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Ice Trilogy #1-3
Ice Trilogy
A New York Review Books Original
In 1908, deep in Siberia, it fell to earth. THEIR ICE. A young man on a scientific expedition found it. It spoke to his heart, and his heart named him Bro. Bro felt the Ice. Bro knew its purpose. To bring together the 23,000 blond, blue-eyed Brothers and Sisters of the Light who were scattered on earth. To wake their sleeping hearts. To return to the Light. To destroy this world. And secretly, throughout the twentieth century and up to our own day, the Children of the Light have pursued their beloved goal.
Pulp fiction, science fiction, New Ageism, pornography, video-game mayhem, old-time Communist propaganda, and rampant commercial hype all collide, splinter, and splatter in Vladimir Sorokin’s virtuosic Ice Trilogy, a crazed joyride through modern times with the promise of a truly spectacular crash at the end. And the reader, as eager for the redemptive fix of a good story as the Children are for the Primordial Light, has no choice except to go along, caught up in a brilliant illusion from which only illusion escapes intact.
In 1908, deep in Siberia, it fell to earth. THEIR ICE. A young man on a scientific expedition found it. It spoke to his heart, and his heart named him Bro. Bro felt the Ice. Bro knew its purpose. To bring together the 23,000 blond, blue-eyed Brothers and Sisters of the Light who were scattered on earth. To wake their sleeping hearts. To return to the Light. To destroy this world. And secretly, throughout the twentieth century and up to our own day, the Children of the Light have pursued their beloved goal.
Pulp fiction, science fiction, New Ageism, pornography, video-game mayhem, old-time Communist propaganda, and rampant commercial hype all collide, splinter, and splatter in Vladimir Sorokin’s virtuosic Ice Trilogy, a crazed joyride through modern times with the promise of a truly spectacular crash at the end. And the reader, as eager for the redemptive fix of a good story as the Children are for the Primordial Light, has no choice except to go along, caught up in a brilliant illusion from which only illusion escapes intact.
694 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2006
About the author
Vladimir Sorokin
81 books798 followersVladimir Sorokin (Владимир Сорокин, Vlagyimir Szorokin) was born in a small town outside of Moscow in 1955. He trained as an engineer at the Moscow Institute of Oil and Gas, but turned to art and writing, becoming a major presence in the Moscow underground of the 1980s. His work was banned in the Soviet Union, and his first novel, The Queue, was published by the famed émigré dissident Andrei Sinyavsky in France in 1983. In 1992, Sorokin’s Collected Stories was nominated for the Russian Booker Prize; in 1999, the publication of the controversial novel Blue Lard, which included a sex scene between clones of Stalin and Khrushchev, led to public demonstrations against the book and to demands that Sorokin be prosecuted as a pornographer; in 2001, he received the Andrei Biely Award for outstanding contributions to Russian literature. Sorokin is also the author of the screenplays for the movies Moscow, The Kopeck, and 4, and of the libretto for Leonid Desyatnikov’s Rosenthal’s Children, the first new opera to be commissioned by the Bolshoi Theater since the 1970s. He has written numerous plays and short stories, and his work has been translated throughout the world. Among his most recent books are Sugar Kremlin and Day of the Oprichnik. He lives in Moscow.
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June 13, 2023
Ice Trilogy consists of three novels: Bro, Ice, and 23,000. It appears most readers begin with Ice or read Ice in isolation - reasonable enough since I see several references to Ice as the #1 book of the Ice Trilogy.
This New York Review Books edition starts with Bro then moves to Ice and 23,000. Author Vladimir Sorokin intended this order, although he wrote Bro after Ice.
BRO - VOLUME #1
A new underground comic book could be created based on this Vladimir Sorokin novel: BRO - Ice from the primordial light awakened his dormant heart. And now he seeks other blonde, blue-eyed brothers and sisters chosen by the light to have their hearts likewise awakened
Bro is the true Volume #1 of the author's Ice Trilogy. The title Bro is taken from the name of the novel’s protagonist following his awakening by the Primordial Light. Frequently, Bro is listed as Volume #2 since Vladimir Sorokin wrote this novel after Ice. However, it should be pointed out, Bro precedes Ice chronologically and Bro also provides the needed context for Ice. Therefore Bro most definitely should be read before Ice.
Bro is simply amazing - what starts off in the first few chapters as a work in the tradition of great Russian nineteenth century literature shifts briefly to Soviet-era Socialist Realist scientific exploration before shifting again, this time to the bulk of the novel: a combination new age Gnostic sacred text, science fiction thriller and the adventures of a comic book superhero. Whoa, baby - what a gripping read!
