Customer Reviews

Ship of Fools

5 star:		(42)
4 star:		(19)
3 star:		(14)
2 star:		(10)
1 star:		(7)

 

 

I think the problem the "editorial review" had with this book is the fact that it raises a WHOLE LOT of questions and leaves the reader to mull things over for him/herself. If you're one of those people who like your sci-fi in an hour TV show where everything is wrapped up neatly for you at the end of the hour, so you don't have to bother to think very much, then this is probably NOT the book for you.

That said, I loved this book for being brave enough to be unconventional. Bartolomeo, the narrator, paints a broad picture of life on the Argonos, a ship wandering the universe for centuries. History, sociology, and religion are all explored in his description of the society and bureaucracy on the Argonos. Bartolomeo wants to be devoted to his captain, embroiled in a power struggle with the church (who else?), but the social structure where the privileged few profit from the labor of the masses ultimately disturbs him. He is also distracted by his feelings (one couldn't really call it a romance) for Father Veronica, a female priest who ends up with him on the exploration team.

All of this becomes moot as the Argonos comes across first a massacred colony and then an alien spaceship that may or may not be responsible for it. The editorial review quote demonstrates just a bit of the horror and shock of the exploration crew that finds the remains of the colony. For the most part, though, the suspense is the exploration of the alien ship: it appears to be deserted, yet it is constructed oddly and even threateningly, and strange "accidents" and "illnesses" keep occurring among the crew. Yet this book never descends to the "jump out and say boo" level of B-movie aliens. It is mostly subtlety, which will keep you guessing until the end, and maybe even after.

A final word: one of the reviews below that says it won't give away too much about the story TELLS YOU ONE OF THE MOST IMPORTANT THINGS THAT HAPPENS!!! I am sad that I read the review before reading the book, so then I knew what was coming. Just thought I'd warn you.

This book starts off slow and conventional. Everyone's on a spaceship bound for nowhere, nobody knows where it came from or why its going on. The Roman Catholic church (why are science fiction authors obsessed with the RC church, think of Dan Simmons's Hyperion/Endymion books? Is it the ceremonial nature and centuries of hidden intrigues of established Christianity?)is up to no good and, although it has finally gotten around to allowing women to become priests, is running an alternative power structure to that of the existing "government" of the space ship, which is a government of privileged occupants living on the fruits of the labor of a wretched and resentful underclass of inhabitants.

Everything gets called into question when the spaceship encounters signs of nonhuman life and an alien spaceship that is either a deserted wreck or a deadly trap. How the ship's people and institutions respond to the challenge is a fascinating story and the way events unfold is riveting in Russo's narrative.

The final quarter of this book is unforgettably riveting and terrifying. I couldn't put it down and doubt that any reasonably attentive reader would be able to.

The end is more of a stop than a conclusion, but this is common in the genre. Perhaps there is a sequel on the way.

This is a superb book. Anyone willing to read speculative fiction will enjoy it.

I picked this book up thinking it was by Richard Russo of Empire Falls fame. I was about a third of the way through when I realized it was a different author. No matter - I was enjoying this story so much that I kept on reading, finishing the book in a day. This is the type of sci fi I like - more of a social cultural look at our future rather than dependance on hardware, with many themes that we are still tackling today. Fast paced story, well written, with interesting characters and dilemmas. Now I want to search for more of this writer's books.

I first picked up this book years ago close to release, but the negative things said about it have persuaded me to defend it.

This is by far one of the best sci fi books I have read, ever. It remains completely personal and never becomes a chore to read. You will find little to get bogged down by, as the writing moves incredibly fast. It's greatest stregnth is it's charecters, all held together by intertwining motives, ideals, and conflicts.

