5.0 out of 5 stars
Brilliant and truly original creation of a remote future, 22 Dec 1999
This review is from: Memory Seed (Paperback)
This is an excellent first novel.
I'm not someone who would normally enthuse over a book, but Palmer has created a vivid vision of a future city, very different from our own society. His style and ideas are original and impressive, and his tale is told with an imaginative writing style.
The Setting:
The City is the last remaining outpost of "civilisation", on a world completely over-run with rampant vegetation.
Have you ever looked at a ruined building - how quickly nature takes it over, breaking down concrete with it roots and branches, eating walls with moss, bringing down roofs with ivy? This book turns this into a swift and horrific scenario.
The city is slowly being choked to death by the products of Mankind's tampering with genetics. Greenery is becoming a deadly plague, squeezing humans into ever smaller parts of the city.
As the book progresses, I truly felt the panic of the population, the steady descent into decay, anarchy and death, as a civilisation is silently strangled to death by creeping vines (though so much more real and sinister than Day of the Triffids!).
Read together with "Glass" - the partner rather than sequel to this novel - each book shows a different version of the same city (or is it...), separated in time and space.
This book is a must for anyone interested in new and original modern science fiction.
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5.0 out of 5 stars
Amasing !! If Palmer keeps up, he'll be a SF Guru for sure, 30 Aug 1999
By A Customer
This review is from: Memory Seed (Paperback)
This is one of the best SF books I've ever read! Scenario: An amasing world, where plants have taken a hard approuch on humans using a very soft scheme (time and patience), biocybernetics beeing the natural machine-human interface and the fate of the last human city is near. The good part about this book are the caracteres and the way they evolve, 'cause the plot is a bit "classical", althought very well adapted. Bits of "D&D" action-like around some chapters keep us tangled and excited. For a first novell, I'd say we're facing a very promissing future. I'm sure if this book had a diferent label (Orbit isn't a well known brand) and a bit more marketing effort, this would be a bestseller and would probably win some commendation from the international critics. Read it and enjoy like I did. Hope Palmer does it again. :-)
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1.0 out of 5 stars
Derivitive and slightly boring, 14 Oct 2010
This review is from: Memory Seed (Paperback)
I got to page 40, I could be wrong but it just didn't grab me.
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