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Title: Slow River by Nicola Griffith ISBN: 0-345-39537-9 Publisher: Ballantine Books Pub. Date: 01 August, 1996 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $13.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 4 (32 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: A science fiction masterpiece.
Comment: When I started reading Slow River I wasn't quite prepared to what I would find. My thoughts, at the moment, having previously read Griffith's Ammonite, were that it would be a good book, though far from great. To my fortunate surprise, the book is one of the best sci-fi works that I've ever read. Unlike the river in the title, it flows light speed fast, and departs from most of the sci-fi that is currently being done, in an extremely positive way. Griffith worries more about the people than the technology itself, even though the technology is fleshed out in sufficiently rich details, and ends up providing us with a beautiful insight on how feels, and how people go through, the process of being born again. Awesome.
Rating: 5
Summary: exceptional reading
Comment: Not normally a science fiction reader I felt compelled to give this book a shot after reading Nicola's book The Blue Place. Slow River is a very well written book that tells an incredible story. I felt that Lore had become a part of me and I could not put the book down. The descriptions of the places and people she met in her life made me feel as if I were there. I would highly recommend this book. I will continue to purchase books written by Nicola Griffith and currently have her books Ammonite and Stay in my to read pile.
Rating: 5
Summary: Don't let the "subgenre" label fool you
Comment: In SF, unlike its sister genre fantasy, there has been a history of dealing with issues of homosexuality in an unflinching, honest fashion (instead of fantasy's fey princes and twisted perverts) and while those issues have not really grasped mainstream SF, it's always been there, blatantly stated in Samuel Delany writings and others, lurking in Disch, in Ballard, from the sixties and seventies onward, incorporating sexuality matter of factly, almost explicitly so. There have been subgenres, of course, as there are in any major genre, but for the most part it's not really shocking or scandalous to see homosexuality represented in SF. And so awarding the Nebula to this novel both gladdens and confuses me. Gladdens, because it is a fine, tightly constructed novel, exploring its characters with a depth normally reserved for such masters as Margaret Atwood (when it comes to charactization and studies, at least). Confuses, because there is nothing really explicitly "groundbreaking" about it. The plot, while entertaining and thought provoking, breaks no real new ground, either by busting down nonexistent barriers regarding homosexuality in SF or providing a mindwarping new way of looking at the artiface of Story. The story itself, on the surface, is simple. Lore, a children born into a ridiculously wealthy family is kidnapped and tormented. Eventually she escapes and instead of going back to her family tries to live out among society, where she meets master scammer Scanner, among other people. Eventually she tries to form her own identity, working as the lowest employee on the type of thing her own family patented. The novel's structure is interesting, in that it jumps between Lore's childhood and her tightly sketched family (even the briefly glimpsed ones feel real, and even small moments resonate), then to her life with Scanner and then to the present day where she finally finishes the journey of finding herself. The fact that Lore is a lesbian is treated astonishingly well, there is no cliched "coming out" moment, she begins the story as a lesbian and that is just the way things are. People turned off by homosexuality probably should avoid this book, while I didn't find the scenes too explicit (certainly nowhere near pornographic, as some reviewers have tried to claim) and frankly they don't take up too many scenes in the novel itself, for some people, one scene may be one scene too many. And those people are entitled to their opinions and shouldn't read things that make them unhappy or uncomfortable. And this is a novel that deals with unpleasant things, and faces them boldly and obliquely, much like we do in real life. Slow River is a good book, perhaps even a great book. Does it deserve to stand up with past Nebula winners such as Dune or Ender's Game or A Time of Changes (and before you think that I'm biased toward SF written by white males, I thoroughly enjoyed Russ' The Female Man, so there) . . . I don't think so, but I also don't know what the competition was that year. It doesn't really matter. If the giant block letters proclaiming it to be a "Nebula Award Winner!" capture your attention enough to entice you to read the book, then that's all well and good. For in the end it's a fine example of SF doing what it does best, reflecting our lives and taking real people and real emotions and putting them in a fantastic setting, so while the background may be unfamiliar, the rest isn't.
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Title: Ammonite by Nicola Griffith ISBN: 0345452380 Publisher: Del Rey Books Pub. Date: 30 April, 2002 List Price(USD): $14.00 |
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Title: The Blue Place by Nicola Griffith ISBN: 0380790882 Publisher: Perennial Pub. Date: 08 June, 1999 List Price(USD): $13.00 |
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Title: Stay: A Novel (Vintage Crime/Black Lizaed) by Nicola Griffith ISBN: 140003230X Publisher: Vintage Books USA Pub. Date: 10 June, 2003 List Price(USD): $12.95 |
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Title: An Inexpressible State of Grace by Cameron Abbott ISBN: 1560234695 Publisher: Alice Street Editions/Harrington Park Press Pub. Date: 01 January, 2004 List Price(USD): $17.95 |
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Title: The Terminal Experiment by Robert J. Sawyer ISBN: 0061053104 Publisher: Eos Pub. Date: 01 May, 1995 List Price(USD): $6.99 |
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