From rec.arts.sf-reviews Fri Aug 23 01:59:29 1991 Path: herkules.sssab.se!isy!liuida!sunic!mcsun!uunet!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!usc!apple!ig!pws.ma30.bull.com!wex From: wex@pws.ma30.bull.com Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf-reviews Subject: Review: THE EXILE KISS by George Alec Effinger Message-ID: Date: 20 Aug 91 20:54:39 GMT Sender: mcb@presto.ig.com Reply-To: wex@pws.ma30.bull.com Followup-To: rec.arts.sf-lovers Lines: 82 Approved: mcb@presto.ig.com (Acting SF-REVIEWS moderator) THE EXILE KISS by George Effinger Critique Copyright (c) 1991 Alan Wexelblat %A George Alec Effinger %T The Exile Kiss %I Foundation/Doubleday %G ISBN 0-385-4124-2 %O large-format paperback $11 %D 1991 I shall attempt to critique, rather than review, this book. I assume you have read the book and its prequels. If not, at least don't get suckered into paying $11 for this one, as I did. EXILE KISS is the third book in the story of Marid Audran and the future-world Budayeen he inhabits. The first book, WHEN GRAVITY FAILS, introduced us to Audran when he was a mere street hustler in the Budayeen. Or, rather, Audran introduced himself. The story -- now three books long, with at least one more on the way -- is narrated by Audran. This is, I think, one of it's major faults. The second book, A FIRE IN THE SUN, showed Audran's rise to lieutenant of Friedlander Bey, one of the two most powerful men in the city. EXILE KISS is an adventure through which Audran develops himself. Let me set up some background for this critique. I liked WHEN GRAVITY FAILS -- it had the freshness of the Arab setting, the interesting twists on cyberpunk themes and it drew strength from Effinger's ability to let a story tell itself. I liked FIRE IN THE SUN less; it was too wordy, and it smacked too much of middle-of-trilogy-ness, wherein the author manipulates the characters into the right positions so that he can set up the denoument he wants. EXILE KISS's first failing is that it doesn't deliver that denoument. It is, essentially, a sideshow to the story of Marid Audran. In order to do this, Effinger has to bring Friedlander Bey back from the brink of death. Recall that at the end of FIRE, Bey was nearly dead and had suffered severe neural damage from a poison (never mind that anyone with two ounces of brain power could have figured out where the poison was coming from). But at the beginning of EXILE, Bey is all but recovered. The poisoning is mentioned once or twice early in the book, then forgotten. The second major failing is that Effinger decided to discard traditional linear narrative. Nothing wrong with that, in and of itself. But instead, he has replaced it with a style wherein Audran tells his own story as a series of flashbacks. The plot leaps ahead, then Effinger comes up with some excuse for Audran to explain (often in ploddingly unnecessary detail) how they got to this point. For example, the point where Audran wakes up in the Bedu tent: Effinger has to give him a totally-unnecessary case of amnesia so that he can spend the next three chapters slowly remembering how he got into that tent. Needless to say, this totally destroys any sense of suspense that the book might have had. The detailed descriptions and lush narrative would have been fine if we didn't already know how they were going to turn out. More than once I found myself skimming. The last major annoyance comes from the fact that Audran is telling his own story. This seems to require him to notice, frequently and in great boring detail, how much his adventures are changing him. As it happened, my wife and I read this book aloud to each other as we drove from Boston to D.C. More than once, one of us would read a "boy, have I changed!" paragraph and the other would ask something along the lines of "Didn't you read that section before?" At one point, we counted six of these self-examinations in two hours of driving. Yes, the book has its good points. I must disagree with Budrys' assessment (in the June F&SF) that Effinger's future is not believable. Budrys asserts that Islam and "cosmopolitan culture" are incompatible. I find the combination of fundamentalist Islam and high-tech decadence to be utterly believable. Today's modern Arab governments are threatened by rising fundamentalist tides. It it completely possible that they would adopt the facade of faithful belief in order to placate the population while continuing their worldly ways. When today's Arab oil sheiks jet around the world, many of them still carry their prayer rugs and stop business when it is time to pray. And, lest the point be not obvious by now, I also disagree with Budrys' assertion that this is "...a rather good book." It's not. It's a rather bad book by a rather good author from whom I hope to see much better things in the future. From rec.arts.sf.reviews Fri Mar 6 13:14:40 1992 Path: herkules.sssab.se!isy!liuida!sunic!psinntp!psinntp!rpi!usc!sdd.hp.com!uakari.primate.wisc.edu!ames!bionet!raven.alaska.edu!never-reply-to-path-lines