A Trip To The Stars: A Novel

A Trip to the Stars is the real deal, and Nicholas Christopher is quite a dealer. Ten year-old Loren is kidnapped after he and his adoptive aunt attend a show at a planetarium. That kidnapping was the biggest pill for me to swallow, but once down, I gulped all the rest happily. All the rest turns out to be a magical mix of star and spider lore, hotels, abstruse allusions to lots of religions and philosophies, and more - all served up in highly readable prose.
The narration alternates between the aunt and Loren. Alma, who changes her name to Mala, tells her own story of her search for Loren and then for her lover whom she found on a hospital ship during the Vietnam War and lost almost immediately. Loren, who learns that his name is really show more Enzo, tells his coming of age story, which takes place in the Hotel Canopus in the desert outside Las Vegas, a hotel filled with lost people or people searching for what has been lost. Their stories sometimes parallel each other, intertwine strangely, yet are lived without any knowledge of whether the other is alive.
Lovers of magical realism, rejoice! This is a magical book that, whatever depths it may or may not reveal, tells a mesmerizing story. show less

Christopher's work is always hypnotic, but in this case, the work is nothing short of intoxicating. Woven of a labyrinthine hotel, exotic jungles, and ordinary passions, it moves forward with a sort of supernatural momentum that has the potential for leaving readers breathless and out of touch with their own realities, lost in the novel's passages and grace.

Beginning with the separation of two unique characters, A Trip to the Stars works as a web of personalities and subplots, all as frighteningly believable as they are fascinating. The novel's unique tandem of science and fantasy is entrancing, a masterful journey of passion and hope in every guise imaginable. While Christopher's writing is poetic and clever, the story here is, in show more itself, worth falling into over and over again.

This isn't a book so much as a journey, and it is wonderful. show less

Joy's review: Beautiful language, vivid descriptions, and a very inventive plot. The coincidences abound, but for some reason, I didn't mind this at all; maybe because despite the very realistic descriptions, it felt like a dream. The plot's rather hard to describe, so I won't even try. Christopher needs to do better research when describing particular places and events; he gets quite a bit wrong (and he has way too many female characters whose name starts with a 'D'. But if you can let that go, this is a thought-provoking book.

No, I did not finish this.

Nevertheless, I am putting up a short review, just in case there is someone out there who might be in the same bracket I was in when I first encountered this novel.

I'm a sucker for (almost) anything astronomy - starry - space related. I have also enjoyed most examples of "magic realism" I've read. Therefore, when I read about A Trip to the Stars, my thought was "Zowie! A magic realism-inspired novel with an astronomical background/framework? Outta my way! Lemme at it!"

So I tried to read it. And then I stopped. And I stopped because, although Nicholas Christopher certainly does sling loads of astro- and pseudo-astro-terms around, it is deadly clear that he never bothered to learn what any of them actually meant. show more Which, I'm sorry, I took as a fatal mistake that rendered the book unreadable.

Is Nicholas Christopher too cool for science? I don't know and I don't care ... but his book is on my personal "most disappointing" list. Boo.

I should have known better: it's my personal belief that no one sporting a last name that is also a first name is to be trusted. ;^) show less

Sex is exhausting. Not the physical act per se (hey, certain teenagers still believe in the notion of waiting until marriage), but reading about it is. Mentally and emotionally there is very little as draining as reading about sex. I don't care if you use the crude (from "screw" to "fuck") or make it sound more polite (as with "lovemaking") or even make it sound clinical by using "sex" or "intercourse", it's tiring. Also depending on how caught up you are in the characters, the best you can hope for is the feeling of there being a vampire over your shoulder draining your life essence (on a complete tangent certain mythologies believe that the human body has three main fluids which make up the life essence for a human: Tears, blood, and show more the fluids of sex. I suppose in a esoteric way I can understand this. I just don't want to think about it too much. Part of the reason I wrote this mildly interesting fact was that a succubus [if I'm accurately remembering the mythological creature's name] lived off of the third part of a human), and at worst the feeling of degradation or that you sold your soul for a paltry sum. Throught this novel I was bombarded by the relationships of the characters; and I don't mean the emotional ones. I was constantly having to put the book down as yet another scene where two of the characters slept with each other came up. Now to be honest there were very few and yet they affected me more than many other books I have read. I'm no prude by any stretch of the imagination (after all I'm honest enough with myself to admit that for a time I was obsessed with the subject as many teenage males are, although I'm ashamed of this part of my life. Have you ever talked to a person who thinks only of sex? They are incredibly boring. I'm just grateful that I never behaved as I've seen many people do.), but there does come a limit for how much a person can handle. Maybe it was due to the fact that I read [b:Best Served Cold|2315892|Best Served Cold|Joe Abercrombie|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1246971611s/2315892.jpg|2322406], which compared to "A Trip to the Stars" is infinitely more crude, immediately prior. This novel is primarily about one thing, and one thing only: the connections between people and the unintended consequences that all our actions have.

If I were to review this book on literary merit alone I would be hard pressed to rate it higher than two and a half stars. Look, though. Four stars. Why, you ask? Despite the feeling of watching a train wreck, or a war zone, and the feeling at times that I needed to throw-up, while reading through this - or maybe because of it - I was unwillingly drawn in, shown that you don't have to have the out-and-out cruelty of, say, [b:Strange Flesh|12639667|Strange Flesh|Michael Olson|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1327528246s/12639667.jpg|17749978] to inspire disgust at the lust, greed, and overall baseness that humans continuously exhibit, and still manage to wrap up the emotion positively with a chance of good things happening to those who deserve it.

I don't know. Usually I can be eloquent, but there is pain and then there is pain. Emotionally I'm experiencing the latter, and it's preventing me from really explaining what I feel about this book. I may come back later when this book is more a memory and finish off the review. show less

I really wanted to love this book. At first I was enchanted by all the star and spider references, the magical realism, the underlying theme of the search for lost things…. but after a couple of hundred pages it just seemed to fizzle out. I think it was the overly detailed descriptions of the inhabitants of The Hotel Canopus. I couldn’t keep straight the convoluted relationships of 3 generations of women, all of whom had names which started with the letter “D”. I just kept wondering why I should care about these minor characters, and the hundreds of pages spent on them made very little difference in the plot. And Mala’s temporary career as a clairvoyant was just bizarre and unnecessary. I gritted my teeth and finished, but show more I’m kind of sorry I did.

Update: while I was dissatisfied overall with this book, I am haunted by some of the images of Vietnam and the Cook Islands and every time I hear a lot of classic rock songs from this era I picture the stars over the South Pacific. show less

Not quite as good as Christopher's VERONICA but a fine tale nonetheless. The plot is too involved to effectively summarize but if you like urban fantasy or magic realism, I think you should give this one a shot. Nicholas Christopher is an accomplished, intelligent writer, his word choice is impeccable and his dialogue pristine. And don't miss reading his book on film noir, SOMEWHERE IN THE NIGHT, it's a masterful tome.