It all starts with Alexander Snegirev relating the facts of his early life: he was born on June 30, 1908 with a clasp of thunder (a critically important date as he discovers at age twenty), his stern, wealthy Russian businessman father and loving mother raised him along with his older brothers and sisters; how, at age ten, his childhood ended with an act of violence during the Russian Revolution that left him roaming from city to city for four years. He moves in with his poverty-stricken old aunt, attends school and finally astronomy lectures at university where he is given the opportunity to join a scientific expedition to unearth and scrutinize pieces of one of the largest meteors ever to reach our planet, the Tungus Meteorite that exploded in Siberia on the exact date of his birth.
Reflecting back on his past life, Alexander notes there was one thing that both frightened and attracted him in childhood, a recurring dream where he is at the base of an enormous mountain. In the dream his body begins to crumble and fall apart and then abruptly “my spine broke and I collapsed into wet pieces and fell backward. That's when I saw the summit. It shone WITH LIGHT. The light was so bright that I disappeared in it. This felt so awfully good that I woke up." Foreshadowing with a vengeance.
Out in Siberia on expedition, Alexander suddenly dreams his recurrent dream, only with a difference: he sees the Light departing and disappearing forever; he cries out to the Mountain not to die. Just at that moment he senses a shift in his heart, that something else lives in his heart connecting him to the Mountain. Thereafter Alexander experiences great joy and feels beckoned forward by an undefined presence.
Then one morning our protagonist sits before a fire and can see his carefree childhood, his tormented life resulting from loss of family and orphanhood, his teenage student years all appear before him as if gathered under glass - they harden and detach themselves from him forever, all instantly becoming the past. Oh, yes, a frequently reported feature of the mystical experience - one's prior conventional identity and concerns appear as colossal illusion to be blown away as if a mere soap bubble.
Not long thereafter Alexander runs away from all the others and their camp. Once alone in the forest he tastes the bliss of freedom: “The absolute silence of the world amazed me. The earthly world froze in front of me in the greatest calm. And for the first time in my life I felt distinctly the vile vulgarity of this world.”
Alexander presses on until he reaches an area covered with ice and is seized by ecstasy. He comes upon a particular mass of ice and moves out on the ice and falls, slamming his chest against the ice. “Then my heart began to resound from the blow of the Ice. And I immediately felt the entire MASS of the Ice. It was enormous. And the whole thing was vibrating, resonating in time with my heart. For me alone. My heart, which had been sleeping for all these twenty years inside my rib cage, awoke. It didn’t beat harder, but sort of jolted - at first it was painful, then it was sweet. And then quivering, it spoke. “Bro-bro-bro . . . Bro-bro-bro. Bro-bro-bro . . . I understood. This was my real name.”
The Ice beneath him vibrates. He feels the Ice and himself hanging alone in the universe. His awakened heart begins to listen attentively to the Music of Eternal Harmony. Bro is told many things about the universe and his place within it, including: in the beginning there was only Primordial Light; The Light consists of 23,000 Light-bearing rays and he, Bro, is one of them; the Light’s mistake was creating this flawed, unstable, disharmonious Earth, leading to the greatest mistake - human beings; this huge piece of Heavenly Ice was sent to open the hearts of 23,000 Brothers and Sisters held hostage by the Earth to help them become 23,000 rays of Primordial Light once again; You, Bro, must find your Brothers and Sisters and come together in a great Circle.
Now that’s extreme! You can see why I said a comic book based on the novel would be fringe or underground. I wonder how many mainstream readers would swallow the place humans are assigned by the novel’s Primordial Light.
We can speculate as to why Vladimir Sorokin wrote this novel. Does he find our modern word disgusting? Is he writing in the same spirit when his countryman Alexander Solzhenitsyn stated: “The human soul longs for things higher, warmer, and purer than those offered by today's mass living habits, exemplified by the revolting invasion of commercialism, by TV stupor, and by intolerable music.”
Or is the author targeting religion? Although there’s next to nothing included about Christianity or any other religion, Bro does begin with two quotes, one from the Bible and this from Gregory Palamas, a great Saint within the Eastern Orthodox Church: “And so, brethren, let us lay aside works of darkness and turn to works of the light.”
Or many other possibilities. Such a bizarre, quizzical work but a work of tremendous imagination and philosophical depth. I can see why Vladimir Sorokin has many fans among young readers. I mean, having his protagonist refer to “ordinary” humans as meat machines and seeing World War II as a battle between the Land of Order and the Land of Ice is, if nothing else, unique - and that's understatement.
ICE - Volume #2
Riveting. Absolutely riveting.
And this riveting, spellbinding novel comes in two different flavors. You get to choose which one might suit your taste.
Flavor number one is to read Bro before Ice. Flavor number two is reading Ice without having read Bro. Permit me to elaborate.
