A review by bobreturns
Anvil of Stars by Greg Bear
2.0
This is a hard book to review. So I'm going to go with the "good, bad and the ugly" system.
The Good:
Cracking science fiction elements. Interesting aliens (especially the "brothers"), awesome technology, cool big space object stuff. All great.
The Bad:
Religious bollocks. We have a hand picked crew going out on a mission into space. So why does someone always go mental and try to start an insane religion? Another science fiction trope which needs to die a fiery death.
And why, oh why, do Science Fiction authors insist on having their characters be children? It makes for melodramatic, incompetent, naive interpersonal nonsense. It's lazy, implausible, and crap to read. It would only have made sense in context if the book had followed up on the possibility that they were being manipulated by the benefactors to use as a destructive catspaw (sadly this is not the case, the book is not that clever). Now on the one hand, Greg Bear seems to indicate that they're technically young adults (~20?) but he continually has them act childlike, emphasising their innocence and naivety. They call themselves children, refer to the boys as "lost boys" and girls as "wendys", which makes it all the more creepy when...
The Ugly:
The sex scenes. Dire sex scenes are a science fiction trope. And it's a bad one. But it's a lot worse when the author describes all the characters as children and has them refer to it as "slicking". That's gross Greg Bear, and it's unecessary. The first third of the book is almost unreadable as a result. I don't care that they're "technically adults", I'm on to you Bear, you creep.
Oh also, a tonne of casual misogyny and implied sexual coercion. Yuck.
The Good:
Cracking science fiction elements. Interesting aliens (especially the "brothers"), awesome technology, cool big space object stuff. All great.
The Bad:
Religious bollocks. We have a hand picked crew going out on a mission into space. So why does someone always go mental and try to start an insane religion? Another science fiction trope which needs to die a fiery death.
And why, oh why, do Science Fiction authors insist on having their characters be children? It makes for melodramatic, incompetent, naive interpersonal nonsense. It's lazy, implausible, and crap to read. It would only have made sense in context if the book had followed up on the possibility that they were being manipulated by the benefactors to use as a destructive catspaw (sadly this is not the case, the book is not that clever). Now on the one hand, Greg Bear seems to indicate that they're technically young adults (~20?) but he continually has them act childlike, emphasising their innocence and naivety. They call themselves children, refer to the boys as "lost boys" and girls as "wendys", which makes it all the more creepy when...
The Ugly:
The sex scenes. Dire sex scenes are a science fiction trope. And it's a bad one. But it's a lot worse when the author describes all the characters as children and has them refer to it as "slicking". That's gross Greg Bear, and it's unecessary. The first third of the book is almost unreadable as a result. I don't care that they're "technically adults", I'm on to you Bear, you creep.
Oh also, a tonne of casual misogyny and implied sexual coercion. Yuck.