Metallic Love

It's a bit like Christmas here with my friend clearing out his bookshelves. So this is another one to add to my fantasy/scifi TBR pile.

It's the follow up to Lee's "Silver Metal Lover". I was easily lost in this sequel and enjoyed it but it was NOT Jane and Silver, but Loren and Verlis entirely different characters. Giving it 3 and half stars even though there seemed to be something missing towards the end - a trifle rushed perhaps in the conclusion. ( )

Hard to measure up to a beloved classic however well written the sequel may be. It was nice to see some of the characters again, and there were some fine moments, but it didn't capture me the way The Silver Metal Lover did. The first book was told in a first person voice which was lyrical and romantic, and Jane and Silver were so firmly at the center of the story that other things and people -however interesting- almost felt as if they only existed to the extent that they affected the central pair. Which is a pitch perfect evocation of how it feels to be a teenager in love for the first time so it was an ideal fit between style and subject. This has the same feel, that the two main characters are immovably the center of the book, the same lyricism and the same first person narrator, but Loren and Verlis are different people, less innocent and older in experience if not in years so the style/subject fit isn't as good. Still worth reading, as I say there are some very fine moments. ( )

A very solid follow-up to/reinvention of Lee's 'The Silver Metal Lover', in which she twists or at least some questions some of the first book's central premises. There was rather interesting use of literal echoes from the first book, from deliberately reusing certain scenarios to quite different effect, to peppering actual quotes from it throughout this new narrative. Lee's typically lush prose is relatively restrained here, though still beautiful, and filtered through her protagonist's pleasingly spiky world view. Overall, it lacks the same romance and magic of the first book, but compensates for it with a sharper, more citrus-y flavour. ( )

The book this is a sequel to, Silver Metal Lover, is a favorite, and I'm afraid Metallic Love suffered from the comparison, especially having reread Silver Metal Lover just before this one, and falling in love with it all over again. Tanith Lee is a favorite writer of mine--she tends to write lyrically and lushly, and several books, including this one, are written first person, usually from a very fresh, distinctive individual voice--the protagonist of Don't Bite the Sun, for instance, sounding nothing like Jane of Sliver Metal Lover, and I'm usually immediately sucked into the book.

That wasn't the case with Metallic Love. It's protagonist, Loren, didn't engage me the way Jane did, and I kept reading only because of the connection with the other book. Among other things, I wanted to see if Jane showed up. This is set only twelve years after the events of the first book, which has been published underground as Jane's Book and made a huge impression on Loren as a child. She's constantly quoting from that first book, and it's jarring and intrusive, as if what I'm reading is not very good fan fiction. Fan fiction from someone not really a fan, who is trying to subvert and belittle the original. Indeed at first it seemed to be trying to completely invalidate the original, blot it out, and I hated the book for it. And being constantly reminded of that first book wasn't to the advantage of this one, which might have stood up better on its own as a completely independent narrative.

Eventually I found that wasn't really so. Nevertheless, I don't think this book has the magic of the first. It's a very, very different story. Silver Metal Lover is the story of a vulnerable teenage girl in the throes of first love. It's about her coming into her own identity through love, and though the book leaves open how much Jane is reading into her lover what she wants, it's still basically a lovely, touching romance. A Romeo and Juliet. This book, on the other hand, is Frankenstein. Verlis, the robot lover, is far, far less likeable and approachable than Silver of the first book--rather sinister in fact.

Metallic Love is imaginative and well-written, which is why I'm giving it as high as two and a half stars, even though I'd feel, at the very least, ambivalent about recommending it to those who loved Sliver Metal Lover. (Although by and by, this book, though set in North America, is riddled with such Briticisms as "lift," "fancies" and "shags" I didn't notice in the first book--possibly an editing issue). With Tanith Lee you can take beautiful prose and strong world-building for granted, and this book did feature a neat twist at the end. After having finished the novel, I don't wish, as I had a third way through, that Lee had never wrote it nor I had never read it. It doesn't take away in the end my love for the first book, but neither does it add to it. And this will be the first Tanith Lee book I've owned that won't be staying much longer on my bookshelf, but will find itself purged the next time I have to winnow my collection. While Silver Metal Lover will have to be pried out of my cold, dead hands. ( )

You can tell that Tanith Lee has a background in the visual arts because she uses words like an impressionistic painter would, throwing out descriptions, and phrases, and letting the reader fill in the gaps between the brushstrokes. I like that aspect of her writing. It's very colorful and atmospheric.

In the first novel the relationship between Jane and Silver was naive, sweet and the love between them transcendent. In this novel, it's not the relationship, but the sex between Loren and Verlis that is transcendent, so much so that Lee has a hard time coming up with words to describe it, at one time using a blank line "_______", because the words just aren't there.

Metallic Love was darker, more jaded, and less funny than SIlver Metal Lover, and the science in it will force you to suspend your disbelief if you want to enjoy this book. I did enjoy it, but I think the characters of both Loren and Verlis were not as likeable as Jane and Silver. Part of the reason we loved Silver so much was that Jane loved him so much. Loren is obsessed with Verlis, but she is also so afraid of him that we, the reader, find him less approachable than Silver was. And the extraordinary powers and gifts the robots have in this novel has rendered them alien and god-like, and it wasn't until the end of the novel before I could decide if I liked Verlis or understand his motivation. There is also less interaction between Loren and Verlis than there was between Jane and Silver so Verlis remains more of a mystery and cypher to the reader.

I'd definitely recommend reading The Silver Metal Lover before reading this book. ( )