From Newsgroup: alt.fan.heinlein

"Dark Lightning (Thunder and Lightning)" by John Varley
https://www.amazon.com/Dark-Lightning-Thunder-John-Varley/dp/042527408X/

Book number four of a four book young adult space opera series. I read
the well printed and well bound MMPB published by Ace in 2014 that I
bought new on Amazon since my books are packed in the garage. This is
my third or fourth reread of this book. I will buy any fifth book in
the series. In fact, I will buy and read just about any new Varley
book. Sadly, John Varley retired in 2023 when his beloved wife passed away.
https://www.discoursemagazine.com/p/john-varley-an-appreciation

Each one of the Thunder and Lighting books highlights a new generation
in the connected families since the first generation of the connected
families in the first book. This book specifically covers Podkayne and
Jubal Broussard's twin eighteen year old daughters: Cassie (Cassiopeia)
and Polly (Pollyanna), the fourth generation to live off the Earth. And
yes, there are serious Heinlein fanboy comments all throughout the
series as Varley is very heavily influenced by Robert Heinlein. This
book is dedicated to Spider and Jeanne Robinson.

Cassie and Polly were born and raised on the "Rolling Thunder", the
hollowed out eight mile long by four mile wife asteroid that Travis and
Jubal Broussard, their families, and 200,000 other people are taking to
a faraway star system. The journey is taking many decades so most of
the people are spending the entire journey in stasis, the black bubble technology invented by Jubal Broussard using his squeezer technology as
a base. BTW, Earth is becoming uninhabitable at this point due to seven
huge aliens from Europa who have destroyed the climate.

Jubal Broussard comes out of his bubble every month for a week to spend
time with his wife and daughters. But this time, he comes out of the
bubble and yells, "Stop the ship, or everyone will die". The ship is traveling at 0.77 of the speed of light and cannot be stopped easily, requiring twenty years of deceleration. Due to the seriousness of the situation, a significant portion of the 20,000 crew members who are
awake decide to mutiny and take over. Not good.

My previous review of this book: "Book number four of a four book
series. This is a MMPB book. This is probably the end of the series.
I have yet to read a bad Varley book and this is certainly one of his
best ones. Very heavily influenced by Heinlein's young adult series as
one of the characters is named Podkayne. This is a series about the
creation of a new power source and the subsequent application of that
power source for intrasolar and interstellar space travel. The Earth is becoming uninhabitable due to an alien invasion so Travis, Jubal and
20,000+ of their best friends build a spaceship out of a six mile by
four mile asteroid and leave. The story is told from the perspective of
the two twin daughters of Jubal who pops in and out occasionally using a stasis bubble."

John Varley has a website at:
https://varley.net/

My rating: 6 out of 5 stars
Amazon rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars (501 reviews)

Lynn
--- Synchronet 3.21d-Linux NewsLink 1.2