a_cubed | Books – Home Fires

Gene Wolfe appears to have lost the plot. I didn’t rate Pirate Freedom as any better than mediocre (Tim Powers did the modern pirate fantasy book better with On Stranger Tides). An Evil Guest was a confusing mish-mash with no clear plot, character development, sense of place or even the brilliant stylistic features for which Wolfe was known earlier in his career. Unfortunately, Home Fires is even worse. It has a lot of plot threads all happening to the same people and many resolved by dei ex machina. The basic premise of relativistic time differences has been done better and in particular the issue of time dilation impacts on soldiers was done brilliantly by Haldeman in Forever War. The future here is half now and half futuristic. Some of it is just throw away lines (the EU under Sharia law? More likely the US under a Christian theocracy a-la “If This Goes On” by Heinlein) while other things are the same or even going backwards. Particularly backwards is women’s lib. In terms of the treatment of women this one could have been written in the 50s. There’s a little bit of lampshade hanging with a discussion of many more women than men enrolling in the military but many fewer of them graduating basic training but the male and the female characters are so sexist that it’s pretty unbelievable to read this straight in the 21st century.

I’ve got a bunch of unread Wolfe (Long Sun, Short Sun, Wizard Knight, Soldier of Sidon) which I’m hoping are better than this pish.

Current Mood: (cynical)

cynical