Strong thriller, difficult style
Written: Aug 02 '00
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Original plot, lots of psychodramatic tension.
Cons: Style much too terse for my taste.
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| tomgray's Full Review: Conscience of the Beagle Books |
Patricia Anthony's Conscience of the Beagle is a tautly-strung SF detective story set in the distant future. Its protagonist is Major Dyle Holloway, billed as Earth's toughest cop (he's certainly hard-boiled enough) and sent to the planet Tennyson as the leader of a four-man anti-terrorist team to probe a series of bombings and assassinations.
Holloway is still mentally ravaged by the brutal killing of his wife several months earlier, and Anthony chooses to tell his story in a choppy, slices-of-consciousness style that I found difficult to follow and not to my taste:
I watch Vanderslice wend his way through the forest. Then Szabo blurts, "He lied."
Disappointment is painful, but I should have learned better by now. "What about?"
"I don't know. But he's lying to us."
"A shame," I say. And I mean it.
Anthony is a risk-taker, right out there on the cutting edge of literature--or at least the cutting edge of the type of literature I read--and Beagle leaves me behind. There's too much ambiguity in writing like the above for me to be comfortable with--it makes reading too much like work instead of a pastime.
She's a masterful writer, and the ingredients are all here:
- Characters are sharply drawn and differentiated, though with this style they can only be sketched. Imagery is similarly strong but incomplete--evidently the reader is expected to fill in the details.
- The plot is original--Holloway's team uncovers a secret that is highly imaginative and breathtaking in its implications.
- Because of Anthony's approach, we literally see the entire story unfold as Holloway sees it--he's not standing somewhere in space telling us the story, he's offering it up in real-time segments, complete with momentary flashbacks, random thoughts, and surges of emotion.
- Beagle is very suspenseful, in no small part because the reader is often uncertain about exactly what is going on.
Holloway and his men, though racked by self-doubts and suspicions of each other and hampered by intrigues within the government of Tennyson and between Tennyson and Earth, function brilliantly and intuitively to run the evildoers down and impose a mind-boggling punishment.
If it sounds at all as though you might like Beagle, by all means go for it--it's a very well written book of its kind.
Writing: 8
Characterization: 9
Big Issues/Ideas: 7
Recommended reading: If this style appeals to you, you'll probably also like Anthony's Brother Termite, a story of aliens openly embroiled in Earth politics that is similarly underwritten. Many of Larry Niven's works also expect a lot from the reader, including parts of his "Ringworld" trilogy (Ringworld*, The Ringworld Engineers, The Ringworld Throne), the "Known Space" stories (Tales of Known Space, Neutron Star), and the Gil Hamilton detective stories (The Long Arm of Gil Hamilton).
*I've also reviewed this book for Epinions.com.
Recommended:
Yes
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Epinions.com ID:
tomgray
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Member: Tom Gray
Location: Norwich, Vermont
Reviews written: 160
Trusted by: 231 members
About Me:
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