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3.53 AVERAGE
3.53 AVERAGE
A great, fascinating, well-thought out book that pokes fun at/warns about so many things going on in American society and the world: oil dependence, the widening gap between the rich and poor, American gov't destroying and dumbing down the public schools, global warming, increasing #s of immunizations, Christian fanaticism, the Bush family. This list could go on and on.
The narrator/author is Adam Hazzard, professional writer and former lease-boy from the state of Athabaska. He tells the story of meeting Julian Comstock back in Williams Ford. Julian is the nephew of the president. Without spoilers, this book tells of their fleeing, being drafted, fighting, moving to New York, the capital of the US (the presidential palace and grounds are---the former Central Park).
A fabulous and thought provoking book, with very very funny footnotes--really. A must-read if you like dystopian novels!
The narrator/author is Adam Hazzard, professional writer and former lease-boy from the state of Athabaska. He tells the story of meeting Julian Comstock back in Williams Ford. Julian is the nephew of the president. Without spoilers, this book tells of their fleeing, being drafted, fighting, moving to New York, the capital of the US (the presidential palace and grounds are---the former Central Park).
A fabulous and thought provoking book, with very very funny footnotes--really. A must-read if you like dystopian novels!
Read this quickly while in LA and travelling home. It was less good then I had hoped principally because the characters (other then the narrator) were weaker and the plot thinner then I might have hoped.
I couldn't finish it - it was just too tedious. I got about halfway through and the characters and the plot failed to entice me to continue reading.
The narrator/author/naive best friend construct was extremely tiresome. I think the adventures of Calyxa and Elaine would have been more interesting if for no other reason than they seemed to have a semblance of understanding of the world.
Near future (now + 165 yrs.) dystopia that I could see happening - a little scary. Good read of current political, social, military and religious trends and how they interact[ed:] to create a rather unpleasant reality less than two hundred years from now... also a lot of focus on the environment (and this was definitely published pre-oil spill...).
Wow. This novel by the distinguished science fiction (really, I should say: speculative fiction) author Robert Charles Wilson is about a North America existing long after most of the oil is gone, and disease has ravaged modern society. Everyday life has returned to nineteenth-century technology and mores. The author is Canadian, and great use is made of settings in the Canadian prairies and in Quebec and Labrador.
There are two aspects of this book that I found stunning:
(1) The style is a pastiche of boys' adventure books from the 19th-century. It is very wittily done. The narrator is either unaware of what he's telling, or he's exercising some very sophisticated double-irony.
(2) The big conflict is between the remnants of the American governmental system, which has declined into something like a monarchy; and, opposing that, a very strong religious state. It's not unlike Iran.
Good stuff.
There are two aspects of this book that I found stunning:
(1) The style is a pastiche of boys' adventure books from the 19th-century. It is very wittily done. The narrator is either unaware of what he's telling, or he's exercising some very sophisticated double-irony.
(2) The big conflict is between the remnants of the American governmental system, which has declined into something like a monarchy; and, opposing that, a very strong religious state. It's not unlike Iran.
Good stuff.
This is a good story, pretty well told. I'm not sure it's anything more than a good story, pretty well told. It's rather heavy-handed at times, and at the end it goes straight-up maudlin and even sappy. It's pretty good along the way, though. Entertaining. Ambitious, maybe. Probably 3.5 stars if Goodreads allowed it, but it gets rounded down, not up in this case.
I wrote a long review... but somehow deleted it sooo:
This book deserves a better rating than I gave it, I just hate the narrator.
This book deserves a better rating than I gave it, I just hate the narrator.
Set in the 2170s, Julian Comstock depicts a fallen America. Hit hard by Peak Oil and global climate change refugees, America has re-imagined itself as an officially Christian nation. With technology and social norms on par with the nineteenth century—which the Dominion of Jesus Christ on Earth extols as the perfect template for contemporary American society—this is a profoundly different society from our own, but it strikes a chord because it may not be far off from what our society could become. That's Robert Charles Wilson's true coup with this book: he relentlessly illustrates how easily an enlightened civilization has slipped back into the pitfalls of slavery, class-ism, and religious intolerance.
