Six-Gun Snow White
Catherynne M. Valente
Saga Press
Fiction, Fantasy
***+ (Okay/Good)
DESCRIPTION: Once upon a time, in a land where white men stole and killed and conquered in a ceaseless effort to quench their thirst for power, wealthy
prospector Mr. H coveted a Crow maiden named Gun That Sings. They had a single child before she escaped by the only means left to her, leaving Mr. H a widower and
her half-blood daughter alone in a world that had no place for her, not among the white men or the native tribes. The girl was hidden away from the world, left free to
run in the wilds of her father's estate... until Ms. M came to be the new Mrs. H. Raised in Puritan hellfire, with a strange black mirror that holds the moon, she mockingly names the child Snow White after
the skin and racial purity she'll never have, not for all the torments the woman lovingly bestows upon her. Thus unfolds a tale of love and hate, of magic mirrors and
dark pacts, of wicked witches and not-so-innocent maidens, of the wild and harsh Old West and curses that even death cannot break.
REVIEW: Valente promises a unique, Western twist on the familiar fairy tale, and delivers that much in full. This story reaches beyond the sanitized Disney portrayals
to the dark roots first recorded by the Brothers Grimm, where keeping a song in one's heart and having animal friends doesn't guarantee happy endings and
handsome princes aren't always available for rescues. This Snow White is no fainting flower, but a girl born to a world that hates her, further broken and twisted by
the warped, abusive attention of a woman who herself was warped and abused in the name of the Puritan God... a woman who only found some measure of escape by turning
to the very forces her religious upbringing forbade. It's not a life for a lily-handed princess, and Snow White isn't a paragon of virtue herself, doing whatever it
takes to survive with the imperfect tools and stunted, bruised heart she's been given. The tale takes several downright surreal turns, with wild Western towns and traces
of Native American mythos amid elements of the original fairy tale, reworked yet still recognizable: the huntsman is a Pinkerton agent, the "seven dwarves" are a town
of other broken women fleeing a world that has no place for them, and the infamous heart sequence makes for an unexpected plot twist. It ends on a peculiar note. Overall,
while I enjoyed Valente's style and remarkable imagination, I was just a trifle too disturbed by some parts of the story to justify a full four-star rating.
You Might Also Enjoy:
The Sisters Brothers (Patrick deWitt) - My Review
Wicked Women (Chris Enss) - My Review
The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of her Own Making (Catherynne M. Valente) - My Review
Tuesday, March 22, 2016
Saturday, March 19, 2016
Watership Down (Richard Adams)
Watership Down
Richard Adams
Avon
Fiction, Fantasy
**** (Good)
DESCRIPTION: When little Fiver has his strange visions and unaccountable feelings, his brother Hazel long ago learned to heed them... but the Chief Rabbit of their warren refuses to believe a premonition of doom. He even sets his Owsla, the chief enforcement guards, after them when they try to flee on their own. Along with a handful of other bucks, Hazel and Fiver make good their escape - but surviving isn't easy for homeless rabbits in the English countryside. Aside from men with guns, there are elil - the "Thousand" predators - not to mention injury, illness, and exposure to contend with. Fiver's visions insist there's a safe haven to be found... but even if Hazel and the rest reach it, will they be able to build a home, not just for themselves but for does and kittens for generations to come?
