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A review by ashryn
The Caryatids by Bruce Sterling
3.0
The Caryatids: So... I'm still thinking "what?" the characters seem a little retarded.. It's making me think of Paranoia -where each successive clone is a bit dumber than the last. the world so far seems post literate and peopled by brainwashed floozies controlled by pre-programmed self loathing.
Why do the sisters hate each other so much? What was with the obsessive fear of non-manmade global catastrophe? Was the weird stilted dialogue just supposed to reflect the sisters nationality?
I suspect I might have missed an important point, but so did all the other reviewers I read.
I do like the ideas in this novel, and would like to further explore the tech, and the history of the world and the characters.. It felt like picking up the third novel of a series without having read the first two, but it's possible that was intentional too. Perhaps the reader isnt meant to understand or identify with the sisters to show how different they are from normal people, but in that case, why did the people love them all so much individually? And in any case I can't see how being clones would make them so different, though maybe being raised in a sensor web might do that... We're they cyborgs?
I think it's a plausible vision of a future world, and it could have been totally immersive and quite scary, except that there were too many questions unanswered, and the time spent wondering where this was all heading kept breaking the spell.
Perhaps there will be a prequel to this one that gives us the background and the details to make sense of it.
Why do the sisters hate each other so much? What was with the obsessive fear of non-manmade global catastrophe? Was the weird stilted dialogue just supposed to reflect the sisters nationality?
I suspect I might have missed an important point, but so did all the other reviewers I read.
I do like the ideas in this novel, and would like to further explore the tech, and the history of the world and the characters.. It felt like picking up the third novel of a series without having read the first two, but it's possible that was intentional too. Perhaps the reader isnt meant to understand or identify with the sisters to show how different they are from normal people, but in that case, why did the people love them all so much individually? And in any case I can't see how being clones would make them so different, though maybe being raised in a sensor web might do that... We're they cyborgs?
I think it's a plausible vision of a future world, and it could have been totally immersive and quite scary, except that there were too many questions unanswered, and the time spent wondering where this was all heading kept breaking the spell.
Perhaps there will be a prequel to this one that gives us the background and the details to make sense of it.