Evolution's Darling Review

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Evolution's Darling ReviewEvolution's Darling is one of the most interesting science fiction novels I've read in the past year.
Evolution's Darling is a 'bootstrap', an AI who has achieved sentience despite frequent downgrades by its last owner. Under the laws of the Expansion, any machine that reaches a Turing Quotient of 1.0 legally becomes a person, rather than legal property - and needing to replace the shipboard computer would wipe out a year's profits for Darling's owner, Isaah. Darling is also the tutor and companion of Isaah's fifteen-year-old daughter, Rathere, and after Isaah disconnects Darling's sensors, Rathere re-connects them to save her friend, who then becomes her lover. He buys himself a humanoid body, then he and Rathere leave Earth together.
Two centuries later, Darling has become one of the Expansion's most astute dealers in artworks, collecting originals and ideas and sex-related body modifications. When a new sculpture allegedly done by fellow bootstrap Vaddum comes onto the market, years after Vaddum's disappearance, Darling and many other dealers rush to see it. While some are prepared to murder their rivals to own the piece, Darling is more interested in its origin. Is Vaddum dead? Can robots actually die? Can intelligent software be copied, and if so, is the copy a forgery or the real thing?
Evolution's Darling contains some wonderful inventions: as well as the Turing Quotient as a solution to the ethical questions of owning intelligent machines, Westerfield gives us a wide range of very individualistic robots, from the fiercely competitive hyper-intelligent starships writing anonymous academic papers on passenger service when they're not hurling insults at each other ("Number-cruncher!" "Intuitionist!"), to Vaddum, the robotic laborer turned sculptor, to the sub-Turing Wardens, cunning but rigid justice machines. I also loved the lithomorphs, alien statues on a thousand-century-long migration towards their breeding grounds. Along with this sparkling inventiveness comes a beautiful prose style: the only flaw, and that a minor one, is the erratic pacing, with two-hundred-year jump cuts and a fistful of flashbacks disguising a very simple and straightforward plot.
Aldiss and Wingrove's Trillion Year Spree defined science fiction (in part) as "the search for a definition of mankind and his status quo in the universe which will stand in our advanced but confused state of knowledge". By this definition, Evolution's Darling is uncommonly pure science fiction, because of the questions it raises about the nature of humanity. When machines can score higher than biological humans on Turing tests, which is really human? Are two beings with identical Turing ratings actually the same person, and is the art they produce equally authentic? Is there a difference between justice and aesthetic considerations? What is alive? What is dead? What is original? What is a copy? Will any of these concepts still be relevant in a few centuries? Westerfield quotes Wilde's essays frequently - and it's Wilde the philosopher, not just Wilde the wit - as well as Wittgenstein and Locke, plus sly nods to Alfred Bester and Samuel Delany... but the book sparkles with ideas and questions, rather than being weighted down with pontification. It manages to combine character-driven and ideas-driven science fiction, and even begs the question of whether there's any real difference between the two.Evolution's Darling Overview

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Kushiel's Dart Review

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Kushiel's Dart ReviewI have to say I had really low expectations going into this book. I bought it to read to my wife, who has a vision disability, but loves the fantasy genre, and there is very little serious romantic fantasy out there, even less available on audiotape. I reluctantly chose this one, figuring I'd suffer through it for her entertainment. From the premise of the book, described on the back cover, I expected it to be a practically endless sequence of raunchy sadomasochistic sexual encounters weakly tied together by a paper-thin plot. Can you blame me? Here's what it says of the main character: "chosen [by some divine power] to forever experience pleasure and pain as one.... trained equally in the courtly arts and the talents of the bed-chamber..." How could that possibly have prepared me for the depth and skill of storytelling I was in for by reading this book?
We hear the story as told by Phèdre, who bears the mark of "Kushiel's Dart," as the scarlet mote in her eye is referred to. This first volume in the trilogy starts with her humble beginnings as the "unwanted get" of a woman of little social consequence, her indenture into the Court of Night-Blooming Flowers, and her rise into the highest social circles of the city. That's merely the first act. The trilogy is set in an alternate history of Europe, where the principal difference seems to be that in this novel, the French may actually be justified in their claim to divinity. The story's main location is geographically analogous to our world's France, but in Phèdre's world, it is called Terre D'Ange (Land of Angels), because the inhabitants (D'Angelines) are descended from divine beings who left the holy land over a thousand years previously. The religion is explained early on in the story, and is close to, but not quite, real-world Christianity. The story takes place some time in the late middle ages or the early Renaissance. Carey uses real-world societies from various time periods to model her world upon. The names of the nations are changed to older, variations on, or more obscure references to those regions they describe. Spain is Aragonia, for example, England is Alba, and so on.
The stage thus set, Carey proceeds to weave an intricate story of politics, love, betrayal, and adventure. One of the strongest points to recommend this story is the cast of characters. The many political figures who take a role in the story are all well-developed characters, each illustrated in great detail in the story, each with their own multifaceted personalities, desires, merits, flaws, and distinctive habits. There are erotic episodes, as the summary implies, but they are woven into the story so seamlessly, and in fact essential to the plot, so that to dismiss this book as merely common erotica is selling it far too short. To begin with the concept of a main character whose uniqueness is based in the erotic, and to build such a full and complicated story, Carey shows a skill with the written word rarely seen in fantasy today, and in fact in most genres of literature.
No work of fiction is perfect. This book was not without its flaws or idiosyncrasies. Many of the reviews here complain about the overly flowery speech, indicating that the telling detracts from the tale. It depends a bit on personal taste, but I didn't think that the narration style was too far over the top, and it was entirely consistent. What did become tiresome in this first volume is that the "voice" of the narration is as if these events happened long ago in Phèdre's life, and she is telling this as if looking back through the years. The consequence of this motif is that the first 400 pages are rife with this one cliché that began to get frustratingly repetitive. She is constantly saying something to the effect of, "...if only I had known then what I know now..." It did lend a foreshadowing of tragedy to the telling, but was used much too often. Fortunately she lays off that cliché about halfway through the book, and while it does rear its head occasionally after that, it is nowhere near as pervasive.
So much happens in this one book that it would use more words than I'm allotted to describe all the various plots, subplots, and cliffhangers and give my opinion of each. We are treated to vibrant descriptions of many of the locales of Phèdre's world, traveling through D'Angeline cities, barbarian villages, rough wilderness, high seas, and palace halls. Phèdre finds and loses friends along the way and each one she comes to know, we know through her. Her enemies, as well, we come to know, and find that they are not the typical cardboard cutout villains that one typically finds in tales of love and magic. These villains have motivations that one could even sympathize with under the right conditions, and this use of moral shades of gray heightens the complexity of the work as a whole. The 900 pages pass in the blink of an eye, and I couldn't tell you the number of times I finished reading a chapter aloud, and my wife and I looked at each other and could say nothing more than "Wow."
One of the writer blurbs on one volume of this series says that the trilogy has "something for everyone," and I think that's the best description I've heard yet. Complicated political plots within plots, a multilayered back story that could support a novel or two of its own, fantastic swordfights, massive army battles, erotic sex scenes, fascinating personal relationships... I could go on. I consider this book one of the nicest surprises I've had in a while, in that it was a totally unexpected enjoyment. After reading the entire trilogy aloud to my wife, we look forward to anything else Jacqueline Carey publishes in the future.Kushiel's Dart Overview

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