Customer Reviews

Resurrection

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"Resurrection," by Katharine Kerr, is one of the best short SF novels I've ever read.

Captain Tiffany Owens died -- twice -- and was brought back to life. Yet nothing seems to fit; well, almost nothing. Her cat remembers her; her family still loves her and shrugs off her strange behavior, and her fiancé is happy beyond words that his love survived, even if _not_ in one piece.

During her long stint in rehabilitation, Tiffany had come to terms with the odd, shifting sense of reality, and had blamed it on "bad neural wiring." As coma patients and people who've had horrific injuries have learned, the "wiring" doesn't always seem to match up with what one remembers of reality.

Or so Tiffany thought, until two strange men showed up. One, an impossible Reb from an impossible place, tells her he wants her to be happy. The other, an impossibly handsome man, tells her to go home -- to the Republic of California, what Tiffany's been assuming all this time was a fiction of her imagination.

But it's not. It's real; the blast that killed her threw her from one dimension into another, and she was brought back to life _in the wrong Universe_.

The story is whether or not Tiffany will stay where she is, where everything feels subtly wrong -- or go home, where everyone is used to her being dead, and everyone has gone on with their lives.

It's an extremely compelling story, enlivened by lots of realistic behavior from coma and rehabilitation patients, and a good amount of humor.

Ms. Kerr is better known for her Deverry/Westlands saga than any of her science fiction. Although I enjoy those books immensely, I think it's a shame those are what made her famous, and not this incredible novella.

This book deserved to win every award there was. I still have no idea why it didn't; maybe it wasn't even nominated, for all I know, which is even _more_ a miscarriage and a travesty of justice.

Read this book, and enjoy it; let's hope it'll be reprinted soon, so my mostly worn out copy can be replaced.

This novella is the basis for Ms. Kerr's later novel "Resurection". However, I feel this story stands better on its own.

This is the story of a female fighter pilot recovering from injuries endured in the line of duty, and trying to return to her old life. Except things are not as she remembers them... things like the name of the country she lives in.

This is definitely "specultative fiction", but nothing like the Deverry novels. It's set in California, probably about 20 years from "now". We see things through the heroine's eyes, and share her sense of fuzzy unreality as she chats with the devil & the mysterious rabbi who keep following her. The "revelation" at the end felt rather like the one at the end of "The Sixth Sense", or like watching "The Matrix": It left me wondering about the solidity of my universe.

I have been a fan of Katharine Kerr for many years after reading her book on the Deverry Series, so when I found her book on the Resurrection I just had to buy it and read :)

Well I am happy to say I was not dissapointed :) her style of writing shined through and for a short story it was a very good read :) what I did find was that it left me wanting to know more about Tiffiany and her new life.

Hugs Dawsie :)