Customer Reviews

White Queen

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I really, really wanted to be impressed by "White Queen", because of what I'd read about it. But I found it nearly incomprehensible. When I finally finished reading the book (and it was a challenge to finish it), I sat back, sighed, and quoted myself a little Shakespeare about sound and fury.

I don't recommend it, and I think I owe my sci fi book club an apology for choosing it as this month's reading selection.

Book Review by C. Douglas Baker

Set in 2039-40 A.D., this novel of first contact creates an almost credible near future earth and avoids the cliche of vastly superior aliens swooping down to subjugate humanity and strip its resources. Instead, Jones' aliens live among humans for awhile, cloaking their existence, until a strange emotional relationship between Johnny Guglioli, a UFO chaser, and Agnes/Clevel, an alien residing in Africa, leads to their discovery. Jones spends a lot of time creating our future world doing a credible job on technological and ecological aspects but the socio-political aspects are more alien, and unlikely, than the extraterrestrials. For example, the United States has been overthrown by socialists and are minor players in world politics. Equally unlikely is the lackadaisical response of the Earth's population to the discovery of aliens and the central role played by politically marginal actors in dealing with them.

Johnny Guglioli, the most interesting character, is infected with a "petrovirus" that destroys the substance "blue clay", which evidently has replaced silicon as the key data processing material. Being a former "eejay" or engineering journalist, his occupation is destroyed because he can no longer work with computers or similar machinery because his virus destroys the data processing capabilities of the "blue clay". Having his livelihood ruined he chases UFOs as a hobby, leading to his encounter with Agnes/Clevel, an alien who reveals itself to him. Enter Braemer Wilson, a journalist ostensibly searching for a story who seems to have information about aliens possibly living in Africa. The emotional triangle that develops between Guglioli, the alien Agnes/Clevel, and Braemer Wilson leads down a winding path of human and alien interaction, neither side quite trusting nor understanding the other. Through the emotional attachments of these characters the reader learns about the physical and spiritual components of the aliens. Their interactions raise the intensity level of the story and serve as a microcosm of the meandering search for understanding, frequented by severe misunderstandings, between alien and human throughout the novel.

White Queen's depiction of earth a little over fifty years from now does not seem quite authentic. And even though the aliens attempt to shield themselves from human observation, the groping attempts at mutual understanding seem too restrained for such a momentous event. White Queen is barely saved by its interesting human/alien interactions.

This is a dense cyberpunk crack at the alien-invasion motif, carried out with a highly-developed grasp of concept. Despite its ambiguity, I found myself reading this in one or two sittings. Weird and worthy.

I am ten pages from finishing this book. It is very hard to follow but it is fascinating. The writing is strangely phrased which adds to the difficulty. There are no characters I care at all about. The aliens are a total mystery. But something keeps me reading - perhaps just a hope that all will eventually be made clear - but I am assuming at this point that it will not. Still - some part of me is fascinated by it.

Why people are comparing Jones to Le Guin (one of my favorites), I'll never know. I'm halfway through White Queen, and I'll only finish it to get to the "punchline," if I finish it at all. What action there is in this book comes from vague political intrigue and media frenzy -- two things I read sci-fi to get AWAY from. And I'm also getting pretty sick: Of reading sentences structured like this. The aliens and the technology are ho-hum, the action is non-existent, and the main Earthling woman is constantly described as 'whorish' by the Earthling protagonist. This is not what I look for in sci-fi.

Gwyneth Jones isn't a writer for wimps, sissies,
and fanboy geeks, but she's *really* talented.

I was very disappointed when I got to the end of this book. I felt like the last page had been ripped out. It was as if the author got tired and decided to finish the story later. It was a difficult read, I had to constantly go back and pick up clues to help follow the story. After all that work how dare it just stop. Now I have the unpleasant task of reading North Wind just to tie up loose ends.