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nickanderson's review
4.0
I had no idea you could write this way. Each surreal image is rendered so clearly, I had trouble getting myself back out of it. It's a hard read - there's no skimming, and it might take you as long to read as a novel twice its length. I wouldn't say there was much in the way of a satisfying narrative arc, either - rather, this is a good book for someone looking to drift idly in the imagery of another world, not race to an ending point. I read it on a 12 hour plane flight, so I was a captive audience - but I loved every second I spent in San Venificio.
theartolater's review against another edition
4.0
This book is short and to the point, which I'm definitely into, but in terms of "New Weird" (which this qualifies in a sense even though it's older), why this works is the way it builds toward the reveals. You meet the main character, and piece by piece drips out until you see the full picture as to what is happening. And it's wonderful and grotesque and so well put together that it was difficult for me not to really just love what was going on.
Closer to a 4.5, as it definitely isn't perfect, but the amount of raves this book has gotten is well-deserved. If you like strange stuff, check it.
Closer to a 4.5, as it definitely isn't perfect, but the amount of raves this book has gotten is well-deserved. If you like strange stuff, check it.
kateofmind's review against another edition
challenging
dark
mysterious
reflective
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
4.5
theladyofthehouseoflove's review against another edition
4.0
Surreal experience reading this. It was like I was hypnotized.
cmrosens's review against another edition
4.0
A weird love affair with words
This book feels on some levels like a deep love affair with words and texts and language, although it’s hard to tell if the odd moments of fragmented sentences and full stops in odd places are deliberate or just a mistake in the edition I read.
The sentences can be up to a paragraph long, and the “less is more” adage hasn’t bothered Cisco much, so if spare poetic prose is your thing, this may not be to your taste.
I found it the book equivalent of watching an aquarium: the plot is simple and kicks in about halfway through, but you don’t need to know (or understand) what’s going on to enjoy the immersion, and in some ways concentrating too hard on it is going to spoil it. It was the perfect thing to read on the train home after work and let it trigger random thoughts about my own relationship with words & texts, things I don’t get much time to think about these days...
The book itself centres the nameless Divinity Student, struck by lightning in a storm in Ch 1 & brought back to life by eldritch creatures who open him up and stuff him full of ancient texts. He’s re-birthed as a Weird Golem type person, and sent off to San Veneficio to become a word-finder. He is meant to be undercover and is trying to recover a lost catalogue of forbidden (?) words, the Eclogue, destroyed & lost.
He learns how to enter the minds of dead creatures via a memorable wtf moment with magic & formaldehyde, and demonic cars try to stop him in a man versus machine sub-plot.
As the plot goes,that’s all of it, but the plot itself isn’t really the point of the book and it’s not really possible to “spoil” it in the traditional sense, because ... there’s nothing to spoil?!
It’s very fantastical, abstract, full of magical realism techniques like the way ‘reality’, ‘visions’ & ‘dreams’ are mashed together seamlessly so that those categories break down and you’re never sure what’s ‘real’ and what isn’t. It’s a story that made me think mainly about obsession with texts & words - sacred texts, in particular - and of being stuffed full of other people’s canonical texts, other people’s language, and struggling to find words and a voice of my own.
Miss Woodwind, the master word finder, has her own voice and that’s why she’s so good at finding other people’s words... she wants the Divinity Student to drink some water (a cleansing, purifying, refreshing thing, with associations of forward movement etc) but he wants to drink/inhale atomised formaldehyde (preservative fluid) and stagnate in the memories of the dead and re-live their texts and words instead.
I suppose it left me with a feeling that there were so many layers to this that one sitting wouldn’t be enough to get all of them. The tree spirits and their porcelain mouths, the folkloric elements, the monitor lizards and their reflective eyes like stars in the desert... there’s some gorgeous imagery here that I really enjoyed.
I guess the main questions I’m left with (apart from “what did I just read? What happened? What’s going on?”) are:
-how do you deal with being stuffed with other people’s views of “canonical” texts?
-Which texts were foundational for me, that are now part of my cultural, emotional, psychological makeup? Do I need to address/dismantle some of this?
-How do you find your own voice if you’re obsessed with other people’s?
-What words/texts give me “life”? Are they mine, as in, did I choose them, or were they given to me? Is that necessarily bad?
I liked the dreamlike, abstracted wandering through these types of questions and the edge-of-madness themes that come from following an obsessive character without a name or a voice of his own.
