I am very glad that I knew this is a translated publiaction of an older novel. It let me stick with it.

There's no flow, the words feel staid and perhaps even machine translated. The story itself is .. well an old story and bring with it a lot of baggage.

I think it's generally it's a good thing to get classic works translated so that they can be recognised or shared with the world but in this case, it just didn't work.

I very much suggest this is published without the slick apperence of a modern piece of sci-fi, otherwise readers will be very disapointed!

(I think this book should definitely have a preface, making the reader aware that they are reading a translated work, originally written in 1962 (France). The only way I found this information was through another reader's review.)

DNF 40%

I'm sorry, I tried, but I really struggled with this book. I don't know how much comes down to the translation or the original text but the writing wasn't great. It's jumpy and disjointed. It doesn't really flow well at all, making it quite difficult to get into. After only 50 pages I started skimming, then eventually decided to give it up once I realised it wasn't getting any better for me.

I wasn't enjoying the plot, characters or world. I absolutely adore the concept of a flying city, it could be my most favourite setting, but in this case it wasn't executed well. I didn't really get a clear picture of what the city actually looked like, further hindering the immersion experience.

I thought the story was really bland, the constant history lessons were confusing, I kept zoning out and the characters are incredibly irritating. Unlikeable characters isn't a reason to negatively review a book, but they were even more jumpy than the writing and they just didn't make sense. The reader is subjected to the most outrageous mood swings and explosive tempers, with no real motivation or reason, it wasn't believable.

The mass population's belief system was problematic and contradictory. They have a severe hatred and prejudice towards all planetaries - but only when it suits them. They are more than happy to 'pop in', do some trading and purchase a supply of planetary goods, that they then go on to sell to the population in their flying city.

Speaking directly to the protagonist - "If there's one thing we would never do, that is lock a man up whose only crime was to be different." How nice. Then in the same paragraph, she goes on to call him 'planetary vermin' and tell him that some of her people will try to kill him.

Oh, did I mention these people also have a 'home base planet', with factories and whatnot. But they only live there was it is 'absolutely necessary', so that means they are free to continue their loathing and prejudice of anyone who chooses to live on a planet. Huh?

I just can't. Without an enjoyable world or characters, there was nothing for me to invest in.

I initially read this without realising it was originally written in 1962! Amazingly, the basic premise is still intriguing - a soldier that has only known the autocratic Empire ends up rescued by a democratic ship, where people have been living away from planets for generations, and instantly judge him for being a provincial 'planetary'. I didn't mind the world building and descriptions of the ship, but the treatment and description of women were what made this book almost unreadable to a modern audience. There are three women who throw themselves at the main character, even though the main plot hinges on him feeling rejected and discriminated against by everyone on board. For the time, two of these women are vaguely interesting and have some agency, which compares well with other 'classic' sci-fi like Ray Bradbury, but he ends up marrying a young (described as looking 17) basically blank nurse, raised in a modest religious sect that somehow also lives on board. The soldier has very little to recommend him - there are numerous opportunities for him to help the ship and prove his worth, which he doesn't do - really for no reason at all.

Having realised that the book is nearly 60 years old, it becomes slightly more interesting as a document of the attitudes of its time, and less infuriating.

This was OK. It has a whole lot of dialog, and of course is dated in many ways. Unless you're prepared for old style scifi, this will probably not be your thing. I struggled with it a bit.

I really appreciate the review copy!

(I know there could be some mistakes in this review. I’m trying to improve my English, thanks)

A classic of science fiction? Good! An unknown science fiction author, and French? Very good! I admit that before I downloaded it I looked for the original French edition -Pour patrie, l’espace-, but I did not find it (at least in ebook), so there is my honest review from the forthcoming English edition, for which I must thank both Netgalley and Flame Tree Press.

As the cover points out, this is the first edition in English of this classic French science fiction novel published in 1962. However, Francis Carsac’s novels were very popular in the USSR, and he has also two translated into Spanish. Francis Carsac was the pseudonym of François Bordes (1919-1981), known as a prestigious prehistorian, with numerously bibliography for his Paleolithic studies.

At first it surprises me that this novel is a happy precedent of Culture starships by the missed Iain M. Banks. There are people who want to live in space, in enormous city-state spaceships and not with the contemptuously called planetaries. There is also a decadent Terran empire, in the form of a dictatorial aristocracy vs. a sort of space technological anarchism. About the latter, apparently an utopia then, but soon we will realize that there is no perfect human society. But I will not talk about the plot, if you want you can read the synopsis provided by the publisher.

Of course, for a novel written in 1962 some issues are expected. The style of writing science fiction from nearly sixty years ago has changed, for example the pace is slower. Also some didactic and a bit silly explanations, mixed with the author own philosophical ideas (Confess, reader!, if you were a writer, will you resist the temptation to explain your own ideas in your novel?).

