Customer Reviews

Sugar Rain

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I stumbled on Paul Park's three book in the "Starbridge trilogy" at my local public library, and since have read and re-read them a few times. They chronicle revolutionary times in a planetary culture ruled by decade-long seasons. The atmosphere is exotic and lush, yet shot through with extravagent morbid decedance.

The planet was apparently settled by a single human astronaut, but again that's not at all clear; you find that out only in bits and scraps. The most fascinating quality of the books is that they present a moment in the life of a culture, where you catch glimpses of distorted bits of the culture's origins. There is a certain amount of humor in this palimpsest -- a very dour, draconian state religion arises from misinterpretation of the human astronaut's psychotically erotic poetry.

While the book has obviously been inspired by the author's travels in India, the real India is but a starting point for Park's delightfully diseased imagination.

Park's book reminds me of both Nabakov's "Pale Fire" and Wallace's "Infinite Jest" in that the text on the page is only half the story; the other half is the blurred and corrupted text behind the text that the reader can infer from the primary text.

I managed to collect and read all three books in the series a few years ago, and when I saw only one review, I had to jump in if only to encourage others. As an avid Sci-fi reader, after a while, all apocalyptic societies can run together. Not this collection. This is a brooding, complex world full of rich detail and lots of thought - both by the author and as a result of the reading. You'll be amazed by the callousness that exists in this world where science and magic and delirium and art are on equal footing, jumbled together in a well paced, conceptually terrifying, and just downright amazing series.