Tathea

Rating:
Summary: Good Grief
Review: I wish I could give this book zero stars. And I'd like to give the publisher zero stars as well for marketing this as fantasy. One star implies that it had some sort of redeeming quality. Perhaps the cover art. That wasn't too bad.

Anne Perry delivers a Mormon version of Pilgrim's Progress, except Tathea, the pilgrim, doesn't really make any progress. None of the characters do. They have about as much depth as Virtue and Vice in a morality play. The writing is about as subtle as being sat on by a big Christian elephant. Perry's treatment of religious questions has none of the depth or subtlety of, say, C.S. Lewis or T.S. Eliot. For that matter, C.S. Friedman delivered better meditations on good and evil in the Coldfire Trilogy.

(I also want to add a note about my viewpoint. Many -- though certainly not all -- fantasy fans seem to be disproportionately hostile toward religion compared with most of the population. I do not feel I share the automatic hostility toward organized religion that seems to predominate among many who share my tastes. Although I am not Christian, I have read plenty of Christian and non-Christian theology (from Kierkegaard to Fackenheim) and while I don't agree with it, I enjoy learning about it.

So I feel safe in asserting that it is not out of religious hostility that I say this is a truly lousy book. The ideas in and of themselves are not necessarily bad, but the execution is just blunt, dull, and annoying.)

Save your money and your time. If you're interested in religious questions in fiction (and fantasy is an excellent medium for exploring them) there are shelves and shelves of books better than this one.

It seems to be difficult for those with fundamentalist worldviews to write good fiction. I believe this is because fundamentalism tends to posit a world in which good and evil are black and white. This may work as a worldview, but good *fiction* deals with shades of grey.

To sum it up: bad allegorical fantasy and theological musings from an author who apparently can't do fantasy, allegory or theology.

Rating:
Summary: Another for my Short List
Review: Ta-thea, Empress of Shinabar, is awakened one night to find herself in the middle of a palace coup and everyone around her dead. With the help of a faithful servant, she manages to escape to the Lost Lands, where she seeks out a sage, demanding that he tell her the purpose of her life, the universe, and everything. He sends her off on a quest with a mysterious boatsman who appears from nowhere. The object of this quest is to learn the mind of God.

According to the book jacket reviews, _Tathea_ is "riveting from the first page," "crafted with depth of thought," and "filled with symbolism." I can't help but wonder if the reviewers who wrote those blurbs actually read the book, or only some promotional material from the publisher. I found this book immensely dull, trite and self-conscious, a work that constantly drew attention to its own supposed profundity while actually sermonizing on pretty simplistic and not-very-original themes. After a hundred pages of monotonous situations, depthless characters and heavy-handed allegory, I couldn't take any more. This isn't a fantasy novel; it's a Fundamentalist tract. Reading it made me feel like I was being hit over the head with a dull axe.

I've never read anything else by the author and I don't intend to. Ace did a disservice to all readers of fantasy by publishing this.

Rating:
Summary: Reading it changed my life...
Review: Tathea is essentially a lengthy (over 500 page) Christian parable. Regardless of the merits of its message, this book should not be represented as a fantasy novel.

The characters are undeveloped and uninteresting. The main character, Tathea, journeys from place to place with only the thinnest of plot devices to connect the various episodes. Supposedly, each of her adventures deepens her understanding of "The Book," but in fact no such growth is evident in the character.

I am surprised that the author, who has published dozens of books in the mystery genre, could produce somethng as poorly written as Tathea.

Rating:
Summary: A cure for insomnia
Review: I'll be brief. I love Anne Perry's work. Although I'm a huge fan of William Monk and Hester and I love the Thomas and Charlotte Pitt myteries, this book was sleep inducing. There are 522 pages of religious ramblings that could have been condensed into 200. I'm sorry to say, reading this was a waste of time.

Rating:
Summary: Mormon propaganda
Review: This book promised far more than it was able to deliver. What started as a beautifully phrased story of a woman's journey to discover herself swiftly descended through thinly veiled religious allegory, a la "Pilgrim's Progress," to out and out homily. Ms. Perry's lovely phrasing was soon lost in repititious plot developement and pedantic moralizing. If you are looking for a moving story of one woman's struggle to overcome the many obstacles facing her, you won't find it here, at least, not after the first 75 pages or so. After that, you become numbed to Tathea's plight and frustrated by the shallow allegory. The many characters often become far more idealized than is comfortable and the insistence upon growth through pain soon dulls any sympathy the reader might otherwise feel. I find it ironic that in several telling scenes, Ms. Perry talks about the insubstantiality of drama without realization of humanity, drama which embodies only the ideals of a specific group or culture. Perhaps if she had followed her own advice, this would be a novel worth reading.