Destiny Doll [Mass Market Paperback]

Product Details

• Mass Market Paperback
• Publisher: Berkley Medallion; First Thus edition (1971)
• ASIN: B002ASV3XI
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #7,099,384 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Mystic faith triumphs on an alien world, May 2, 2003

By 

OAKSHAMAN "oakshaman" (Algoma, WI United States) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)   

This review is from: Destiny Doll (Mass Market Paperback)

When I first read this novel more than twenty years ago I just didn't get it. Frankly, I thought that my favorite science fiction author had written a clunker. Then, after rereading it after all these years, I finally got it. This is a spiritual allegory.

What threw me off the first time was the fact that, unique to any other Simak novel, the lead character is absolutely obnoxious. Captain Michael Ross is a completely arrogant, intolerant, and bigoted specimen. We get a hint of his ruthlessness and lack of conscience from his original profession- "planet finder." This means that he locates new worlds for profit and turns them over to developers to subdivide and exploit. That's where he makes his big mistake- he sells an already inhabited planet. This means he has to run and hide on earth to escape the people who are looking for him. Once on earth he is desperate to get into space again. So he becomes part of an expedition that he has absolutely no faith in- but the pay is good. He has total disrespect for every one else in the party (a woman big-game hunter, a blind mystic, and a monk.) He makes it clear that he considers them all to be freaks and defectives to varying degrees.

Then, the expedition begins to collapse under his leadership. He is slowly forced to interact with the people that he has held in such contempt. He finds that just because he doesn't understand the other members of the party, that doesn't mean that they do not have valuable God-given gifts. His own arrogance and certainty that his is the only correct way of seeing and doing things slowly erodes as the party makes it's way through the alien wilderness. Finally, sick and out of his head he has a vision that perhaps there is more to space and time than he ever dreamed of in his limited view of things. Finally, he is left to ponder alone as, one by one, the other members of the expedition find their own higher destinies....

Here we have once again a story based on Simak's sophisticated intuition that there are many universes and many sentient levels at certain space-time intervals. It is just that our sensitivity to these levels have to evolve before we can access them. In other words, the kingdom of heaven is all about us, but we just don't see....

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars The Road to Paradise, February 17, 2000

By 

frumiousb "frumiousb" (Amsterdam, the Netherlands) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (TOP 500 REVIEWER)   

This review is from: Destiny Doll (Mass Market Paperback)

Clifford Simak's books seem so frequently to be about choices-- how you choose to live, how you choose to find salvation. In this book, a planetary expedition looking for a lost hero finds instead a planet at the center of the universe which might be an endless trap or might provide the answers to all the questions that they could ever have. Simak provides his usual combination of off-beat characters-- an outlaw planet finder, a big game hunter, a blind man who hears voices, and an alien being named Hoot. This unlikely party must each find a different path to the secret of the planet.

4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Read this one if you can find it, April 30, 2004

By 

Kullervo "Kullervo" (Chicago, IL USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Destiny Doll (Medallion SF, Z2996) (Mass Market Paperback)

This book blew my mind and left me speechless.

I am a huge Simak fan, and I snap up whatever is by him that I can find. I bought the only copy of this book that I have ever even seen.

This is an absorbing, evocative, and thought-provoking book, that, as is the status quo for Simak, full of extremely interesting characters. Also, it is short. Short + good = very good.

Have fun coming to terms with an extremely unsympathetic protagonist.