The Weightless World by Anthony Trevelyan (Book Review)
Just like the anti-gravity machine central to this story, The Weightless World by Anthony Trevelyan is a wonderfully inventive, fluid and soaring breeze of a novel that never lets go of its reader. The first important question that this book raises is, does an anti-gravity machine actually exist? I shall not divulge such spoiler information in this review, but I can tell you that the plot threads and character motivations all spiral around such a machine, whether it actually exists or not. The second important question is, why is someone willing to sell it for an undisclosed yet affordable fee, when they could make billions from it themselves? As the story progresses, such questions begin to get answered, however rather cleverly they only seem to raise a new set of even deeper questions, and I was kept guessing the answers to some of these right to the end.
On the whole the story has very likeable, if somewhat antsy and eccentric characters, and the story keeps you guessing on who the real antagonist among them might be, for each character, apart from Steven Strauss - the stories first person narrator, are shown in a light which does more than air a little suspicion towards their true motives. Steven Strauss and Raymond Ess are the two main characters in the story, but there are many more that are cleverly realised and brought to life, and no one seems to appear for no reason, for there is a certain economy and pleasing roster of characters that deepen the plot as it progresses.
All in all I found the concept of this novel to be very satisfying and well executed, and I found Trevelyan's prose to be both literary and accessible. Added to this, his powers of description were almost lyrical and never repetitive or strained. So to round up I highly recommend this book, and my only reason for not giving it a full five stars is that the story ended perhaps a little too neatly for me, and I felt that there was perhaps some room for a little intrigue at the end, or a sudden unresolved twist that sadly never came.