Mindscape

by Andrea Hairston

MINDSCAPE takes us to a future in which the world itself has been literally divided by the Barrier, a phenomenon that will not be ignored. For 115 years this extraterrestrial, epidimensional entity has divided the earth into warring zones. Although a treaty to end the interzonal wars has been hammered out, power-hungry politicians, gangsters, and spiritual fundamentalists are determined to thwart it. Celestina, the treaty's architect, is assassinated, and her protegee, Elleni, a talented renegade and one of the few able to negotiate the Barrier, takes up her mantle. Now Elleni and a motley crew of allies risk their lives to make the treaty work. Can they repair their fractured world before the Barrier devours them completely?

Genres: Science Fiction, Fiction, Fantasy, Speculative Fiction, Adult, Queer, Science Fiction Fantasy

445 pages, Paperback

First published March 1, 2006

About the author

Andrea Hairston is an African-American science fiction and fantasy playwright and novelist who is best known for her novels Mindscape and Redwood and Wildfire. Mindscape, Hairston's first novel, won the Carl Brandon Parallax Award and short-listed for the Philip K. Dick Award and the James Tiptree, Jr. Award.

She is the Artistic Director of Chrysalis Theatre and has created original productions with music, dance, and masks for more than a decade. Hairston is also the Louise Wolff Kahn 1931 Professor of Theatre and Afro-American Studies at Smith College. She teaches playwriting, African, African American, and Caribbean theatre literature. Her plays have been produced at Yale Rep, Rites and Reason, the Kennedy Center, StageWest, and on public radio and television. In addition, Hairston has translated plays by Michael Ende and Kaca Celan from German to English.

(source: Wikipedia)

Reviews

[Wealhtheow · Rating 4 out of 5]

Multi-dimensional barriers slam down on Earth, splitting the planet into discrete, nigh-impenetrable cages. Nations, geography, and civilizations as we know it crumble, replaced by gang-run city-states. But out of this chaos and violence also come chimeric healers known as Vermittler, who have the ability to create safe passages through the Barrier. One healer, Celestina, uses these passages and crafts a Treaty between different realms--but on the very day the Treaty is signed, she is assassinated. In the wake of her death, a number of individuals each struggle in the newly connected world. Aaron, a movie producer/gang lord who skin-switched into a white man after being a brutalized black woman, and has never come to terms with his past. Lawanda, who has purposefully reclaimed an ethnicity and culture everyone else would like to forget, who is nominated as a Treaty Ambassador to harm the Treaty but proves to be its greatest advocate. The Major, torn between the mind-bombs placed in his head by his superiors and his love of Lawanda. Ellina, Celestina's apprentice who seeks to finish what she started. And Ray, an actor in Aaron's latest project; no one is sure whether he's just acting like a hero, or actually is one--not even himself. Their struggle to reconcile the Barrier with Earth, and the fractered pieces of Earth with itself, progress through tangled schemes, vision quests and flash-backs.

As a story it is exuberant, irrepressable, far-reaching, very smart and knowledgable but simultanously unashamed of believing whole-heartedly in mystical koans. The characters have a tendency to communicate in epigraphs that don't quite connect with each other, and it took a while for me to get the hang of what is going on. There's a lot of magic floating around, and none of it is explained. But there's so much energy and power and feeling to this tale that I couldn't quite give up on it, even though I had no idea what was going on for the first quarter of the book.

[Thistle & Verse · Rating 3 out of 5]

I first read an excerpt in the Reading the Bones anthology edited by Sheree Renee Thomas and was very intrigued, so I wanted to read the full work. I don't know what to make of this book. Hairston doesn't outright explain how the world works. The reader gets the lay of the land and the history of this world as the book progresses. I had difficulty keeping track of characters and locations. There's commentary on Hollywood/entertainment, singing as time travel, and clashes between tradition and modernity. Mindscape ultimately felt like a bundle of cool ideas that wasn't quite cohesive, fragmented like a post-Barrier world.

[M. Fenn · Rating 5 out of 5]

In my last WOGF reading challenge review, I remarked on how one of the main points of Native Tongue gets bogged down amidst all the other plot threads Suzette Haden Elgin tries to bring together. That point being the attempt of a group of women Linguists to create their own language, a necessary thing given their oppression. Andrea Hairston brings up a similar point in her 2006 debut novel Mindscape and does so in one sharply written paragraph–one amongst many.

All the thugs is laughin’ at me, but I don’t go off. I take a deep breath, work calm in my center, like Ray Valero do to act. Ethnic throwbacks be like the ole Israelis bringin’ back Hebrew after two thousand years, after so many words was fightin’ against ‘em. Why anybody wanna speak the truth, raise they children, know themselves with gas chamber language? Survival be havin’ words to call home, havin’ idioms and syntax to heal the Diaspora. In your cultural rhythm and rhyme, that’s where the soul keep time. — Lawanda Kitt, p. 51

The rest of Mindscape is like that: a lot of heavy things said that, at least to me, doesn’t get lost in a stew of wobbly prose.

