The Promise of the Child / Tom Toner

The Promise of the Child

(Amaranthine Spectrum #1)

by Tom Toner

fantasy

copyright 2015

partly read in November 2017

rated 6/10: read to pass the time

I'm finding this book hard to read at all, let alone to read to pass the time. To be fair, I've been ill and having trouble concentrating. But this book is more than a "novel of astounding ambition". It's a monstrous mishmash of scenes and threads and times and characters, all -- apparently -- doing their own thing. I think, for example, that one entire world has been destroyed. No explanation how, nor why. And no-one seems to have even noticed.

The book is set in the far, far future. So far in the future that I classify it as fantasy rather than science fiction. The world rulers are immortals. I've met a dozen of them. It appears that absolute power -- which they only pretend to have -- has absolutely corrupted them. A nasty group of evil despots. Other characters -- in the small amount that I have read -- are mostly sketches. Too little known to either like them or dislike them.

But here's an interesting concept:

The more "advanced" races have more sophisticated languages. One character has only managed to learn a small fraction of his own language. So how do they communicate?! Does a self-proclaimed great poet hawk and spit -- and tell everyone that he has just recited the greatest poem ever written... If only the listeners had the brains to understand his language?

That, btw, is a problem with language. And with a poets and authors. Not just with this book.

Do you want to immerse yourself in a complex world, a sprawling plot across who knows how many volumes? This book may be for you.

It is not for me.

====    Dr Nick Lethbridge
Flâneur / Consulting Dexitroboper
Agamedes Consulting / Problems? Solved.
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"Being funny is being awake to the absurdity of normalcy." … Bob Mankoff

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Now so much more than a simple holiday blog:  https://notdotdeaddotyet.blogspot.com.au :-)
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