Feb. 12th: Review of "Ivory: A Legend of Past and Future" (1988) by Mike Resnick
I've been taking a reading break
Hello everyone! o/
This week I've been taking a break from my writing projects. I've been investing a lot of time and energy in them since the beginning of the year, and it felt like about time for a sanity break. So no cosmological news this week, (boo!) but I'm still coming at you with a book review.
Book review: Ivory: A Legend of Past and Future (1988) by Mike Resnick
I picked this book because of the style. From skimming through it at the bookstore, it seemed to depict colorful sceneries, and that's all I wanted to read with my depression. Well, I wasn't disappointed.
This book is about a clerk searching for the tusks of the legendary Kilimandjaro Elephant, the largest elephant to walk the Earth, in the year 6303 of the Galactic Era, at the demand of the last of the Maasais.
Following this quest, we are immersed chapter after chapter in the whereabouts of the tusks through the centuries, from the time the Elephant walked the Earth, through space colonization, up to a far future where humanity lives all throughout the galaxy together with many alien species.
Transported from planet to planet, from museums to private collections, stolen, lost gambling, the hunt for this invaluable trophy is tedious and fascinating.
While the mystery of what the last of the Maasais is going to do with the tusks takes half the book to kick in, it left me wondering and pondering in the second half. The book is well rythmed and entertaining to read, touching on diverse topics including politics and diplomacy, natural sciences, aliens and cyborgs, religion and esotericism...
The only thing I disliked is the dreadful end... If you like the pitch, I hope this doesn't stop you from reading it, but the end is short for its build-up, and I personally found it horrifying.
About the Author
Mike Resnick, who left us in 2020, was passionate about two things: space opera and Africa. He brought these two things together in his writing career, depicting in his books fantasies like for instance the happenings of the xeno wildlife of savannah planets after colonization by mankind.
His style is colorful, entertaining, and original. It is far from simplistic and notably depicts fairly any political organization in his worldbuilding without making the text heavy at all. I'd definitely recommend to any science-fiction fan to give a read to one of his novels.
The depiction of aliens in this book
In Ivory: ALPF, sentient aliens are described to be incomprehensible to men. Or, rather, they're depicted most often as some sort of lunatics, wether blood-thirsty or benevolent.
Their speech is different from the tone of the other human characters, but not that different either that communication and diplomacy is impossible.
Physically, we have large serpents with tentacles, flying gargoyles-like creatures, and the like. I wouldn't say unoriginal, but definitely not the wildest, and the focus is anyway not on their morphology.
Socially, they mix up very well with humans and coexist with human societies on their planets.
All in all, a mostly friendly bunch open to cooperation, amusing, but without any real relief. A typical far-future novel with a community of physical races rather than an innovative one in this topic. A good read although if you're into this kind of "old" sci-fi.
Thank you for reading!
That's it for today! As always, thank you so much for reading, it means the universe to me...
Stay tuned next week, for more science-fiction writing content hopefully!
Cheers!