REVIEW: In a special anniversary edition of this title, Richard Adams talks of how he conceived this tale in a series of car trips with his children, stories of rabbits and their adventures in the English countryside to entertain and pass the time. Since publication, however, it's been hailed as a modern classic, inspiring numerous other "animal epic" fantasies (including one of my all-time favorites, Tad Williams's Tailchaser's Song - which borrows quite heavily from this book) and additional material, not to mention generations of fans more numerous than rabbits on the downs. Others insist it's a profound work, a symbolic examination of civilization and humanity (er, animality), or otherwise worthy of display on literary pillars of ivory and gold. When I started reading, therefore, I wasn't quite sure what to expect, aside from having once seen the movie (and suspecting a fair bit was cut from the script.) It moves at a fair pace, with some lulls and rough patches now and again, as the characters slowly grow from simple names and flat descriptions to more rounded beings... beings who don't always think or act as a human would, limited by lapine mentalities that preclude much abstract thought (beyond their numerous myths of the creator Frith and the first rabbit El-ahrairah, not to mention the Death figure, the Black Rabbit of Inlé), the bucks often reducing the does to vague entities required for breeding. (I admit this last point grew subtly irksome over time, despite does playing some part in later events of the novel.) They can learn, though; indeed, the balance of tradition with novelty, good new ideas with bad ones, makes a running theme through the book, as Hazel and company encounter various problems and warrens who have fallen into snares of their own innovation. The omniscient narration, though, tends to float above and beyond the rabbits, often contributing human observations and trivia of little use or concern to the rabbits themselves as they travel through the countryside. Sometimes, the descriptions get too detailed for their own good, thick with wildflowers and grasses, though Adams does an interesting job describing the flow and character of light. There are moments of tension and lightness, heroism and cowardice, cleverness and blundering. Ultimately, it may not be the great epic novel of the ages that some make it out to be, but it's a decent story, best thought of as Adams himself describes it: an adventurous tale of English rabbits, told to while away the hours.
You Might Also Enjoy:
The Jungle Book (Rudyard Kipling) - My Review
Tailchaser's Song (Tad Williams) - My Review
Watership Down (Deluxe Edition)
- Amazon DVD link
Richard Adams
Avon
Fiction, Fantasy
**** (Good)
DESCRIPTION: When little Fiver has his strange visions and unaccountable feelings, his brother Hazel long ago learned to heed them... but the Chief Rabbit of their warren refuses to believe a premonition of doom. He even sets his Owsla, the chief enforcement guards, after them when they try to flee on their own. Along with a handful of other bucks, Hazel and Fiver make good their escape - but surviving isn't easy for homeless rabbits in the English countryside. Aside from men with guns, there are elil - the "Thousand" predators - not to mention injury, illness, and exposure to contend with. Fiver's visions insist there's a safe haven to be found... but even if Hazel and the rest reach it, will they be able to build a home, not just for themselves but for does and kittens for generations to come?
REVIEW: In a special anniversary edition of this title, Richard Adams talks of how he conceived this tale in a series of car trips with his children, stories of rabbits and their adventures in the English countryside to entertain and pass the time. Since publication, however, it's been hailed as a modern classic, inspiring numerous other "animal epic" fantasies (including one of my all-time favorites, Tad Williams's Tailchaser's Song - which borrows quite heavily from this book) and additional material, not to mention generations of fans more numerous than rabbits on the downs. Others insist it's a profound work, a symbolic examination of civilization and humanity (er, animality), or otherwise worthy of display on literary pillars of ivory and gold. When I started reading, therefore, I wasn't quite sure what to expect, aside from having once seen the movie (and suspecting a fair bit was cut from the script.) It moves at a fair pace, with some lulls and rough patches now and again, as the characters slowly grow from simple names and flat descriptions to more rounded beings... beings who don't always think or act as a human would, limited by lapine mentalities that preclude much abstract thought (beyond their numerous myths of the creator Frith and the first rabbit El-ahrairah, not to mention the Death figure, the Black Rabbit of Inlé), the bucks often reducing the does to vague entities required for breeding. (I admit this last point grew subtly irksome over time, despite does playing some part in later events of the novel.) They can learn, though; indeed, the balance of tradition with novelty, good new ideas with bad ones, makes a running theme through the book, as Hazel and company encounter various problems and warrens who have fallen into snares of their own innovation. The omniscient narration, though, tends to float above and beyond the rabbits, often contributing human observations and trivia of little use or concern to the rabbits themselves as they travel through the countryside. Sometimes, the descriptions get too detailed for their own good, thick with wildflowers and grasses, though Adams does an interesting job describing the flow and character of light. There are moments of tension and lightness, heroism and cowardice, cleverness and blundering. Ultimately, it may not be the great epic novel of the ages that some make it out to be, but it's a decent story, best thought of as Adams himself describes it: an adventurous tale of English rabbits, told to while away the hours.
