Customer Reviews

Dead Girls

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

 

 

I was anxious to read this as soon as I bought it but then learned it was part of a trilogy (Dead Boys, Dead Things). Now that I have all three I am reading them. I have to say I was a little disappointed by this first book.

The time is the future. Europe had become the center of luxury goods before the economy collapsed. One of the luxury items were the dolls. Gynoids. Artificial women. But somewhere along the way something happened and a plague struck that could be transmitted between doll and human. The plague created more dolls. Now London is sealed off to try and contain the plague.

Primavera is mostly a doll. Ignatz is in love with her and addicted to her. They have escaped from London (no easy task) and are looking to put their lives together and cure her.

The story follows their quest, jumping between past and present in a manner where you are not always sure where you are. These sudden scene changes added to the new vocabulary and the workings of the future world will make this confusing for many readers.

In the story we find out how they got together, how they escaped, what and who is behind the doll plague, and to what depths some might sink when all is falling apart.

It wasn't a bad book, but it wasn't polished either. It reads like something that slipped into the wrong pile in the editor's office. It really could use a little reformatting (not rewriting) to make the story better.

I hope the other two are better set up.

While there may be an interesting story buried beneath the frenetic prose and flip-flopping between past and present, I wasn't willing to find it. I did however, like the concept.

Cute little English Girls transform into Vampiric Barbie Dolls in a world consuming itself with rabid economic competition, disintegrating nation-states and a complete breakdown in "family values". The masochistic Ignatz travels surreal circles to protect his nano-tech "Doll" from shadowy Yakuzas both corporate and governmental. However, it is the world that needs protecting from the singularity that swirls within her plastic womb.

Is this love at first bite or just nothing ever turns out right? Both are true in this psychedelic, sci-fi parable cautioning against so many things that it is clear this world will end, not with a nanotech bang but a post-coital whimper.

The writing is a tour de force and the author's fervid imagination is matched by his powers of description that, while intentionally confusing, are never confused. Propulsive. Vivid. Sexy. Disturbed.

Don't fall in love.

This book caught my eye on the shelf by virtue of its title alone, but I was very pleased to discover that it was a fantastic read. I've never read anything quite like it before. Reading the book is a linguistically sensual experience, and Calder's prose reflects the chaotic and obsessive mindset of his first-person narrator, a doll-junkie (a human addicted to the narcotic which comes from the bite of a female vampiric android) in "love" with one of the Lilim, an artificial species of vampiric androids who seduce human males with their "allure" in order to propagate their own species, and whose origin is not wholly known (or, if it is, that origin is only theorized about, and not revealed, to the reader). Calder's writing style takes a little getting used to, and reminds me of a 90s Kerouac on speed with a Continental education (he uses a lot of French). Some of his descriptions become so involved with the words being used that they fail to actually communicate what he's trying to describe. At many points it is hard to understand what's actually going on; the writing itself seems to take over. I agree with Doug, above, that the sequels are much harder to stomach. The few things I mentioned which make this book difficult dominate the sequels so much that they aren't nearly as good. Fortunately, this book stands on its own just fine, and is a very original contribution to the genre.

Warning: Spoilers follow

These three novels (Dead Girls, Dead Boys and Dead Things) can be viewed in two ways: as a traditional trilogy, chronicling the adventures of its protagonist in a reality gone mad, or as complementary narratives which, using the same premise as a springboard, veer off in wildly different directions. Either way, these novels, ambitious as they may be, constitute three moderately successful pieces of fiction which do not comprise a satisfying whole.

Dead Girls, the first book in the cycle, lays the groundwork for the rest of the series. The book focuses on Ignatz Kwazh, an angst ridden, obsessive nebbish, and his exotic paramour Primavera. Upon entering puberty, Primavera, like many of her contemporaries, contracted a nanotech virus which transformed her into a white, plastic skinned lifeform, called a "Doll" or "Lilim" (after Adam's first wife Lilith) by a fearful human populace. Males are apparently immune to the virus, but can become carriers through contact with the sexually ravenous Lilim--their saliva carries agents that infect male gametes, insuring that any girl-children will be born dolls.

The lovers, fugitives from a quarantined Britain, live in Bangkok, where Primavera earns a living as an assassin. Having crossed Madame Kito, the kingpin of Bangkok's underworld, the couple are hunted by her minions and by allied American intelligence agents. The duo eludes their pursuers, but Primavera is wounded, and dies at novel's end.

