— by Wombat-socho





Back in February, Smitty mentioned that Kevin J. Anderson would be writing a novel to accompany the new Rush* album Clockwork Angels . Well, thanks to a librarian friend, I got hold of an advance reader copy. It’s not bad.





It’s an odd little book, much less Randian than I would have thought it would be, given that Neil Peart was quite the Objectivist back in the day. Anderson does a very good job of spinning a bildungsroman out of Rush’s album without making it seem like a disconnected string of songfics, and while some of the characters may be not much more than thick cardboard, at least there is something more to them than a bare description and a few lines of dialogue. This may sound odd, but I think this wouldn’t be a bad YA novel; there’s a good philosophical argument in there about avoiding extremes and going off to tend to your own affairs, but you’re not being beaten over the head with it. I liked it and would recommend it, especially for the younger folks.





As for the album, well, it’s no 2112 ; I haven’t been following Rush closely for the past dozen years or so, but they seem to be not wearing their Objectivism on their sleeves so much as they used to. They’ve lost nothing on the technical side, and artistically – well, it’s a nice little rock opera about finding one’s pace in the world. You could do worse, and others have.





(A shorter version of this was originally published here.)

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