Much like Vincent hitting his stride, Carnival and I just clicked the moment I read that excerpt.

That's at least partly due to the fact that Our Heroes were giving off enough sexual and other tension to drive me up a wall. You read "Chapter One" and bang! here comes conflict.

I love the fact that Bear's protagonists are, as a rule, over the age of 50. It gives so much more to the plot - in wisdom, in knowledge, in experience and depth. When you say "these people were lovers who were separated" that doesn't mean "they had one or two screws and went their separate ways" but "they maintained a secret relationship for over 20 years before they were forced apart for 17." So much more history, so much more at stake. It explains everything from how well they work together to how much weight on their shoulders they're both carrying.

It is a love story. Without a single "I love you," without weepy dramatic sex, without things that may look fine to a romance writer but generally make me want to spork my eyes out in the cold light of day. (There is sex; it's not weepy.) It's difficult to describe just how the way Vincent and Angelo are presented together appeals to me, except to say that as I've grown, I've encountered the fact that love is like this. That no matter how much you love, there are things you will not sacrifice, or forsake for the fear of no longer being yourself. That the thought of giving something so precious up would terrify and hurt you, but to do the morally wrong thing would simply destroy you. And these two are the best example of it I ever read.

To put simpler, their love is not hearts and flowers. It's pain, and lies, and I spent much of the book going "oh if you'd only have the courage to talk to one another," and then Angelo did. And he made my day because it demonstrated how well the relationship works when it works.

But the book cannot stand on its own with just the two of them. Ultimately, as much as it is about Vincent and Angelo's relationship, it is also about New Amazonia, about New Earth and Ur, and the OECC (which we never actually see, so that's pretty darn impressive), about Lesa and how far you will go to give your children the best chance you can, about cultures taken to the extreme, and about the lies we tell ourselves to live.

Pretty impressive, no? Throw in all that physics, an AI-like character, espionage and intrigue, a bit of art, and you get an incredible book.

That's a book that just flew under my radar - I skipped it intentionally when it was published (did not sound interesting enough - no idea why) and I bought it at the last days of December 2008 while searching a 4th book for one of these 4 for 3 books deals in Amazon. And I am so happy that I got it. It's what Science Fiction should be - a lot of ideas, great execution and believable setting.

The novel takes place some 500 years in the future (it's mentioned almost in passing somewhere in the book as being 2500 years after Christ or something like this) but the world has nothing to do with the world that we know. A few waves of assessments had wiped out most of the races on Earth (not just people but whole races - it looks like anyone that is not from the African Diaspora had been wiped out) and the surviving ones keep getting assessed. Which is a nice term for being killed by the ruling machines. Somewhere between all the assessments, a lot of people managed to get off the planet and created colonies... which the coalition that formed on Earth now try to get back into its grasp. So far nothing special - a coalition/empire/foundation and a few states that try to remain independent. It's as old setting as you can imagine one but somehow the novel sounds fresh.

Michelangelo Osiris Leary Kusanagi-Jones and Vincent Katherinessen are two spies/diplomats for the coalition (and the history of those names is just one of the fascinating moments in the book). Additionally they are partners (both in work and romantically) and they had been separated for way too many years. In a way, the novel can be considered their love story. But it is much more than this. Because the world they are sent to this time is New Amazonia - a place where the women and men had switched roles in an attempt to make it a better place. Except that it had not worked - the roles are changed but that's about it. The world is the same - the men behave and are treated as the women in the old world and the women behave as men. It is as believable as possible - that's just the way the human race behave. Add to this some aliens and the picture starts getting complicated.

Most of the book deals with the complicated world they all live into - showing how New Amazonia works and revealing the truth about assessments, what had happened and why things happened. A grim future shown in sparse words and with masterful imagination. But it is also a character-driven story because all that happens can happen only with these people and at this time.

A story of love, future, aliens, AI and something more. One of the most beautiful stories I had read lately. And even though this future is as grim as possible, it also has a hope... through the whole novel, all the way to the last sentence. I just wish Bear had decided to write a prequel/sequel to it - I want more from this world.

A small warning though: if you have any issues with same sex relationship, you might not enjoy the book as much - it relies heavily on such and even has sex scenes between the main characters.

