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134th out of 1,496 books
—
11,995 voters
Biting the Sun
by
Tanith Lee
In a world dedicated to pleasure, one young rebel sets out on a forbidden quest--.
Published for the first time in a single volume, Tanith Lee's duet of novels set in a hedonistic Utopia are as riveting and revolutionary as they were when they first appeared two decades ago.
It's a perfect existence, a world in which no pleasure is off-limits, no risk is too dangerous, and n...more
Published for the first time in a single volume, Tanith Lee's duet of novels set in a hedonistic Utopia are as riveting and revolutionary as they were when they first appeared two decades ago.
It's a perfect existence, a world in which no pleasure is off-limits, no risk is too dangerous, and n...more
Paperback, 384 pages
Published
October 5th 1999
by Spectra
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In the far, far future, after most of the planet has been sucked dry, humanity lives in three colossal dome cities in the middle of the vast desert. There is no hunger, sickness or true death—suicide is a sport that has next-to-no consequences, since a new body of any shape, size or sex is always waiting. Youth now lasts a century, and the disaffected young people now form a separate class in society: the eternally dilettante Jang, encouraged or required to be silly, selfish and profligate, to c...more
Biting the Sun by Tanith Lee is a fantastic book. It was very strange at the start when everyone was committing suicide and then making a new body and contiuing on as if nothing happened. The world is set in the distant future and people live in domes called ether Four BOO, Four BEE, of Four BAA. the rest of the world is a desert. The main character (who you never know her name) is not content with the world that is made so teens (called Jang) can do whatever they want. She wants to move on to b...more
I'm not a great lover of science-fiction, and I otherwise wouldn't have read it, if it weren't a book club choice. The conclusion of the book, though a bit exasperating in its winding things too perfectly, resolves many of the issues the protagonist struggles with throughout the book--a place to settle, a purpose, regeneration. But of the cast of characters in her clique, this character would have been low on my list for following in the narrative. But in some ways, this was a strength: the char...more
All of the other books I've read by Tanith Lee have been so DARK, so it was refreshing to read something this light and fantastical (with dark bits scattered throughout, of course). This is actually a collection of two books, "Don't Bite the Sun" and "Drinking Sapphire Wine", but I'm glad that I read the collected edition, because I would have been extremely unsastisfied with the ending to the first book. I'm sure that was Lee's intention though; the entire story is about a character who can't f...more
Set in a far future (presumably on Earth, though this is never explicit), Biting the Sun features an unnamed main character living in Four BEE, one of the three great domed cities. Society has lost its purpose, and humanity's every need is catered to by Q-Rs, or Quasi-Robots, androids created out of machinery and human flesh to run the cities. Humans are separated into three distinct groups--children who attend "hypno-school," the Jang, and the Older People. They no longer truly die, but have th...more
Set in the world in which every desire is fulfilled we have a character who is miserable and can't understand why. S/he tries every suggested option available to someone of her social class but still cannot get satisfaction. S/he comes to the conclusion that her life has no substance unless s/he can create or work at something. Unfortunately such an impulse is completely unacceptable to everything and everyone, so s/he ends up becoming an individual. This is so fulfilling that it starts a minor...more
I wish I could give this a 3.5. I liked it but it wasn't 4 enough for me. I found the beginning of the book a little slow. Which is weird because the pace of the book is not that slow. But I felt that the narration of the main characters dragged out a little too much. I understand that the author was portraying the society of that time but I didn't think there needed to be that much.
It got a lot more interesting towards the middle of the first book and into the second book. It really showed how...more
It got a lot more interesting towards the middle of the first book and into the second book. It really showed how...more
I found the world interesting; a boring utopia. But I found the answer that the narrator gives to the situation to be unsatisfying. It ends with (view spoiler)...more
This book is actually two novels in one, as it's a volume composed of Don't Bite the Sun and Drinking Sapphire Wine. Both novels are set in the same universe and focus on many of the same characters, so it makes perfect sense for them to be put out in one volume, particularly as I feel the first book is in desperate need of a conclusion that Drinking Sapphire Wine provides for it.
