GregHowley.com

The Anguished Dawn was a worthy sequel to Cradle of Saturn.

Sequels are hardly ever as good as the originals, and destroying the Earth as was done in Cradle of Saturn is a tough act to top. But the interaction of primitives and spacemen, and the introduction of the "Yarbat Array" Anti-Gravity technology, along with an exciting climax to the story made for a good read.

Still, I can't help but feel that Hogan was proposing certain philosophical if not religious views with the book. I certainly found the investigation of alternate theories of Earth's distant past fascinating, although without further research I'll consider them science fiction, as that's the angle from which I'm approaching the book anyway. And I also admire the perspective of never harboring a fixed view of the world - research may always elicit observations that overturn one's staunchest ideas, and stubbornly clinging to a perspective despite evidence to the contrary is just silly.

But so many Kronians in this book seem to believe in Intelligent Design, and find evidence to support it. As Michael Crichton has shown, writing a book to advance an agenda doesn't always make for a bad book, and The Anguished Dawn proposes its theories and views artfully. The story is central and these other issues are tertiary. All in all, a book I enjoyed.