5 stars out of 5. And I suppose I am on the hunt for other novels by Bear. :) ( )

I’ve liked or loved almost everything I read by Elizabeth Bear (the notable exception being Blood and Iron). And I liked this book quite a bit. It is the first thing of hers since Hammered that really recaptured what made that book so enjoyable. This is a well-plotted, relentlessly-paced adventure story with imaginative twists and turns and colorful characters. It keeps you guessing, and keeps you turning pages right to the end. Elements of coolness notwithstanding, it feels like a bit of a throwback to me, to an era when science fiction was less pretentious and happy to be pure entertainment.

Some reviewers have suggested that this should be read as a novel of ideas, with important things to say about gender, sexuality, and feminism. My response to that is “what have you been smoking?” Carnival may provides a setting in which such issues could have been probed, but it has absolutely nothing to say about any of them beyond the patently obvious “dismissing people who are different from you as having no worth is not particularly wise.” Yes, the protagonists are gay men in a repressive society, and yes they visit a society in which men have been turned into abused, second-class citizens, but these facts are merely stage props, not anything about which Bear has insightful things to say.

The characters are fun, but not particularly believable. The societies serve to provide a backdrop for drama. Kii is fun and a bit of a mystery, if perhaps a bit in the deus ex machina mode.

In short, if you are looking for a well plotted, quick moving, entertaining adventure story by all means give this a try. And don't think about it too much. If you are looking for a story with something important or challenging to say about humanity, individually or collectively, try Ursula Le Guin or Joanna Russ instead. ( )

Vincent Katherinessen and Michelangelo Kusanagi-Jones had been partners in diplomacy and espionage for the Coalition for years until a disastrous mission gone wrong revealed that they were also lovers. Seventeen years later the powers that be have reunited them to undertake a mission to New Amazonia where a matriarchal society will only allow "gentle" men some semblance of diplomatic power. However, Vincent and Michelangelo's true mission is to seek out the source of the planet's energy and determine if it can be taken by force. Below that secret mission each agent has an even deeper agenda which may threaten not only their lives, but any chance they may have of being together again.

Carnival is an interesting, strongly character driven, multi-layered science fiction tale of our destruction of the environment and what happens when the radical environmentalists and animal rights activists take over to protect what is left and head exploration into the worlds around ours. Kind of scary really. The story centers on a diplomat, Vincent, and his body guard/partner/lover Michelangelo and Lesa, their political contact on New Amazonia. Each have their own agendas, both political and personal, hidden and not. There are also a variety of interesting ideas and characters worked into the plot of the story. I love the idea of the fog that Vincent and Angelo work into various clothing and other necessities. I also liked the idea of an intelligent race of dragons and I enjoyed Kii's input to the story. The way Vincent and Angelo worked together was interesting and the idea of "advocating" (arguing ideas from different angles not necessarily agreeable to their own beliefs) to work out the issues they faced was an interesting work solution.

The politics and side characters sometimes confused me as I was reading, but I was able to get the majority of it...I think. I liked the push and pull of Vincent and Angelo's relationship with each other. The scenes of them together was more implied than graphic and weren't the focus of the story which was good in this case because it didn't detract from the overall plot. Lesa as well, is an interesting character and went through many personal trials over the course of the story. I felt quite bad for her at a few points during the story.

This was a very enjoyable, nicely paced, character driven story with an interesting political/environmental plot which leads its readers to question a variety of different ethics and see how the scenarios play out on different worlds. Certainly recommended! ( )

I'd heard a lot of good things about this book, but being a scifi about...diplomatic relations and such, I still mostly expected it to earn my respect for being well written, but maybe not my enjoyment.

As it turns out, while it indeed didn't grip me quite as much as it would have if it had been more my style, I still quite liked it. It's very much driven by the character interactions, which were...nicely nuanced (sometimes to the point where I wasn't sure if I was understanding correctly what was going on, but not too often, thankfully). And for a book driven by character interactions it was still nicely paced, tense, and even had some more action-ish/harrowing bits in it as well. The romance aspect of it didn't have nearly as much...warm and fluffy feelings as one usually sees, which I was on one hand I was thankful for (because many romance scenes in other books are a bit much for me), and on another hand made me a little sad (since I could still use a little more).

I'm a little sad it's been so long now between when I finished this and now as I write this, since now I cannot go into more detail about what makes this book work so nicely. And my book praising skills always lag far behind my criticizing abilities, as they just don't get a chance to to be used on a book like this often enough. Suffice to say I recommend this book, certainly to those who think the premise sounds interesting, and even to those like me that think it sounds a little stiff for their tastes, especially if you're interested in novels with strong, complex characters. ( )