Hearts Hands and Voices
Jun. 22nd, 2019 12:12 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
elfbiterIan MacDonald - Hearts Hands and Voices
(US edition. Broken Land)
(This is repost from LJ)
This is a pseudo-African world where an old empire struggles to maintain itself. Ruling monotheistic Proclaimers rule over the apparent minority of animistic Confessors. They have lived in relative harmony - until recently.
Young Confessor girl Mathembe is intentionally mute - she just doesn't want to speak. She has an implanted language and an ability to create small temporal creatures out of biological plasma. The head of her grandfather lives on a tree.
When the violence erupts, Proclaimers imprison her father, his brother joins the Confessor rebels and her mother has to move the head of the grandfather into a flower pot when the Proclaimers burn the ancestral tree. And when the proclaimers destroy their village, they have to join the other refugees. So they wander around.
"We. Are. Going. To. Kill. You. Now"
Biotechnology is - apparently typically to MacDonald - sufficienty advanced that it's de facto magic and metaphors in the bioengineered flesh. There is no sign of electricity. But the story is not about the technology but the people who use it. Those who build biological houses that scream when they burn. Those who use destructive weapons. Those who use it to turn their political opponents into trees.
In fact, the technology is so advanced that Mathembe can visit the afterlife of her people; it is full of vengeful ancestors whose "wisdom" is composed of vitriolic hate.
And the media barges in and concentrates in taking pictures of food riots because they are "classic television, the naked human drama at its best".
In some cases the reader is bound to mix Proclaimers and Confessors- and that may be quite deliberate. Proclaimer soldiers and Confessor guerrillas use the same level of violence with similar methods. Mathembe does meet an occasional moderate Proclaimer.
This novel is not light reading and not only because of the themes. Text is convoluted. Infodumps are not excessive although they are frequent. The complex and confused sentences mimic Mathembe's confusion and fear when she tries to get along with the chaotic world; praying to a neon image because she thinks it's a local spirit; repairing the biomachines of the ship "nation"; and eventually trying to make sense of it all by joining a peaceful movement.
(US edition. Broken Land)
(This is repost from LJ)
This is a pseudo-African world where an old empire struggles to maintain itself. Ruling monotheistic Proclaimers rule over the apparent minority of animistic Confessors. They have lived in relative harmony - until recently.
Young Confessor girl Mathembe is intentionally mute - she just doesn't want to speak. She has an implanted language and an ability to create small temporal creatures out of biological plasma. The head of her grandfather lives on a tree.
When the violence erupts, Proclaimers imprison her father, his brother joins the Confessor rebels and her mother has to move the head of the grandfather into a flower pot when the Proclaimers burn the ancestral tree. And when the proclaimers destroy their village, they have to join the other refugees. So they wander around.
"We. Are. Going. To. Kill. You. Now"
Biotechnology is - apparently typically to MacDonald - sufficienty advanced that it's de facto magic and metaphors in the bioengineered flesh. There is no sign of electricity. But the story is not about the technology but the people who use it. Those who build biological houses that scream when they burn. Those who use destructive weapons. Those who use it to turn their political opponents into trees.
In fact, the technology is so advanced that Mathembe can visit the afterlife of her people; it is full of vengeful ancestors whose "wisdom" is composed of vitriolic hate.
And the media barges in and concentrates in taking pictures of food riots because they are "classic television, the naked human drama at its best".
In some cases the reader is bound to mix Proclaimers and Confessors- and that may be quite deliberate. Proclaimer soldiers and Confessor guerrillas use the same level of violence with similar methods. Mathembe does meet an occasional moderate Proclaimer.
This novel is not light reading and not only because of the themes. Text is convoluted. Infodumps are not excessive although they are frequent. The complex and confused sentences mimic Mathembe's confusion and fear when she tries to get along with the chaotic world; praying to a neon image because she thinks it's a local spirit; repairing the biomachines of the ship "nation"; and eventually trying to make sense of it all by joining a peaceful movement.
