PLOWING opening page and subsequent hostage entries could have been extracted from the imagined journal of The Count of Monte Crisco.
A terrifying existence evolves while the VR people revel merrily in The Cavern.

Chained to the radiator Zach and a few of The RL people (Spider, Sue, Ebesen, Jackdaw, O'Reilly)
deliver strong main characters while the actual main ones - Ted, Stevie, and " I will kill you" Adie -
come across mostly as tiresome tropes,
from the abandonment of Art, to (bisexual?) composer leanings, to the sexual conquest of so many, many women.

Deeper development of the RL standouts in place of these three would have been welcome.

The creation of The Cavern, from Jungle Bees to Arles, Hagia Sophia's Dome,
and on to Ronan O'Reilly's immersive, transporting Globe was incredibly fascinating and enduring.

And how inspiring to think of what paintings we would Love to Live within!

Yet, readers may find it hard to anticipate when the prisoner suffers even more beatings and betrayals.

What exactly happened with Jackdaw and his date?

Vintage early Richard Powers "...every connection we can lay down between out here and in there...."

Which may be why many of us plow through the tough parts... ( )

The language is sometimes a little too precious. The alliteration is distracting at times—"sallying forth among the salients" and "eidolons of eiderdown"—and when I read the phrase "stipulate the stipule," I got the idea it may have occurred to Powers out of the blue and been the seed for the entire book.

But the final chapters won me over. There are far too many books that are engaging and engrossing for most of their length, only to let you down in the final chapters. There's something to be said for a book that you have to force yourself to plow through to reach a totally satisfying ending that at last wins you over.

Was it intentional that the sections on the artists and programmers working in perfect freedom on such an intellectually stimulating project at the Cavern were so dry and superficial, while the chapters on the hostage in Lebanon were so much more compelling and vivid? ( )

The two story lines kept me reading - how can these stories possibly converge? I don't think I can even spoil the story. It's a miracle!

I guess the story is maybe about the transformative power of art? ( )

Powers is an amazing writer, even if in the end he can't quite pull it off. The threads here are a team of virtual reality programmers working in Seattle, an American held hostage in Lebanon (the book is set in the late 80s), and a former friend of the researchers battling MS. Each of the threads are creating their own worlds out of necessity or play, and while they do come together in the end it is not altogether convincing. ( )

Chronique disponible ici : http://escargotgarpien.blogspot.com/2009/06/richard-powers-lombre-en-fuite-faite... ( )