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67 of 75 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Like Floating Veils of Painfully Burning Light.., May 4, 2000
I've just finished the book and have found myself alternately fascinated, horrified, and intrigued. Pinto has only begun to tell this story--which I assume will cover at least 2 more books--and thus things were somewhat slow to start. Saying this, however, the events which thrust the story ahead are not slow. I found the images painted by Pinto in this book both repellant, beautiful, horrific, yet transcendant. Yes, I'm into adjectives today I guess. His Chosen and their Hidden Land are creul as ice and just about as uncaring. The society he has commenced showing us is still a mystery in many respects as are the motivations and connections between characters. As a fan of more intricate scifi and fantasy this aspect of his writing didn't bother me. Actually I initially picked it up because of the main character's name, Carnelian, and because several reviewers apparently disliked it because the main character was gay. What drivel. I've read many many fantasy novels and scifi novels and only ONE other had truly "gay" characters. Thank god I could suffer through all those other straight characters I couldn't identify with huh? That's not the point. One relates to Carnelian because of his horror at the events around him. One relates to him because of his fear and loneliness. One relates to him because of his delight in another 'human' to share his terrifying life. Whatever. I am looking forward to seeing what Pinto comes up with in the next books. I would recommend George R.R. Martin, Robert Holdstock, Storm Constantine and Guy Gavriel Kay to you if you liked this book, or other intricate, beautiful fantasy.
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25 of 27 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Impressive If Flawed Debut, February 7, 2001
This review is from: The Chosen (The Stone Dance of the Chameleon, Book 1) (Mass Market Paperback)
If "God is in the details," then "The Chosen" by Ricardo Pinto should be a reflection of divine inspiration. Lavishly detailed and descriptively realized, the author has imaginatively succeeded in creating a realm and society unlike any I have encountered in fantasy fiction, even though antecedents can be traced in the works of Mervyn Peake, Gene Wolfe, Michael Moorcock, Storm Constantine, or Steven Erikson. But perhaps no other author has as firmly, obsessively and inventively delineated his world as Ricardo Pinto. This is a realm ruled by a blood theocracy whose social structure is rigidly hieratic, and whose laws and customs are inflexible and cruel, existing upon a base of customs and traditions that are morally alien from our own, and in which the majority of society are seen as no more than cattle to be used or dispensed with as the ruling caste sees fit. With an absolute authoritarianism not seen since perhaps the Chin Dynasty of China, the Chosen preside over an ancient world that shifts between squalor and exotic beauty, a mix of the barbaric and the aesthetic almost so refined as to be ethereal. Most of the population inhabit a land brutal and grim in setting, reduced to virtual servitude, whereas their rulers, the Chosen, are cloistered within the mountain walls and sky mere of Osrakum, a holy city in which the ruling caste lives amid luxury and splendor, but are equally oppressed by the rigid society they have created, in which at any moment they may fall beneath the brooding, hidden and often arcane intrigues of an elaborate political and religious court system. Deity does not rest easy upon the shoulders of divine aristocracy. While Ricardo Pinto has lavished his world with incredible amounts of descriptive detail, creating what might be hailed a monumental and highly original feat of world-building, this has come at the expense of often subsuming his plot and characters within his description, descriptive detail dominating the novel's character development and storyline. This is not to say the latter do not exist, but they are in part buried beneath the architecture of Pinto's world, slowing the narrative pace and, for those dependent upon action to propel the narrative along, many I suspect will find this book slow slogging. However, there are decided rewards to wading through the vast amounts of descriptive detail---if no other the clarity of depiction in the world unfolding---and the society and religious motifs are firmly developed and intriguing. So also is the main protagonist, an individual who, while a member of the ruling caste, has been raised outside the sacred precincts, and is therefore alienated by much that he finds himself inheriting. This creates enough tension to sustain much of the seemingly excessive description, and by the end of the novel conflicts are propelling the novel swiftly forward, even if baldly manipulated by the book's cliff-hanging conclusion. Further, the author