The Cult of Loving Kindness (Starbridge Chronicles) [Hardcover]

Paul Park (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 1991 | Series: Starbridge Chronicles

As intellectual oppression reigns in Charn, a pair of changeling twins--seduced by the violent extremes of an outlaw religion--usher in a bizarre and terrifying future. Reprint. NYT.

--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

The third novel in Park's ( Sugar Rain ) ambitious Starbridge Chronicles is as tantalizing, ambiguous and fascinating as its predecessors. Set in a world (probably a far-future earth) where the seasons stretch for decades and historical phases of repression, rebellion and reaction repeat themselves with the long year, this volume takes place in the prosperous summertime. The spring revolution that tore down the old Starbridge regime and its harsh authoritarian religion has left a secular, populist government in its place. But remnants of the old ways remain, especially in the more primitive rural areas, and the forbidden Cult of Loving Kindness has begun to organize again. Sarnath Bey, disciple of a Zen-like master, rescues the twins Rael and Cassia as he returns to the master's village, where Sarnath raises them as his own. When he dies and progressive scientists from the city come to take over the village and improve its farming practices, Rael and Cassia flee to the forest. There they meet pilgrims of the Cult, and the twins learn the secret of their identities and the role they must play in bringing the Cult back to power. Park's prose is restrained and elegant, and the world he envisions is an evocative mixture of the familiar and the strange. With layers of speculation about history, religion, fate and destiny, this novel will remind the demanding reader how satisfying and challenging literary science fiction can be.
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Kirkus Reviews

Third in Park's Starbridge Chronicles, a fantasy series with literary ambitions, following Sugar Rain (1989). Mr. Sarnath, a nonhuman Treganu exile working as a customs official, observes a mystical sign and resolves to return to his home village, where the Master, a sage whose vapid, trite teachings inspire the Treganu to peace and cooperation, lies dying. Along the way--the journey takes years--Sarnath adopts human twins Cassia and Rael, orphans perhaps demon-got, perhaps reincarnations. The Master duly expires; time passes. Eventually Sarnath, disgusted with the way his compatriots have perverted the Master's teachings, and despairing at the way the distant central government is destroying the Treganu forest, commits suicide. Cassia and Rael are drawn into, or maybe are destined to personify, a resurgence of the hitherto severely suppressed Cult of Loving Kindness--a cult that, ironically, once enabled the overthrown and anathematized Starbridge caste to rule unopposed. Despite the layers of unfathomable weirdness, there's little in the story or the backdrop or the uninvolving characters that holds much appeal. Clever, certainly, sometimes admirable, but what it all adds up to is anybody's guess. -- Copyright ©1991, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 312 pages
• Publisher: William Morrow & Co; 1st edition (June 1991)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0688105742
• ISBN-13: 978-0688105747
• Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 5.6 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,906,520 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars The Cult of Loving Kindness, May 5, 1999

By 

James T. Heeney ([e-mail]) (West Caldwell, New Jersey) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Cult of Loving Kindness (Starbridge Chronicles) (Hardcover)

It is a pity that this work, like the previous two installments of the Starbridge Chronicles (Soldiers of Paradise and Sugar Rain), is now out of print, because it is certainly one of the most interesting fantasy experiments to be published in the past several years. Set in the distant future, in a time where environmental degradation has caused seasons to last for years, a phenomenon which has caused the fabric of society to disintigrate, the story synchronizes elements of mysticism, magic and prophecy. At the same time, the trilogy offers startling psychological insight into such areas as mass hysteria, human sexuality, addiction, and religious longings. Park in the Starbridge Chronicles has created a vivid, horrific world that, for all of its Boschian strangeness, convincingly portrays the landscape of the unbridled unconscious. I highly recommend these works to anyone, but in particular to readers of Gene Wolfe, Jack Vance, Frank Herbert, and Fritz Leiber.

2.0 out of 5 stars Is this the same author?, May 20, 2011

By 

Randall Monk (Leesburg, VA USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Cult of Loving Kindness (Starbridge Chronicles) (Hardcover)

The first two books in the series are distinctly excellent and compelling science fiction. Not sure what happened here - this book is frustratingly aimless. Mr. Park's writing remains very good, but not good enough to make this nearly plotless book readable.

3.0 out of 5 stars Correcting a Misperception, February 3, 2008

By 

Lynn Walker "owlcroft" (Ritzville, WA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Cult of Loving Kindness (Starbridge Chronicles) (Kindle Edition)

Lest readers be confused by some of the reviews, this series is *not* set on Earth, nor are the characters human.

It is set on a world that in many ways is Earthlike, but in others is not, and that difference has much to do with the nature of the societies that have evolved there. The characters are of a race that is in many ways remarkably human, both physically and mentally, but not *quite* so (for instance, they have prehensile tails, and--apparently--certain mental powers much akin to magic).

The chief setting difference is that all the worlds in this solar system have extremely eccentric orbits, such that an "Earth" year is roughly 80,000 days long (about 219 Earth years). Moreover, there is, besides the nine orbital planets, another that is captured as a temporary moon by each of them in turn over time. That planet has become the keystone in their religion as "Paradise", considered the true home of humans, all the others, including "Earth", being seen as Hells of one degree or another. In consequence, their society is based on the acceptance of suffering and of sharply divided castes ruled over by a divinely ordained and omnipotent aristocracy.

The series is well written and interesting, with a complex and interesting world setting, though it seems rather episodic and somewhat meandering. But it is well worth reading.