Years after Ed Chianese’s fateful trip into the Kefahuchi Tract, the tract has begun to expand and change in ways we never could have predict...
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Jul 02, 2008
Jason
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(My review of this book is much longer than Goodreads' word-count limitations. Find the entire essay at the Chicago Center for Literature and Photography [cclapcenter.com].)
Regular readers know that I've been in a bit of a special situation for the last month, in that by random luck I was able to track down at my local library five of the <strike>ten</strike> twelve(!) science-fiction books nominated this year for either the Philip K Dick Award or the Hugo Award; added to More...
Regular readers know that I've been in a bit of a special situation for the last month, in that by random luck I was able to track down at my local library five of the <strike>ten</strike> twelve(!) science-fiction books nominated this year for either the Philip K Dick Award or the Hugo Award; added to More...
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Apr 11, 2009
Adam
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The whole debate, which is mostly due to the 20th century publishing industries insidious pollution of our intellectual market, of whether or not Sci-Fi is trash or literature is best summed up by the Ted Sturgeon quote, “Yes 95% of it is trash, but 95% of everything is trash.” But what dyed in the wool science fiction books of recent times match masterpieces of contemporary literature for tone, symbolism, meaning, intelligence, and ferocity? On this short shelf I would place Gene Wolfe’s Fifth
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Jan 02, 2012
Morgan
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I read this for three reasons:
1. I figured it would be best to read it after Light, seeing as they occupy the same universe;
2. To move it from the traveling library into the Massachusetts semi-permanent library; and
3. So that I could have three books in a row on my Read shelf with cats on the cover.
The third reason was actually the deciding point, and if I knew where it was I'd consider rereading The Schrödinger's Cat Trilogy for a try at four books featuri More...
1. I figured it would be best to read it after Light, seeing as they occupy the same universe;
2. To move it from the traveling library into the Massachusetts semi-permanent library; and
3. So that I could have three books in a row on my Read shelf with cats on the cover.
The third reason was actually the deciding point, and if I knew where it was I'd consider rereading The Schrödinger's Cat Trilogy for a try at four books featuri More...
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Apr 25, 2011
Nick
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Since this book is a sequel to Light, one of my favorite novels, I wanted to love it. Sadly, I only really like it. It lacks the strong plot coherence of Light; very often while reading one Harrison's brilliant lines I was like "That's cool, that's cool, but why here and now? Why is he focusing on THIS?"
There's really something to be said for a more discursive style of novel writing, especially in genres like space opera that have historically been given over to plot at the More...
There's really something to be said for a more discursive style of novel writing, especially in genres like space opera that have historically been given over to plot at the More...
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Nov 17, 2010
Yupa
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"carbone"...
Notevoli passi indietro rispetto al precedente Luce dell'universo.
Harrison sembra essersi un po' perso, e in Nova Swing si limita a incollare in maniera ondivaga e confusa varie scene senza andare a parare quasi da nessuna parte, senza riuscire a riprodurre l'intensità emotiva e poetica del romanzo precedente.
Ne risulta un manierismo molto molto scialbo.
Soprattutto, l'ambientazione comune con Luce dell'universo è alquanto pretestuosa: tolti alc More...
Notevoli passi indietro rispetto al precedente Luce dell'universo.
Harrison sembra essersi un po' perso, e in Nova Swing si limita a incollare in maniera ondivaga e confusa varie scene senza andare a parare quasi da nessuna parte, senza riuscire a riprodurre l'intensità emotiva e poetica del romanzo precedente.
Ne risulta un manierismo molto molto scialbo.
Soprattutto, l'ambientazione comune con Luce dell'universo è alquanto pretestuosa: tolti alc More...
Oct 03, 2009
Belarius
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Nova Swing is a semi-sequel to Light, set in the same universe. It is, succinctly, also a much better book than its predecessor.
Like Light, the story takes place in a bitterly dark far future, full of ambiguous realities, systemic criminality, and fleshly urges. As an aside, Nova Swing will be much more difficult to understand without having read Light first. Also like the previous volume, Nova Swing is an ensemble piece: It knits together well over a dozen characters, many of who More...
