Customer Reviews

Geisha

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The premise of Geisha sounds almost Broadway, in spite of the "soft" sci-fi trappings: an android is trying to establish a career as a painter in a world where human art critics blackball her and where she has to live in a dive in a red light district. Forgetting details like why the character (Jomi) has a gender, it's fun to see the characters take precedence over the sci-fi "world". The other key plot is that Jomi is so hard up for cash she joins her family's security business and ends up being bodyguard to an incredily snooty fashion model who's being stalked by her ex-husband. High art and high fashion naturally clash. The happy ending may disappoint some people but it's appropriate. It's a comedy. And there's a lot more food for thought here than the trappings of the story suggest: art forgery, the nexus of criminal and high art cultures, the codependency of art in its avant garde forms with the rich elite, and other things. Thought provoking stories are best when they don't insist and Andi Watson is generally good about not insisting. Warning to comics fans, if you hate the manga style you'll want to steer clear of this book, and if you like hard-core genre fiction Watson's deliberately disappointing. If you want a charming, solid story and likeable characters you'll get what you're looking for.

The futuristic story is of a female android raised as a human who is trying to eke out an existence as a painter. This leads to the question of her soul, since the conventional wisdom is that without a soul, one can't really create good art. Soon, she is forced to enter the family business in order to pay her rent, and becomes a bodyguard to a supermodel. This leads to a convoluted plot concerning an obsessive ex-husband, candid dirty photos, blackmail, the city's crime mogul, a gossip columnist, an ex-military mech/battlebot, and a bunch of fights and chase scenes. If this sounds exciting, be warned that it somehow isn't. This may be because the story doesn't take itself to seriously, or it may be because the art is simply and broadly done, but for whatever reason, it failed to move me. I think with a darker tone, it might have worked a little better. Oddly enough, the whole thing seems exceptionally well-suited for film adaptation, complete with hokey happy ending.