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Stone Spring, Stephen Baxter - Review

Publication Date: June 2010

8,000 years ago Europe was a very different place. England was linked to Holland by a massive swathe of land. The landmass of Northland lay where the North Sea is now. And then came a period of global warming, a shifting of continents and, over a few short years, the sea rushed in and our history was set.

But what if the sea had been kept at bay? Brythony is a young girl who lives in Northland. Like all her people she is a hunter gatherer, her simple tools fashioned from flint cutting edges lodged in wood and animal bone. When the sea first encroaches on her land her people simply move. Brythony moves further travelling to Asia. Where she sees mankind's first walled cities, and gets an idea. What if you could build a wall to keep the sea out?

And so begins a colossal engineering project that will take decades, a wall that stretches for hundreds of miles, a wall that becomes an act of defiance, and containing the bones of the dead, an act of devotion. A wall that will change the geography of the world. And it's history.

Stephen Baxter has had a long writing career and is an old hand at creating believable worlds (science fiction) and re-creating long-forgotten times (ancient epics). In Stone Spring he shakes us up with writing that is deeply evocative and gritty, carrying us on the tide of a story that could so easily have happened, creating an alternative world and history to what we know today.

The story starts small and personal, singling out one girl, as she reaches womanhood. Gradually it becomes bigger, wider, working in fantastical mythology and other ‘scatterlings’ of human existence. We come to know these Mesolithic humans well and can relate to the harsh reality of their world. The cold, the hunger, the fear of the elements, the various superstitions they cling to.

The author keeps us very close to the humans throughout the story, shifting his focus and ours, occasionally to make us aware of the chaotic environment they find themselves in. The shifting weather, the elements the people revere and worship and depend on is treacherous and we very soon realise that it is going to turn on them in a truly damaging way.

When a tsunami hits, devastating the area, sweeping homes away, realisation hits that slowly the land they have relied on all their lives, is sinking beneath the waves.

A young girl, one of the scatterlings, decides to rise above the situation she is in and to try and save her tribe from utter destruction, by building a wall that will stand against the oncoming flood.

From here on, we are in unknown territory – an alternate history that is so plausible it gives you an uncomfortable itch behind the shoulder blades. The author effortlessly drags us with him through the narrative, showing us petty rivalries, family members turning against each other, love and hate as tumultuous as the harsh and brutal environment he has set Stone Spring in.
If there is one thing Stephen Baxter can do well it is world building and creating intense characters who, though separated through thousands of years, as a reader you can identify with. The forward momentum in the novel is dizzying and sometimes you feel yourself wishing that things would slow down, just a bit. But ultimately, it’s a great piece of fiction that reads quickly and exhaustingly, regardless of its decent size.

Stone Spring is a strong, thought provoking novel written by an author very much at the top of his game. Stone Spring, published by Gollancz, is out now.

Written by Liz de Jager

Liz de Jager discovered her love for words through reading westerns as a small child. She graduated to fantasy, sci-fi, horror in school. Subsequently she met a biker who introduced her to D&D, action movies, superheroes and comics and somehow, has never been the same since.