- Mass Market Paperback: 480 pages
- Publisher: Bantam USA (29 April 2003)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 0553576402
- ISBN-13: 978-0553576405
- Product Dimensions: 10.6 x 2.7 x 17.4 cm
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 1,571,601 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
Hopscotch
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Product Description
Product Description
Suppose you could switch bodies with another person? What exciting new experiences would you choose to explore? What forbidden desires would you indulge? Suppose someone stole your life–how far would you go to get it back?
From New York Times bestselling author Kevin J. Anderson comes a pure adrenaline thriller of hijacked identities, elusive motives, and deeply buried secrets–a disturbing, thought-provoking excursion into a sleek, hedonistic society where nothing is your own...not even your soul.
Hopscotch
For a fee, Eduard Swan will swap bodies with people in distress–those facing surgeries, emotional crises, moments of unpleasantness or discomfort they can’t or would rather not deal with. Eduard will experience the suffering for them. It’s a lucrative business, and in a world in which no one is required to feel any pain, there is no end of clients. But someone doesn’t want to play by the rules. Someone doesn’t want to return his body. And, unfortunately for Eduard, that someone is one of the world’s most powerful men. Now Eduard has no choice but to steal back his life.
He has the perfect alibi–or so he thinks. For even in a world where you can hopscotch from body to body, you always leave a trail. And following that trail is a relentless dispenser of “justice” named Daragon, a childhood friend, now a zealous and ambitious agent of state security, who won’t let old friendships stand in the way of doing his duty.
When Eduard goes on the run, hounded at every turn by Daragon, his only hope is two other childhood friends: Garth, a tormented artist who gains success beyond his wildest dreams, only to discover the terrible price of fame; and Teresa, a spiritual seeker who risks losing her own body to a fanatical religious cult as she embarks on a harrowing quest to find her true identity.
Moving from underground hopscotch pleasure bars to the highest enclaves of power to a seamy underworld of illegal Phantoms, ancient minds who steal younger bodies in a quest for eternal life, Eduard and his friends seek the meaning of identity in a society in which appearances mean everything–and nothing–and where everything is relative...even murder.
From the Hardcover edition.
From New York Times bestselling author Kevin J. Anderson comes a pure adrenaline thriller of hijacked identities, elusive motives, and deeply buried secrets–a disturbing, thought-provoking excursion into a sleek, hedonistic society where nothing is your own...not even your soul.
Hopscotch
For a fee, Eduard Swan will swap bodies with people in distress–those facing surgeries, emotional crises, moments of unpleasantness or discomfort they can’t or would rather not deal with. Eduard will experience the suffering for them. It’s a lucrative business, and in a world in which no one is required to feel any pain, there is no end of clients. But someone doesn’t want to play by the rules. Someone doesn’t want to return his body. And, unfortunately for Eduard, that someone is one of the world’s most powerful men. Now Eduard has no choice but to steal back his life.
He has the perfect alibi–or so he thinks. For even in a world where you can hopscotch from body to body, you always leave a trail. And following that trail is a relentless dispenser of “justice” named Daragon, a childhood friend, now a zealous and ambitious agent of state security, who won’t let old friendships stand in the way of doing his duty.
When Eduard goes on the run, hounded at every turn by Daragon, his only hope is two other childhood friends: Garth, a tormented artist who gains success beyond his wildest dreams, only to discover the terrible price of fame; and Teresa, a spiritual seeker who risks losing her own body to a fanatical religious cult as she embarks on a harrowing quest to find her true identity.
Moving from underground hopscotch pleasure bars to the highest enclaves of power to a seamy underworld of illegal Phantoms, ancient minds who steal younger bodies in a quest for eternal life, Eduard and his friends seek the meaning of identity in a society in which appearances mean everything–and nothing–and where everything is relative...even murder.
From the Hardcover edition.
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7 reviews
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful
It's your basic Kevin Anderson novel
20 July 2005
Format:Hardcover
At some point in the future humans learn how to swap bodies with one another, and very few people lack this ability. Sometimes, however, someone will swap with someone else who decides that they don't want to swap back. Against this backdrop, we find five friends who were raised together at an orphanage by monks, and we see how far they are willing to go for one another, blah, blah, blah, blah. The main core of three include an artist, a guy who swaps his body for money with people having surgery or other unpleasant ordeals, and a girl on a major quest to "find herself." The decription of the plot beyond that on the book jacket is inaccurate, by the way.
