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22 of 22 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Unbelievably Good, June 2, 2005
This review is from: Bone Dance: A Fantasy for Technophiles (Paperback)
If life held any justice, Emma Bull would be at least as famous and as (presumably) wealthy as Neil Gaiman. Anyone who enjoys his writing will positively revel in hers.
'Bone Dance' first caught my eye as a library book almost ten years ago and it was with vast happiness I bought a used copy from Amazon last summer. And really, it's the PERFECT book to read around St. John's Eve.
The protagonist is Sparrow, a mysterious but deeply engaging character with a shadowy past and a sudden tendency to black out, only to later meet characters who seem to know more about these episodes than poor Sparrow does. The greater plot concerns the Horsemen, supersoldiers created by a now-defunct U.S. government who had no bodies, gifted with the ability to seize any host body and destroy its owner's mind. Sparrow and friends (Sherrea, Theo, and many others, all finely and absorbingly drawn) are now living in a world after the Horsemen caused a nuclear holocaust, where folk magic has new credence and technology is precious.
I can't decide which I like better: the plot(which is dynamite), the characters (all of whom you'd love to spend time with), or the prose itself (witty, sparkling, and apt to make you lose whole hours while reading it). I generally don't go in for a lot of cyberpunk beyond William Gibson, simply because it's usually too invested in its own tragically hip and fiercely cutting-edge coolness to actually entertain the hapless readers who find it, but this is pure quicksilver magic. I'd give it ten stars if I could.
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22 of 22 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Not As Good as _War for the Oaks_ but Still Brilliant!, August 27, 1998
This review is from: Bone Dance: A Fantasy for Technophiles (Paperback)
Like most of Emma Bull's work, _Bone Dance_ is better than 98% of everything that's on the fantasy shelves today. I didn't find it as fabulously built as _War for the Oaks_, but it was still a marvelous read. Bull takes a common theme (life after nuclear war and the breakdown of civilisation-as-we-know-it), and turns it sideways . To begin with, it takes place in a city, not the usual post-nuclear desert; for another, not everybody has turned into punk-rockers/bikers. Instead the city has become a multi-cultural meeting ground, with a government whose power seems to be based on control of energy and communications resources and an economy large enough to support an entertainment business and a trade in luxury goods (such as pre-war compact disks and videotapes). Add in a likeable protagonist, a lot of voudou, and a former member of the psychic clique responsible for the war, now on a mission of penance (she's spent the past few decades killing off her former colleagues), and we have a plot that more than fits the fascinating milieu. Best of all, Bull had abandoned the tired old USA-USSR backstory for her post-nuclear world; instead there was apparently a war between North and South America Particularly interesting is the fact that--judging from the heavy Hispanic and Afro-French influence in the un-named City--the two were apparently rather similar to each other by the time they came to blows.
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16 of 16 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
The Friendship of the Soul, July 7, 2005
This review is from: Bone Dance: A Fantasy for Technophiles (Paperback)
Ms. Bull does not have very many titles to her credit, but each one of them is very unique, very different from the average run-of-the-mill fantasies that clutter up the bookstore shelves.
Bone Dance starts with a post-nuclear setting, but rather than a world of deserts and a civilization blasted back to stone-age technology, here we still have cities, electricity, even full-flavored showings of old movies and music clips intertwined in the best traditions of artistic DJ's. Of course, the infrastructure that produced the technological goodies needed to do such shows no longer exists, thereby providing employment for Sparrow, our first-person narrator, as he is one of the few that still has the necessary knowledge of electronics to repair this gear when there are the inevitable breakdowns.
Sparrow has a problem, however, of having `blank' spots in his memory, times when he can't remember what he did or where he went, only knowing that where he woke up is far from when his last memory says he was. Finding out the answer to these blank spots involves tarot cards, the Horsemen, the dictator of the city, a search for revenge on the person who helped instigate the nuclear war, hoodoo magic, and a cast of very well realized characters. Each of these characters have their own pasts and problems, and they all grow and change considerably during the course of this book's action. Some of the action is very `unpretty', almost gross, but provides a strong line of plot thread that well illuminates one of the main thematic points here, of the importance of friendship and community and that the means to find these things involves baring your soul a bit to others. The odd meld of magic and technology here is refreshing, with some interesting descriptions of the meaning behind the various tarot cards, something I don't normally subscribe to, but Ms. Bull makes them an integral part of the plot, and here it works well.
A strong book with a taut plot that is not telegraphed, highlighted by characters that are very different but quite recognizable, a setting and a group of ideas that are not just a rehash of stuff seen hundreds of times elsewhere, all are very good. I had some quibbles with some of the minor characters not being presented with enough force to make them memorable when they reappear after fifty page gaps, and I found some of the descriptive work either over- or under-done, sometimes leaving me floundering about just what the scene was or wishing she would get on with the story. These are definitely minor quibbles, however, as the general prose is quite adequate, the story line engrossing, the main characters real. Recommended for all those readers who are tired of crumbling castles and yet another dragon quest.
--- Reviewed by Patrick Shepherd (hyperpat)
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