Book Review: Carnival by Elizabeth Bear
Aug. 19th, 2015 03:41 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
juushikaTitle: Carnival
Author: Elizabeth Bear
Published: New York: Spectra, 2014 (2006)
Rating: 3 of 5
Page Count: 392
Total Page Count: 165,560
Text Number: 484
Read Because: fan of the author, ebook borrowed from the Multnomah County Library
Review: Kusanagi-Jones and Katherinessen come to New Amazonia on a complex ambassadorial/espionage mission, further fraught by their troubled personal history and the sights they have set on treason. Carnival shoves the reader into the middle of a vast world, focusing equally on high-concept worldbuilding and intricate interpersonal relationships. But not enough differentiates the protagonists: similar names, headhopping, and identical POVs, focus on microexpressions, and ulterior motives mean that it wasn't until the two-thirds mark that I could begin to tell them apart. (This may not be a problem for readers who are better with names.) But the sci-fi is great, creative, far-reaching, with the philosophical and social bent—which, always, ties into the lives of the characters—that makes Bear's work resonate for me. Carnival feels like a first novel, suffused with the promise of things to come but with an abundance of the author's weaknesses and common tropes. I don't particularly recommend it, especially as a starting place for Bear, but I liked it.
Author: Elizabeth Bear
Published: New York: Spectra, 2014 (2006)
Rating: 3 of 5
Page Count: 392
Total Page Count: 165,560
Text Number: 484
Read Because: fan of the author, ebook borrowed from the Multnomah County Library
Review: Kusanagi-Jones and Katherinessen come to New Amazonia on a complex ambassadorial/espionage mission, further fraught by their troubled personal history and the sights they have set on treason. Carnival shoves the reader into the middle of a vast world, focusing equally on high-concept worldbuilding and intricate interpersonal relationships. But not enough differentiates the protagonists: similar names, headhopping, and identical POVs, focus on microexpressions, and ulterior motives mean that it wasn't until the two-thirds mark that I could begin to tell them apart. (This may not be a problem for readers who are better with names.) But the sci-fi is great, creative, far-reaching, with the philosophical and social bent—which, always, ties into the lives of the characters—that makes Bear's work resonate for me. Carnival feels like a first novel, suffused with the promise of things to come but with an abundance of the author's weaknesses and common tropes. I don't particularly recommend it, especially as a starting place for Bear, but I liked it.
