Leaf 🍂 reviewed Memory by Linda Nagata
Review of 'Memory' on 'Storygraph'
5 stars
In the end, the big reveal was perhaps a little less revealing than I would've liked. But again, it worked plot-wise, and it probably would've seemed extremely forced to reveal everything—there's no way the characters would have understood any of it, their paradigm is so much different, and there are a number of things I feel I can safely infer from my standpoint that the main character has no basis for. It's essentially an SF secret to a fantasy world, which I can certainly appreciate.
The cover blurb crows a great deal about how this is "hard SF". I tend to think of men flying about in spaceships attacking one another and talking in great detail about how their guns and computers work when people use the term "hard SF", and this certainly isn't that. Though there's a great deal of advanced technology about, and the characters know how to …
In the end, the big reveal was perhaps a little less revealing than I would've liked. But again, it worked plot-wise, and it probably would've seemed extremely forced to reveal everything—there's no way the characters would have understood any of it, their paradigm is so much different, and there are a number of things I feel I can safely infer from my standpoint that the main character has no basis for. It's essentially an SF secret to a fantasy world, which I can certainly appreciate.
The cover blurb crows a great deal about how this is "hard SF". I tend to think of men flying about in spaceships attacking one another and talking in great detail about how their guns and computers work when people use the term "hard SF", and this certainly isn't that. Though there's a great deal of advanced technology about, and the characters know how to use it, they have absolutely no clue how it works. As mentioned above, their paradigm is at once too primitive and too advanced. So it's definitely SF of a sort, but a muddier, more mixed up sub-genre of SF than it sounds from the cover blurb.
It's a beautifully written book, and strange. A sort of folktale mixed with ghost stories and futurism. If you're as much a fan of muddy, complicated, original stories as I am you'll probably love it.