Bro is Volume #1 of Vladimir Sorokin’s Ice Trilogy. Bro is the first person account of how a young Russian by the name of Alexander Snegirey has his heart awakened by Primordial Light in 1928. As part of his awakening he is given the name of Bro and told he must find his Brothers and Sisters who have also been chosen to likewise have their hearts awakened. The novel takes readers on Bro’s breathtaking adventure up until 1950. Ice continues the thread of the story beginning in the year 2000. Thus Bro provides not only historic context for Ice but puts the reader in the know about those who come to have their hearts awakened.
I'm glad I read Bro prior to reading Ice since I generally like to follow a story chronologically. Added to this, I would make the world's worst detective - much better for me to know the basic facts of what's going on rather than being kept in the dark.
British critic Michael Froggatt disagrees. In his review for Strange Horizons Mr. Froggatt judges Ice the strongest novel in the trilogy and goes on to say how reading Bro lessens the mystery and suspense of Ice. He concludes by suggesting a reader who is interested in tackling Vladimir Sorokin's Ice Trilogy begin with Ice and work outwards.
Either way, Ice possesses an intensity, a surging drive right from the first pages. The narrative voice is detached, hard-edge, objective, as if a journalist recording the nitty-gritty of combat in a war zone. We encounter drug dealers, drug addicts, prostitutes, bottom of the barrel ruck and their coarse, crude, brutal, blunt way of speaking and dealing with one another – a novel not for the squeamish.
Many of the men and women are given a special call-out. Two examples: “Ilona: 17 years old, tall, thin, with a lively laughing face, leather pants, platform shoes, a white top.” - “Borenboim: 44 years old, medium height, thinning blonde hair, an intelligent face, blue eyes, thin glasses in gold frames, a dark green three-piece suit."
There’s mystery afoot, a stroke of Vladimir Sorokin infusion of radical myth mixed in with cosmic science fiction: these denizens of Moscow’s concrete canyons wonder what the hell is going on with the ice and all those primitive looking ice hammers. And the shift in their feelings. The contrast between the scummy day-to- day lives of these people and what they eventually feel in their hearts is quite striking: hard-as-nails drug kingpin Borenboim talking about his tender heart; likewise Nikolaeva the prostitute - very funny in an odd, offbeat way.
Two glimmers of refinement in this dank, cesspool world: Boremboim has a collection of Borges stories in his briefcase and Mozart is playing softly at a rehabilitation center. In Moscow 2000 overflowing with hard rock and liquor, gadgets, computer games and Hollywood posters, to know at least somebody appreciates Borges and Mozart is most refreshing.
Part Two switches to an old lady’s first person account retracing her childhood in a poor Russian village under Nazi occupation and her joining others villagers herded off to Germany to work in a factory. But then something remarkable happens. She’s singled out since she has blonde hair and blue eyes. What follows thereafter ties her to a strange brotherhood. Her worldview is forever transformed – from 1950 right up until 2000, the grueling, gritty details of her earthbound, everyday routine take a distant second to her true identity and mission.
One of the most stimulating dimensions of Ice is the way in which the story raises a number of philosophical issues. How bound are member of a particular religious cult or sect by their beliefs? Jim Jones and the mass suicides/mass murders in Jonestown, David Koresh and the Branch Davidians going up in flames in their compound in Waco, Marshall Applewhite leading Heaven’s Gate members in mass suicide - we need only think of these events to know that sects and cults can be closely linked to violence and death.
And considering the frequent instances of torture, imprisonment and murder throughout history perpetuated in the name of religion, how far are the major religions removed from sects and cults? Any time members view others through the lens of “us versus them” watch out. Brutality and viciousness of one stripe or the other usually isn’t far behind.
What are we to make of the fellowship in Ice? Those initiates speak of opening the heart but how open is their heart to those outside their fellowship? Referring to “ordinary” humans as meat machines unworthy of life has a frightening ring. And this reference to libraries; "Thousands of meat machines were always sitting there, engaged in silent madness: they attentively leafed through sheets of paper covered with letters." Sounds like a rant spouted by a semi-illiterate thug.
Witnessing the horrors of twentieth century totalitarian governments is hardly less disturbing. And how about the omnipresence of contemporary multinational corporations? Perhaps Vladimir Sorokin in his sly way is commenting on the dangers of all forms of power and coercion reducing individuals to hungry consumers or meat machines.
Even if Ice is the only novel within the trilogy one reads, it is well worth it. For fans of the author, both old and new, nothing short of all three volumes will do.
