Sign in with Facebook
Loading...
Hearts, Hands And Voices
by
Ian McDonald
Amidst violent conflict, love can heal. Chepsenyt farmers, hunting wild trux to vitalize their breeding stock, find rebels from the cruel soldiers of the Emperor Across the River. Although rivals, Proclaimers and Confessors all hide the pair .. and suffer. Mathembe, separated from her family, struggles to survive as she travels across her troubled land.
Hardcover, 320 pages
Published
1992
by Gollancz
Friend Reviews
To see what your friends thought of this book,
please sign up.
This book is not yet featured on Listopia.
Add this book to your favorite list »
Community Reviews
(showing
1-30
of
182)
This is a more challenging book than I've been reading lately, and that's a pity because I now remember that reading challenging books is a much more satisfying experience.
The Broken Land is challenging in all the right ways. The prose is dense but beautifully packed with imagery, the sort of descriptions you read twice to fully understand and three times just because they're so moving.
McDonald has created a politically, culturally and ethically complex world. Wikipedia will tell you he writes...more
The Broken Land is challenging in all the right ways. The prose is dense but beautifully packed with imagery, the sort of descriptions you read twice to fully understand and three times just because they're so moving.
McDonald has created a politically, culturally and ethically complex world. Wikipedia will tell you he writes...more
"Grandfather was a tree. Father grew trux .. Mother could sing the double-helix song .. A house ran amok .. Split into its components" p1 " .. skittering thing like a walking umbrella .. alarmed the young organicals .. to the Proclaimer end of town" p2 scatter pieces of a puzzle. Words build a thorny barrier of odd spellings, names, and slow-emerging concepts. Exhausting.
Mathembe converses in Old Speech with her (determined after many pages) late grandfather's head, among others being absorbed...more
Mathembe converses in Old Speech with her (determined after many pages) late grandfather's head, among others being absorbed...more
I think I will always enjoy reading an Ian McDonald novel even when I am not entirely satisfied with it. McDonald renders a fabulous, seamless world in which is well-realized main character battles for survival. I imagine being a Palestinian must be very much like being a Confessor, and I imagine partition in the Indian subcontinent is a parallel to the partitioning of the Proclaimer and Confessor lands of The Broken Land. McDonald's desire to imagine a way for humanity to find peace is the argu...more
The Land is the last province of a dying Empire. It has had advanced biotechnology for a thousand years, but this land that should be paradise is riven by the same old evils of religious and nationalist violence. This is the story of Mathembe Fileli and her family who are made refugees in the conflict and Mathembe's trials and tribulations as she loses one after another of her relatives and has to rely only on herself to get through them all and find her family again.
Like his first novel, Desola...more
Like his first novel, Desola...more
Hearts, Hands and Voices informs us on the stupidity of war, especially when fought over something trivial like different beliefs. We feel the plight of refugees, those who end up in the middle of fighting and devastation, getting separated from their lost ones without a choice or warning. It arouses our interest on how refugees cope, an always relevant issue. We feel sadness, anger and hope, hope that there may be an end to this horror as we are given a solution that fits in neatly with the bac...more
Surprisingly good, emotional, interesting, innovative.
Loved it. Second book I read by Ian McDonald.
The Broken Land by Ian Mcdonald (1992)
Jul 29, 2009
Craig Ruaux
rated it
2 of 5 stars
·
review of another edition
Recommends it for:
Only the hard core Ian McDonald fan
Shelves:
science-fiction
Ian McDonald is a bit of a stylist, and in some of his other work (the utterly awesome Desolation Road, for instance), the style and the substance gel together wonderfully.
In The Broken Land the style sometimes gets in the road, which is a pity, as there is clever substance here too. Overall, "it was OK", as my two star score would suggest, but I would not recommend it as a first entry into Ian McDonald's body of work.
In The Broken Land the style sometimes gets in the road, which is a pity, as there is clever substance here too. Overall, "it was OK", as my two star score would suggest, but I would not recommend it as a first entry into Ian McDonald's body of work.
Oh my God, what a terrible book.
It was like a slam poet tries making a sci-fi book.
It. Doesn't. Work.
It was like a slam poet tries making a sci-fi book.
It. Doesn't. Work.
There are no discussion topics on this book yet.
Be the first to start one »
Ian Neil McDonald (1960-) is a British science fiction novelist, living in Belfast. His themes include nanotechnology, postcyberpunk settings, and the impact of rapid social and technological change on non-Western societies.
McDonald was born in 1960, in Manchester, to a Scottish father and Irish mother, but moved to Belfast when he was five, and has lived there ever since. He therefore lived throu...more
More about Ian McDonald...
McDonald was born in 1960, in Manchester, to a Scottish father and Irish mother, but moved to Belfast when he was five, and has lived there ever since. He therefore lived throu...more
Share This Book
No trivia or quizzes yet. Add some now »
