Soldiers of Paradise

The Starbridge Chronicles #1

by Paul Park

On a distant world of cruel belief and harsh reality, Dr. Thanakar and his cousin, Mad Prince Abu, enter the city of Charn and become involved in a society of freedom, oppression, intrigue, and power

Genres: Science Fiction, Fantasy, Fiction, Ebooks, Dying Earth, American, Novels

281 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1987

About the author

Paul Park (born 1954) is an American science fiction author and fantasy author. He lives in Berkshire County, Massachusetts, with his wife and two children. He also teaches a Reading and Writing Science Fiction course at Williams College. He has also taught several times at the Clarion West Writing Workshop.

Park appeared on the American science fiction scene in 1987 and quickly established himself as a writer of polished, if often grim, literary science fiction. His first work was the Starbridge Chronicles trilogy, set on a world with generations-long seasons much like Brian Aldiss' Helliconia trilogy. His critically acclaimed novels have since dealt with colonialism on alien worlds (Coelestis), Biblical (Three Marys) and theosophical (The Gospel of Corax) legends, a parallel world where magic works (A Princess of Roumania and its sequels, The Tourmaline, The White Tyger and The Hidden World), and other topics. He has published short stories in Omni Magazine, Interzone and other magazines.

Reviews

[Gabrielle (Reading Rampage) · Rating 2 out of 5]

Ugh…

So, my husband loves Paul Park’s work, and he has often read my favorite books or books I have recommended to him, even if he didn’t always love them as much as I did – so I felt like I had to give Mr. Park a shot. But Jason’s taste in books and I’s don’t always align, and I am sorry to say this specific book was not a fun reading experience for me. At all.

It’s weird, because I can read crazy, dense Russian novels and enjoy them, but this little unknown fantasy novel gave me a harder time than Messrs. Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky and Bulgakov ever have. I think it was partially poor timing: I’ve been very tired, frustrated and my ability to focus is not great right now, so it doesn’t make me terribly patient.

This novel is a slow-burn, weird fantasy. The world imagined by Park is quite unique, gritty. In “Game of Thrones” fashion (though it predates that series by a solid decade), seasons in this world last for generations, and thousands for years ago, a religious riff split society in two: one half reverting to a primitive, almost hunter-gatherer civilization, while the other half evolved a complex almost Industrial Revolution society. This half is ruled by a sophisticated caste system, controlled by religious authorities. The other half communicate mostly through music and song and lives without real structure, which makes them easily oppressed by their more organized and technologically advanced counterparts.

The narrative structure in the first hundred pages is choppy, and you are thrown into the world with no clue as to what is going on; I got very frustrated trying to understand of what I was reading was meant not to make sense or if I was simply too tired to read it right. It turns out that the real story doesn’t really start until almost halfway through, so my feeling of complete confusion was not entirely unwarranted, and I was simply not in the mood to be left unmoored in this weird world. Eventually, we get to know two main characters who year to break the theocratic limits of their society to make it more equalitarian.

I get what Park was trying to do here, and he’s clearly extremely intelligent and articulate, but I just didn’t enjoy the book. I never felt the atmosphere he was trying to create, I couldn’t feel anything for the characters because I never felt like I got to know them. I felt like this was a lot of telling and very little showing… and my husband thinks the exact opposite, so clearly, we read different books! With a due respect to Jason, I was just really happy to be done with this one...

I will probably try Paul Park again, but I will need time and many palate cleansing books before I’ll feel confident enough for it.

[Charles · Rating 4 out of 5]

Paul Park is really more of a literay writer, I think. He's a wonderful fellow to talk to, and very literate. He uses fantasy and SF as a way to touch on the themes he feels are important. If you're looking for space opera or heroic fantasy, for adventure, then Park is probably not for you. His stories are complicated and rich. They're worth the effort but you won't find them to be quick reads.

[Michael · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read Soldiers of Paradise for the first time 20 years ago. I just read it again and am happy to say it still holds all the same beauty and mystery as it did for me as a teenager. This novel is so dense despite its slim size, it can't be read in a sitting. A few pages reveal a world of unlimited imagination to ponder. The characters are angry, hurt, fallible and failing people living in a corrupt society of such violence and danger and poverty and privelege that it might be our own. Except, incredibly, it isn't. Soldiers of Paradise breaks all science fiction/fantasy rules. It is not plot-driven, nor simple, nor based on its environment. It is a painting explored, a portrait of a world so different from our own that it reminds us of all we should hold dear, and don't.

[Mark Pantoja · Rating 4 out of 5]

i don't think i could really tell you what this book was about. i didn't really care for the characters, Paul Park definitely does not give you any kind of pay off (which i appreciated), the setting is unexplained and pretty impenetrable, and the plot meanders and frankly seems absent. that being said: bravo. i can't imagine ever writing this book, and i'm not entirely sure that i'll read the later books, though i might. reminded me of a less verbose David Zindell, and not quite as cryptic Gene Wolfe. it was good. i wasn't blown away, but i was happily surprised that i enjoyed it as much as i did. i would love to talk to Mr. Park about this book.

[Caroline Eising · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is another of my random secondhand book selections, and I was pleasantly surprised. I have made it a goal to read more fantasy, and this was one of the few at Bookfest that looked interesting (the cover shows men on horned, bird-headed horses), but I really did not know what to expect. What I did find was a detailed bit of world-building, and two very well written cultures set against each other on a planet with strange and long drawn-out seasons.

