Mind Snare

by Gayle Greeno

Once Glynn gives his ultimate performance as an actor in the famous Stanislaus Troupe, his life will be forever changed.  He’ll be banned from the stage just because he’s turned fifteen, which in the Stanislaus Troupe means the end of the limelight for a man.  Only women can continue to build their careers, women like his mother Jerelynn, the Great Lynn, perhaps the finest actress ever to grace the starways. But someone is determined to end the careers of mother and son alike, and when an assassin’s unexpected strike leaves Jerelynn on the brink of death Glynn has no choice. He won’t let his mother die—even if it means using forbidden and highly experimental technology to keep her alive.  Yet this may prove but a temporary reprieve, for the assassins will not rest until their destruction is complete. Their only chance for survival lies in tracking down the people behind the killers. And the trail will lead from the satellite colonies down to the mother planet itself—straight into a deadly game of vengeance and conspiracy that will involve some of the most powerful organizations on Earth…

Genres: Fantasy, Science Fiction

352 pages, Kindle Edition

First published September 1, 1997

Reviews

[Clare O'Beara · Rating 1 out of 5]

This could have been a good book but it's written in such a way that the reader does not get into it. My husband dropped it quarter way. I worked hard but dropped it too. I have read a 'Ghatti's Tale' book by this author which was much better so either her writing matured after this one or her editor changed.

A boy in his teens is an actor on a space station. His main angst is that he is going to have to stop acting aged 16 because only women act after that age. We are not told why. We are told that other troupes allow men to act and don't relegate them to set design and costumes. We are not told why he can't join one of those. Many new terms are in use.

Then we get several pages of a guidebook explaining how many space stations there are, what they are all called, how they are designed, what terms are used to mean various parts of them, which Lagrange points are in use and more. This information should have been drip-fed as the character or reader needs to learn it, ideally through conversation or experience. Coming out at the other end of that I found an explosion or shooting or something, a terrorist attack and many pages of indescribably awful harm to the boy's mother, I'll just mention burning, blackening, skin falling off... enough. Less is more, folks.

I flicked through a few sections in case the writing got any better, it did not. By the end something is talking in ALL CAPITALS TO THE BOY which is very hard on the eyes.
This is an unbiased review.

[Jessica Lerbs · Rating 1 out of 5]

I just couldn't get into it. Too much techno-jargon and too much religion, and too many points-of-view with slang or stream-of-consciousness that didn't pull me in.

[Victoria Gaile · Rating 3 out of 5]

Three+ stars, almost four. (Terrible title, though: ignore the title, read the synopsis & reviews.)

This was a pretty absorbing/engaging read, and the setting was very rich. There's the overall culture on earth, the splintering of the nations + the amalgamation of the corporations + the major & minor religions*; the technology, orbital mechanics, and social culture of the space stations; the culture of the acting troupes (mainly Stanislaus Troupe but others as well); the culture of the faith-healing compound.

((*Pro tip: if you're describing the state of global Christian religions, don't forget the Orthodox East!))

Then there's the personal relationship dynamics: within and around Stanislaus Troupe; within the faith-healing family; among the corp-religion handlers. And all the political and personal intrigue.

Then there are the deeply explored themes of embodiment, life, death, living, dying, and killing; with interlocking themes of love, loyalty, and betrayal. This is really what the book is about. Is living as a brain in a box really living? If you want to die, should you be forced to go on living? How do parents, children, spouses, siblings love each other? When does love turn to something else? How many forms of betrayal are there?

Really, this was a very good book. Only two things kept me from giving it four stars:
1) one of the main characters, Glynn, spends too much time being too whiny for me -- not that this was unrealistic for a 15yo boy in his situation, just that it got on my nerves.
2) one of the characters has an extremely idiosyncratic speech pattern that is as much or more about playing with sounds and repetition as it is about conveying meaning. (Greeno does something very similar with the speech of the ghatti in her other books (starting with Finders-Seekers). It's a very recognizable quirk, and if the character had remained marginal with relatively infrequent dialogue, I would have appreciated it. But she became a sufficiently significant character that talks a lot, and again, it just got on my nerves.

I was especially intrigued by the Little Sisters of Mortality, a Nuevo Catholic religious order of assassins.

Some of the exposition in the beginning was a bit clunky, but it wasn't too bad, and sometimes was slightly clever.

I liked Greeno's ghatti books, but they have a fairly standard fantasy feel. This book was stronger. I think she writes better SF than fantasy, and I'd like to see her write more of it.

[Allisyn · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was this second time that I read this book, the first time being several years ago. Glenn and his mother, Jerelynn, are the star actors in a traveling Acting troupe on the Satellites on Earth. Glenn is the secret child of Jerelynn's affair with a well-respected religious man. Because of the affair, the man's wife tries to murder Jerelynn and only fails because Glenn and a friend preserve Jerelynn's mind in an illegal "brain box" when it is clear that her body is dying. During my first read of the story, I didn't really notice the presence and the implications of the Brain Box but this time I could really appreciate the horror of it. They took an active woman known for her grace and physical abilities and cut her existence down to life as just a brain. Trapped, utterly reliant on other people... Aside from scientific horrors, this story is full of action, intrigue, and betrayal. It was definitely worth a second read to really get the nuances.