Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
One of the 100 best science fiction novels, March 6, 2007
I've read all of Philip José Farmer's books, and of his stand alone sf novels, this is one of his best. Apparently I'm not alone in thinking this. Interzone editor David Pringle included The Unreasoning Mask in his book, Science Fiction: The 100 Best Novels, and sf author Ian Watson called it "a masterpiece, Farmer's finest."
This novel might be viewed as a thinking person's version of Star Trek's "The Doomsday Machine" or "The Immunity Syndrome"; but it's really much more than that, with its metaphysical themes and implications, as well as its well-conceived world building of alien cultures and psychological examination of human motivations.
Captain Ramstan commands a rare alaraf drive starship which allows it to jump instantaneously to distant regions of space. Just as Ramstan sets off an interstellar incident by stealing the god-idol of an alien world (called the glyfa), he is alerted that one of the alaraf ships has disappeared, a victim of a world-killer called a "bolg." What is the mysterious connection between the glyfa and the bolg, and why does Ramstan begin to have waking visions of a mystical being from his long extinguished Muslim faith? Ramstan, chased by the aliens who worship the stolen god, races across the pluriverse to find the answers.
The Unreasoning Mask is a gripping, captivatingly disturbing book. Even at his most fantastic, Farmer manages to entrance with a compelling degree of realism, in particular as regards his portrayal of human nature, which in his fiction seems to carry at least as much bad as it does good. Don't miss this darkly riveting sf adventure.
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4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
This was my favorite Sci-Fi novel!, November 11, 1998
I read this novel over ten years ago, so my knowledge about the details are sketchy. But I feel compelled to write this review because of how it affected me. It is the ONLY novel I have ever read in one sitting. Perhaps the reason I liked this novel so much is do to the fact that it is slanted toward the hard philisophical questions of life.
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2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Plenty of imagination, but decidedly unpleasant, October 26, 2007
In this sci-fi/fantasy adventure Ramstan is captain of the al-Buraq, one of the few starships fitted for instantaneous travel through space, when he impulsively risks everything to steal the glyph, an egg-shaped artifact that is worshipped by an alien civilization. Fleeing from the religious indignation of the aliens, and following the hints he receives from the glyph, Ramstan hops from planet to planet until he encounters the bolg, a terrifying engine of destruction with world-breaking power. With the help of the immortal beings known as the Vwoordha, Ramstan resolves to take a stand against the bolg before it destroys the Earth.
Unfortunately, Ramstan is not a particularly likable character, nor even a very convincing one, and his actions are often controlled by non-human (and even non-living) forces, which does little to make him sympathetic. The myriad Islamic references, although perhaps considered suitably exotic at the time, may even grate upon the sensibilities of some Western readers in our post-9-11 world. And the story certainly takes its time getting started, although it does pick up eventually. There's almost none of the swords-and-shields, hand-to-hand combat that Farmer is so good at; most of the conflict is space chases and puppet manipulation. There's certainly no shortage of imagination here, and fans of far-out cosmic speculation should be intrigued by the concluding chapters, but ultimately this book is more successful as fantasy than science fiction.
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