The Pollinators of Eden by John Boyd is similar to the only other Boyd novel I have read: The Last Starship from Earth. Pollinators is about a strange species of plant which may be intelligent. The novel has more than one thing going on and the conclusions are staggered to give the reader more than one thing to think about, but this, unfortunately, makes the ending unclimactic because what seems to be the main plot is concluded with twenty percent of the book left. Last Starship gives the same impression: that Boyd does not know when to end a book and drags on to reach even further conclusions. Still, I see this as his only major failing because his characters are well developed and he tries to use some hard science. These are his first two novels and he will probably improve.

Click here to return to the SIGMA mainpage.

This page maintained by Greg Armstrong