Scan barcode
roytoo's review against another edition
adventurous
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
5.0
I enjoyed this novella very much after reading it on the recommendation of an author I really enjoy.
Hard to categorize this since it blends elements science fictional, fantastical and even epical hero's journey.
I can't pin down exactly why but it reminds me of John Brunner's Compleat Traveller in Black in very good ways.
Hard to categorize this since it blends elements science fictional, fantastical and even epical hero's journey.
I can't pin down exactly why but it reminds me of John Brunner's Compleat Traveller in Black in very good ways.
chloekg's review against another edition
3.0
The person who described this book as the tales of a sleepy dungeon master was dead-on. Full of meandering, morphing poetry, this short novel is pack full of metaphor and beautiful dreams but not plot.
jworley's review against another edition
adventurous
mysterious
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
3.0
innae's review against another edition
1.0
I am sure there is some deeper meaning in this book that I just did not get...at least I am hoping so, otherwise it really is just a collection of creation myths from a world that doesn't exist. And not even really interesting myths. This should have been an entertaining story of a travel through a foreign land, with discussions on all the weird and interesting peoples that inhabit this world....but instead, it is just a meandering story that doesn't seem to go anywhere.
chalicotherex's review
5.0
Surreal with a strange logic underlying it all. The geography of the world is fascinating: a thin peninsular continent that runs across the equator of a water world. It's populated by strange creatures: men with trees growing out of their shoulders and women with faces on their eyes. The infighting crab beach shellcottage people are the best.
He said to the swimmer, "were you ever the queen of an ancient kingdom?"
"Yes," she muttered sleepily. "And I still am." But this, he supposed, was another of their misunderstandings. Thel had first noticed this phenomenon when he had seen a windhover, hunting over the meadows inland. "Look," he had said, "a kestrel." But the swimmer had thought him crazy for pointing into the sky, for that to her was the name of a kind of fish. And later he found that when he said loyalty she understood it to mean stubbornness, and when she said arbitrary she meant beautiful, and that when she said melancholy she did not mean the sadness we enjoy feeling, but rather mendacity; and when she said actually she meant currently; and when he said I love you, she thought he was saying I will leave you. They had slowly worked up quite a list of these false cognates, Thel could recite scores and scores of them, and he had come to understand that they did not share a language so much as the illusion of a language; they spoke strong idiolects, and lived in worlds of meaning distinct and isolated from the other. So that she no doubt understood queen of an ancient kingdom to mean something like a swimmer in the deep sea; and the mystery of the ancient alloy coin was never explained, and, he realized, never would be. It gave him a shiver of fear, thinking about it –- it seemed to him that nothing would ever be explained, and that all of a sudden each day was slipping away, that time was flying by and they were getting old and nothing would ever become clear. He sat on the beach watching clouds tumble overhead and letting handfuls of sand run through his fingers, the little clear grains of quartz, flecks of black mica, pieces of coral, shell fragments like small bits of hard ceramic, and he saw that a substantial portion of the sand was made of shells, that living things had labored all their lives to create ceramic shelters, homes, the most permanent parts of themselves; which had been pummeled into shards just big enough to see, millions upon millions of lives ground up and strewn under him, the beach made out of the wreckage of generations. And before long he and the swimmer too would become no more than sand on a beach, and they would never really have understood anything.
"Yes," she muttered sleepily. "And I still am." But this, he supposed, was another of their misunderstandings. Thel had first noticed this phenomenon when he had seen a windhover, hunting over the meadows inland. "Look," he had said, "a kestrel." But the swimmer had thought him crazy for pointing into the sky, for that to her was the name of a kind of fish. And later he found that when he said loyalty she understood it to mean stubbornness, and when she said arbitrary she meant beautiful, and that when she said melancholy she did not mean the sadness we enjoy feeling, but rather mendacity; and when she said actually she meant currently; and when he said I love you, she thought he was saying I will leave you. They had slowly worked up quite a list of these false cognates, Thel could recite scores and scores of them, and he had come to understand that they did not share a language so much as the illusion of a language; they spoke strong idiolects, and lived in worlds of meaning distinct and isolated from the other. So that she no doubt understood queen of an ancient kingdom to mean something like a swimmer in the deep sea; and the mystery of the ancient alloy coin was never explained, and, he realized, never would be. It gave him a shiver of fear, thinking about it –- it seemed to him that nothing would ever be explained, and that all of a sudden each day was slipping away, that time was flying by and they were getting old and nothing would ever become clear. He sat on the beach watching clouds tumble overhead and letting handfuls of sand run through his fingers, the little clear grains of quartz, flecks of black mica, pieces of coral, shell fragments like small bits of hard ceramic, and he saw that a substantial portion of the sand was made of shells, that living things had labored all their lives to create ceramic shelters, homes, the most permanent parts of themselves; which had been pummeled into shards just big enough to see, millions upon millions of lives ground up and strewn under him, the beach made out of the wreckage of generations. And before long he and the swimmer too would become no more than sand on a beach, and they would never really have understood anything.
tregina's review
4.0
Beautiful and strange with a dream-like quality. It was at times gentle and at times brutal and it is best read without trying to impose a standard sense of logic on it. Somehow, this story just is, and it is exactly as it should be.
More...