Deira

by Philip José Farmer, Nomeda Berkuvienė (Translator)

1588 metais staiga dingo 108 Roanoko kolonijos gyventojai Amerikoje. Tais pačiais metais iš amžininkų akiračio išnyko devyniasdešimt gražuolių čerkesių, gabentų į musulmonų didžiūnų haremus.

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TURINYS:

Šviesos Naktis (Night of Light)
Deira (Dare)

Genres: Science Fiction, Fantasy, Speculative Fiction, Fiction, Science Fiction Fantasy, Classics, Ebooks

222 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1965

About the author

Philip José Farmer was an American author, principally known for his science fiction and fantasy novels and short stories. He was born in Terre Haute, Indiana, but spent much of his life in Peoria, Illinois.

Farmer is best known for his Riverworld series and the earlier World of Tiers series. He is noted for his use of sexual and religious themes in his work, his fascination for and reworking of the lore of legendary pulp heroes, and occasional tongue-in-cheek pseudonymous works written as if by fictional characters.

Reviews

[Jim · Rating 4 out of 5]

There are very few books that I have read a third time--this has become one of them. I picked up a British edition of this book as a paperback, by "Quartet Books" from 1977. The original book by Farmer was published in 1965. One reason I was interested in this book when I first read it in the 70s is that it was about one of the greatest historical mysteries of all time--the complete disappearance of the tiny English colony of Roanoke, North Carolina, sometime between 1587 and 1591. Virginia Dare, the first English child born in the New World, was among the missing. According to Farmer, the mystery is solved! Along with several other groups of Earthpeople, the Roanoke colonists were transported to another planet--which they called "Dare" after the family which included baby Virginia.
In the story, hundreds of years have elapsed and the humans have developed their agrarian society in an uneasy relationship with the Wiyr, the natives of the planet. The "Darians" call these natives "horsetails" as they are humanoid--but have a long tail. As the natives also go about in the nude, the Darians consider them no better than "beasts of the field." So it's a situation that resembles that of the European settlers and the "American Indians" in the New World. The difference is that the horsetails may have knowledge and abilities beyond the Darians' understanding.
Farmer is the author regarded as the man who introduced sex into science fiction back in the 50s--and that happens in this book, as our hero, young Jack Cage, develops an intimate relationship with a sensuous horsetail woman. This could not only make Jack a despised outcast, but could trigger a war...This is a 4 star book, but if it could have been developed a little more, it would certainly be 5 stars!
Whatever did happen to Virginia Dare and the Roanokians???

[Andy · Rating 3 out of 5]

The first half of this sci-fi novel might be some of the sexiest fantasy erotica ever written, where a young man's fancy turns to an alien beast girl all innocence and loving bestial woman need.

In the middle of the book it turns into a "Starship Troopers" space war story, completely shoving the hot beast girl out of the story. Quite possibly the biggest cold shower in the history of science fiction - what a cock block!

[Derek · Rating 2 out of 5]

Its first half sets up obvious story vectors and conflicts between the human colonists and the Wiyr, framing it in terms of Wiyr collectivism and negotiation versus human expansionism, factionalism, and violence. The second half is a sequence of rug-pulls, each of which reframe the situation in new ways, and which effectively destroy the story in progress.

It's a jumble of disconnected pieces, each of which might be entertaining in itself--I particularly like the idea that the planet was once a colony of alien overseers, now gone, their ruins to be found and looted--but the central themes about cultural assimilation and domination get diluted with each twist, rather than reinforced. The author explores these ideas more in his Riverworld series.

Farmer has a real sense of the alien-yet-commonplace: human colonists have adapted to the weird ecology of the planet Dare, and there's great joy in reading of sicktrees and the wild unicorns and all else, that the humans take as matter of fact.

[Pablo Flores · Rating 2 out of 5]

The best thing you can say about this book is that it's entertaining. It's not racy or explicit, even though it may have been perceived as that when it was written (but it actually isn't, at all). The worst thing is that it could have been much better. The story, and especially the latter parts of the book, looks badly assembled, disjointed, forced into an early finish. There are actually three consecutive stories here, and another author could have written three short novels with them. As it stands, the last two stories are condensed, with important characters popping out of nowhere, underdeveloped, and fulfilling their roles in a world-altering plot that nevertheless is resolved in a matter of pages.

