Re: What's everybody reading at the moment?
I'm still and again reading David Zindell's Neverness. ^_^
register |
New Here?
This here is the weblog of me, Sander van Lambalgen. I'm a sometimes Mozilla contributor, ectophile, allaround computer geek, avid science fiction reader, amateur photographer and professional web developer with a penchant for traveling.
Although you can expect me to write about all these interest, it's this last, the traveling part, that gives rise to most entries in this here weblog, as I write "tripreports" detailing the experiences of my travels around the world.
Fri 12 Dec 2003, 06:56 GMT
I'm still and again reading David Zindell's Neverness. ^_^
I'm still and again reading David Zindell's Neverness. ^_^
Comments
wiggin commented on Fri 12 Dec 2003, 07:19 GMT:
I nominate that as coolest post in this thread. :)Shadows and Ice commented on Sun 14 Dec 2003, 10:30 GMT:
Wait......NEVERNESS?*scrambles around in various word documents*
No!
*wails*
But it was such a GOOD name for a caster university! Why?! I've never heard of the book before, why?! Good names are so hard to come up with.
*sniffle*
WiFi-Aan commented on Tue 16 Dec 2003, 09:21 GMT:
Shads, dude!!! You mean I never raved to you about Neverness? Not at all? not even the tinsiest little bit?*shakes head* Okay, throw away your reading list. This one comes first. Seriously. Think of the Hedge Knight for a moment... This is better. Zindell is god. (Well actually Neverness doesn't quite show that - Neverness is only perfection, while the followup trilogy A Requiem for Homo Sapiens is real heaven.)
It's philosophical science fiction (space opera-like, except that it's 'like' nothing at all) that not only dares to dream, but makes you dream right along with it. Zindell's prose is poetry, his words sings and glow with an inner light. His books are also the hardest read I've ever come across, litterally leaving me stunned - walking around in a daze - for an entire weekend after finishing A Requiem for Homo Sapiens for the first time.
As such (and because Zindell assumes a pretty thorough background in common science fiction themes) I don't regularly recommend it to people (this is not something to throw at someone who's just getting started in the genre, and someone not appreciating the books because of not being ready for them would be the greatest shame imaginable), but you should definitely be ready for them. :)
So like, go. buy. now.
quote:
She shimmers, my city, she shimmers. She is said to be the most beautiful of all the cities of the Civilized Worlds, more beautiful even than Parpallaix or the cathedral cities of Vesper. To the west, pushing into the green sea like a huge, jewel-studded sleeve of city, the fragile obsidian cloisters and hospices of the Farsider's Quarter gleamed like black glass mirrors. Straight ahead as we skated, I saw the frothy churn of the Sound and the whitecaps of breakers crashing against the cliffs of North Beach, and above the entire city, veined with purple and glazed with snow and ice, Waaskel and Attakel rose up like vast pyramids against the sky. Beneath the half-ring of extinct volcanoes (Urkel, I should mention, is the southernmost peak, and though less magnificent than the others, it has a conical symmetry that some find pleasing) the towers and spire of the Academy scattered the dazzling false winter light so that the whole of the Old City sparkled. The streets, as everyone knows, are coloured ice. Throughout the city, the white shimmer is broken by strands of orange and green and blue.
'Strange are the streets of the city of Pain,' the Timekeeper is fond of quoting, but though indeed colourful and strange, they are colourful and strange to a purpose. The streets -the glissades and slidderies- have no names. Thus it has been since our first Timekeeper announced that young novices could prepare their brains for the pathways of the manifold by memorizing the pathways of our city.
(David Zindell - Neverness)