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A review by fisk42
The Quantum Rose by Catherine Asaro
3.0
It’s always nice to get a pleasant surprise while carrying along on my attempt to read all the Hugo and Nebula award winning novels. There are certain winners that just don’t get talked about very often, the black sheep of the family. So as someone who wasn’t keeping up with Science Fiction when this book was published about 20 years ago, I would have never come across it if it hadn’t won the Nebula. And frankly if I ever had come across it I would have been completely turned off by the cover (I know, I know, there’s a saying about that).
I gave The Quantum Rose three stars but that was rounding down. This book was a combination of several SF tropes that I enjoy. It did that and more, dealing with issues such as alcoholism and rape/patriarchy at the same time. It also helped that although this is apparently in the middle of a series, zero foreknowledge is necessary to enjoy this book.
The novel starts in a very fantasy-ish setting. A feudal (alien) world with lords and ladies and women being bought with dowries. A lord claims the main character for marriage and it turns out he’s from the stars! So it turns out the world this takes place on was part of an Earth empire that expanded for thousands of years and then collapsed. There’s space ships, some form of genetic telepathy/computer assisted mind reading, AI, genetic modifications, all the normal far-future tropes end up. But we see this all through the eyes of what is essentially a backwater bumpkin.
Also there are a couple layers to this novel as apparently the author did her doctoral dissertation on quantum... coupling? (I can’t remember without looking it up). So the entire thing is also an allegory for that. The audiobook didn’t have her essay explaining it which was at the end of he original print book. I’ll have to track it down but either way it only makes it more technically accomplished but doesn’t really affect my enjoyment.
I gave The Quantum Rose three stars but that was rounding down. This book was a combination of several SF tropes that I enjoy. It did that and more, dealing with issues such as alcoholism and rape/patriarchy at the same time. It also helped that although this is apparently in the middle of a series, zero foreknowledge is necessary to enjoy this book.
The novel starts in a very fantasy-ish setting. A feudal (alien) world with lords and ladies and women being bought with dowries. A lord claims the main character for marriage and it turns out he’s from the stars! So it turns out the world this takes place on was part of an Earth empire that expanded for thousands of years and then collapsed. There’s space ships, some form of genetic telepathy/computer assisted mind reading, AI, genetic modifications, all the normal far-future tropes end up. But we see this all through the eyes of what is essentially a backwater bumpkin.
Also there are a couple layers to this novel as apparently the author did her doctoral dissertation on quantum... coupling? (I can’t remember without looking it up). So the entire thing is also an allegory for that. The audiobook didn’t have her essay explaining it which was at the end of he original print book. I’ll have to track it down but either way it only makes it more technically accomplished but doesn’t really affect my enjoyment.