Mindscape is a complex tale of a future Earth dealing with the aftermath of the invasion of some sort of alien/magical barrier that has cut the planet into several regions that can no longer interact with each other except for when seasonal corridors open up in the Barrier. All of these regions are constantly at war until a seer/prophet/something named Celestina convinces everyone to sign a peace treaty, ushering in a new era, presumably. She is then assassinated.

So much for the prologue.

The rest of the book concerns the aftermath of the treaty signing. Like I said, it’s complex and Hairston leads us through with the help of five perspectives: Elleni, Celestina’s spirit-daughter who might not be completely human; Lawanda Kitt, an ambassador called upon to interact with the rulers of a rival region; The Major, a man of mixed loyalties, one of which is Lawanda; Ray Valero, a celebrated actor who finds himself in the position of having to be a real hero; and Aaron Dunkelbrot, an entertainment producer with an interesting past.

Through these five people, Hairston shows us a dystopian world where epidemics rage, poor people who don’t have the “right” appearance become Extras in snuff films, “ethnic throwbacks” fight to not be disappeared while gene-art mutations flourish, and a chosen few try to communicate with the Barrier to figure out its plans.

I enjoyed Mindscape quite a bit. Hairston’s prose is delightful and her characters are strong and interesting. The story carried me right along, and her insights into race and culture never felt preachy or heavyhanded. My only complaint might be that the ending felt a little rushed with a ton of plot threads coming together all at once. It’s a minor complaint, though, and I’m looking forward to reading her novel from 2011, Redwood and Wildfire. 4.85/5

[Bogi Takács]

Review now available on tor.com:
https://www.tor.com/2018/10/23/quiltb...
____
Source of the book: It was a while ago... I think I asked Aqueduct to pay me in books for a poem (they have an option like that in their contracts for Cascadia Subduction Zone) and that was how I got it.

[Shannongibney · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was an incredibly dense and fascinating exploration of (among other things) African diasporic spiritual and aesthetic traditions, technology and its limitations and possibilities, seeing various communities as "character," alternative sexualities and kinship systems, multiple languages, multiple spiritual systems, the effects and results of cultural collison, and much, much more.

All of this makes _Mindscape_ a wild, engaging, and illuminating ride, but also, at times, quite a disorienting one. Not a book for the faint of heart. This one will definitely bust your mind open, but it requires tenacity to stick with it.

[Parallel Worlds · Rating 2 out of 5]

Intended Audience: Adult
Sexual content: Explicit
Ace/Genderqueer characters: Yes
Rating: R for language, violence, and sex
Writing style: 1/5
Likable characters: 3/5
Plot/Concepts: 3/5

When the Barrier came—a cosmic and organic life-form, restricting travel between arbitrary zones on Earth—the world changed forever. A hundred years later, Celestina dies to bring an end to the wars between the zones, and five years after that, the treaty is still not being lived as it should be. Instead, many of the zones reject the treaty, already too set in their individual agendas and cultures. Soldiers, actors, directors, ambassadors and Vermittler (humans who can commune with the Barrier) are thrown into a conflict with and against one another that will decide the future of Earth.

At 445 pages, Mindscape is a fairly hefty read. I wasn’t sure what to expect when I picked it up, as the synopsis I’d read was fairly vague. I soon learned that this was for good reason. I’m not sure if Hairston was trying to pull the reader into a particular “mindscape” via her writing style, or if the muddled feel of it was accidental, but I was nearly a hundred pages in before I had any sort of clue what was going on. In the first scene, the reader is dumped right into the thick of an important political event, with foreign names and words being thrown around helter-skelter with very little indication of which ones are important or what they really mean. Then comes the realization that there is no single main character; the reader is bounced back and forth between first and third-person perspectives and multiple points of view. The only explanation of anything comes in dialogue or flashbacks, which could be real, or could be visions or legends—it’s impossible to tell for sure. I can appreciate the effort taken to teach by immersion, but in this case I would have preferred an info-dump over feeling so lost for the entirety of the book.

Post-barrier Earth is in many ways a very different place from our present-day Earth. It seems to be divided into three main areas, although where these areas are, and how the seasonal corridors between each of them work, was barely described. We never find out exactly why they were warring in the first place. And although many words were used to describe these places and the characters in them, I never actually got a clear picture. All that came through were vague emotional impressions. Los Santos is dirty and dangerous and full of gangsters, while New Ougadougou is like some romanticized hodge-podge “ethnic” village, has nice small-scale architecture and probably looks like how an idealized cluster of adobe and brick houses would in an animated Disney movie. Paradigma has a lot of scientists. That’s almost everything I know about these places despite 445 pages of action taking place in them.

