Too Like the Lightning
Jun. 18th, 2020 05:09 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
primeidealSo ambyr and seekingferret had both mentioned that this book is interesting from a worldbuilding perspective of "what comes after the nation-state," and that piqued my interest. It's set in the 2400s, where people affiliate themselves with seven "Hives" which control different factions. Having a super-fast transit system means you can get anywhere in a couple of hours, and so previous national borders aren't really important. Okay, neat.
The premise introduced in the first chapter is that in an otherwise SF (but not fantasy) world, there's a thirteen-year-old kid who has supernatural powers; he can bring inanimate objects and toys to life. This makes him dangerous and he needs to be protected from political leaders who would manipulate him. Moreover, discussing the spiritual implications of this (is there an afterlife?) is basically forbidden, since society has decided that public religion is a terrible danger which can lead to war. So only a few people know about the kid, and the beginning introduces a secular chaplain/counselor/spiritual but not religious guide who stumbles upon this secret. Cool. Good start.
Unfortunately, the rest of the book does not live up to the hype. (Somewhat spoilery.)
-For one thing, the Hives all seem to know each other and adopt each other's kids, and for a society with basically real-time communication, all these different world leaders very carefully maintaining a balance of power seem to wind up in the same place way too often. Even the characters lampshade the "well, this is kinda incestuous" angle, but don't do anything about it.
-The other main plotline is about the theft of a "most important persons" list from a prominent newspaper, and it was hard to suspend disbelief that "oh no, the wrong people are in ranks 7-10 of the VIP list, THIS WILL UNSETTLE EVERYTHING."
-The very unreliable narrator is a former criminal punished to being a "Servicer," basically a convicted person who has to serve anybody who asks and can't otherwise get food. (There's a creepy/infantilizing scene where a bunch of his fellow servicers are basically told "be good and you'll get ice cream" from the self-styled "Emperor," and if that's an allusion to this Emperor I'm going to roll my eyes, so it probably is.) For a long time, we're supposed to be wondering "...so what did he do?" And it turns out the answer is "infamously tortured and murdered a large extended family who were like his own loved ones, also used a device to disable the 'trackers' everyone wears so nobody could catch him." (The tracker-disabler is also a Macguffin in the present-day timeline, but it turns out he never had it, he just got it some other way. The trackers themselves were another parallel with the Infomocracy computer-devices.) So...uh...why torture them and take so long? One of the victims used his last moments to try and communicate a message about the percentage of land/population/resources that would need to fall into the same hands in order to precipitate a global crisis, was our narrator trying to prevent that message from getting out? There's a digression about "would you kill a few to save many," is that supposed to tell us why he did it? We're never told.
-In the 2400s, almost everyone calls each other "they" in dialogue because discussing gender is rude. Okay, I can buy that, and I would read a whole novel in that vein without complaining. The narrator, however, is like "when I'm narrating I'm going to call everyone 'he' and 'she' because I like the 1700s." O...kay...then? And then every few chapters is like "this character actually is female, but likes to dress up in the style of 1700s European gentlemen, like the big old Washington wigs, so I'm calling him a he." Why even bother then. I know complaining about circular definitions makes me a Bad Person but...come on.
-Everything that could possibly be a symbol of group identity is publicly displayed as symbolism. Being originally of "Japanese" "nationality" gets you a special bracelet to wear. But you also have to wear a similar bracelet if you're, like, a member of the math club. Even different languages are controlled as to who gets to learn them (which felt quite unrealistic for 2454); the fact that the narrator can speak Latin and French and Greek and Spanish, and uses different quotation marks to offset all of them, is a rarity. Couldn't suspend that disbelief either.
-Maybe some of the mysterious questions are actually answered but it's one of those "lots of people have five different names, so you don't know who's who,"
Anyway. Probably won't continue the series.