On the other hand, habitually we must accept the way that the women are disregarded in classic science fiction. If not, we would not read none of them. This book it is not a exception, but the women have a curious role: in some way they are important for the story, but mostly as a sentimental counterparts of the hero. In this utopian spatial society they are imagined as independent and capable, for example as technicians or soldiers (In France times were changing, six years before May 68) but her role in the story is mainly as partners of the protagonist. So there is plenty of flirting issues in this novel between the hero and... three women!, and it includes a ridiculous catfight. I must add also that the protagonist warrior ego is a bit tiresome.

For all this I get the impression that the author facet as a science fiction writer is mostly due to entertainment. The novel contains spaceships, intersolar empires, space battles, terrific aliens, adventure and a lot of flirting… In other words, this is pure space opera! It is difficult to translate the French title, but it means something like My Country, the Space. Does it remind you of another very influential novel, written a few years before?

I must add that the novel has some minor plot nonsenses -even for being a space opera-, and also some illogical style problems, but I have to keep in mind that this is a evaluation copy and that it needs a final correction before its publication on May 21. In the marketing aspect, in my opinion the cover is more than right, it shows the beginning of the story with the hero marooned in space.

Finally, can I recommend this novel? Of course if you love classics like I do. By classics I mean pre-cyberpunk or better, pre-New Wave literature. Also to space opera lovers, the book has an interesting and different -or eccentric- way to tell a science fiction story.

I felt the main character in this book, had little to be admired. He was a conceited spoiled brat. While the basic premise of story was interesting, the characters were not.

I'm not usually into this sort of book but this was actually really enjoyable. Will enjoy reading more from this author.

Thanks to Flame Tree Press and Netgalley for the eARC.

Just a quick disclaimer. I like sci-fi, but not to the point where I’ve gone back to read the classics, and I haven’t read any pre-1990s sci-fi besides some H. G. Wells and Jules Verne. Thus, I’m not sure how this book compares to others of its era.

I hated this book.

Firstly, plot. The narrator was unlikable and a brat and shallow and rude (and yet women flung themselves at him). All of the characters had the blatant inability to empathize with others or consider their point of view, so the majority of the book was Character A saying, “I want this!”, and when Character B says no, Character A decides to put thousands of people’s lives in danger out of stubbornness. The plot also seriously meandered. It didn’t feel like there was any direction and the action didn’t feel meaningful. The book didn’t come to any satisfying conclusion because the storyline that it wrapped up was whether or not the main character had one ounce of character growth (supposedly he did) and not any of the big picture stuff.

Prose-wise, it also sucked! I’m not sure how much was the original author and how much was the translation, and I can’t find the original online to cross-check (it’s French title is “Pour patrie l’espace”). This book is 90% dialogue, and poorly written dialogue at that, in which characters have no unique voice and continuously over explain everything. It’s clunky and it’s boring and it’s confusing. There’s basically no transition in between scenes—you can skip over three months and not have any idea at all. If you skim, you’ll miss plot points, but you’ll want to skim because it’s so awful. I read this as fast as I could because I wanted to get this book over with.

As I was reading this, though, there is one thing I think could save this story: turning it into a comic book. As a novel, it sucks. However, with more visual cues, I think it would work a lot better. And the way it jumps from one absurd scenario to the next is better suited to comic book form and more forgivable. It still wouldn’t be a phenomenal story, but it would be much more digestible.

I am always so keen to read classic Sci Fi, not least because my dearly beloved father was the one who got me into this genre, I'd sneak books from his pile of library books and devour them when I should have been sleeping. This is a translation of a "Golden Age Science Fiction Classic" and so I was pleased to get hold of a copy!

Although at the time of initial publishing this book it must have felt furiously futuristic, I'm afraid that as with many others of this time period - the book has aged horribly.

Tankar, our protagonist is misogynistic, self absorbed and indoctrinated. He makes dumb decisions that make no sense and blames them on the women in his life, who are all out to manipulate him, or get something from him or use him. He punches one woman and she falls in love with him, another woman tries to kill him but realises the error of her ways...it goes on a lot like this. Women are BAD!

The story covers deep space, a massive city in the stars (hence the title!) a Jurassic Park type planet, space wars and more. It has all those imaginative flashes of brilliance that must have been so cool to read back in the day. If only Tankar had been less of a miserable git!

I do think it's great that a classic novel like this is available in English for people to read. There is lots to learn about where we came from and it is impressive to see how authors like Francis Carsac were imagining our future in the stars so long ago. I appreciate these trailblazers that made way for the amazing scifi that was to evolve. That said, I got through it with gritted teeth and was relieved when it was done.

Thanks so much to NetGalley and Flame Tree Press for providing a free ebook copy for review!

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