From: ecl@mtgzy.att.com (Evelyn C Leeper +1 908 957 2070) Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.reviews Subject: THE EXILE KISS by George Alec Effinger Message-ID: <1992Mar4.222816.9043@raven.alaska.edu> Date: 4 Mar 92 22:28:16 GMT Sender: wisner@raven.alaska.edu (Bill Wisner) Organization: University of Alaska Computer Network Lines: 48 Approved: wisner@ims.alaska.edu THE EXILE KISS by George Alec Effinger A book review by Evelyn C. Leeper Copyright 1992 Evelyn C. Leeper This, the third novel in Effinger Marid series, takes place in large part outside the Budayeen, that great Arab metropolis of the future. Mariid Audran and Friedlander Bey are kidnapped at the start of the novel and left to die in the desert. The first half of the book covers their struggles and adventures there; the second half is about their revenge on those who arranged for their kidnapping. The first part seems to draw rather heavily on the film LAWRENCE OF ARABIA at times, but works well and even events that seem superfluous turn out to be important. Effinger has done his research well, but may expect more knowledge of his readership than they have. For example, he follows Arab custom in referring to a mother as "Um Jirji" (where Jirji is her eldest son's name), but since she is also sometimes referred to by her own name, this may lead to confusion. And he keeps his calendar based on the Hegira, which requires some mental arithmetic at times. But all this also means that THE EXILE KISS feels authentic. Effinger doesn't give the reader New York or London with a couple of minarets stuck on and a reference to Friday prayers. Instead he extrapolates from Cairo or Damascus, and achieves a much better result. (He also has his final manuscripts read over by Arab friends for errors--a highly commendable practice that other authors would do well to emulate.) As with the first two books (WHEN GRAVITY FAILS and FIRE IN THE SUN, both Hugo nominees), the story follows Marid's character development and how he is changed by events. Unfortunately, THE EXILE KISS probably does not stand well on its own. Fortunately, I can recommend that you read all three books, and since Effinger writes clear prose with no padding, it will take less time to read all three than to read a single bloated novel from the best-seller list. In fact, it's probably worth re-reading them even if you have already read them--Effinger is a solid writer. %T The Exile Kiss %A George Alec Effinger %C New York %D May 1991 %I Doubleday Foundation %O trade paperback, US$11.00 %G ISBN 0-385-41424-2 %P 265pp %S Marid Audran %V 3 Evelyn C. Leeper | +1 908 957 2070 | att!mtgzy!ecl or ecl@mtgzy.att.com From /tmp/sf.4146 Tue Aug 9 01:56:22 1994 Path: liuida!sunic!pipex!howland.reston.ans.net!gatech!newsxfer.itd.umich.edu!nntp.cs.ubc.ca!cyber2.cyberstore.ca!nwnexus!krel.iea.com!connected.com!news.sprintlink.net!dg-rtp!sheol!dont-reply-to-paths From: kevin716@aol.com () Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.reviews Followup-To: rec.arts.sf.written Subject: Review: The Wolves of Memory Approved: sfr%sheol@concert.net (rec.arts.sf.reviews moderator) Message-ID: <9404160206.tn49395@aol.com> Date: Sat, 16 Apr 1994 16:52:09 GMT Lines: 35 George Alec Effinger bases this novel on a rather pessimistic assumption: that as machines become more and more intelligent man will abdicate control of his destiny to them. He combines this with the cynicism that machines will be just as bureaucratically inept and petty as the worst civil servant. From this grim viewpoint he crafts a tale of man's spirit refusing to be crushed. Or appears to; for in the end he twists it back upon itself until one questions whether it is man's spirit or the machine's that has emerged victorious. The setting is a futuristic Earth society that has fallen willingly under the rule of a vast computer intelligence called TECT. The main character is one Sandor Courane; a failed basketball player, a failed science fiction writer, and a failed assembly line worker. Three strikes and you're out! TECT sees these failures on Sandor's part as cause for exile - to a colony planet in the Epsilon Eridani system. But even lightyears cannot place the colonists/prisoners outside the reaches of TECT. The computer is seemingly omniscient and omnipotent. And here Sandor discovers that all the colonists are susceptible to a disease that will gradually and inexorably destroy their cellular structure. The disease is always fatal, untreatable, and irreversible. And only through TECT can they research its cause and possible cure. The first manifestations of the disease are noticeable in the victim's memory lapses. Effinger utilizes this in his writing style. The story is told in a disjointed series of vignettes that occasionally repeat themselves and are not always chronological in order. When I first realized this was the going to be the structure of the novel I was not enthused, but it worked well despite my apprehensions. I have to note that Effinger prefaces the story with a couple