Customer Reviews

Strength Of Stones

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

 

 

What a fascinating idea! Greg Bear has a remarkable vision for the future of both religion and architecture that will leave you in awe. These are not normal subjects for SciFi, and it's a really interesting trip.

I had read Strength of Stones before, and returned to it after recently reading Greg Bear's "Vitals." Vitals has a complete shipwreck of an ending (literally and figuratively!), and I'm realizing that this is typical of Greg Bear. Even his best ("Eon") has a kind of fuzzy ending. "Strength of Stones" is great until the last few pages, when the action suddenly shifts to a different continent, with a completely different vision of the future of architecture and religion. Where did that come from!??! It seems that Mr. Bear just doesn't know how to end a book in a way that makes any sense. Despite this, Strength of Stones is a great journey, even if the ending is botched.

I docked a star from this particular printing. The paperback with a green cover is listed as an "iBook." I don't know what that means, but I think this is a different publisher than the copy I originally read. Several sections of this book read like a previous printing of it was sent through OCR, and then the editing was poor. For example, "walls" shows up as "wails" several times. Also, one character's name switches back and forth between "Lod" and "Led." (I seem to recall it was "Lod" in the original.) I'm not sure where this publishing run came from, but it's a bit frustrating to read. If there's an earlier run of this book available in your local used book shop, you might be better off with that version.

Greg Bear's "Strength of Stones" focuses on the development of planet God-Does-Battle, the self-elected exile of Christians, Muslims and Jews from a secularised earth. The planet's habitats are living, sentient, mobile cities designed as a paradise of coalition between the world religions, but they slowly grow disgusted by human sin and cast out all their inhabitants to fend for themselves on a more primitive level. The novel charts what follows as the plot develops, on both philosophical and individual levels, with the backdrop of the cities supporting a spare, but engaging set of characters. In some ways, this is just another planetary-development novel, but it is written and structured well and provides enough surprises to lift it clearly above the throng.

To me, Bear's "Blood Music" remains the most enjoyable, original and unusual of his novels, but "Strength of Stones" is well worth a read nonetheless.

This book is definitely worth reading, as it has a great concept and Bear's prose is nice and uncluttered. Some salient points:

* The concept is very engaging and unique

* Very readable prose, especially for the SF/F genre

* Somewhat reminiscent of Asimov's Foundation, in that it covers a world across several characters and a span of years

* Spelling errors in this version get progressively worse toward the end of the book, suggesting poor copy editing

* The ending is a complete "Huh?", going in a totally different direction from the rest of the book, and suggesting a master plan that is completely unrelated to everything that has come before. It's as if it was pulled from a different book entirely.

Another reviewer suggests that Bear cannot seem to properly finish a book, and while this is my first book of his, I can definitely see that problem here. It's a shame because it's a nice, quick read that never bogs down, and has some great ideas. It would be four stars if it had a satisfying ending. I will try other Greg Bear books, and hope that some of them end more convincingly.

I tend to read the reviews before I buy a book, and the reviews on this book almost made me drop it. Relying on the prior works of Greg Bear, such as "Blood Music", which I rate among the finest in hard SF, I picked up Strength of Stones. The book is a masterpiece. Here's why:
In the business of creating a compelling, encompassing, fresh and inventive world, the planet of God-Does-Battle is a winner. The creation of the ultimate city is a well-abused utopian vision, but on God-Does-Battle, the cities pick themselves up and move. They evict their inhabitants and then regret it. They are religious, each to its own religion, Christian, Moslem, Jew, and Gnostic. The city parts are intelligent and they have that human characteristic called soul. If this palette doesn't doesn't already fire your appetite for the book, then please let me go on. The characters are dynamic. The scope is centuries and the ending is apotheosis.
I've read some reviewers that found the ending a let down. Apparently they don't understand anything beyond boy gets girl and lives happily ever after. There is a saint who wars with her son begotten by rape. There is an architect who arranges to come back 700 years too late and finds that he has designed an built an engine of universal immortality.
Enough. Read it!
Greg Bear, if you ever read this, I'll be honored.Strength of Stones ebook version on Kindle

Enigmatic, even without the frequent typos, mainly f for t repeating over and over. Yet quite a vision of a future not to be desired but perhaps inescapable. The notion of exiling Earth's three major religions is certainly resonant in the age of Islamic terrorism and the practitioners inability to hold their new world together is not surprising. God-Does-Battle, indeed. The criticism of the ending, though, seems to me misplaced. The conclusion wasn't what I expected (or, rather, hoped for) yet it fit with what had gone before. All in all, one of Bear's best and worth your time.

Rather than a collection of short stories concentrated on one subject matter, these three stories are sequential. All take place upon the planet God-Does-Battle where empty cities the size of mountains crawl across the landscape.

The first, and the original, takes place after all the giant, rolling cities have banished all the citizens of its hold. One man is banished from his hometown and finds entry into one of these forbidden cities where he finds self-truth.

The second story unfolds well after the first. A poor woman finds her way into a city after being injured. She becomes a caretaker for the city, yet an army have similar ideas in mind. She wants to care for sick children while the army wishes to conquer the planet.

The last story combines both story lines, in which the past comes to the future so that a saviour can bring good to the planet which had honest beginnings yet has waned in its goal. Can the partnership be strong enough to bring peace and prosperity?

Overall, an orignal idea well carried out with Greg Bear's character driven plot and novel thoughts about future technology, speech and customs.

Very difficult to get into. Throughout the book, but particularly in the first section (53 pages,) the author shows how divergent language has become between groups. The difficulty of trying to figure out what the characters are saying may help us understand how the main character feels, but did not allow me to immerse myself in the story.
That alone might have set the tone for me and I never got into the story. Part of the problem was developing a whole new world, covering hundreds of years of new history and tying it together with new scientific advancements all in fewer than 300 pages. New characters and concepts are introduced and developed only in the most superficial way. Great ideas, poor development.

On the planet God-Does-Battle, colonists from Earth settled more than 1300 years ago. The colonists were all religious refugees, escaping from the chaotic and politically inhospitable Earth to their new-found home amongst the stars. To support these colonists, more than a hundred highly sophisticated cities were constructed under the auspices of architect Robert Kahn. These cities were designed with every possible comfort...and then some. From advanced medical and educational facilities to legions of robotic servants tending to every citizen's beck and call. The cities were even capable of breaking themselves down and moving to entirely new locations. But, a mere century after God-Does-Battle's colonization, the cities revolted, the artificial minds that oversaw the cities kicked its citizens out, forcing them to eke out a meager existence in makeshift villages called expolises.

The reasoning behind this banishment, and how to correct it, provides the central story arc in Bear's novel. Having read some of Bear's work in the past, the author's "fingerprint" is clear. A novel full of strong chracterizations that come in a very close second to the hard science background of the story. Combined, these two components compose a rather fine novel that is easy to read and keeps things moving...until a weaker than expected, and somewhat confusing, ending. However, the ending is still solid enough to make this story worth reading.

Divided into 3 books, each basically a story in itself, Strength of Stones is about a planet colonised by humans that built cities that are themselves practically living entities. Unfortunately the cities judged the humans unfit and chucked them out. Strength of stones is set many years after this happened....

I love these kind of stories that let my imagination run free with new ideas during and after I've read it.

I had already read Queen of Angels and read Songs of Earth and power afterwards without realising they were by the same author. Strength of Stones was definitely much easier for me to read than the other two (which is not to say I didn't like them!) and I can thouroughly recommend it.

This story went a bit all over the map. Not as good as some of his later work. Not recommended. Instead read Blood Music or Eon, both wonderfully imaginative stories by this author.