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Read The Infinity Concerto (1988)

The Infinity Concerto (1988)

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Author
Rating
3.88 of 5 Votes: 4
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ISBN
0712618163 (ISBN13: 9780712618168)
Language
English
Publisher
century

The Infinity Concerto (1988) - Plot & Excerpts

The title, summary, and about the first third of this book intrigued me very much, which made me all the more disappointed when it all went flat. Bear incorporates some excellent fantasy elements -- Lamia, the Crane Women, humans confined to a sort of ghetto in the realm of the Sidhe, the mystical power of music -- but he never seems to effectively meld the components into a coherent whole.The most obvious example is music: the title has the word "concerto" in it, Michael's translation into the Realm is instigated by a composer, nearly all of the humans in the Realm are there because they experienced a mystical response to music (either playing or listening), no musical instruments are allowed in the Sidhe realm and it's mentioned more than once that the Sidhe dislike human music, etc. But in the end, all of that is completely irrelevant. Music plays no part whatsoever in the central conflict of the book, either in its unfolding or resolution. That was a major "WTF?" for me. Another example of apparently important but ultimately unincorporated story elements is Eleuth: (view spoiler)[she loves Michael to the point that she dies for him but in the end her death means nothing, since he learns nothing from it and it has no effect on his quest, his training, his knowledge, or even his emotions! (hide spoiler)]

Creo que hubiera sido mucho mejor que no leyera este libro tan cerca de Blood Music. Estaba esperando algo diferente y tenía muy fresca la impresión que me dejó Greg Bear con su lado de ciencia ficción.Éste es un libro de fantasía tal y cómo me gustan: donde el mundo fantástico es peligroso y difícil para un humano. De forma lenta e intrincada se presenta una historia con muchas referencias mitológicas, que discute lo que significa ser humano y explora el poder del arte y la música.Es muy bonito, pero es confuso y aunque todo lo que ocurre es importante hay partes en que la relación de los eventos con la historia no es evidente y por tanto se sienten más tediosas (lo que es totalmente a propósito, pero hacen muy cansada la lectura).Le comentaba a un amigo que leer este libro me recordó a la experiencia de ver El viaje de Chihiro. Las situaciones de los personajes, los seres descritos o la magia utilizada son diferentes, pero las impresiones que dejan son similares. Léanlo y me entenderán, supongo.

What do You think about The Infinity Concerto (1988)?

I found the narrative voice of Michael Perrin easy to relate to, which makes me wonder about his credibility as a sixteen-year-old protagonist -- yet he is a bookish teenager of the early 80's, a novice poet, with ambitious tastes in poetry and adventure, so perhaps that says more about my own inner personas than about his.Bear uses some creative devices from Jungian psychology to fuel some of the magical discipline, and although a few of the sections dragged for my taste, he introduced novel possibilities for influencing manifestation in more flexible worlds like the Realm. His balance of light and dark at this stage is somewhat absolutist, like the latter novels in Marion Zimmer Bradley's Shadow's Gate series.Bottom line, I enjoyed the time I spent with this book, and look forward to seeing the stories unfold.
—Kathleen Porter

a tale about fairies and magic and the power of the arts...short plot description: Michael Perrin, an aspiring young poet, is given a key and instructions by an elderly music composer. Following the instructions he finds himself in a quite different world. The Sidhe are ruling this world by magic and humans (who all somehow are connected to music) are a persecuted minority, only tolerated after a terrible battle which ended in devastation and an uncomfortable truce.Michael gets assigned to the Crane Sisters, three Breeds (half human, half Sidhe) who train him physically and mentally but give him little information why he was brought into the Pact Lands. After the conclusion of his training he wanders out into the Realm trying to find out why he is crucial to events...my thoughts: for one reason or the other I never got into this book. Some parts didn't make sense to me other than as a plot device to reveal some necessary information so we can get to the next part. Mostly I felt as if this novel was constructed using a checklist. The pacing and the world building felt uneven and I didn't care for any of the characters.my advice: for me this was just another fantasy novel, not bad but not really good. There is better fantasy out there...
—holy_fire

I quit at 29%. If this wasn't a book club read, I would have stopped a lot sooner. It's too dark for me. The main character is too isolated, the world too hostile. It's all grayscale in my mind. Faerie shouldn't be ugly and colorless and full of death and despair, even when dangerous to humans. There should at least be an alien beauty to it. But this was all ugliness and hardship.I was forcing myself to continue reading (because - book club), but I was getting depressed even when I wasn't reading it (NOT good, and completely against all the reasons why I read), so I moved onto something else and really haven't looked back since. Not for me.
—Allison

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