At first I was ambivalent to the narrator of Julian Comstock. Adam Hazzard, friend to the eponymous protagonist, has a plodding tone full of pointless asides like "I won't bore you with the details of..." that serve little purpose. And although Hazzard expresses his aim of writing a biography of Julian from an inside point of view, the book seems to be more about him than Julian at times. Yet as I got further into the book, I understood why it was necessary to have a first-person narrator who was sidekick instead of hero, Watson to Julian's Holmes. This book would not have worked with Julian as the narrator, plain and simple, and it would have lost a great deal with a third-person narrator. It needed the perfect blend of innocent incredulity and incorruptible loyalty—in short, it needed Adam Hazzard.
Through Adam's eyes, Wilson shows us what America has become. Julian emerges early as a paragon who not only understands the past but is in a position to influence the future—he's the nephew of the President of the United States, although said President is also the one who sends Julian into the army hoping he'll be killed (twice). Adam chronicles Julian's rise to power through his singular intelligence, strength of self, and his friends (including Adam) and allies. This occupies the first four acts of the novel, but it's the fifth act that I found most interesting.
Julian emerges as a war hero for the second time in his life and finds himself the figurehead of a military coup. Nudged into the Presidency, Julian attempts to use his power for good, and makes powerful enemies: the Dominion, which essentially certifies the Christian churches that operate in America; and later, the very military forces that deposed the last President. I enjoyed this part of the book because it was both the most tragic and the most believable. The first four acts are rife with improbable events that, while entertaining and useful to the plot, are the sort for which suspension of disbelief is required. Act Five seizes upon reality and shoves it in Julian's face, precipitating an inevitable decline from hero to desperate dreamer.
Julian takes the Presidency hoping to improve conditions in America and enfeeble the Dominion, which holds too much power over the "democratic" Senate and Executive branches. We know from our experience with the previous president, Deklan Comstock, that the Presidency of this United States is only nominally democratic; Deklan was continually acclaimed president, not elected, and he showed little skill in his role as Commander in Chief. While Deklan ruled as a despot, we see Julian gradually become a sort of 17th-century Philosopher-King. Intelligent and good-intentioned, Julian nevertheless finds himself one man against a behemoth that has had a century to entrench itself in society. He scores several Pyhrric victories but ultimately finds himself the target of another coup. Julian Comstock ends not with a bang, but a whimper.
And that's what saved it. I was going to give the book four stars; as brilliant as I found Wilson's world-building, some of the writing was dull, and the book seemed much longer than it needed to be. But the ending simply blew me away because it felt so true. Julian, even Julian Conqueror, could not take on the entire Dominion by himself. Rather than reward the reader with a quick resolution, Wilson instead opted to offer us a ray of hope: that Julian's actions, and the actions of people like him, would lead to the fall of the Dominion and the renewed freedom for everyone in America. It wasn't the end; it was a beginning:
As an adventure story, Julian Comstock is an average book. Oh, there's plenty of action, and it's adequate in that respect. The strategy and combat aspects of the second and fourth acts should satisfy war enthusiasts (they didn't appeal to me as much, which is perhaps why I found the first four fifths of the book less intriguing, but there was nothing technically wrong with them). But it's a long adventure, with a ponderous narrator—a very nineteenth-century style work of prose, which is of course appropriate.
As a didactic work of fiction, however, Julian Comstock embodies the sublime. It neither preaches nor lectures. There are precious few speeches. Instead, Wilson shows us a possible future, and as the consequences of his what-if game unfold, we see his themes in both the dialogue and the action: it takes strength to stand up against injustice, especially when it's inevitable that you won't live to see your victory achieved; the only comfort is the knowledge that this too shall pass.
Although Julian Comstock is a tragedy, I found it cathartic and uplifting. I'm too young to remember any of the tense moments of the twentieth century, its Cold War, Vietnam War, or Gulf War that so shaped the psyche of the Western world. As such, I worry about the ramifications of global warming, poverty, and unrest. I'll probably be alive in fifty years, if I'm lucky, and I'd rather not see the world go to hell in that time. Julian Comstock reminded me that no matter how bad it gets, even if civilization collapses and humanity rejects Darwinism as heresy and America forgets that walked on the moon, there is still hope for the future. Yet that does not give us license to be complacent when there is work to be done:
Well, I certainly hope so, Mr. Palumbo! And I know you're probably biased, since if you're reading this you are a literate person yourself, but I hope you agree. The most dangerous threat, Julian Comstock teaches us, is not Peak Oil, climate change, or terrorism. It's that we will become content with mere survival instead of true freedom—freedom to speak, to act, and to contest.
