[books 2010] Steph Swainston, book 2
Oct. 8th, 2010 04:02 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
inulro63. No Present Like Time by Steph Swainston
Sequel to The Year of Our War, which I read a couple months back.
I think this is better than the first one. Once again I started out not being very impressed by the premise – that a distant island civilization has been found and a delegation from the Fourlands, including Jant, the narrator of the first volume, is sent to make official contact. Jant, who has been clean for 5 years, is terrified of water so goes back on drugs to survive the 3-month voyage.
The island they find is a paradise which, through one visit lasting only two days, gets *completely* trashed. The power of this book is that even though I thought I knew what was coming, all the bad stuff still got me like a slap in the face and feels utterly tragic.
The alternate world of the Shift has shifted from being weird and a bit disturbing to utterly downright disturbing and scary, and it's all presented in a matter-of-fact way, making it feel even creepier.
I have the third volume from the library at the moment, but No Present Like Time was so intense (or I’m emotionally vulnerable at the moment) that I’m taking a break and reading something else trashy & non-challenging first.
I read a comment on someone else’s LJ saying that they find Jant to be an “unsympathetic narrator”. I have to disagree, but it’s as if he was created to appeal to people who like skinny intellectual goth boys. Impossibly tall and thin – check; wears t-shirts, leggings, eyeliner and nail polish – check; speaks a gazillion languages, living and dead, and is more distraught about the destruction of a library than the death of his comrades – check. OK, there’s the drug habit, but for me Swainston's world building and plotting is cool, but it's Jant that really keeps me wanting more.
Sequel to The Year of Our War, which I read a couple months back.
I think this is better than the first one. Once again I started out not being very impressed by the premise – that a distant island civilization has been found and a delegation from the Fourlands, including Jant, the narrator of the first volume, is sent to make official contact. Jant, who has been clean for 5 years, is terrified of water so goes back on drugs to survive the 3-month voyage.
The island they find is a paradise which, through one visit lasting only two days, gets *completely* trashed. The power of this book is that even though I thought I knew what was coming, all the bad stuff still got me like a slap in the face and feels utterly tragic.
The alternate world of the Shift has shifted from being weird and a bit disturbing to utterly downright disturbing and scary, and it's all presented in a matter-of-fact way, making it feel even creepier.
I have the third volume from the library at the moment, but No Present Like Time was so intense (or I’m emotionally vulnerable at the moment) that I’m taking a break and reading something else trashy & non-challenging first.
I read a comment on someone else’s LJ saying that they find Jant to be an “unsympathetic narrator”. I have to disagree, but it’s as if he was created to appeal to people who like skinny intellectual goth boys. Impossibly tall and thin – check; wears t-shirts, leggings, eyeliner and nail polish – check; speaks a gazillion languages, living and dead, and is more distraught about the destruction of a library than the death of his comrades – check. OK, there’s the drug habit, but for me Swainston's world building and plotting is cool, but it's Jant that really keeps me wanting more.
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Date: 2010-10-08 03:08 pm (UTC)I quite like him, he's weak and selfish but usually pretty entertaining. I have to stick with it for more details about the Shift and some other things that you probably haven't got to yet.
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Date: 2010-10-09 02:37 pm (UTC)