I definitely see why it’s not everyone’s cup of tea but I’m giving it 4 stars anyway.
This book feels on some levels like a deep love affair with words and texts and language, although it’s hard to tell if the odd moments of fragmented sentences and full stops in odd places are deliberate or just a mistake in the edition I read.
The sentences can be up to a paragraph long, and the “less is more” adage hasn’t bothered Cisco much, so if spare poetic prose is your thing, this may not be to your taste.
I found it the book equivalent of watching an aquarium: the plot is simple and kicks in about halfway through, but you don’t need to know (or understand) what’s going on to enjoy the immersion, and in some ways concentrating too hard on it is going to spoil it. It was the perfect thing to read on the train home after work and let it trigger random thoughts about my own relationship with words & texts, things I don’t get much time to think about these days...
The book itself centres the nameless Divinity Student, struck by lightning in a storm in Ch 1 & brought back to life by eldritch creatures who open him up and stuff him full of ancient texts. He’s re-birthed as a Weird Golem type person, and sent off to San Veneficio to become a word-finder. He is meant to be undercover and is trying to recover a lost catalogue of forbidden (?) words, the Eclogue, destroyed & lost.
He learns how to enter the minds of dead creatures via a memorable wtf moment with magic & formaldehyde, and demonic cars try to stop him in a man versus machine sub-plot.
As the plot goes,that’s all of it, but the plot itself isn’t really the point of the book and it’s not really possible to “spoil” it in the traditional sense, because ... there’s nothing to spoil?!
It’s very fantastical, abstract, full of magical realism techniques like the way ‘reality’, ‘visions’ & ‘dreams’ are mashed together seamlessly so that those categories break down and you’re never sure what’s ‘real’ and what isn’t. It’s a story that made me think mainly about obsession with texts & words - sacred texts, in particular - and of being stuffed full of other people’s canonical texts, other people’s language, and struggling to find words and a voice of my own.
Miss Woodwind, the master word finder, has her own voice and that’s why she’s so good at finding other people’s words... she wants the Divinity Student to drink some water (a cleansing, purifying, refreshing thing, with associations of forward movement etc) but he wants to drink/inhale atomised formaldehyde (preservative fluid) and stagnate in the memories of the dead and re-live their texts and words instead.
I suppose it left me with a feeling that there were so many layers to this that one sitting wouldn’t be enough to get all of them. The tree spirits and their porcelain mouths, the folkloric elements, the monitor lizards and their reflective eyes like stars in the desert... there’s some gorgeous imagery here that I really enjoyed.
I guess the main questions I’m left with (apart from “what did I just read? What happened? What’s going on?”) are:
-how do you deal with being stuffed with other people’s views of “canonical” texts?
-Which texts were foundational for me, that are now part of my cultural, emotional, psychological makeup? Do I need to address/dismantle some of this?
-How do you find your own voice if you’re obsessed with other people’s?
-What words/texts give me “life”? Are they mine, as in, did I choose them, or were they given to me? Is that necessarily bad?
I liked the dreamlike, abstracted wandering through these types of questions and the edge-of-madness themes that come from following an obsessive character without a name or a voice of his own.
I definitely see why it’s not everyone’s cup of tea but I’m giving it 4 stars anyway.
morporum's review against another edition
5.0
Best . . .
.. . opening scene .. .
. . . amazing city . . .
... man who walks into town . . .
.. . use of formaldehyde in fiction . . .
... EVAR.
.. . opening scene .. .
. . . amazing city . . .
... man who walks into town . . .
.. . use of formaldehyde in fiction . . .
... EVAR.
competencefantasy's review
4.0
Weird*
Weird
Weird
Weird
Weird
Weird
Formaldehyde
Weird
Oh, I see what this is driving at!**
Words
Words
Weird
Words
Formaldehyde
Weird
Weird
Weird
*Weird here denotes the use of the most beautiful words to make the most stomach-concerning imagery because this book about language takes only the best phrases and arranges them as a uncanny fever dream.
**There is plot, really.
Weird
Weird
Weird
Weird
Weird
Formaldehyde
Weird
Oh, I see what this is driving at!**
Words
Words
Weird
Words
Formaldehyde
Weird
Weird
Weird
*Weird here denotes the use of the most beautiful words to make the most stomach-concerning imagery because this book about language takes only the best phrases and arranges them as a uncanny fever dream.
