Foreigner

Rating:
Summary: This is the best book ever!!!!!!!!!!!
Review: I, personally, think that this book is the greatest one ever written, if you can overlook some off colored parts. (You need to read the others too.)

Rating:
Summary: Seeking understanding
Review: It's a pity this book has gone off the active list. As the concluding work in the Quintaglio series of planetary destruction, it draws together many elements introduced earlier. Although ostensibly a dinosaur, Afsan's character grows more human with each volume. As a reflection of current Euro-North American society, Foreigner is hard to beat. Perhaps the reflection is too vivid for some and the book has failed to garner sufficient readership to keep its sales active. That's a shame; it's worth reading.

A trilogy of sub-plots keeps your interest alive through the main theme. The saurians are learning about their own world while striving for the means to escape it. Sawyer depicts the violent mental disruptions of racism with talent. Although dinosaurs mate for reproductive ends, he manages to introduce a new feature of their lives, jealousy versus loyalty. While the accounts of Novato, Afsan's mate and his son Toroca are compelling, it's the relationship of Afsan, the continuing primary character in this series, that renders this book worthy of note. His association with the practitioner of the new therapy of psychology makes hilarious reading. Mokleb, the 'therapist,' is a marvelous rendition of the money-grubbing cockroaches that infest Earth's cities today. She's a Freudian, of course, with all the fanciful ideas of conscious and subconscious ['high' and 'low' mind] and dream interpretation that has bled many a bank account dry during the past century. Her negotiation with Afsan over payment for the therapy sessions is too vividly real to be missed.

If you are new to Sawyer, by all means start the trilogy at the beginning and follow it through this volume. You will learn much about your own world as Sawyer reflects it in Afsan's. The series is a good addition to any library of speculative fiction. The only truly speculative part of Sawyer's works is the 'people' portrayed and their location in the cosmos.

Rating:
Summary: Seeking understanding
Review: It's a pity this book has gone off the active list. As the concluding work in the Quintaglio series of planetary destruction, it draws together many elements introduced earlier. Although ostensibly a dinosaur, Afsan's character grows more human with each volume. As a reflection of current Euro-North American society, Foreigner is hard to beat. Perhaps the reflection is too vivid for some and the book has failed to garner sufficient readership to keep its sales active. That's a shame; it's worth reading.

A trilogy of sub-plots keeps your interest alive through the main theme. The saurians are learning about their own world while striving for the means to escape it. Sawyer depicts the violent mental disruptions of racism with talent. Although dinosaurs mate for reproductive ends, he manages to introduce a new feature of their lives, jealousy versus loyalty. While the accounts of Novato, Afsan's mate and his son Toroca are compelling, it's the relationship of Afsan, the continuing primary character in this series, that renders this book worthy of note. His association with the practitioner of the new therapy of psychology makes hilarious reading. Mokleb, the 'therapist,' is a marvelous rendition of the money-grubbing cockroaches that infest Earth's cities today. She's a Freudian, of course, with all the fanciful ideas of conscious and subconscious ['high' and 'low' mind] and dream interpretation that has bled many a bank account dry during the past century. Her negotiation with Afsan over payment for the therapy sessions is too vividly real to be missed.

If you are new to Sawyer, by all means start the trilogy at the beginning and follow it through this volume. You will learn much about your own world as Sawyer reflects it in Afsan's. The series is a good addition to any library of speculative fiction. The only truly speculative part of Sawyer's works is the 'people' portrayed and their location in the cosmos.

Rating:
Summary: 3rd best dino SF book ever
Review: The 1st and 2nd best are Far-Seer and Fossil Hunter .... this is the third volume in that trilogy and although I'm ranking them 1,2,3 in order of release this is not really an example of the law of diminishing returns. This time out it's the dinosaurian Freud .... surprising choice (I'd expected a dino Einstein) but Sawyer makes it work wonderfully, with his earlier creation .... the dino Galileo named Afsan .... undergoing pscyho-analysis! Wonderful end to a wonderful series by a Nebula and Hugo winning Canadian author.