Steal Across the Sky, Nancy Kress
Review from January 1st, 2013

I didn’t really intend to read Steal Across the Sky all in one evening, it just sort of happened. It’s the first of my books for a challenge which I might or might not fully participate in, the Worlds Without End female writers challenge for 2013. I’ve meant to read Nancy Kress for ages, and I actually have Beggars in Spain somewhere to read, but on impulse I chose this one.

It’s an interesting concept, or bundle of concepts: people are chosen to bear witness to the results of a crime committed by aliens long ago, and to take that knowledge back to the human race. But it’s not a book about aliens — we barely see the aliens — it’s a book about humans and how we might react, how things might change, if those Witnesses existed and came back with the news of what they saw.

Nancy Kress seems to be, from this at least, a good judge of what people are like. The whole range of responses is here, and a range of different personality-types to react to each other in all the ways people do, seeing things from different sides. My main quibble was that it felt very much like the narrative took a side in the whole debate, so I was very sure what the truth was. I would rather have wondered a little more, or even a lot more.

It’s not so much about specific people and personal emotions, but about the central concept, and how it affects everyday people. There was enough personality there, though, to keep a character-orientated person like me reading. Once I’d picked this up, apart from a break to wash my hair, I read it more or less in one go — it had me thinking, which is sometimes more important than feeling when it comes to books.

Rating: 4/5