The timeline of the story was very difficult to follow as well. The characters are one place, then another. They’re shooting a movie, and suddenly one of them is injured, and then he’s splashing water on his face, but where did the water come from? Is he in the bathroom now? Did someone bring a bucket? Why is it that nobody cares when bombs are going off outside the theater? The sense of movement, space, presence, and time, are all mixed up and insubstantial. I couldn’t get my bearings at all. It was like trying to remember a dream that was already a bit fuzzy to begin with, littered with proverbs in other languages and lots of references to technological and movie-making jargon. This kind of narrative style could work in poetry, but for a novel it was needlessly metaphorical, trying too hard to be meaningful or artistic without actually letting the readers experience the story themselves. Sometimes this also makes any in-narrative discussion of real-life problems come off as preachy.

So my biggest problem with this book was how unreadable and incomprehensible it was. I imagine that I could have really gotten into the setting if I were allowed more concrete glimpses of it, and more actual explanation of what was going on. The cast of characters was definitely diverse, and once I could keep them all straight (at about page 300), I found that I liked most of them more than I expected. Elleni, Celestina’s spirit-daughter, is the closest thing to a central main character we get. As a Vermittler she can commune with the Barrier, and is tasked by Celestina’s ghost (or is it her voice transmitting from an alien spaceship?) with healing the Barrier and thus the many rifts between the warring zones. Then there is Ray Valero, star actor, and his Director and Assistant Director, Aaron and Achbar, respectively. They are all working on making a movie out of Celestina’s life throughout the entire story… a plot element I barely cared about, although I did find Aaron’s character to be one of the most interesting by the end.

Aaron was an Extra before becoming a famous director. Extras, as far as I can tell, are people who are too poor, unhealthy, or otherwise deemed unimportant by their community, often killed by being thrown into the Barrier, or harvested for organs. It seems that when the world was cut up into zones by the Barrier, the difficulty in transporting resources caused shortages which in turn made people begin to evaluate who was most important to keep alive. The twist with Aaron is that he was not only an Extra but a black female Extra named Stella, gang-raped and traumatized by the experience. In order to become Aaron, he had to essentially kill off a part of himself. However, Stella remains buried deep in Aaron’s psyche, and he has mixed emotions about having to give her up to be who he is today. He is not asexual but I do consider him to be genderqueer. Beyond that, his identity is a metaphor for how some members of oppressed minorities feel they must become like the enemy in order to survive, and Mindscape explores some of the consequences of such a choice.

Lawanda is woman of color and an ethnic throwback, who replicates a speaking style which I can only describe as gangster-like. She is stationed in Los Santos, trying to shut down the treaty-resistance there, guarded by a woman called Captain, and in love with a stoic, mysterious and cold man who just goes by Major. I didn’t like Lawanda much at first. Most of her first transmissions to the Major are full of complaining about the Major not calling her back and how she��s in way over her head. But she is stronger than she at first appears, and I came to respect her for her strong sense of self. Eventually I even grew to like the Major, because out of all the characters he seems to change the most throughout the course of the story, going from unquestioning loyalty to fearful open-mindedness and then even further to brave defiance of what he’d previously believed. This is all the more impressive because he, like Captain, has bombs wired up in his brain, in danger of going off if he strays from his mission. Captain isn’t much of a character for most of the book, more of just a background bodyguard for Lawanda, but she suddenly shines in a few chapters, and I wish there had been more of her. She was also a woman of color, of Hawaiian origin, and a much better person than she at first appeared.

This book has no qualms about sexuality, and a sense of the mystically erotic permeates nearly every scene. Subtly in most scenes, but it’s there. Same-sex relationships are actually an integral part of the story, in fact being the cause of Celestina’s dual-consciousness—she holds two female lovers inside her, one who murdered the other. Elleni and Ray are lovers, both bisexual and attracted to many other people. The author spares no expense in describing Elleni’s body in great detail, particularly because, as a Vermittler, she has even more unusual features than the genetically-modified rainbow-haired humans around her. Her electrically charged dreads seem like a character all by themselves, hissing and spitting and wrapping around things without her consent.

As a woman of color, Andrea Hairston probably has much more of a right than I to depict other people of color in whatever way she sees fit. Certainly she is entitled to depicting characters of African descent however she chooses. But the Ghost Dancer characters seemed oddly stereotypical and theatrical to me, mostly there to add a touch of mysticism, putting Native Americans in a mythological light. I’m not sure if she was trying for parody or if there was something else going on that I was missing. Admittedly, the Wovoka (head of the Ghost Dancers), was a decent character in the end, but so much of the ethnic throwback thing in this book seemed oddly distorted. Maybe this was related somehow to the development of the three separate zones post-Barrier, and I missed the connection—entirely possible, considering how disorienting the writing style was.