Note: I posted a separate review of Volume 3 - 23,000. Link to my review: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
May 31, 2021
I’ve read this in Russian after The Blizzard which I liked. This is different and I have not even finished the 3rd book. The language is really good. I do not have doubts Sorokin could write. But the plot and the pathos troubled me. The trope of the chosen race consisting from 23 thousand blond blue eyes demiurges in human form is quite frankly slightly distasteful. Those creatures are coming from the Sun. They are really the rays of light. And they need to destroy the Earth and all not-bemiurges to come back to their form. The rest of the people are called “meat machines” and deserve to die as they are not chosen. I hope it was some kind of satire, but I could not find where it was supposed to be funny. And even if not to take all of this too seriously, it is becoming quite repetitive with the ritual of checking involving hitting a candidate with the ice hammer and see what happens.
If you decide to read it after all I suggest to start with “Ice”, not “Bro” which is a prequel.
If you decide to read it after all I suggest to start with “Ice”, not “Bro” which is a prequel.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
August 13, 2011
Ironically, for a book that is sort of about the whole being greater than the parts the same isn't true for the novel. Most of the individual parts of the book, the little stories and narrative strands are fairly interesting and readable. The book moved along for me at a fairly quick clip and if i didn't stop and think about the book as a whole I was quite happy with it.
Actually, it wasn't really until I was telling Karen that I was almost finished with it and then added that this isn't very good, that I realized that I wasn't actually enjoying it as much as I thought that I was (this isn't really a spoiler, but maybe it is, but it's a very minor one if it is). But, I don't feel that comfortable saying it's not very good, because at times and for long stretches the book is very good, and if you stay on the detail level, linger around the individual stories and accept that they show up and then they might leave and that there might be no resolution or really any necessity to the over-all story in the stories than the book is enjoyable. When you pull back a bit and look at the overall structure though the book starts to look like a mess, like the result of a lot of small good ideas and an interesting over-arching premise but without the middle level coherence needed to make this a satisfying 'traditional' narrative or disciplined feeling enough to make it a successful big, sprawling, non-linear, non-wrapping up difficult type of book.
It might not sound it, but I actually really did enjoy reading this. Me and disappointment are pretty close friends so i didn't mind that he showed up here, I should have figured he would, the basic premise of the novel is just asking for a level of disappointment or tedium and after a brief foray into tedium towards the end of the first book the author wisely gave up on the tedious and started to engage in the subtly disappointing. If you don't think how everything ties together, or care that a hundred pages of characters seems to just go poof without really effecting the over-all story at all by their presence or absence (which now that I think of it is pretty dead on for life, you are born and then you die and really if your whole 'narrative' thread got edited out of the overall story of 'life' would it make any difference?) than you'll do just fine.
I did like this but I want to make it sound like I liked it less than I really did because I don't want to influence anyone to read this.. It's not a satisfying read, or it wasn't to me, it was fun and enjoyable at times but not coherent enough to fall into the 'fun and enjoyable' category. Sci-Fi / fantasy fans would most likely get really angry at some of the disappointments in this story, and the DFW / Pynchon types who might chuckle at others being annoyed at the lack of resolution won't find much here that will satisfy them either. The book is big but not big enough in scope, in the characters, in the links between characters. Am I making any sense?
So yeah, like not love. Maybe I enjoyed it more than a lot of other three star books, but there are lots of other fine books out there that are begging to be read and they should probably be given a chance before this one.
Actually, it wasn't really until I was telling Karen that I was almost finished with it and then added that this isn't very good, that I realized that I wasn't actually enjoying it as much as I thought that I was (this isn't really a spoiler, but maybe it is, but it's a very minor one if it is). But, I don't feel that comfortable saying it's not very good, because at times and for long stretches the book is very good, and if you stay on the detail level, linger around the individual stories and accept that they show up and then they might leave and that there might be no resolution or really any necessity to the over-all story in the stories than the book is enjoyable. When you pull back a bit and look at the overall structure though the book starts to look like a mess, like the result of a lot of small good ideas and an interesting over-arching premise but without the middle level coherence needed to make this a satisfying 'traditional' narrative or disciplined feeling enough to make it a successful big, sprawling, non-linear, non-wrapping up difficult type of book.
It might not sound it, but I actually really did enjoy reading this. Me and disappointment are pretty close friends so i didn't mind that he showed up here, I should have figured he would, the basic premise of the novel is just asking for a level of disappointment or tedium and after a brief foray into tedium towards the end of the first book the author wisely gave up on the tedious and started to engage in the subtly disappointing. If you don't think how everything ties together, or care that a hundred pages of characters seems to just go poof without really effecting the over-all story at all by their presence or absence (which now that I think of it is pretty dead on for life, you are born and then you die and really if your whole 'narrative' thread got edited out of the overall story of 'life' would it make any difference?) than you'll do just fine.
