AESTIVAL TIDE (Spectra Special Editions) [Mass Market Paperback]

Elizabeth Hand (Author)

Book Description

Series: Spectra Special Editions | Publication Date: August 1, 1992

Four hundred years after the Third Shining, Hobi, Reive, Tast'annin, and Nefertity prepare for the prophesied collapse of Araboth, the domed city-state presumably protecting its citizens from the alleged horrors of the Outside.

Product Details

• Mass Market Paperback
• Publisher: Spectra (August 1, 1992)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 055329542X
• ISBN-13: 978-0553295429
• Product Dimensions: 6.7 x 4.1 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 7.2 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,840,168 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

A couple of years after seeing Patti Smith perform, Elizabeth Hand flunked out of college and became involved in the nascent punk scenes in DC and NYC. From 1979 to 1986 she worked at the Smithsonian Institution's National Air & Space Museum; she was eventually readmitted to university to study cultural anthropology, and received her B.A. She is the author of many novels, including Winterlong, Waking the Moon (Tiptree and Mythopoeic Award-Winner), Glimmering, and Mortal Love, and three collections of stories, including the recent Saffron and Brimstone. Her fiction has received the Nebula, World Fantasy, Mythopeoic, Tiptree, and International Horror Guild Awards, and her novels have been chose as New York Times and Washington Post Notable Books. She has also been awarded a Maine Arts Commission Fellowship. A regular contributor to the Washington Post Book World and The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, Hand lives with her family on the Maine Coast.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A sensual, alien and real book by an awsome writer., August 4, 1999

By 

[e-mail] (Tacoma) - See all my reviews

This review is from: AESTIVAL TIDE (Spectra Special Editions) (Mass Market Paperback)

Aestival Tide brought together all of the things I appreciate most about Elizabeth Hand. Her telling of how relationships would be if sex were no longer important, how the world would be if no one saw the sky, how a man would live if he were no longer a man, how a machine could express humanity, all without being cartoonish or over the top. She creates a world that exists, with flaws and history, yet nothing for most people within to belive in, because they lack the ability to care no matter how hard they try.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars ELIZABETH HAND DOES IT AGAIN!, December 4, 2001

By 

Raymond J. Wright (HOLLISTON, MA United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: AESTIVAL TIDE (Spectra Special Editions) (Mass Market Paperback)

Elizabeth Hand has done it again! She has created a profoundly disturbing, beautifully written masterpeice. Like it's predecessor WINTERLONG Ms. hand has taken what could have been nothing more than a dime store sci-fi novel and turned into a rich, well crafted, stunningly beautiful epic. This isn't so much a science fiction novel as it is a sweeping tale filled with deeply felt characters and lush prose. I would reccomend this book to anyone.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Winterlong 2 it is not., April 21, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: AESTIVAL TIDE (Spectra Special Editions) (Mass Market Paperback)

If you are looking for a sequel to Winterlong, you will be dissapointed. This book is more like a companion, but it is beautiful in its own right. Sheds more light on the world that Winterlong gave so many tantalizing little hints about, while at the same time, almost seeming to create another world within that one.

It's a far out comparison, but some of Hand's sci-fi images and concepts remind me of Cordwainer Smith (if you don't know him you should!)