The Ugly Swans

This book pretty much sums up everything I love about Strugatskies - vivid language, dark humour, irony, sarcastic view of the world we live in and problems we face, unique atmosphere that you want to plunge into, believable and relatable characters, and above it all, what makes it really special - deep meaning, philosophical questions, something to think about when you put the book down.

The Ugly Swans is set in an unknown country in an unnamed town where it rains perpetually, and where some affliction of unknown cause, a kind of plague perhaps, is afflicting some of the residents. Victor Banev is a writer who returns to the town to deal with his daughter, Irma's, strange behaviour at the demand of his estranged wife. Irma and all the children of the town have become seemingly cold and rational - alien to their parents - and are so under some kind of influence of the plague carriers, or 'slimies' as they are called. The slimies' condition is studied by Golem, the physician, whose leprosarium receives literally truckloads of books to meet the slimies' insatiable demand, and also shelters them from the victimisation they show more suffer at the hands of the town's population - which only increases as their apparent hold over the town's children grows, in a way reminiscent the pied-piper of Hamelin...

This is not the sort of science-fiction in which you will find any discussion of science or technology: here we have ambiguity instead of explanation; here we have political and philisophical allusions. And here we have well developed characters. Victor is well written and interesting, with grievances and wandering thoughts, and we follow him through his half-inebriated conversations at the hotel bar, as well as near-interrogation by a class of the strange children.
Highly recommended. show less

By today's standards, very little happens. This would usually be an issue for me as I've been spoiled by Joe Abercrombie and Pat Rothfuss and Tom Cruise, but it wasn't at all. The language is vivid and evocative, and full of so much more flavor than most things I read and consider to be masterfully written. And humor is pervasive, as in most of their works.

No actualy story, but the social commentary is so prescient it could have been writen yesteray. ( Which actually gives you some idea of how intractable these problems are )

No actualy story, but the social commentary is so prescient it could have been writen yesteray. ( Which actually gives you some idea of how intractable these problems are )