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A review by kjjohnson
Vagabonds by Hao Jingfang
4.0
The premise was fascinating, which was why I picked up the book. The book itself was much more philosophical than I expected, which I took time to adjust to but ended up appreciating for what it was.
Pros:
The ideas/philosophy. I thought Jingfang did a good job setting out the two competing 'utopias' of Mars and Earth, and how each thought the other was really a dystopia. There wasn't any right system, just different values, and beneath it humanity was largely the same on each planet. I could definitely see why the 'vagabonds' who had spent time on both felt so isolated and questioning. Within the Mars colony, too, the major choice between staying in the city or going to the crater was an interesting argument. The setting was well-realized overall, with the importance of glass and magnets on Mars, and the impact of the low gravity and lack of resources on the colony.
I thought it wrapped up very well. It was hard to see how a book like this would be able to end effectively, but I thought she pulled it off. It didn't definitively answer the questions it raised, but there was change and the promise of more, and Luoying found a future that she could look be happy with, on the shuttle. Very circular, with how the novel started.
I thought the play the vagabonds put on was rather clever, and normally I don't really enjoy on-the-nose play-within-the-novel type things. I was also
Cons:
Like a lot of philosophical or ideas-based sci-fi, I thought that a lot of the characters were relatively flat in favor of the ideas that were being debated. The Doctor that Luoying talks with as a mentor-like figure seems to exist largely to drop pearls of wisdom. While the vagabonds are searching and grasping for answers (and the film-maker), almost all of the other characters in the novel are firmly convinced of their respective philosophies and don't change much. That's not to say they don't have character - thankfully there aren't really any complete mouthpieces and the characters have lives and their own separate desires - but it felt to me like the character was often secondary to the ideas that the author was getting at. Also the film-maker seemed like a deuteragonist for the first third, then pretty much dropped out of the book? Which kind of threw me.
While there wasn't one main character, the foremost character was Luoying and she was quite passive overall, which helped the book drag at points for me. She did a lot of reflecting and listening to her friends' and mentors' advice, but one consequence of her being 'stuck' between worlds was that she mostly went along with what other people were passionate about than her own interest. As noted above, though, I did enjoy how her story resolved.
Kind of nit-picky, but I was mildly irritated that all of the politically/technically powerful people in the story were men.
While this book wasn't what I expected based on the description, I thought it was a worthwhile read.
Pros:
The ideas/philosophy. I thought Jingfang did a good job setting out the two competing 'utopias' of Mars and Earth, and how each thought the other was really a dystopia. There wasn't any right system, just different values, and beneath it humanity was largely the same on each planet. I could definitely see why the 'vagabonds' who had spent time on both felt so isolated and questioning. Within the Mars colony, too, the major choice between staying in the city or going to the crater was an interesting argument. The setting was well-realized overall, with the importance of glass and magnets on Mars, and the impact of the low gravity and lack of resources on the colony.
I thought it wrapped up very well. It was hard to see how a book like this would be able to end effectively, but I thought she pulled it off. It didn't definitively answer the questions it raised, but there was change and the promise of more, and Luoying found a future that she could look be happy with, on the shuttle. Very circular, with how the novel started.
I thought the play the vagabonds put on was rather clever, and normally I don't really enjoy on-the-nose play-within-the-novel type things. I was also
Cons:
Like a lot of philosophical or ideas-based sci-fi, I thought that a lot of the characters were relatively flat in favor of the ideas that were being debated. The Doctor that Luoying talks with as a mentor-like figure seems to exist largely to drop pearls of wisdom. While the vagabonds are searching and grasping for answers (and the film-maker), almost all of the other characters in the novel are firmly convinced of their respective philosophies and don't change much. That's not to say they don't have character - thankfully there aren't really any complete mouthpieces and the characters have lives and their own separate desires - but it felt to me like the character was often secondary to the ideas that the author was getting at. Also the film-maker seemed like a deuteragonist for the first third, then pretty much dropped out of the book? Which kind of threw me.
While there wasn't one main character, the foremost character was Luoying and she was quite passive overall, which helped the book drag at points for me. She did a lot of reflecting and listening to her friends' and mentors' advice, but one consequence of her being 'stuck' between worlds was that she mostly went along with what other people were passionate about than her own interest. As noted above, though, I did enjoy how her story resolved.
Kind of nit-picky, but I was mildly irritated that all of the politically/technically powerful people in the story were men.
While this book wasn't what I expected based on the description, I thought it was a worthwhile read.