SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: The Heavens by Sandra Newman: https://t.co/zODWqGNx2e Short Review: 8 out of 10 (1/3)— (4-0) (2-3) Josh (garik16) (@garik16) April 22, 2019
Short Review (cont): When Ben meets Kate, he's instantly head over heels for her. But Kate is weird - as every night she dreams of being a person in the 1500s and claims that when she wakes up the world has changed....for the worse. Interesting Cynical book. (2/3)— (4-0) (2-3) Josh (garik16) (@garik16) April 22, 2019
The Heavens is an.....interesting book. It's one of those books where explaining the sub-genre of SF/F (technically it's a time travel story) kind of misleads as to what the story is about or how it works. It's also one of those where the ideas take center stage, although it's not a book lacking in at least one interesting character.
Is it a good book though? That's a harder question to ask. The book centers around a concept - a man and a woman meet each other, and the story alternates chapters between the woman's dreams of another life in the 1500s, and the man's life in a relationship with her as the world seems to change around them due to her actions in the past - except no one notices the changes except the woman. And the result is fascinating to behold, with it making it hard for me not to want to see what would happen next....but is the finale particularly satisfying? I'm still grappling with that answer - but the ending is certainly damn cynical.
-----------------------------------------------Plot Summary---------------------------------------------------------
In the year 2000, Ben met Kate at a rich girl's party and immediately fell for her. But it soon becomes apparent that something is strange about Kate - for she claims to have these dreams of another life in the past, and then every time she wakes up she seems confused by the state of things in the world - of current events (who's the president? We're at war where now?), of technology (we still use oil?), and even of things of a personal nature (your parents are dead? mine are split?). As the year moves on, it becomes harder and harder for Ben to stay with Kate, as her bizarre insistence upon things not true makes her seem incredibly callous....and yet he can't get away.
But for Kate, it's hard to know what is real. What feels real are her dreams, where she seems to be a woman in the 1500s named Emilia, the mistress of a high lord. There, in her dreams she meets a poet/playwright named Will, someone who she discovers in the real world was a historical figure, but no one of note. It seems like Kate is actually travelling to the past as Emilia, and every time she wakes up, the world seems to have changed. And yet, Kate-as-Emilia has visions of a future where the world is up in smoke and destroyed, and feels like it is up to her, in this time period of the 1500s, to try and change something to save the world....but the only thing she can seem to change is Will's life, often to her own misery.
Yet every time Kate wakes up, the world seems to have become worse than before, and no one believes her when she wonders at the changes. Can she truly save the world...or only make it worse? Or is she really crazy and is this all in her head, as everyone else and Ben seem to suggest, preventing her from maintaining any sort of life in either world?
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The Heavens is an interesting book because it seems essentially to be two different plots at once. Each chapter alternates between Ben and Kate's points of view, with Ben not noticing the changes in the world - but the reader certainly noticing them - and Ben trying to deal with his love for Kate despite her seeming madness. Then in Kate's chapters, we have her time in the past as Emilia, for the most part, with very occasional glimpses of Kate's POV in the present day up until the end. The thing is that Ben's love for Kate and his struggles are naturally less interesting than Kate's own issues and "time travel," which leaves the plots feeling very disjointed. They do come together in the end successfully, although rather cynically.
Kate's storyline is far more interesting, with her being both trying to find a way to save the world in the past and at the same time as Emilia trying not to be miserable herself in that present (by which I mean the past). The reader will almost certainly guess who Will is fairly early, but the story still progresses in interesting and different ways, with Kate-as-Emilia's attempts to figure out how to change things being very different than how you'd expect, especially with her final attempt.
Ben's storyline is less successful, as the reader (me in this case) is likely to get kind of annoyed at his clinging to Kate despite his understandable problems with her seeming madness - which of course as the reader we know is anything but. Where it does work is in showing how the world changes every time Kate wakes up, progressively getting worse. The book has a twist involving this that I've actually seen used once before fairly recently*, and the book uses that twist rather nicely.
*Spoiler in rot13: Gur gjvfg orvat gung gur jbeyq jr ortva gur obbx va vf ABG bhe jbeyq, naq gur jbeyq jr yvir va, nf fubja ol Frcgrzore 11, vf bayl pnhfrq ol Xngr'f punatrf naq vf n onq shgher. V'q frra guvf gjvfg (fbeg bs) va Nyvpr Cnlar Neevirf ol Xngr Urnegsvryq, ohg hfrq gb qvssrerag checbfrf gurer.
The overall ending is satisfying but cynical as hell, with the book's seeming thesis statement (in the final paragraph) being rather rough. Still, it's certainly interesting, and worth a read I think....but I kind of feel like I've seen this sort of thing done better even recently (there's some overlap with say Version Control by Dexter Palmer, which is much more involved and better done I think).
The Heavens is an interesting book because it seems essentially to be two different plots at once. Each chapter alternates between Ben and Kate's points of view, with Ben not noticing the changes in the world - but the reader certainly noticing them - and Ben trying to deal with his love for Kate despite her seeming madness. Then in Kate's chapters, we have her time in the past as Emilia, for the most part, with very occasional glimpses of Kate's POV in the present day up until the end. The thing is that Ben's love for Kate and his struggles are naturally less interesting than Kate's own issues and "time travel," which leaves the plots feeling very disjointed. They do come together in the end successfully, although rather cynically.
Kate's storyline is far more interesting, with her being both trying to find a way to save the world in the past and at the same time as Emilia trying not to be miserable herself in that present (by which I mean the past). The reader will almost certainly guess who Will is fairly early, but the story still progresses in interesting and different ways, with Kate-as-Emilia's attempts to figure out how to change things being very different than how you'd expect, especially with her final attempt.
Ben's storyline is less successful, as the reader (me in this case) is likely to get kind of annoyed at his clinging to Kate despite his understandable problems with her seeming madness - which of course as the reader we know is anything but. Where it does work is in showing how the world changes every time Kate wakes up, progressively getting worse. The book has a twist involving this that I've actually seen used once before fairly recently*, and the book uses that twist rather nicely.
*Spoiler in rot13: Gur gjvfg orvat gung gur jbeyq jr ortva gur obbx va vf ABG bhe jbeyq, naq gur jbeyq jr yvir va, nf fubja ol Frcgrzore 11, vf bayl pnhfrq ol Xngr'f punatrf naq vf n onq shgher. V'q frra guvf gjvfg (fbeg bs) va Nyvpr Cnlar Neevirf ol Xngr Urnegsvryq, ohg hfrq gb qvssrerag checbfrf gurer.
The overall ending is satisfying but cynical as hell, with the book's seeming thesis statement (in the final paragraph) being rather rough. Still, it's certainly interesting, and worth a read I think....but I kind of feel like I've seen this sort of thing done better even recently (there's some overlap with say Version Control by Dexter Palmer, which is much more involved and better done I think).
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