Overall, I just found Mindscape baffling in terms of plot. If someone were to ask me to describe how the characters got from point A to point B to point C and so on to Z, I wouldn’t be able to summarize with more than a “well, stuff happened… I’m not really sure how they accomplished task X, but they did… probably some combination of the Barrier’s will and ancient magic.” It seemed like throughout the story, the humans were all running around blindly bumping into each other, trying but failing to do anything really important, and sometimes getting killed… and finally in the end a path magically appears toward the future, and so they start to walk on it. The End.

I wish I could have read the story of what happens once things started making sense. I can only suppose that the confusion may be part of the story’s meaning—after all, Vermittler are charged with making meaning out of the Barrier’s cosmic chaos. But for me, there was altogether too much chaos and not enough translation of that chaos into meaning. It’s a shame that the story was told and not shown—I felt like I was looking at this world of Hairston’s through warped glass, and I really wanted to open the window.

[2TReads · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5 stars, maybe

When I think of original works, I will always think of Hairston. Her prose is electric, fast-moving, filled with cultural connotations, and just unique on a whole; whether it be the language, how she uses theatre, film, or the overall creation of the societal structure.

Mindscape is a novel that proves this, and to think of this as her debut(rereleased) tells you how very plugged into the Black experience she is. In this fractured and changed world, a space entity, the Barrier, has led to the Earth being dramatically changed and segregated into three major cities/countries/powers. All with their own distinctive societal consrtuct whether it be technocracy, shamanism or cartel control. But this Barrier is different, and I love how Hairston crafted its use to her narrative.

I really enjoyed the spiritual aspect and how she tied in rebel groups, the vulnerable communities, diplomacy, political shenanigans, and race relations to propel her story forward and to plot a course out of regime control towards freedom and relief.

Having individuals that were born attuned to the Barrier frequency and who could therefore manipulate and travel via said Barrier added a science aspect that was so interesting. This is a very compelling story, and though it won't be for everyone, I think those who go in and just let the story be what it is will have a good time. I did!

[Samantha (AK) · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wow. So, words seem inadequate, but I'll give this my best shot.

No lie, the first 100 pages aren't easy. Andrea Hairston puts you right in the middle of things with no inclination to explain, and it is weird. But, if you can make it through that bit, the pieces start to come together. It's confusing, yes, but not to no end. The author delivers on her promises.

It's a wild ride. Ms. Hairston rotates you through the limited perspective of each character--and what characters they are! From Lawanda, who is so much more than her sass, to Aaron Dunklebrot (who I thought I'd hate, but actually found fascinating by the end), to Elleni (another character I didn't 'get' right away), each has their own unique voice and motivations.

It's been nearly a week and I'm still trying to wrap my head around everything, which probably queues it for a re-read at some point in the future. This book gets inside your head and stays there.

It doesn't hurt that the writing is gorgeous.

Genre-wise, this could be categorized as 'soft' Science-Fiction in the tradition of social-commentary, but I'm actually more comfortable leaving it in the broader catch-all category of speculative fiction. Not quite sci-fi, not quite fantasy, but definitely still "elsewhere."

Your mileage may vary, but I loved this book.

[Melinda · Rating 4 out of 5]

I enjoyed Lawanda's voice. In this crazy world where nothing is as it seems, Lawanda is the voice of truth. She's you and me floundering in a sea of politics not knowing who to trust. She wants to change the world but feels like a puppet. Eleni has her own demons to fight. Should she lead and carry on a dead woman's legacy or wander the Barrier aimlessly?

There are so many characters in this book and the storyline is not linear. And time is fluid. I personally felt that it is the story of working in non-profit/social justice communities when so many versions of the truth exist together and everyone is working a hustle as a result of limited resources. I truly encourage people to read this book. Open your mind to a different reality. It is so worth the effort.

[Venneh · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a dense as hell Afrofuturist novel, but in the best kind of way. We are thrown into the far distant future, which is also blended with German, a love for the arts, and psychics, for an epic that focuses on how to change the future and the power of community. Hell of a read and one I'm glad to have read.

[Anastasia · Rating 1 out of 5]

Tried reading it again. Very, very hard to read. The prose does the opposite of flowing. It's not wordy, so I wouldn't call it dense, pretty much unreadable to me. It's hard to care about what's going on, and impossible to lose yourself in this book. One major POV is written in an accent. At 120 pages, I decided I gave it a fair shot and stopped.

[Dennis Fischman]

I didn't finish this book. Only one character, Lawanda, made any difference to me, and that just wasn't enough to make me work my way through it. I stopped around page 120.

