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johnazoidberg's review against another edition
adventurous
mysterious
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
4.5
sparklingreader's review against another edition
5.0
I first read this book back in the 70s and loved it then, reading it now, it is still as fascinating as it was then with great characters and amazing world building. Snake is a great lead character. As a healer in a dystopian society, she travels around with her snakes in what passes for doctors in the distant future. The different people she runs into run the gamut of desert nomad bands to snobbish mountain dwellers to paranoid city dwellers, and even an alien landscape and strange man who attempts to kill her.
Join Snake on her adventures as she travels this new landscape. You won't be sorry.
Join Snake on her adventures as she travels this new landscape. You won't be sorry.
abibliophagist's review against another edition
2.0
Hugo Readthrough continues.
I'm giving this 2 stars merely because my opinion may be clouded by not being a fanatsy person.
This book, took me forever to read. I jeppt putting it down, and my partner would bring it to me like 'why haven't you just given up' 'I found this fallen behind the trash can, are you trying to say something?'. So with the looming new year I finally buckled down and finished it.
What can I say?
This book is dull, dull, dull. Originally a short story that she expanded, this shows exactly how not to expand a short story. Of the hugo winners so far Leiber has made it on to my official 'garbage list' and I actually liked 'They'd rather be right'. This book is so amateurly written it*s painful.
The characters are boring, hollow, and 2d. The setting is an attempt at throwing you into a post apocalyptic borderline fantasy world (I swear the time it takes to travel from city to city changed each chapter). However her ability just couldn't do it any justice. The plot was incredibly disjointed, and ultimately read likr a series of short stories. The most interesting of which was probably the finale.
Also, and this may be a time period thing, it was awkwardly sexual. I don't mind sex in books, but this was a little too heavy with just, awkward sex, the whole world in this learn how to control their fertility and attend sexual training at a young age. A few times I was convinced she wanted to write a romance novel. I'm pretty sure the moral of the book is that we need to be.more sexually open amd understanding (I get it I'm GGG, but this was literally the point it hinted at).
The plot is that in a post apocalyptic world, far past the event of apocalypse, the world has turned into a series of villages and nomadic tribes. One of the more interesting concepts is that one city still has a lot of technologies, and hoards them, and cuts themselves off. Oh and they're inbred and talk to aliens. This, some hints at radiation, and another lrelic of the past are where the scifi ends for the most part. There are nomadic healers that travel the world with their snakes that they use to create medicine to heal peolple. We follow the aptlg named Snake, as she goes ou to more isolated tribes and her most important snake, tve dreamsnake (alien?) get's killed and she goes on a journey to find another. Along the way, we get like 50 pages of her helping a girl with two lovers and a broken back, 50 to an old man whose a jerk, a sexually untrained guy that she sleeps with randomly, a sexually abused little girl (that she offers to show why sex can be fun....) like 50 a junkie, and a underdeveloped, quickly written cultist. The rest is the set up, and travelling. I might be forgetting something due to my break. Oh also a love story we're somehow supposed to care about. Oh, and Snake is perfect in all ways but acts like she's a failure. Plus the ultimate revelation is so simple and just doesn't feel believable. If dreamsnakes are so important, that if you lose yours ypu can't be a healer anymore, then you'd think the healers would thoroughly study them...
Over all, it bored me to.death. It took the longest to read, and while I HATE Lieber... this gets pretty close to being my least favorite winner...
I'm giving this 2 stars merely because my opinion may be clouded by not being a fanatsy person.
This book, took me forever to read. I jeppt putting it down, and my partner would bring it to me like 'why haven't you just given up' 'I found this fallen behind the trash can, are you trying to say something?'. So with the looming new year I finally buckled down and finished it.
What can I say?
This book is dull, dull, dull. Originally a short story that she expanded, this shows exactly how not to expand a short story. Of the hugo winners so far Leiber has made it on to my official 'garbage list' and I actually liked 'They'd rather be right'. This book is so amateurly written it*s painful.
