Freedom & Necessity
Steven Brust & Emma Bull
1997 Tor Fantasy
F
This has got to be the most torturous bok I've ever read.  It's presented as
a collection of letters and journal entries from 1849, instead of as prose,
and apparently the authors realized this wasn't working at around page 200,
and gave one of the letter-writers a perfect memory, and the ability to
hand-write letters that must have been 300 pages long, all written in one
evening.  Ridiculous, absurd.  The characters are inconsistent, and the
only excuse is the repeated references to Hegel, which is to indicate that
there is no objective reality, only various different points of view.  As
the book is a collection of letters instead of prose, this is certainly
true, but the reader is left wondering what really happened.  Actually the
reader would be better off avoiding this dull drawn-out drivel entirely.
Every scene is drawn out, the characters babble endlessly in their letters,
as if it takes no effort at all scrawl 300 pages with a pen.  Brust is much,
much better than this; I have to assume Bull has poisoned him.  And don't
believe the reviews: there is no magic here.