Customer Reviews

Beggars and Choosers (Beggars Trilogy (also known as Sleepless Trilogy))

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This was actually the first Kress book I read (I went out and grabbed 4 more almost immediately afterward, including Beggars in Spain)...so, the book definately stands on its own two feet and I still enjoyed the series tremendously despite not reading them in their intended order. Maybe it's because I read this one first, but it stands out as my favorite - a well-crafted future (usually missing from a lot of sci fi), a compelling plot (again, often absent from a lot of sci fi...no alien invasion/war/global cataclysm/blah/blah here, just a very interesting look at what the advances in our own existing technology may one day bring us), really great lead characters, particularly Diana Covington who I felt I sort of followed through this story in progress, and hey, some actual science! I'm no genetic engineer, but it seems that the material has been very well thought out and is a running theme in the Kress books I've read so far - being central to this book and the others in the series, I like the fact that the concept is used so thoughtfully...genetic engineering didn't destroy the world, but it certainly did change it. I suppose it would...perhaps it will, depending on how far we take it. This book has a ring of realism and science fact mixed in with fiction, as well as the central question 'what will the technological and social advances of the future really mean to us and how will they affect us?' - I just don't seem to find much science fiction like that these days. I was looking for some new material to read, and after picking up four or five complete duds by other authors, I picked this one up initially because the cover intregued me...boy am I glad I did. I have a feeling Kress will keep me in good sci fi for a while.

BEGGARS & CHOOSERS is more disturbing than satisfying, as perhaps the middle book of a trilogy should be. I'm looking forward to the conclusion in BEGGARS RIDE.

First person narration is delivered from several characters, mostly Livers. The only one returning from BEGGARS IN SPAIN is the Lucid Dreamer, Drew Arlen. It's fitting, not getting any direct view from a sleepless or a supersleepless. It makes for balance, credibility, mystery, and food for thought. My recommendation is to dig in and enjoy this book.

One of the most compelling features of the Beggars trilogy is that the specific technological achievements in it are not required for the themes to ring true. However in this book humanity has nigh-infinite cheap energy, reliable eugenics for intelligence and aesthetics in humans, and robots that replace nearly all labor. You can guess where that leads.

I read this after reading "The Beggars of Spain," and it doesn't measure up to the greatness of the first novel.

None of the main characters measure up to the Leisha Camden, who ends up with a minor role before being written out of the novel. For me, Leisha Camden carried the first novel, and having the direct sequel with her not as main character disappointed me. Of the characters in the new novel, none of them approached the joy or gentle reflectiveness of Leisha.

The philosophical questions raised by first novel, of all the beggars in Spain, are neatly sidestepped and ignored in the second novel. Miranda ends up making the same mistakes her grandmother made, but in a different way. It just struck me a super-genius might learn something from the past? Kress really didn't write the level of super-genius intelligence well, unlike the first novel where she managed to do so by perfectly capturing emotional issues that would grip you regardless of intelligence. I found her super-genius behavior to be emotionally stupid in this book, and it just turned the whole thing to trash for me.

No complaints with the setting, though the dramatic pace was slow, especially in Oleinta, New York. Maybe I'm over-reacting a bit at giving this two stars, but compared with the first novel (which I read on the same day as this one) this book is short-sighted and mediocre.

This book picks up about a decade after the end of Beggars in Spain and mainly follows the path of the Super Sleepless on Earth, specifically Miranda Sharifi, the brilliant granddaughter of Leisha's nemesis from the first novel. American society has become more stratified than before, where the wealthy working class called "Donkeys" literally buy votes by providing bread and circuses for a large uneducated welfare population called "Livers". Of particular interest is the character of Drew Arlen, a young Liver who wants to raise himself above his birth and be on par with the Super Sleepless. Drew becomes involved with Miranda's plots within plots to remake society as she sees fit.

Beggars and Choosers is the second book in Nancy Kress's "Beggars" trilogy. Although it is intended to be able to stand alone, many readers will find it much more intelligible and enjoyable if it is read after Beggars in Spain, which is a fine story in its own right.

Beggars and Choosers is set in a twenty-second century in which genetically engineered humans ("genemods") have taken over the reins of society, with the predicable consequence of conflict with the unmodified "livers." This is not a new theme, but Kress handles it with imagination, intelligence, a wonderful understanding of the conventions of hard science fiction, and a truly admirable literary style. This, and Beggars in Spain,contains some of the best written science fiction that I have encountered in my forty or more years of reading in the genre. It is intellectually demanding, as is most good science fiction, but very rewarding.

My one quibble with the book is comparatively minor, but annoying enough to be stated: I found the distinctions between the various groups of modified humans (donkeys,sleepers, super sleepers), and their origins, to be less than clear. I suspect that readers who approach Beggars and Choosers without having read Beggars in Spain are likely to have even more trouble with these distinctions than I did, but the differences are of critical importance to the understanding of the story.