Don't let some of the negative reviews fool you, this is magnificent. I've read quite a lot about the dissatisfaction with the ending, and I am baffled. Everything that needs to have an end, does. At the risk of spoilers, this novel is about these charecters and the ship they inhabit. At the end, that story is finished. The ship is gone, the threat of an alien race, gone. What charecters do make it out of the ship are going to a new chapter of their lives. Many of them have had their lives changed by an unforgettable experience, and now they are moving on to the next.
While it is true that you never find out some things, they are hardly things that seem important. Do the aliens need a motive? Do we need to know more about the Church's plot to overthrow the current ruling body? Do we need to see the final fate of the captain? Do we need to see what's on those video moniters? Do we need to see the return to Antioch?
I think not. Nearly every "unresolved" issue in this book are issues that the reader creates for themselves; not the author. Our own desire to know more, that hunger for knowledge and power, is the roots of our destruction and one of the mainy strong points of this book.
That being said, none of these issues in question are necessary to the primary focus, and that's why I was surprised at the disdain for the ending.
The conflicts that have been going on between the charecters and the primary plot lines of both the political uprisings and the alien ship ARE resolved at the end of the story.
Even if by some chance you are unhappy with the brilliant end, you will still have read one of the most engaging and thought provoking novels in a long time. It is beautifully written, and you cannot go wrong.
At the very least, pick it up and try it.
You won't be dissapointed.

The Argonas is a gigantic spaceship that houses thousands of people while visiting different galaxies. The residents on board have lived on the ship for generations and have lost sight of their original mission or who even built the craft. Inside the ship, is a city structure with two classes of people: the ruling oligarchy and the downsiders who provide forced manual labor. The latter have no rights or freedoms.

The travelers have not touched down in a planet in twelve years, but now receive a signal from a place capable of sustaining life. The leaders decide to explore the planet. Humans once colonized Antioch, but when the visitors arrive they find the horrible site of numerous skeletons hanging from hooks in an alien-like chamber. They flee rather quickly, but soon stumble across an alien space ship as big as their own. No one seems aboard as members of the Argonas explore the vessel, unaware of that they have let loose on their own population.

Space opera was never quite like this tale. Anyone who were enthralled by the aliens from the movie Alien will love Richard Paul Russo's latest masterpiece, SHIP OF FOOLS. The title is appropriate. The author creates a shocker of an ending that no one could have predicted, probably not even the author when he was drafting the novel. Even the day-to-day details of life on the spaceship seem fascinating as readers are simply hooked by a wonderful plot that would make a powerful movie.

Harriet Klausner

Brilliant book, great story and thoughtful subjects. This book intends to cause much thinking in the reader. If you are desiring a book to lead (link) you from point A to point B to point C, etc., you might try something else...like Grisham. The subjects are intentionally not solved for you, no silver platter, no ribbon and bow.

Instead, you get a believable world (on a ship - a big ship), with real people (the protagonist wears prosthetic body armour), in some terrible situations, some of their own making. This is not black and white writing, nor is it shades of gray; it is technicolor. The faceless Hollywood science fiction movies fail to tell stories as engaging, fresh and as interesting as this one.

Enjoy.

Richard Paul Russo here tackles two of science fiction's hoarier scenarios: The generation starship, and the mysterious alien ship which no one can understand. Although he writes a more engaging story than some of his predecessors (e.g., Arthur C. Clarke's Rendezvous with Rama, and John E. Stith's Reckoning Infinity), he doesn't pull it off.

The book is most interesting in exploring how the good ship Argyros works. The political machinations and tensions among the factions, the sense of sameness - if not ennui - which pervades their society, and occasional moments of desperation and revolt.

Unfortunately he sets this against a backdrop of the aforementioned mysterious alien ship, with the twist that the ship appears related to a dead colony on a nearby world, and is, well, far from safe to explore. As such Russo sets out to paint yet another picture of aliens so alien and mysterious that we can't understand them. Such stories are never satisfying, because when the aliens' (or perhaps their ship's) behavior is the centerpiece of the book, we need to eventually be told SOMETHING about them. Why are they behaving as they are? Why are they sitting in the middle of space, silent? Why are the rooms constructed the way they are? It's not that we need all the answers hand-delivered, but we need to be given something, and we're not. We can't even draw our own conclusions because there's nothing there to draw from. Worse, one is left with the strong impression that Russo himself doesn't even have an idea as to what it's all about.

