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The Starbridge Chronicles #2
Sugar Rain
The second book in the Starbridge Chronicles, SUGAR RAIN relates the stories of Thanakar and Charity Starbridge during the revolution that ended the first book in the series, SOLDIERS OF PARADISE. The generations-long winter has drawn to a close, and with it the power of the tyrannical Starbridge theocracy that maintained order during the years of hunger. But a cruelly pragmatic priest has set the stage for a new faith, and even those who defy him seem fated to play out roles that will inevitably bring it to pass. As Thanakar struggles in exile to find safe harbor for his adopted family, Charity Starbridge undertakes a mythic journey to join him, passing through various underworlds to defy a tragic destiny.
384 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1989
3 people are currently reading
114 people want to read
About the author
Paul Park
62 books45 followersPaul 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.
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.
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
January 23, 2018
An absolutely extraordinary novel, possessing a wondrous imaginative scope and a uncompromising, often unnerving strangeness that makes it very difficult to describe. It's also difficult to recommend without fair warning: it is unrelentingly weird, dense, difficult, and in many ways its true meanings are obscure. But still, I devoured it.
This is the second book in the series, and even though I picked it up without having read the first (actually I found an old paperback copy on the street) I got sucked into it all the same. The world and its oddities are rendered with perfect clarity. The characters are striking and memorable.
There is a quality that this novel has that is rare among even the best fantasy and science fiction: much like the invented myths and miracles that shape the lives of its characters, this story is certain of its own truth, its own reality. It reads more like history than fiction.
This is the second book in the series, and even though I picked it up without having read the first (actually I found an old paperback copy on the street) I got sucked into it all the same. The world and its oddities are rendered with perfect clarity. The characters are striking and memorable.
There is a quality that this novel has that is rare among even the best fantasy and science fiction: much like the invented myths and miracles that shape the lives of its characters, this story is certain of its own truth, its own reality. It reads more like history than fiction.
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December 15, 2015THE STARBRIDGE CHRONICLES by Paul Park
PARK'S PEAKE
THE STARBRIDGE CHRONICLES by Paul Park, author of the recently acclaimed biblically inspired novels THE GOSPEL OF CORAX and THE THREE MARYS, is one of the most respected and unrenowned of all major works of science fiction slash fantasy. Often compared to Gene Wolfe's TORTURER series and Brian Aldiss's HELLICONIA triptych, these comparisons, though flattering, are superficial at best, reminding the reader of Wolfe in the density of prose, of Aldiss in the prolongation of the seasons.
My own comparison of the three novels comprising THE STARBRIDGE CHRONICLES ( SOLDIERS OF PARADISE, SUGAR RAIN, and THE CULT OF LOVING KINDNESS) would be to that other neglected masterpiece of the imagination in trilogy - GORMENGHAST by Mervyn Peake.
Like the Gormenghast novels, Park sets the reader down in a a darkly fantastic environ, letting them find there own way at first, offering subtle hints at the history and magnitude of the milieu. Whereas Peake's inspiration seems to be a Samuel Beckett-like examination of the inner mind, Parks influence is more akin to the paintings of Bosch and Bruegal. Both writers were early influenced by oriental images and their society's function on minute rituals that have lost their meaning. Both were obviously influenced by Charles Dickens in their choice of names and the setting of scenes. Indeed there is a passage in Park's work where the poor plot a revenge that strikes one as being worthy of TALE OF TWO CITIES and others of bureaucratic madness that remind one of BLEAK HOUSE or Kafka's CASTLE. Both writers use a curious admixture of almost medieval societal structure and a mentally modern technology gone to ruin.
Both Peake's castle Gormenghast and Park's city of Charn are dark and dying places, its denizens decadent and moribund. The rich are opulently empty, the poor are denigratingly poor, and in both, the station of the life that one leads is decreed at birth, with no hope of casting off one's caste. The habitués of Gormenghast and Charn are delineated in the darkest of inks: grotesques in shadows, the despairing poor, the uncaring ruling class, and beauty, when it exists at all, is a tremulous spark that dies without effect. The same empty rote of ritual has led both societies to decay, ultimately to be overthrown by fire and fury.
Rousseau's noble savage is given the same sad shrift in both trilogies. Park's Antinomiles are like Peake's "Wild Thing" - empty of civilization's promise, creatures of the moment, and thus are doomed by the same society that they reject.
The differences, like the similarities, are profound. THE STARBRIDGE CHRONICLES investigate the ravages of war and the hypocrisy of religion. Peake eschews both themes in Gormenghast (though he does chillingly attack modern Christianity in BOY IN DARKNESS). Park also paints a broader canvas - Charn is part of a vast world filled with strangeness and while his prose is dense, it doesn't quite reach the poetic as does Peake's.
