Rebel Sutra [Mass Market Paperback]

This sophisticatedly twisted melange of "Ender's Game" and "Fahrenheit 451" is passionately, exhaustively well-written. Shariann Lewitt has adopted an interesting internal structure - the book is told in two halves from two characters' perspectives. Della's story is presented first, in the form of a memoir. It begins at the finale - the revolution - and goes on essentially backwards through Della's time with the Tinkers (Suu-Suu's mysterious band of banished off-worlders) and her brief tryst with Arsen - the young revolutionary from Babelion - Anselm's father. Anselm's story is told in a more conventional fashion - it begins with his forced flight from the treacherous Mountain (the secret of his mixed-blood parentage is anathema to the Changed) and continues on through his time with Babelion's meandering, petty revolutionaries, his tutelage under the Hindu priests, and his final confrontation with his fate. Indeed, Anselm's story is a search for meaning and self-discovery, a quest for identity, a struggle against his own dehumanization and needless symbolism, his battle against those who would have (knowingly or not) made him a mundane pawn of the old . Ultimately, his is a search for truth.

The novel deftly interconnects its parts by having all stories told by knowing first-person narrators in the past tense - there are numerous internal redundancies, parallels, cases of deja vu, and so on. Lewitt interestingly infuses her tale with Hindu mythology and philosophy - and makes it perfectly accessible to the reader. Her voice as a writer has a tasteful twang of femininity - similar to LeGuin's but less labyrinthine. At times, "Rebel Sutra" had me literally spellbound in its clutches.

It does have several flaws, most obvious of them being the numerous allusions to Anselm's apparent homosexuality - which is fine in itself but doesn't quite fit with the story (did she retain this tendency from her participation in "Bending the Landscape", or vice versa?). Several characters are made deliberately flat only so they can add artificial depth to Anselm's dramatic struggle. The author enjoys making allusions to revelations given further on in the book - whcih frequently makes sense within the context of the story, though I hate being baited by lines such as "...but the actual reason for it being the way it is we didn't learn until much later."

Nonetheless, this is a powerful, excellently written work of fiction. Sorry to say it - but this is a "must-read."

Against this background Lewitt places the story of Della, apparent member of the Changed who becomes infatuated with one of the 'lesser' humans, Arsen, and bears a child by him, Anselm. Arsen becomes the leader of an abortive revolt against the Changed, protesting the human's treatment by the Changed and their abysmal living conditions. When Arsen is executed for his part in the revolt, the stage is set for Della and her son to continue the fight, each in their own way.

During the course of their struggles, each of them journeys down a road of self-discovery, a slowly dawning awareness of the Empire and the role of Maya and the genetically enhanced humans in the larger picture. It is this journey that is main attraction of this book, leading Lewitt's characters and the reader into the realms of philosophical reality, personal identity, the influence of environment versus heredity, fate against free will, prejudice, and the influence of other's expectations on an individual's choice of actions. Della and Anselm are both well drawn believable people, even if neither is the paragon of virtue. However, most of the other characters are flat stick-figures, merely there as props for the action.

The story construction is somewhat odd, starting from Della's memoirs at the end of the revolution, changing in the middle to Anselm's point of view as the revolution is just beginning. This construction only partially works, as at times it allows the good use of foreshadowing, at others it spoils the suspense, leaving a certain level of confusion in its wake and leading to an odd, not-quite-there atmosphere.

The prose style is adequate, but at times more detailed descriptions of places and everyday happenings would have been helpful. I found myself floundering a couple of times trying to imagine a particular scene with too few signposts to direct me. The apparently complex structure of the Changed's society is merely hinted at, not fleshed out in great detail, so Della's position within and actions to control that society remain somewhat ambiguous and nebulous.

A very ambitious work, with potentially tremendous thematic concepts and ideas, enough for three books of this length, but not quite executed well enough to make the story vibrant and demanding.