Customer Reviews

A Hunger in the Soul

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

 

 

Remember hearing about how Stanley found Livingstone? Remember the 1939 Spencer Tracy movie glorifying this "great" human effort? Well, hold onto your hats, folks! Here's the REAL story of how Stanley found Livingstone dressed in science fictional clothes. Stanley was not the great man popular sentiment and Hollywood has led us to believe he was. Hugo and Nebula award-winner Mike Resnick tells us the real story in a genre where the unusual, the cruel, and the vicious aren't subject to the political correctness so rampant in today's world. I recommend this book to any lover of science fiction AND truth.

This is probably Resnick's best novel. (Yes, better than Kirinyaga.) It's certainly his most political. It's a devastating anti-colonial (and anti-neo-colonial) critique, hidden in a damned good sci-fi adventure novel--and with the political points revealed, not through exposition, but through the words and actions of the characters. Even better, Resnick is a very good writer technically, and he creates believable characters.

Resnick is best known for his schlock space-opera novels (Santiago, Santiago revisited, Santiago yet again, Santiago one more time, Santiago otra vez, Santiago ad nauseam), and I picked this book up expecting an evening of mindless entertainment. Instead, I got an evening of thought-provocation.

It's one of the best sci-fi novels I've read in years, and I read approximately 100 sci-fi novels per year.

Journalist-adventurer Robert Markham is out to locate the vanished medical legend, Michael Drake. Markham recruits a medically retired desk-bound explorer-guide to lead him. Meanwhile the fabled Drake has secreted himself away among the natives on a world called Bushveld. This lush & verdant planet is renown for its isolation, its People, the varied & tribal Orange-Eyes & its huge creatures perfect for trophy hunting. This started out wry & dry & ended up a bit drab. Some truly interesting premises & awesome descriptions of a whole 'nother world! Worth the read. END

This is an interesting story about an egocentric reporter on a mission to find a renowned doctor and medial researcher who has disappeared (intentionally) on a backward and poorly explored planet. Much more description of the plot than that would necessitate spoilers so I'll stop there.
Although I found this book entertaining it felt as if the science fiction elements were tacked on. This is more like a story about deepest, darkest Africa from the late Nineteenth or early Twentieth Century than a science fiction novel. Everything from the characters' beliefs and perceptions to the colonial mindset of the government remind me of those in a Tarzan novel.
This isn't necessarily a bad thing and the book is an enjoyable, light read. It may leave speculative fiction fans cold though because it really doesn't stretch the imagination or provoke serious thought.

For the first half of my life I read everything I could get my hands on. If it sounded remotely interesting I consumed it voraciously. This half of my life I've had to be more discriminating, what with kids & work and all, but I devote all my attention to one book at a time rather than the five at a time from before.
Unfortunately for me, that meant that I had no escape from this. I kept hoping that this story would be rescued by a trick of clever writing, but it never was.

***SPOILER ALERT***

The story: You have one relentless reporter that cares about nothing and no one that does not have a direct impact on his quest of the perfect story. You have his target, a brilliant scientist who saves the galaxy once with a cure for a rampant disease and then disappears on a remote planet just as a variant of this disease rears its ugly head. And, you have an expedition leader who witnesses said reporter commit a long list of atrocities on his quest to find the scientist, commits plenty more when he finds him, lies and covers things up in the name of fame. Then the expedition leader inexplicably destroys all evidence so that he can then narrate the book you're holding to tell you about the attrocities.

I've enjoyed Resnick in the past, but this is a badly thought out effort and is not worth the time you'll never get back for having read it. SKIP THIS BOOK.

Journalist, Grant Markham, is seeking immortality through fame by tracking down the missing scientist, Michael Drake, who has developed an antidote for a disease that is currently ravishing the universe and hasn't been seen for over 15 years. Taking a huge party of humans and Orange-eyes, they traverse the dangers of the planet Bushveld to see if the doctor still lives.

I found that the book has pretty much no character development whatsoever, except for the main antagonist, Grant Markham. He was the arrogant, rogue, gets everything he wants, killer journalist but you tend to find yourself liking him as he was the only one you knew anything about. All other characters are just one dimensional, they did have possibilities to become greatly remembered characters, but in the end were just a let down.

The planet Bushveld was a great place and well described with it's jungle/native settings. Alien types were good as well. The story tended to jump from days to weeks making it a very quick little jaunt that actually went for about a year. And although this is just a reinterpretation of the Stanley/Livingstone affair, only in space. There's really not much change in the story other than place/race/character names.

Overall, an entertaining, short read, with a bit of a shocking ending, but with a lot of dull characters and events and leaves you with the notion that it could have been so much better.

Why is history so full of incidents that we all know, but know nothing about? Everybody knows that Stanley found Livingstone, but who the heck was Livingston? And who the heck was Stanley? If you want the answer to the first question, I suggest an encyclopedia, but if you want to know who Stanley was, just read this book. As in many of Resnick's books, (and Resnick doesn't make a secret of this) the author has taken an element of african history, and Dragnet style (names changed, but facts left basically intact) repeated it. Except, and I'm going to have trouble not straying off topic into african history, but really, this book doesn't make sense.

I read this book and it left me with one single insight - that Mike Resnick has finally lost it. What is the point of writing this book? Alright, the various insane things that Stanley did are represented in this book, but it is all undercut by the basic plot. If Resnick's Stanley doesn't find Livingstone, billions will die. This gives Stanley the trump card; whatever he does is justified (yeah, well, sort of, anyway). The historical Stanley never did a damn thing, and that's a nice description. Why did Resnick even write this book? Are we so starved for adventure tales that we have to resurrect this jerk? And then try to justify him? Do we have to take him as the pinnical of heroism? Why not Richard Burton? What about Livingstone himself? Isn't it bad enough that, historically, Livingstone created Stanley's reputation, without dragging the poor man out of his grave and killing him? again?

I can only hope that this is volume one of a series in which eventually has Resnick's Stanley disgraced, ruined and possibly dead. Also please read "King Leopold's Ghost", a wonderful book.