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A review by timinbc
Prophet by Sin Blaché, Helen Macdonald
3.0
Tries to do too much. Is it SF, thriller, gay romance, or what?
Well, it's not rigorous enough to be SF. Maybe the Hollywood-movie version.
It's way too long, mostly because every second page contains a variant of this:
Rao?
Fuck off.
Adam, love?
(silence)
Adam is just a cross between Bruce Lee and Eeyore - but perhaps not without reason.
Rao is a jerk, but may have been made that way by his experiences.
But things built interestingly for a while.
Until it became clear there would have to be a Showdown, because all this has to end, because you can't write your way out of it any other way. And then we realize that the Showdown is going to consume a LOT of narrativium, as the Prophet morphs and grows, and finally we get a really special firework show of handwaving to Explain It All.
So, way too much thriller, not enough SF, and c'mon, we knew how the Relationship had to end.
Well, it's not rigorous enough to be SF. Maybe the Hollywood-movie version.
It's way too long, mostly because every second page contains a variant of this:
Rao?
Fuck off.
Adam, love?
(silence)
Adam is just a cross between Bruce Lee and Eeyore - but perhaps not without reason.
Rao is a jerk, but may have been made that way by his experiences.
But things built interestingly for a while.
Until it became clear there would have to be a Showdown, because all this has to end, because you can't write your way out of it any other way. And then we realize that the Showdown is going to consume a LOT of narrativium, as the Prophet morphs and grows, and finally we get a really special firework show of handwaving to Explain It All.
So, way too much thriller, not enough SF, and c'mon, we knew how the Relationship had to end.