I am looking forward to reading Beggars Ride, the third volume in the trilogy.

The saga continues. The people who do not need to sleep have wrought a profound change on the world in the first book (Beggars in Spain). Now, like the numerical solution of a differential equation spinning away as the computer chugs on further iterations, the story spinds out in myriad directions and ends up creating a society that looks very much like society today or for that matter a thousand years ago. Stratified and seggregated - of course the rules of seggregation are different. Do all stable societal configurations stratify the society? Or does the author's experince with her society guides the book to this conclusion? Thought provoking.

In "Beggars and Choosers" Ms. Kress continues to pursue questions concerning the role of biomedical technology in "improving" the quality of the human species. Almost everyone accepts the premise that modern medical science should strive to eliminate physical and mental defects. What happens, however, when we have the technology to enhance traits, such as intelligence, to levels beyond "normal"? She creates a society stratified on the basis of genetic enhancements. This society begins to fragment as the groups grow to distrust and then hate each other. The novel is more crisply written than its predecessor, "Beggars in Spain" and the characters have more depth. This is true even for the SuperSleepless, who may be a different species altogether. Ms. Kress wrote "Beggars and Choosers" in the first person, in contrast to "Beggars in Spain" which is in the third person. She writes through the eyes of three characters to give different perspectives of the new social stratification, and is very effective at this task. Leisha Camden, the key character in the first novel, has only a minor role in this work. I was disappointed by her unceremonious exit. Getting readers to invest this much emotion in characters, however, is the mark of a good writer.

Nancy Kress writes science fiction of the best sort, in which the story not only focuses on science but on the ethical and moral issues that scientific change forces us to confront. (Notice I don't say "progress" because so many people don't consider change and progress to be equivalent.) Beggars in Spain (1993), to which the present volume is a direct sequel, dealt with human genetic manipulation and modification, the culmination of which was the creation of people who never have to sleep -- which amounted to a new human sub-species because it was inheritable. The Sleepless also turned out to be extremely healthy and extremely long-lived. And very, very intelligent, far more so even than the IQ-mods that wealthy families could buy for their offspring-to-be. The Sleepless, increasingly (and inevitably) hated and feared by the rest of society, retreated into Sanctuary, at first in New York State and then in an orbital habitat. And their leaders, isolated for decades, fell into hubris and tried to coerce the U.S. government with terrorist blackmail. Meanwhile, though, they also created another generation of their own offspring who were as far in advance of themselves as they were of the Sleepers -- and these new "Supers" had their own ideas about how the country ought to be run when it came to relations between the two halves of society, and knocked the pins out from under the rulers of Sanctuary. Now it's a few years later and America is a very different place. The "donkeys" -- the genetically modified and IQ-enhanced who actually do the work and run the country -- make up a very small segment of the population. The "livers," who make up the majority and who sell their votes to those donkeys who supply them with the best bread and circuses, are determinedly idle and ignorant. And on a man-made island in the Gulf of Mexico, the Supers, all twenty-seven of them, are creating the tools for a worldwide revolution.

The principal ethical-moral issue this time is "Who should control technology?" The scientists, who actually understand what science does? The "people," who don't understand any of it but who make up the democratic majority? Or the bureaucrat-run government, which is somewhere in the middle? Kress makes the distinctions between these segments of the population a good deal more extreme than in our present world as a narrative device, but the issue is a fair one. In her story, however, things are brought to a head by the activities of a redneck-led underground "patriot" movement that wants to kill off all the abominations and take over the country themselves via revolution -- as God and Gen. Francis Marion apparently want them to. Aided by traitors in the government, they've released a viral form of nanotech that destroys the technology that keep things running -- food machines and transportation and communications and computers. The Supers know about it and are bending things to suit their own ends -- a not terribly moral position when the innocent are being killed in the process. There are no easy answers. But the Supers' solution to a world divided between haves and have-nots, only a week or two away from starvation, is a breath-taker. This is yet another excellent novel from a very talented author.

Beggars and Choosers by Nancy Kress is one of the most thought provoking books I've read in a while. If you enjoy stories that create endless ideas for your mind to chew on, this book is loaded with them. In this tale society is divided between those who are DNA enhanced and do all the thinking and providing and the average, unenhanced people, whose basic needs are all taken care of, leaving them to stagnate. The story opens interesting avenues of thought on what would happen to humans if all their needs were met and they had to discover new challenges to give their lives meaning. It also leaves one with serious reservations about the welfare ghettos that already exist and are a breeding ground for street gangs. Throughout the story politicians pandering for votes is carried to a logical extreme, with people who have always been cared for feeling that the care is an entitlement and not just a government service.
It was a great read and I didn't know when I picked it up that it was part of a series, it was so well done I didn't realize until I started ordering more of the author's work that it was the middle of a trilogy.