I read Soldiers of Paradise for the first time 20 years ago. I just read it again and am happy to say it still holds all the same beauty and mystery as it did for me as a teenager. This novel is so dense despite its slim size, it can't be read in a sitting. A few pages reveal a world of unlimited imagination to ponder. The characters are angry, hurt, fallible and failing people living in a corrupt society of such violence and danger and poverty and privelege that it might be our own. Except, incredibly, it isn't. Soldiers of Paradise breaks all science fiction/fantasy rules. It is not plot-driven, nor simple, nor based on its environment. It is a painting explored, a portrait of a world so different from our own that it reminds us of all we should hold dear, and don't.