It’s Christmas ! Now is a good time to treat yourself by stocking up on reading (or rereading, etc.), especially since the weather at the end of December, as we know, can go in all directions. Here are three reading suggestions – two new and one revisited – in the very likely event that Mother Nature has also decided to take her leave.
Dive into the sand
Hugh Howey is the author of the saga Silowhich was picked up and then released by Apple TV+ earlier this year as from a remarkable series television. Howey, interestingly enough, became, thanks to this suspense trilogy which takes place in a toxic future probably destroyed by humanity itself, one of the first authors to successfully self-publish his books in digital version on Kindle. A whole slew of authors have obviously followed in his footsteps. Advice to future writers who don’t know where to start…
Outresable is the first part in French of another saga imagined in 2014 by Howey. Under its original title Sandthis story which plunges – literally – into the dunes of a world buried under tons of sand was entitled to a sequel in 2022, called Across the Sandwhich has just been adapted into French. Outredune was released at the end of October.
No sand in the gears of this series, which engages the reader in a family story that is fragmented to say the least. Everything revolves around sand divers, a profession which consists of going under the dunes to recover treasures from a bygone era to ensure the survival of humanity. Their quest for the depths will lead them in the first volume to the mythical buried city of Danvar, while forcing them to visit the depths of the human soul at the same time. In the second epic, the descendants of the first divers will have to unravel the underside of a nuclear war which adds a layer of dystopia to this already very postapocalyptic adventure…
Outresable
Hugh Howey, Actes Sud, Paris, 2021, 400 pages
Outredune
Hugh Howey, Actes Sud, Paris, 2023, 493 pages
In the confines of time (and space)
“Post-humanity” does not mean the same thing for everyone. British author Adrian Tchaikovsky revisits how intelligence, or at least human consciousness, is reproduced by other living species as the last humans of a not-so-distant future attempt to resurrect their civilization dying in galaxies far from ours.
The third volume of this space saga which cannot be compared to any has just been released in English. The first two are available in French under the titles In the web of timeThen In the depths of time. We can’t wait to know the name of the third volume… without too much urgency. The first two stories will keep the reader eager for sprawling epics occupied for several hours, where the storyline is finely woven, one thread at a time.
In both cases, we follow the last inhabitants of Earth, scattered throughout space to ensure the colonization of new worlds. The first world visited is that of Kern, a distant planet ready to welcome human life. Except that another species already installed there does not intend to be invaded. The origin of this species raises many questions about the evolution of life and genetic chance which, ultimately, is perhaps more responsible than we think for the existence of life at all, and on its great fragility, as we know it on Earth.
In the web of time
Adrian Tchaikovsky, Gallimard, Paris, 2019, 686 pages
In the depths of time
Adrian Tchaikovsky, Gallimard, Paris, 2021, 688 pages
Dune revisited
Paul Atreides and his mystical journey through the dunes of the planet Arrakis have acquired the status of a legendary saga thanks, among other things, to his ultimately successful return to the cinema. Unsurprisingly, therefore, the new Collector’s Edition in two volumes translated, revised and corrected by the publisher Robert Laffont, includes a preface written by the Quebec director Denis Villeneuve. He has built an international reputation as a master of fantasy and science fiction scenarios. His ability to render a captivating and not too cluttered audiovisual version of complex and difficult to follow stories, even after several thousand pages printed in small print, raises the inevitable question: could he be the One?
Dune. Collector’s Edition also includes a second preface, by French author Pierre Bordage. Less known here, Bordage is a prolific author of fantastic literature, to whom we would like to label him as a science fiction author, if it were not for the fact that he himself somewhat refuses to take on this genre. His heroic sagas take place in all eras and remind us that science and technology are, for the author who has the necessary imagination, only the myths and legends of the modern era.
This first volume is perfect for two types of readers. First, it is aimed at those who have already read Frank Herbert’s endless original saga and who now know that it is better to stop reading sooner rather than later, as the author seems to have lost his way himself in his own desert after the first volumes. Then it will appeal to those who hate terrible book covers, but who like to present on their shelves or in their library the novels that they have enjoyed reading more than once.
Dune. Collector’s Edition (volume 1)
Frank Herbert, Robert Laffont, Paris, 2020, 720 page