Sunfall is Al-Khalili’s first novel though not his first book having written a number of science-for-the-lay-reader books. Al-Khalili is a professor of theoretical physics and holds the chair of public engagement in science at the university of Surrey, so he is certainly well qualified to make a hard science fiction book in which the science is neither overwhelming nor too confusing. And this he has done admirably well. He is maybe not quite so well qualified when it comes to writing a novel; Sunfall is flawed in a number of ways but then it is his first book.
Overall, I thoroughly enjoyed it; I love hard science fiction so his detailed and plausible speculative dark matter science was fascinating and brilliantly explained. But this did tend to mean that there was rather a lot of exposition which was fine by me but not for everyone. His characters though were rather less successful being somewhat two dimensional and just a little too obvious especially regarding the final reveal towards the end.
The story is a near future disaster story with Earth’s failing magnetic field exposing the planet to cosmic radiation and leaving it vulnerable to coronal mass ejections from the sun. The science solution to this problem provides the meat of the story with a fascinatingly unique and convincing take on restarting the Earth’s core.
A good but not brilliant first book that makes it to 4 stars for me by virtue of its excellent science.
4/5 stars
Overall, I thoroughly enjoyed it; I love hard science fiction so his detailed and plausible speculative dark matter science was fascinating and brilliantly explained. But this did tend to mean that there was rather a lot of exposition which was fine by me but not for everyone. His characters though were rather less successful being somewhat two dimensional and just a little too obvious especially regarding the final reveal towards the end.
The story is a near future disaster story with Earth’s failing magnetic field exposing the planet to cosmic radiation and leaving it vulnerable to coronal mass ejections from the sun. The science solution to this problem provides the meat of the story with a fascinatingly unique and convincing take on restarting the Earth’s core.
A good but not brilliant first book that makes it to 4 stars for me by virtue of its excellent science.
4/5 stars
