Customer Reviews

The Malacia Tapestry

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

 

 

Aldiss has writen a variety of novels in different genres. This one is a strange fantasy with some fabulous scenery and ideas. It is a dark gritty fantasy if you want something light and breazy go elsewhere. Malacia moulders in timelessness a bit like Mervyn Peake's Gormenghast and its visions make one thoughtful and don't set you free. It's art though and strongly rooted in the past with Byzantium just around the corner, a genuinely unique book.

After reading the exhausting but wonderful Helliconian trilogy I sought out more by this author and found this odd novel I had never heard of by Aldiss. It sat on my bookshelf for a couple of years. I finally read it and was enthralled by the vivid imaginative story set in a parallel midieval universe where things are nearly the same but with a few odd evolutionary twists. (like dinasours being still around) Its kind of a Tom Jones in a fantastic world. It works well!! 5 stars.

It's been years since I read this, so it says something that when I ran across it I was motivated to give a brief review. It's odd as much as dark, but it's definitely not your typical fantasy story. Fifteen years after first reading it (and probably 7 or 8 since the last time I read it), it still stands out. Recommended.

Being a real lover of Brian's SF, I was a bit dubious about readint this, the plot really didn't sound like my kinda thing. The book follows the 'journey' of Perian, a free spirit and his life in the trouble city of Malacia. Magic, war, lust, destiny and life has created this cracker of a novel! It's definately worth a look!

The Malacia Tapestry follows the exploits of Perian de Chirolo, an actor in the city of Malacia as he looks for work, seduces women, falls in love and becomes embroiled in intrigue. Malacia is a combination 16th century Vienna, and Florence, in an alternate world where dinosaurs, known as ancestral animals still roam. The constant in Malacia is that there is never any change. Many people see it as a curse, but the rich and powerful, for obvious reasons, strive to keep it that way.

I was expecting a lot from this book. Brian Aldiss is a renowned science fiction author. I had read one of his books, `Non-Stop' and thought it was excellent. Also this book is on the list of the best 100 books of Modern Fantasy, but although it was well written, it was disappointing. The fantasy elements, such as the dinosaurs, lizard people, were just colour, they could have been removed with no basic change in the story. Aldiss might as well have set the story in real life Vienna for all the difference it would have made. Furthermore the central plot is not very inspiring- boy seduces girl, decides that he loves her after all, then finds she has different ideas. Meh

Aldiss should stick to science fiction. I only managed to read 108 pages of this crap, until I just couldn't take it anymore. In those 108 pages nothing interesting happened. Actor Chirolo is a woman-hungry, out of work actor, and we spend the entire time following him around on his sexual conquests. If I wanted to read about sex with random women, I would read a romance novel, not fantasy.
Throughout the book its easy to see that Aldiss is a sci-fi writer through the way he writes, and his descriptions. His writing style is very mechanical, and while it may work with science fiction, its horrible for a fantasy book. Don't waste your time reading this unless you have nothing better to do.