Customer Reviews

Mindscape

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1 star:		(1)

 

 

This is a wonderful book, exuberant, original, funny, moving, often confusing and always alive. It takes about seventy-five pages before you can make sense of the world and the plot (six major characters, all seeing and thinking differently, and lots of minor ones) but once you get a sense of what's at stake the book takes hold of you and won't let go.

It takes place on an earth divided up by a mysterious-possibly living-barrier of energy that keeps people in three "zones" corresponding to three different social systems and systems of value. Movement between zones is possible only at seasonal intervals (except for mutant "Vermittler" who can sing their way through the barrier), and there is a background of violence within zones and between them. A treaty to curb the violence and bring the zones together comes into being (along with an assassination) at the opening of the novel. In what follows different characters attempt either to extend the treaty or to destroy it. I won't say much more to avoid giving away the plot, which is full of surprises, but the ending seems to me both powerfully moving and fully justified.

In some ways the book reminds me of Clarke's Childhood's End, because it's so concerned with human transcendence (one of the characters is making a video called "The Transformers"), but its technique-moving between chapters from different points of view-is more complicated. The characters are a complicated mixture of love and anger, idealism and cynicism and longing. They're very real. The language of the novel, playfully moving between black slang and formal diction, sprinkled with phrases from Yoruba and German, blazing with wild metaphors, is a constant joy. It's the best science fiction novel I've read in the last year and I think it deserves a Nebula.

Whether you're into science fiction or not, Andrea Hairston draws you into an amazing world! Andrea's language is alive - it sings and moves in your body. Her language invites you to stretch beyond the range your daily tongue. Mindscape is full of possibilities beyond what we see in the world today - yet it is somehow hauntingly close to our current reality. Politics, science, art, healing, spirituality, consciousness, race, humanity, reality, hopes and dreams...Andrea Hairston explores and questions everything in a way that allows each character to expose unexpected parts of themselves and the world around them. What else do we know that we're pretending not to know? What else is really possible?

Andrea Hairson's /Mindscape/ introduces us to a society in which borders between countries (called "Zones" in the novel) are very real. Looking through the mind of six characters, we learn about the society and its problems---most notably the struggle to connect the three very different cultures. As previous reviews have stated, the novel seems a bit daunting at first, but it quickly becomes a rewarding reading experience.

On another note, this is science fiction, but it contains enough fantastic elements that fantasy readers will enjoy it.

Hey this book is a mindblowing journey! Like if Jimmy Hendrix met Shakespeare and they collaborated with Octavia Butler on a sci-fi adventure. It will open your eyes and shift your world around! Sure, folks, it might be a little intense to wade through at first - but it is WORTH every second of reading! I recommend it highly. This writer is HOT!

I found this book to be an utter and confusing mess. I didn't give a flip about any of the characters but it didn't take long for me to figure out that this didn't matter to the author because it was supposed to be a plot-driven novel. Allegedly (if it is done right) if a novel is plot-driven you can get away with less than stellar character development. It is rare for an author to pull this off. The author of this book (Andrea Hairston) did not pull that off here. The plot was convoluted and did not really make much sense and I found the ending to be a ridiculous one that did not make any more sense than the rest of the book. I wanted to give up on the book and just chunk it and at 400+ pages it seemed endless at times....but I kept waiting for it to get better. To put it plainly, IT DIDN'T (get better that is). This was a huge waste of time. I'm sorry but this book just did not do it for me. Not a good one folks.