Review: The Prestige by Christopher Priest

The Prestige by Christopher Priest
Published: Simon & Schuster UK/Touchstone, 1995
Awards Won: World Fantasy Award
Nominations: British Science Fiction Association Award, Arthur C. Clarke Award

The Book:

"In 1878, two young stage magicians clash in the dark during the course of a fraudulent seance. From this moment on, their lives become webs of deceit and revelation as they vie to outwit and expose one another.  Their rivalry will take them to the peaks of their careers, but with terrible consequences. In the course of pursuing each other's ruin, they will deploy all the deception their magicians' craft can command--the highest misdirection and the darkest science.  Blood will be spilled, but it will not be enough. In the end, their legacy will pass on for generations...to descendants who must, for their sanity's sake, untangle the puzzle left to them" ~barnesandnoble.com

I enjoyed the movie adaptation of The Prestige, so I thought I should check out the source material, the novel by Christopher Priest.  While the film did depart in some significant ways from the plot of the novel, I liked them both.  I think that each form of the story drew from the strengths of their respective mediums.  It was also interesting to approach the novel while knowing the secret plot twist, which I will avoid mentioning here, just in case.

My Thoughts:

In the novel version of The Prestige, the story of the rival magicians, Alfred Borden and Rupert Angier is framed in a 'modern' story about their great-grandchildren.  The Borden descendant, Andrew Westley, is an adopted child who has always had the unexplainable feeling that he has a twin brother.  The Angier descendant, Kate, is living in a wing of her family home, haunted by a scene she witnessed as a child.  The mystery of Kate and Andrew shows how the magician's feud has affected both of their families for generations, but it only takes up a small portion of the book.  It mostly serves to introduce the two fictional documents that make up the bulk of the story, Alfred Borden's semi-private memoirs and Rupert Angier's diary.

Instead of switching back and forth between the two magicians, as was done in the movie, the first part of the novel follows Borden's story from beginning to end.  After that, the point of view switches to Angier and we learn his complete life story.  Priest succeeded in giving each of the men a distinct voice, and the two documents even differed markedly in style.  Borden's memoirs were vaguely intended to be read by others, so he wrote very guardedly about his professional and personal life.  Due to this sense of having an audience,  his life story was kept very focused and entertainingly structured.  On the other hand, Angier's diary was, in this fictional world, never actually intended to be read.  As a result, it was much more fragmentary and disorganized, and the pacing was inconsistent.  I personally preferred Borden's memoir over Angier's diary, mostly due to the more concise and focused style.

One interesting result of telling the story through two private 'documents' is how it clearly showed each man as the hero of his own life story, with the opposing man as the villain.  Borden was a working-class boy who had the talent and intense desire to learn stage magic.  Angier was an aristocratic gentleman who left his family to perform as a magician alongside his lower-class girlfriend.  Angier, unlike Borden, had no natural talent for devising tricks, but he was just as obssessed with the field. All it took was one incident of youthful arrogance on Borden's part to kick off the feud that would shape their personal and professional lives. 

Neither of the magicians seemed like a particularly reliable narrator, due both to their individual identity crises and the natural tendency of a storyteller to cast themselves in a positive light.  Even when they were recounting the same scene, the tone, intentions, and often even actions or dialogue, differed in a realistic way. I felt that this helped to lend a sense of reality to both of the magicians. I can't deny that they both had significant personal flaws, most notably their obsession with stage magic over the people they supposedly loved.  However, even though they often made decisions that left me infuriated, I typically found it easy to sympathize with them.  I suppose I respect people that are so deeply motivated, even if that drive pushes them towards painful consequences for themselves and others.

