Occupy Me

This was a weird book. Part sci-fi, part mystery, and part thriller. The strangest thing of all was that it was the sci-fi elements of the story that let the story down! The premise was super intriguing. Pearl, an angel, with no memory of how or why she ended up on earth is trying to track down Dr. Kisi Sorle, the man responsible for stranding her on this planet in the first place. He stole something of hers. It looks like an ordinary briefcase, but is in fact a gateway to another dimension. Pea [...]

Bats**t crazy SF involving an angel, international financial shenanigans, possession by a malevolent entity, international malfeasance by an oil company and a surprise pterosaur.There's no plot summary I could give that wouldn't spoil the hell out of this, and the basic setup just doesn't make much sense anyway. This book is a puzzle-box and at least half the fun in trying to work out how it all comes together, who all these people are and what they're trying to do. It's a very ambitious story a [...]

I thought this book was going to be one I could not finish, but I persisted in the hope I might begin to enjoy it more. For me, this is one of those novels that had huge potential to be fantastic but the execution let it down badly. I found reading this book hurt my brain and that's not what you want when reading a book for pleasure.The plot felt very disjointed and I struggled for a lot of the book to have a clear grasp on what was really going on, in addition to that the characters all seemed [...]

This book has three narrators: one each in first, second, and third person. They are Pearl, Dr Sorle, and Alison the veterinarian respectively. Second person is not a favorite of mine but it ends up getting explained later on and the explanation makes this really work.Pearl is an angel, complete with wings, who gets pulled over from her home world, a place she calls HD - the Higher Dimensions. She has no memory of this world and spends the book trying to get her "launcher" back so that she can g [...]

Pearl is an angel, a being with wings that only exist in another dimension. She works for the Resistance–a mysterious organisation that promotes the spread of kindness among humans. As she returns from one of her missions, she recognises a passenger: he’s the man who stranded her here, away from her home. Dr. Sorle, meanwhile, has another problem: he has a passenger, one who regularly hijacks his body, and now, under the influence of that invisible rider, he’s stolen a briefcase that may o [...]

This was a complex, challenging sci-fi read with some interesting ideas and I really quite liked the characters. The lead Pearl is female, but is muscular and has wings when she defaults to her ‘angelic’ form. Other times she can constrict herself and hide the wings from view, appearing human in appearance. The book opens with her being unsure of who she really is, where she came from or what her purpose in life is. She knows however she has been robbed of a component of herself and needs it [...]

A brilliantly mind-warping, fast-paced science fiction thriller starring, among others, a powerful angel, a fifty-ish Scottish veterinarian who also does cross-stitch, a massive carnivorous quetzlcoatlus, a briefcase containing other dimensions, and a doctor whose timeline has been split by blood and oil. It's all so gripping and so much FUN - and so funny, too, at times! - that I couldn't stop reading. It's not my usual kind of read, but I loved it.

If I had to categorise Occupy Me it would be as speculative fiction about a secret and unseen war. Or about secret and unseen dimensions; also, time-travel and non-linear causality. Or perhaps as an exploration of selflessness through conflict. Or maybe a mystery thriller where the mystery stretches human comprehension.Actually, I’d rather not try and categorise this book. I’d rather you went out and got a copy, and read it for yourself.The cast is as diverse as you can get: a being who may [...]

DNF at 50%. I just stopped halfway through the book after giving it my full attention for an hour at the library, and asked myself, do I care what's going to happen next? How did I even start reading this? And decided that it was too. I don't know, strange. There's a special angel (like, not a regular angel) called Pearl (there didn't seem to be any reason why this name was chosen, frankly I find it sickly sweet), a briefcase with a blackhole in it, strange men and demons it just feels like a Me [...]

Puh, das war schwere Kost für mich. Von Anfang an habe ich das Gefühl, etwas total cleveres zu lesen, dessen Sinn sich mir aber einfach nicht erschliessen will. Und mit fortschreitender Lektüre steigt in mir die Erkenntnis hoch, dass mich die Auflösung dieses verschwurbelten Konstrukts eigentlich auch gar nicht interessiert. Sechzig Seiten vor Schluss hat's mir dann endgültig gereicht. Ich bin definitiv zu einfach gestrickt für dieses Werk, muss jetzt dringend einen "Perry Rhodan" zur ment [...]

Nuts. Absolutely, nuts. The most surreal sci-fi book I've ever read. So obscure, I can't even attempt to describe it. Reading this was like trying to watch 'The East' and several episodes of 'Sense8' at once. Whilst on acid. I enjoyed it, but I did feel a bit sick afterwards. Make of that what you will!

A brilliant read! Full review to come.

Reviewed on my blog - Books by Proxy2.5 StarsThis book was received from Netgalley in return for an honest reviewAs soon as I finished Occupy Me, the latest novel from sci-fi author Tricia Sullivan, I knew that I would have a hard time writing a review for it. At its best, Occupy Me is a beautiful, twisted and chaotic novel which sings with wonderful prose and an obvious depth of skill and imagination. At its worse, however, it is confusing, utterly strange and left me at times thinking ‘what [...]

