Science Fiction & Fantasy Award Winning Book Group discussion

Welcome to March (a few days late) and our discussion thread for Bitter Angels by C.L. Anderson. This book won the 2009 Philip K. Dick Award. Other books on the shortlist that year include Cyberabad Days, The Prisoner, The Repossession Mambo, The Devil's Alphabet, Centuries Ago and Very Fast, and Prophets. For the record I am not familiar with any of these titles.

I hadn't planned on picking this book this month. I was browsing the group bookshelf looking for a different title when I saw the cover for this one and thought that I recognized as a book that I had already read. When I read the synopsis I realized that I hadn't read it but it sounded interesting. As I have mentioned before I'm trying to read more of the PKD winners so this one got the nod.

Welcome everyone and beware of spoilers.

I'm very much enjoying this book. It's a very light and easy read. Feels like it has a sort of YA-vibe even though it's aiming for for a certain amount of dark and gritty.

About 100 pgs in and I like it so far. Nothing earth shattering but it feels like a nice change of pace. I'm looking forward to getting to the murder mystery part of it.

Nick, it looks like you didn't keep enjoying it?

I did enjoy it! I'm just not sure it was very good?

Top example: the characters and their emotions. Every character seemed juvenile to me: they had that exact mix of weary cynicism and total idealism that can only come from lack of experience in the world.

I found them all adorable and I enjoyed reading their story, but I didn't really believe in any of them.

The other thing I couldn't get my head around was the economics. How does it make sense to transport water between moons to people who appear to be performing basic manual labour?

Nick wrote: they had that exact mix of weary cynicism and total idealism that can only come from lack of experience in the world.

That describes Terese to a tee. It didn't really bother me. It seems to me that you can find that sort of combination in people involved in several fields (military, police, medical, religion).

Nick wrote: How does it make sense to transport water between moons to people who appear to be performing basic manual labour?

This was probably my biggest problem with the book. Not this specifically but the fact that some things were a little 'fuzzy'. Maybe the world building wasn't great. I'm not sure if I want to rate this a 3 or a 4. It's right in the 3.5 range for me. I liked the plot and the characters and while it just didn't snap together for me like a 4 star read should I did like it more than an average 3 star.

For example, how did the Blood Family steal the Guardian tech and suddenly have telepathy? Maybe I missed it?

I do wish more SF books had maps. I'm not good at visualization and in this book (like many others) I couldn't visualize the different locations, both the colonies and the different planets.

Jon wrote: "For example, how did the Blood Family steal the Guardian tech and suddenly have telepathy? Maybe I missed it?"

They stole it from Bianca's body, I think. They vivisected her in order to get the 'companion' tech that was in her brain and then adjusted it so that they could use it as a telepathy/mind control network.

I don't want to be too harsh. I did really enjoy the book, it was a fine thriller adventure. It just didn't click on a lot of levels. Like you say, the fuzzy world-building, I didn't really believe the characters, and even the writing had some annoying tics that kept me from really getting immersed in the story.