Pangaea Imperium Without End, Book I | ||||||||||
Lisa Mason | ||||||||||
Bantam Spectra Books, 400 pages | ||||||||||
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A review by Charlene Brusso
The pures are the most educated, wealthiest, most powerful
members of Pangaea's society -- second only to the rare, solitary
Angels, those whose crystalline purity and skillful "sharemind"
abilities allow them to project the wonderful dreams which
entertain and titillate those lesser members of society.
As far as the pures are concerned, the only instability within
Pangaea is the random, dangerous quaking of the earth, a threat
which top scientists work to predict and someday hope to
alleviate, or even prevent.
This may sound like a lot of information and world-building
to drop on the unwary reader, but Mason does it skillfully,
chaining through the points-of-view of a group of characters
whose lives will become connected by the most dangerous of
threads: rebellion against the all-powerful Imperium.
The novel opens with Lucyd, an angel and one of the most
beloved dreamers in the land, who's barely begun to mourn the
loss of his sharemate/wife Danti, recently murdered by a
terrorist explosion. In the midst of his sorrow (as well as
disquiet over the dark symbols of his latest dream), comes the
ringing of the great Bell, warning of an impending earthquake.
From there we jump to Plaia, a researcher of quakes and
resonance theory, in the thick of the geologic upheaval. Plaia's
role is to play cymbals in accompaniment to the other
musicians/scientists on her team. Their music, theory says, if
correctly played, will quell the quake -- and this time it seems to
work, for the shaking stops and the area suffers minimal damage.
Returning home to celebrate, Plaia briefly makes eye contact with
a sexy young guy on the street.
That young man is Dubban, a technician in one of the natalries
where babies are made on Pangaea, and he doesn't forget Plaia's
face either, as he suffers through the next work day. His job is
to prune "bad threads" from developing embryos, removing genes
which could cause disease or deformity. Knowing that just touching the beautiful woman he
saw would be a crime against purity seems even more unfair. The
last straw is having Horan Zehar, the local qut dealer, show up
asking for the money Dubban owes him.
Zehar links us to Tahliq, the licensed erotician who owns
the prosperous Salon of Shame, where her secret skill at
sharemind -- the same mental link the very best dreamers use to
transmit their fantasies to the masses -- makes her extra-good at
her job. If only she dared reveal that secret to her favourite
customer, the vigile (beat cop) Regim Deuceman, who visits her
regularly to handle those bestial urges the purest never suffer
from -- but now it's too late, for Deuceman is to enter sharelock
with another woman of higher purity and a very rich and powerful
family, Dame Clere Twine.
Which brings us to the final link in the chain: Horan
Zehar's 16-year-old daughter Salit, born and raised on the edicts
of the Manifesto of the Apocalypse, the document which the rebels
use to break the Imperium's stranglehold on society. When Horan
is killed during the rebels' assassination of Dame Twine right
after her sharelock with Deuceman is completed, Salit assumes his
mantle, physically and emotionally.
Despite the large cast of characters, Mason balances the
plotlines with skill. The world is intriguing and the characters
are well-drawn. One question, though: Is Pangaea that very same
enormous landmass that was Earth's first continent, or is this
world merely modelled on it? Is the novel alternate history or
metaphoric science fiction? The answer isn't entirely clear
here; but that's really only a nitpick. Readers should be
warned, however, that this book doesn't even try to reach
closure. We'll just have to wait for the next installment in
what looks to be a lengthy series. Still, Mason's previous books
(the revisionist 60s fantasy novel Summer of Love and the lively
fin de siècle The Golden Nineties) are enough reason to give the
next in the series a try.
Charlene's sixth grade teacher told her she would burn her eyes out before she was 30 if she kept reading and writing so much. Fortunately he was wrong. Her work has also appeared in Aboriginal SF, Amazing Stories, Dark Regions, MZB's Fantasy Magazine, and other genre magazines. |
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