- Wood, Fenton.
The Tower of the Bear.
Seattle: Amazon Digital Services, 2019.
ASIN B07XB8XWNF.
-
This is the third short novel/novella (145 pages) in the author's
Yankee Republic series. I described the first,
Pirates of the Electromagnetic Waves
(May 2019), as “utterly charming”, and the
second, Five Million Watts
(June 2019), “enchanting”. In this volume,
the protagonist, Philo Hergenschmidt, embarks upon a
hero's
journey to locate a treasure dating from the origin of
the Earth which may be the salvation of radio station 2XG and
the key to accomplishing the unrealised dream of the
wizard who built it, Zaros the Electromage.
Philo's adventures take him into the frozen Arctic where
he meets another Old One, to the depths of the Arctic
Ocean in the fabulous submarine of the eccentric Captain
Kolodziej, into the lair of a Really Old One where he
almost seizes the prize he seeks, and then on an epic
road trip. After the Partition of North America, the
West, beyond the Mississippi, was ceded by the
Republic to the various aboriginal tribes who lived
there, and no Yankee dare enter this forbidden territory
except to cross it on the Tyrant's Road, which remained
Yankee territory with travellers given free passage by
the tribes—in theory. In fact, no white man was known
to have ventured West on the Road in a century.
Philo has come to believe that the “slow iron” he
seeks may be found in the fabled City of the Future, said to be
near the Pacific coast at the end of the Tyrant's Road. The
only way to get there is to cross the continent, and the only
practical means, there being no gas stations or convenience
stores along the way, is by bicycle. Viridios helps Philo
obtain a superb bicycle and trailer, and equip himself with
supplies for the voyage. Taking leave of Viridios at the
Mississippi and setting out alone, he soon discovers everything
is not what it was said to be, and that the West is even more
mysterious, dangerous, and yet enchanted than the stories he's
heard since boyhood.
It is, if nothing else, diverse. In its vast emptiness
there are nomadic bands pursuing the vast herds of bison on
horseback with bows and arrows, sedentary tribes who prefer
to ride the range in Japanese mini-pickup trucks, a Universal
Library which is an extreme outlier even among the exotic
literature of universal libraries, a hidden community that makes
Galt's Gulch look like a cosmopolitan crossroads, and a strange
people who not only time forgot, but who seem to have
forgotten time. Philo's native mechanical and
electrical knack gets him out of squeezes and allows him to
trade know-how for information and assistance with those
he encounters.
Finally, near the shore of the ocean, he comes to a great
Tree, beyond imagining in its breadth and height. What is
there to be learned here, and what challenges will he face as
he continues his quest?
This is a magnificent continuation of one of the best
young adult alternative history tales I've encountered
in many years. Don't be put off by the “young
adult” label—while you can hand this book
to any youngster from age nine on up and be assured they'll
be enthralled by the adventure and not distracted by the
superfluous grunge some authors feel necessary to include
when trying to appeal to a “mature”
audience, the author never talks down to the reader,
and even engineers and radio amateurs well versed in
electronics will learn arcana such as the generation and
propagation of extremely low frequency radio waves. This
is a story which genuinely works for all ages.
This book is currently available only in a Kindle edition. Note
that you don't need a physical electronic book reader, tablet,
or mobile phone to read Kindle books. Free Kindle applications
are available which let you read on Macintosh and
Windows machines, and a Kindle Cloud Reader allows reading
Kindle books on any machine with a modern Web browser, including
all Linux platforms. The fourth volume, The City of
Illusions, is scheduled to be published in December,
2019.
October 2019 