|
5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Extra Spooky With Sauce, 1 Jul 2004
By A Customer
I don't usually read much SF but was intruiged to buy this novel after seeing a billboard advert for it in a railway station of all places. The hype seduced me. 'Fiercely intelligent...' 'Needle-sharp...' 'Quite, quite brilliant...' Feeling not a little excited I bought the book. (The iconic lipstick-cum-catridge case sealed any last doubts on purchasing it.) I didn't like it when the writer described the science in the book as 'pure fudge' in the Acknowledgements section at the beginning, seemed a bit of a disclaimer, but I started to read with high expectations intact. The first two pages were quite deliberately shocking and then I was into the story. It is clever, disturbing, intruiging, challenging, funny, moving, and quite original. 'Extra spooky with sauce', as one of the chapter headings put it. I think you will either love Tricia Sullivan's style or junk it. But I was reminded of the magic that can be displayed when a writer taps into something which is happening right now - mall culture, teenage agression, fashion, biotechnology, socio-political exploitations of many devious kinds, etc - and twists it into an intelligent, perceptive thriller. For this is a thriller. Two story-lines building momentum.
I left the book feeling that - for once - I had not been cheated by any hype. That I had been enriched by the book. I have said little about the actual content of the novel because I really think that readers should be able to experience the story 'blank', with out any 'spoilers'. An excellent SF novel.
|
by Ursula Le Guin
by Tricia Sullivan
by Neal Stephenson
by Hanif Kureishi
by James Tiptree
With an Amazon.co.uk Gift Certificate, you can get them what they want (even if you don't know what that is). 
Make sure you always get what you want with an Amazon.co.uk 
Amazon Home