A Grey Moon Over China
Thomas A. Day
Tor, 2009 (original published by Black Heron, 2006)
A Grey Moon Over China is near future sci-fi epic with a surprisingly intimate touch that constantly wars with broader scope. It is a struggle that at times makes for an engrossing read and at other times makes for a difficult read. In the near future of this novel Earth is shattered by wars and environment ruin. While people go on about their daily lives the endless war and violence takes its toll. One soldier, Edward Torres, tired of war and violence and look for a peaceful life and quiet place his own, makes a startling discovery on a tiny island: a cheap, near limitless, portable energy source. His discovery creates a domino effect of change as he and his companions restart a failed space program in order strike out and start fresh amongst the stars.
A Grey Moon Over China was a bit of an impulse buy for me. Before punching in for a weekend shift at the book store I had picked up the book and started reading the prologue. Towards the end a particular melancholic passage clenched my purchase:
Walking back up the hill carrying my parcels, I stopped to catch my breath and listen to the silence after crunching my feet on the gravel. She’s like the rest of us, I thought. We pursue our own solitary passions and seldom look up, seldom sense that it we ourselves who form the swelling flood of history, the dark constellation of events we would sooner lay at the feet of other. Until the storm finally gathers, and then we look up and we grow afraid, and we say: This is not what I intended.
And yet, even then, I thought, we do not act. Even then we hesitate, and always for too long.
There was something about that little passage that really struck and cord with me and while that passage doesn’t neatly encapsulate the novel’s plot it certainly captures the novel’s tone. This is not a novel that lifts you up. It drifts into surprisingly dark places and in many ways confirms and highlights the immutability of man’s violent nature.
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