Julian Comstock is a thought-provoking story of a what might happen, a tale both compassionate and cautionary. Read it. Ignore the science fiction label, if that scares you; it may be set in the future, but it's about the present.
At first I was ambivalent to the narrator of Julian Comstock. Adam Hazzard, friend to the eponymous protagonist, has a plodding tone full of pointless asides like "I won't bore you with the details of..." that serve little purpose. And although Hazzard expresses his aim of writing a biography of Julian from an inside point of view, the book seems to be more about him than Julian at times. Yet as I got further into the book, I understood why it was necessary to have a first-person narrator who was sidekick instead of hero, Watson to Julian's Holmes. This book would not have worked with Julian as the narrator, plain and simple, and it would have lost a great deal with a third-person narrator. It needed the perfect blend of innocent incredulity and incorruptible loyalty—in short, it needed Adam Hazzard.
Through Adam's eyes, Wilson shows us what America has become. Julian emerges early as a paragon who not only understands the past but is in a position to influence the future—he's the nephew of the President of the United States, although said President is also the one who sends Julian into the army hoping he'll be killed (twice). Adam chronicles Julian's rise to power through his singular intelligence, strength of self, and his friends (including Adam) and allies. This occupies the first four acts of the novel, but it's the fifth act that I found most interesting.
Julian emerges as a war hero for the second time in his life and finds himself the figurehead of a military coup. Nudged into the Presidency, Julian attempts to use his power for good, and makes powerful enemies: the Dominion, which essentially certifies the Christian churches that operate in America; and later, the very military forces that deposed the last President. I enjoyed this part of the book because it was both the most tragic and the most believable. The first four acts are rife with improbable events that, while entertaining and useful to the plot, are the sort for which suspension of disbelief is required. Act Five seizes upon reality and shoves it in Julian's face, precipitating an inevitable decline from hero to desperate dreamer.
Julian takes the Presidency hoping to improve conditions in America and enfeeble the Dominion, which holds too much power over the "democratic" Senate and Executive branches. We know from our experience with the previous president, Deklan Comstock, that the Presidency of this United States is only nominally democratic; Deklan was continually acclaimed president, not elected, and he showed little skill in his role as Commander in Chief. While Deklan ruled as a despot, we see Julian gradually become a sort of 17th-century Philosopher-King. Intelligent and good-intentioned, Julian nevertheless finds himself one man against a behemoth that has had a century to entrench itself in society. He scores several Pyhrric victories but ultimately finds himself the target of another coup. Julian Comstock ends not with a bang, but a whimper.
And that's what saved it. I was going to give the book four stars; as brilliant as I found Wilson's world-building, some of the writing was dull, and the book seemed much longer than it needed to be. But the ending simply blew me away because it felt so true. Julian, even Julian Conqueror, could not take on the entire Dominion by himself. Rather than reward the reader with a quick resolution, Wilson instead opted to offer us a ray of hope: that Julian's actions, and the actions of people like him, would lead to the fall of the Dominion and the renewed freedom for everyone in America. It wasn't the end; it was a beginning:
"You're a failure, Julian Comstock, and your Presidency is a failure, and your rebellion against the Dominion is a failure."
"I guess the Dominion will stagger on a while longer. But it's doomed in the long run, you know. Such institutions don't last. Look at history. There have been a thousand Dominions. They fall and are forgotten, or they change beyond recognition."
"The history of the world is written in Scripture, and it ends in a Kingdom."
"The history of the world is written in sand, and it evolves as the wind blows."
As an adventure story, Julian Comstock is an average book. Oh, there's plenty of action, and it's adequate in that respect. The strategy and combat aspects of the second and fourth acts should satisfy war enthusiasts (they didn't appeal to me as much, which is perhaps why I found the first four fifths of the book less intriguing, but there was nothing technically wrong with them). But it's a long adventure, with a ponderous narrator—a very nineteenth-century style work of prose, which is of course appropriate.
As a didactic work of fiction, however, Julian Comstock embodies the sublime. It neither preaches nor lectures. There are precious few speeches. Instead, Wilson shows us a possible future, and as the consequences of his what-if game unfold, we see his themes in both the dialogue and the action: it takes strength to stand up against injustice, especially when it's inevitable that you won't live to see your victory achieved; the only comfort is the knowledge that this too shall pass.