For the #shadowclarke

“I leaned into HD. My body folded like a paper airplane and I went down as a shaft, shedding importune photons like confetti. He got closer and closer. Every beat of my heart was dedicated to this one thing. Fly like an arrow. Fly. Every breath. Every impulse to muscle and every thought. My teeth sang in the wind.” (p.25)Tricia Sullivan won the Arthur C. Clarke Award in 1999 for her novel Dreaming in Smoke. She has written nine SF and three Fantasy books, but I’d wager you haven’t heard [...]

I always enjoy that moment of trepidation that arrives whenever I’m reading an author’s work for the very first time. I’ve not read any of Tricia Sullivan’s other novels, so this was new territory for me.Pearl, an angel who lives amongst us, is an intriguing creation. Innocent in many respects, but world weary in many others, her view of humanity shifts on a minute by minute basis. There is an unaffected air of otherworldliness that makes Pearl consistently fascinating character. She is [...]

This is an interesting book with some impressive qualities, but it seems reluctant to share them. I found it a hard book to warm to, it just feels cold and distant. The book flips between first, second, and third person perspectives which makes it hard to find the voice of the book and slows the pace considerably. As things progress it does become easier, but ultimately it took too long to draw me in.There's some interesting ideas in the book though. Corporate corruption, causality, time and spa [...]

You know that feeling when you pick up a sci-fi book and it's the same old story all over again? No such feelings here. It picks up speed right in the beginning and not even 30 pages in I found myself saying "What. The fuck. Just happened." together with the main character.The birds. I still don't know what it was that made my pleasure neurons tingle reading about them. It was beautiful. It was new. I could *feel* it. That's usually what makes it or breaks it for me in a book.I'll admit, it does [...]

2017 ARTHUR C CLARKE AWARD SHORTLIST BOOK 3An angel with wings in another dimension, working for 'The Resistance', an order who gently nudge humanity towards kindness, loses a briefcase which is a portal to another dimension and forgets who she is. The briefcase has been stolen by a man possessing the body of another man, the latter being forced to do things against his will. There's some gubbins about a race of birdpeople, dinosaurs popping up from other realms and all sorts of other batshit cr [...]

I don't get it. What the hell did I just read? I mean, I'm all for weird, I quite like weird. But this was not the weird for me. I could have dealt with that. It wouldn't have been so bad. except. for all those frigging perspective changes. First to second to third and back again, only ever a few pages at a time in one perspective. Nup. Couldn't stand it. But that's ok. If you're up for experimental stuff, give it ago. But only if you can get your friends to read it also. It's a book best read t [...]

Loved the premise but the execution failed to grab me. The book is hard to follow and the plotting seems a bit half-hearted. The Allison POV is well done, the Pearl ones confusing and the rest lack depth. At least that was my take-away.

Ambitious idea, didn't grab me. It needs reading over a short space of time, and I wasn't in a position to give it that level of attention.

Hum okay, I have to think about this one a bit but I'm not mad at it, I quite liked the ending and overall even if it didn't make sense, I oddly enjoyed the book.

One of those books that I'm sure I'd think is brilliant if I only knew what it was going on about.

There's a hell of a lot going on in this book and it's either narrated by the angel-birdmade-detective-healer, Pearl, or the murderer-possessed-by-another-self, Dr Kisi Sorle, who seems very easy to forget. I had to look his name up just now even though I finished the book an hour ago.Lots of explaining is done because Sullivan has made this complicated in a strange way. The people linked to Austen Stevens, the birds, the dinosaurs, the vet, a lover, some sort of Resistance (couldn't even unders [...]

The plot is difficult to explain. The tale is narrated by Pearl, who wakes up in a fridge in a junkyard with little knowledge of who she is, or indeed what. She has the appearance of a middle-aged tall muscular black woman, but she also has wings in a higher dimension and a strength far beyond human. She might be an angel. In alternate chapters she directly addresses a Dr Kisi Sorle, whose story initially seems to be separate from hers, though they inevitably come together.Dr Sorle has been expe [...]

I’m fond of Tricia Sullivan’s distinctive style of quasi-incomprehensible yet thrilling sci-fi strangeness. Her novels tend to have interesting female protagonists and vividly surreal parallel and/or nested realities. Maul is my favourite, as I have a particular yen for fiction set in shopping malls. I enjoyed ‘Occupy Me’ more than her other recent novels Lightborn and Sound Mind as it played with some interesting concepts, the protagonist Pearl is very appealing, and quite a lot of it w [...]

This is a very disconcerting book on the first read and I feel intentionally so. Much like the characters we are thrown in headfirst and the explanations come late. Even why the narrative jumps between Second and First person only come later on. Instead we go through the story bashing into lines that knocked me backwards.Upon a second reading it all makes perfect sense but allowed me to keep the sense of unease I remembered from a first journey through.As such it is hard to describe without spoi [...]

DNF @ (what I imagine to be) 10%.Firstly – second person. I can't read second person. Especially when it isn't consistent. It didn't hook me, and usually, from the start of a book, I need to be; or at least enough that I can drag myself to the good bits. That wasn't going to happen. I feel quite harsh to have not tried harder, but this type of book isn't for me. Received as advance reader copy.

Very intriguing book, although I was a little confused for the first part - and indeed, think some of the bigger ideas still need pondering after I've finished. Which is no bad thing!(My full review is now here.)