[Dan · Rating 4 out of 5]

My thanks to NetGalley and Tor Publishing Group for an advance copy of this book of speculative fiction that imagines a world that is beset by barriers, not the usually ones that humans set up to keep others out, but from an alien intelligence with dark motives.

Except for my neighbor across the way I have lived on my street the longest of everyone else around me. The sad thing is except for my neighbor across the street I don't know any of the people who live here. I might recognize a errant letter, but their faces, even their dogs are unknown to me. I work odd hours, my lawn care is manage, don't go crazy, and I haven't had a pet in years. I see them walk by with dogs, kids, and nod and wave, but I wouldn't know them if I saw a picture of them anywhere. And they would say the same about me. I'm shy by nature, and small talk is what I do with customers at work, outside of work I'd rather talk about what I like, not weather, politics or gossip. This is a barrier that separates me from others. This barrier also, except for my neighbor across the street, doesn't really make me care much what happens. They are strangers, even though we live next door on a dead end street. Barriers make us not care, make us think only of our own. People who cross our barriers, well they are annoyances, or even a threat. However sometimes one has to look past obstructions to see the whole picture. Mindscape by Andrea Hairston is a story of the future, where a barrier from an otherworldly intelligence has cut the world into different parts, different parts that have to work together, or be destroyed.

Over 100 years ago ships returning from the outer planets were close enough to Earth to see the Barrier divide the world up. Not by culture or continents, but in parts that divided the world even further. Behind these barriers different groups, strong man, gangsters even religious leaders told power. The Barrier allowed travel at certain times, which lead to raids, as some places had much, some places had little. Over time people began to work with the Barrier, figure out ways of passing through without waiting for the Barrier to decide. A rough peace treaty was worked out with all the divided lands. Until the woman who worked the hardest was assassinated on the day of the treaty's signing. Elleni is one of the few who can work the Barrier, and is trying to bring together the different parts to come together. However there are many who like the division, the power it gives and the control they have. And don't want to give it up.

The book is a reprint from earlier in this century, but I think really speaks to the politics and mindset of many today. Barriers to many are good, as are tariffs, and sending people back to where they belong. There is a lot going on in the book. Philosophy, religion, race, and lots of violence. I don't know how I missed this book the first time, though I must confess I was missing from the science fiction scene for quite a while. The writing is really good, with a way of letting the characters talk that makes them unique and different. There is a lot of myth, and feelings of loss and dissociation among almost all the characters. Some try to change how they are, some how they are perceived, and a few just don't want change. Hairston has created a very unique future, one that is a bit dystopian, but one that many have embraced as good for them, and good for their people. Hairston asks a lot of questions, and the answers are quite uncomfortable in many ways.

This is the second Hairston book I have read, and I quite enjoyed this. I do miss reading this when it came out, but now, as I said it really fits the times. A dark book, but one the looks deep inside, and sees that their is still hope, and even a little magic inside to get past these barriers that seem to be erected. By ourselves or by those in control.

[Ed · Rating 3 out of 5]

Mindscape is a hard book to review. It makes almost no sense for the first 100ish pages and even after that, very little is explained to the reader. Very little about the world and the players is explained. Yet despite this, the some of the characters are interesting enough that the lack of information sort of doesn’t matter.

Ray, Aaron, Lawanda and the Major are interesting, in a sort of detached way. They are compelling from a distance but it’s hard to get emotionally invested in any of them. If one of them was to drop dead on page, it would inspire no emotion whatsoever.

What makes these characters interesting is the themes they represent, not their actual characterization.

Ray is all about the relationship between fiction, reality and truth, and heroism. Aaron is also about the relationship between fiction, reality and truth, but also the duality of self, trust, and race and gender.

Lawanda’s themes is the connection between language, culture and history. Her portions of the book are entirely in Ebonics/AAVE, which made her stand out from the other narrators.

One of Lawanda’s most notable quotes is “Ethnic throwbacks be like the ole Israelis bring back Hebrew after two thousand years, after so many words was fighin’ against them. Why anybody wanna speak the truth, raise they children, know themselves with gas-chamber language? Survival be havin’ words to call home, havin’ idioms and syntax to heal Diaspora.”

While Lawanda raises an interesting point, its weakened by the historical inaccuracy. Hebrew was not “gas-chamber language” since most Jews did not speak Hebrew prior to Israel’s creation, and Israel had to force people to use Hebrew by banning Yiddish in places, including movie theaters.

Lawanda makes the same point but stronger later in the book when she says “I’m like a Renaissance woman—they was throwbacks too—to Greeks and Arabs.” By linking her embrace of Black culture with one of the most important periods in history, she gives herself credibility.