Like Light, the story takes place in a bitterly dark far future, full of ambiguous realities, systemic criminality, and fleshly urges. As an aside, Nova Swing will be much more difficult to understand without having read Light first. Also like the previous volume, Nova Swing is an ensemble piece: It knits together well over a dozen characters, many of who More...
Jul 21, 2011
David
rated it: 
Harrison is one of my favourite authors and this is his sequel to the Science Fiction novel Light. Here he fuses Science Fiction with Noir, all wrapped in his usual surreal poetic style. Pieces of the Kefahuchi Tract have fallen to earth, creating a strange, dangerous zone of shifting landscapes within the city. Vic Seratonin, a 'travel agent' will, for a price, take people into the zone. But things have started escaping too. New artefacts bringing with them the dangerous daughter code that lead
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Dec 16, 2009
Bob
rated it:
I found this in parts compelling and baffling. It's a kind of SF noir that picks up on the same universe delineated in Light, one in which unimaginably old and intelligent civilisations have messed with the quantum fabric of the universe and caused uncontrollable ruptures in space-time. Impacted on this are various members of a decadent and scattered human race, scratching out a living by stealing unimaginable arefacts from the discontinuity.
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Jan 25, 2011
Viridian5
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I don't know how this won the Arthur C. Clark Award and the Phillip K. Dick Award and was a finalist for the John W. Campbell Award. I really don't. The narrative jumps around without much warning, to the point where you're not sure what character's being talked about or whether it's the past, present, or future. It uses a terse pseudo noir narration that makes all that worse by cutting out words that would help the reader figure that kind of thing out. Characters react to things in ways that of
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Sep 29, 2009
Ben
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This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers.
To view it, click here
Jan 24, 2010
Amanda
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started this last night. I love it already. The book that comes before this one, 'Light', which Neil Gaiman said was- "easily my favourite SF novel in the last decade, maybe longer" was excellent with a kinda Noir aspect to it. Nova Swing has an even more deliberate Noiry Pulp feel, yet is still deeply thoughtful and literary. Beautiful!
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Feb 05, 2009
Critics greeted M. John Harrison's Light (2002), which won the James Tiptree Jr. Award, as a revelationa science fiction novel that drew upon much of the best of the genre but also transcended it. Reactions to this sort-of sequel were not quite as enthusiastic across the board, but even the negative reviews showed admiration for Harrison's stellar wit and style. The consensus is that Harrison has traveled not only to the outer limits of space and time but also to the outer bounds of the novel
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Mar 24, 2009
Kristin
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I'm not sure how to describe or review this book and do it justice.
Set in the same timeline as Light, Nova Swing follows an assortment of characters who have come to settle in Saudade (still not sure if this is the planet or the city or the Event Site...): Fat Antoyne and Liv Hula used to fly spaceships, Edith and Emil used to be part of a traveling show, Irene the Mona came from farther up the tract. Now they live in on a backwater world where they can hop in a tank and be whoever More...
Set in the same timeline as Light, Nova Swing follows an assortment of characters who have come to settle in Saudade (still not sure if this is the planet or the city or the Event Site...): Fat Antoyne and Liv Hula used to fly spaceships, Edith and Emil used to be part of a traveling show, Irene the Mona came from farther up the tract. Now they live in on a backwater world where they can hop in a tank and be whoever More...
Apr 10, 2011
Rafal
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Jako ogólnikowe podsumowanie powieści "Nova Swing" może posłużyć tytuł jej siódmego rozdziału, mianowicie "Kosmos w stylu noir". Jest to oczywiście punkt wyjścia dla tej bogatej w metafory, poetyckiej i - jak to u Harrisona - skomplikowanej, acz nie tak trudnej w odbiorze, jak wcześniejsze "Viriconium", powieści science - fiction.
