The Sky People, Chapter One, continued

SM Stirling, The Sky People (New York, 2007). 

"'The herbivores like this one' - he kicked the ceratopsian's shield - 'are dumb as geckos.'" (p. 18)

"The stems were deep, poplin green..." (ibid.)

"A Grand Banks-style schooner..." (p. 19)

"...there were board sidewalks on the main drag..." (p. 20)

"'...frontier Deadwood...'" (ibid.)

I am learning a lot on the second reading, including this:

"...the first cargoes and personnel had come down in one-way capsules that had landed on the shallow bay...it had taken years to get the runway and orbital boosters ready for two-way traffic." (p. 19)

So the first American explorers of Venus had willingly stranded themselves on the planetary surface for several years, a detail that simply did not impinge on my brain, or at least not on my memory, on the first reading of the novel. As with Poul Anderson, there turns out to be a great deal more information in the text than we, or at least I, assimilate on a single reading. It is almost like reading another book.