Another issue with the book was Aaron’s transgender plot line. Before the novel started, he used to be a Black woman but remade himself into a white man. After the reveal happens, its implied that people only change essential parts of themselves to escape abuse or oppression.

Hairston digs herself into an even deeper hole by writing “the deluxe, gene art makeover had been about power, about passing, not about becoming who felt himself to be.” Is she trying to make Aaron not-transgender? Or is this what she thinks of transgender people? It’s hard to tell and it’s not good either way.

Elleni, another main character, was wholly uninteresting. She spends most of the book out of focus, naked on a highway, having visions. While her plot line sets up the latter half of the book and tie the other plot lines together, it’s too little too late to make her an interesting character.

The ending was a bit confusing but overall it still felt satisfying. This truly was an odd book from start to finish.

[Peter · Rating 1 out of 5]

Hundreds of years ago, a mysterious Barrier appeared, dividing Earth into separate zones, connected only intermittently, and often in conflict. A few years ago, a peace agreement was reached, though there are forces on many sides working against it.

Sometimes, when you're a reader of SF, you read a brief description of a book and think, "Hey, there's a really cool idea here that I'd like to see how it's explored." And sometimes you think, even in the same description, "There's some stuff I'm not really into in this book," ideas that, for whatever reason, you don't connect with. Maybe it's robots, or vampires, or FTL, it doesn't even really have to have a good reason. Not everybody has these things, but some people do, and, in those cases, you have to do a juggling act, where you think, "Okay, maybe I'm interested enough in this idea that I'm willing to suffer through these other ones."

And sometimes, you make the wrong choice, because, for whatever reason, the idea that sold you on the book is only interesting to the author as background worldbuilding, and the ideas you're not into are the main meat of the book.

That was the case for me in this book. I was really interested in the idea of an Earth divided by an impenetrable barrier put up by aliens, to see how people reacted only to discover (and maybe I didn't read the description carefully enough) that all that happened centuries ago and the author only seemed to have it to set up her factions and drive a bit of the conflict with the way the barrier behaved. I wasn't at all interested in people using psionic powers or 'magic realism,' and that was a huge chunk of the book.

Worse, for me, the barrier functioned as the plot demanded. Sometimes it was impassable, killing everyone that tried to pass through. Sometimes it opened corridors. Sometimes people could deliberately open corridors. Sometimes it granted meaningful visions. Sometimes hallucinations. Sometimes space and time are literally bent around it. It's possible it saved people's spirits. Essentially it was magic.

Basically, this book felt to me like fantasy that the author sprinkled a few SF tropes, with the Barrier essentially taking the spot of a fantasy novel god that sometimes intervened and sometimes acted in mysterious ways and that a few characters could petition, not always successfully, for special powers. And that's fine, but it's Not My Thing, and in fact the book as a whole was extremely Not My Thing. It was, in fact, so much Not My Thing that I can't even really say it was bad (although there were a few things that, even though other people might like them, I count them as flaws in addition to 'Not My Thing'). Sometimes I read a book and think "this is objectively bad and I can point out all the ways it falls short," but in this case, it was just "I don't even feel like I can evaluate the quality of the book on any level." For various reasons, I just didn't care enough to keep enough track of who was doing what and so I couldn't ever really relate to any of the characters or what they were doing. I don't think it was the book's fault, we were just poorly matched. Honestly, I probably should have just bailed out but it's hard for me to do that with books.

I did find of particular annoyance was that there were, as far as I can tell, basically only Three Zones in the entire story (a few times they briefly make references that suggest there may be others, and a vague 'wild' section that humans haven't been able to reliable access, but I might have just misunderstood). One's a "science" based nation, one's based on "magic realism" (often manipulating the barrier with psi-like powers), and one's... basically a weird hybrid of Hollywood and organized crime where people are obsessed with making entertainment programs, sometimes using real people's deaths along the way, and use so many showbiz terms that I just found it all ridiculous. Low-class people are Extras, a meeting is Doing Lunch and so on (okay, only the first I can actually guarantee was in the book, the other one was just an example to give you an idea of the kind of stuff they do). Similarly a little distracting was one of the viewpoint characters, from the science nation (I think), who narrated in 1990s African-American slang (my main objection being the fact that it was hundreds of years in the future rather than the technique itself, but at least it had some minimal explanation that I could go along with and she was one of the more engaging characters in the story).

So yeah, I struggle to evaluate it beyond thoroughly Not My Thing, but others might well enjoy it. Just not me. And since ratings are personal, I had to give it one star- it was a slog for me, personally, to get through, I kept finding my mind wandering to other things I was more interesting.

