Beasts (Paperback)

by John Crowley (Author)

4.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (1 customer review)

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Product Details

Paperback: 192 pages
Publisher: Victor Gollancz Sf; New edition edition (Nov 16 2000)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0575071435
ISBN-13: 978-0575071438
Product Dimensions: 21.6 x 13.8 x 2.2 cm
Shipping Weight: 359 g

Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (1 customer review)

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Product Description

Painter is a leo - part man, part lion - the result of one of man's genetic experiments, a powerful, beautiful, enigmatic creature deemed a 'failure' to be be hunted down. But Painter has two advantages in this world of small bickering nation states and political accommodation and compromise: his own strength and integrity, and the guile of Reynard, another of man's experiments, a subtle and potent intriguer, a king-maker...

About the Author

John Crowley was born in 1942 and has worked in documentary films and TV since 1966. The Deep, his first sf novel, was published in 1975 and was followed by Beasts, Engine Summer and Great Work of Time. In his later work, Little, Big, Aegypt and Love and Sleep, he has moved into writing fantasy to great critical acclaim.

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4.0 out of 5 stars Aesop rides again., April 5 2004

By	Maximiliano F Yofre "Maxi" (Buenos Aires, Argentina) - See all my reviews

Crowley proposes a strange universe to develop a new Aesopian world.
USA has disintegrated in a bunch of minor Autonomies and City States competing one with each other in an endless struggle. There is a feeble nominal Federal Government and a new emerging Union for Social Engineering trying to gain political control. In some earlier stage, scientists had done some bio-engineering experiments producing some hybrid new species: the Leos (grown from the improbable combination of human and lion cells). There are also other strange specimens: a fox-man, a dog with some undetected talents and, of course, lots of human characters, with their own goals and needs.
Combining all these elements, Crowley structures a very interesting novel. The Beasts traits, (fox's cunning, lion's braveness and endurance, dog's fidelity and self sacrifice) are potentiated by the mixture with human traits. Humans in their turn had been subject to over stressing situations in a changing background. So the interaction between different characters are always open to collisions due to so different natures and interests, the power shifting from one group to the other. At the same time all of them are also approaching to each other, seducing and being seduced, in a continuous dance in a spiral course.
There are some reminiscences and resonance from Aesop fables and his wise animals proposing intelligent lessons to humankind. A book to be tasted as a rare dish by sophisticated readers.

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