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Blue Light

Blue Light

List Price: $6.99
Your Price: $6.29
Product Info Reviews

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Rating: 1 stars
Summary: Forced and unnecessarily disgusting read
Review: This book is not what the cover and reviews promise, I enjoy
sci-fi books, but this book was forced and a pointless read. I will never read another Mosley book again! There goes five hours of my life I will never get back! If you feel the need to read this book, I beg you, warn you----don't do it, please! I mean Gray Man---get real! (if I could give it negative five stars I would)

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Oh man what a wild wild ride
Review: I have to agree with most of the reviewers in that I was looking for a story closer to the Easy Rawlins series when I picked this up. What I got however was a journey,one that was hypnotic, fascinating, repulsive and rivetting. I read this book on 2 flights and was gripped from start to finish. This book demands an open mind and the ability to accept Mosley's utopia. A great deal of it attempts to paint life and death in very holistic terms, varied degrees of energy or "blue light" and how it effects each one differently. Read it but brace yourself.

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: Stephen King Meets the Wizard of Oz
Review: I picked up this book in anticipation of a discussion with my monthly book club this coming weekend. We had previously read RL's Dream and I found that difficult to follow but considered it historical fiction. Now we enter the Blue Light. This book had none of the lyrical language I found so endearing in RL's Dream. This was a violent journey through a twisted utopia with no purpose. In a bow to the 60's, this was an acid trip gone very bad with a short fun period in the middle. The meanies were cardboard cartoon characters and the goodies were always running from them like Dorothy, Tin Man and Scarecrow through the poppy fields. I can't wait to see who picked this in our book club...Thanks for letting me share.

Rating: 2 stars
Summary: This cap not a winner. Thanks for playing. Please try again.
Review: Like many people I wanted this book to succeed so I could point to a mainstream writer (who rocks at what he does best, mystery) that has big ideas about SF. Well, Mosley does have ideas, but the book does not deliver. Rather than blend the mystery and SF genres so much, what Mosley has decided to do, more or less, is create a book that raises big questions about race in the future of this country. This would also be pretty darn great if it succeeded too, but... While the future is a frequent realm of SF, Mosley has dealt a book that feels like it was written on a bet to see if he could get a publisher to buy an SF novel from a mystery star. Hmm.

Unlike some of the better works of Delany, Butler, and newer young black SF writers, Mosley's approach lacks a critical understanding of what makes an SF novel a philosophical novel (and quite unfortunately, this is exactly what he wants it to be, very very badly). Rather than unfold the whole plot for you to explain what I mean, I will let Mosley fans and SF read it on their own to decide if they agree.

If you are interested in these issues (race in SF)- check out "Dark Matter", an anthology of African-American SF stories. There are some stories in there which top the effect of this book in a much smaller space.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: A wonderful diversion ...
Review: This read is much different from Moseley's other works. I'm hungry for more. Way to go Easy!

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Novice To SciFi
Review: With just one science fiction book under my belt I found Mr. Mosley's book to be an entrance into the world of letting my imagnation go.

Mr. Mosely has drifted from his characters and time of Easy, Etta Mae and Mouse. I must admit the 1st couple of pages were a bit hard to get through but with a thirst for the unknown I continued and found it to be a world of nature, lightning bolts, death, life, murder & inhibitions within my mind and nature.

I was taken from my train ride to & from work to a world that may come upon us at some time in our life if not just in our mind's eye. This book gave me a chance to use something I thought I no longer had. My imagination.

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: Deeply Profound, Dogmatically Disappointing
Review: Walter Mosely's writing style will captivate you, in fact it is the catalyst that brings you to the end of this trite novel. However the unfathomable plot and foolhardy character's make you wonder, when will this novel end? Mosely's attempt at the mystical is by all means fulfilled. The "blue light" awakens those who perceive, touch, and experience the bounty of death, and it is the character death that leads Mosely's diverse characters into the depths of the woods. The culmination occurs in a place where the fearless "blue lights" believe they are safe (and you thought this group was enlightened). You would think in the early stages of the novel that Mosely is attempting to reveal a divine group of individuals, who are on the brink of understanding the essense of life, however the end reveals this story is nothing more than a ficticious tale of good versus evil.

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: Where is the Light?
Review: For the life of me, I had to keep reading this piece. I just had to get to the end to see if I could fully understand this book. When I finally did reach the end, things still didn't make sense. There was no direction, no climax, no scope of story. Characters were in and out and some just simply disappeared. Maybe next time on the SF note, Mosley, will improve.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Not your children's sci-fi
Review: Mosley weaves an intriguing tale through the Bay area in the '60's. Chance, a bi-racial Ph.D. student dropout discovers a self-styled prophet and salvation in the Close Congregation. All is not well, though; there are poisonings, unnatural attractions, and a exterresterial essence in the "Blues" of the loose knit group that is attracting death personified. This isn't a children's sci-fi. Though the end delves into a fantasy replete with accommodating animals and trees, much of the work is gritty, bloody, sexy, and full of dark realism.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Too profound for the unwilling
Review: I can understand the disappointment of many of Walter Mosley's fans with this book; superficially, it has very little in common with his crime fiction. But, get rid of your preconceptions and your expectations because this is a profound and meditative exploration of what makes us human, of colour, of race, of poverty, of inequality. The writing is magnificent, characterised by bursts of seering linguistic and thematic improvisation. This is literature infused by the free-wheeling but fiercely disciplined spirit of Miles Davis, the transcendentalism of John Coltrane, and the black psychedelic journeys of Sun-Ra and George Clinton. This is pure and expressive journeying too, unencumbered by his own literary past or the expectations of his readers (which is probably why it confuses so many of them). What if ordinary, poor people were able to reach their full potential, that they could tear down the barriers imposed by a racist and unequal world? What if people came together to protect and nurture the earth? What if sociopaths and the insane could become whole people? What if people could really live together without judgmement? These might be unfashionable subjects to the cynical souls of literary critics, but they are profound questions, the really important questions, dealt with through the metaphorical struggle between the Blues, the transformed fully-realised humans, and the Gray Man, the archetypal representation of everything that is bad about humans and human societies. The evocation of atmosphere and mood, which vary from the most brutal and violent to the most tender and compassionately lyrical are unsuspassed in contemporary literature; the scenes in the forest-garden prior to the apocalyptic finale, and the downbeat coda are particularly fine. This is an exquisite, beautiful and ultimately painful allegory, destined to be misunderstood and reviled by the ignorant, the uncaring and those unwilling to suspend their expectations and take a leap into the unknown.


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