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sarabz's review against another edition
4.0
I loved this book. The story is very rich and complex, and there are a lot of interesting ideas woven in.
essinink's review against another edition
5.0
Wow. So, words seem inadequate, but I'll give this my best shot.
No lie, the first 100 pages aren't easy. Andrea Hairston puts you right in the middle of things with no inclination to explain, and it is weird. But, if you can make it through that bit, the pieces start to come together. It's confusing, yes, but not to no end. The author delivers on her promises.
It's a wild ride. Ms. Hairston rotates you through the limited perspective of each character--and what characters they are! From Lawanda, who is so much more than her sass, to Aaron Dunklebrot (who I thought I'd hate, but actually found fascinating by the end), to Elleni (another character I didn't 'get' right away), each has their own unique voice and motivations.
It's been nearly a week and I'm still trying to wrap my head around everything, which probably queues it for a re-read at some point in the future. This book gets inside your head and stays there.
It doesn't hurt that the writing is gorgeous.
Genre-wise, this could be categorized as 'soft' Science-Fiction in the tradition of social-commentary, but I'm actually more comfortable leaving it in the broader catch-all category of speculative fiction. Not quite sci-fi, not quite fantasy, but definitely still "elsewhere."
Your mileage may vary, but I loved this book.
No lie, the first 100 pages aren't easy. Andrea Hairston puts you right in the middle of things with no inclination to explain, and it is weird. But, if you can make it through that bit, the pieces start to come together. It's confusing, yes, but not to no end. The author delivers on her promises.
It's a wild ride. Ms. Hairston rotates you through the limited perspective of each character--and what characters they are! From Lawanda, who is so much more than her sass, to Aaron Dunklebrot (who I thought I'd hate, but actually found fascinating by the end), to Elleni (another character I didn't 'get' right away), each has their own unique voice and motivations.
It's been nearly a week and I'm still trying to wrap my head around everything, which probably queues it for a re-read at some point in the future. This book gets inside your head and stays there.
It doesn't hurt that the writing is gorgeous.
Genre-wise, this could be categorized as 'soft' Science-Fiction in the tradition of social-commentary, but I'm actually more comfortable leaving it in the broader catch-all category of speculative fiction. Not quite sci-fi, not quite fantasy, but definitely still "elsewhere."
Your mileage may vary, but I loved this book.
nwhyte's review against another edition
http://www.strangehorizons.com/reviews/2007/04/the_2007_philip.shtml[return][return]Andrea Hairston's Mindscape is an intriguing first novel. Her future earth has been divided into feuding zones by the alien-imposed Barrier shades of Greg Egan's Quarantine or Robert Charles Wilson's Spin, but with the planet itself being geographically fragmented rather than merely isolated from the rest of the universe. The Barrier itself can be crossed, but only by people with the correct training, which of course includes our viewpoint characters. The future world is richly realised and politically complex, with a strong African element in its culture and a cynical take on the future development of the entertainment industry. It is easy to read into it a metaphor for the continuing apartness of black and white in contemporary America the dividing Barrier is difficult to cross, but music is one of the ways of crossing it.[return][return]But there were a couple of elements that I found improbable. I would have liked a better sense of how large the zones are supposed to be and how (if at all) they fit together geographically. The entire premise of the book is that an interzonal peace treaty is both necessary and fragile yet it seemed unlikely that given the resources available and the impenetrability of the Barrier, serious conflict could ever really break out between the zones rather than within them. Indeed, most of the violence in the book is perpetrated by on one another by people who are coresidents of the same zone. The second point is about language: Hairston's use of English is great, and one character memorably affects twentieth-century African American dialect. But her characters also use plenty of Yoruba and German phrases, and while these are always (as far as I can tell) in context and used with confidence, the presence of these combined with the complete absence of any other African or European languages from her future world struck me as anomalous.
wealhtheow's review against another edition
4.0
Multi-dimensional barriers slam down on Earth, splitting the planet into discrete, nigh-impenetrable cages. Nations, geography, and civilizations as we know it crumble, replaced by gang-run city-states. But out of this chaos and violence also come chimeric healers known as Vermittler, who have the ability to create safe passages through the Barrier. One healer, Celestina, uses these passages and crafts a Treaty between different realms--but on the very day the Treaty is signed, she is assassinated. In the wake of her death, a number of individuals each struggle in the newly connected world. Aaron, a movie producer/gang lord who skin-switched into a white man after being a brutalized black woman , and has never come to terms with his past. Lawanda, who has purposefully reclaimed an ethnicity and culture everyone else would like to forget, who is nominated as a Treaty Ambassador to harm the Treaty but proves to be its greatest advocate. The Major, torn between the mind-bombs placed in his head by his superiors and his love of Lawanda. Ellina, Celestina's apprentice who seeks to finish what she started. And Ray, an actor in Aaron's latest project; no one is sure whether he's just acting like a hero, or actually is one--not even himself. Their struggle to reconcile the Barrier with Earth, and the fractered pieces of Earth with itself, progress through tangled schemes, vision quests and flash-backs.
As a story it is exuberant, irrepressable, far-reaching, very smart and knowledgable but simultanously unashamed of believing whole-heartedly in mystical koans. The characters have a tendency to communicate in epigraphs that don't quite connect with each other, and it took a while for me to get the hang of what is going on. There's a lot of magic floating around, and none of it is explained. But there's so much energy and power and feeling to this tale that I couldn't quite give up on it, even though I had no idea what was going on for the first quarter of the book.
As a story it is exuberant, irrepressable, far-reaching, very smart and knowledgable but simultanously unashamed of believing whole-heartedly in mystical koans. The characters have a tendency to communicate in epigraphs that don't quite connect with each other, and it took a while for me to get the hang of what is going on. There's a lot of magic floating around, and none of it is explained. But there's so much energy and power and feeling to this tale that I couldn't quite give up on it, even though I had no idea what was going on for the first quarter of the book.
emilpaladin's review
adventurous
challenging
mysterious
medium-paced
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
Content Warnings
Graphic: Sexual assault
Moderate: Death
thistle_and_verse's review against another edition
3.0
I first read an excerpt in the Reading the Bones anthology edited by Sheree Renee Thomas and was very intrigued, so I wanted to read the full work. I don't know what to make of this book. Hairston doesn't outright explain how the world works. The reader gets the lay of the land and the history of this world as the book progresses. I had difficulty keeping track of characters and locations. There's commentary on Hollywood/entertainment, singing as time travel, and clashes between tradition and modernity. Mindscape ultimately felt like a bundle of cool ideas that wasn't quite cohesive, fragmented like a post-Barrier world.
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