[Charles · Rating 1 out of 5]

Stuff I Read - Dare By Phillip José Farmer Review

So this is my first taste of work by Philip José Farmer and…well, for a minute there it had me going. I mean, not entirely, because the book opens up with a hate crime and from there…well, there are probably some things to like about this book but I'm not sure that it won me over. Like, at all. It's obviously trying to make some points about race and about love and about…secret societies? You know what, I don't even know. It tries to do a lot and then towards the midway point decides to just drop all that, thanks, and veer sharply into the WTF territory.

I'm not lying when I say the book kicks off with a hate crime. One that is at least accompliced after-the-fact by the main character, man's man Jack Cage. That's a very, very tricky way to kick off a book, and one that I'd almost applaud except that throughout the novel Cage doesn't really have to deal with that action. In some ways that is just waved away because he learns a big lesson about understanding and humanity and—wait, no, he's forgiven because it's political to do because he's like the coolest human around because the rest of them are that bad and it's kind of crazy the stuff that he gets away with and still gets to be the hero. The horstrel that he falls in love with might be the far more competent and smart and cunning and daring, but it's Cage that is the hero, him who ultimately gets the honors and the book has problem with this.

There are moments in this book where I wanted to like it. Talking dragons and horstrels being much smarter than anyone knows and weird aliens and all of it but the finished project just tries to do too much without really paying anything off. Things just start happening and characters move and lose sight of each other for years before finding each other again, all that after the first half of the book is like three days worth of action and it's just a bit too jarring to work. Too much to swallow when it seems maybe the work was supposed to have been much longer. Instead the metaphors all implode and turn out to be rather offensive and…well, mostly offensive. And some just don't make sense. Characters make entire 180 degree turns and then turn back and then a spaceship shows up and it was all for nothing. Seriously, guys, like for nothing.

I guess the real lesson of this novel is that you should just see people as people and try to learn together instead of killing everyone different from you. Because you might all turn out to be not that different. But seriously that message is really stretched and filtered by some questionable calls in this book and some more questionable behavior from Jack Cage and I cannot in good conscious recommend this book. I'm still willing to try something else by the author, as this might have been a schedule thing or an editor thing but no, give this one a miss, regardless of how weird and interesting the cover looks. Yeah. A 3/10 for me.

[Natasha 4E · Rating 3 out of 5]

According to this book, the lost colony of Roanoke, along with other groups of people who got lost around that time, were transported to another planet. Three hundred years later, the humans on the planet Dare still live in contempt for the aliens they share their lands with, and the restrictions of their religion have witheld them from learning more about them. Jack, the son of a wealthy farmer, gets caught between joining his fellow men in a revolt against the aliens, and his love for R'li, an alien girl.
Farmer created an interesting world, and the story moves along nicely. It's too bad that during the last forty pages, the pace goes up and the storytelling quality goes down. Feels like Farmer was too late on his deadline or something.

[Travis · Rating 5 out of 5]

I first read this book in the early Seventies. I was a preteen at the time, and this book gave me a whole new understanding of how people of different races could get along and live together.

[Vladimir Ivanov · Rating 4 out of 5]

Очень необычная и, как говорится, thought-provoking, повесть. В начальных главах Фармер мастерски усыпляет бдительность читателя, убеждая его, что сейчас у нас тут будет драматическая история про высокодуховных инопланетных индейцев а-ля "Аватар", которые героически отстаивают свою независимость от землян-колонизаторов, и про запретную межрасовую любовь, вынуждающую героя предать свой народ и перейти на сторону «лесных людей», которых земная церковь и людьми-то не считает. Ну ок, борьба с расовыми стереотипами и церковными табу – для подрастающего поколения полезно, взрослых развлечет, отчего бы не почитать.

А где-то к середине повести внезапно оказывается, что Фармер своими политкорректными сказочками заманил нас на середину минного поля и под ногами натурально начинают рваться килотонны тротила :D

Вся картина мира (неоднократно) переворачивается с ног на голову, базовые понятия «кто здесь хороший и кто плохой» совершают дикие кульбиты, а герой, такой же растерянный, как читатель, уже абсолютно отчаялся спасти своих любимых туземцев и панически мечется между фракциями, раз за разом предавая очередного временного союзника в надежде найти относительно гуманную культуру, которая просто поработит лесной народ и навяжет ему свой образ жизни, но по крайней мере без геноцида.

