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A review by windhover
A Voyage to Arcturus by David Lindsay
2.0
OK, this a philosophic allegory with a surface story of a science fiction-y travelogue. So far, so good. Unfortunately, either I didn't pay enough attention or the philosophy was buried too deep, but I didn't get a lot out of it philosophically. There is some stuff that is interesting but nothing that rocked my world.
Unfortunately, it's not really a fun story on its own merits: the protagonist is a horrible person, most of the other characters are worse, and everybody is pretty flat. The action often seems arbitrary or contrived. I can only presume it is generally serving some symbolic purpose that I couldn't be bothered to notice. Maybe I just wasn't in the mood.
On the other hand, it reminds me a lot of books I do love. It has the same wandering structure as George Macdonald's wonderfully disjointed adult fantasy novels Lilith and Phantastes. C. S. Lewis liked it and borrowed large elements of its plot for Out of the Silent Planet and Perelandra. I confirmed this with Wikipedia, but I was pretty sure before; the similarities are pretty obvious. It's distasteful, naive, but strangely mysterious protagonist reminded me strongly of Gene Wolfe's heroes, especially Severian from Book of the New Sun and Able from The Wizard Knight. Maybe I'll have to re-read this one sometime when I'm willing to spend the work to really parse out exactly what Lindsay is trying to say.
One last thing: This book has a lot to say about gender and love and power. If discussions of gender from the 1920's sound like something that might make you angry, maybe pass this one by.
Unfortunately, it's not really a fun story on its own merits: the protagonist is a horrible person, most of the other characters are worse, and everybody is pretty flat. The action often seems arbitrary or contrived. I can only presume it is generally serving some symbolic purpose that I couldn't be bothered to notice. Maybe I just wasn't in the mood.
On the other hand, it reminds me a lot of books I do love. It has the same wandering structure as George Macdonald's wonderfully disjointed adult fantasy novels Lilith and Phantastes. C. S. Lewis liked it and borrowed large elements of its plot for Out of the Silent Planet and Perelandra. I confirmed this with Wikipedia, but I was pretty sure before; the similarities are pretty obvious. It's distasteful, naive, but strangely mysterious protagonist reminded me strongly of Gene Wolfe's heroes, especially Severian from Book of the New Sun and Able from The Wizard Knight. Maybe I'll have to re-read this one sometime when I'm willing to spend the work to really parse out exactly what Lindsay is trying to say.
One last thing: This book has a lot to say about gender and love and power. If discussions of gender from the 1920's sound like something that might make you angry, maybe pass this one by.