Although Julian Comstock is a tragedy, I found it cathartic and uplifting. I'm too young to remember any of the tense moments of the twentieth century, its Cold War, Vietnam War, or Gulf War that so shaped the psyche of the Western world. As such, I worry about the ramifications of global warming, poverty, and unrest. I'll probably be alive in fifty years, if I'm lucky, and I'd rather not see the world go to hell in that time. Julian Comstock reminded me that no matter how bad it gets, even if civilization collapses and humanity rejects Darwinism as heresy and America forgets that walked on the moon, there is still hope for the future. Yet that does not give us license to be complacent when there is work to be done:
"The spread of literacy is the problem here," said Palumbo. "Oh, I'm all in favor of a sensible degree of literacy—as you must be, Mr. Hazzard, given your career as a journalist. But it has an infectious tendency. It spreads, and discontent spreads along with it. Admit one literate man to a coffle and he'll teach the others the skill; and what they read won't be Dominion-approved works, but pornography, or the lowest kind of cheap publications, or fomentive political tracts."
Well, I certainly hope so, Mr. Palumbo! And I know you're probably biased, since if you're reading this you are a literate person yourself, but I hope you agree. The most dangerous threat, Julian Comstock teaches us, is not Peak Oil, climate change, or terrorism. It's that we will become content with mere survival instead of true freedom—freedom to speak, to act, and to contest.
Julian Comstock is a thought-provoking story of a what might happen, a tale both compassionate and cautionary. Read it. Ignore the science fiction label, if that scares you; it may be set in the future, but it's about the present.
From Robert Charles Wilson, author of Spin, comes an original future tale in the style of The Postman and Stephen King’s The Dark Tower. It is the 22nd century and our world is a different place, just as we know it will be. After the halcyon days of the early 21st century, there were decades of war and suffering and a reset for the planet. After the Efflorescence of Oil and a number of cataclysmic events: The Fall of the Cities, the Plague of Infertility, the False Tribulation, and the days of the Pious Presidents, the American flag now stands proud with sixty stars and thirteen stripes under the control of the Dominion. But one man named Julian Comstock is looking to change that.
President Deklan Comstock rules with a mighty fist, hand in hand with the Dominion, subjugating Americans while sacrificing thousands of troops in the ongoing war against the “mitteleuropans”. He has already sent his brother into harms way and had him “sacrificed,” keeping his rule as President certain. But in the small town of Athabaska his nephew Julian Comstock is a young boy with dreams of becoming a great man. Told from the viewpoint of his best friend who has hopes of becoming a writer, Adam Hazzard chronicles Julian’s life from a young age as close friends, to fighting in the army and become a national hero, to overthrowing his evil uncle and becoming rightful president. Always a leader, he has goals of ending the rule of the Dominion and reestablishing the former atheistic doctrine, the age of reason, and celebrating his hero, the great Charles Darwin, in a biographical film. Told in a strong, chronicling voice, Julian Comstock is a powerful novel.
Wilson has created an incredible and memorable world with some fascinating events that have come to pass. While the story of Julian Comstock is an important one, readers are left wanting more about the last century and exactly why things are the way they are, what’s going on with the rest of the world exactly, and what’s in store for the future. This is hopefully a strong first book in a series that will explore this unforgettable world that Wilson has put so much work in creating.
For more reviews, check out the BookBanter site.
President Deklan Comstock rules with a mighty fist, hand in hand with the Dominion, subjugating Americans while sacrificing thousands of troops in the ongoing war against the “mitteleuropans”. He has already sent his brother into harms way and had him “sacrificed,” keeping his rule as President certain. But in the small town of Athabaska his nephew Julian Comstock is a young boy with dreams of becoming a great man. Told from the viewpoint of his best friend who has hopes of becoming a writer, Adam Hazzard chronicles Julian’s life from a young age as close friends, to fighting in the army and become a national hero, to overthrowing his evil uncle and becoming rightful president. Always a leader, he has goals of ending the rule of the Dominion and reestablishing the former atheistic doctrine, the age of reason, and celebrating his hero, the great Charles Darwin, in a biographical film. Told in a strong, chronicling voice, Julian Comstock is a powerful novel.
Wilson has created an incredible and memorable world with some fascinating events that have come to pass. While the story of Julian Comstock is an important one, readers are left wanting more about the last century and exactly why things are the way they are, what’s going on with the rest of the world exactly, and what’s in store for the future. This is hopefully a strong first book in a series that will explore this unforgettable world that Wilson has put so much work in creating.
For more reviews, check out the BookBanter site.