Rating books from one to five stars is useful for developing a quick consensus on how good a book is, and every author loves to get four and five star ratings. But as a reader I find star ratings problematical. I can greatly admire a book without loving it. I can be utterly intrigued by a book while feeling ambivalent about it. Should I give such a book three stars? Four? Five?

Bio of a Space Tyrant, Volume 1, Refugee by Piers Anthony is the present example. Someone, somewhere–on twitter or G+ or facebook–mentioned this book and, wanting to read some older science fiction, I picked it up. The copyright date is 1983.

I’ve never read anything like this before. The story takes place on and around the moons of Jupiter. Science and technology are often carefully and clearly explained in a style that feels dated and yet works very well. Bio is a first person tale, told from the point of view of a fifteen-year-old refugee fleeing political oppression, and has clear parallels to real-world stories of refugees fleeing Cuba or Haiti.**

At its core, Bio is a brutal, horrific tale, made readable because of the detached, analytical tone of the young narrator as he comes to terms with the worst of human nature and struggles to retain a belief in the best of human nature. There is an obsession with rape and male violence throughout, with every bit of it discussed and analyzed, and none of it remotely titillating. Despite all this, the book is not nihilistic. It’s very much concerned with love, loyalty, human relationships, and doing what you have to do to survive.

Still, with a book like this I can’t say, “Go read it! You’ll love it!” because it’s not that kind of book. But I can say that I was fascinated by this story almost from page one and that I knew I’d be blogging on it long before I finished. Oh, and I’ll be starting in on volume 2 very soon.

So if you’re up for something powerful and different and, yes, grim, go read it–and let me know what you think.

** This paragraph was written before I had quite finished reading the novel. In a postscript within the book, Piers Anthony confirms this was the case.

Posted on: Sunday, October 16th, 2011 at 4:57 am
Categories: Reading, Recommended Reading.
Tags: Bio of a Space Tyrant, Piers Anthony