[Andrea · Rating 5 out of 5]

Mindscape by Andrea Hairston is quite an incredible book, I can't believe it's her first. Maybe I do, because I confess it just might have taken me a little while and some work to get into it, but damn. I loved this story of hope and struggle and culture and ideals and love and death and some freaky alien future earth. It's complex and complete with Ghost Dancers and 'ethnic throwbacks' and technology and healers and spoken combinations of German and Yoruba. It's also full of heat and action, symbiogenesis (taking me back to Butler) and plenty of deep thoughts on language, race and struggle. From my favourite character, Lawanda, who sticks to her talk despite being looked down upon for it:

Survival be havin' words to call home, havin' idioms and syntax to heal the Diaspora. In your cultural rhythm and rhyme, that's where the soul keep time. (51)

Her lover, the Major, responds in his intellectual way:

Consider that language, despite science fantasy projections, is essentially conservative, hence our ability to communicate across generations. Even the hippest multi-channeling gearhead uses two-thousand-year-old metaphors, slang (such as "hip") from 1900 that's now standard, as well as jazzy, take-no-prisoners inspeak that leaves the rest of us down a corridor as the portal collapses. The battle over language, over naming and experiencing the universe, over what constitutes reality is always fierce. Ethnic throwbacks are ideal warriors in these gory cultural skirmishes. (78)

It's still one hell of a battle, in SF as much as anywhere.

This novel is all about change through struggle, about launching yourself into the unknown and risking everything to change a world of deep pain and horror. It's about the people who ground you while that change is happening, and the words and culture and songs you hold on to.

I love when things in life coincide, disparate things coming together at the right time -- like reading this at the same time I reached the excerpt from a 1986 interview with Bernice Reagon--member of NAACP and SNCC and the Freedom Singers--in Eyes on the Prize: The Civil Rights Reader.

Funny because look here, in the epigraph for Book IV, Hairston quotes Reagon: 'Standing in a rainstorm, I believe.'

Reagon's interview has been one of my favourite parts so far in wading through this massive collection a day at a time. She brings together music and tradition to show the ways that these two things only truly become your own through struggle. They root you in the strength of your past, and uplift you in the movement for the future. Mindscape was full of the power of music and harmony to sculpt human and alien reality both. There is Mahalia Selasie (see what Hairston did there?) and her gospel choir working along with everyone else to create a better future, helping one lost soul after another. To heal, to open, to change. Bernice Reagon on music:

Growing up in Albany, I learned that if you bring black people together, you bring them together with a song.... Now the singing tradition in Albany was congregational. There were not soloists, there were song leaders.

Like the struggle in which you find your true self:

I know a lot of people talk about it being a movement and when they do a movement they're talking about buses and jobs and the ICC ruling, and the Trailways bus station. Those things were just incidents that gave us an excuse to be something of ourselves. (143)

She was in Union Baptist Church after the first march, when asked to sing, she added the word "freedom" to a traditional song. She tells us:

I'd always been a singer but I had always, more or less, been singing what other people taught me to sing. That was the first time I had the awareness that these songs were mine and I could use them for what I needed them to.

At that meeting, they did what they usually do. They said, "Bernice, would you lead us in a song?" And I did the same first song, "Over My Head I See Freedom in the Air," but I'd never heard that voice before. I had never been that me before. And once I became that me, I have never let that me go.

Reading this is pure joy, no? This is the moment that change happens.

I like people to know when they deal with the movement that there are these specific things, but there is a transformation that took place inside of the people that needs to also be quantified in the picture. (144)

This is what Paulo Freire and Myles Horton and Ella Baker and Septima Clark (and I'm getting to the ladies soon, I promise) were all about, and the process that we are enveloped in through Hairston's novel. Only there's sex and violence and you never quite know what is going on and it's all a bit complicated and there are a lot more ants.

I confess, I fucking hate ants. I could have done without the ants, but I honour their place in Mindscape's mythologies. She does one hell of a job worldbuilding. Just two more quotes -- and I confess I singled out the more political bits because that's how I roll, but it is not especially how the novel rolls so don't worry. These points are just in there because it's people working through why things are the way they are, and this shit explains it. Why don't I have quotes about music? I don't know, maybe because it's woven throughout. But I liked this:

Look, ethnic throwbacks do culture not identity politics. We don't put stock in color. Race is how the world see you, ethnicity is how you see yourself. (121)

I smiled at the next one, I ask this question all the time:

The Last Days... People be past masters at imaginin' the end of the world--Armageddon, Ragnarök, Götterdämmerung, Apocalypse Now, the Big Crunch--doom and gloom in the twilight of the Gods--but folk're hard put to imagine a new day where we get on with each other, where we tear it up but keep it real. Why is that? It's an ole question, but I gotta keep askin'.
-- Geraldine Kitt, Junk Bonds of the Mind

I appreciated that in this novel nothing comes easy, least of all love (whether that be for one person or all of them). No one is perfect, but somehow people manage to pull it together and the point of it all is to imagine a new day. Maybe I'll just end with a quote from Septima Clark, who fought all her life for justice and equality and who also knew that your humanity is found in struggle and in change.

