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Product Details
Paperback: 256 pages
Publisher: Tor Books; 1st Trade Pbk. Ed edition (March 15, 1998)
This book came up during a discussion of multiple, limited third-person points of view. I had wanted to find some books that did this well by authors who were considered stylists. Once this book was mentioned, it caught my interest enough to check it out.
This is one of those books that easily falls into the realm of literary science fiction. The focus here is on writing style and character, and there is barely, and I do mean barely, a thread of plot that holds this book together. In truth, this book is more of an exploration of what it's like to live on a generation ship, told through through the perspective of five characters.
It's rich in setting. That's probably the most noteworthy thing about this book. The attention to setting, detail, and world-building. You can't put this book down without the sense of experiencing a singular culture that's as real as anything else, and by real I mean human: there's truly hardship and heartache, and something that I truly appreciate in this is that the humanity of these characters isn't ignored in favor of technology and all its wonders.
The culture focuses on a group of Esperanto-speaking Quakers. I don't find this book heavy in religion so much as I find that religion (like in life) plays a role in these peoples' lives. Instead, the central focus of this novel is the exploration of the "New World" (a rocky-strewn planet with a pervading sense of grey) and whether or not to continue living upon the generational ship of The Dusty Miller or to settle. But like I said, this plot point is a very thin one.
This story is more about human hardship, and that hardship details everything from marriage, politics, suicides, etc. While the characters were well-depicted, none of them stood out to me in a visceral manner.Read more ›
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It took me 3 tries over 2 years to get beyond page 50 -- but it was well worth the effort. Since I don't generally read SF, I initially had a hard time envisioning the future world that Gloss describes -- the sails, the ship, the neighborhoods, etc. Ultimately they were incidental to the plot; this is a novel about the lives of people and the decisions they make. Some readers have written that it's a "woman's" book. I think that's entirely off base. There are some central female characters but there are central male characters as well. I thought it was fascinating to learn about the Quakers, the dilemmas they faced, their interaction, their decision making processes, etc. It was a very very interesting book and throughly engrossing.
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This must be one of the more unconventional approaches to SF in general and generation ships in particular. The story is slow-moving. We get into the heads of about five different viewpoint characters of different ages, sexes and professions, and stay with them for large parts of the book. In the end, I have a pretty good idea about life on the generation ship; how it works, how they reach decisions, what they eat, how they marry, how they date and how they simply live together. Nothing really exciting ever happens, it's a very calm, steady story. This feels very different from most other SF I've read, where something *happens*. Here, I came away from the story with an understanding of life on the ship, but not much more. I don't know if there IS more to take from this book and I just haven't found it yet (that's what I suspect), or if that's actually what the story is about. I liked the use of Esperanto names and phrases, it made for a nice background. The technological background seemed okay to me. It blended nicely into the general framework of the story. Only four stars, because the ending left me musing over the story and what exactly it all meant, and I still haven't made up my mind.
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I must enter a review to address the comments of other reviewers. First, I don't believe this novel was ever intended to be "typical SF". Molly Gloss writes about deeply rooted issues having to do with relationships and people's lives. Dazzle of Day turned out to be a most entertaining story because she explores the interaction of people in the face of crisis and challenge and she set it in a world well beyond the ordinary. The setting enhanced the personalities, the challenges and the gripping details for the reader. I found her descriptions of the ship, the agriculture, the homes, the people to be fascinating. Don't read this as a SF novel. Read it as an analysis of people facing fear, conflict and uncertainty. In short, people facing life.
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I found this book through a recommendation by Ursula LeGuin, as I have found several of my favorites before this, so I was overjoyed to finally lay my hands on it. And then it took me almost as long to read it as it did to obtain it. It may be worth reading if you have a lot of patience.
The whole book might as well have been written from the perspective of a single character. The small details of their interactions and internal workings felt real, but in the scheme of things I could hardly tell Bjoro from Kristina from Juko. They have grudges and feuds without having more than superficial flaws. The only character who caught my attention was Cejo for his sexuality and his deviant views on marriage, and even those were glossed over. No matter their sexes or relative ages, all of the characters have the feel of your longwinded, rambling grandmother reminiscing about times past.
The subject matter is often inherently colorful, but everything--from rape to love to the descriptions of geological features--is filtered through the gray lens of the author's unhurried, uninterested prose. The whole thing is just unapologetically boring. In one ironic part, the author describes for us how bored and impatient Kristina becomes while reading over the minute-by-minute accounts of the Quaker Meetings, and then treats us to thirteen pages of just such a minute-by-minute account of a Meeting. And it's every bit as dull as Kristina found it.
That said, the writing *is* gorgeous and because of it the scenes are often touching despite themselves. I was moved almost to tears by a part in which Bjoro lies on the grass remembering the feel of his long-dead son (note that nothing happens here except lying and remembering). What Dazzle never moved me to was laughter.Read more ›
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