Świeżo po przeczytaniu ciężko o jednoznaczne interpretacje i sadzę, że trzeba dać sobie trochę czasu, aby pozwolić sobie na konk More...
Świeżo po przeczytaniu ciężko o jednoznaczne interpretacje i sadzę, że trzeba dać sobie trochę czasu, aby pozwolić sobie na konk More...
Oct 28, 2009
Demetria
rated it:
Perhaps I should preface this review by saying that I do not own many science fiction books. In fact, save for this book and maybe "Time Traveler's Wife" if you want to get technical, all of the sci-fi books in my personal library are by Octavia Butler. She was an awesome writer and her work sets a very high bar for me in terms of sci-fi writing.
All of that said, I was not exactly wowed by M. John Harrison's "Nova Swing," but it is an interesting read. It's a noir More...
All of that said, I was not exactly wowed by M. John Harrison's "Nova Swing," but it is an interesting read. It's a noir More...
Jul 21, 2010
Jaime
rated it:
I had no idea M. John Harrison had written a sequel/follow-on to Light, which is one of my all-time favorite sci-fi novels.
If you haven't read Light, this book doesn't forgive you for not understanding the Ketahuchi Tract is, or K-ships, or Uncle Zip. On top of that, if you don't like detective stories, read something else -- Nova Swing introduces the main cast of characters as they sit in a run-down bar in ... well.
If you don't like sci-fi, don't read this book. And if you d More...
If you haven't read Light, this book doesn't forgive you for not understanding the Ketahuchi Tract is, or K-ships, or Uncle Zip. On top of that, if you don't like detective stories, read something else -- Nova Swing introduces the main cast of characters as they sit in a run-down bar in ... well.
If you don't like sci-fi, don't read this book. And if you d More...
Jun 02, 2009
Don
rated it:
A beautiful, lyrical SF noir tale of lost souls living on the fringes of the stangest of existences. A fragment of the Kefahuchi Tract falls on the planet Saudade. Vic Serotonin earns a precarious living taking tourists into the event site it has created for tours of the shifting, surreal landscapes within. But new types of sicknesses are to be fund there, leaking out to infect Serotonin and his associates. So, in a future where citizens are free to roam the vast realm of space known as The B
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Jan 03, 2012
Mike
rated it:
I agree with Viridian5 completely, his review this book says exactly what I feel. I left unsatisfied, I didn't like any of the characters. I won't read anything else by this author. He reminds me of watching little league tryouts after seeing the pros play, it made me realize just how good William Gibson is, and look forward to his next book.
Yahoo... I just saw that Gibson has a new book out,
Distrust That Particular Flavor
Goodreads:
http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/11890... More...
Yahoo... I just saw that Gibson has a new book out,
Distrust That Particular Flavor
Goodreads:
http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/11890... More...
Jan 17, 2012
Chris
rated it:
I love the science fiction of M. John Harrison, which he writes in burnished steel, elegantly and smoothly detailing heartbreak and loss, perversion and excess, etching rapid, brutal violence with the same casual ease he tosses off bar-stool patter between mean-street acquaintances and gene-spliced miscreants. I have yet to come across another writer who can so vividly—yet matter-of-factly—describe the interplay between multidimensional mathematics and quantum exoticness in ultra-technology, whi
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Jul 05, 2009
Terence
rated it:
Nova Swing is not quite as "metaphysical" as its predecessor Light but it still carries Harrison's typical mood: Reality is a construct, constantly changing as its participants think and act. As some reviews here have complained there's no story/plot to speak of. It's a "day in the life" of a collection of people living along a particularly active warp in mundane reality - the Saudade Event Site. You don't have to have read Light to take an interest in the various characters
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Dec 20, 2007
Adam
rated it:
The whole debate, which is mostly due to the 20th century publishing industries insidious pollution of our intellectual market, of whether or not SciFi is trash or literature is best summed up by the Ted Sturgeon quote, “Yes 95% of it is trash, but 95% of everything is trash.” But what dyed in the wool science fiction books of recent times match masterpieces of contemporary literature for tone, symbolism, meaning, intelligence, and ferocity? On this short shelf I would place Gene Wolfe’s Fifth H
More...
