 "slow start, dragging line, little redemption" | 2008-06-05 |
| - Reviewed By 2theD from Ban Chang, Rayong, Thailand |
| Wonderful concepts of near-future society... the same society based on Bear's short story Sisters in his collection Tangents. Expansive qualities about the society, person-to-person relationships, country-to-country relationships, etc. It's all good in the like. But, the plot starts slow and confused me. It actually got me angry because of the idiosyncratic typing for some of the characters. It pans out eventually. Another dislike of mine is the inclusion of poetry from characters in the story... and the inclusion of invented fables. If Bear were to stick to technology and sociology, it would have been a good novel (maybe 4 stars). |
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| "Not Free SF Reader" | 2007-10-25 |
| - Reviewed By - Research Finished |
Poet killer case for transform detective.
A detective gets assigned the investigation into why a famous poet went whacko and dispatched a few people.
She herself is an animal-human hybrid of sorts, which, in passing some people are not too fond or (and they themselves may not be too fond of normal people).
The whole book itself doesn't gel all that well, maybe because it is something a little different for Bear, perhaps.
Those people who have to have someone they like in a book to read it can avoid this one, too.
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 "An orgy of Originality & Style" | 2007-07-13 |
| - Reviewed By Avid Reader from Franklin, Tn |
This is Greg Bear at his best, a hallucinatory, wild ride through a future murder investigation. Sure it's science fiction but that's like saying the Taj Mahal is a nice building. It is one of those rare works that are all things to all people and yet offending none. It is a police procedural, a mystery, a philosophical tome, science fiction and personal reflection. Philosophical thunderclaps reverberate throughout and Bear employs a catchy technique for getting to the heart of the matter in the use of simultaneous stories that conclude but do not necessarily intertwine. The language is bold, quirky and even startling with tricks galore ("+" for thoughts, new curse words, stream of consciousness at times). I should stress that these tricks "work" as do the descriptions of the wondrous future society of nanotech, AI and robots. Bear does not make the critical mistake of explaining each invention or technology as so many do - they are simply part of the flow.
The story begins with the murder of eight friends by a famous black poet. From this spring several subplots. In the future, culture wars are fought over the use of therapy to "cure" folks of aggressive tendencies. Some want to make it mandatory while others abhor the practice. We meet Mary, the chief investigator (and the voice of the story). She is a transform, that is (as best as one can tell), an individual who has radically changed their appearance. She chose black skin for aesthetic and not political reasons. She wants the killer to get therapy before he is captured by the Selectors, a vigilante group that tortures evil doers neurologically.
The other story tells of a simultaneous exploratory mission to Alpha Centuri by an AI on the verge of self-awareness. On an Earthlike planet the AI discovers evidence of intelligence. The AI in space has a twin on Earth that vividly describes intelligence without awareness (the AI conversations are nothing short of brilliant). Bear tackles all sorts of philosphical questions - punishment, justice, indignation, redemption and consciousness from several points of view - society as a whole, the criminal, the therapied, the untherapied and most important, the AI who can ask deep questions and remain within the flow of the story. A well-designed political story concerning Haiti also plays out and Bear fortunately does not simply extrapolate current events into some aburd parallel future.
My grade - A |
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| "Stick with it - it's worth it" | 2006-06-14 |
| - Reviewed By Jay Rogers from Buda, TX United States |
After the first 30 pages I suspected something was wrong so I flipped to the blurbs on the covers and flyleaf: "ambitious" "challenging" "complex" -- uh oh!
There are some wierd syntactical treatments that make for rough reading: the absence of commas, unusual phrasing... but eventually you train yourself to defocus on these sections and just let the words shower down on you... maybe that was Bear's intent.
I loved Slant, and was excited to discover this prequel based in the same universe and featuring Mary Choy, but this novel makes Slant seem pretty mainstream. There are "Big Ideas" here that are really worth the read, and I am in amazement of the complexity and maturity of the thought: it's like Bear had been saving up decades of thought on the nature of consciousness, the subconscious, guilt, and punishment, and was finally letting fly.
I eventually decided that this was a great novel. Keep going. It's worth it. |
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 "I don't know what to say..." | 2005-10-20 |
| - Reviewed By ihijump from Arkansas |
I've read more than a few of Greg Bear's books but have come across no books of his that were anything like Queen of Angels. If I didn't know better I'd say there was a bug in his word processor that removed all the punctuation.
I put this book down a dozen times an finally gave up on it. I never could get into it becuase I like to read one story at a time... not four. I also like sentences that are structured. I'm not sure what he was trying to accomplish with this but I don't recommend it at all. It will basically frustrate the crap out of you to try and read it. |
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| "Voodoo People ..." | 2004-07-27 |
| - Reviewed By Petteri |
Nothing in Bear's previous works prepared me for the nature of this book. In marked contrast to the majority of Bear's novels, Queen of Angels does not deal with speculative evolutionary biology or quantum physics. Yes, it pays to be up to date on the latest articles on nanotechnology and Jungian archetypes, but perhaps more than any other book of Bear's, Queen of Angels is a work that could pass as highly-respected contemporary literature.
The back cover of the edition I own quotes a Washington Post Book World critic saying that Queen of Angels may be the most ambitious book the critic has ever read. I can't say I disagree.
On a surface level the book is a whodunnit, except for the fact that we know who the killer is. Emanuel Goldsmith, a notorious poet, suffers an apparent mental breakdown and slaughters a group of his acolyte friends in cold blood.
Structurally the book contains four threads following the exploits of an equal number of protagonists involved in the murder case. The individual storylines are linked thematically, with only tenuous physical connections established between the main characters; in a move that may alienate some of his regular readers, Bear forces the reader to put the big pieces in place and find the elusive meaning behind it all. It is almost as if Bear is throwing down the figurative gauntlet to see who among his large fan base can handle the one aberration in his oeuvre.
The author deals with his cast without any remorse, reveling in the intimate, embarrassing details of their mundane existence in a style reminescent of James Joyce's 'Dubliners'. Mary Choy, a 'transform' cop formerly white now the blackest black; Martin Burke, a cutting-edge psychotherapist fallen from grace; Richard Fettle, an aspiring if mentally brittle poet; Jill, an Artificial Intelligence without self-awareness: all the main characters try to build a new, sustainable 'self' while carrying some deep psychological fracture within themselves. The eye of a needle awaits every one. Each storyline ultimately ends in partial redemption, but it is only the reader, enjoying a god-like perspective, who can reconstruct the trail of events behind the bloodbath.
Bear's thesis:
Some people may walk through their lives exhibiting all the traits of an intelligent person while still missing true self-awareness, the essential 'I'. Without contact to other intelligences, self-modeling (read: self-awareness) in evolutionary terms can be demoted to excess-baggage status, a quirk of nature. And without full self-awareness, there can be no social responsibility for one's actions regardless of how criminal they may be.
These theories are further explored in Slant, an inferior and loosely-connected sequel to Queen of Angels.
After finishing the book, I spent a full hour contemplating what I had just read while the implications of Bear's theories started to sink in. Trying to pin down my 'thoughts behind the thoughts', analyzing my internal monologue. Searching for clues in a desperate attempt to convince myself that I was truly self-aware and not just some collection of maintenance routines. Queen of Angels had hit me like no other book since.
'I think, therefore I am' - is that admissible evidence in court? |
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