Финальная мораль «в столкновении с противником, культурно и технологически превосходящим родное племя, немедленно бросай родное племя и переходи на сторону врага, это объективно меньшее зло» – она, конечно, изрядно провокационная и раздражающая, но именно за это мы Фармера и любим. Он в игровой форме заставляет нас включить мозг и немного задуматься о разных немаловажных штуках.

[YourFriendlyBard · Rating 2 out of 5]

Un altro Urania preso alle bancarelle dell'usato per via del titolo improponibile, un altro buco nell'acqua.
"Una questione di razza" si presenta con un incipit intrigante, un mondo alieno popolato dalle creature del folklore europeo e dai protagonisti delle sparizioni di grandi gruppi d'individui della storia umana. Eppure, in fin dei conti tutto ciò si conclude in ben poco: vuoi per incapacità e/o inesperienza dell'autore, una premessa potenzialmente interessante è sfociata in poco più che una gimmick spicciola. Il worldbuilding è piatto, approssimativo e tutto sommato dimenticabile (che per un romanzo che dovrebbe puntare tutto sul mondo in cui si ambientano le vicende non è il massimo).
La trama è banale, scontata e con un pessimo ritmo (a volte diluita senza motivo, altre accelerata di botto, soprattutto verso la fine). Gli attori che animano le vicende sono semplicemente piatti (con particolare nota di demerito per le donne descritte, anche se non so quanto sia colpa dell'autore e quando del periodo storico in cui il romanzo è stato scritto) e lo stile di scrittura è dimenticabile come tutto il resto.
Banalmente, "Una questione di razza" è un romanzo che non è né carne né pesce: né una gemma sconosciuta piacevole da scoprire, né un romanzo trash su cui farsi due risate. È probabile che tra qualche settimana mi sarò già dimenticato di questa storia (che, se chiedete a me, è probabilmente la cosa peggiore che si può dire di un libro).

[carmen! · Rating 3 out of 5]

this book is wild and the second half makes almost no sense but i was always just here for the horse girl anyway

[Xabi1990 · Rating 4 out of 5]

Leído en 2003
8/10. Media de los 23 libros leídos del autor: 7/10.

En su momento otro de mis autores favoritos, aunque con algún gran “truño” entre sus obras. Me enamoró con su novela “Relaciones extrañas”. Y tb muy buenas “Los amantes” o la Saga “Mundo río”, tremendamente original esta última.

En esta tenemos a Hombres y Horstels -con una relación sospechosamente parecida a la de los blancos y negros del pasado- en el planeta Dare y con relaciones sexuales prohibidas en ter ellos.
Y a un amor imposible entre dos jóvenes de las dos razas (¿Romeo y Julieta tb por aquí?). Y persecuciones y ritmo y el estilo de Farmer que me seguía gustando por la época.

[Brennon · Rating 3 out of 5]

Okay. I found it a touch hard to follow the latter part of the book, I could not quite understand the motivation for the central conflict at that point. Plus, a sort of sudden insertion of a third party to the conflict seemed very out of the blue.

Further, this book seems to suffer from the same problem that burdens a number of books by authors of the 1950s and 1960s - especially in regards to authors that are accustomed to writing short stories to pay the bills. When these authors try to expand a short story into a full size novel - the story seems to run out of steam and seem incomplete. This book sems to fall into that category, it seems like it might have been a nifty short story, but the author did not seem to quite know what to do with it in trying to turn it into a heftier novel.

[Charl · Rating 2 out of 5]

Meh. Farmer's known for outre ideas and story telling, yet other than "Roanoke was abducted by aliens", this just didn't feel all that "out there".

Yes, there was some teasing about miscegenation, but only teasing. And we had mandrakes, werewolves and even dragons. Who are actually other alien races.

I enjoyed it enough to finish it, but that's really all I can say about it. It wasn't a waste of time, but not by much. I expect more from Farmer, but this didn't deliver. At least, not for me.

[Little Timmy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Philip Jose Farmer is one of my top 5 favorite writers of all time. This is an older story of his but still well worth the read. Very recommended

[Phoenix · Rating 4 out of 5]

Morality Play

A very early Philip Hosea Farmer novel. The book's themes are colonialism, racism, miscegenation and genocide and it hits you over the head rather bluntly with a murder, by a human, of a satyr - that is a male member of a gentle race known as the "horstel" (a contraction of horse tail). Ed Wang is a young hot headed swaggering racist and a member of a Klan like group known as the HK, or horstel killers. His cousin, Jack Cage (as in someone trapped) witnesses the event, and is coerced through social pressure to join. And the appellation HK could mean human killer as well.

