Blood Tree
Jun. 9th, 2003 12:10 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jazzfishSince I'm not doing anything else productive I may as well ruminate on books.
The Merro Tree, by Katie Waitman. Del Rey, 1997. Out of print.
This reminded me of Orson Scott Card's Songmaster at first, but went in a very different direction. Mikk of Vyzania is a performance master, an actor/singer/dancer/what-have-you who is skilled in the art forms of many, many races. He is on trial for performing the banned art of Somalite songdance. This trial is the 'spine story' of the book; the trial chapters are interspersed with sections detailing Mikk's life, as an apprentice and then a performance master. Each spine chapter contains a lead-in to the next history section. Problem: the trial is nominally specifically about the songdance performance... the dragging in of the other life-events felt forced.
Mikk, naturally, is the most fully realised of the characters. His soulmate Thissizz and his teacher Master Huud are nearly as well-developed. Many of the other characters suffer a bit, though. (This is partly a problem with simply having so many characters to introduce, in addition to having such a complex world. That the world never felt underdeveloped is a point in Ms Waitman's favor.)
The book tackles themes of art, censorship, prejudice, love, and philosophy, and rarely falls flat. (Or it may just be speaking to my inclinations.) Overall it's an excellent first novel, and a solid piece of work in general. At last report the author is working on a sequel... here's hoping she can get it published.
Blood Music, by Greg Bear. Ace, 1985/1996 / iBooks, 2002.
About three-quarters of the way through I realised that this felt an awful lot like Greg Egan's Permutation City: a few solid main characters fronting for a near-endless parade of minor ones, some science that I only barely (or, in Egan's case, fail to) understand, the utter shift in tone between the first and second half of the book, and the weird transcendence at the end. Not that this is a bad thing, especially not since Blood Music predates Perm City by about ten years. Just something I noticed.
Vergil I. Ulam, biotech researcher extraordinaire, has been ordered to destroy his attempts to make intelligent white blood cells. So he saves his culture the only way he knows how: he injects them into his bloodstream. Then things get wacky, as the cells grow and take over his body, and then everyone else's.
For me, at least, it was a pretty quick read. I really got into the dialogues with the cells, and later the last lone survivor's journey. The end is a bit confusing, and I'll need to reread it at some point. (Same with Merro Tree, really.)
(Heh. "Vergil." Dante's guide through the Inferno and Purgatory in the Commedia. How cute.)
The top two posts on my friendslist have, as their subjects, WASTE and V. Neither of them, however, has anything to do with Thomas Pynchon.
The Merro Tree, by Katie Waitman. Del Rey, 1997. Out of print.
This reminded me of Orson Scott Card's Songmaster at first, but went in a very different direction. Mikk of Vyzania is a performance master, an actor/singer/dancer/what-have-you who is skilled in the art forms of many, many races. He is on trial for performing the banned art of Somalite songdance. This trial is the 'spine story' of the book; the trial chapters are interspersed with sections detailing Mikk's life, as an apprentice and then a performance master. Each spine chapter contains a lead-in to the next history section. Problem: the trial is nominally specifically about the songdance performance... the dragging in of the other life-events felt forced.
Mikk, naturally, is the most fully realised of the characters. His soulmate Thissizz and his teacher Master Huud are nearly as well-developed. Many of the other characters suffer a bit, though. (This is partly a problem with simply having so many characters to introduce, in addition to having such a complex world. That the world never felt underdeveloped is a point in Ms Waitman's favor.)
The book tackles themes of art, censorship, prejudice, love, and philosophy, and rarely falls flat. (Or it may just be speaking to my inclinations.) Overall it's an excellent first novel, and a solid piece of work in general. At last report the author is working on a sequel... here's hoping she can get it published.
Blood Music, by Greg Bear. Ace, 1985/1996 / iBooks, 2002.
About three-quarters of the way through I realised that this felt an awful lot like Greg Egan's Permutation City: a few solid main characters fronting for a near-endless parade of minor ones, some science that I only barely (or, in Egan's case, fail to) understand, the utter shift in tone between the first and second half of the book, and the weird transcendence at the end. Not that this is a bad thing, especially not since Blood Music predates Perm City by about ten years. Just something I noticed.
Vergil I. Ulam, biotech researcher extraordinaire, has been ordered to destroy his attempts to make intelligent white blood cells. So he saves his culture the only way he knows how: he injects them into his bloodstream. Then things get wacky, as the cells grow and take over his body, and then everyone else's.
For me, at least, it was a pretty quick read. I really got into the dialogues with the cells, and later the last lone survivor's journey. The end is a bit confusing, and I'll need to reread it at some point. (Same with Merro Tree, really.)
(Heh. "Vergil." Dante's guide through the Inferno and Purgatory in the Commedia. How cute.)
The top two posts on my friendslist have, as their subjects, WASTE and V. Neither of them, however, has anything to do with Thomas Pynchon.
no subject
Date: 2003-06-09 02:54 pm (UTC)