Tuesday, April 7, 2015

Kalki

I picked up Kalki a while back because I had always heard that Gore Vidal was a good author and that this was the most science fiction like of his books and it was described as something akin to Mad Max meets Hemingway.  If that doesn't pique your interest even a little, I don't know what will.


Before I get into this book, I just want to say a quick thing about gendered nouns (it is at least tangentially related, I promise).  I generally don't like gendered nouns, they seem a little archaic and slightly sexist.  However, on occasion I will come across a word that is just plain cool, and I have to love it regardless of its other qualities.  This book introduced me to one of those: aviatrix.

As I said above, this was my first read by Gore Vidal and, frankly, I was blown away.  I'll admit the plot was not that interesting, perhaps I am a little jaded for apocalypse stories, but the lower level sentence and paragraph constructs were excellent.  I found myself repeatedly enjoying individual sentences because they were exquisitely crafted.

I found it a little difficult to emphasize with the protagonist because she (the aviatrix) makes a lot of frustrating and questionable decisions and in general seems a little blind to what (to me, the jaded reader seemed to be obvious) consequences her actions would have.  Vidal also repeatedly emphasizes the fact that she is a woman who cannot reproduce and that she is attracted to other women which are both perfectly fine character traits but seem strange for repeated emphasis.

Overall, I would give this book an 86%.