Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Strong Ideas Overshadow Weak Execution, 14 Aug 2000
By A Customer
One of the most memorably tongue-in-cheek creations of Douglas Adams was a madness booth--designed to make its victims insane, simply and effectively, by displaying them "to-scale" beside the rest of the cosmos.In many ways, it's the same trick Bear's best novels play on a reader's mind, forever putting it in contexts too vast to afford the thing any significance at all: "Queen of Angels" concerns a therapist who literally delves into his patients' subconscious, while "Eon" and its sequel plunge characters into an infinite number of alternate universes. "Blood Music" represents yet another disturbing tour of an alarming theoretical Bearscape--that of an earth whose population has, after a singular biological catastrophe, come to share the same vaguely protoplasmic, continent-sized body. It could do with a sense of tone, a touch of poetic irony, a memorable character or two, and perhaps even a dollop of Barthelmian humor, but the central idea itself is so unquestionably remarkable that the novel's trashy-ness is, for once, actually overwhelmed by its ambition. Like it or not, you will be thinking about "Blood Music" long after you put it down. And you should definitely pick it up.
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14 of 16 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Eerie., 12 Jun 2003
With an apocalyptic vision at its heart, Blood Music is escapist reading with high drama, though its excitement has been somewhat muted by time and the magnitude of the real events which have transpired since its publication in 1985. Here a genetic experiment goes awry, and the whole world is endangered. .Though only seventeen years have passed since its publication, the book feels old--eerily so. Gene therapy is now a reality. The Soviet Union, which here rattles its nuclear sabers in an effort to dominate the world, seems like a very old enemy. Strangely, a number of particularly vivid scenes here take place in a ravaged World Trade Center, images so similar to the reality of 9/11 that I found them painful to stumble upon in a piece of light fiction. Suzy McKenzie, a lonely survivor in New York, sets up home in the World Trade Center lobby, and Bear’s descriptions of her explorations through the desolate upper floors and of the collapse of one of the towers conjured up nightmarish (real) images. Bear’s narrative is fast-paced and suspenseful. With an acute sensibility and eye for detail, Bear creates stark images. His characterizations of Vergil and Suzy are often touching, however, and the dialogue between Vergil and his mother will bring smiles to the faces of many parents. Structurally, the novel is very loose, with characters who come and go, and ultimately the novel feels almost as chaotic as Bear’s vision of devastation. Bear’s immense potential, obvious here, finds its true fulfillment in his later, more carefully controlled, novels. Mary Whipple
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9 of 11 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Good book, taking SF in new directions, 31 Dec 2003
I found this book very interesting. SF is normally concerned with the outside i.e. space or the inside of your mind. This goes into the area of microbiology. Quite an original and bold step for an author to take.
It is quite a science based book, but that does not make the book less enjoyable, in fact the opposite. It keeps you turning the pages until the end.
I found the style very simiar to JG Ballard,But with extra science, if that helps.
A very modern and contemporary novel. In these days of cults trying to clone humans, the book seems to be a prediction of the future ...
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