The characters are boring, hollow, and 2d. The setting is an attempt at throwing you into a post apocalyptic borderline fantasy world (I swear the time it takes to travel from city to city changed each chapter). However her ability just couldn't do it any justice. The plot was incredibly disjointed, and ultimately read likr a series of short stories. The most interesting of which was probably the finale.
Also, and this may be a time period thing, it was awkwardly sexual. I don't mind sex in books, but this was a little too heavy with just, awkward sex, the whole world in this learn how to control their fertility and attend sexual training at a young age. A few times I was convinced she wanted to write a romance novel. I'm pretty sure the moral of the book is that we need to be.more sexually open amd understanding (I get it I'm GGG, but this was literally the point it hinted at).
The plot is that in a post apocalyptic world, far past the event of apocalypse, the world has turned into a series of villages and nomadic tribes. One of the more interesting concepts is that one city still has a lot of technologies, and hoards them, and cuts themselves off. Oh and they're inbred and talk to aliens. This, some hints at radiation, and another lrelic of the past are where the scifi ends for the most part. There are nomadic healers that travel the world with their snakes that they use to create medicine to heal peolple. We follow the aptlg named Snake, as she goes ou to more isolated tribes and her most important snake, tve dreamsnake (alien?) get's killed and she goes on a journey to find another. Along the way, we get like 50 pages of her helping a girl with two lovers and a broken back, 50 to an old man whose a jerk, a sexually untrained guy that she sleeps with randomly, a sexually abused little girl (that she offers to show why sex can be fun....) like 50 a junkie, and a underdeveloped, quickly written cultist. The rest is the set up, and travelling. I might be forgetting something due to my break. Oh also a love story we're somehow supposed to care about. Oh, and Snake is perfect in all ways but acts like she's a failure. Plus the ultimate revelation is so simple and just doesn't feel believable. If dreamsnakes are so important, that if you lose yours ypu can't be a healer anymore, then you'd think the healers would thoroughly study them...
Over all, it bored me to.death. It took the longest to read, and while I HATE Lieber... this gets pretty close to being my least favorite winner...
mikime's review against another edition
5.0
Snakes are part of the healing process and are crucial to the work of healers in this novel, particularly the type called "dreamsnake", whose bite soothes the pain of patients. Dreamsnakes are rare though, and so it is heartbreaking when Snake (who earned her name for being such a good healer) loses her dreamsnake to prejudice and misunderstanding. Her mission becomes not only gaining a new dreamsnake, but trying to go to the source of dreamsnakes and to possibly find a way to breed them more effectively. During her journey, she will keep healing and saving people, reluctantly leaving some behind while bringing others along with her, but she will also risk her life more than once, as a mysterious person seems to be bent on harming her and robbing her of all her valuables. All the mysteries are explained and revealed in the final part of this very engaging and fantastic novel. Against all odds, with her friends' help, Snake finds the key to solve her people's problems and to help the whole world. Quite a good novel, mixing different genres and ending on a positive note.
aaronreadabook's review against another edition
3.0
This was pretty disappointing in some ways because I loved the premise, a novel following a healer who uses snakes, but the execution wasn't great. It felt like the author hadn't planned out the novel and didn't know where the story was going. It was expanded from a novella so maybe that's why.
synthism's review against another edition
2.0
Dreamsnake: A book about a healer named Snake who heals with Snakes. I picked this up basically because it seemed like a really funny concept for a book, and it had won some awards.
Unfortunately this is an entirely earnest presentation of that ridiculous premise. Worse than earnest, it's also extremely linear and contains basically no surprises. It's more of a sketch than a novel, to be honest. The characters are pretty one note and the scifi world is largely unexplored.
It feels kind of like one of those fantasy romance novels from DAW books, but the romance as well is underdeveloped and barely shown.
Unfortunately this is an entirely earnest presentation of that ridiculous premise. Worse than earnest, it's also extremely linear and contains basically no surprises. It's more of a sketch than a novel, to be honest. The characters are pretty one note and the scifi world is largely unexplored.
It feels kind of like one of those fantasy romance novels from DAW books, but the romance as well is underdeveloped and barely shown.
synoptic_view's review against another edition
3.0
A doctor loses her painkillers and goes on a quest that culminates in her getting resupplied by the local drug dealer.