The Stone Gods | 
 enlarge | Author: Jeanette Winterson
Publisher: Harcourt
Category: Book
List Price: $24.00
Buy New: $11.30
You Save: $12.70 (53%)
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Avg. Customer Rating:  10 reviews
Sales Rank: 73598
Media: Hardcover
Edition: 1
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 224
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.8
Dimensions (in): 9.2 x 6.4 x 1.1
ISBN: 0151014914
Dewey Decimal Number: 823.914
EAN: 9780151014910
ASIN: 0151014914
Publication Date: April 1, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Condition: brand new copy with no markings or highlights, all clean and intact.great book at a great price. fast shipping
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Product Description
This new world weighs a yatto-gram. But everything is trial-size; tread-on-me-tiny or blurred-out-offocus huge. There are leaves that have grown as big as cities, and there are birds that nest in cockleshells. On the white sand there are long-toed claw prints deep as nightmares, and there are rock pools in hand-hollows finned by invisible fish . . . Mankind has rendered its planet unlivable and is beginning to colonize a new blue planet. Our heroine Billie Crusoe’s flight to the future is also a return to the distant past—“Everything is imprinted forever with what once was.” What begins as a witty, satirical futurist adventure deepens into a dazzling exploration of our relationship to environment, to power and technology, and to what defines us as humans. For over twenty years Jeanette Winterson has consistently been one of our most brilliant writers. Lyrical, visionary, by turns funny and devastating, The Stone Gods is fiction at its most provocative.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 5 more reviews...
 It's ok, but probably not my favorite August 15, 2008
This book is somewhat difficult to follow. It's possible that I just didn't get the connections, but it transitions abruptly between a semi-dystopic future into a swashbuckling past, without any real connection between the two eras. In addition, the third section of the novel, which returns to the first time period, doesn't seem to mesh quite well with the first section. I think that it might have been better if the third and second sections were reordered, and the second section edited to allow for more continuity. I wasn't quite sure how the sailor & Easter Island fit into the whole scheme of things.
 Winterson returns! June 25, 2008
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
This is the best book I've read from Winterson in quite a while. It's much more science-fiction than her other works. Think of an Asimov plot with Winterson's style and language. And queer characters. The middle sections threw me off at first, but it comes together at the end. btw, for anyone who wants to learn more about easter island, check out collapse by Jared Diamond.
Science Fiction and Lesbians - a favorite combo of mine June 25, 2008
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
Strongly written, a mind bending plot, and a robot head who, even though carried around under the protagonist's arm, still manages to get away for a little sex. Excellent.
 Mediocre - Love Story or SF? Too Many Undeveloped Ideas June 14, 2008
2 out of 6 found this review helpful
I bought the book because I was especially interested in one of the three stories: Planet Blue. I wanted to discover how the author would handle the SF subject of humanities dilemma facing a dying planet. I was highly disappointed. From the style of the writing to the plot, nothing appealed to me. I forced myself to read through it to see how the end would turn up, which proved a waste of time. The story suggests a handful of intriguing ideas but these are never properly developed leaving you with the feeling of an incomplete novel.
Everything is odd and awkward in the story. First, there is a "love" story between the main (female) character Billie and a female robot named Spike that goes nowhere. Then, the robot is showing more desire to be human than the humans themselves (?) - a theme already brought in by Data in Star Trek The Next Generation, and hardly developed in this novel. It goes on with the author's attempt to create a universe half way between 1984 and Blade Runner (?), which only results in serving the reader cliches after cliches of the typical gloomy modern and decadent civilization that humanity is heading into. Next, the captain of the ship en route to Planet Blue decides it is a great idea to modify the course of a meteorite to hit Planet Blue in order to destroy unwanted dinosaurs (?) - yeah right, like I will believe that - this humanity would have the technology to push a meteorite off from its trajectory not even thinking that it would obviously jeopardize the chance of the new humanity's settlement on the planet, but they don't have the technology to simply kill the dinosaurs with a virus or other much more direct methods (?); SF is not an open genre for anything at the push of a button, is it? And the choice of the meteorite is a pathetic attempt to "emulate" a still much debated theory that might have taken place billions of years ago on earth. And then we have the choice of names for the characters like "Handsome" for the captain of the ship transporting our main characters, who barely displays the charisma, composure, and leadership expected from a captain. Can you imagine this dialogue: "Hello Captain Handsome, this is Darth Vader here, how's things with your dinosaurs in your neck of the woods? Don't hesitate to send me an email if you need my help with that, I am good at destroying things. How about you, what are you good at Captain Handsome? Is Handsome a nickname or your mommy really thought it was going to be groovy?" I made my point. Finally there is the writing style with long winded confusing and boring sentences, trying to be more poetic than realistic, and the choice of narration in the first person, which locks the reader in the mind of one character and one character only (?). First person is a narration style that I find totally inappropriate for this story - the use of multiple point of views would have broadened the story and brought depth to the many intriguing yet unexplored SF elements of the plot. Everything in the story contributed to an awkward and mediocre ensemble.
There is so much better SF out there, don't waste your time with this book. I can't imagine how an agent or an editor could have accepted such pale imitation of Science-Fiction.
a fast and fun read with aspects of depth and brilliance May 21, 2008
a pleasant and enjoyable book with powerful ideas sprinkled through that make it well worth reading. while the political issues are timely as the world slides further into the destructive ideology of violence, these are not treated with much depth, nor are the characters very thoroughly crafted. great pushing of conceptual boundaries of sexuality for those who do not live in metropolises where we've seen (done? ;-) it all perhaps. implausible plot points occasionally bordering on silly. that said i'd still recommend it for the interwoven aspects of truly deep, touching, and thought provoking associations between characters and existential concepts.
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