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leahbobet(Published in accordance with the Tenets of Book Reporting and the support of Viewers Like You.)
So far this year...
#1 -- M. John Harrison, Nova Swing
#2 -- Barth Anderson, The Patron Saint of Plagues
#3 -- Stephen King, The Waste Lands
#4 -- Stephen King, Wizard and Glass
#5 -- Margaret Atwood, The Penelopiad
#6 -- Patricia McKillip, The Book of Atrix Wolfe
#7 -- Stephen King, Wolves of the Calla
#8 -- Stephen King, Song of Susannah
#9 -- Julia Alvarez, !Yo!
#10 -- Stephen King, The Dark Tower
#11 -- Melissa Marr, Ink Exchange
#12 -- Paul Melko, Singularity's Ring
#13 -- Sarah Prineas, The Magic Thief
#14 -- Sarah Monette, The Bone Key
#15 -- Marie Brennan, Midnight Never Come
#16 -- Michelle West, The Broken Crown
#17 -- Nick Sagan, Edenborn
I loved this. I finally loved a book this year.
This is not to say that I have disliked that list of books up there. I liked several of them, two enough to write favourable shelf reviews for at work. However, it's been a while since I've read a book that I love and jump up and down about and make little fluttery motions with my hands. I have taken to reading backlist in search of a book to love; this year's SF offerings so far have been rather thin. And I now have a book I love for 2008. I wish there was an award in the field that was We Were Silly And Didn't Read This When It Came Out, But It Rocks, so I could pin it on this book.
Edenborn is exceedingly well-constructed science fiction. There is thought in the post-apocalyptic, post-epidemic worldbuilding, which combines the ruined splendour of being the last people in the world -- getting to do whatever you want -- with the inherent terribleness of that condition; there is thought in the characters and their emotional makeup, in their motivations and how they clash or don't with each other; there is thought in the plotting and the weight of the structure. It is not carrying agendas or pushing agendas. It eats your head.
By and large this is a book about isolation, and what isolation -- be it physical, emotional, or social -- will do to a person. There are some portrayals of the paranoid and narcissistic patterns of thought people get into when they're excluded that made me flinch with the truth of them. And that discussion of isolation is reflected through several characters and perspectives, and tied into a discussion of parenting: what is good parenting, what is bad, and how we impress a fear of our own mistakes upon our children and maybe cripple them in our overcompensation. It is in some ways, a very dark book. Bad things happen to good people.
But the thing is? It's not unkind. There is a lot of SF that does bad things to its characters and all the while is watching you for your reaction to that, watching you for your flinch. I can't really verbalize that approach well aside from "scoring points off the reader", no matter if those points are scored in service to something. Your relationship to a narrative changes when it is actively out to get you. I class China Mieville's stuff here; the end of Perdido Street Station is specifically designed to put a fist-mark in the reader's gut. I respect him for taking that choice, but it creates a distance between that book and me.
Edenborn is not portraying the way its characters are hurt -- and get hurt -- to make you flinch. It is quite deeply understanding of all these people, of why they act and think the way they do. They're mirrors of each other, pieces of each other dealing with the same fundamental problems of isolation in different ways and with varying levels of self-awareness. They are all immensely sympathetic at the end, with one possible exception. And those motivations, the pressure of that isolation, is true. And sometimes hard to read: you see this world through the eyes of four or five of its inhabitants, and they each read events differently according to their damage. Like the real world, the Real Story is flawed and fuzzy, and open to interpretation. It depends on who you believe.
And the prose is sharp, and human, and humorous in its ways, and the voices so very well done, and the emotional arcs and balance just right, and just really, you guys should go read Idlewild which I also loved and then read this next.
So...buy these books.
I rarely give marching orders. The last time I did was for Air, I think, and I have a partial marching order for Bad Monkeys, but only a partial because it's really not for everyone. I am delivering orders here because these two books -- I'm going to read the third ASAP -- are a breath of fresh air even inside the little ghetto of Hard SF that composes the books I like best. They made me happy and blew little holes in the top of my head like nothing has since Accelerando. And if these don't do well and consequently I don't get more books from Nick Sagan? I will be extremely cross and bite people.
