Customer Reviews

A Miracle of Rare Design: A Tragedy of Transcendence

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Resnick's ability to create alien species and cultures is well developed and written, but he seemed to skip over time rapidly, sometimes leaving out details I felt would've made the book much more interesting. Also, the amount written about each species the main character becomes less and less. This is dissapointing because each species is as unique as the one before it.

Firefly - 60 pages
Hawkhorns - 17 pages
Wheeler - 11 pages
Singer - 8 pages

This book should've been twice its length to cover all of the species more thoroughly.

One of Mike Resnick's better paperback releases is A MIRACLE OF RARE DESIGN. The strength of Resnick's work makes that quite a compliment. Fans of Resnick's science fiction will really enjoy this book.

Xavier William Lennox is a writer specializing in exposes of alien cultures. On Medina, he went too far to observe a sacred ritual and is brutally tortured to the edge of death. While recuperating, the Office of Alien Affairs tells him he has a chance to go back. They can surgically transform him into a Medinan. He goes. Now he can study Medina more closely than any culture he has seen before.

Being a Medinan does not give full understanding however. Lennox leaves but is fascinated with his alien body. Now continuing to work for the Office of Alien Affairs, lennox is given new bodies. Each one has its strong and weak points. And each one takes Lennox further from his humanity. Each change is less satisfying, but returning to human would be unbearable. Lennox continues to sink lower until he finally finds a place for himself. This book is aptly subtitled A Tragedy of Trancendance. And a tragedy it is, but a fascinating tragedy. I strongly recommend this book.

Does a good job of making you feel like part of an expanding galactic empire. Reminded me of Alan Dean Foster. Does a good job of describing 4 different aliens. Gets into a couple of their cultures. Describes different ways of sensing the world, and the resulting impact. We see our hero's changing personality as he comes back transformed to interact with humanity again. Thought provoking and still a fast paced read.

Mike is a master of Characterization and he displays this in a Miracle of Rare Design. I was fascinated with his use of taking the character through many alien forms, yet leaving his basic 'humanity' intact, although his mind perceptions did change. Leave it to Resnick to find a new form of characterization!

So this is about Xavier Lennox, who discovers worlds and cultures far different than those of humankind. This was a fun read, somewhat short, and probably should have been shorter, or in a collection of short stories, which it effectively is. I found the beginning half the most enjoyable, and the rest a different work, best put as interesting. It felt a lot like pulp sci-fi, and so it was a good read to kill a bit of time. It was fun; I can understand why it stopped in each section and why, though leaves a bit to be desired.

It shows Lennox's attitudes change as he encounters more cultures, but it's so contrary to his beginning personality that the main character's impression gets muddled. And he talks less, thus making him difficult to fully understand, though that may be the point. It was fun, for a 2 or 3 hour read, total. It's not bad, not by a long-shot.

After writing a partial review, I found out that this was based on a real person, which completely changed my perception of the novel. Per Mr. Resnick himself, Lennox is actually based on: "Sir Richard Burton, the Victorian scholar and explorer who kept visiting remote locations in Africa and Arabia, living like a native, and being less and less the Victorian gentleman each time he returned home. He ended his career (and life) as the governor of an almost-unpopulated island in the Carribean, where he spent his time translating esoteric texts that almost no one wanted to read."

Once I found that out I really appreciated the novel. I had initially been confused by Lennox's "realism" IE: doing things real people would do, not "fictional real people" - there is a great difference, and I didn't expect fiction to encroach upon the subject. Now that I know, it's a really good read. The main character isn't a hero. He's just an eccentric person with some really interesting experiences. It's a fun read, and I really liked it.

This was my first book by this author and while it starts off very strong (read the sample chapters without being able to stop), it quickly peters out to a less than fantastic ending. Overall, it is worth a read with a number of very interesting alien cultures and abilities, but he Doesn't spend nearly enough time fleshing out the experiences. It feels like the book doesn't quite know what its trying to portray as it progresses, leaving the reader feeling that there should have been something more.

Part of this feeling may be the length of the book, which is quite short (I finished it in about 7 hours). Still, for a fun, easy to read little adventure, this book works quite well and I am now curious to try more Resnick stories.

The only complaint I can really have over this book is that it's too short. Throughout the book we follow one man as he becomes more than human quiet literally. He travels the universe transforming his body into other alien races in order to better understand them.
I absolutely loved the ending to this book. How he finds happiness is in many ways how all people should.

This is the second book of Resnick's that I have read. I was not disappointed in the least. The near complete absence of technobabel in his prose is very refreshing in what is essentially a space opera. The story was compelling especially as Lennox progressed through his incarnations. I actually caught myself making time to finish it rather than picking it up when I had a minute to read something recreational. Resnick has one of the most unique styles I have experienced in SF. MHR

Resnick's novel is an interesting and rare world where humans are the dominant force in the galaxy (the Republic) and are able to subjugate many of the alien creatures that abound in the many worlds Xavier is able to visit.

The book starts off with an interesting and tense visit to the Fireflies. I like how Xavier takes on their form through radical surgery and tries to infiltrate their culture. The rest of the novel highlights Xavier's continued quest to be like other aliens, becoming increasingly uninterested in ever being a human again.

What I found frustrating was how the mystery of the Fireflies was never resolved. The book description made me think that the reader is to find out the reasons behind their strange mysticla practices, and instead we are left hanging. The book shifts too quickly into a story that just doesn't fulfill my expectations. A lot more could have been done with this story.