You Might Also Enjoy:
The Jungle Book (Rudyard Kipling) - My Review
Tailchaser's Song (Tad Williams) - My Review
Watership Down (Deluxe Edition)
- Amazon DVD link
Tuesday, March 15, 2016
The Martian Chronicles (Ray Bradbury)
The Martian Chronicles
Ray Bradbury
HarperCollins
Fiction, Collection/Sci-Fi
**** (Good)
DESCRIPTION: A Martian woman's strange dreams provoke a strong reaction from her husband... an expedition to Mars inexplicably finds a small town from the 1950's American Midwest waiting at the landing site... a man has a strange encounter on a lonely road one long Martian night... an automated house patiently awaits the return of its masters... The story of humanity's exploration and conquest of Mars unfolds in this classic series of short stories and vignettes by noted sci-fi author Ray Bradbury.
REVIEW: I've read a couple short stories from this classic collection over the years, but never the entire volume, so I figured it was worth a try when I found the eBook version at a discount. Bradbury's work pushes into poetry, riddled with ethereal descriptions of both ordinary and extraordinary things. Though characters rarely return, the whole collection works as a narrative, as well as an examination of two civilizations doomed by their own inescapable flaws. The Martians, already in their twilight, refuse to accept what the coming of Earth-men means until it's too late, while the young hot-blooded humans, fleeing their own collapsing planet, fail to realize that the seeds of their own self-destruction are within them all along. Moments of wonder and otherworldly beauty punctuate a slow-motion tragedy, with glimmers of hope all too often quashed by Martian denial and human ignorance. It's more allegory than hard science, a space-age myth, in which the future Earth consists of hermetically-sealed 1950's white Midwestern American people, values, and lifestyles, and Mars is an especially exotic New World for human progress to destroy, plunder, and exploit. Men are independent scientists and explorers and doers, while women are needy and emotional tag-alongs. One wonders how much of this was a deliberate conceit on the part of Bradbury and how much was a result of cultural blinders of the era in which he wrote, the assumption that cultural norms (not to mention American dominance of space travel) would remain intact through interplanetary colonization. I have to admit some of those assumptions irked me, but such was the era in which Bradbury wrote these tales. They weren't meant to be literal scientific speculation anyway, but more a literary mirror to explore and expose our own flaws, not to mention the likely outcome if those flaws remain unacknowledged and unchecked. On the whole, despite some aging around the edges as the mid-century America he waxes poetic about fades ever further into history, this collection becomes more than the mere sum of its stand-alone parts, still well worthy of its classic status.
You Might Also Enjoy:
Something Wicked This Way Comes (Ray Bradbury) - My Review
Red Mars (Kim Stanley Robinson) - My Review
The Martian (Andy Weir) - My Review
Ray Bradbury
HarperCollins
Fiction, Collection/Sci-Fi
**** (Good)
DESCRIPTION: A Martian woman's strange dreams provoke a strong reaction from her husband... an expedition to Mars inexplicably finds a small town from the 1950's American Midwest waiting at the landing site... a man has a strange encounter on a lonely road one long Martian night... an automated house patiently awaits the return of its masters... The story of humanity's exploration and conquest of Mars unfolds in this classic series of short stories and vignettes by noted sci-fi author Ray Bradbury.
