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Summary: Best book I've read in months!
Review: I've read m-a-n-y science fiction/fantasy, and by far, this is the best one I've read in months!!! It is so cool how the main character stays unnamed throughout the whole book and you don't even notice. Well, don't take from me! READ IT! *heehee*
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Summary: A stirring fantasy.. disturbingly realistic
Review: In a world where computers know best, one young rebel sets out to change everything.. Biting the Sun is a book that I think eveyone should have the oppurtunity to read. It's a stirring and daring fantasy about a society centered around pleasure and immortality, where you can never die, but come back in different chosen bodies, and are encouraged to change genders at will. The girl in the story (who's name is never mentioned), struggles to find herself in a souless society, and finally does so in the desert wasteland outside of her perfect civilization. By bucking the system and shattering the rules, she finally finds out what it means to be truly human, while learning to love and live by her own standards.
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Summary: I love Tanith Lee
Review: Pure fantasy. This book is wonderful. I truly enjoyed it. Being able to die and come back the same person and looking however you wanted. This book even has its own language. By the end you too will be fluent in it. Another masterpiece of Lee.
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Summary: Masterpiece of Modern Science Fiction
Review: Strange, moving, humorous, tantalizing, evocative. _Biting the Sun_ is the unspoken masterpiece of modern science fiction. Lee's writing is lyrical without obfuscating the disarming simplicity of her storytelling voice. This novel propels the reader into magnificent spaces and manages to leave a lasting impression. Lee is acerbically thoughtful without being boring or moralizing. Timeless and absolutely groshing.
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Summary: You CAN do anything - can't you? =Derisann=, absolutely!
Review: That's what Jang can do, right? Anything, and everything - well, not exactly, as the hero/heroine =ooma= discovers. How hard can it be to -=not=- break the unwritten law[s] society? It's just as hard for us as for =ooma=! And how many people can pull off a book when you never, ever find out the protagonist's name, eh? =GRIN= I have many of Tanith Lee's books in the original DAW editions, and often I couldn't keep myself from reading the second book [or later] in a series precisely because they were so excellent - it was too much to wait to find the one[s] before! That's how I fell into the dystopia =ooma= lives in, by reading _Drinking Sapphire Wine_ first. It's one of my all-time favorites of Tanith Lee, next to _The Silver Metal Lover_. Of the two novels enclosed in _Biting the Sun_, I much prefer _Drinking Sapphire Wine_. _Don't Bite the Sun_ somehow isn't as good to me, perhaps because it's when =ooma=, the hero/heroine, is less mature, less happy, not yet realizing why the womb of the Fours isn't right for him/her. I identified hugely with =ooma= as a teen, and still do now - trying to find or make a place in the world, struggling to be or to explain choices to others. All this makes me sound pretty dull, because I'm not focusing on the trappings of the book, the mesmerizing imagery, the zaniness, the witty repartee. =grin= Yes, you can talk about how they can change their bodies like we do clothes, about how the cities are playgrounds in a sterile wasteland - that arid world which is very probably ours in the distant future... and you will be describing the way the Jang feel about life as well as how they live it. Which will let you understand how =ooma= could fall into crises of the soul, love, life, of - boredom? Yes. I've loved Tanith Lee's writing for a long time, and I'm glad others are getting a chance to try the earlier works which won me to her. For a taste of her early fantasy, I recommend _Cyrion_ - imagine Sherlock Holmes' mind meshed with a beautiful angel [possibly the diabolic kind] and Conan's warrior deeds. Or her Flat Earth books, about the Masters of Death, Wickedness, Delusion/Madness... and much like the feel of Arabian Nights, but with some twists you would only find with Tanith Lee! Since _Biting the Sun_ is contemporary with these books, they'll give you some alternate tastes to compare, contrast and further enjoy =ooma= with. The neat thing about =ooma= is that the wit and scenery you expect in Tanith Lee's books makes this a fun and wild read. Yet if you take it soberly, you find that =ooma= learns about being able to live with oneself, needing others, the value of life and death. All the things you need to handle society, whether your society is decadent and messed up or not. I'll leave you with this truth, which is an echo of what the Silver Metal Lover implies: "--how the body was a joke, that it was the inner something which mattered...". And leave all of what Tanith Lee does best for you to discover firsthand, with delight. :>
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Summary: Insumatt!!
