West of January

Joanne Wotypka is a branch library assistant in the Cameron Library at
the University of Alberta.

Vernier is world where things move slowly—the planet’s rotation
creeps along at a pace that results in generations passing before a
single turn is complete. The herdsmen of Vernier are scattered,
primitive remains of failed human colonies. The Angels are
less-than-holy guardians of the planet, attempting to shepherd the
scattered enclaves along with the slowly moving sun, to keep them from
starvation and annihilation.

Knobil skirts both these worlds, as the child of an Angel father and a
herdswoman mother, and attempts to take his place as an Angel in order
to give his life some meaning. During his life, he mixes with other,
non-herdsman people, and finds himself equally not at home with all of
them. However, this novel doesn’t really seem to have an ultimate
goal: Knobil simply copes with the changing circumstances of his life,
and the reader follows along after him. In many ways, the plot of the
novel is like Vernier’s sun: slow-moving, but heading relentlessly on,
though to no clear finishing point.

Knobil’s world (both Angel and herdsman) is also relentlessly
misogynistic to the point of brutality, an element that some readers
might find difficult to take. Females are for breeding purposes only.
Knobil’s “excursions” with non-herdsman females are similarly
self-serving, and among one population he single-handedly rejuvenates
the entire gene pool.

By the end of the book, I felt very unsatisfied. There were many
interesting ideas winding their way through the storyline, but none ever
got fully developed. The whole idea of a planet where a single
revolution takes centuries is rife with possibility, but on the whole,
West of January doesn’t live up to its potential.