And that is my book report. Doom Has Spoken.
So far this year...
#1 -- M. John Harrison, Nova Swing
#2 -- Barth Anderson, The Patron Saint of Plagues
#3 -- Stephen King, The Waste Lands
#4 -- Stephen King, Wizard and Glass
#5 -- Margaret Atwood, The Penelopiad
#6 -- Patricia McKillip, The Book of Atrix Wolfe
#7 -- Stephen King, Wolves of the Calla
#8 -- Stephen King, Song of Susannah
#9 -- Julia Alvarez, !Yo!
#10 -- Stephen King, The Dark Tower
#11 -- Melissa Marr, Ink Exchange
#12 -- Paul Melko, Singularity's Ring
#13 -- Sarah Prineas, The Magic Thief
#14 -- Sarah Monette, The Bone Key
#15 -- Marie Brennan, Midnight Never Come
#16 -- Michelle West, The Broken Crown
#17 -- Nick Sagan, Edenborn
I loved this. I finally loved a book this year.
This is not to say that I have disliked that list of books up there. I liked several of them, two enough to write favourable shelf reviews for at work. However, it's been a while since I've read a book that I love and jump up and down about and make little fluttery motions with my hands. I have taken to reading backlist in search of a book to love; this year's SF offerings so far have been rather thin. And I now have a book I love for 2008. I wish there was an award in the field that was We Were Silly And Didn't Read This When It Came Out, But It Rocks, so I could pin it on this book.
Edenborn is exceedingly well-constructed science fiction. There is thought in the post-apocalyptic, post-epidemic worldbuilding, which combines the ruined splendour of being the last people in the world -- getting to do whatever you want -- with the inherent terribleness of that condition; there is thought in the characters and their emotional makeup, in their motivations and how they clash or don't with each other; there is thought in the plotting and the weight of the structure. It is not carrying agendas or pushing agendas. It eats your head.
By and large this is a book about isolation, and what isolation -- be it physical, emotional, or social -- will do to a person. There are some portrayals of the paranoid and narcissistic patterns of thought people get into when they're excluded that made me flinch with the truth of them. And that discussion of isolation is reflected through several characters and perspectives, and tied into a discussion of parenting: what is good parenting, what is bad, and how we impress a fear of our own mistakes upon our children and maybe cripple them in our overcompensation. It is in some ways, a very dark book. Bad things happen to good people.
But the thing is? It's not unkind. There is a lot of SF that does bad things to its characters and all the while is watching you for your reaction to that, watching you for your flinch. I can't really verbalize that approach well aside from "scoring points off the reader", no matter if those points are scored in service to something. Your relationship to a narrative changes when it is actively out to get you. I class China Mieville's stuff here; the end of Perdido Street Station is specifically designed to put a fist-mark in the reader's gut. I respect him for taking that choice, but it creates a distance between that book and me.
Edenborn is not portraying the way its characters are hurt -- and get hurt -- to make you flinch. It is quite deeply understanding of all these people, of why they act and think the way they do. They're mirrors of each other, pieces of each other dealing with the same fundamental problems of isolation in different ways and with varying levels of self-awareness. They are all immensely sympathetic at the end, with one possible exception. And those motivations, the pressure of that isolation, is true. And sometimes hard to read: you see this world through the eyes of four or five of its inhabitants, and they each read events differently according to their damage. Like the real world, the Real Story is flawed and fuzzy, and open to interpretation. It depends on who you believe.
And the prose is sharp, and human, and humorous in its ways, and the voices so very well done, and the emotional arcs and balance just right, and just really, you guys should go read Idlewild which I also loved and then read this next.
So...buy these books.
I rarely give marching orders. The last time I did was for Air, I think, and I have a partial marching order for Bad Monkeys, but only a partial because it's really not for everyone. I am delivering orders here because these two books -- I'm going to read the third ASAP -- are a breath of fresh air even inside the little ghetto of Hard SF that composes the books I like best. They made me happy and blew little holes in the top of my head like nothing has since Accelerando. And if these don't do well and consequently I don't get more books from Nick Sagan? I will be extremely cross and bite people.
And that is my book report. Doom Has Spoken.
