The Stars My Destination, by Alfred Bester

[keilexandra]

The Stars My Destination (AKA Tiger, Tiger)
by Alfred Bester
258 pages (hardcover)
Genre: Fiction/SF

Tiger! Tiger! burning bright
In the forests of the night,
What immortal hand or eye
Could frame thy fearful symmetry?
--William Blake

This is yet another version of The Count of Monte Cristo, Plot is basically the same, but the characters are very different. I'm not sure who plays the part of Mercédès--Jisbella or Olivia? Or Robin? It's difficult to determine exactly what happened before suffering on the Nomad and what happened after, due to the Burning Man (which is an excellent twist that I shan't spoil). Neil Gaiman speaks truly in the preface to the edition I read--despite the age, this book is barely outdated and joins 1984 in the ranks of classic SF novels. The read is brief--certainly nowhere the length of the original--but very, very weird. A classic to be sure, but weird. Be forewarned.

Recommended to experienced SF fans; definitely not as an introduction to the genre.

ETA: Comments are getting a little spoilery.

Comments

[tmseay.livejournal.com]

The ending of this book rocks my world, but I find the pacing of the rest of it dizzying and exhausting -- although pretty typical for the space opera subgenre in that area.

[tmseay.livejournal.com]

"Area" there being an, er, uncommon variant spelling of "era."

[keilexandra]

Hmm, I didn't have many issues with pacing--maybe because everything is so weird that if I don't read fast, I'm going to be overwhelmed by the sheer wackiness. (But I'm not exactly an experienced SF fan; fantasy is my specialty.) The ending was amazing, even if I was mentally exhausted by then and didn't really stop to ponder the symbolism. My favorite part was definitely the Burning Man, because it's so logical--basically the only logical way to depict time travel if you're going to go back into the novel's previous events--and yet I didn't see it coming at all.