Customer Reviews

Spaceling

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

 

 

OK, look. I have read probably around 10,000 science fiction books in my life. I am always looking for ones that have original and imaginative backgrounds, not just another "this is an FTL starship approaching a lost colony or newly discovered planet" or "this is an urban wasteland of the mid-21st Century" so many seem to be. _Spaceling_ is the best of these by far. When I had to sell my library, this is one of the few I kept. This is a background I wish I could enter into as a character. A few people are born with the ability to enter new worlds and change into a form appropriate for those worlds. Objects can be brought to different worlds by the characters, and "morph" themselves in various ways (experiment). How society, both the muters and the normals, react to this is well thought out. The ending features at least a couple twists that took me by surprise, and that takes some doing. I would give this one six stars if I could...I have actually dreamed about it!

If you've read Piserchia before, don't be afraid--this is by far her most cohesive SF adventure and well worth reading. This is one of the most empowering (if I can use that word without throwing up) adventures that I can remember reading as a teenager with a FEMALE main character, who travels through different dimensions by muting through different rings she sees in the sky--something non-muters can't see or understand. I have many favorite books in many different genres, and Spaceling always sticks out as one of the best SF novels. Great book for teenagers.

Found my hardback copy for a dollar at a used book sale, and I picked it up because of the cover. Ended up borrowing a buck to buy it and read it in about two days. _WOW!_ Fascinating world, and so many twists that you can't believe it when you actually come to the (totally unexpected) end. Pretty much everybody's endearingly and not-so-endearingly crazy, and you can never guess what's going to happen next or who's going to turn out to be who. You see that button up there? Buy a copy and read already; you won't regret it.

I found a hardcover copy of Spaceling some years ago in a used bookstore. Don't even know why I picked it up--the dust jacket was missing--but I'm sure glad I did. While I'll read just about anything, particularly sf and fantasy, Spaceling is *definitely* one of my absolute favorites. The story has so many twists and turns that the truth doesn't come out until the last few pages, one of very few books I've read where I haven't been able to guess what's going on somewhere in the middle. I've never read anything else by Doris Piserchia, and I'm not even sure she's written anything else, but I certainly hope she has, because Spaceling is about as good as it gets, and I'd like to see if she could top it. I highly recomend Spaceling, for teenagers *and* adults--it's interesting enough to hold just about anyone's attention, in my opinion.

I read this book around the time it was first published, when I was 7 or 8 years old. Elements of the story stayed with me for decades, long after I had forgotten the title or author's name. Wanting to re-read it, I would sometimes ask fans of science fiction if they knew the book but, based on my description at least, nobody could help. More recently I began posting about the book on science fiction fan websites and the discussion boards on Amazon.com itself. Eventually, not being certain it was the right book, I got my hands on Spaceling. Bingo.

It's such an unusual book. The narrative gaps, the weird lapses of time, the odd relationships between the characters. So often these would be the mark of a poorly written text. However, in this case it merely strengthens the tale -- the odd circumstances of the narrator and the world in which she lives dictate that if people behaved the same as they do in our world, and it were similarly described, it would have been less believable.

The story in Spaceling is too complex to be well summarized here. Suffice it to say that it involves an amnesiac girl who has the ability to travel through dimensional portals. Others share this ability, though she is unusually good at it. She finds herself with allies and dangerous opponents, though she is never entirely clear why and she makes some bad decisions about whom to trust, This is set in a world that is probably an alternate U.S. of the 1970s (the date is never made clear). At some point in the past (shortly after WWII perhaps?) mutants in the population began to discern the portals and could travel through them, and even use them as manufacturing devices. A period of great wealth follows (never fully described), followed by chronic energy shortages (never explained) and perhaps social decay (certainly not complete decay, the precise situation is never made clear to the reader).

The main character's adventures are gripping, the ending is unexpected and leaves many loose ends, but rather than being frustrating, these elevate the book to a more mature level than the MockingJays and Harry Potter books of the world in which every plot point is obsessively resolved.