REVIEW: I've read a couple short stories from this classic collection over the years, but never the entire volume, so I figured it was worth a try when I found the eBook version at a discount. Bradbury's work pushes into poetry, riddled with ethereal descriptions of both ordinary and extraordinary things. Though characters rarely return, the whole collection works as a narrative, as well as an examination of two civilizations doomed by their own inescapable flaws. The Martians, already in their twilight, refuse to accept what the coming of Earth-men means until it's too late, while the young hot-blooded humans, fleeing their own collapsing planet, fail to realize that the seeds of their own self-destruction are within them all along. Moments of wonder and otherworldly beauty punctuate a slow-motion tragedy, with glimmers of hope all too often quashed by Martian denial and human ignorance. It's more allegory than hard science, a space-age myth, in which the future Earth consists of hermetically-sealed 1950's white Midwestern American people, values, and lifestyles, and Mars is an especially exotic New World for human progress to destroy, plunder, and exploit. Men are independent scientists and explorers and doers, while women are needy and emotional tag-alongs. One wonders how much of this was a deliberate conceit on the part of Bradbury and how much was a result of cultural blinders of the era in which he wrote, the assumption that cultural norms (not to mention American dominance of space travel) would remain intact through interplanetary colonization. I have to admit some of those assumptions irked me, but such was the era in which Bradbury wrote these tales. They weren't meant to be literal scientific speculation anyway, but more a literary mirror to explore and expose our own flaws, not to mention the likely outcome if those flaws remain unacknowledged and unchecked. On the whole, despite some aging around the edges as the mid-century America he waxes poetic about fades ever further into history, this collection becomes more than the mere sum of its stand-alone parts, still well worthy of its classic status.
You Might Also Enjoy:
Something Wicked This Way Comes (Ray Bradbury) - My Review
Red Mars (Kim Stanley Robinson) - My Review
The Martian (Andy Weir) - My Review
Behind the Canvas (Alexander Vance)
Behind the Canvas
Alexander Vance
Fiewell and Friends
Fiction, YA Fantasy
**** (Good)
DESCRIPTION: Middle-schooler Claudia Miravista loves nothing more than a good art gallery - which, combined with her shyness, hardly makes her the most popular girl in class. It's not like she's a great artist herself, no matter how her grandfather praises her doodles and sketches... but she can still enjoy gazing into a painting.
She never expected anyone to gaze back.
Pim first appears in a painting at the small art museum in downtown Florence, Indiana, during a school trip, a blue-eyed boy nobody else saw. It's only later, when he "follows" her home to an oil painting in her room, that she learns his story. For three centuries, he claims, he's been trapped in a world created ages ago by mages known as Artistis, cursed by a witch. When it seems she might help him break free, Claudia willingly agrees; he's the first real friend she's ever had, after all. But art, like reality, has many more layers than meets the eye... as do people, a lesson she learns all too quickly when she steps into the world behind the canvas.
REVIEW: With a great concept and a reasonably interesting (if occasionally stubborn) heroine, Behind the Canvas makes for a fast, adventurous read. Claudia starts with the usual middle grade baggage of shyness and insecurity, her love of painting tempered by fear that she'll never be any good at art herself, plus her chronic social awkwardness. Her adventure starts fairly fast, with little of the usual dithering and foot-dragging. Naturally, she learns important life lessons in her journey, but not without a few false turns and setbacks and the odd relapse - most of which play out believably, given the often-intense situations she's in. Pim seems a simple victim of circumstances at first, but along the way, as more of his story comes out, Claudia must make some hard choices about how much to trust him. The evil witch, Nee Gezicht, is a nasty villainess and formidable foe whose taste in minions and decor has a disturbingly Surrealist streak. Defeating her is no easy task, as she has several tricks up her sleeve. Along the way, a decent helping of real-world art history is sprinkled into the tale, often with helpful footnote "excerpts" from Claudia's favorite art book, Dr. Buckhardt's Art History for the Enthusiast and the Ignorant - excerpts with the humorous touch the title implies. I read this with an internet browser window open; it was rather interesting to look at the art and the styles as Claudia encountered them. But this isn't just a thinly-disguised attempt to force-feed culture into reluctant young brains; it's a decent story in its own right, whether or not it inspires any genuine art appreciation in its readers. The ending has a few nice twists, and there are some moments of true wonder. For now, it looks to be a stand-alone tale, but I wouldn't mind exploring further behind the canvas if Vance finds more stories lurking back there.