I did like this but I want to make it sound like I liked it less than I really did because I don't want to influence anyone to read this.. It's not a satisfying read, or it wasn't to me, it was fun and enjoyable at times but not coherent enough to fall into the 'fun and enjoyable' category. Sci-Fi / fantasy fans would most likely get really angry at some of the disappointments in this story, and the DFW / Pynchon types who might chuckle at others being annoyed at the lack of resolution won't find much here that will satisfy them either. The book is big but not big enough in scope, in the characters, in the links between characters. Am I making any sense?
So yeah, like not love. Maybe I enjoyed it more than a lot of other three star books, but there are lots of other fine books out there that are begging to be read and they should probably be given a chance before this one.
October 8, 2018
Whoa this was super weird and great. The writing in the first book was a little clunky (intentionally probably as it mirrored the crystalline thoughts of the narrator), but a ton of interesting ideas and perspectives. I love the idea of a secret alien-ish cult thing starting up at the start of the Russian Revolution and everything that followed. I'm glad Bro starts things in this collection, even though it wasn't the first book written in the series. Really enjoying these classics of Soviet/Russian sf lately! Just keep your ice hammers away from me please, thanks.
March 27, 2013
I finished this on Friday night or so, and was all prepared to rate and review it like a GoodReader does. But then I did some normal physical stuff that apparently my body is very unhappy with, and I spent the rest of my downtime this weekend trying to figure out how to roll off the couch and into a standing position without damaging myself or my loved ones. And, also (and possibly relatedly but I'm waiting for my doctor to get back to me on this) my thyroid hates me.
So a proper rate and review will be coming, but until then I'm giving two big middle fingers to the world.
Until then:
I liked this book. I think.
then...
I haven't read this Sorokin guy prior to this book, yet. Though I once checked out The Queue from the library because a) I like Russian authors and b) that is one seriously bad-ass cover. But something like life or other got in the way, and I never got around to reading it. I didn't actually realize it was the same author until about the time I finished reading this trilogy.
Okay, so this trilogy. Huh.
We start out with Bro and it's all normal-seeming and there's real stuff going on like the Russian Civil War of 1918 and stuff. I can dig that. And there was the Tunguska event, which we all more likely recognize as the Tungus event, and actually occurred 10 years prior to the Russian Civil War, but you get my drift. Okay, so this meteorite landed in Russia, right, that's all true story stuff. The protagonist, Alexander, sets off to find this meteorite with which he appears to have a co-dependent relationship, and this meteorite becomes known, lovingly, as Ice. Alexander becomes known, lovingly, as Bro.
You with me still?
Now that he's Bro, he realizes what he's meant to do. He sets off to find others like him - blue-eyed, blond-hairded - and to come together (all 23,000 of them) as the Brotherhood. The Brotherhood, from what I gather, is a happy hippie commune.
Just kidding. Sorta.
Complaint with this section: Random words are italicized. Like... "Bro wandered down the street." (I made that up, but that's pretty good, huh?) Why the stress on the fact that he wandered? What does that add to the story? It doesn't add anything, that's my point.
Ice
Interestingly, this second part of the trilogy was written before the first. I love that shit. I've decided that this is actually the best part of the book because I was all "This is amazing", he got rid of that annoying italicization thing he had going on in Bro, and at times I didn't know what the eff was going on, but that was okay too.
A GR friend who is also reading this made a comparison to Samuel Delaney's Dhalgren, and that's truly appropriate. A lot of similarities here. Except Dhalgren was written in 1975 and is infinitely better than this trilogy. (Imho.)
So now we're getting to see the Ice in more action, so to speak. The reader is taken through the years as the Brotherhood expands, how they find each other, what they to do each other, what happens, what they feel, where they "go". That sort of thing. At times it feels repetitious, but I was surprisingly okay with that. The same way I was surprisingly okay with the same sort of repetition in 2666. It was maybe a little less obvious to me in Ice what the purpose was of that, except, as another reviewer sort of touched on, Sorokin liked the "hammer" the idea into his readers. (Which is not necessarily anything anyone is going to understand until you read the book.)
Okay, okay, so I dug this part the most. I really did. Maybe it was the evolution of the Brotherhood and the Ice process that was appealing, I don't know. But it worked for me.
23,000
The future of Ice. The italics are back, though maybe not as annoying as in Bro. Some stuff happens in places that aren't Russia and Siberia. Not everyone is as pleased with Ice as others. Some stuff happens.
Clearly the least interesting to me, but then I tend to fall asleep during trilogies around the third book because omg is it still going? I can't tell if it's just me as a bad reader or if the author also seems to get tired, lose steam, whatever. But the third book (third movie, third whatever) is just never as good. Don't make me talk about the third Godfather again. That won't be pretty.
