Cecilia Holland is not a science-fiction writer. Any person familiar with the genre will notice her lack of grasp on some of the fan's favorite science-fiction features, mainly the scientific and the gadget sides. The novel use of paraphernalia is ridiculously poor and stamps it irremediably from the seventies: if we were to believe Holland, videophones and air buses would be the only technical innovations humanity could come up with in almost 2,000 years !This aside, Floating World is a powerful evocation of the female condition - one that makes the best possible use of a utopic / dystopic Solar system. All planets from Venus to Uranus have been populated. In the most remote ones lives a mutated human population, organized in a male-based, extremely hierarchic, fascist society. This society happens to control the biggest source of energy of all the Solar system. This is not the only feature reminiscent of a Saudi Arabia-like civilization : in Uranus too polygamy is a men-only privilege, in Uranus too their wives have to go veiled in public.Paula Mendoza is a small black woman who grew up on Earth. There, like on any other planet of the Solar system, humanity lives in bubbles. Pollution has rendered the atmosphere unlivable to human beings. Under the massive globes of glass covering London or what is left of New York, Earth's society evolved to a form of pacifist egalitarian anarchy : people are poor, social bounds are loose, passions are low, life has little prospect to offer other than one of chilled-out, low-key survival.But Paula is ambitious. She wants wealth. And where to find it other than in Uranus ?The shock between the small, black, anarchist, ambitious, incredibly resilient Earth woman and the big, sur-human, machist, fascist leaders of Uranus echoes throughout the 630 pages of the novel with a strength that never weakens. Ten pages from the end I found myself still entrapped into the action and unable to guess what the final situation would be. The only reason why I wouldn't give this book the 5 stars it deserves in so many aspects is the writing itself: dry, quick, factual, unemotional, it misses opportunities to develop landscapes promising to be stunning -the quick glances we get at the outer planets, at the cities of Uranus, made me long for more ; their dark, monochrome beauty deserves to be put in pictures, in a form or another-. However, regardless of how much my romantic French soul suffered from poetry starvation, I can see how the dryness of the style serves to reflect the harshness of Paula's condition. The novel covers most of her adult life: kidnapped, beaten, "harem-ed", enslaved, raped, constantly despised, hated, bullied, she earns every single atom of respect she gets the hardest way. Paula's survival through constant struggle is her victory - the victory of the resilience of the oppressed, of men over merciless gods, of Anarchy over dictatorship.
I see that a lot of other people liked this book, but I had to force myself to finish it. I didn't care about a single one of the characters, the plot of meandering, there was no clear narrative drive or arc, and the writing wasn't very good, either. Plus, there's a scene where a couple of desperate people eat puppies. Basically, the protagonist, Paula, gets a job she doesn't really want and gets herself into dangerous situations doing it, but before you know it she's no longer really doing that job because she's gotten pregnant by a Stythian man (a mutant from Uranus) and is going to live with him there, where she proceeds to live as a wife/slave/spy for nearly a third of the book. Finally, she gets to do more of the kind of thing she was hired to do and go back to Earth, but then fullscale war suddenly breaks out and she winds up on the run with a guy she used to work with and didn't really get along with, but now they're sleeping together (I don't know why). And then--again, suddenly--the war's over and the mutants are back. And then, and then, and then.... It's one crazy thing after another and there's no real preparation or climax to any of these things.I didn't absolutely hate the book, but there wasn't really anything redeeming about it and I definitely wouldn't recommend it.
What do You think about Floating Worlds (2002)?
I'm my own worst enemy. I saw this the whole way through to the end because it's a classic, and as a fan of the genre, you owe it to those forerunners to pay homage.This is an epic space opera seen through the eyes of Paula, an Earthling who ends up at the centre of an inter-galactic war.The storytelling is clunky and tedious. I had no clue what was going on a lot of the time. There is a lot of political rambling. There's a lot of unexplained stuff about a special kind of alien that doesn't add a lot to the overall journey. It felt like a mess.Another reason that I read this book is because I am sure my father would have read it when he was around my age. He would always be investigating the SciFi shelves at the library whilst I was in the kids section. So even though this was a tedious read for me, it had a resonance that made me decide to finish up. I wonder if Pops got the whole way through.. :)
—Mira
Considering this book made it into the Sci-fi Masterworks range i had high expectations. However, despite my determination to read it, I hated this book from start to finish, especially the main character. Paula seemingly had no stable character and constantly seemed to shift. The story itself was uninteresting with almost all of the characters being two dimensional, with little variation between say, the citizens of the middle planets, all portrayed as weak, rich snobs, religious zealots and xe
—Jacob Barker
I acquired this book at a book fair in Tulsa, OK.TW for domestic violence. Includes sexual content and anarchy.A good female lead who is not actually "good". She has her own self: this book is so well written that she is Real and the Styth she beds is just as Real. The antagonist is more than real and the worlds seem a thin veil on the happenings between the people in the story. Her own unique style of writing appealed to me and gave me inspiration. Her plot and characters illuminated deeper insights into my own thoughts and feelings about the world and my own place in it. Sci-fi can do that sometimes. I love it. This book was amazingly good but I'd say there were 2 weaker qualities. I'd give the pacing and the ease of reading a 7 out of 10 but as you can see, those are not low scores. They were just aberrations because everything else was so fantastic.
—Grace