You Might Also Enjoy:
Jeremy Thatcher, Dragon Hatcher (Bruce Coville) - My Review
Stoneheart (Charlie Fletcher) - My Review
The Rithmatist (Brandon Sanderson) - My Review
Alexander Vance
Fiewell and Friends
Fiction, YA Fantasy
**** (Good)
DESCRIPTION: Middle-schooler Claudia Miravista loves nothing more than a good art gallery - which, combined with her shyness, hardly makes her the most popular girl in class. It's not like she's a great artist herself, no matter how her grandfather praises her doodles and sketches... but she can still enjoy gazing into a painting.
She never expected anyone to gaze back.
Pim first appears in a painting at the small art museum in downtown Florence, Indiana, during a school trip, a blue-eyed boy nobody else saw. It's only later, when he "follows" her home to an oil painting in her room, that she learns his story. For three centuries, he claims, he's been trapped in a world created ages ago by mages known as Artistis, cursed by a witch. When it seems she might help him break free, Claudia willingly agrees; he's the first real friend she's ever had, after all. But art, like reality, has many more layers than meets the eye... as do people, a lesson she learns all too quickly when she steps into the world behind the canvas.
REVIEW: With a great concept and a reasonably interesting (if occasionally stubborn) heroine, Behind the Canvas makes for a fast, adventurous read. Claudia starts with the usual middle grade baggage of shyness and insecurity, her love of painting tempered by fear that she'll never be any good at art herself, plus her chronic social awkwardness. Her adventure starts fairly fast, with little of the usual dithering and foot-dragging. Naturally, she learns important life lessons in her journey, but not without a few false turns and setbacks and the odd relapse - most of which play out believably, given the often-intense situations she's in. Pim seems a simple victim of circumstances at first, but along the way, as more of his story comes out, Claudia must make some hard choices about how much to trust him. The evil witch, Nee Gezicht, is a nasty villainess and formidable foe whose taste in minions and decor has a disturbingly Surrealist streak. Defeating her is no easy task, as she has several tricks up her sleeve. Along the way, a decent helping of real-world art history is sprinkled into the tale, often with helpful footnote "excerpts" from Claudia's favorite art book, Dr. Buckhardt's Art History for the Enthusiast and the Ignorant - excerpts with the humorous touch the title implies. I read this with an internet browser window open; it was rather interesting to look at the art and the styles as Claudia encountered them. But this isn't just a thinly-disguised attempt to force-feed culture into reluctant young brains; it's a decent story in its own right, whether or not it inspires any genuine art appreciation in its readers. The ending has a few nice twists, and there are some moments of true wonder. For now, it looks to be a stand-alone tale, but I wouldn't mind exploring further behind the canvas if Vance finds more stories lurking back there.
You Might Also Enjoy:
Jeremy Thatcher, Dragon Hatcher (Bruce Coville) - My Review
Stoneheart (Charlie Fletcher) - My Review
The Rithmatist (Brandon Sanderson) - My Review
Monday, March 14, 2016
A Fire Upon the Deep (Vernor Vinge)
A Fire Upon the Deep
(The Zones of Thought series, Book 1)
Vernor Vinge
Tor
Fiction, Sci-Fi
***+ (Okay/Good)
DESCRIPTION: Over the countless eons of the Milky Way's existence, civilization after civilization has struggled from planet-bound primitive to higher power... each discovering, in their own time, the Zones of Thought that govern everything from native intelligence to technological capabilities. From the Unthinking Depths at the galactic center, through the Slow Zone and Beyond, to the Transcendence where essential godhood and more awaits, sophont species rise and fall in endless tides. But some who rise high have less than altruistic intentions. Though transcended Powers often have limited lifespans, they sometimes leave gifts or traps behind for those who come later - and the humans of Straumli Realm just triggered the most terrible trap the galaxy has ever known. Even as the Blight spreads, enslaving the minds of whole species, one sliver of hope remains: a single ship escaped the closing jaws, headed for an obscure spot on the edge of the Beyond. If there's a countermeasure to be found, it's there.