I enjoyed the book well enough, but I approached it specifically as a Kevin Anderson book: not particularly deep but engaging enough. He didn't explain the mechanics of swapping, and I can get over that, but there are so many other things he could have done with the whole concept of swapping bodies, both logistically and ethically. The characters were endearing enough, though they were essentially walking, talking sterotypes (broad strokes, broad strokes). But I was entertained, and for that I give it 3 stars.
I enjoyed the book well enough, but I approached it specifically as a Kevin Anderson book: not particularly deep but engaging enough. He didn't explain the mechanics of swapping, and I can get over that, but there are so many other things he could have done with the whole concept of swapping bodies, both logistically and ethically. The characters were endearing enough, though they were essentially walking, talking sterotypes (broad strokes, broad strokes). But I was entertained, and for that I give it 3 stars.
5 of 6 people found the following review helpful
Hopscotch is 40 years old, but that's not necessarily bad.
20 April 2002
Format:Hardcover
Science Fiction in the 50's and 60s - like most other fiction in the US - was discrete about sex, to say the least. Thomas Bowdler would have found little to expurgate. And that's exactly what struck me the most about Hopscotch. Not its characters or plot (more about that later), but that it is so eminently a 1960s novel. Hopscotch could have extended and completed the work Heinlein tried to do (and failed to do, I think) with "I will fear no evil." But it didn't.
Sex is important. It divides the human race in two, and each half is somewhat alien to the other. Anderson left a dark veil obscuring this difference. There are a few obligatory sex scenes, but nothing that really delves into the difference between man and woman during them. Perhaps that was Anderson's intent, but it leaves a book that will provoke far less honest discussion than it otherwise would have.
It could be that in a world where you can swap your body with another, everyone is so used to it that they slip on others' bodies like clothes from a closet. I have a feeling it wouldn't be quite that simple. Every closet has clothes that don't fit anymore, and every body has reflexes that your mind accepts naturally. When danger is coming, do you jump left or right? Everyone has a primary preference, and these are often reenforced at an early age. What if your body jumps left when your mind subconsciouly expects a jump to the right? And how do you adjust to different weight distributions between the sexes? Sadly, most of the body adaptation area is missing from the book.
Probably the best parts of the book are Anderson's descriptions of Garth's art, and the reaction of those who see it. I couldn't picture the exhibits or pictures in my mind, but I could picture the reaction of those coming out of the exhibits. That's a perfectly valid tool in a novel.
Less perfect are the characters. They just don't jell. They do things, you say "uh-huh," and go on reading. Characters in most novels much face difficulties and react to them. If the characters are fully drawn, the reader will understand - or at least accept - these changes. Changes in Hopscotch do occur, but I never felt comfortable that they were not doing so via the hidden hand of an author trying to keep a story moving along.
Hopscotch is OK, but it never truely condenses into the fine granularity that makes a novel memorable. It's not a bad book for the beach or some other idle time, but it's not worth buying until the paperback comes out. You will like the story better if you approach it with lowered expectations. You will like it least if your expectations are higher.
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
Interesting Premise, Poor Execution
27 Sep 2004
Format:Hardcover
Author Kevin J. Anderson has a long-standing interest in issues of identity and body-image -- witness his "Resurrection Inc." from several years ago. In this book he postulates a "what if" involving the ability to move personalities from body to body. In a more thoughtful treatment this could have been a philosophical exploration of packaging vs. contents, of what makes us who we are (nature vs. nurture), or even an exploration of the differences between the sexes, or between the generations, or between races.
Instead what we get is a longwinded detective novel with "hopscotching" as a mere backdrop. There are a lot of major plot holes and untidy ends (such as any explanation of hopscotching itself) and when the author writes himself into a pickle he's not above creating new characters, new powers or new conditions to pull himself out. The story is not only sloppily-plotted, the writing is wooden, with stilted dialog and unconvincing characters. As other reviewers have noted, the passage of time is jerky and off-putting, and the book's 1950s morality is loudly anachronistic.
I hate to say it, but Anderson's involvement writing series novels for Star Wars, X-Files and Dune does not seem to have instilled good discipline.
Instead what we get is a longwinded detective novel with "hopscotching" as a mere backdrop. There are a lot of major plot holes and untidy ends (such as any explanation of hopscotching itself) and when the author writes himself into a pickle he's not above creating new characters, new powers or new conditions to pull himself out. The story is not only sloppily-plotted, the writing is wooden, with stilted dialog and unconvincing characters. As other reviewers have noted, the passage of time is jerky and off-putting, and the book's 1950s morality is loudly anachronistic.
I hate to say it, but Anderson's involvement writing series novels for Star Wars, X-Files and Dune does not seem to have instilled good discipline.
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