As a whole, I really enjoyed this, as much as I can. Sorokin's characters leave a lot to be desired, but it's not necessarily a character-driven novel. It's weird to say that because on the surface that's exactly what it appears to be. But the Tungus event is fascinating to me, a great inclusion to bring the past and present (and, ultimately, the future) together, and I was able to make my boyfriend really mad because apparently he's using the Tungus event in a comic he's working on, so he feels like someone cheated on him. Always a good time.
I'm more interested in checking out The Queue now. I see Sorokin is consindered a "post-modern" author, and I'm all itchy and fussy about that because I never know quite what I'll get, or if I'll like it, so I tread carefully around that classification. But mostly I'm curious to see what Sorokin can do on a smaller scale - this trilogy is rather large when it's all put together and stuff, but The Queue is, I believe, a stand-alone novel and a gazillion times smaller.
Bottom line: I have no idea if anyone else will like this trilogy. I see some people have really loved it, others thought it was crap, and some few are in the middle with a "meh" kinda thing going on. I didn't like it as much as I liked Dhalgren, but that could have been because I read Delaney first and I feel like that's what Sorokin was sort of going for. But on the other hand, I like Russian literature, and this was a fine Russian novel. No Leo Tolstoy. But then he's no Boris Akunin either (which is totally unfair because I've only read one book by him, and it didn't appeal to me, so now, sad for him, he's like the worst author ever. Thyroid just made that rule up.)
So a proper rate and review will be coming, but until then I'm giving two big middle fingers to the world.
Until then:
I liked this book. I think.
then...
I haven't read this Sorokin guy prior to this book, yet. Though I once checked out The Queue from the library because a) I like Russian authors and b) that is one seriously bad-ass cover. But something like life or other got in the way, and I never got around to reading it. I didn't actually realize it was the same author until about the time I finished reading this trilogy.
Okay, so this trilogy. Huh.
We start out with Bro and it's all normal-seeming and there's real stuff going on like the Russian Civil War of 1918 and stuff. I can dig that. And there was the Tunguska event, which we all more likely recognize as the Tungus event, and actually occurred 10 years prior to the Russian Civil War, but you get my drift. Okay, so this meteorite landed in Russia, right, that's all true story stuff. The protagonist, Alexander, sets off to find this meteorite with which he appears to have a co-dependent relationship, and this meteorite becomes known, lovingly, as Ice. Alexander becomes known, lovingly, as Bro.
You with me still?
Now that he's Bro, he realizes what he's meant to do. He sets off to find others like him - blue-eyed, blond-hairded - and to come together (all 23,000 of them) as the Brotherhood. The Brotherhood, from what I gather, is a happy hippie commune.
Just kidding. Sorta.
Complaint with this section: Random words are italicized. Like... "Bro wandered down the street." (I made that up, but that's pretty good, huh?) Why the stress on the fact that he wandered? What does that add to the story? It doesn't add anything, that's my point.
Ice
Interestingly, this second part of the trilogy was written before the first. I love that shit. I've decided that this is actually the best part of the book because I was all "This is amazing", he got rid of that annoying italicization thing he had going on in Bro, and at times I didn't know what the eff was going on, but that was okay too.
A GR friend who is also reading this made a comparison to Samuel Delaney's Dhalgren, and that's truly appropriate. A lot of similarities here. Except Dhalgren was written in 1975 and is infinitely better than this trilogy. (Imho.)
So now we're getting to see the Ice in more action, so to speak. The reader is taken through the years as the Brotherhood expands, how they find each other, what they to do each other, what happens, what they feel, where they "go". That sort of thing. At times it feels repetitious, but I was surprisingly okay with that. The same way I was surprisingly okay with the same sort of repetition in 2666. It was maybe a little less obvious to me in Ice what the purpose was of that, except, as another reviewer sort of touched on, Sorokin liked the "hammer" the idea into his readers. (Which is not necessarily anything anyone is going to understand until you read the book.)
Okay, okay, so I dug this part the most. I really did. Maybe it was the evolution of the Brotherhood and the Ice process that was appealing, I don't know. But it worked for me.
23,000
The future of Ice. The italics are back, though maybe not as annoying as in Bro. Some stuff happens in places that aren't Russia and Siberia. Not everyone is as pleased with Ice as others. Some stuff happens.
Clearly the least interesting to me, but then I tend to fall asleep during trilogies around the third book because omg is it still going? I can't tell if it's just me as a bad reader or if the author also seems to get tired, lose steam, whatever. But the third book (third movie, third whatever) is just never as good. Don't make me talk about the third Godfather again. That won't be pretty.