of quotations; the one from A.J. Languth's JESUS CHRISTS in particular sets a tone of slightly irreverent humor that runs as a mild undercurrent throughout the story. I don't know how easy/difficult this book is to find, but it's worth picking up should you run across it. From rec.arts.sf.reviews Mon May 27 01:10:04 1996 Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.reviews Path: news.ifm.liu.se!news.lejonet.se!mcevans.tip.net.!newsfeed.tip.net!news.seinf.abb.se!inquo!bofh.dot!vyzynz!bofh.dot!newsfeed.concentric.net!news.texas.net!news.kei.com!uhog.mit.edu!news!news From: jim.henry@silver.com (JIM HENRY) Subject: Review: What Entropy Means To Me Message-ID: Followup-To: rec.arts.sf.written Keywords: author=JIM HENRY Lines: 24 Sender: wex@tinbergen.media.mit.edu (Graystreak) Reply-To: jim.henry@silver.com (JIM HENRY) Organization: Intelligent Agents Group X-Newsreader: (ding) Gnus v0.94 Date: Tue, 21 May 1996 21:02:10 GMT Approved: wex@media.mit.edu Lines: 24 What Entropy Means To Me by George Alec Effinger Review Copyright 1996 Jim Henry This has the honor of being one the weirdest books I've read in months. The narrator is Seyt, the official biographer of his eldest brother Dore, and a member of an absurdly large family. The story switches constantly between Seyt's scrapes with family politics -- his elder brother and sister respectively are leading schismatic factions of their family religion, based on worship of their missing parents -- and his made-up story about what happened to Dore after he set off in search of his Father. The father and mother apparently were the first, accidental colonists upon this planet, and there they begat dozens of children and established themselves as the rulers of all subsequent colonists. The stories unfold on several levels at once; all is very nicely handled. It reminds me of _Tristram Shandy_, from which the frontspiece quotation is taken. %T What Entropy Means to Me %A Effinger, George Alec %I Signet %D 1972 %G no ISBN %P 188pp. %K sf experimental From rec.arts.sf.reviews Thu Oct 30 14:12:04 1997 Path: news.ifm.liu.se!news.lth.se!eru.mt.luth.se!luth.se!feed1.news.erols.com!news.idt.net!netnews.com!newsswitch.lcs.mit.edu!news.media.mit.edu!not-for-mail From: agapow@latcs1.cs.latrobe.edu.au (p-m agapow) Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.reviews Subject: Review: "Lookaway" by George Alec Effinger Followup-To: rec.arts.sf.written Date: 07 Oct 1997 14:55:04 -0400 Organization: Calvin Coolidge Home for Dead Biologists Lines: 47 Approved: wex@media.mit.edu Message-ID: NNTP-Posting-Host: kangaroo.media.mit.edu X-Newsreader: Gnus v5.3/Emacs 19.34 Xref: news.ifm.liu.se rec.arts.sf.reviews:1552 "Look Away" by George Alec Effinger A Postview, copyright 1997 p-m agapow The American Civil War has ground to a halt, the two sides seperated by the Green Line, a zone patrolled by an international peace-keeping force. Two young Confederate soldiers seperate from their unit and move along the line, looking for a way to be useful. The War Between the States is a potentially rich field for alternate histories and indeed has been used much in that way. Unfortunately, and by Sturgeon's Law, the treatments tend to the dull: e.g. "The South won!" In a strange way, you might think something similar about George Alec Effinger. Althought there is an underlying cleverness and knowledge to his writing, this has yet to fully realise in a truly great novel. Effinger can certainly be funny ("The Red Tape Wars", "The Bird of Time") and even draw an interesting world ("When Gravity Fails"). But at times his work is more a tour of interesting ideas than an exploration, something the "Marid Audran" series is only beginning to correct. "Look Away" delivers on both these fronts. It attempts something daring and inventive with the American Civil War and Effinger gets to think out loud about the South, Reconstruction and realpolitik. These are complicated and, to some, emotional issues but he doesn't go all Heinlein and start lecturing the reader. He also displays a keen skill for voice and dialogue, making each character sound right. This is fairly rare skill, particularly in SF. Think of the number of times you've heard ancient Romans sound like Californians. The rhythms of Southern speech are well rendered without descending into faux-Magaret Mitchell. "Look Away" is an entertaining and thoughtful read. The price of small press books is always high, but if you can borrow this, find it on sale or are a fan of Effinger it is well worth it. The rest of us should hope that a long overdue collection of Effinger's short fiction will include this. Provisonally recommended. [***/interesting] and grits on the Sid and Nancy scale. %A George Alec Effinger %T Look Away %I Axolotl Press %C Eugene, Oregon %D 1990 %P 90pp %O paperback, Aus$16.95 paul-michael agapow (agapow@latcs1.oz.au), La Trobe Uni, Infocalypse "There is no adventure, there is no romance, there is only trouble and desire." [archived at http://www.cs.latrobe.edu.au/~agapow/Postviews/]