Book Review: 'Shaman' by Kim Stanley Robinson

Kim Stanley Robinson's new novel may seem like a change from his past works, but in a way it fits in well with his other works. Instead of spaceships we get the end of the last ice age. And although you may think that this is a huge change in what Kim usually writes, we do get a story about humans surviving and adapting through innovation and investigation, just like all of his stories. 'Galileo's Dream' may have seemed like Kim was talking about the beginnings of science, but with 'Shaman' he shows that there are no beginnings of science and that it is essentially part of being human.

Kim has stated that his inspiration for this novel come from extensive hiking near glaciers and the type of environments that Europe would have been like at the end of the last ice age. On these hikes Kim would imagine what it would have been like to be a human at this time. Other inspiration has come from the ongoing investigation of Otzi, the five and a half thousand year old body found exposed in a glacier in 1991. Clothes and other artifacts found with the body have survived wonderfully and provide a great insight into the technology and innovation of the time.

What Kim produces is a heart-warming, coming of age tale of an apprentice shaman. We join him in his first wandering, cast aside into the wilderness naked and with no tools. We learn an awful lot about his clan and how they function in day to day life. And every character you encounter is well-drawn and is a complete individual. These people and the book itself does well to remove itself from using the standard caveman stereotype and indeed shows that 'humanity' has been with us all along and did not come about with the rise of civilisation.

I found that I did not enjoy this novel as much as some of Kim's other works such as the Mars trilogy and 'Galileo's Dream', but compared to most other works out there, it is still a brilliant and thoughtful work full of wonder and heart. In my opinion even when Kim is experimenting and trying something different like this, he could write the pants off all but a few authors.