Rating: 
Summary: inappropriate for children
Review: This is a book many children aged nine or ten to twelve or so might enjoy, but I would not have my own read it and I don't recommend you have yours read it. It teaches them the wrong lessons. It tells us that problems are best ignored, that you don't have to ever grow up if you don't want to. It encourages xenophobia and paranoia (in the popular, non-clinical sense of the word) and--I don't know how to put this delicately--cold-blooded violence. (Although the adult psyche will probably prove impervious, I recommend it for only those adults with a high tolerance for simplistic drivel and badly constructed prose.)
Rating:
Summary: dreadful but also (sadly) typical: pulp
Review: This is the stuff that tarnishes science-fiction's reputation. Yes, the group telepathy was fun, but persons as inept at handling English prose as "Chrysalids"'s author proves himself to be should never, ever be published. Dreck.
Rating: 
Summary: a science fiction classic
Review: The Chrysalids is a great read, well written and absorbing, a true classic in science fiction, and probably in fiction in general. The message that "different" may as well mean "better than the common", and that bigotry and intolerence are ugly, is presented to the readers through a very original plot that gradually reveals the situation on Earth after a nuclear holocaust. A group of children and young adults struggle to survive by keeping secret their telepathic abilities, which, like all other "mutations", are considered a sacrilege by a rigidly pious, intolerent, and cruel society. The characters in the book are alive and human, the images vivid, the feelings compelling, and the end full of hope. A truly wonderful book which would make a great movie.
Rating: 
Summary: the chrysalids
Review: This book is great for the more advanced reader. I found the storyline got confusing sometimes but it was really an enchanting book. The chrysalids is a creative book with the idea of mind pictures. I could really imagine what the characters looked like and their personalities were clear. I would definatly reccomend this book to someone with a love for reading and being taken to another world to experience the story.
Rating: 
Summary: a fairy tale pretending to be science fiction
Review: This book was recommended to me by an adult who represented it to me as adult science fiction. I don't want to fault him especially however, for it seems to me publishers and authors are often equivocal, possibly for commercial reasons, about the distinction between adult science fiction and children's fairy tale, and for that matter, it ought to have occurred to me that since "Chrysalids"'s protagonists are children and teen-agers so might its intended audience be. In fact, this is a sort of inverted "Peter Pan"--with rough approximations of Peter Pan (David), Wendy (Rosiland), Wendy's-younger-brother (Petra--a girl here), and Tinkerbell (the woman from New Zealand). I say an INVERTED "Peter Pan" because the real "Peter Pan" stresses that growing up is inevitable. "Chrysalids" tells us the opposite. (Its title can be thus taken as an ironic metaphor.) The eldest protagonist, Ann, is doomed fpr deserting her compatriots, for marrying, symbolically, for growing up. (The ruthlessness of these children toward their adult relatives and Ann and Alan, her husband, is striking and suggestive, but I'll leave it unanalyzed--either you understand the implications or you don't.) All this would be fine--or at least not SO bad--if the book were not marketed as science fiction and more if it did not assume the trappings of science fiction, if it did not allude to real world problems (nuclear armament and over-population--the gravest facing us) brought about by technology, if it did not invoke (and misrepresent) such scientific matters as genetics, natural selection, evolution, and the effects of nuclear fall-out.
Rating:
Summary: very silly
Review: I read "Chrysalids" yesterday. I enjoyed much of it--the middle much (the beginning and end made all too apparent the silliness of the story--and I read rapidly to avoid stumbling over Wyndham's occasionally clumsy prose and narrative lacunae). Nevertheless, I find--I'm afraid--, "Chrysalids" fundamentally and irredeemably flawed. 1) In the preface to a collection of what he calls his "scientific fantasies" bound in a single volume, H. G. Wells explains how he sought in them to introduce just one strange element and to make the rest as realistic and matter-of-fact as possible. Wyndham in "Chrysalids", on the other hand, piles various unrelated or only loosely related fancies atop one another, suffocating whatever point he wished to make and concocting something of an aesthetic eyesore. 2) The real world problems underlying the fancies of "Chrysalids" are summarized most succinctly in this passage from its page 186: "If they ["the Old People", that is, us] had not brought down Tribulation [engaged in nuclear war] which all but destroyed them; then they would have bred with the carelessness of animals until they had reduced themselves to poverty and misery, and ultimately to starvation and barbarism [they would have over-populated the planet--though the immediate effects of over-population are subtler and more insidious than that]." How do the characters in "Chrysalids" grapple with these problems? They don't; they magically turn into butterflies and flit away to Emerald City. Very pretty for some, no doubt, but the point of science fiction is to make us think, not to lull us to sleep.
Rating:
Summary: The Chrysalids
Review: I LOVED THIS BOOK! It has always been one of my favorites. As a confused teenager trying to fit in, I identified completely with David and the group. They were different. They didn't fit in, but they didn't understand why everyone else thought it was wrong to be different. I appreciated the way the group found each other, stuck together and made sacrifices for the greater good of the group, which allowed them to find a place in their world where they were permitted to be themselves. I even named by business after this book. It is such a parallel to the unfounded prejudices we find now in our own world, and it opened my eyes to my prejudices I didn't even know I had. This book changed my way of looking at people. I've always wondered if it really was post-nuclear-war earth, or if it might have been PRE-pre-historic, or even a different planet...HMMM... I think it should be required reading in every adolescent age school program.
Rating:
Summary: Paralising!
Review: Hello, I am just one of the many teenagers who have read theChrysalids novel. Now, with this new curriculm, they decided that thiswould be the novel that all grade nines students would read within my district. As, I heard reviews from my class, it was basicly a big confusion. To make it clear, I heard in one review that a man compared telepathy to thought shapes. That is incorrect. It is simply 'thought shapes,' not messages or brain waves, just thought shapes. In our modern world telepathy is possible but not thought shapes and that is what make Chrysalids different and interesting. It is hard to understand the book at times, and I agree that there should have been a sequel. I reccomend that you should be mature enough to read and understand this book, and if not then you will be lost. Over all, it was quite wonderful!
Rating:
Summary: This was a disapointment
Review: I am a grade 9 student and the class did a group book report on this novel. It was awful, it was overated as a classic. No I don't hate it because it was forced apon me, it was a week book. The ending was odd and much to fast. There was a big lead up to nothing. The climax was a black hole of emptyness. When written it may verywell have been good but it was not up to todays standards. There are so many better recent books I have read. No I'm not dumb I have a 92% in english and a 96% average. I feel we should let the book die and pick up a new book published in this decade. Support the new authors not the dead ones.
Rating:
Summary: This book sucks
Review: This is the worst book ever. John Whyndham is a big failure. If it were up to me, this book would never be taught in school again. The whole book was entirely boring and the ending was retarded. Please do not read this book.
|