Both horstrel and human have been deposited by a third race the Arra on the planet Dare, which is devoid of iron. The humans were drawn from 16th century Earth some from a missing caravan of Circassian slave girls captured in Turkey, others from wrecked Portuguese ships, but many from the legendary "lost" colony of Roanoke Virgina. Legend has it that humans have 500 years redeem to learn the peaceful ways of the horstrel. The two races have an uneasy truce through a series of pacts, but the human population has been rapidly growing. But behind the conspiracy is yet another conspiracy from the more technologically advanced human country of Socinians, who think that time is running out and that all humans need to be united in time so that they can develop the technology to fight the Arra and seize their ships when they arrive.

And then a ship from the stars arrives.

For Jack, who falls in love with the horstrel R'li, it's a matter of principles and loyalties to family, love, homeland, role and honour and how they get applied when the ground keeps shifting underneath. Like Richard Burton and Mark Twain in Farmer's Riverworld series he finds that human character remains the same, but there is always the possibility of finding a higher purpose.

It's an enjoyable read because of the constantly changing perspectives and I really enjoyed the main characters of Jack, Chuckswilly and R'li, the extrapolated puritan society of the humans and the unusual nature and the psychologically based culture of the horstrel who turn out to be more advanced than we think. There are even skittish unicorns and some talking dragons thrown in for good measure. The edition I have is an unillustrated hardcover from 1980 with an interesting introduction by Moshe Feder and David G. Hartwell who point out some similarities to The Lovers along with some of Farmer's other stories.

[Storm Bookwyrm · Rating 3 out of 5]

My prior experience with Farmer was "Image of the Beast", which was just about one of the oddest books I ever read that I still liked. Therefore, I expected equally bizarre and messed up stuff from Dare
It was not as weird as Image of the Beast, but... Well, it was still a little odd.

The premise of Dare is this: all the mysterious, missing colonies of earth, like Roanoke, were in truth abducted by aliens, and brought to a distant planet inhabited by semi-goofy wildlife, like trees that puke ambergris, unicorns that do farmwork, and werewolves and dragons that steal livestock. There they've developed a highly bastardized version of Earth religion and civilization (though with all the usual dogma and social oppression one expects from humanity), all while living side by side with a humanoid race of peaceful, agrarian creatures they call horstels (who differ from humans solely in that they have horse tails, and an abundance of body-hair). From there the plot follows a boy named Jack who, though at first seems just another boy living life on Dare, will become swept up in some strange tides of fate..
Though the first half of the book seemed to just be an exploration of the established, odd order of things, everything abruptly take a very different direction in the books second-half, and continue to abruptly change and re-contextualize every 'chapter' or so. While the story at first seemed to just be an exploration of the odd little civilization taking place on this strange world, by the second half things are progressing at a break neck pace and becoming something almost like a Heinlin novel, about how war, politics, and progress are forces beyond any one person's ability to stop, and humans are going to be evil bastards whose single driving urge is to get the better of everyone else, because surely that's what they're trying to do to you too, right?
Some of the odd and jarring twists included:
- Dragons talk and are intelligent.
- A girl falsely accused of witchcraft is actually a witch, and IS actually an evil, baby-killing witch, and not just a misunderstood pagan
- One of the human nations has severely advanced beyond all the others, and has blimps, bombs, and gatling guns that can easily defeat even the horstels, who until now had seemed to be thoroughly in control of the planet.
- Aforementioned human nation abruptly and easily takes over the world in a single chapter.
- Aliens arrive, but they're actually humans from Earth, what a twist!
I didn't hate it, but I didn't love it either. It was alright.

...Also, Farmer displays the same lack of ability to NAME anything in a non-goofy way that I learned he possessed from Blown.