As a whole, I really enjoyed this, as much as I can. Sorokin's characters leave a lot to be desired, but it's not necessarily a character-driven novel. It's weird to say that because on the surface that's exactly what it appears to be. But the Tungus event is fascinating to me, a great inclusion to bring the past and present (and, ultimately, the future) together, and I was able to make my boyfriend really mad because apparently he's using the Tungus event in a comic he's working on, so he feels like someone cheated on him. Always a good time.
I'm more interested in checking out The Queue now. I see Sorokin is consindered a "post-modern" author, and I'm all itchy and fussy about that because I never know quite what I'll get, or if I'll like it, so I tread carefully around that classification. But mostly I'm curious to see what Sorokin can do on a smaller scale - this trilogy is rather large when it's all put together and stuff, but The Queue is, I believe, a stand-alone novel and a gazillion times smaller.
Bottom line: I have no idea if anyone else will like this trilogy. I see some people have really loved it, others thought it was crap, and some few are in the middle with a "meh" kinda thing going on. I didn't like it as much as I liked Dhalgren, but that could have been because I read Delaney first and I feel like that's what Sorokin was sort of going for. But on the other hand, I like Russian literature, and this was a fine Russian novel. No Leo Tolstoy. But then he's no Boris Akunin either (which is totally unfair because I've only read one book by him, and it didn't appeal to me, so now, sad for him, he's like the worst author ever. Thyroid just made that rule up.)
April 25, 2011
Part One—Bro:
Strangely enough, Sorokin wrote Bro—or at least had it published—a couple of years after he penned Ice, to which the first-named book served as a prequel. It begins in rather commonplace bildungsroman style, recounting the life-forming experiences of a somewhat awkward but vibrant and energetic Russian boy, the son of a wealthy merchant and one apparently being groomed for a career in service of the same. Whilst still a child, however, the Great War befalls the Russian Empire, followed by the Revolution of 1917 and then the Civil War between Reds and Whites, at the end of which our narrator, Alexander Snegirev, finds himself effectively an orphan, the entire male side of his family dead, the female out of reach in Polish exile. In such a lonely, solitary fashion begins his teenage years of restless exile, a peregrine journey across the new Bolshevik State whilst that buoyant enthusiasm that marked his earlier, carefree years slowly ebbs away. Why? Because he has a hazy, premonitory intuition that something way out east, something huge, is exerting a powerful, magnetic attraction upon his de-tuned soul; so it is that, when apparent happenstance offers him the opportunity to partake of Leonid Kulik's third expedition to discover the cause of the mysterious Tunguskan Event—an alleged meteor strike that hit Central Siberia on June 30th, 1908, the exact date that Snegirev was born, and which lit up the blackened Asian sky like a midnight sunrise—he leaps at the chance. By the time the flattened and charred rolling Taiga of the impact zone has been reached—after a lengthy and arduous journey—the other members of the expedition are united in deeming Snegirev, reduced to the rote inertia of a shambling automaton, to have lost his mind, a consensus by all counts confirmed when the latter burns down the base camp and flees, naked, into the bitterly cold Siberian swamp. But there is a method to his madness: he has been pulled in by the Ice, the pyramidal shaped block of frozen, glowing Light that, encased in an iron shell, hurtled into the atmosphere back in 1908; an Ice of cosmic sentience, a primordial luminosity that is kin with what really constitutes the essence of the assemblage of molecules that makes up Snegirev's physical structure: his pneuma, his cosmically-attuned Heart, which, in the presence of the swamp-buried Ice, awakens, coming into an awareness of itself like a pretty stellar-flower unfolding into systemic radiance where previously was an empty, cold, and darkling void.
Attuned to the Ice with a gnostic cardiolucent connection, Snegirev discovers that his true name is Bro, and that he is one of the 23,000, the beams of primordial, eternal, universal, and harmonious light that, in collective concert as they timelessly and tirelessly roamed this expanding multiverse, creating planets and stars and comets and galaxies here and there along the way, somehow took a hankering to construct what came to be know as the Earth, and compounded this error by covering the spheroid in catoptric water, which ensnared them—23,000 light-beams all—and trapped them within the physical confines of that Earth, binding them there within the overarching flow of newly-arisen Time. Slowly-but-surely these smothered spirits, encased within physical structures like amoeba, proto-fish, early mammalians, upright-shuffling apes, and upwards and onwards to fully-formed humans, utterly forgot their Cosmic origins, their refulgent purity and massless eternity. These 23,000 still exist in the Twentieth-Century world, scattered and asleep within the hearts of flesh-and-blood Humanity: but with Bro now conscious of his true Divine nature, his unity with the Universal Harmony of the Divine Light, well, by Ice, he is going to do something about it. He now has a mission, one of overwhelming importance. After immediately awakening another sleeping spirit, a young female whose Light-Name is Fer, Bro discovers that he and his Sister, enjoined at the heart and aware and attuned to each other in a unity and ease incomprehensible to non-luminary mankind, have the combinatory power of functioning as Heart Magnets: in other words, they can, by exerting themselves—a process that prematurely ages them, such is the resistance of this dead and brackish world—discover the other 23,000, enshrouded within vulgar, mortal humanity, who are all fair-haired and blue-eyed, when they are in their proximity. Experimentation reveals to this Cosmological Adam and Eve that by constructing Ice Hammers—shaped chunks of the meteoroid Ice attached via animal skin to regularly formed sticks of wood—and then using such to smash the sternums of the newly discovered dream-stuck, they can shock the heart into knowing itself, discovering its true ethereal identity and its collective interconnectivity with those violent midwifes who comprise their Brethren.
