Customer Reviews

Purgatory: A Chronicle of a Distant World

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

 

 

I read this book mostly because I am interested in the integration of human's into an alien race. What I found though left me speechless. Resnick turns a human battle for profits into an alien battle for survival and supremacy of their home world. Potent symbolism and intricate character development, and an ending that will stagger you with tragedy. One of your best and most meaningful books Mike. Why doesn't anyone know about it?

As a student of the history of Zimbabwe in general and Robert (the mugger) Mugabe in particuliar, I found this book facinating.Resnick is "right on" both as a history of Zimbabwe and the whole African continent. It reminded me a great deal of "Watership Down," in the aspect of a simple story being told while a whole different and significant story lurks just below the surface.

I'll give Mike Resnick this: Purgatory is the most unique sci-fi novel I've read recently. The book chronicles the colonization of an alien world by the human race. It draws heavily from the history of Britain's colonization of Africa. Each section of the book covers an epoch of this history, so that it reads like seven interrelated novellas rather than a single coherent novel. Perhaps the most surprising aspect of the book is that there are no clear good guys or bad guys; Purgatory is a tale that embraces ambiguity, and that refuses to paint good and evil in the stark black-and-white terms employed by most fiction. The novel also has a somewhat tragic surprise ending, which I won't spoil here. Suffice to say, it was quite effective. If I had to describe this book in one word, it would be "smart". I'm not sure, though, that it will satisfy most readers of science fiction. It does not fit the usual action-packed escapist mold, it abandons characters just as soon as the reader begins to get invested in them, and the writing is frankly somewhat lackluster. It is light on descriptive detail, which makes for a clean and unencumbered narrative but which also inhibits the reader from entering fully into the universe Resnick has imagined. I walked away from the book feeling pleased, but a little unsatisfied. Three stars.

I heard an interview with Mike Resnick and liked him so I picked up one of his books at random. Loved it! It jumps to many different time frames so each section is almost like a short story. He manages to recapture my attention each time. The parallels to African history are great. I felt as if I was learning a bit about the real history of colonization and reading a good scifi novel at the same time. I have started reading some of his other books and they are all page turners so far.