Jefri and Johanna Olsndot were aboard the fleeing vessel when it came to the primitive, unnamed world - and the sole waking survivors when the doglike natives attacked. While nine-year-old Jefri was taken by the fighters, his older sister Johanna was smuggled away by their enemies. Each thinking the other dead, they find themselves alone among the peculiar Tines: pack intelligences unlike anything they've ever known, embroiled in an ongoing battle between two powerful leaders for control of their medieval world. Neither side wastes any time exploiting the aliens and their technology, with the starship becoming the ultimate prize - and none, not even the children, suspect its true value.
Meanwhile, the human Ravna Bergsndot, employee at a hub of the galactic communication network called the Known Net, finds herself embroiled in the plots of a transcended Power known as the Old One. When the enemy forces strike, she and a pair of treelike Skroderiders, along with a man who may or may not be a living relic of a lost human age, become part of the rescue crew dispatched to the Tines' world... with the Blight and other enemies hot on their trail.
REVIEW: This one lingered on my Currently Reading list for quite some time, for reasons that are part of what narrowly cost it a full fourth star in the ratings. Vinge presents some excellent ideas and a rich galactic milieu with deep history (even the Known Net is a relic of long-vanished civilizations, passed down and rediscovered and maintained through the ages) and very alien races, among whom humans are a middling-at-best species. The pack minds of the Tines in particular, and their civilization that has grown because of, and often in spite of, their limitations and abilities, makes for something nicely different. I also liked the idea of the Zones of Thought, evidently inspired by ancient notions of godhood being tied to distance from the ground and expanded to a galactic scale. However, it can't help but be thick going, overwhelming at times, with the deep space distances and almost mind-boggling switches between Zones. The humans claim to have risen (or re-risen, as species often experience numerous setbacks) from a matriarchal society and a near-legendary Age of Princesses, yet the weakest, most blubbery character in the book is the lady Ravna; she's perpetually overshadowed by the old-school spacer Pham Newen, whose memories may (or may not) be mere fabrication but whose raw nuts-and-bolts mentality gets them through far more scrapes than Ravna's emotional breakdowns. The "female" of the Skroderider pair also takes a back seat to her more forceful partner. A slew of characters compete for attention, in space and on Tines' World. Ultimately, the higher struggle with the Blight and the down-to-earth struggle planetside are resolved in a single battle that's as much about gunpowder and space-age weaponry as it is about the nature of Powers and the galactic zones of thought. Meanwhile, throughout the book, snippets of traffic from the Known Net add information and occasional local color to the tale; no matter the century or species, it seems like internet capability is an irresistible temptation to spout one's half-baked theories (and propagate viruses and spam) at the universe at large. In the balance, I liked it more than I didn't, but it just grew too dense at times for me to truly enjoy, plus the subtle sexism started grating on me somewhere past the halfway point. I'd still recommend it to anyone wanting a galaxy-spanning hard SF tale with interesting ideas.