has displayed a certain boldness in wrapping his protagonist at the book's conclusion within a homosexual relationship: fantasy fiction is almost entirely dominated, after all, by manly men and women who are brave and beautiful, as well as decidedly white, and I suspect the gender blurring here will make many of the genre's more obvious audience somewhat uncomfortable. Whether this element will succeed in garnering what traditionally is a decidedly heterosexual and often male-dominated audience remains to be seen. But one must admire the courage shown by the author in taking the risk inherent in introducing this element to his narrative. As a heterosexual male, it raised issues of identification that are perhaps most succinctly addressed by an earlier reviewer who, as a gay man and reader of fantasy, has found himself perforce needing to identify and relate to characters whose sexuality and identification is expressed through traditional and decidedly heterosexual romanticism. This will obviously not be a book that will please everyone. At times the writing is obscure, losing itself within the labyrinths of its own description, and following an evolution that is doggedly and patiently rendered. Nonetheless, for those interested in exploring a detailed and fully realized world and society that is exotic even by the standards of fantasy and science fiction, and that is not in a rush to reveal its storyline or conflicts through the flash of wizardry or sword play, this novel offers many rewards to the patient, and is certainly one of the most impressive debuts I have encountered, irregardless of its flaws. And, should the author reign in his obsessive and impressive descriptive skills, the vast and fertile imagination shown here offers exciting prospects for the future.
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44 of 53 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
A fantasy Chung Kuo?, March 13, 2000
This is one of the best new fantasy stories to appear in some time. Regardless of what the blurbs might try to make you believe, it is not, however, "literary fantasy of the highest order". It's good, but not that good. The story progresses quite linearly, starting out with the young protagonist, Carnelian, spotting an incoming ship from his island exile. Soon those aboard, three so-called Masters (or "Chosen"), have disembarked, and have called upon Carnelian's father (another Chosen) to return to the Sacred Land, Osrakum, to participate in (and, indeed, regulate) the election of a new God-Emperor. For reasons which are at that time unknown (but which turn out to be motivated by love, a rather naive premise, given the utterly grim setting against which most of the story is placed) Carnelian's father acquiesces. A vast - but (again) rather straightfoward and at times even almost dull - journey follows, as Carnelian and his father journey to Osrakum. During this sequence, which takes up most of the book, Pinto seems to delight in developing, not a plot as such, but rather a succession of horrible and at times seemingly gratuitous cruelties. Still, he does this well; slowly the "wonder" and the "majesty" of the Chosen people are brought forth, Pinto ably portraying their absolute power and moral decrepitude in equal measure. As the pages wear on, however - the book's got about 700 of them - you're ground down by this repetition of well-drawn but unvarying images, which amount, all told, to something of an indefinate mass of hierarchic (vaguely Chinese) oppression. Moreover, although the writing is admittedly well-realised, much of it ultimately amounts to little more than superficial background. In can be pointed out that, in the end, the story boils down to a quite simple struggle with regard to the votes cast in the election of the new Emperor, whilst, at the same time, an incongruous and rather absurd love affair between Carnelian and the Emperor-elect is thrown in for good measure. There's very little in this outcome which surprises or engages; Pinto, perhaps realising this, then abruptly sets out to give the book a totally inappropriate "cliff-hanger" of an ending which does much more harm than good. This is a good book, better than 90% of the fantasy novels you'll find this year. But it isn't great, and perhaps Pinto still has a bit to learn. If you're looking from something new, buy it by all means, but if you're new to this genre, you'd do better getting anything from Guy Gavriel Kay, Patricia McKillip, or Stephen Donaldson (to name just three). I've one other quip to make: throughout the story, Pinto manages time and again to describe his scenes in an irritatingly oblique fashion, causing you to to do double-takes just about every ten pages or so. That's all very well for those writers whose content is essentially dominated by their style (such as Paul Hazel), but Pinto is a long way off from emulating (and, I would assume, from wishing to emulate) such writers.
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