Scan barcode
A review by egelantier
Psion by Joan D. Vinge
3.0
cat, a half-breed kid trying to survive in the slums of big galactic city, tries to escape the forced labor press-gang, finds out he has a latent telepathic talent and ends up in a middle of a deadly game between greedy, corrupt human government and a psychopathic rebellious telepath. it doesn't end well for him or, frankly, everybody, but cat sure tries his best.
i don't think me and vinge are a good match - i remember vaguely liking her snow queen homage a while back, but the way this book went? no. it's pretty straightforward soft sci-fi centered on an outcast hero, xenophobia and trying to find some applicable ethics in a setting where pretty much everybody is a hopeless asshole, and, well. there was nobody in there, except maybe cat, for me to like, and neither the writing nor the setting were especially good for me to settle for the book as a grimy but fascinating thought experiment.
cat is tenacious, lonely and hurting, but there's nobody there for him to reach out for. the "good" side ranges from vaguely kind but absolutely inactive (see: jule taming, resident empath, and if she'd be any more inert she'd stop breathing) to actively assholish yet repeatedly exonerated by narartive (see: dr. siebeling, who repeatedly sabotages and betrays cat, and honestly, all i can do there is to quote rocket the raccoon: boo hoo, my wife and child are dead! everybody dies, and tell him to grow a fucking conscience). cat picks one bad side against the other, citing tenuous human connections and whatnot, but all that i, as a reader, took out of this book is that i'd like to erase this entire setting with a fire and start it over.
i don't think me and vinge are a good match - i remember vaguely liking her snow queen homage a while back, but the way this book went? no. it's pretty straightforward soft sci-fi centered on an outcast hero, xenophobia and trying to find some applicable ethics in a setting where pretty much everybody is a hopeless asshole, and, well. there was nobody in there, except maybe cat, for me to like, and neither the writing nor the setting were especially good for me to settle for the book as a grimy but fascinating thought experiment.
cat is tenacious, lonely and hurting, but there's nobody there for him to reach out for. the "good" side ranges from vaguely kind but absolutely inactive (see: jule taming, resident empath, and if she'd be any more inert she'd stop breathing) to actively assholish yet repeatedly exonerated by narartive (see: dr. siebeling, who repeatedly sabotages and betrays cat, and honestly, all i can do there is to quote rocket the raccoon: boo hoo, my wife and child are dead! everybody dies, and tell him to grow a fucking conscience). cat picks one bad side against the other, citing tenuous human connections and whatnot, but all that i, as a reader, took out of this book is that i'd like to erase this entire setting with a fire and start it over.