In other book news, I found "The Three-Body Problem" gripping and blazed through it way too quickly because I had to know what happened next, so I'll probably revisit at a slightly more leisurely pace before hitting up the sequels!
ambyr and seekingferret had both mentioned that this book is interesting from a worldbuilding perspective of "what comes after the nation-state," and that piqued my interest. It's set in the 2400s, where people affiliate themselves with seven "Hives" which control different factions. Having a super-fast transit system means you can get anywhere in a couple of hours, and so previous national borders aren't really important. Okay, neat.The premise introduced in the first chapter is that in an otherwise SF (but not fantasy) world, there's a thirteen-year-old kid who has supernatural powers; he can bring inanimate objects and toys to life. This makes him dangerous and he needs to be protected from political leaders who would manipulate him. Moreover, discussing the spiritual implications of this (is there an afterlife?) is basically forbidden, since society has decided that public religion is a terrible danger which can lead to war. So only a few people know about the kid, and the beginning introduces a secular chaplain/counselor/spiritual but not religious guide who stumbles upon this secret. Cool. Good start.
Unfortunately, the rest of the book does not live up to the hype. (Somewhat spoilery.)
-For one thing, the Hives all seem to know each other and adopt each other's kids, and for a society with basically real-time communication, all these different world leaders very carefully maintaining a balance of power seem to wind up in the same place way too often. Even the characters lampshade the "well, this is kinda incestuous" angle, but don't do anything about it.
-The other main plotline is about the theft of a "most important persons" list from a prominent newspaper, and it was hard to suspend disbelief that "oh no, the wrong people are in ranks 7-10 of the VIP list, THIS WILL UNSETTLE EVERYTHING."
-The very unreliable narrator is a former criminal punished to being a "Servicer," basically a convicted person who has to serve anybody who asks and can't otherwise get food. (There's a creepy/infantilizing scene where a bunch of his fellow servicers are basically told "be good and you'll get ice cream" from the self-styled "Emperor," and if that's an allusion to this Emperor I'm going to roll my eyes, so it probably is.) For a long time, we're supposed to be wondering "...so what did he do?" And it turns out the answer is "infamously tortured and murdered a large extended family who were like his own loved ones, also used a device to disable the 'trackers' everyone wears so nobody could catch him." (The tracker-disabler is also a Macguffin in the present-day timeline, but it turns out he never had it, he just got it some other way. The trackers themselves were another parallel with the Infomocracy computer-devices.) So...uh...why torture them and take so long? One of the victims used his last moments to try and communicate a message about the percentage of land/population/resources that would need to fall into the same hands in order to precipitate a global crisis, was our narrator trying to prevent that message from getting out? There's a digression about "would you kill a few to save many," is that supposed to tell us why he did it? We're never told.
-In the 2400s, almost everyone calls each other "they" in dialogue because discussing gender is rude. Okay, I can buy that, and I would read a whole novel in that vein without complaining. The narrator, however, is like "when I'm narrating I'm going to call everyone 'he' and 'she' because I like the 1700s." O...kay...then? And then every few chapters is like "this character actually is female, but likes to dress up in the style of 1700s European gentlemen, like the big old Washington wigs, so I'm calling him a he." Why even bother then. I know complaining about circular definitions makes me a Bad Person but...come on.
-Everything that could possibly be a symbol of group identity is publicly displayed as symbolism. Being originally of "Japanese" "nationality" gets you a special bracelet to wear. But you also have to wear a similar bracelet if you're, like, a member of the math club. Even different languages are controlled as to who gets to learn them (which felt quite unrealistic for 2454); the fact that the narrator can speak Latin and French and Greek and Spanish, and uses different quotation marks to offset all of them, is a rarity. Couldn't suspend that disbelief either.
-Maybe some of the mysterious questions are actually answered but it's one of those "lots of people have five different names, so you don't know who's who,"
Anyway. Probably won't continue the series.
In other book news, I found "The Three-Body Problem" gripping and blazed through it way too quickly because I had to know what happened next, so I'll probably revisit at a slightly more leisurely pace before hitting up the sequels!
no subject
Date: 6/18/20 10:31 pm (UTC)