Michael Swanwick

Stations of the Tide

Honestly, I have no idea what I just read. Something about a bureaucrat going down to a planet from a place that is NOT a planet (is it some kind of artificial reality?) to find some dude who has forbidden technology and claims to be able to turn people into water animals so that they can stay on the planet once the tide comes in instead of leaving.

It was kind of making some sense at first, but then came the scene with the main character getting drugged and meeting a fox, and I can't figure out if the rest of the book is just the guy stumbling around super high, seeing things. He accuses several characters of working with the evil magician and sometimes I have no idea why. Drugged paranoia? He goes up to his home in his "Puzzle Palace" and I still have no idea what the "Puzzle Palace" is because he can just conjure anything out of thin air there and no laws of physics seem to apply? Is it a virtual reality of some sort? Where is his real body? 

At the end, on the planet when the tides come in, he transforms into a fish or something. So he was never human? What is he? Is any of this real? Is he lying in a fever dream somewhere, still high from being drugged?

There was also some kind of weird Earth encounter where Earth is some kind of chained up creature that swallows him and he hears voices as he stumbles through Earth's insides.

I feel like maybe my ebook was corrupted or something, because some jumps from one scene to another made zero sense to me. Was that it? Does this book actually make sense to anyone else? I am so lost.

One thing I'll say for it is that the descriptions of some on-planet scenes were excellent; the author painted some very vivid scenes with words. Unfortunately the rest of it, including the vast majority of the plot, was completely over my head. I feel like I just read somebody's dream journal, or some kind of feverish ramblings.

Liza 

Honestly, I have no idea what I just read. Something about a bureaucrat going down to a planet from a place that is NOT a planet (is it some kind of artificial reality?) to find some dude who has forbidden technology and claims to be able to turn people into water animals so that they can stay on the planet once the tide comes in instead of leaving.

It was kind of making some sense at first, but then came the scene with the main character getting drugged and meeting a fox, and I can't figure out if the rest of the book is just the guy stumbling around super high, seeing things. He accuses several characters of working with the evil magician and sometimes I have no idea why. Drugged paranoia? He goes up to his home in his "Puzzle Palace" and I still have no idea what the "Puzzle Palace" is because he can just conjure anything out of thin air there and no laws of physics seem to apply? Is it a virtual reality of some sort? Where is his real body? 

At the end, on the planet when the tides come in, he transforms into a fish or something. So he was never human? What is he? Is any of this real? Is he lying in a fever dream somewhere, still high from being drugged?

There was also some kind of weird Earth encounter where Earth is some kind of chained up creature that swallows him and he hears voices as he stumbles through Earth's insides.

I feel like maybe my ebook was corrupted or something, because some jumps from one scene to another made zero sense to me. Was that it? Does this book actually make sense to anyone else? I am so lost.

One thing I'll say for it is that the descriptions of some on-planet scenes were excellent; the author painted some very vivid scenes with words. Unfortunately the rest of it, including the vast majority of the plot, was completely over my head. I feel like I just read somebody's dream journal, or some kind of feverish ramblings.

Stations of the Tide

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