The story ends up being - sort of - about how humans react to such an encounter, but the alien ship is so generic it's not even up to the level of, say, 2001, and the ending seems all-too-predicable, ultimately. The religious and spiritual overtones are not without interest, but they're at best the third-most-interesting element of the book and cannot carry it.

I suspect that I'll barely remember the details of this book a year from now, although I enjoyed it for most of the ride. Chalk it up as another novel which could have been much better than it is, if it had had a firmer direction.

Richard Paul Russo's latest work, Ship of Fools, is as much a philosophical exploration-or simply a mood piece-as it is a tale of fiction. As always, Russo breathes a gritty authenticity into the people, places, and social system of Ship of Fools. Unfortunately, the book fails to fall neatly into any conventional science fiction niche. Not heroic enough for space opera, not intense enough for horror, not comprehensive enough as a dystopian treatise, and not revealing enough as a tale of alien contact, the book is stylish and thought-provoking but raises more questions than it attempts to answer and sets up more potential story lines than it bothers to pursue. Fans expecting something like Russo's Carlucci books, or relying too much on the back-cover synopsis or reviewers' quotes, are likely to end up disappointed. Readers who enjoy observing how a master writer creates and manipulates the fabric of a story, or exploring their own beliefs and tenets through the thoughts of others, will find the book rich indeed.

The human generation ship Argonos has been in space for hundreds of years. Its original purpose is murky. Its aging mechanical systems are gradually falling apart. Its tightly closed social system consists of a working class which performs the labor necessary to keep machines and society functioning, and a ruling class which peripherally includes ship's crew and clergy. Tensions are running high between classes and among the various ruling class factions.

Argonos picks up a radio signal from a nearby planet. At this point, the ship really needs a habitable world in order to re-provision if nothing else. An exploration party finds the planet habitable but no longer inhabited. A cache of grisly human remains among a cluster of strange buildings hints at an alien menace, but no records can be found to explain what has happened.

When the transmitter that drew Argonos to the planet begins sending out a different signal, the ship's leaders decide to follow up. This takes Argonos to another vast starship, clearly alien and apparently derelict. Teams are sent to systematically investigate the vessel, thus leading to the story's climax.

Russo's main themes are evil, particularly the evil outside versus the evil within; nobility, duty, or whatever else provides the motivation for people to rise above self-interest and serve a greater cause; and how a closed society breeds lifestyle abnormalities along with genetic abnormalities. Russo's characters directly or indirectly question God, the status quo, the value of individual lives, and man's place in the universe in general, with varying degrees of resolution before the tale's end. Ship of Fools provides no big, emotionally satisfying payoff, but offers an absorbing read nevertheless.

I'm disappointed to read some of the reviews of this book which state that it's a letdown and that it doesn't have a tidy resolution. Clearly these are the type of people who like Americanized versions of foreign movies, where all the loose ends are tied up for you nicely, instead of making you think. This book has great characters and is more suspenseful than any book I've read in a very long time. If you like your books compelling and thought provoking, give this a shot. If you want a fantasy sci-fi book that's the equivalent of a tv sitcom, go elsewhere.

I find it very hard to really pin down this book. I have recently re-read it and I did the exact same thing that I did the first time I read it two years ago. That is, I got so involved in it that I read almost ¾ of it at one sitting and as soon as I was done with it, I began searching the web for any hint of a sequel. I think Russo is just sitting back laughing at me, the big weasel.

The story is, to me anyway, absolutely riveting. Russo paints his story with a master's brush. You not only have the suspense of a truly enigmatic first contact with an alien species, but also a growing insurrection on the human space ship with all the accompanying drama. The two stories run parallel to one another until the alien contact develops to overshadow the problems of the human.

The story ends up with a lot of un-answered questions but, I felt like the book has just enough meat and gives just enough answers to keep me interested until after the last page. The big problem is that `after' part there. I could really have used a few hundred more pages, or better yet a sequel.

If you are the sort of reader who thinks Graphic Novels are "deep" and that Douglas Adams is heavy reading, you will want to skip this one. But, if you are the sort of person who doesn't need to have everything explained to you and realizes that, ultimately, a lot of life's questions aren't answered, then this is the book for you.

Read it, it's worth it.