Reviews

The Caryatids by Bruce Sterling

joeyh's review against another edition

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2.0

To understand why this is written the way it is, you need to read the Afterword. But once I'd gotten to that point, I no longer cared; I was mostly glad it was over.

kevin_carson's review against another edition

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5.0

https://teaearlgreyhotblog.wordpress.com/2019/05/13/the-caryatids-by-bruce-sterling/

matthewssmith's review

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4.0

Cool future that explores what life might be like in a world in which nearly everything is quantified and tagged, through the eyes of five extraordinary siblings who border on the psychotic whenever they think of each other.

ifoundtheme's review

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2.0

no characters to speak of, no particular attempt at plot. some interesting ideas about ubiquitous computing and bionics.

nigellicus's review

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5.0

With the world undergoing disastrous disintegration from man-made causes, who better to bring together the man-made solutions than three female clones as damaged and traumatised and dysfunctional as the world they're supposed to save? Most of their sisters are dead, their mother/sister is out of reach from the forces of law and order in orbit and the four surviving clones are scattered over the world, engaged in various morally dubious projects of reclamation, amelioration, sterilisation and terrorism. One man sets out to bring them together and hopes by doing so to mend the ideological divisions hampering the task of global salvation.

Well, I liked it. Sterling is too optimistic to let the world die screaming, but too much of a realist to make survival easy pr cost free. The clones are like a fractured human psyche, half-mad and self-hating, to the extent that getting anything useful other than tragedy and heartbreak out of them seems impossible. Whether they succeed, and whether Sterling succeeds, is for the reader to decide.
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