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Oct 22, 2009
Stargrave
rated it:
I thought this was an interesting story and setting that left a lot to the reader's imagination. I highlighted a bit about lanterns or pictures of lanterns that seemed to particularly show the levels of what is or what represents something that is. It was well-written and avoided being too hip or stylish and had a lot to incite the imagination.
I read without having read Light and it was entirely accessible as such, though maybe reading a plot summary of Light might help some people
I read without having read Light and it was entirely accessible as such, though maybe reading a plot summary of Light might help some people
Sep 05, 2009
Andreas
rated it:
I'm so glad I like M. John Harrison, because that's how I got to finally read Nova Swing, which follows one of my all time faves, Light by same author. Sweet juicy prose, and a killer setpiece in the middle that ranks as one of the best action sequences I've ever read, plus I think it's supercool that an area of the city that has weird shit going on and nobody really understands is called an "event". Fantabulous! Please write another speculative fiction novel soon Mr. Harrison.
Jul 30, 2011
There's vivid, trippy descriptions in this, one of which describes a band in a night club. The band tries out a new song and can find it's groove, but slowly begins a standard, and subtly the groove start to emerge. This book is like that, I too like the first one, this one took me awhile to get into it's groove...but when I did, I feel in love with it.
It Sci-Fi noir, it is a little hard to follow, but it's worth getting into it's rythme.
It Sci-Fi noir, it is a little hard to follow, but it's worth getting into it's rythme.
Aug 27, 2009
Chris
rated it:
Nova Swing was an interesting follow up to Light. The book eschewed some of the surrealism and technical stuff that made Light so fascinating to read. It was more of a Detective Noir sort of book. There were definitely some cool sci-fi elements to it, like the fighters that used bodies that were created in a lab, and had to drag themselves back to get fixed up after each bloody match (the imagery of them sporting huge erections while fighting was a pretty interesting commentary on the eroticism
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Apr 27, 2010
Natasha
rated it:
Not much of a plot. There are little plots about each character and each character gets neatly tucked away by the end. It leaves with a what the fuck? He's getting rid of the character like that? I was also super confused about what the tract actually was. I guess reading the first book would have helped, but even still, there was no explanation. And the main driving point of the story is never explained and you are left with tons of questions.
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Feb 22, 2009
Smoothw
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Another fascinating M. John Harrison novel. This time i felt like I was reading a cross between a forgotten gem of a 40's noir, love and betrayal and disillusionment set in a seedy pub, and of course Stalker by Tarkovsky. Not his best, maybe because it did feel a bit obviously like a mashup, maybe because the confined setting, maybe because I'm a little tired of his tired characters, but still very good.
Mar 11, 2009
Frank
rated it:
Not a direct sequel to Light, but another story in the same universe, taking place later, the book is full of the dirty, real characters and beautiful poetry I have come to expect from Harrison's writing. Great ending, very enjoyable sci-fi, in a crafted and poetic kind of way, not a space-opera kind of way. I look forward to anything new he is going to write.
Aug 10, 2011
Ryan
rated it:
Coincidence that I read this after China Mieville and Quantum Thief ... because this seems to be a powerful influence on them. Major difference being it's really, really good. I'm grabbing Light and Viriconium by Harrison and if they're of the same quality, he may just be my favorite current sci-fi writer. Heavy on the "writer". I found it laughable that Embassytown and Quantum Thief were praised for the quality of their prose; they were lumpy, awkward, uninvolving. The writing in Nova
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Jun 25, 2009
Erinn
rated it:
I did not like this book. It was an audible book. I normally like strange science fiction books but this just made no sense.
It was a slow buildup of story and then one thing happened and the rest of the book was just what happened to the characters afterwards. Not a very good story line.
It was a slow buildup of story and then one thing happened and the rest of the book was just what happened to the characters afterwards. Not a very good story line.
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