[Johannes · Rating 3 out of 5]

I think this had the makings of a very good book but it got a little over zealous. Over promised, under delivered. It also has not one but two twists at the end that border on deus ex machina and I hated every bit of the last 20 pages. Clearly the author has a vision for this world that I was interested in seeing but was warring for space with the plot which as you might expect from the above was all over the place. We follow this milksop of a protagonist as he is whisked around by the choas of the impending war. He spends the entire book letting everyone else make decisions for him, even when he disagrees morally or rationally he just follows suit and hates himself afterword. Then the story congradulates him by giving him really understanding allies and telling him that if he actually tried to fight for what he believes in he would just have died and changed nothing anyway, but he never really outgrows this. Everything is themed around colonialism, race and gender prejudice, religious persecution, and social and economical hierarchies alongside the rise of industustry or otherwise how the people in power abuse the people without by inciting wars where all the poor die for the benefit of the wealthy who reap all the benefits. Mind you this is a 200 page book. Not enough pages to go over all of this, meaning, everything is just sort of touched on and moves on without any real depth to it. Everything happens and so nothing happens. I am begrudgingly giving this a higher score than maybe it deserves but that is because I can see the vision and the author does write well so I feel like if the book were longer and I mean a lot lot longer, 2 or 3 times as long at least, it could have been good. Also change the ending, but it would still be massively improved if they had more time to justify it instead of just saying, boom this happened, everything changes so its like this now.

[Ambrose Malles · Rating 2 out of 5]

Well, I can't say that I was disappointed because when you pick up a book that's so obscure, it's a dice roll if it's going to be good or not. I was so invested after 20 pages too, I was thinking "Man, I've done it again, another hidden gem!" But this time it wasn't meant to be, the book dropped off after that and I began to see its many flaws. This may have led me to look for more flaws, but you can't be perfect.

I guess the most important thing I didn't like about this book was that I didn't like Jack. He was just not a guy you root for. He was sexist, racist, and not remotely loyal. I mean the guy was so annoying to read. I didn't even really like R'il either, I don't think any of the characters stand out in fact.

The book in general was very sexist, the plot was all over the place and you never had any good suspense-building. The philosophy was very one-dimensional and only looked at things through a certain lens, which is quite unfortunate. With the world-building that was there, it could have been written so well. So many interesting ways to look at morals with the different races and such.

The world-building was there, meaning the potential was there, but it didn't come out like it could have.

[Alex · Rating 4 out of 5]

Actually a good book by Farmer!
The world description is more believable and can pass the common sense test, without Godlike characters shoved down a reader's throat; while sex scenes appear and us discussed (nothing wrong with it) the book is not overwhelmed by meaningless orgies.

Better than all the River chronicles, and recommended overall

[Durval Menezes · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a good book. I don't remember much of the story (almost 30 years since I read it), but I remember it was quite a thrill reading it.

[Julian · Rating 4 out of 5]

Unconventional and lots of twists, very original story of the descendants of Jamestown settlement on a distant alien world.

[Joel Jarvis · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not as good as the Riverworld series.
But entertaining and quick read.

[Estéfano J. · Rating 2 out of 5]

Un mundo curioso, con cierta profundidad y algo de ritmo. (2,5)

[Gingaeru · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was my first experience with Farmer, and I was pleasantly surprised. The prose ranged from poetic to very humorous. It was a lot of fun overall. The last twenty or so pages are the weakest, but they aren't necessarily bad.

Some readers have expressed that they didn't understand the story, but it was pretty straightforward. Part of their confusion might have been all the different terminology thrown around. For example, the main species mentioned is the "Wiyr," also called "horstels" (horse tails), "cadmen," "dogeaters," etc. The males are called "satyrs," and the females, "sirens" (the cover artist for the Italian edition took this literally, which I thought was hilarious). The children speak one language, and the adults another. The dragons are called "Thrruk," but a certain place forbidden to humans is also called "Thrruk." Personally, I feel the vocabulary adds some convincing realism to the world.

The story follows Jack Cage, a descendant of the Lost Colony of Roanoke, Virginia. By some strange coincidence, I had never heard of the "lost colony" until just ten days before reading this novel (and I had no idea that it had anything to do with it going in).

Another coincidence is that this story takes place on a planet where all the iron has long since been destroyed by powerful beings (so it's an incredibly rare and valuable mineral). I read "Wyrms" by Orson Scott Card just last month, which featured the exact same scenario. Whether Card got the idea from Farmer or not is up in the air, but I find it fascinating.
...

There's a hate crime very early on, and the victim's name is Wuv. I couldn't take it seriously because of that name ("I wuv you."). I'm not sure if it was intended to be funny or not because this is a partly satirical work.