**There is plot, really.
xterminal's review
5.0
Michael Cisco, The Divinity Student (Buzzcity Press, 1999)
I had somehow gotten it in my head that The Divinity Student was a horror novel. I have no idea how that happened, for it is anything but. This is a fantasy, almost a steampunk novel, that put me in mind more than anything of K. J. Bishop or Ekaterina Sedia, but with the obsession with language more commonly found in Catherynne Valente or China Mieville. (And if you're a fan of any of the above and haven't discovered Michael Cisco yet, do so at your earliest opportunity.) It is beautiful, fascinating, thought-provoking.
As we open, the nameless Divinity Student of the title is struck by lightning and killed, but we soon see that this is some sort of common (or at least understood) ritual in this world; the body is returned to the seminary, eviscerated, filled with pages ripped from sacred books, and plunged into water. (I now want to be buried like this.) He then returns to consciousness and is given an assignment by Fasvergil, the head of the seminary; he is to go to San Veneficio, a nearby city, and get work as a word-finder while he waits for further instructions. When he gets them, that's truly amazing (and it's there the plot really kicks off), but just think about the idea of a world where you can go to a city and find work as a word-finder.
There are so many wonderful things to say about this book that I'm not even sure where to begin. There are some I can't talk about, because we'd be getting far into spoiler territory, but the writing is just phenomenal; Michael Cisco has a love affair with the language, and it shows. The downside to that is that typographical and proofreading errors made by the press tend to come through more in books like this (and it didn't help that this was the second book in a week that used the odd, but somehow appropriate, phrase “door jam”; as it is spelled right in other places in the book, I'm giving Cisco the benefit of the doubt and blaming the press), but that's not something for which I can blame the author. And the plot here is one of the most original, and pleasurable, I've come across in years.
The book is not perfect, though if you're going to err, better to do it this way than the other; if anything, it's shorter than it should be. There are a few chapters that begged to be further fleshed out (“The Final Interview”, especially, could have been twice as long as it is). Still, there's so much about this book to love that you can't go wrong. This is by far one of the best books I've read this year, and I can't recommend it highly enough. Find it and read it as soon as you possibly can. **** ½
I had somehow gotten it in my head that The Divinity Student was a horror novel. I have no idea how that happened, for it is anything but. This is a fantasy, almost a steampunk novel, that put me in mind more than anything of K. J. Bishop or Ekaterina Sedia, but with the obsession with language more commonly found in Catherynne Valente or China Mieville. (And if you're a fan of any of the above and haven't discovered Michael Cisco yet, do so at your earliest opportunity.) It is beautiful, fascinating, thought-provoking.
As we open, the nameless Divinity Student of the title is struck by lightning and killed, but we soon see that this is some sort of common (or at least understood) ritual in this world; the body is returned to the seminary, eviscerated, filled with pages ripped from sacred books, and plunged into water. (I now want to be buried like this.) He then returns to consciousness and is given an assignment by Fasvergil, the head of the seminary; he is to go to San Veneficio, a nearby city, and get work as a word-finder while he waits for further instructions. When he gets them, that's truly amazing (and it's there the plot really kicks off), but just think about the idea of a world where you can go to a city and find work as a word-finder.
There are so many wonderful things to say about this book that I'm not even sure where to begin. There are some I can't talk about, because we'd be getting far into spoiler territory, but the writing is just phenomenal; Michael Cisco has a love affair with the language, and it shows. The downside to that is that typographical and proofreading errors made by the press tend to come through more in books like this (and it didn't help that this was the second book in a week that used the odd, but somehow appropriate, phrase “door jam”; as it is spelled right in other places in the book, I'm giving Cisco the benefit of the doubt and blaming the press), but that's not something for which I can blame the author. And the plot here is one of the most original, and pleasurable, I've come across in years.
The book is not perfect, though if you're going to err, better to do it this way than the other; if anything, it's shorter than it should be. There are a few chapters that begged to be further fleshed out (“The Final Interview”, especially, could have been twice as long as it is). Still, there's so much about this book to love that you can't go wrong. This is by far one of the best books I've read this year, and I can't recommend it highly enough. Find it and read it as soon as you possibly can. **** ½
rgrove's review
4.0
Beautifully strange book where you never know what's coming next. Can be read a variety of ways: for the poetry, for the surrealism, for the world-building...Loved this book and will now start working my way through his writings. Not for those for whom main-stream fiction is their primary reading. This is for those who want something different.
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