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4.13 AVERAGE
4.13 AVERAGE
Loved this book and look forward to reading it again.
adventurous
mysterious
reflective
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
dark
mysterious
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
adventurous
mysterious
tense
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
challenging
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
I’m not sure how I feel about this book after just finishing it an hour ago. The premise is as interesting as it is not. I wonder if all of the editions are the same because I read some other reviews where they quoted lines from the ending and my edition did not contain those lines. My biggest issue with the book, as a multiracial person, was when race would come up. The way she wrote about minorities was extremely weird. When the world lost skin color she wrote about heather “her anger, timidity, brashness, gentleness all were elements of her mixed being, her mixed nature, dark and clear right through”. There are other moments like this which show the author’s, how I would describe as, “white Portland woman’s subconscious racial biases”. Enjoyable enough to finish probably won’t read again.
challenging
dark
emotional
informative
reflective
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
take my review with a grain of salt. i think i had expectations for this book given to me by a bad booktok rec or two, so this is on my list for a more measured re-read.
dark
mysterious
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
We are all Martians ... what if someone woke up one morning and found they could control the past - as who controls the past, controls the future. George Orr (part George Orwell, as in that '1984' quote) and part 'jaw-jaw' being better than 'war, war') is a young man who in his past was molested by his aunt, until he dreamed her into having died in a car crash months earlier. Enter Doctor William Haber, a psychiatrist with a strange machine in his consulting rooms in Portland, Oregon. Haber links Orr up to the machine ... and the world changes.
Though each Possible Portland (except maybe the first) is for the worst, and Haber and Orr lurch desperately to make amends. End the war? Have aliens discovered on the moon. Get rid of the moon aliens? They invade Earth. Too much population? Have a cancer plague? Racism? Everyone becomes grey and orderly. And so on. Yet certain things remain - Haber is always in this world, and Orr, and the Institute, and Heather ... or nearly always. Heather is a lawyer, mixed race half African-American and half White (sound like anything? Yin-Yang perhaps. Because the Tao belongs to lovers). And Mount Hood, although in one world it is destroyed (nearly right there, think Mount St Helens, destroyed by eruption in 1980, nine years after TLoH appeared). It's set in 2002 and certain aspects such as the environmental pollution and the impact of a world population of seven billion (though they get to that figure earlier than we did) are very prescient.
But because of Orr's nature - his name suggesting also possibility, this or this or that - he is able to let the changes happen. He is possessed of what the aliens call 'iahklu'' - something like being without the desire to force. His gods are 'nameless and unenvious, asking neither worship nor obedience' - which brings to mind the Tao, the nameless that underpins everything. Haber, on the other hand, is a man with wrathful and vengeful gods, very Old Testamenty and bearded. And yet he does not believe dreams are evil, while Orr does believe this.
I confused myself reading this ... heading down to Portsea island which not only sounds like Portland (there is also a Landport in Portsea), but some years ago I wrote a NaNovel set partly in a Folded City whose earthly position was the Portland in Dorset, England (not any of the US Portlands) - however England's Portland is a sparsely-populated isle living from quarrying, and Portsea is the most densely populated of the British isles, also (and I am sure this is no coincidence) the birthplace of Jonathan Meades, novelist, fan of dense urban hives and also a fan of that 'weird lump of rock' that is Portland, Dorset.
But that is by the by. The Lathe of Heaven reads like an hommage to Philip K Dick in parts - so much so that at times I thought I'd read it before, but I was remembering "The Man in the High Castle" instead. But it's also a fable about changing things that aren't meant to be changed, and Things We Were Not Meant To Meddle With.
funny
hopeful
reflective
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes