The Merro Tree

Mikk, once an awkward and shy boy, has grown up to be the galaxy's most celebrated performance master. The book begins with Mikk imprisoned and awaiting his trial for performing a banned art-form, the Somalite songdance. From there, the narrative relates Mikk's life from his birth, through his apprenticeship, to his ascension to master. Interspersed amongst the chapters are "Entr'actes" that follow Mikk's current imprisonment. Eventually, these two story-lines merge to form a tumultuous finale--Mikk must give the performance of his life, or lose it.

The novel touches upon some big issues--censorship, sexuality, and xenophobia to name a few--couching them in a delightful story. The relationship between Mikk, a Vyzanian, and Thissizz, a show more Droos, is wonderfully sweet. Being a musician myself, I loved the significance given performing arts in the book. Kate Waitman has created a myriad of worlds and a myriad of fascinating characters (some more compelling than others). She did seem to gloss over the background quite a bit, but she did manage to convey a large quantity of story material regardless.

A fairly strong debut novel, it has some problems (many of the descriptive details must be inferred and much is underdeveloped), but overall I found it to be very good and I very much enjoyed it--perhaps more than I expected. It really is a shame that it is currently out of print. Waitman has written a sequel, tentatively entitled The Roots of Forgiveness, which is currently unpublished. I would awfully like to read it, though!

Experiments in Reading show less

I ordered this book used on Amazon & am so glad I did. It was rather hard to track down (in that it's not widely available and is not an ebook).

I didn't really know much about this going into it. I don't even know why I purchased it; the synopsis wasn't that gripping. Perhaps I like titles that have an obscure element from the story in it.

Waitman's writing was...shall I say: exquisite. It was very much a prose on the issue of performing arts and how censorship can be a tragedy when it comes in contact with it. I am not a performing artist, however I am a graphic artist and this book touched many chords with me; made me think about how if, I, specifically, was prohibited from creating something I love just because I may be interpreting show more it in a different way.

The Merro Tree was beautifully written; the characters were very well hashed out and Waitman gave the reader lots of credit and didn't spoon feed information to you.

One thing that caught me off-guard (which I should have easily figured out just looking at the bookshelves this book is in) was the homosexual relationship between Mikk & Thizziss (which I pronounced like
Thesis but with a "Z" sound in place of the 1st "s"). It weirded me out at first...not that I particularly care what other people do...I've just never read anything like it before. I ended up enjoying that aspect of Mikk's life and I longed for Thizziss' scenes when Mikk had to go away from him. It seemed natural and if it were any other way it would seem forced. I especially loved Waitman's use of the coiling of Thizziss' limb around Mikk's ankle. It was very endearing.

I would recommend this book if you're in the mood for something with more substance to it. I can see how it would be a book where one would have to be in the mood for it.

I took 9 days to read this which is a very long time for me. It wasn't long (436 pages or something), but I felt like I had to take my time; soaking up every word. show less

Waitman excels at creating alien cultures and physiologies that are truly alien to human readers. This, her first novel, follows gifted performance master Mikk, who is haunted by childhood traumas, inspired by his love for a sentient singing snake, and driven to fight censorship and laziness of mind wherever he goes.

I picked this up as it was part of the Del Rey Discovery series, and I'd seen extremely good reviews of it, praising this debut novel to the skies...
Well, it was a good, enjoyable space-opera-type story, but I think my expectations had been raised a little bit too high. It was fun - reminded me quite a bit of Deborah Chester's "Golden One" trilogy - a sci-fi/fantasy setting with lots of different co-existing races (mostly inspired by different kinds of animals) and an adventure with themes of freedom and etc...
However, it's not really "deep" and the supposedly-barrier-pushing same-sex-interspecies love affair was neither explicit nor shocking.... (the protagonist is soulmates with a snake-like character).
The story deals with Mikk - a show more multi-talented artist who is on trial by an interplanetary Council which governs art for performing the songdance of a recently-extinct race, against their wishes and the Council's specific ban. It's told in parallel form, one strand showing us Mikk's life and rise to success, and the other dealing with his current troubles.
There are some interesting ideas here, especially the issue of who art really belongs to, and whether a people can or should feel that they "own" something, and whether an outsider can truly understand the expresssion of another culture... But I could have wished that that the discussion delved a little deeper into these issues - and at the end, the way everything wrapped up felt very pat, to me.

This book won the The Compton Crook Award for Best New Novel, but since then (1997) Waitman has only published one other novel. Perhaps she's decided writing is not the field for her? She doesn't seem to have a website. show less

Exploring the idea of interspecies romance, this is a truly beautiful story. The first time I read it, it was a copy from the library. Once I finished, I barely waited a day before I went to B&N to order my own copy. I simply had to have it forever, that's how good it is.

Fasinating story about a Magic man/Perfomer's struggle to make art free, instead of governed by a council more interested in money than in art.

The love story between Mikk and Thissizz is beautiful as well as unique.

The author, Katie Waitman, has created a complex society that rivals Herbert's Dune.