Review: The first chapter of this book is kind of overwhelming (because of all the slang terms and the different characters) but once you keep on reading it sucks you in. By the end of the book you won't want it to be over! I'm sad that I'm finished reading it. I wish Tanith Lee would have written more books with these characters and with this world. The book is all about a person going against their society and the ridiculous rules/customs associated with it and the boredom of conformity. This is a powerful book with an engaging and active main character who goes against everything that she/he knows, and an engaging, yet not so engaging, world. The writing style is interesting and often times amusing and humourous (because the main character is often times amusing). The world will suck you in and you'll laugh, cry, and be afraid with the main character. Being the first book by Tanith Lee that I've ever read, I'm inspired to read more longer works by her (the other things I've read by her being shorter works in genre magazines). Hopefully all her other books will be just as good! Derisann!
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Summary: What are you rebelling against? What have you got?
Review: This (Don't Buy The Sun, DaW ed) was the first Tanith Lee novel I ever read, and as soon as I read it, I immediately sought out everything else she had written. I am primarily a hard SF fan, but this story of the 4's griped me as few other novels had. One of my perrenial favourites is Arthur C. Clarke'ws The City And The Stars. In many ways Biting the Sun is the flip side of Clarke's story in the same way that Halderman's Forever War is a mirror to Heinlein's Starship Troopers. Certainly I think Lee's view of how humans will behave in a pleasant utopian environment, i.e. go quietly nuts, is perhaps more realistic than Clarkes gently rationale beings. Certainly the environment of the 4's presents a rebel with some unusual challenges, i.e. finding something forbidden to do that is not immediately reversed by the equivalent of a house cleaning robot. In some ways the 4's could be the endpoint of the Williamson story "With Folded Hands" where helpful robots have remove all risk etc, from life, taking humanity with it, turning the world into an endless nursery. Biting the Sun is how the protaganist escapes the playpen. It is fun to read, down right hilarious in places (Grey Eyes vs the Food Dispenser), but with a fundamental serious message underlying it. You have to fight to be human, it will cost you, but the prize is worth the cost.
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Summary: Dont put it down
Review: This book is a really really great book. Its part sad/happy/funny and you really feel for the characters. Its set in world similar yet different from ours...some what futuristic....but not sci-fi.
Get it, you'll love it!
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Summary: Stays in your head
Review: This is one of those stories I could never get out of my head. I first read it as a teenager, then tried to find it years later. It was out of print (or maybe just really hard to find), but I managed to order a copy in some weird hardback edition. I had an even harder time finding the sequel (paid a bookfinder service, and it took nearly a year to get to me). I'm so happy that these have been reissued. They are wonderful stories, and I still think about them. Quite a few lines that I keep remembering. The 2nd book is as good as the first, though it was years before I heard there was a second book. Are there any other books that take place in 4-B? I know she has lots of other books but don't know which ones to read next!
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Summary: Stays in your head
Review: This is one of those stories I could never get out of my head. I first read it as a teenager, then tried to find it years later. It was out of print (or maybe just really hard to find), but I managed to order a copy in some weird hardback edition. I had an even harder time finding the sequel (paid a bookfinder service, and it took nearly a year to get to me). I'm so happy that these have been reissued. They are wonderful stories, and I still think about them. Quite a few lines that I keep remembering. The 2nd book is as good as the first, though it was years before I heard there was a second book. Are there any other books that take place in 4-B? I know she has lots of other books but don't know which ones to read next!
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