Reviews

The Book of Strange New Things by Michel Faber

loujanae's review against another edition

4.5

Yeah this was stellar. Absolutely my kind of thing. I have to reread this.

bartonstanley's review against another edition

5.0

A marvelous apocalyptic story of whether redemption is possible through love. Highly recommended to spiritual/religious seekers. Others may enjoy it as well. Or not.

lunaremu's review against another edition

adventurous challenging mysterious reflective tense medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.25

geekwayne's review against another edition

'The Book of Strange New Things' by Michel Faber will be viewed as some as an SF book, but it's only got those trappings to tell an older type of story, the missionary journey far from home. It's a good story and written very well.

Peter is married to Bea and they have a church in England. Peter has been accepted by USIC as a pastor on one of their missions. The mission is far away from home in another galaxy with a group on aliens. He can communicate with his wife over the distance, but it can take time. This plays into the story. Peter meets the aliens who are very receptive to him and his ideas. They call his Bible "The Book of Strange New Things" and before long, he's decided to live among them, which will make communications with home even tougher since there is none among the aliens.

Meanwhile, at home, Peter's wife Bea is reporting things in a steady decline. Her messages to Peter are more desperate. As Peter's faith seems better than ever, Bea's seems to be in decline.

Then there are the strangely passive people Peter meets on the base. They seem picked for their ingenuity and blandness.

There are other mysteries, but I'll leave them for the reader to discover. It's a well written book, with a good main character stuck in a strange new situation. If you're expecting a hardcore SF, look elsewhere, but if the premise intrigues, you're in for an interesting ride.

I received a review copy of this ebook from Crown-Publishing and NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. Thank you for allowing me to review this ebook.

zmull's review against another edition

2.0

I know that I am often swayed in my opinions by reviews. For that reason, I try to avoid them before I read something. About half way through The Book of Strange New Things I couldn't resist checking a few. I was curious, not so much about the critical opinion of the book, which I assumed was high based on the cover pull quotes and the marketing campaign, but because of the hard to miss racism and hints of homophobia. One character is literally compared to a monkey. Nearly every female character is described as "butch." What I found is almost no mention of these issues and an overwhelmingly positive reaction to the book. It's difficult to square the book I read with the reviews. The story follows a pastor sent to another planet to minister to the aliens there. The best sections of the book involve Peter, the main character, separated from his wife, and the slow unraveling of their marriage. There's a rawness to those scenes, especially the hopelessness of the minister and the anguish of the wife. But Peter has frustratingly underwritten motivations for his actions once on the planet Oasis. Faber seems to know this and plants the idea early on that the only people hired to travel to Oasis are people who can easily leave loved ones behind. Why this would be, given later revelations about the nature of the project, is hard to understand. Peter's life on Oasis is needlessly mysterious, with all of the human characters acting like they have a secret when they really don't. The aliens, the Oasans, are total cyphers. They have no personalities, no clear motivations for accepting Jesus (except a fear of death), and no social interactions outside of communicating with Peter. Worse, there's no conflict. They want to be Christians, Peter shows up and teaches them about Jesus. That's it. All of the tension in the story comes either from the vague mysteries of the earth people or from the, admittedly beautiful, husband/wife dynamic. David Mitchell called this novel a "masterpiece." Clearly, I'm missing something.

baker75's review against another edition

5.0

Another masterpiece from Faber: haunting, elegiac, and beautifully constructed. The Book of Strange New Things will stay with me for a long time.

erica_palmisano's review against another edition

challenging dark emotional mysterious reflective sad tense slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? No
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.0

The characters honestly drove me nuts. It's a story about exploration and yet the in-curiosity of the main character (and many of the main characters around them) was just overwhelmingly annoying to me. I know that's part of the plot but it was just unjustifiable. Also, only the (few) female characters had a real humanity to them and one of them got called "hysterical" for being justly angry, so I found that pretty alienating too. Maybe you'll find it less annoying, but I dragged myself through the 17 hours. Some cool world-building and writing but the juice was not worth the squeeze for me. 

cmvcaulfield's review against another edition

adventurous challenging dark sad fast-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? Yes

5.0

tomstbr's review against another edition

4.0

Not what you expect. A good example of lit crossed with SF. Beautifully written with some fantastic characters, the symbolism is what really drove it home for me.

lsparrow's review against another edition

3.0

The premis of the book was fascinating to me - Christian missionary to alien planet. As a child of missionaries I am always interested in where stories of missionaries go and I love science fiction - what could be better. What I most enjoyed about the book was the questions is raised in my thoughts (about cultural norms, time, individuality, conflict, interpersonal contection) - perhaps not in the ways intended - questions about the author and his views on culture and race(some of which I felt in disagreement with) as well as my own experiences and thoughts about this. I definitely questioned if the author has truly experienced culture shock. I could not decide if I was irritated by the main character or if he just did not make any sense - all the individual components of him made sense but together it just seemed a very unlikely combination of characteristics that just made no sense to me and seemed to be unlikely in an individual. Definitely do not read this book for the plot as it doesn't go very far and it ends quite suddenly for no apparent reason. Overall I am more interested in this book as a starting point for discussions than for the writing or the story.