Years have passed on Riverworld. Entire nations have risen, and savage wars have been fought--all since the dead of Earth found themselves resurrected in their magnificent new homeworld. Yet the truth about the Ethicals, the powerful engineers of this mysterious "afterlife," remains unknown. But a curious cross-section of humanity is determined to change that situation . . . at any cost.
Intrepid explorer Sir Richard Francis Burton leads the most remarkable voyage of discovery he has ever undertaken. Hot on his heels are Samuel Clemens, King John of England, and Cyrano de Bergerac. Spurred by the promise of ultimate answers, they chart a course across the vast polar sea--and toward the awesome tower that looms above it. But getting there will be more than half the battle. For death on Riverworld has become chillingly final . . .
This is the third installment in Farmer's Riverworld series. Riverworld is an engineered planet, that has one river that spirals or otherwise traverses the planet so that it is several millions miles long. There are unscalable mountains dividing the river valley from itself. At some point everyone who had ever lived on Earth, and reached the age of 5, was resurrected along the river valley.
Every mile or so along the river is a grailstone, and every person has their own personal grail, which when place on the grailstone, will at three specific times a day be filled with food and other items.
To Your Scattered Bodies Go was fresh, intriguing and won the Hugo award. The Fabulous Riverboat was a pretty good followup. The Dark Design is more of the same. I got bogged down because I read the first half of the book before softball season started, and now four months later I've finally finished it. The book followed two or three sets of characters, which is fine, but because of the time lapse it made it harder to follow the story.
For some reason, Farmer finds in necessary for the protagonists to work and work and work and finally achieve their goal and they have the rug pulled out from under them. Sort of an anti dues ex machina.
I don't know what was happening in 1977 (yes I do, I lived through it!) but for some reason Farmer decides to give all his measurements in metric units, and then state it again in English units.
The deal is the creators of the planet, the ethicals or whoever, have some sort of base at the north pole. The books have been following a few different groups which have been trying to get there. One lead by Sam Clemens, one by sir Richard Francis Burton, and a few other characters. In the second one Clemens works to build a riverboat to take him there, at the end of that story the boat is stolen away and he's left with nothing. This book starts years later, and he has built a second boat, an even better one, and is on his way. Others stay behind and build dirigibles.
So at the end nothing is really answered, we learn just a little more of riverworld's secrets.
I'll probably read the next book, but not right away. I think I've pulled out another Myth (Robert Asprin) book.
