Memory (Paperback)

by Linda Nagata (Author) "When I was ten I had a blanket that was smooth and dark, with no light of its own until I moved and then its..." (more)
Key Phrases: forest mechanics, kobold wells, mimic screen, Temple Huacho, Temple of the Sisters, Azure Mesa (more...)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly
The author of the innovative Limit of Vision (2001) offers another challenging science fantasy. On an artificial world, the people, referred to as players, are reborn time after time, to rediscover their talents (if not their history) from past lives. Their needs are largely provided for by mechanical beetle-like kobolds, which appear out of wells. A silver fog that appears each night constantly reshapes the world. At age 10, Jubilee is devastated when her brother Jolly is taken by the silver, despite the usual protection by kobolds. He had oddly not shown any inherent talents, but in his last words claimed to have called the silver. Jubilee studies the silver assiduously in the ensuing years. The action picks up when she's 17. Her lover, Yaphet, is identified in a faraway town (like talents, mates repeat from former lives), a hauntingly familiar though menacing stranger appears out of the silver asking after Jolly as if Jolly were still alive, and the silver takes Jubilee's father. Jubilee joins her father's younger brother, Liam, on a quest for clues about players who survive the silver. What they learn and do affects the fate of their world. This poignant tale with the bones of hard science is bound to win Nagata new fans.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Booklist
Young Jubilee lives with her parents and brother, Jolly, in a remote temple, where they are protected by beetlelike metabolic machines from the nocturnal floods of "silver." The stuff, though called "breath-of-creation," "fog of souls," and "mind of a dreaming goddess," seemingly kills animate creatures and haphazardly transforms the landscape, erasing roads and leaving bizarre architecture in its wake. One terrifying night, the silver takes Jolly, while Jubilee watches, horrified. Some years later, a mysterious stranger walks out of the silver, asking for Jolly, whom he seems to know. Can one survive the silver? Hoping to find her brother, Jubilee sets off on a dangerous quest, pursued by the man who can control silver. Her journey leads to her discovery of her civilization's stormy past and her own memories of past existences. Although the concept of the hazardous silver remains enigmatic, Nagata's book conjures up a richly realized world in which a truly eerie landscape serves as the vibrant background of a tale of self-discovery and courage in the face of seemingly insurmountable odds. Sally Estes
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 416 pages
• Publisher: Tor Books (June 1, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0765309009
• ISBN-13: 978-0765309006
• Product Dimensions: 8.2 x 5.6 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 13 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars See all reviews (10 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #734,425 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars powerful insightful coming of age science fiction thriller, May 17, 2003

By	Harriet Klausner - See all my reviews (#1 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

This review is from: Memory (Hardcover)

Ten year old Jubilee lives with her parents and her brother Jolly in the remote outpost Temple Huacho located in the isolated wild of Kavasphir Hills, a place known for the frequency of the killing silver floods that terraforms the landscape with each new deluge. The family "owns" metabolic machines to keep them safe from the deadly quick flow of the silver. However, that fails when the silver claims Jolly while his younger sister watches in abject horror.

Several years later, a mysterious stranger seemingly walks out of the silver up to a teenage Jubilee asking for Jolly. Beside the awe of seeing what this man did, her fear of him makes her flee, but also wonder if her sibling lives. Needing to know, Jubilee plans to go on a quest to find her brother and learn the secrets of the silver accompanied by her Uncle Liam.

MEMORY is a powerful insightful coming of age science fiction thriller starring a wonderful protagonist seeking answers, but what she learns makes her wonder about a whole different set of personal questions rather than what she originally sought to understand. The story line is action packed yet contains a subtle theme of finding one's self to comprehend the world in which an individual resides. Though the silver remains ironically a somewhat unsolved puzzle, the reader will have a great time observing the brave heroine on her journey to ascertain the truth that takes her as much inside her self as the weird world she lives in.

Harriet Klausner

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Future comes to life, March 4, 2007

By	K. Sozaeva "Obsessive bibliophile" (Athens, GA USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This is the first book I have read by Linda Nagata, but I think I may look up more. The cover claims she tends to write hard sci-fi, but this book really read more like a fantasy, as the scientific elements are never really explained. However, because of the knowledge base of the players who inhabit this world, I believe this decision on Nagata's part makes sense: although they interact with this tech every day, they don't understand it. How, then, can they explain it to us, the readers?

This story is primarily about Jubilee Huacho, who at the start of the story is a child. One day she climbs down their kobald well and burns herself with silver, which is a creeping mist/fog that comes at irregular intervals in most places of the world and destroys any biologicals it takes into itself. It also changes the world when it comes - taking away parts, adding others, which the players call follies. We never really come to understand *what* the silver is, only that it is important to the world; for some reason, without it, the world's ecology collapses. This also is never explained - just said to be so. That night, the silver comes all the way into the temple and takes her older brother, Jolly. Jubilee is horrified.

Years later, she is a headstrong young woman and is somewhat in love with her uncle, Liam, although in this world there can only ever be a single lover for any given player, as determined by blood testing (this also is never explained - the lack of explanations becomes a bit frustrating, thus my rating this book at 4 stars rather than 5). She discovers she has a lover, half-way across the world. One night while outside on the temple wall, a stranger walks out of the silver, asking for her brother Jolly. She tells him that Jolly is gone, with no further explanation, and the stranger goes back into the silver, causing it to rise rapidly. Jubilee races inside, only to find out from her mother that her father was just taken by the silver. Was this coincidence?

Not much more I can tell you about the general plot - from that point on Jubilee travels the world, searching for her brother and a way to stop the silver floods. She learns about herself and her past lives.

The idea is quite intriguing, though I would have been happier had some of the ideas been further explained. But, as I said, perhaps they were not explained because Nagata wanted to show just how ignorant the players are of their world and how it works.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Starts out well, but morphs to an interminable chase scene. 3.5 stars, December 25, 2005

By	Peter D. Tillman (Taos, NM USA) - See all my reviews (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

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Nagata's world-building here is pretty cool. The setting is a ringworld-orbital where things have gone Terribly Wrong. A long-ago war damaged the habitat, and the construction & maintenance nanoassembler-fogs (the silver), have become a menace to the players, their 'mechanics' (cool hi-tech machines) and their homes. The only safe places to live are temple-complexes around kobold wells -- the temple kobolds, small programmable mechanics, exude a sweet-smelling silver-repellent.

It's a pretty neat setup, an appealing combination of a half-understood high-tech background, a likeable heroine, a nasty villain, and a Quest... So I was having a good time until along about p.200 or so, I started realising that nothing much had happened for awhile, except that the Evil Villain (and/or his minions) was chasing the heroine (and/or her Faithful Friends, and always with her Cute Doggie) through varying landscapes, over and over again. I'm sorry to report that this is pretty much what happens in the rest of the book. The ending's pretty soggy, too.

I'd say Ms. Nagata needed a Stern Editor for this one, or else more inspiration.... Anyway, most everything else she's written is better than this. If you've never tried her (and you should), I'd start with LIMIT OF VISION, her best novel and a standalone. Or, for an appealing sample, her Nebula-award-winning novella "Goddesses", available online.

Happy reading--
Pete Tillman