Reality is illusory and magical in the stunning new literary sci-fi novel from the multiple award-winning author of The Prestige--for fans of Haruki Murakami and David Mitchell This is a tale of ...
Reality is illusory and magical in the stunning new literary sci-fi novel from the multiple award-winning author of The Prestige—for fans of Haruki Murakami and David Mitchell This is a tale of murder, artistic rivalry, and literary trickery; a Chinese puzzle of a novel where nothing is quite what it seems; with a narrator whose agenda is artful and subtle; and a narrative that pulls you in and plays an elegant game with you. The Dream Archipelago is a vast network of islands. The names of the islands are different depending on who you talk to, their very locations seem to twist and shift. Some islands have been sculpted into vast musical instruments, others are home to lethal creatures, others the playground for high society. Hot winds blow across the archipelago and a war fought between two distant continents is played out across its waters. The Islanders serves both as an untrustworthy but enticing guide to the islands; an intriguing, multilayered tale of a murder; and the suspect legacy of its appealing but definitely untrustworthy narrator. It shows Christopher Priest at the height of his powers and illustrates his undiminished power to dazzle.
Perhaps this is a great novel to some, but I hated it. You have to be REALLY into digging out information that is so deeply layered you feel like you need Sparks notes to get to the bottom of it. At some point in a novel, there has to be a level of enjoyment or intrigue, but with characters who may or may not be characters, and plotlines that may or may not exist, you never know what you're looking for, and the ride becomes dull. One of my least favorite reads ever.
Christopher Priest is one of those authors that give a good name to genre fiction. So much so in fact that I've repeatedly seen his novels described as `literary Science Fiction', as opposed to, I guess, something like `commodity Science Fiction' or `throwaway SF'.Priest has won a number of prizes, most recently the BSFA's (it was the fourth time, if memory serves). Still, he's so good that I wouldn't be surprised if his name popped up in something like the Man Booker's shortlist, alongside Murakami or Davi..
The Dream Archipelago is a vast string of thousands of islands, wrapping themselves around the world between two great continents. Some of them are deserts, some are home to great cities and others have been riddled with tunnels and turned into gigantic musical instruments. The Islanders is a gazetteer to the islands...and a murder story. It's also a musing on the nature of art and the artists who make it.The Islanders is Christopher Priest's first novel in almost a decade, a fact which itself makes it one ..