The book starts with the first culture, a nihilistic society that lives in the present and spurns everything else - planning, thinking, memories and even names. They dance and sing and play music and live only from moment to moment, preferring to speak with music rather than words. They only survive with the help of 'biters'. These are the members of their society that fail to live up to their nihilistic standards and who plan ahead and use words instead of music to communicate.

This society soon clashes with the other prominent culture on their version of Earth - this society has a rigid caste structure ruled by rich families and priests who use strange arcane technologies which involve both magic and science mixed together. This society is waging war against many others, including 'heretics' among their own race, and their sprawling city is full of slums and slaves and untouchables, as well as mansions and temples and priests performing convoluted rituals.

While the world building is rich and well-structured, the story itself seemed to ramble from character to character and I found the various endings partial and unsatisfactory. It made me think this must be part of a series as so many threads were left untied (I've yet to check if this is the case because I don't like to read anything else about a story before I review it). This left me feeling a little lost and it made it hard to care about the fates of the many and varied characters introduced in the story. The book ends with at least one cliffhanger and a lot of death and chaos but the purpose, if any, is unclear and the outcome a complete mystery.

But overall the book is worth it if only for the depiction of the cultures and the alien yet familiar planet with it's strange seasons that can last a life-time and the peculiar orbit of it's planets and the gentle way the reader is introduced to the strangeness of the world - you may assume for instance that the 'horses' referred to are just like ours until the author mentions their beaks, and not until the end do you discover their vestigial wings. It's a great way to have a reader discover the world in bits and pieces instead of one long initial exposition.

[Keith Davis · Rating 5 out of 5]

Park's Starbridge Chronicles are an amazing example of literary science Fiction. The fictional world is as rich as Dune with its detailed culture and religion. The society has an extremely maladaptive caste system in which children are marked with tattoos to mark their place in society for life based on omens at birth. There are the antinomial outcasts who reject names and live in the wild. The plot almost gets lost in the richness of the setting. These books deserve a much bigger audience than they have found.

[Tm Mu'ir · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not an easy read for me..but worth the effort..has some great characterization full of anti-heros who evolve dramatically as their stories and complex misfortunes unfold pushing the characters to their limits and pulling them into various modes of insanity as they fail to cope with a world of insanity and religiously ordained chaos. The plot seems to play off of familiar social disparities in our own contemporary world, successfully making a mockery of various socio-religious dogmas most noticably the Christian ethic of demigoguery and Hindu-istic caste devotationalism take to alien level extremes. Once I learned to accept that this world has almost no trace of comparison to our own except that maybe I could imagine that these inhabitants could have been a remnant of a humanity whose ancestors migrated from ours, completely lost hope and began to manufacture their own kind of hope, which has by now gone terribly wrong since then..it eventually became easier to accept the extreme characters and their extreme cultural values or anti-values as realistic. I like how there is an element of occult/supernatural ability in some of the characters yet instead of this being so enigmatic as to become a central point of the plot, it is presented quite matter of factly as if it is actually no more enigmatic or advantageous to them as an unusual eye color would be.

[Rudolf Kremers · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is one of the most remarkable and impressive books I have ever read. And I have read many, many books.

I was almost thrown by the somewhat dense and difficult introduction, but once the book settles I was left in awe on pretty much every page.

Prose is to die for. Startling, original, beautiful.
Characters are completely original and both real and iconic.
The worldbuilding is incredible. This is a haunting, grotesque, beautiful, powerful, surprising mesmerising (I can go on) world that subtly unfolds as you read each part of the book.

The story is fascinating and filled with meaning and symbolism, humanity and cruelty, and doesn't feel the need to always explain itself.

This review doesn't do the book justice, but let me finish by saying that this makes me feel a but like when I first discovered Gene Wolfe's Book of the New Sun.

I hear the 2nd book in this trilogy is even better, which would be quite a feat! I'll report one I've read it.

In fact, I'll think I'll come back to this mini review and update it once I have properly digested the book, and maybe again after I finish the series.

[Daniel · Rating 5 out of 5]

I hope to have a more substantive review soon, but for now all I can say is this really blew me away.

It's my first Paul Park, and I'm pretty damned excited to see what else he's done. Dense, evocative, literary SF, reminiscent of Gene Wolfe and John Crowley, but definitely not obviously derivative of either.

As in the best SF & F, it is deeply otherworldly while being strongly resonant with lived emotional reality.

[Paul Kane · Rating 3 out of 5]

this is bizarre. there are long stretches of this book where i am unclear exactly what is happening. there are ... mutants or something who act crazy, and they are at war with some vegetarians who have a strange caste system to their society. and then sugar rains from the sky???

but Mr. Park has a wonderful way with words, and the story flows in strange ways. as you read further, things become clearer, somewhat.

still, the book is fascinating.

[Liam · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is both gripping and not. The first chapter was astounding the second chapter was mostly boring. There is much, much, much here. It is a weird world, one full of things alien but also similar to our own, and I think there are many lessons to learn from the pages. The plot is there in places but is largely absent, which made it hard to keep pushing at parts. I think this would be wonderful as an audiobook.

[Joshua · Rating 2 out of 5]

evocative description of an exotic world; uninteresting characters and uninvolving plot.