Kiteworld / Keith Roberts

Kiteworld
by Keith Roberts

science fiction, early steam punk

copyright 1985
read in August 2014

rated 6/10: read to pass the time

A series of stories provides a series of views of Kiteworld. A series of depressing views provides a confused view of a miserable world.

Okay, it's not the worst book that I've recently read. I started reading The Chalk Giants by the same author, Keith Roberts. That one is either a series of snippets -- not stories -- about one character but jumping round in time and space. Or it's a series of unrelated snippets about several unrelated and unpleasant people... I gave up reading before any of it made any sense.

Kiteworld continues the author's confusing style of writing. He doesn't bother to name his characters. I'm left wondering, who is this ? Is it the character that I met in a previous story ?

Finally... well past halfway through this book... Roberts realises that... perhaps a book needs to reach some sort of conclusion. Several characters appear in more than one chapter. There is a feeling of a plot progressing.

Then there's the revolution.

The two arms of the state church kill and burn and loot. The "Ultras" suddenly appear -- I don't remember them from earlier in the book, perhaps I was asleep. These Ultras are really scary -- so we are told.

Then the not-really-magic plane appears. All the miserable characters from the earlier stories reappear. There's the man who swore revenge so he became a shopkeeper ?! His adopted daughter the thief and procurer. He loved her so much that when she continued her old line of work, he raped her then threw her out of the house.

There's the rich slut. She had finally given in to blackmail and married a rich child molester. Now she's killed him and let the lunatics out of the asylum.

The girl with no mind slept with her brother. When found out, the brother killed himself... Rather that trying to protect the girl that he claimed to love.

This mixed grab bag of killers and rapists and assorted nasties... These are the "innocents" who are saved. To be taken to a mysterious land which we have never heard of before. A land of happiness and light and of it's-not-really-miraculous healing.

Good grief.

Still. After struggling through the start I did manage to read all the way to the end.

Which is more than I can say for The Chalk Giants. So that's a recommendation.

Of sorts.

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