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Hopscotch | Rating | |
| C | |||
| Kevin J. Anderson | |||
| Series | Related Books | ||
| N/A | N/A | ||
It's been two hundred years since Man discovered how to hopscotch, swapping minds between bodies with a thought. The development had changed society forever, but it has remained remarkably stable, new laws and technologies rapidly evolving to take the ability into account. But people are still people, with all their attendant dreams and tragedies — and crime. Eduard, Garth, Daragon, and Teresa are four orphans who were raised together. They all choose different paths to follow in their lives, but they remained close. But the machinations of one corrupt man may destroy them all. In a world where nobody is necessarily as they seem, much less who they seem, can justice ever truly be assured?
Hopscotch is simply riddled with flashbacks, which I generally hate. I usually feel that if a scene is worth showing to the reader at all, there's no reason not to put them in chronological order. But i have to admit, that wouldn't quite work, here. They're used to illustrate why the characters became the people they now are, as well as set up a few things for later. But for the first third of the book, or even more, it is done extremely frequently. Anderson hardly gives now a chance to continue before the next one comes along. The story has little opportunity to develop, much less gain any momentum.
So it's a good while before anything akin to a plot even begins to coalesce, for any of the orphans. Seventy pages or so might not sound like much, especially in a book in shouting range of five hundred pages long. But it certainly felt like a long while, and that's only the point where one of the four really starts to develop a story. And it is a slow, incremental progression, at that. The others' tales wait yet longer.
That's not to say those seventy pages are entirely wasted. They are filled with exploring the setting and all the possibilities inherent in hopscotching. How society managed to cope, what adjustments were made to the law and social fabric. And there's those flashbacks, of course, where we get a taste of what makes these four people tick. I simply wish Anderson had let something happen as he did all that, rather than concentrating for so long and so hard on these basicss. A story is not a hourse — you can work on the structure while the foundation is incomplete.
The orphans' stories, too, weren't bad at all, once they finally got rolling. With their four distinct viewpoints and personalities, each with their own interests and goals, Anderson does a good job demonstrating the new pitfalls inherent in this ability. More, he is able to illustrate how some old pitfalls have been adapted to this new world, presenting familiar dangers in new forms.
Hopscotch reads somewhat like how a Kubrik film plays — and you can take that as a compliment or criticism, as you wish. If you think his films are evidence of genius, whith their deep questions and focus on the characters, then you will likely rave similarly about this book. If, on the other hand, you consider Kubrik's movies slow, tedious bores, then I have no doubt you'll feel much the same about Hopscotch. My own stance lies between the two, but definitely leans towards the latter. I can recognize the message and appreciate the thoughts Anderson was trying so hard to induce. But the book was just too slow to hold my interest for long.
The last third of the book is great, just as Kubrik's films are once they reach the payoff. Eduard's flight and Daragon's persuit have an energy matched nowhere else in the novel. Meanwhile, watching as Garth's artistic vision changes into a quest for glory to geed his eho is all to believable. But working my way through that first two-thirds felt like exactly that: work.
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