The people of Four-BEE live in a world where both young and old, but especially the young, can experience any pleasur...more
The people of Four-BEE live in a world where both young and old, but especially the young, can experience any pleasur...more
This book has such a wonderful main character – though she has a desire for something greater in her life, for three-quarters of the book, she spends her time getting distracted from that by many shiny things – a new pet! someone new to fall in love with! a new body! archeology! volcanos! stone-carving! someone else new to fall in love with! theft! etc.! The author does such a good job humanizing her as a protagonist through that, because honestly, who really trusts a teenager who decides to ded...more
I thought this book was facinating. In this world one can have absolutely anything you want. You can change your body, change your gender, and commit suicide without dieing. You just come back in another body. Adolecence lasts for centuries and they are encouraged to take drugs, have sex (they get married first for a day or two before getting an annulment) and overindulge in every excess. There is no money and to "pay" for things you throw yourself into fits of gratitude that most people have to...more
I liked this one a lot, once I got used to it. It's one of those stories where you're sort of just dropped in, and there's all this new vocabulary and a culture that's completely other and seems nonsensical at first. And then you figure things out a bit as you keep reading.
I'm not sure how I would have felt about this if I had read it as it was originally released, in two separate books--Don't Bite the Sun and Drinking Sapphire Wine. They fit so seamlessly together, and I wonder if I would have...more
I'm not sure how I would have felt about this if I had read it as it was originally released, in two separate books--Don't Bite the Sun and Drinking Sapphire Wine. They fit so seamlessly together, and I wonder if I would have...more
Sometimes I would love to be able to exchange my body for a custom-made one. ^_^ That'd be awesome.
I first read Biting the Sun in middle school, probably 1999. At the time, I didn't grip all of it (some concepts were a bit ahead of where I was, social awareness-speaking), but that's changed in the intervening fourteen years. It was written in the mid 1970s, but a lot of its message--the characters allowing their lives to be thoroughly managed by their government, which is made up of technology; the extremes gone to for eternal happiness; the eternal life--is still appropriate. I absolutely lo...more
Tanith Lee is another one of those authors who's ability to shift tone and style from each book while maintaining a high degree of excellence amazes me. And yet another well done, the pacing, the words catch me up in the claustrophobic and frantic life of the narrator (who's name we never do seem to find out). She is stifling in Lee's futuristic world that should be bliss. With no way to express this or rebel the book is fraught with the tension and she feels until I too seemed to reverberate li...more
Fabulous! Probably the most original novel I've ever read.
Tanith Lee has this wonderful way of drawing her readers into her world. She makes references to events and places, as if the audience is familiar with them, and she never provides too much background information. (Because we already know, right?)
Her language as always is wonderful, (I've never read any author with such a flair for creative adjectives!) Descriptive but still very concise.
There is a glossary at the beginning of the novel,...more
Tanith Lee has this wonderful way of drawing her readers into her world. She makes references to events and places, as if the audience is familiar with them, and she never provides too much background information. (Because we already know, right?)
Her language as always is wonderful, (I've never read any author with such a flair for creative adjectives!) Descriptive but still very concise.
There is a glossary at the beginning of the novel,...more
A complicated and beautiful read. The book is set in a gorgeous world where you can be whatever gender you prefer, in a body that you design and can change at will, where dimensions are your play thing and it doesn't matter if you work or steal -- since there is no concept of crime. Even death is not permanent. Suicide serves only as a convenient loophole to change one's body faster.
The unnamed heroine is engaging as the bored 25 year old every-person. The writing is designed to put the reader...more
The unnamed heroine is engaging as the bored 25 year old every-person. The writing is designed to put the reader...more
This is on my top ten favorite books of all time, for sure! It tells the story of an adolescent entity who lives in a world where one is able to do anything one could want. It is told from the point of view of a single narrator, whose name we never learn, and whose gender and appearance change often. The world is run by robots and consists of one giant playground for the sentient beings.
The narrator, a being with a very active imagination and a slightly larger yearning for adventure than her (sh...more
The narrator, a being with a very active imagination and a slightly larger yearning for adventure than her (sh...more
This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it,
click here.
Biting the sun is a pairing of two books that are essentially the same story. This is sci-fi without any sort of omniscience -- we are given the details of the setting in pieces, from the point of view of the main character (who doesn't know much of the history herself). The premise is interesting and Lee does a very good job of keeping the story and premise consistent. Despite the fact that the story is well written, ultimately I felt it was rather predictable. I did find that the second book h...more
This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it,
click here.
This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it,
click here.
Upon reading the first chapter, I realized that I'd read this before, though I couldn't remember much about it -- that was probably close to about 20 years ago, when I devoured so many books in a week that the stories all bled together.
