Monday, June 06, 2005
book twenty-three
The Visitor
by Sheri S. Tepper
As you already know, I really like Sheri S. Tepper's books. This one was totally cool right up until the end, where it seemed like she didn't know how to finish it, and the book just went blooey.
Here's the premise: In the future, the Earth has undergone some kind of cataclysm. Society has become rigid in its adherance to the "dicta," a quasi-religious set of rules and regulations. Anyone not following the dicta can be reported, punished, and even "bottled". "Bottling" seems to refer to preserving a tissue sample of a person for resurrection at an unspecified future time. There is a jumble of ideas that seem to be accepeted among the population - belief in demons, a belief that magic used to exist but now does not, belief that the "bottled" will be resurrected. I expected the magical stuff to turn out to be simply technology - but it doesn't.
Dismé Latimer is charged with keeping an ancient book written by her ancestor Nell Latimer. Her mother disappeared when she was small and her father disappears when she is an adolescent. She is abused constantly by her stepsister Rahel but tolerates the abuse until she is an adult, at which point she runs away to the city and meets some like-minded people. She also begins to show signs of having magical powers.
The end of the book kind of goes blooey. There are demons and cryosleepers and aliens and gods and a whole lot of rhetoric about doing right and maturing as a species, and honestly, I kind of lost track of what the hell was happening. I'd still read it again, though.
by Sheri S. Tepper
As you already know, I really like Sheri S. Tepper's books. This one was totally cool right up until the end, where it seemed like she didn't know how to finish it, and the book just went blooey.
Here's the premise: In the future, the Earth has undergone some kind of cataclysm. Society has become rigid in its adherance to the "dicta," a quasi-religious set of rules and regulations. Anyone not following the dicta can be reported, punished, and even "bottled". "Bottling" seems to refer to preserving a tissue sample of a person for resurrection at an unspecified future time. There is a jumble of ideas that seem to be accepeted among the population - belief in demons, a belief that magic used to exist but now does not, belief that the "bottled" will be resurrected. I expected the magical stuff to turn out to be simply technology - but it doesn't.
Dismé Latimer is charged with keeping an ancient book written by her ancestor Nell Latimer. Her mother disappeared when she was small and her father disappears when she is an adolescent. She is abused constantly by her stepsister Rahel but tolerates the abuse until she is an adult, at which point she runs away to the city and meets some like-minded people. She also begins to show signs of having magical powers.
The end of the book kind of goes blooey. There are demons and cryosleepers and aliens and gods and a whole lot of rhetoric about doing right and maturing as a species, and honestly, I kind of lost track of what the hell was happening. I'd still read it again, though.
Labels: book reports, science fiction
