Advide from the SF Cognoscenti please

[andrewducker]

I'm about halfway through "Living Next Door To The God Of Love", and am rather enjoying bits of it, while being fairly baffled by other bits.

While googling about, I've discovered that it is, in fact, a follow-up to Natural History, a fact that is mentioned nowhere at all on the book itself.

So, those people who have read both, should I go read Natural History and then come back to Living Next Door..., or does that previous book not actually explain anything I need to know?

Comments

[swisstone.livejournal.com]

Depends. It might help you understand the nature of Unity a bit better. On the other hand you might end up even more confused than you started.

[andrewducker]

It's largely the Unity/Forged bits that are confusing. I'm a tad lost as to which bits so far have been real, real (but with hypertech) and VR. Not helped by the fact that Stuff has been referred to repeatedly, but I'm still not sure what, if any, its limitations/uses are.

The characters themselves are all great, but the background seems arbitrary to the point of Alice in Wonderland levels, which would be enough to make me give up, if (a) I wasn't enjoying the characters to much and (b) I didn't get the feeling that the background _does_ work, it just hasn't been explained to me.

If there's the chance that it can be explained to me, it will almost certainly mean I enjoy the rest of it much more. I'll track down the first book and see how I get on.

[swisstone.livejournal.com]

Only the bits in Uluru are VR. Everything else is real, though a lot of it happens in 'pocket universes' created through the use of Stuff. And the thing about Stuff is that it can be whatever you want it to be (whilst pursuing an agenda of its own). I'm not sure Natural History will tell you much more than Ch. 9 of Living Next Door ... does.

[coalescent.livejournal.com]

but the background seems arbitrary to the point of Alice in Wonderland levels

Not sure what you mean by 'background'. If you mean 'backstory', there is a coherent explanation of how things got to be the way they are, and that book is called Natural History. But if you literally mean the background, and are an expecting an explanation of how Sankhara works exactly and why, you get all you're going to get from Living Next-Door. The malleability of the scenery is deliberate, and I don't think there's any distinction between "real, real (but with hypertech) and VR"; as far as the book's concerned, it's all experience.

[channelpenguin.livejournal.com]

er, got 'Natural history' not read it yet. So I'd be interested also.

[heron61.livejournal.com]

I can provide no help given that I'd not previously heard of the author. However, a brief look on Amazon indicates that her work is something I should read. "Natural History" looks excellent.

I am curious, several amazon reviews indicate that "Living Next Door To The God Of Love" is at least somewhat incoherent, have you found that to be true, or is it merely a confusing setting where everything ultimately makes sense (or are you not certain)?

[andrewducker]

I suspect it all makes sense by the time you get to the end.

Or at least it makes _enough_ sense, in that I expect that certain aspects will be left unexplained.

I certainly get the sense of things being unexplained rather than unexplainable, if you get my meaning.

But it's certainly not written entirely linearly, and happily jumps forward in leaps on time, leaving you to fill in the gaps yourself.