{"id":2893,"date":"2013-10-04T09:55:19","date_gmt":"2013-10-04T13:55:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.fridaynirvana.com\/fiction\/?p=2893"},"modified":"2013-10-01T00:09:53","modified_gmt":"2013-10-01T04:09:53","slug":"book-review-shaman-by-kim-stanley-robinson","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.fridaynirvana.com\/fiction\/2013\/10\/book-review-shaman-by-kim-stanley-robinson.html","title":{"rendered":"Book Review : Shaman by Kim Stanley Robinson"},"content":{"rendered":"

[amazon_link id=”0316098078″ target=”_blank” container=”” container_class=”” ]\"Shaman\"[\/amazon_link]Title : Shaman
\nAuthor : Kim Stanley Robinson
\nGenre : Sci-fi\/Anthropological
\nPublisher : Orbit
\nPublish date : September 3, 2013
\nPages : 464
\nSource : Publisher\/Netgalley
\nRating : 3.5\/5<\/strong><\/p>\n

Loon is a young adolescent of the Wolf tribe in Ice Age times. We meet him as a young orphan, being brought up by the pack\u2019s Shaman Thorn and by the medicine woman Heather. Loon is apprenticed as a young Shaman although he isn\u2019t sure he wants to be one. Shaman is about Loon, and takes us through his life, a little by little, and can be described to be a book of the \u201ccoming-of-age\u201d genre.<\/p>\n

Shaman is strong on detail, and presents to us Ice age life as our ancestors lived it. The clothes, food, lifestyle, nomadic habits, society, social rituals and status of women and men are all described from Loon\u2019s point-of-view, and narrated by the \u201cThird Wind\u201d a force which apparently helps people survive when they are at the end of their rope. The narrative progresses season by season; the spring is when the pack catches and stores food to last through the harsh and possibly lean winter, where one might not be able to find any meat or any edible vegetation.<\/p>\n

Loon is a likeable enough character, so it is easy to be invested in his life story. The description of Loon\u2019s adventures is engrossing, like the \u201cwander\u201d he is forced into going on, naked and defenseless for a fortnight, without the protective cocoon of his pack members. His pack-members are like regular people \u2013 some good, some bad, some mean and some bossy. The story flows naturally and organically, and makes for smooth reading.<\/p>\n

Shaman reads like an exquisitely described, interesting history lesson, garbed as a work of fiction. The book is low on plot and there isn\u2019t much suspense, so I\u2019m not as thrilled with it as I though I would have been. The language of the book is simple and blunt, shorn of sophistication as we might imagine prehistoric man\u2019s to be, very apt for the book.<\/p>\n

I haven\u2019t read Robinson before so can\u2019t make a comparison with his earlier novels. Shaman may not be your adventure filled sci-fi novel, since it is more philosophical and less action-filled than hard sci-fi tends to be, but it is a good read.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

[amazon_link id=”0316098078″ target=”_blank” container=”” container_class=”” ][\/amazon_link]Title : Shaman Author : Kim Stanley Robinson Genre : Sci-fi\/Anthropological Publisher : Orbit Publish date : September 3, 2013 Pages : 464 Source : Publisher\/Netgalley Rating : 3.5\/5 Loon is a young adolescent of the Wolf tribe in Ice Age times. We meet him as a young orphan, being […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"rop_custom_images_group":[],"rop_custom_messages_group":[],"rop_publish_now":"initial","rop_publish_now_accounts":{"twitter_17000648_17000648":""},"rop_publish_now_history":[],"rop_publish_now_status":"pending","_uag_custom_page_level_css":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[85,74,53,3,114,4,38],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2893","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-85","category-3-5_star_rating","category-arc","category-books","category-orbit-books","category-review","category-sci-fi"],"aioseo_notices":[],"uagb_featured_image_src":{"full":false,"thumbnail":false,"medium":false,"medium_large":false,"large":false,"1536x1536":false,"2048x2048":false,"post-thumbnail":false,"sow-carousel-default":false},"uagb_author_info":{"display_name":"amodini","author_link":"https:\/\/www.fridaynirvana.com\/fiction\/author\/admin"},"uagb_comment_info":1,"uagb_excerpt":"[amazon_link id=”0316098078″ target=”_blank” container=”” container_class=”” ][\/amazon_link]Title : Shaman Author : Kim Stanley Robinson Genre : Sci-fi\/Anthropological Publisher : Orbit Publish date : September 3, 2013 Pages : 464 Source : Publisher\/Netgalley Rating : 3.5\/5 Loon is a young adolescent of the Wolf tribe in Ice Age times. We meet him as a young orphan, being…","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fridaynirvana.com\/fiction\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2893","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fridaynirvana.com\/fiction\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fridaynirvana.com\/fiction\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fridaynirvana.com\/fiction\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fridaynirvana.com\/fiction\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2893"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/www.fridaynirvana.com\/fiction\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2893\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2923,"href":"https:\/\/www.fridaynirvana.com\/fiction\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2893\/revisions\/2923"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fridaynirvana.com\/fiction\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2893"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fridaynirvana.com\/fiction\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2893"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fridaynirvana.com\/fiction\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2893"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}