I kept reading though, and at first the Jang slang kind of bothered me. Memories of Clockwork Orange made me a little resistant to the use of made-up words where everyday words would have worked just fine. But Tanith Lee kept the number of strange words to a minim...more
I kept reading though, and at first the Jang slang kind of bothered me. Memories of Clockwork Orange made me a little resistant to the use of made-up words where everyday words would have worked just fine. But Tanith Lee kept the number of strange words to a minim...more
Aug 27, 2010
mlady_rebecca
rated it
1 of 5 stars
Recommended to mlady_rebecca by:
author Katrina Strauss
First off, I didn't finish this book. It was so bad that I stopped somewhere around chapter 3 or 4.
When I read that this included switching bodies and changing genders I was thinking more along the lines of Frederick Pohl's "Outnumbering the Dead" and how they changed who they are career wise almost on a whim. This isn't spoiled kids exploring who and what they can be, it's more like the part of the movie "Groundhog Day" when Bill Murray's character is trying to think of the myriad of ways he c...more
When I read that this included switching bodies and changing genders I was thinking more along the lines of Frederick Pohl's "Outnumbering the Dead" and how they changed who they are career wise almost on a whim. This isn't spoiled kids exploring who and what they can be, it's more like the part of the movie "Groundhog Day" when Bill Murray's character is trying to think of the myriad of ways he c...more
A funny, surprisingly endearing book that struggles with the most basic of human traits and necessities -- love, freedom, boredom, the freedom to fuck up a lot because you're bored. The fantastical setting paints a rich world for this small portrait of epic attempts to create a life worth living, and by the time you put it down, you'll be thinking in the slang and wishing that, despite all of its flaws, this was a world you could see for yourself. But hey -- maybe one day.
Biting the Sun takes place in a seemingly utopian society, where anyone can change their gender and/or appearance by committing "suicide," marriages can simply be for the afternoon, and constant pleasure is expected of you.
The lead character might not be to everyone's liking. She/He begins as somewhat spoiled, but then matures closer towards the end of the book. The plot isn't really heavy in this until the second book, so for some people the first book may be too slow paced.
The world was well d...more
The lead character might not be to everyone's liking. She/He begins as somewhat spoiled, but then matures closer towards the end of the book. The plot isn't really heavy in this until the second book, so for some people the first book may be too slow paced.
The world was well d...more
This book is truly one of my favorites. I'm not entirely sure why, except that I enjoy the not-quite-Utopian aspect of it. It isn't a Dystopian future either, in my opinion (though this could be argued).
The story and characters were well done, and interesting. The book makes you think about what it is to be happy (or human for that matter). I highly recommend this book to all mature readers.
The story and characters were well done, and interesting. The book makes you think about what it is to be happy (or human for that matter). I highly recommend this book to all mature readers.
Originally I was not sure what I was getting into when I read this book, however, I enjoyed the Unicorn Trilogy so much I decided to read this book. This story was written quite well and Tanith Lee's imagination shines through in this book. I could see myself in the world she created. Past this book to some friends who were amazed at Tanith's imagination as well.
It is one of my daughter's favorite books. I thought I would give it a shot. Not my cup of tea. Too far out fantasy for me. Too much description as well. Story was ok, just too much effort to get to it. Author had to include a glossary so you could understand the characters slang... I don't want to have to work that hard.
This combines two of Lee's novels that made the duo that is "Biting the Sun." The first, "Don't Bite the Sun" was alright, interesting and definitely different, though not something that I particularly was a fan of. But the second book, "Drinking Sapphire Wine," was much more enjoyable. Definitely a coming of age story with some great plot twists and a fabulous story. After finishing this book, I am definitely glad that I read it.
Here's an excerpt that I liked where the narrator describes her fi...more
Here's an excerpt that I liked where the narrator describes her fi...more
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Tanith Lee is a British writer of science fiction, horror, and fantasy. She is the author of 77 novels, 14 collections, and almost 300 short stories. She has also written four radio plays broadcast by the BBC and two scripts for the UK, science fiction, cult television series "Blake's 7."
Before becoming a full time writer, Lee worked as a file clerk, an assistant librarian, a shop assistant, and a...more
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Before becoming a full time writer, Lee worked as a file clerk, an assistant librarian, a shop assistant, and a...more
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Nov 19, 2012 11:19am