When I do laundry I like to bring a book small enough to fit into one of my pockets with me. This happened to be on top of a pile of mass markets I hadn't read, so it got read today. It's ok. In college I took a Sci-Fi literature class, and the teacher got really excited about what SF and Fantasy could do in the area of social commentary that other literature couldn't. He never really sold me on this point, yeah there is social commentary in the books, but there are in lots of books, and well just because a book has some social commentary doesn't mean that it is necessarily insightful social commentary (as in the book we read in the class about the women who live in a big walled city and only bring in men to fuck in order to reproduce with, I think there were supposed to be some deep messages in that book, but it was just a 'what-if' women ruled and acted in civilized manners that men are not capable of. Ok, that's possible, but it's also sort of simple minded and lacking any real complexity in the thought of what causes evil shit to happen in the world).This book is about an evil imperialist nation (city-state?) who needs to take over land to grow the food it needs to sustain it's population. They conquer and destroy in OT biblical fashion, kill 'em all, it is our destiny to have your land as our land kind of way. The story takes place when the evil imperialists come to take over a peace loving community (nation? city-state? large village? I don't know). The evil doers look to wipe the good peaceful folk off the map, but some of the peaceful folk fight back. This was originally written in the late 1960's. There is a certain anti-war thing going on. The aggressors are described repeatedly as pig looking, the evil doers describe the good doers as dogs and maggots. There is a blurring of lines at times between what is good and what is evil, but never more than just kind of mentioned and never developed. There is also a feeling to me that this is sort of a stab at America's western movements and our treatment of the native population, but with an idealized qualities but on the evil and the good. There is a little bit of a discussion of religion, and one kind of funny shot at Christianity and it's worship of a dead god on a tree, but I never quite figured out what the purpose of the few theological discussions were supposed to mean for the book. Criticism aside, the book was kind of fun to read. It was very light, went by quickly and had enough plot development going on to make me want to keep reading it even though there are like six other books that I'm halfway through all within arms distance from where I sat reading this. One more gripe though, the blurbs on the back of the book make this sound like something much greater than it really is. I think it's the blurbs fault that I feel so critical about it. The blurbs also promised lots of sex, ('full of sex'). Now I don't pick my books based on if they have sex or not, but if you are going to promise a book 'full of sex' there should be some sex in the book, maybe at least one sex scene that doesn't involve three flying creatures pleasuring a man by throwing them in between themselves as they fly and nibbling at his legs. That was the one sex scene in the book, and it's just as confusing to imagine reading in the book as it is from my paltry description.
Do You like book They Fly At Çiron: A Novel (1996)?
