Overlong, but blessed with moments of wry and gentle beauty as friends and antagonists rediscover each other under different...
Hugo winner Robinson (Antarctica, 1998, etc.) follows three characters over seven centuries on an alternate Earth in which Islam and Buddhism are the dominant religions. Her charming though ponderous study in comparative religions opens with wandering Mongol scout Bold Bardash stumbling through an abandoned Athens, where the Black Death has wiped out everyone. Christianity just about dies out, Judaism is a minority cult, and, after many barbarous and pointless struggles between petty warlords, the New World is discovered by the Chinese Navy, and the Renaissance is played out as a conflict between a Middle Eastern Islam and Chinese Buddhism. Robinson explores ten periods in this alternate history with earthy, pragmatic Bardash, impetuous, vengeful Kyu, and quietly intellectual I-Li undergoing many reincarnations: orphaned Indian girl, Sufi mystic, African eunuch, Sultan’s wife, Chinese admiral, dourly brilliant alchemist, feminist poet, village midwife, glassblower, theologian, etc. Robinson avoids the battles and calamities that mar most alternate histories, leaving his characters to discuss at sometimes tedious length the esoteric ironies among evolving theological and political ideologies as China assumes unsteady mastery of the globe.
Overlong, but blessed with moments of wry and gentle beauty as friends and antagonists rediscover each other under different guises in exotically dangerous locales.Pub Date: March 5, 2002
ISBN: 0-553-10920-0
Page Count: 672
Publisher: Bantam
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2002
A moderately promising entry that should find an audience.
Larkwood's debut, the first of a fantasy series, begins in familiar fashion as a warrior-maiden adventure and gradually develops into a love story.
In this imaginative but never fully convincing universe, places may be reached via magical gates leading through a maze of dead and dying worlds. Magic powers derive from a rare, innate ability combined with power vouchsafed by a patron god. Csorwe is of a hominin race that sports tusks—these are functionless and, unfortunately, impossible to visualize without thinking "piggish." In a narrative rendered in crisp, vivid prose, Csorwe serves the oracular shrine of a god—the Unspoken Name—but is destined soon to sacrifice herself. Then Sethennai, a wizard—his race has Spock ears—requesting a prophesy about the mysterious and powerful Reliquary of Pentravesse, offers her a choice: serve him and live, or marry the god and die. Csorwe chooses life and becomes Sethennai's ninja. The wizard, formerly the ruler of the city Tlaanthothe, needs her to help reclaim his position from a scheming rival. Later, during a quest to secure the Reliquary, she will clash with the Qarsazhi, imperial interworld extortionists, and their powerful young wizard Shuthmili, who's fated to be absorbed by their enforcement arm but, like Csorwe, never conceived other possibilities. Until this point, the story meanders, but finally the author finds a unique voice no longer dependent on boilerplate action, chases, escapes, torture, and fights. And when Csorwe and Shuthmili meet and fumble toward a relationship, we recognize heartfelt emotion, real substance, and an emergent theme: loyalties and the choices we make that engender them. These, along with the strong female leads, are solid foundations upon which to build.
A moderately promising entry that should find an audience.Pub Date: Feb. 11, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-250-23890-0
Page Count: 464
Publisher: Tor
Review Posted Online: Nov. 24, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2019
PERSPECTIVES
Liu’s trilogy is the first major work of science fiction to come to the West out of China, and it’s a masterpiece.
What if alien civilizations do exist? In this final installment of a stunning and provocative trilogy (The Dark Forest, 2015, etc.), Liu teases out the grim, unsettling implications.
Previously, astronomer-turned-sociologist Luo Ji forestalled an invasion attempt by advanced aliens from planet Trisolaris. Luo’s “dark forest” deterrence works thus: if intelligent species exist, inevitably some will be hostile; therefore, safety lies in remaining hidden while threatening to reveal your enemy’s location to the predators. Earth knows where Trisolaris is, but the Trisolarans can’t threaten to reveal Earth’s location since they want to occupy it. Here, the story picks up at an earlier juncture. Cheng Xin, an aerospace engineer developing a probe to study the approaching Trisolaran fleet, learns that a friend has been tricked into volunteering to die in order to assist the project. Horrified, she retreats into hibernation. When she revives centuries later, dark forest deterrence holds the Trisolarans at bay. Luo, now old, hands Cheng the key to Earth’s defense. Unfortunately, the sophons—tiny, intelligent, light-speed computers sent by the Trisolarans as spies—know Cheng lacks Luo’s ruthlessness and immediately seize control of Earth; only by luck does Earth manage to trigger its deterrent. Hostile aliens immediately destroy planet Trisolaris, whose invasion fleet turns away because it’s only a matter of time before the same invisible antagonists deduce the existence of Earth and strike the solar system. Once again, Cheng must choose between logical ruthlessness and simple human compassion, with the fate of humanity at stake. This utterly absorbing book shows little interest in linear narrative or conventional character interactions. Instead, the author offers dilemmas moral, philosophical, and political; perspectives—a spectacular glimpse of three dimensions seen from a four-dimensional viewpoint; a dying universe shattered by billions of years of warfare; and persuasive ideas whose dismal repercussions extend beyond hope and despair into, inescapably, real-world significance.
Liu’s trilogy is the first major work of science fiction to come to the West out of China, and it’s a masterpiece.Pub Date: Sept. 20, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-7653-7710-4
Page Count: 592
Publisher: Tor
Review Posted Online: June 29, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2016
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
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