Another important similarity between Peake's trilogy and Park's lies in their prose and the stories they tell. These are not books for lazy readers or seekers of hobbit-like thrills. (the appreciation of Peake's GORMENGHAST was set back 20 years when it was offered to a Tolkien crazed audience that found it dull and too dark by comparison!).
Their heroes are not heroic in stature: Park's Prince Abu is a fat and indolent, balding and besotted. His heroism lies not in deed, but like Titus, in choice.
The last similarity between STARBRIDGE and GORMENGHAST is that the main story is told in the first two novels, the third being a kind of coda and a complete transition to a different world. In TITUS ALONE, Titus leaves the castle that he (and the reader) have lived in for two long novels and enters the strange world outside. In the CULT OF LOVING KINDNESS we leave the generation long bleak and harsh winter world of Charn into a new summer of burgeoning growth and fecundity. For that reason I personally suggest that the reader, like the Gormenghast Trilogy, read the last book first.
PARK'S PEAKE
THE STARBRIDGE CHRONICLES by Paul Park, author of the recently acclaimed biblically inspired novels THE GOSPEL OF CORAX and THE THREE MARYS, is one of the most respected and unrenowned of all major works of science fiction slash fantasy. Often compared to Gene Wolfe's TORTURER series and Brian Aldiss's HELLICONIA triptych, these comparisons, though flattering, are superficial at best, reminding the reader of Wolfe in the density of prose, of Aldiss in the prolongation of the seasons.
My own comparison of the three novels comprising THE STARBRIDGE CHRONICLES ( SOLDIERS OF PARADISE, SUGAR RAIN, and THE CULT OF LOVING KINDNESS) would be to that other neglected masterpiece of the imagination in trilogy - GORMENGHAST by Mervyn Peake.
Like the Gormenghast novels, Park sets the reader down in a a darkly fantastic environ, letting them find there own way at first, offering subtle hints at the history and magnitude of the milieu. Whereas Peake's inspiration seems to be a Samuel Beckett-like examination of the inner mind, Parks influence is more akin to the paintings of Bosch and Bruegal. Both writers were early influenced by oriental images and their society's function on minute rituals that have lost their meaning. Both were obviously influenced by Charles Dickens in their choice of names and the setting of scenes. Indeed there is a passage in Park's work where the poor plot a revenge that strikes one as being worthy of TALE OF TWO CITIES and others of bureaucratic madness that remind one of BLEAK HOUSE or Kafka's CASTLE. Both writers use a curious admixture of almost medieval societal structure and a mentally modern technology gone to ruin.
Both Peake's castle Gormenghast and Park's city of Charn are dark and dying places, its denizens decadent and moribund. The rich are opulently empty, the poor are denigratingly poor, and in both, the station of the life that one leads is decreed at birth, with no hope of casting off one's caste. The habitués of Gormenghast and Charn are delineated in the darkest of inks: grotesques in shadows, the despairing poor, the uncaring ruling class, and beauty, when it exists at all, is a tremulous spark that dies without effect. The same empty rote of ritual has led both societies to decay, ultimately to be overthrown by fire and fury.
Rousseau's noble savage is given the same sad shrift in both trilogies. Park's Antinomiles are like Peake's "Wild Thing" - empty of civilization's promise, creatures of the moment, and thus are doomed by the same society that they reject.
The differences, like the similarities, are profound. THE STARBRIDGE CHRONICLES investigate the ravages of war and the hypocrisy of religion. Peake eschews both themes in Gormenghast (though he does chillingly attack modern Christianity in BOY IN DARKNESS). Park also paints a broader canvas - Charn is part of a vast world filled with strangeness and while his prose is dense, it doesn't quite reach the poetic as does Peake's.
Another important similarity between Peake's trilogy and Park's lies in their prose and the stories they tell. These are not books for lazy readers or seekers of hobbit-like thrills. (the appreciation of Peake's GORMENGHAST was set back 20 years when it was offered to a Tolkien crazed audience that found it dull and too dark by comparison!).
Their heroes are not heroic in stature: Park's Prince Abu is a fat and indolent, balding and besotted. His heroism lies not in deed, but like Titus, in choice.
The last similarity between STARBRIDGE and GORMENGHAST is that the main story is told in the first two novels, the third being a kind of coda and a complete transition to a different world. In TITUS ALONE, Titus leaves the castle that he (and the reader) have lived in for two long novels and enters the strange world outside. In the CULT OF LOVING KINDNESS we leave the generation long bleak and harsh winter world of Charn into a new summer of burgeoning growth and fecundity. For that reason I personally suggest that the reader, like the Gormenghast Trilogy, read the last book first.
November 17, 2015
Big drop off from book 1. Hard to read because of the mix of exposition and narrative.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews