Blueheart

by Alison Sinclair

Poised on the brink of disaster, the hidden underwater inhabitants of the planet Blueheart strive to create a new species while plans are in motion to transform the planet into an Earth-like world, and as a battle rages, Rache returns and must make a difficult choice--his humanity or his world

Genres: Science Fiction, Science Fiction Fantasy

544 pages, Mass Market Paperback

First published January 1, 1996

About the author

Alison Sinclair is a science fiction and fantasy author.

Reviews

[Daniel Smith · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book is going to be difficult for me to review. Some organizational issues and just general structural instability and unlikeable characters made this one tough to finish. I really wish I could rate this book higher as it has an incredible idea behind it, and the setting has massive potential. That being said, I had a hell of a time making myself pick it up after about the first 200 pages. I just didn't feel as though there was anybody worth rooting for, or even that the characters felt distinct from each other. I don't want to spend too much time dwelling on this book because it was very frustrating to try to analyze due to these factors. I tried my durndest to make notes during my reading to fuel my review, but I find that I'm really exhausted by finishing this book and I will attempt to sort of reorganize my notes into a cogent review rather than fully re-wording and fitting them together.
My main issue with this book is the characters. The book's premise is intriguing, as it explores the essence of what constitutes an intelligent species and whether that species' attempts to change itself result in a new species or subspecies. Considering I'm a member of the species in question, this really interested me. Unfortunately, the conveyance of the interesting philosophical points the author could have made here is held back significantly by the bland and unlikeable characters. I try to be understanding of weaker characters in sci-fi books because I know a lot of authors try to focus in on the Big Idea rather than the characters themselves, and sometimes this works. That being said, I think a lot of sci-fi authors have had ringing success bucking this trend and have laid a good groundwork for powerful sci-fi with realistic, deep characters who feel human (or alien, or plant-entities, or whatever). One of my criticisms in my notes says "characters are never clearly defined for the reader. This leaves me to have difficulty holding them as separate entities in my head, and gives me very vague ideas of who / what they are. This becomes frustrating when we discover a character who has been around for at least 125 pages apparently has a computer in her head where she stores most of her memories and higher functions. If this is mentioned before, it's not made clear. [...] It's very unclear to me what these characters' motivations are without having clarity about who they are in the first place. This is a problem when the perspective of two very opposite people (an adaptive and a primary human) and their experiences are perceived and narrated in the exact same way with the exact same tone. I really want to like this book, but I'm missing a lot of subtleties that beg for better explanation." I should explain at this point that adaptives are modified humans that the author is using as an example of a possible subspecies of human. These issues with character development are further exacerbated by the author abruptly and jarringly switching perspectives, sometimes with no division at all in chapters or even paragraphs. I found myself having real trouble knowing who was talking, and to whom. To make this even worse there are multiple instances where a question is asked verbally and then we have a page or more of narrative from whoever's perspective we're following before the (usually one-sentence) response. This is extremely frustrating to me as a reader, but I admit this may be due to my own preferences in dialogue and reading in general. I believe the author realized, or was told by an editor that the dialogue was confusing the plot. It appears as though the author tried to do a recap of the previous plot points by having a character verbally reiterate everything that's happened (at least from his perspective) up to this point at around page 300. This is more than halfway through the book, and it feels like a clumsy way of trying to band-aid over the ineffective exposition it's trying to correct. While we're on the subject of character development, or lack thereof, it feels as though I should mention a couple especially poorly-drawn characters: Lisel and Cesar Kamehameha. Lisel is so poorly introduced before she becomes a major part of the story that I had to go back and try to find previous references to her to know who she was. On top of that, when we do meet her she's very hard to swallow as a protagonist. She's manipulative, spiteful, treacherous, cryptic, rude, and presumptuous. Throughout the remainder of the book she gives us no reason to support or like her, and I have a really hard time rooting for characters like this. This becomes especially true when we factor in the way she treats the main character, who in his own right is hard to like because he doesn't seem to have much personality. Cesar is the head of an organization known as the AOC, in favor of and responsible for terraforming the planet on which this book takes place. The term AOC may be explained at some point, but only once and very early in the book. I honestly got so frustrated with things being difficult to understand that I abandoned trying to find this reference and just accepted that I'll never know what "AOC" stands for here. My issue with Cesar is that he seems to only have two physical traits, which we are beaten over the head with in description: he's small and he has "olivine" eyes. These eyes are mentioned in almost every reference to him, and it starts to get comical. This hurts him as a serious character, and makes it hard to focus on his actions / motivations. While this is fairly minor in and of itself, it combines with the other issues in this book to be distracting, and impedes comprehension. One final note on characters that I will excerpt from my reading notes: "Nobody seems to change at all throughout the book. The stoic main character who tries to toe the line between conflicting factions remains stagnant and doesn't change his position or have much effect in any way on the plot. The wounded daughter of a murder victim remains angry and resentful at everyone and everything the entire time. The aloof and indifferent woman with a computer in her head becomes a little more human (briefly, due to hardware failure) and then reverts right back to acting like a robot."
Another major issue with this book - it's too long. It feels as though the climax happens way too early, and then we're left with just a bunch of wind-down that doesn't go anywhere or add anything. I feel as though this book could've been more comfortable if it was about 250 pages, effectively cutting a little less than half of the book. There was a lot of repetition, which unfortunately didn't help much with the comprehension as the repetition was usually about a character's emotions (of which they felt A LOT) or repeated phrases that characters seemed to like. Maybe this is done to try to lend some realism to the story, but it was a difficult choice for me to support and work through as a reader.
Another difficult choice for me was that none of the main characters seem to have much agency or impact on the plot. The purported main character isn't even able to participate in what I guess was intended to be the climax. This climax seems to be rather tame and happens after a more impactful plot point, which also seems like an organizational gaffe.
One more note before I try to wrap up this increasingly long review: religion. Religion is a motivation for several characters in the book, and I think it could've been very interesting to see how belief systems treat the question central to the book about what makes a human a human. While we are given some very light lip service to the idea that the Christian God made us in his image and would prefer that we stay in that image, this idea is only ever stated and never challenged. On top of that, it's not even very important to the characters who appear to believe it, as their opinions and loyalties appear to change whenever it's convenient to move the plot where the author wanted. This seems like a huge missed opportunity to add some impact and depth to the book and the ideas it espouses, and touches on a related issue. The loyalty of every character seems to fluctuate wildly from scene to scene and chapter to chapter. One character, if I'm counting correctly appears to change her loyalties no fewer than 5 times. Characters like this feel almost too malleable, and somehow this didn't seem to lend any development to the characters in question. I don't really understand how this happened or what needs to change to correct it, but it definitely felt like a swing and a miss to me.
The one saving grace to this book is that it's genuinely thoughtful about humans as a species and where we sit in the order - natural or otherwise - of life. Unfortunately, this felt poorly explored and largely without any kind of statement one way or the other. Here is some final summarization from my notes: "Through the entire book I had a hard time with the dialogue and the characters. It's so widespread that I'm having trouble even expressing all the reasons this book disappointed me. If I had to pick one to nit, I would say that this book has an amazing, excellent idea that was just kind of squandered by exploring a series of bureaucratic quagmires and overhyped, histrionic personal melodrama that didn't really feel like it fit with the personalities of most of the characters. This came at a large detriment to the pacing and grip of the plot, which largely failed to draw me into its gyre - a word that the author seems to love using almost as much as 'olivine.'"

[Melanie]

I love this book. It is great. It should have won awards. I've only read it about 7-8 times, but each time I read it there are still new details to notice, new nuances to discover and savour. The depth and the richness of the world, the detail of the environment and the culture, the various levels of society within the various socio-cultural groups is SO well done.

I will continue to enjoy this book for years. It is not just a good read, it is a SMASHINGLY good read.

[Blake · Rating 3 out of 5]

(FYI I tend to only review one book per series, unless I want to change my scoring by 0.50 or more of a star. -- I tend not to read reviews until after I read a book, so I go in with an open mind.)

I'm finally going through my physical library owned book list, to add more older basic reviews. If I liked a book enough to keep then they are at the least a 3 star.

I'm only adding one book per author and I'm not going to re-read every book to be more accurate, not when I have 1000s of new to me authors to try (I can't say no to free books....)

First time read the author's work?: Yes

Will you be reading more?: Yes

Would you recommend?: Yes


------------
How I rate Stars: 5* = I loved (must read all I can find by the author)
4* = I really enjoyed (got to read all the series and try other books by the author).
3* = I enjoyed (I will continue to read the series)
or
3* = Good book just not my thing (I realised I don't like the genre or picked up a kids book to review in error.)

All of the above scores means I would recommend them!
-
2* = it was okay (I might give the next book in the series a try, to see if that was better IMHO.)
1* = Disliked

Note: adding these basic 'reviews' after finding out that some people see the stars differently than I do - hoping this clarifies how I feel about the book. :-)

[John · Rating 1 out of 5]

I can't remember ever having bailed on a book before, no matter how bad it was. But there's a first time for everything.

A hundred pages into this 500+ page monstrosity, I was still unable to answer simple questions about this story. Who are the main characters (not their names, but their identities, their values, and their back stories)? What are the central conflicts? What are the social structures and norms in this future world, in this universe that the author has created? What do various inside references and bits of jargon mean? If I have to suffer through another 100 pages of opaque, convoluted, often ambiguously phrased prose to discover the answers to these and similarly fundamental questions, I think it is safe to conclude that the author has failed and I am absolved of any further obligations as a reader.

When I read a one-star book through to the end, it is generally because I want to earn the right to critique it from a place of knowledge. Furthermore, as a writer, I find the failures as instructive as the successes since there are many cautionary lessons to be gleaned. But this is the first time I can remember that I simply don't have the patience to endure any more.

Uncle!

[Christy · Rating 3 out of 5]

I really wanted to like this book, but, no matter how interesting its plot and characters and world-building were, it never quite compelled me emotionally.

[Huw]

Very clever, but a bit uninvolving. I preferred her other two books.

[Peter Tillman · Rating 1 out of 5]

This one has been on the to-read shelf for years, and after 60-some pages of exposition, it's in danger of recycling...

OK, out it goes. DNF.

[Apollo Lee]

I bought this book 7 years ago. Need to finish it.