You Might Also Enjoy:
Foundation (Isaac Asimov) - My Review
Star Rigger's Way (Jeffrey A. Carver) - My Review
Dune (Frank Herbert) - My Review
(The Zones of Thought series, Book 1)
Vernor Vinge
Tor
Fiction, Sci-Fi
***+ (Okay/Good)
DESCRIPTION: Over the countless eons of the Milky Way's existence, civilization after civilization has struggled from planet-bound primitive to higher power... each discovering, in their own time, the Zones of Thought that govern everything from native intelligence to technological capabilities. From the Unthinking Depths at the galactic center, through the Slow Zone and Beyond, to the Transcendence where essential godhood and more awaits, sophont species rise and fall in endless tides. But some who rise high have less than altruistic intentions. Though transcended Powers often have limited lifespans, they sometimes leave gifts or traps behind for those who come later - and the humans of Straumli Realm just triggered the most terrible trap the galaxy has ever known. Even as the Blight spreads, enslaving the minds of whole species, one sliver of hope remains: a single ship escaped the closing jaws, headed for an obscure spot on the edge of the Beyond. If there's a countermeasure to be found, it's there.
Jefri and Johanna Olsndot were aboard the fleeing vessel when it came to the primitive, unnamed world - and the sole waking survivors when the doglike natives attacked. While nine-year-old Jefri was taken by the fighters, his older sister Johanna was smuggled away by their enemies. Each thinking the other dead, they find themselves alone among the peculiar Tines: pack intelligences unlike anything they've ever known, embroiled in an ongoing battle between two powerful leaders for control of their medieval world. Neither side wastes any time exploiting the aliens and their technology, with the starship becoming the ultimate prize - and none, not even the children, suspect its true value.
Meanwhile, the human Ravna Bergsndot, employee at a hub of the galactic communication network called the Known Net, finds herself embroiled in the plots of a transcended Power known as the Old One. When the enemy forces strike, she and a pair of treelike Skroderiders, along with a man who may or may not be a living relic of a lost human age, become part of the rescue crew dispatched to the Tines' world... with the Blight and other enemies hot on their trail.
REVIEW: This one lingered on my Currently Reading list for quite some time, for reasons that are part of what narrowly cost it a full fourth star in the ratings. Vinge presents some excellent ideas and a rich galactic milieu with deep history (even the Known Net is a relic of long-vanished civilizations, passed down and rediscovered and maintained through the ages) and very alien races, among whom humans are a middling-at-best species. The pack minds of the Tines in particular, and their civilization that has grown because of, and often in spite of, their limitations and abilities, makes for something nicely different. I also liked the idea of the Zones of Thought, evidently inspired by ancient notions of godhood being tied to distance from the ground and expanded to a galactic scale. However, it can't help but be thick going, overwhelming at times, with the deep space distances and almost mind-boggling switches between Zones. The humans claim to have risen (or re-risen, as species often experience numerous setbacks) from a matriarchal society and a near-legendary Age of Princesses, yet the weakest, most blubbery character in the book is the lady Ravna; she's perpetually overshadowed by the old-school spacer Pham Newen, whose memories may (or may not) be mere fabrication but whose raw nuts-and-bolts mentality gets them through far more scrapes than Ravna's emotional breakdowns. The "female" of the Skroderider pair also takes a back seat to her more forceful partner. A slew of characters compete for attention, in space and on Tines' World. Ultimately, the higher struggle with the Blight and the down-to-earth struggle planetside are resolved in a single battle that's as much about gunpowder and space-age weaponry as it is about the nature of Powers and the galactic zones of thought. Meanwhile, throughout the book, snippets of traffic from the Known Net add information and occasional local color to the tale; no matter the century or species, it seems like internet capability is an irresistible temptation to spout one's half-baked theories (and propagate viruses and spam) at the universe at large. In the balance, I liked it more than I didn't, but it just grew too dense at times for me to truly enjoy, plus the subtle sexism started grating on me somewhere past the halfway point. I'd still recommend it to anyone wanting a galaxy-spanning hard SF tale with interesting ideas.
You Might Also Enjoy:
Foundation (Isaac Asimov) - My Review
Star Rigger's Way (Jeffrey A. Carver) - My Review
Dune (Frank Herbert) - My Review
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