Nancy Farmer
It is strange how many different ways you can write a time travel book. In this case, the setting is sometime in the future, but our protagonist spends most of his time in the past. And even though there is not "time travel" as you normally think of it, Mateo definitely encounters many of the same culture shocks that time travelers do. In many ways, the "child held in the attic" syndrome and time travel are really the same problem, in a literary sense. The plot here involves Mateo, the young clone of powerful drug lord in the country of Opium (a new political entity that has developed between Mexico and the US). As he comes of age, Mateo slowly has his blinders removed to both his own existential issues as well as to the cultural and moral issues that surround someone in his position. Farmer presents characters carefully and with enough substance to feel as if you understand their motivation. Perhaps 30 years from now, this book will look prescient. But that is the beauty of science fiction. If you write enough of it, something will inevitably be right.
Read
No comments:
Post a Comment