The Rosetta Codex
Mar. 19th, 2006 11:35 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
bookzombieUsually I rather like Richard Paul Russo's books. I enjoyed his 'Carlucci' SF detective novels and I adored the Alienesque Ship of Fools (or Unto Leviathan if you have the UK edition).
I was less impressed with Subterranean Gallery, which seemed to be part of a rash of 'Poor struggling artist' sf going on at the time. Mind you, it won the Philip K. Dick award so what do I know?!
His latest, The Rosetta Codex is a very odd duck indeed. The primary reaction I had from it was that it felt like extracts from a much longer novel. Apart from in the final section there is a 'time break' between almost every chapter. By this I mean most chapters start 'Several weeks passed', or 'The following spring' or 'Five years later'.
This gives a weird sort of 'narrative stroboscope' effect, the upshot of which it becomes very difficult to really feel engaged. I finished it, but it leaves no real impression beyond a puzzled frown on the face.
One of the oddest books I've read for some time...
I was less impressed with Subterranean Gallery, which seemed to be part of a rash of 'Poor struggling artist' sf going on at the time. Mind you, it won the Philip K. Dick award so what do I know?!
His latest, The Rosetta Codex is a very odd duck indeed. The primary reaction I had from it was that it felt like extracts from a much longer novel. Apart from in the final section there is a 'time break' between almost every chapter. By this I mean most chapters start 'Several weeks passed', or 'The following spring' or 'Five years later'.
This gives a weird sort of 'narrative stroboscope' effect, the upshot of which it becomes very difficult to really feel engaged. I finished it, but it leaves no real impression beyond a puzzled frown on the face.
One of the oddest books I've read for some time...
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Date: 2006-03-19 10:45 pm (UTC)The Carlucci novels and Ship Of Fools in particular are set in a quite constricted space and time period, creating an intensity that The Rosetta Codex lacks in its sprawl. He also seems to have focussed on the 'wrong' character in a sense. Cale in RC has a doomed lost-innocence like that of Silkie and other adolescent fringe characters in earlier books but by making him the focus this essential tragedy is diluted and then lost but not really replaced.
Curiously, whilst the aliens are mostly offstage as in SoF, there is no sense of mystery evoked either.
Definitely not the one with which to introduce people to this underrated author.