[Archren]

OK, I was thinking about this for quite awhile, and I figured something out:

When you look at the book through that theme of alienation, you see that Seira Mau is a ridiculously over-extended metaphor about the fact that abuse victims who wall themselves off from the universe repress their very human feelings, and because of that repression end up lashing out at people who love them/can help them. That alone probably explains why the book won the Tiptree award.

Then there's Ed Chianese, an alienated individual who is helped by the love of an "innocent" (Annie, who having "died" and been "reborn" qualifies for a second attempt at child-like innocence). And as we all know from "Catcher in the Rye" (another book that I really hated), one of the only cures for alienation is the love of an innocent (Caulfield's little sister).

However, this heavy-handed moralizing shoved into an SF story made for a less-than-enthralling SF story, which I still say didn't really work for me. Obviously it made an impression, since I'm still thinking about it, but I think someone like Cordwainer Smith handled grand themes like this without compromisng on the entertainment value of the pure SF story.

And I still don't understand what Harrison was going for with the really unrealistic Kearny plot.

[Soon Lee]

I too was ambivalent about this book. I finished it less than a week ago and I am reminded of Neal Stephenson on Slashdot (http://interviews.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/10/20/1518217&tid=192&tid=214&tid=126&tid=11).

Look at his response to the second question. LIGHT is clearly on the 'Dante' side of the divide, whereas we at sffworld are mainly 'Beowulf'. I found LIGHT vaguely entertaining, literate but not gripping; a page-turner this was not. This would be the sort of book that makes a university course 'required reading' list. I don't deny that it was well written. At times I engaged with the characters but the feeling of alienation (as previously mentioned) pervades the book.

I could go on about the themes, the subtext, the symbology, the black/white cat dichotomies. It was laden with 'meaning'. :) LIGHT, for what it's worth, is 'serious writing'.

As a read, I rate it 6/10 for enjoyment; 8/10 for quality of writing - that's 'quality' in terms of Literature (with a capital 'L'). Overall, a 7/10. But I would be reticent about recommending it.

P.S. Look at Neal Stephenson's answer to question four as well; actually the whole thing is a delightful read.

[odo]

Anyway, I can see why people liked this book.

Sadly I can't :( I really hated the book. I was really excited about it after reading an interview with M. John Harrison in which he explained why he wrote Space Opera. It was brilliant and compelling. So I bought "Light" expecting Space Opera and I was completely dissapointed when I found... something completely different :( I found the whole book absurd and meaningless. Oh, yes, and quite boring most of the time.

About Kearny, I have read somewhere that it was a kind of homage to "The dice man" by Luke Reinhart (a book which I couldn't finish, I must confess).

[homosap]

This was given to me by my father-in-law, he bought it mainly because the front cover says:-

Light is brilliant - Iain M Banks

now if Mr Banks meant that physical light is actually brilliant then I owe him an apology, otherwise he owes my father-in-law £6.99!!! He had to give up on this about a quarter of the way through but handed it on to me without mentioning this.

Well I finished this, barely, and found it to be one of the worst reads I have ever come across. Does he have some good ideas - yes, can he construct some great sentences - yes, but can he tell a good story - emphatically no! Most of us could sit there and sweat the thesaurus, and various literary tricks, to produce some good looking flowery prose. Flesh these out with some sketchy ideas, add in some poor characters and, hey presto, you've got Light.

What puzzles me is the fact that this book contains so many facets that I normally like. His ability to combine them so badly may actually be an ahievement in itself.

[LordBalthazar]

To be brutally honest, working my way through this book felt not unlike patiently waiting out the drunken ramblings of a friend. A deep-thinking, well-spoken friend who yammers on a little too long. Say, about a week. I didn't mind the back and forth between the different stories so much but was confused within the bodies of the three. The Ed storyline was the only one that seemed to progress whereas as the other two felt frustratingly static. I suppose it wasn't helped by the fact that the characters seemed more symbolic constructs designed to convey a theme rather than the more grounded characters of a traditional narrative. Which wouldn't be a bad thing if this was a short story but, even at a fairly modest 320 pages, Light felt frustratingly long. Harrison introduces some truly "out there" concepts - the think thank, the former human turned ship, the Kefahuchi Tract - but then remains cryptic throughout. A wasted opportunity and, ultimately, a very frustrating read.