For whatever reason, this book isn't broken up into chapters at all (no line breaks, either!). Each page is crammed from top to bottom with text, so it's nearly impossible to find a passage if you need it for reference after the fact.

I'm almost positive that at some point, a character says that Polly was seen riding with a masked man, but I couldn't find it again in the sea of text. And unless I missed something, he isn't explained or identified. Jack has a dog named Samson and owns a priceless (because it's iron-based) scimitar. After a while, they stopped being present in the story. Somehow, I missed what happened to them (if it's mentioned). I don't recall any "werewolves" actually showing up, even though they are referred to several times.
...

Typos:
There were a few words with missing (or extra) letters.
...

159 pages.

8/10

[Frank · Rating 2 out of 5]

Farmer has always been one of my favorite sci-fi authors. I loved his Riverworld series, especially "To Your Scattered Bodies Go" which I have read at least 3 times. "Dare" started off with a great premise that the lost colony of Roanoke, Virginia (including Viginia Dare and her family), along with some other strange disappearances of the 16th century, were transported to another planet by an alien race called Arra as part of some kind of extraterrestrial experiment. On the planet Dare there are several sentient races including humans and horstels -- a race of myth-like near humans that resemble satyrs and sirens. Jack, the main character of the novel, falls in love with one of these "sirens" which is strictly forbidden by his society. The story goes on to become an allegory of war, race relations, and inhumanity. It includes a group called the HK (obviously derived from the KKK) bent on eliminating all of the horstels. The last part of this brief novel includes a visit from a spaceship from Earth. The novel then ends rather abruptly and unsatisfactorily. Overall, I was rather disappointed in this weak story which could have been more fully fleshed out and developed by Farmer.

[Ferio · Rating 3 out of 5]

Pongámonos en contexto: es una novela corta de ciencia ficción escrita hace casi 50 años, lo que quiere decir que la podría haber escrito tu abuelo; por eso tiene esos tintes tan viejunos, de gente en granjas que se asombra ante la llegada de tecnologías modernas hechas de metal. Pero no es ese el único tufillo que destila esta novela, digna del mejor/peor género pulp: está compuesta cogiendo material de diversos sitios sin coherencia aparente (aunque tampoco la necesita) y culmina con un deus ex machina digno de Stephen King, encima de forma acelerada, como si le corriera prisa el dinero del contrato.

¿Entonces me ha gustado o no? Digamos que me ha entretenido sin encontrar grandes baches por el camino: en esta edición tiene 200 páginas y lo único que me ha impedido terminarla antes es que cada escena dura unas 40, por lo que lo he cogido solo cuando sabía que tenía tiempo para darle duro.

No es la mejor obra de Farmer, pero para echar el ratejo una tarde de domingo bien vale, especialmente si eres un adolescente nihilista.

[St-Michel · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was one of those books where I just really had no idea where it was going. It's not that it took me by surprise at every turn of the page, but it was more like I was a deer in the headlights - just what the heck is going on here!? I'm fast becoming a huge fan of PJF, but this was just...strange?

Unfortunately, I think the first half of the book dragged and it took me a bit to get through, but the second half picked up nicely and quickly became a rapid read. However, this would probably not be one by Farmer that I would avidly recommend to anyone looking to try the author out.

[Ryan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Classic sci-fi/fantasy book. Farmer has a million creative ideas and this is a great example of him pulling it off well. I can only complain about two things: 1. it has no chapters. not too big of a deal since its a short book 2. its too short. Many fantasy writers would use this as a base for a much bigger story. He could have used more pages fleshing out some of the characters or the world. The good side to this is that we aren't left with some bloated, massive volume with more boring dialogue and exposition than necessary.

[bleak · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not Farmer's ideal writing style. Probably cramped by publishing house restrictions or some other external reason. Farmer is much more comfortable writing the super pervy stuff he tends to, and so that's his best stuff. This isn't pervy, though it reads like it wishes it were. read it if you need to read something fluffy and schlocky with a low level of commitment.

Oh, and the best part of the book is when it lovingly describes the bowl of pudding being dropped on Dad's head.

[João Sousa · Rating 2 out of 5]

I was a bit disappointed with "Dare", my first (and only up to now) book I read by Farmer. I liked the starting point, the whole environment and the themes developed. But... although a lot seems to happen during the narrative, I could not get rid of the feeling that nothing here goes deep in any way. This book is in my opinion very much superficial and light, despite the fact that some themes deserve a lot more.