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outi's review against another edition
adventurous
dark
mysterious
tense
medium-paced
- Strong character development? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
3.25
msaari's review
3.0
Quite hazy little story set in a drug-addled jungle. [b:Heart of Darkness|4900|Heart of Darkness |Joseph Conrad|http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1328698658s/4900.jpg|2877220] theme is strong in this one, with some quite surprising turns. Not an excellent book by any means, but interesting enough.
will_sargent's review
4.0
Decent novella, set in Borneo. It has many of the elements that hold a Shepard novella together: there's a jungle, drugs that alter or manipulate reality, a steady stream of political / colonialist theory combined with some reflexive loathing at the over-intellectualism involved in the theorizing, a hidden world only accessible through a leap of faith, and a question on whether faith and trust can ever be truly be genuine, or another move in the game of self-interest. It's a story of a low level British pawn shop owner who helps an idealistic American live in the jungle with a pharmacutical researcher, and finds that the American is looking for his approval before he remakes the world in his own image, and a witch who thinks that unchecked idealism and hope can be a greater evil than self-interest.
But the language is greater than the story. I have no real hope of reproducing Lucius Shepard's voice -- god knows it's not mine -- but part of me envies his sheer ability to make words read like music, to represent the interplay of skepticism and faith and the internal workings of men as finely as the landscape around them. It's a pleasure to read someone who has "read the text" -- every one of his characters is reading the environment around them and at least somewhat aware of their failings and blind spots.
So yeah. If you've read Viator, if you read Two Trains Running, you know what you're looking at here. If not, it'll be different to almost anything you've ever read.
But the language is greater than the story. I have no real hope of reproducing Lucius Shepard's voice -- god knows it's not mine -- but part of me envies his sheer ability to make words read like music, to represent the interplay of skepticism and faith and the internal workings of men as finely as the landscape around them. It's a pleasure to read someone who has "read the text" -- every one of his characters is reading the environment around them and at least somewhat aware of their failings and blind spots.
So yeah. If you've read Viator, if you read Two Trains Running, you know what you're looking at here. If not, it'll be different to almost anything you've ever read.
lordofthemoon's review
3.0
Barnett is an expat Briton living in Kalimantan, in Indonesia. A momentary act of kindness from him sends Curtis MacKinnon to a trading post deep in the jungle. After a while, Barnett gets alarming correspondence from the trading post that sends him to confront MacKinnon.
I'm not familiar with Shepard and from reading this, I assumed he was a literary writer, dipping his toe into the SF genre, but Wikipedia describes him as an SF author, albeit one with "an awareness of literary antecedents." There is definitely a literary tone to this novella and the island land of Kalimantan is lovingly described.
The story straddles the line between SF and fantasy with talk of the spirit of the land, but also crashed alien spaceships on parallel worlds. The story is a bit of a character study, with MacKinnon and Barnett both being examined in some depth.
An interesting story, with a lot of pleasure to be had from the language and descriptions. While there is some action late in the story, this isn't a book to read for that. It's one for introspection and to delve into the landscape. Worth it, but be prepared to have to do a bit of work.
I'm not familiar with Shepard and from reading this, I assumed he was a literary writer, dipping his toe into the SF genre, but Wikipedia describes him as an SF author, albeit one with "an awareness of literary antecedents." There is definitely a literary tone to this novella and the island land of Kalimantan is lovingly described.
The story straddles the line between SF and fantasy with talk of the spirit of the land, but also crashed alien spaceships on parallel worlds. The story is a bit of a character study, with MacKinnon and Barnett both being examined in some depth.
An interesting story, with a lot of pleasure to be had from the language and descriptions. While there is some action late in the story, this isn't a book to read for that. It's one for introspection and to delve into the landscape. Worth it, but be prepared to have to do a bit of work.
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