But I really do feel that this is the best part of life. It's not that you have just grown old, but it is how you have grown old. I feel that I have grown old with dreams that I want to come true, and that I have grown old believing there is always a beautiful lining to that cloud that overshadows things. I have great belief in the fact that whenever there is chaos, it creates wonderful thinking. I consider chaos a gift, and this has come during my old age. (Ready from Within, 125)

[Jillian · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is all over the place. 5 stars for creativity, 1 star for making sense.

Premise: a "barrier" falls on to the earth, making living but impenetrable walls, dividing humans into three basic communities: European-cultured Western sciencey people, Wild West / Hollywood gangster people, and African-ish militantly spiritual people. Portals open up here and there allowing passage from one community to the next. The Barrier's appearance caused wars and lots of evil, which has now been resolved in a tenuous treaty.

Some characters are created with Barrier-magic somehow, and are only partly human, and can do some magic-type stuff. We switch perspectives, through four-ish main characters (Ray, Lawanda, Elleni, Aaron), who all have their faults. They are all mostly great but not always likeable. Lawanda is wonderful.

The setting is great, I love the ideas in this book, but you have to just get used to the fact that things aren't gonna make sense. How does one character get from here to there? Wait who is that again? Why does no one care that this thing near them is exploding? How did they get out of that situation? You just don't get to know. Re-reading paragraphs does not help. Suspend disbelief and get on with it and the story is fun.

[Jim · Rating 4 out of 5]

This surreal, intricately woven book deals with an earth that is fundamentally changed by the appearance of a phenomenon called the Barrier, a web of mysterious energy that divides the land into regions that can only be left via seasonal corridors through the Barrier, or under the guidance of mystics who can commune with the Barrier to open pathways through.

The zones thus divided have grown independently, with divergent cultures and technologies, and more than anything, values. And these values lead to conflict.

It is beyond me to summarize this book. It is a fever dream, a mesh of languages ranging from German to Igbo to variations of English and more, a refusal of mere plot, arc or story. It shifts in perception and reality and detail until it becomes less about what is happening, and more about the language itself. There is a beginning, and there is an end. There is a journey here, but the value is in each individual footstep along the way, rather than the destination.

It is a challenging read, and confusion is to be expected, but the value in engaging with the challenge cannot be denied.

[Michael · Rating 5 out of 5]

I won Mindscape by Andrea Hairston in a Goodreads giveaway. This is a great book. It is at times exuberant, original, moving, and often confusing. It is a great example of what Science Fiction can do when you reach outside of the narratives of space opera and military science fiction.
The story takes place on an Earth divided by a mysterious, possibly living barrier of energy that keeps people in three "zones" corresponding to three different social systems. Movement between zones is possible only at seasonal intervals, except for some known as "Vermittlers" who can sing their way through the barrier, at least some of the time. There has long been conflict between the three sectors, but a treaty has been negotiated to end the hostilities. Some would like to see the treaty fail and are actively working to destroy it. It will be up to Elleni and her allies to make the treaty work.
This book is unique and unusual, but well worth reading. A lucky day for me when I won it in the Goodreads giveaway.

[Daniel Read Good · Rating 1 out of 5]

Thank you to TOR publishing and the author Andrea Hairston for this ARC. I am sorry that this just wasn’t for me.

DNF 25 pages in.

This just did not strike me enough to want to continue. There are just too many characters and a lot of lore thrown at you right out of the gate. I have no idea what is going on.

This book may be amazing, I just don’t have the desire to disassemble what the hell is going on.

[Hamperhead Crocetti · Rating 5 out of 5]

Doing Delany proud.

[Emily · Rating 4 out of 5]

You have to get about 150 pages into this book before it makes a little sense, and by the end it makes some sense. Wild ride, though!

[Jay Shelat · Rating 5 out of 5]

Epic in every sense of the word. Loved reading this novel.

[Max Reinhold · Rating 4 out of 5]

There's a glossary and a list of characters in the back you should read before starting this book.

[Robert Rabinowitz · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very unique - really loved it - can’t wait to read more of her books.

[Julie]

DNF--Wanted to, just couldn't get into it.

[Rachel]

Not for me.

[Rai Duffy · Rating 5 out of 5]

This one was a challenge, it's been a while since I've read anything at this level, but it was absolutely worth it. Such a rich world with 6 main characters and at least 20 other fully realized ones.

[RACHEL · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very strange 4 stars

My copy was a gift from Goodreads First Reads.

[Hayley · Rating 2 out of 5]

I think this type of book just wasn’t for me. I had a really hard time getting into it and following what was going on.