Gregg Nicholas
The story meanders around and finally stops - I can't say that the story has a start or an end. We're brought into the story after society has fallen apart. We're never told what caused the dystopia, or if it affects the entire world or just the United States of America. When the book ends, nothing has really changed in society. The story isn't a ‘coming of age' tale, nor does it teach a lesson or preach a moral. Good does not triumph over evil. The reader has followed a set of characters through a small portion of their lives, but I don't see any point to the story beyond exploring some vaguely interesting characters as they learn more about each other in a dystopian world. Still, it kept my interest, so I didn't give it a poor rating.
As other reviewers have said, the book ends without answering a lot of questions. Perhaps it is better that the reader is left to imagine how each character develops after the end of the book, and how the world changes by what is about to happen, and which side might win. Nonetheless, the incomplete nature of the story does bother me. I also knocked off points because the ‘science fiction' elements of the story were completely unbelievable.
I'm ashamed to say that it took me more than 2 years to finish this book. However, I think it is significant that even a fiction reader, like me, can enjoy this book. In my opinion, the book is losing relevance because even this second edition is now 7 years old. While reading it, there were many times that I wondered what the author would say about more recent developments.
This is a disaster story. In my opinion, the story is nearly a disaster itself. The chapters abruptly jump forward and backward in time. Although most of the people on earth die, I believe that the author overestimates the negative impact this would have on humanity. It is as if any survivors lost most of their intelligence in the process. You could argue that we only get a glimpse into the lives of a few people in a small area of the world. However, it is very difficult to believe that no survivors in the world, knew enough technology to keep some communications going. An amateur radio station doesn't need much power to reach the world. Alternative power sources for radios are relatively common. Wouldn't some dictator in oil rich lands, seize upon the opportunity to conquer the world? Any number of possibilities suggest themselves - but I just can't imagine why the author wants to believe that all the survivors would be shell shocked for a couple years, and then be stuck in the technology of the middle ages.
No spoilers, but when the causes of the disaster are eventually revealed, they aren't believable - or at least, they aren't sufficient. The writer should have done more research into the emergency preparedness plan of his local county. The lack of communications between the rescue workers, and lack of communications to the victims, is just not believable. If the protagonist had just known more about what was going on, several tragic parts of the story would have been prevented.
This series was something of a disappointment. I had expected better from Octavia Butler. The first book starts out with only remnants of humanity, kept captive by aliens. While this sounds like a great place to start a story about the strengths of humanity recovering from a terrible setback, that's not the story we're told. Instead, the aliens completely dominate the remaining humans, strip them of their humanity, and turn them into sterile, drug dependent, genetic experiment monsters. Mankind is dead - we're just waiting for the creatures that used to be human beings, to die off - because no new human beings can be born after the aliens sterilize the survivors. She tries to end the trilogy with hope, by restoring fertility to a few humans on Mars. However, none of them are truly human anymore since all of them have been genetically altered, and injected with alien cells.
In my opinion, the story relied too heavily on the unbelievable alien powers of control by pheromones. How are we supposed to believe that simply breathing in the presence of these aliens, removes free will and logical thinking? She tries to tell us that the biological urges and bonding of mates overpowers all logical thought and physically injures them on separation, including death when their mates die.
Clearly, Octavia had an agenda to writing this story. Masculine characteristics are constantly denigrated - there are no strong male role models. Independent thought is depicted as a horrible thing. Everyone must obey the consensus decision.
Tigana starts awkwardly by introducing characters, then abruptly changing the scene to introduce more people before the reader has time to form an attachment to the original characters. This happens several times. Throughout the book there are abrupt changes in the story thread. With no warning, a paragraph will completely change to a different thread of the story, with no indication that the reader is now standing in another part of the world, and surrounded by different people. Many times, I would reach the middle of a paragraph - and suddenly realize that the pronouns were referring to different people than were in the previous paragraph.
Characters were sometimes lovable, sometime despicable - no real heroes or villains. The story had many twists and left many unresolved questions. While I enjoyed the story, and can even appreciate that some story lines aren't finished, I'm glad that there isn't a second book. I just don't love the world of Tigana enough to follow any further.