Perhaps due to the nature of the story, Alfred Borden and Rupert Angier are really the only characters who feel like fully realized people.  The descendants take up only a small portion of the book, and, of course, the reader is only introduced to any other characters through the filters of Angier and Borden.  However, it was curious to me that Borden and Angier seemed to be the most important people in each others' lives, and the most often mentioned in their respective journals. Borden almost never mentioned his wife and children. Angier abandoned his wife and children for years to run around with another woman, and when he finally came back to them, they simply forgave him.  The most notable non-viewpoint character is Olive, an American dancer and stage assistant who is the mistress of both magicians at different times.  Even she is kind of a stereotype, the sexually-liberated American temptress who lured the men from their wives.  I know the story is fundamentally about Borden, Angier and their magic, so I understand why little time was devoted to their wives, families, and friends.  I just feel as though it would have been interesting to get a better picture of how they interacted with the people that were important in their lives.

I was also a little disappointed with the final scene of the story.  It didn't really answer some of the major questions of the magicians' story, or provide much closure for the descendants' story.  Since the descendants' story took up so little of the book, it ran the risk of feeling unnecessary when it was not made clear how it either reflected or enhanced the main story. I'm not opposed to leaving some things open-ended, but I would have liked for there to have been a little more to tie the old and new stories together thematically. 

My Rating: 4/5

The Prestige is an exciting story about two feuding rival magicians and how their obsession with their craft shaped their personal and professional lives.  I enjoyed the novel, even though I already knew a lot of the plot twists from the film adaptation.  A modern story, which felt slightly extraneous, frames the main plot, which is told through fictional documents authored by the magicians Borden and Angier.  I liked the way these documents were used to give each magician a unique voice, and how their unreliability as narrators enhanced the sense of realism.  I favored Borden's narrative, since I found Angier's to sometimes drag or seem unfocused.  While the two magicians made for intriguing protagonists, I wished Priest would have chosen to show more of their relationships with their families or friends. I think that The Prestige is worth reading, even if you've already seen the movie.  The story and style are different enough that I was never bored, even though I already knew the general plot.

Review: Mappa Mundi by Justina Robson

Mappa Mundi by Justina Robson

Published: Ballantine Books, 2006

Nominations: Arthur C. Clarke Award

The Book:

“In the near future, when medical nanotechnology has made it possible to map a model of the living human brain, radical psychologist Natalie Armstrong sees her work suddenly become crucial to a cutting-edge military project for creating comprehensive mind-control. Meanwhile, on the other side of the Atlantic, Jude Westhorpe, FBI specialist, is tracking a cold war defector long involved in everything from gene sequencing to mind-mapping. But his investigation has begun to affect matters of national security--throwing Jude and Natalie together as partners in trouble, deep trouble, from every direction.

This fascinating novel explores the nature of humanity in the near future, when the power and potential of developing technologies demand that we adapt ourselves to their existence--whatever the price.” ~barnesandnoble.com

I read this novel as a part of the 2011 Women in Science Fiction Book Club.  This is the first book I’ve read by Justina Robson.

My Thoughts:

Mappa Mundi was essentially a hard SF thriller.  The story had a heavy focus on the details and uses of mind-affecting technology, but it also spent a lot of time on the political maneuvering and espionage carried out by the many characters.  The technology and its implications were discussed extensively, but the exact method of its working was only given to the reader in fragments. 

In general, it seemed that the technology could be used to destroy, recreate, or alter someone’s mind in almost any way.  From my understanding of it, it seemed that a mental operating system, called NervePath, must first be installed in a person’s mind.  Then, ‘MappaWare’, a type of software, could be run on their mind to change even their deepest held beliefs.   The psychologist Natalie was also working on a program called ‘SelfWare’, which was intended to enhance human consciousness.  I found this kind of mental programming intriguing, and I couldn’t help wondering what buggy MappaWare code would do to someone’s mind.  For the most part, though, the story focused on software that functioned exactly as intended.

I enjoyed the discussions of the possible uses and abuses of the MappaWare, and what it would do to the concept of the self and freedom.  MappaWare could be used to cure mental illness, but it could also be used to control the minds of all humanity.  Its near-limitless power made it a kind of mental doomsday device for the various political factions to fight over.  The MappaWare technology and the complicated schemes of many groups to possess and use it are the driving force of the story.

The format of the novel is map-themed, and it contains ‘Legends’, vignettes that set up the identities of the key players, a ‘Compass Rose’ section that shows the event that brings them together, a ‘Map’ section for the main story, and an epilogue called an ‘Update’ at the end.  It was a neat way to organize things, but it kind of emphasizes the fact that this is a very plot- and structure-driven book.  While the characters were superficially interesting, I never felt much of an emotional connection to them. They were more like set pieces in the plot, and so they had very distinct but static personalities.  I felt like none of them grew much past my first impression.

I think this is a matter of personal preference, but I also had a hard time with Robson’s writing style.  It seems that my brain and hers just don’t operate on the same wavelength, and mine just kept snagging on little details. Specifically, there were many situations where her word choices or phrasing seemed unnecessarily confusing or contradictory to me.  For example, at one point Natalie notes a companion’s surprising codeine intake with the thought:

“That was more codeine than would kill a cat.” (p. 386)

The structure of the sentence implies that it was a large dose of codeine, but the chosen comparison seems to imply the opposite.  Cats are very small animals, and they typically can’t take nearly as much medicine as a human. According to my sources, codeine can be safely given to cats only in very small quantities.  I imagine that a dose capable of killing a cat could still be a pretty small dose for a human.  So now, I have no idea what that sentence was meant to imply about the amount of codeine consumed. A few chapters later, it is clarified that the dose of codeine was, in fact, large.  It seemed like I was constantly getting sidetracked into puzzling over those kinds of minor points. 

My Rating: 3/5

I enjoyed Mappa Mundi as a hard SF thriller, and as a discussion of the possible influence the existence of mind-altering technology might have on human society. The story itself was very interesting on an intellectual level, though I had very little emotional attachment to the characters.  I enjoyed the discussions about what constitutes a person’s ‘self’, and how MappaWare should be used, if at all, to improve the world.  There were many conflicting sides trying to pursue what they thought was right, mostly through the use of manipulation and deceit.  However, the complexities of the plot seemed to overshadow the development of the many major characters.  Also, I was a little disappointed with the conclusion, which seemed almost to render the entire story pointless. On the one hand, I enjoyed the technology and the political-machination-filled plot, but on the other, I was bothered by my lack of emotional connection and the unsatisfying conclusion.

Review: Cryoburn by Lois McMaster Bujold

Cryoburn by Lois McMaster Bujold

Published: Baen, 2010

Series: Book 14 of the Vorkosigan Saga

Nominated: Hugo, Locus SF Award

The Book:

“Miles Vorkosigan is back!

Kibou-daini is a planet obsessed with cheating death. Barrayaran Imperial Auditor Miles Vorkosigan can hardly disapprove--he’s been cheating death his whole life, on the theory that turnabout is fair play. But when a Kibou-daini cryocorp--an immortal company whose job it is to shepherd its all-too-mortal frozen patrons into an unknown future--attempts to expand its franchise into the Barrayaran Empire, Emperor Gregor dispatches his top troubleshooter Miles to check it out.

On Kibou-daini, Miles discovers generational conflict over money and resources is heating up, even as refugees displaced in time skew the meaning of generation past repair. Here he finds a young boy with a passion for pets and a dangerous secret, a Snow White trapped in an icy coffin who burns to re-write her own tale, and a mysterious crone who is the very embodiment of the warning, “Don’t mess with the secretary”. Bribery, corruption, conspiracy, kidnapping--something is rotten on Kibou-daini, and it isn’t due to power outages in the Cryocombs. And Miles is in the middle--of trouble!” –barnesandnoble.com

I read Cryoburn as a part of my plan to read all of the 2011 Hugo Award nominees.  I had not yet read any of the “Vorkosigan Saga” novels, but I decided to go ahead with this one. Since it was nominated for the Hugo & Locus SF Awards based on its merits as a single novel, I figured that it would not be unreasonable to review it out of its place in the series.