Dead Boys begins with Ignatz mourning the loss of Primavera. He aimlessly wanders the streets of Bangkok, carrying Primavera's excised sex organs in a jar, occasionally chewing them for the high they provide. Ignatz's tenuous grip on reality is further loosened when he begins to receive messages from 1000 years in the future, from a Lilim named Vanity who claims to be his daughter. Vanity is being hunted by Lord Dagon, who may actually be Ignatz himself. Dead Boys also introduces the concept of Meta, the name for the virus behind the doll plague. The virus, which has moved into the male population (transforming its victims into fanged, sexless creatures called Elohim), is now affecting the very fabric of reality.

Dead Things, the last book in the series, follows Lord Dagon, a ruthless doll killer who roams the solar system in search of his prey. Here, Calder reveals that Dagon is indeed a future incarnation of Ignatz, transformed into Elohim by the Meta virus. Discovering that he is the key to ending the Meta plague, Dagon/Ignatz travels back in time to prevent the Meta virus from infecting reality and changing the course of human history.

The series' strongest features are Calder's dystopian vision and his frenetic prose. In Calder's decadent future, anything goes. Technology, in an attempt to cater to an amoral populace, has run amok, threatening humanity's existence. Calder conveys the desperation in feverish prose, effectively portraying a world where hope has vanished and violence and perversity reign.

The book's strengths, oddly enough, are also it weaknesses. There's just too much going on, and Calder's stream of consciousness riffs don't help. The books' influences are colorful and plentiful, ranging from literary sources as diverse as Neuromancer, Peter Pan, Lolita, A Clockwork Orange, Dracula, and Frankenstein, to films like Metropolis and Logan's Run. The problem is Calder is nodding in too many directions, as if eager to impress readers with his cleverness. The avalanche of words and information is downright numbing at times. Calder, indeed, tacitly acknowledges this, occasionally slowing the narrative to provide some needed exposition, the lion's share of which, unfortunately, appears near the end of Dead Things. It seems Calder, approaching the conclusion of his magnum opus, suddenly realized that he needed to explain it to readers.

Of course, one might expect this kind of confusion in a treatise on the malleability of reality, but Calder wants to be all things to all people. Thus, the books can be characterized as cyber AND splatterpunk, science fiction AND horror. They can also be interpreted as diatribes against the objectification of women or as misogynistic pieces of dreck. It's not clear where Calder stands. Knowing he lived in Thailand for most of the 1990s explains some of the content of the books, but not the author's thrust--Calder's moral stance is unclear.

In the end, the books are unclassifiable. Even the publisher, St. Martin's, can't provide insight. Consider this paragraph from the press release for Dead Things:

"Hailed as one of the most audacious and exciting new voices in science fiction, Richard Calder offers a fast moving, exotic, erotic and violently modern tour of the wild side of the future, a surreal trip that claws its way toward love."

This statement is somewhat accurate until it reaches the "surreal trip clawing its way toward love" part--does anyone know what that means? What the press release fails to mention is that the narrative is often confusing and erratic, and that Calder, in trying to dazzle his readers, instead pushes them towards sensory overload. Hopefully, Calder will take the positive elements demonstrated in these works and put them to good use in future offerings.

I can not begin to express how much I enjoyed this novel. This has to be the most original spin on the Vampyre genere in decades. Well done Richard.

I thoroughly enjoyed "Dead Girls", the first original take on the vampire concept in many long years. It's dark, it's sexy, and it's smart without being obnoxiously hip or clever. Also, the author gives a great sense of place and time -- he shows a broad and deep understanding of SE Asian and Thai culture in a hundred throwaway details (I especially loved the CIA agent in a Hash House Harriers t-shirt, and also the beggar-bot). Once you swallow the rather implausible basic premise (nano-engineering produces near-human androids whose programming goes horribly wrong, turning them into alluring but deadly parasites), the rest of the book proceeds pretty logically, if not exactly straightforwardly.

Unfortunately, the two sequels are basically surreal sadomasochistic light shows, with all sorts of wild and awful events occuring without much plot or logical connections. Read this if you want a good, intelligent cyberpunkish thriller, but avoid the other two books ("Dead Boys" and "Dead Things") and hope this author gets his head together with his next one.