McHugh, Maureen F. - Nekropolis

[oyceter]

I didn't like it as much as I liked her China Mountain Zhang.

It's written much in the same style, with the first person present and the change of viewpoints in each chapter. It's about a jessed woman, Hariba, (jessing some how makes the people more loyal as servants) and the harni Akhmin, them falling in love and running away and much trouble ensues. Akhmin is harni and a genetic construct made to look human, but essentially not.

I think mostly I was disappointed in this book -- one should not have blurbs on the back saying books are "unique love stories" and then making them not so. I also probably picked up the book for the wrong reasons -- the AI/human love reminded me of Silver Metal Lover, which I have actually not read (yet) but sounded good, and I thought it would be about exploring the things that make us human, or that make us fall in love even in the most impossible circumstances, or something like that.

But much of the book has to do with how Hariba and Akhmin get out of their states of slavery, with viewpoints contributed by Hariba, Akhmin, Hariba's mother and her best friend. I have to admit, McHugh's character voices sounded a little similar stylistically (I have been spoiled by Freedom and Necessity), and I wasn't quite sure why in the end Hariba's mother and her best friend were included in what seemed to ultimately be Hariba's journey. It worked for me in China Mountain Zhang because I enjoyed watching the different people he influenced and affected and because that book felt more on community and human ties, while this one was preset in my mind to be about a less general relationship with the world. Plus, McHugh lost the gorgeous quiet moments that really made China Mountain Zhang work for me, like the life of colonists on Mars, or an endless night in the Arctic, or Daoist architecture.

Mostly, I think I was annoyed because as soon as the book seemed to be hitting the points that interested me, it stopped. Hariba and Akhmin had finally escaped from Morocco and found sanctuary in Spain, both of them readjusting to life there, Hariba learning things about Akhmin and the harni in general that would have a big impact on their relationship (mostly non-existent in the earlier chapters, as she was completely incapacitated by getting over being jessed). Plus, I liked the parts where Hariba had to adjust, had to learn to live in the new country. And instead of finishing her journey there, the book just stops. No ultimate resolution of the Hariba-Akhmin problem, nothing.

Plus, I dislike books in which the heroine is basically dead weight and utterly useless throughout most of the book.

I will try one more to see how McHugh is and then see...

Comments

[coffeeandink.livejournal.com]

I thought a lot better of the book than you did, but then I didn't expect it to be a love story. It's a rewrite of The Silver Metal Lover as more psychologically realistic, which means it's a deconstruction of the idea the love can exist between slave and slaveowner. It's uncomfortable precisely because it's looking at the effects of power on love, as well as cases in which the more powerful person has persuaded him or herself that the exercise of power is the exercise of love. So Hariba's mother and Hariba's best friend are there as alternative and/or parallel stories of largely powerless people exercising what power they have in their social structure, and as given us a larger perspective than we could get from Hariba, who's obsessed in her folie a deux, and Akhmin, who isn't human.

I think it might be justifiable to read the ending as the last pain before liberation, but I do find it almost impossibly bleak. It's a very depressive book, by which I mean not that it's sad but that it very clearly comes from a depressed person's worldview. I recognize it. This doesn't mean that it's wrong, just that it's identifiable.

[oyceter]

This is my problem with blurbs... it was a bit weird reading up till the end of chapter one and realizing that was all the blurb was talking about. I think it might have gone over much better without preconceptions, sigh.

I did very much like how McHugh quietly destroyed the idea of Hariba and Akhmin having some sort of deathless, species-transcending love affair, except I think I wanted more of that. Something like having Hariba actually come to the realization that it wouldn't work, instead of the hints that come at the end of the book.

I like the idea of the book being depressive and Hariba's mother and best friend being an alternate sort of push against society. I don't know, it's strange because I was one of the people who very much fell in love with the depressive storyline in Buffy S6. I think having to see Hariba through her mother's and her friend's eyes made her seem much more annoying? agency-less? than she might have had it been from her POV.

[rachelmanija.livejournal.com]

CHINA MOUNTAIN ZHANG is McHugh's least depressing book, unfortunately, so if you've already read that it's all downhill from there. However, you might like MISSION CHILD, as the point where you wished NEKROPOLIS would continue-- heroine has been through hell, encountered the dominant culture, and begins to try to adapt and find her place in it--occurs at about the two-thirds mark. Though it depicts utter crushing misery, gloom, and despair in its early and middle sections, it gets somewhat cheerier in the second half and ends on something of a hopeful note.

Maureen McHugh is an excellent writer and I always feel as I read it that what she writes is psychologically, sociologically, and politically true. But if it is true, and that all anyone coming from a third-world country to a first-world one can hope for is a slightly better material situation compromised by complex feelings of unworthiness and guilt, I'm not sure that I want to know about it.

I hadn't thought of it before M mentioned it, but that is a classically depressive worldview: things might get better but they'll never get good.

Just thinking about those books makes me want to go read Jennifer Crusie.

[oyceter]

Hrm. Hee, ok. I will remember that when I pick them up. I don't think I generally mind utter crushing misery, gloom and despair as long as it has a point... plus, am personally interested in adapting to different cultures and etc.

Very much a depressive worldview, which generally doesn't quite mesh with me (I tend to be an optimist), unless I am in an awful state.

Mmm, Crusie ^_^. I still want to go pick up more of her.