From the Bookshelf of Building a SciFi/Fantasy Library…
Find A Copy At
Group Discussions About This Book
No group discussions for this book yet.
What Members Thought
6.0 stars. On my list of "All Time" favorites. An absolutely brilliant novel by one of the masters of science fiction. This book is as good as SF gets and ranks up their with Dune and Ender's Game among the best ever. Unlike those other two books, I do believe that this book is MUCH, MUCH better the second time around. The reason for this is that the story jumps around and the background for the story is reavealed slowly so can be a bit confusing at the outset. Therefore, my advice would be to r
...more
this was a challenging read but a fascinating one. Take a colony world which has been subjugated by its founders (who in the process have set themselves up as god of the ancient India cultures) undergoes the fires of rebellion where members of its first families start to break free from the totalitarian control and return science and invention and freewill to the people in the process.
The story is not completely linear and takes inspiration from indian culture (since many of the first people hav ...more
The story is not completely linear and takes inspiration from indian culture (since many of the first people hav ...more
Excellent and mystical book, laced with a good dose of Dune-like prophecy and intrigue. The writing is intense and poetic; it was written in the 60's and definitely has that 60's vibe to it, with mysticism, theology and a big nod to Western interest in Indian myth and religion.
There are two things that I would change if I ran the proverbial zoo. First, the book feels a bit truncated. Because it has a ton of secondary characters, it feels like it would have worked better as a big, fat 900 pager, ...more
There are two things that I would change if I ran the proverbial zoo. First, the book feels a bit truncated. Because it has a ton of secondary characters, it feels like it would have worked better as a big, fat 900 pager, ...more
Jun 06, 2011
Frank Taranto
rated it
it was ok
·
review of another edition
Shelves:
science-fiction,
fantasy
I had a hard time getting through this book. Part of it was my minimal knowledge of Hindi theology. A bigger part was not getting into any of the characters.
Talk about not judging a book by its cover...the front cover of this one says: "One of the five best SF novels ever written. - George R. R. Martin." There's further malarkey of the same tone on the back cover. I found I couldn't really read more than 5 pages before I started frantically skipping. What a turgid, pretentious, overrated piece of tripe.
...more
May 17, 2009
Tonia
marked it as to-read
Apr 10, 2012
Te-ge Bramhall
marked it as to-read
Jan 02, 2019
Lauro
marked it as to-read