The main story of Cryoburn does stand on its own, but I don’t think I would recommend reading this without reading the rest of the series.  The novel was full of references to places I’d never been introduced to, and there were many cameos or mentions of characters I didn’t know.  These were all explained well enough to follow, but I feel like I was lacking the expected emotional connection to this universe and the Vorkosigan family. 

My Thoughts:

While the book does contain a fair amount of action and humor, Cryoburn is mostly a mystery involving politics and economics.  In Kibou-daini, many people choose cryogenic preservation over death, hoping to awake to a future that has discovered the cure for aging.  They leave their political power as citizens in the hands of their chosen cryocorp, giving these massive corporations power over huge blocks of votes. Miles begins his investigation into the cryocorps of Kibou-daini through an official cryogenics conference, but, thanks to the lovable pseudo-orphan boy Jin, he quickly finds his way to part of the planet’s disenfranchised segment of society.  As he learns more about the motivations and history of the powerful cryogenics corporations, he begins to piece together the truth of their elaborate cover-ups and chilling future plans. I enjoyed the story as an exploration of how easy access to cryogenics might change the balance of power in a society, and of what forms of corruption would suddenly become possible and profitable.

Fear of mortality is a major theme explored in Cryoburn, mostly through examination of the Kibou-daini cryogenics program. At what point is a person ready, if ever, to die?  While some citizens might turn to the technology as a last resort, many people on Kibou-daini simply count it as a part of their life plan.  They opt for an earlier, possibly impermanent, death, instead of accepting their own aging and eventual decline. Bujold also discusses the plight of the ones who have been revived, only to find themselves still aging in a society that has become foreign to them.  We may not have the same medical options as the people of Kibou-daini, but the transience of life is something everyone has to face. Bujold’s portrayal of the many ways people react to the inevitable fact of death felt very genuine to me, and relevant to both the events of the novel and to all of us mortals.

Aside from the plot and the discussions of mortality, I also rather enjoyed the characters. Miles, the Imperial Auditor, is a thoroughly entertaining and sympathetic protagonist. I liked that he was not truly disrespectful of anyone around him, whether they were high government officials or street kids.  He sometimes operates ‘outside the rules’, but not in the irresponsible, shortsighted method of most action heroes.  For Miles, I got the feeling that he was simply much more interested in accomplishing things than he was in observing etiquette or maintaining appearances.  His energy and enthusiasm made the book even more engaging for me.

The local Kibou-daini main character was Jin Sato. Jin is a kid who was essentially orphaned when his mother was frozen under mysterious circumstances.  Having run away from his aunt and uncle, he lives in a kind-of-illegal community with other discarded people of Kibou-daini.  He has an essentially nurturing nature, and he cares for a large menagerie of animals.  Jin provides Miles with a link into the parts of Kibou-daini society that the government would prefer for him not to see.  Jin was an endearing character, if a little too much of a ‘cute kid’, but he sometimes seemed a little too convenient for the plot.  The many other characters, such as Jin’s little sister, Miles’ armsman Roic, Vorlynken of the Barrayan consulate, and Raven Durona, weren’t very deeply characterized, but they were certainly interesting enough to add to my enjoyment of the novel.

My Rating: 3.5/5

I think that Cryoburn is a novel that will work best in the context of the rest of the series. It’s certainly enjoyable on its own, but there are parts of the book that won’t be emotionally effective unless the reader is already familiar with the universe and the Vorkosigan family. The story of the corrupt Kibou-daini crycorps is interesting enough to carry the book, though, and the society of Kibou-daini is an interesting exploration of how the impermanent death of freezing would affect the balance of power in the society.  I enjoyed Miles as a protagonist, and Jin was an interesting character, if a little overly adorable and convenient.  I wouldn’t recommend this as a starting point for the series (my mistake), but it was fairly interesting as a mystery and as a discussion of mortality.  I’m going to start reading the “Vorkosigan Saga” from the beginning starting sometime in the next few weeks!