Free Live Free

Rating:
Summary: Characterization at its best
Review: Free Live Free has some brilliant moments, and some very well drawn characters. Unfortunately, the reading experience for me was badly damaged by the ending. Without writing any spoilers, let me simply say that Wolfe seems to have sidestepped the obvious choice by picking another one, one that instead of working well, what he did seemed entirely out of keeping with the rest of the novel. Still worth reading.

Rating:
Summary: Masterful novel that didn't need the gimmick at the end...
Review: From the first page Wolfe grabs you and pulls you into the world of 4 forlorn individuals. With nothing else to go on but a witch's promise of treasure, the characters fan out in search of something each hopes will bring an end to their disappointment. They find comedy, pathos, terror. Without sentimentality, Wolfe draws each character with compassion, and it's a shame at the end he feels compelled (or perhaps was contracted) to tack on such a clunker of a science fiction device. It wasn't necessary (especially something as shopworn and silly as a time travel "gizmo") and detracts from what would otherwise be hailed as a masterpiece. Of course--it's still worth reading!

Rating:
Summary: Hoped for too much - ended in disappointment
Review: I have managed to track this fantastic book down. I read it a few years ago now on loan from a friend. With no cover on the book, sorry fellow book lovers but the girl had travelled with it across Europe and the cover went the way of all well read books, sad but true. I had no memory of the author only the blinding, blazing story line that had me captured from the first page. I think i fell in love with Candy the slightly pudgy "Escort Girl", who spends the book munching chocs and delivering some great lines that help to carry the story page after page. Look, enough words, its almost Christmas time, go out and treat yourself to this book, stick it in your stocking, then forget about it till you wake up on Christmas morning, you wont be disapointed, your family may though feel neglected as you wont be talking to much. Enjoy!
Colin Gould.

Rating:
Summary: Another Excellent Find
Review: I have yet to be disappointed by anything Wolfe has written. I will quickly agree with the general consensus that Free Live Free is not, by any means, Wolfe's greatest work, but it is an excellent story that experiments with the boundaries and definitions of the SF genre. Of all Wolfe's works, this is one of the least difficult to grasp, though there is still a wonderful complexity to the prose. It is also one of the grittier books he has published, which is not, by any means, a bad thing.

The greatest shortcoming of this book, I feel, is that the fabulous character of Mrs. Baker was left undeveloped...which was, I think, Wolfe's intention all along. Her amusingly endearing speech patterns practically screamed her significance to the story, but we are left, at the end, knowing very little more about her than we did the moment she misspoke her first cliché.

Do not enter this text expecting anything like the "Sun" cycle, or even anything like "The Fifth Head of Cerberus" or "Peace." "Free Live Free" is as unique as Wolfe himself.

Rating:
Summary: SF only if you include the ending
Review: I will have to re-read the last few chapters of this book but there is no getting around the fact that the plot ends with an unsatisfying and unnecessary red herring. It is as if Wolfe had a manuscript lying around unfinished and some cohort of his said "I dare you to end it using [X] plot device," and Wolfe took up the challenge.

Nor did I find his characterizations really compelling. "Mr Barnes" is the most fully fleshed out of the four protagonists, but all four seem like facets of a single individual, not four distinct people driven by their individual motivations.

That all said, it was an interesting read, and more accessible than Gene Wolfe's heavier fiction. It is atypical among Wolfe's work for its lightness and clarity of prose.

Rating:
Summary: SF only if you include the ending
Review: I will have to re-read the last few chapters of this book but there is no getting around the fact that the plot ends with an unsatisfying and unnecessary red herring. It is as if Wolfe had a manuscript lying around unfinished and some cohort of his said "I dare you to end it using [X] plot device," and Wolfe took up the challenge.

Nor did I find his characterizations really compelling. "Mr Barnes" is the most fully fleshed out of the four protagonists, but all four seem like facets of a single individual, not four distinct people driven by their individual motivations.

That all said, it was an interesting read, and more accessible than Gene Wolfe's heavier fiction. It is atypical among Wolfe's work for its lightness and clarity of prose.

Rating:
Summary: A Second tier Wolfe book
Review: This book attempts to adapt the quintessential Gene Wolfe formula by positing several interesting characters around a central mystery. Unforutantely, this is restricted to our world, unlike the fabulous worlds of his varied 'Sun' novels, so his imagiantion is not given free play. Equally unfortunately, he fully explains his vitae idea, a general time traveling back to a pereptually flying ship (which by the way was probably the msot origianl thing in teh book, of using the 300 mph jet stream to glide on. Also includes a tie in to howard hughes.)
In brief, this is a book to read after you've finished your Pynchon and Eco.

Rating:
Summary: A wonderful book!
Review: Wolfe's fans probably admire most the books in which he demonstrates his ability to create believable (and yet unbelievably complex) fictional settings. In this novel, Wolfe has placed the strange events of his plotline right in the middle of a run-down and rather seedy neighborhood in Chicago, with forays into a nearby luxury hotel and an insane asylum. It's remarkable how well this works. Wolfe demonstrates that he's just as good at listening to how people actually talk to each other in the real world as he is at imagining how they would talk in particularly baroque and distant futures. The conversations between the many characters who make up this book are its biggest pleasure. It's pointless, however, to attempt to explain why the conversations leave such a lasting impression in the mind, because the dialogue derives its effectiveness from the way that it reveals the psyches of some extremely well-drawn characters. If you don't know the characters, you can't understand the appeal. A part of it is that the main characters are all, in one way or another, the type of people that our culture regards as losers. Wolfe manages to make you root for them, but not by idealizing them. Instead, he shows you all of their many flaws...and pretty serious flaws they are, from an ethical viewpoint. Then he shows you their small virtues and talents. And then you begin to realize how hard they have to struggle, because of their poverty, just to get through life. This is a remarkable science-fiction novel for a lot of reasons, but mainly for being populated with protagonists who are neither fearless heroes nor nihilistic violent cretins.

Rating:
Summary: Quite simply the best book I have ever read. READ IT!
Review: You will see elsewhere on this page a few words which mention the characters and plot of this remarkable book. They are but shadows casting shadows... how can a spattering of words capture the magic of the work as a whole? You simply have to read the book itself to discover the intricate art of it, the unexpected and delightful revalations that make you laugh and weep.

My first exposure to Gene Wolfe was through his Book of the New Sun (consisting of four books, with a few related titles - it was a pleasure to read them all.) The Book of the New Sun impressed me enough to count Gene Wolfe as one of my favourite authors. Free Live Free has pushed the man into a seemingly unassailable first place position. If another author ever manages to displace him, I fear I may perish from sheer joy of reading.