8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Provocative, January 3, 2005
Any story featuring a group of people who are
determined to create a utopian society is bound
to raise some serious questions. But Truesight
by David Stahler Jr. takes provocative to the
next level.
For generations, the inhabitants of the colony
Harmony have genetically engineered themselves to
be blind. In a society that believes sight leads
only to corruption and temptation, thirteen-year-
old Jacob is horrified when he suddenly becomes
able to see. Jacob has always been disturbed by
his best friend Delaney's criticism of the values
of the community, but when he attains the faculty
of vision he begins to see what really goes on in
his town, developing doubts of his own. Already
reeling from the shock of being able to see,
Jacob is told that Delaney has committed suicide,
and his life is thrown into complete turmoil.
The drama heats to the boiling point when his
secret ability is discovered by others in his
community. These people decide that his vision
must be "corrected," informing him that he will
need surgery to again become blind.
Though constructed around some very serious
issues, this book offers great opportunities for
moral development for mature teens and young
adults. Rather than avoiding controversial
issues, Stahler has opened the door for the
honest discussion of everything from advanced
scientific technology to social ostracism.
What makes this story appealing, rather than
just challenging, is the setting. Harmony is one
of two communities founded on Earth and sent to
live and develop on a satellite planet. This
community has developed amazing technologies to
facilitate the lives of the blind. Because the
inhabitants are determined to live independently
from seeing societies, unusual equipment was
fabricated. Featuring everything from advanced
tracking tools to personal sounding devices
invented to alert the user to the presence of
others, this novel is a science-fiction lover's
dream.
The only hitch worth mentioning is that the
reader can never be sure whether there is meant
to be romantic tension between Jacob and Delaney
or between he and his classmate, Beth, or perhaps
both. The romantic tension remains unresolved in
the end and though the events that imply the
tension contribute meaningfully to the story, to
a degree they take away from the plot.
The most impressive tidbit about this
stimulating and entertaining novel is the fact
that it is Stahler's first. A treasure for
anyone with a taste for the out-of-the-ordinary,
this book is sure to leave his readers anxiously
awaiting future publications.
Reviewed by Kimberly Bolton for Flamingnet Book Reviews, www.flamingnet.com.
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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Truesight, June 27, 2006
This review is from: Truesight (Truesight Trilogy) (Mass Market Paperback)
Fantasy and science fiction often get so caught up in trying to explain the world in which the story takes place -- characters and setting are so key to the expository information within the novel -- that the plot suffers in the first half of the book.
TRUESIGHT is a sci-fi young adult novel that does some of that suffering (or rather the readers do). The entire first section of the book has a problem with trying to make the reader see this world (no pun intended) in which everyone is blind, but...
...as our protagonist (a 13-year-old boy named Jacob) starts to develop sight, we start to develop more interest in what happens. Eventually, the plot takes over from the exposition and things start to move along wonderfully.
As an 8th-grade Language Arts teacher, I also notice that the second half (clearly labeled "Part Two") has a better vocabulary, moving the material up a couple of reading levels as it goes. I also appreciated the metaphor I detected about conformity (whether religious, political or societal). I am teaching a unit on "Conformity" this year and will incorporate discussion of TRUESIGHT into this with (hopefully) strong results.
Though it is the first in a trilogy, each book should stand on its own. Younger readers will hate the ending as it doesn't answer all the questions it has set up for the reader.
What prevents the book from receiving three stars (instead of four) is the way that it transforms itself in the second half into an enjoyable example of the genre. What prevents itself from getting a full five is its growing pains in the first eighty pages.
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