What is the point of all of this strike-and-embrace mummery? Well, it seems that, via the Ice, the vision has been revealed that, if all 23,000 Children of the Divine Light can be awoken from their fleshly prisons and they gather in a circle, by speaking the 23 Light Words of the Heart they will, in effect, snuff this repugnant, vulgar, dead, artificial and universally disharmonious world right the fuck out. It's an Aryan Gnostic Paradise! Evil flesh, with its time-chained excruciations, will instantaneously be rendered into cosmic dust, and the 23,000 can return to their primordial unity within eternal space, shining along the highways of brilliantly aglow galactic nothingness. Gathering the full complement will not prove an easy task, mind you, what with the Stalinist purges and the Second World War doing such a magnificent job of destroying mortal bodies, whether pneuma-enveloping or empty. Bro patiently outlines how the Brotherhood, ever-increasing in size, ever-augments their power and influence—and hence, their ability to locate sleeping hearts—by infiltrating and capturing various levels of the political, commercial, scientific, and cultural hierarchies. The greatest impediment is the fact that only the male-female pair of Heart Magnets can discover the pneuma buried within the flesh, and the effort required to do so drains them of their life-force at an exponential rate. Bro and Fer are dying, dammit, and they must find the young pair who are to succeed them if the Grand Circle is ever to be assembled and this unbearably corrupt and disharmonious Earth be terminated as it oh-so-richly deserves.
Whew. What a story! Sorokin has undoubtedly given his gnostic fantasy a lot of thought, and developed a reasonably consistent and plausible basis for this blonde-haired cult. The reader must indulge him with bouts of suspension-of-belief and a few ridiculous linkages, but on the whole it is a coherent creation. What's more, Sorokin does a nice job of showing Snergirev/Bro's development over time: as a young man describing a world of wonders in flux, then drying out as his Divine Heart assumes control, seizing his reason and enchaining it to a greater cosmological purpose. As Bro, humans become seen, and referred to, as Meat Machines, fleshy systems of growing, eating, digesting, shitting, fucking, killing, mating, and dying, soggily-solid bags of putrescent flesh forever spraying forth liquids and solids, consumed with consuming other inert, lightless items, death-enslaved ghouls living out their purposeless, darkened lives with but one consistency—that of senselessly creating sufficient meat machines to ensure the continuance of this absurd and soulless existence in the service of a corrupted planet. Upon their hammer-wrought rebirth, The Children of Light must enact a material role-playing, pretending to be human when virtually everything humans partake of disgusts and repulses them, especially the eating of cooked flesh or boiled vegetables, the smell of bodies dying with every unaware breath they take. Even when Bro encounters a former first love, or his blood sister lost to him since childhood, since they are not Light-Bearing they hold no more interest for him than driftwood discovered upon a beach.
By the time of the final chapters, Bro takes on a toneless inflection as he labels Nazi Germany the Land of Order and Stalinist Russia as The Land of Ice, where meat machine armies are on the march, using metal pipes to shoot hot objects at each other, or flying in metal containers and dropping heated eggs upon the other's cities. It's the narration of a cold and uninvolved analyst, so removed from the dead world that has entrapped him that he can barely bother to distinguish between the variety of earthly objects that—once he has freed all of the requisite pneuma—will be happily returned to a state of scattered stellar dust. In contrast, whenever Bro or any of his brethren are together, waxing ecstatically about their Hearts and the Divine Light, the book's atmosphere takes on the creepy ebullience of a particularly radiant group of initiates at Jesus Camp. They are Sorokin's gnostic parsing of an experience informed by both Chechen and al-Qaeda terror, of fervent, radical believers willing to countenance indiscriminate violence in order to achieve their horizon-bound goal, though the visceral tinge of delirium within their proclaimed devotions carries the suggestive whiff of Christian mystic cults, or certain Sufi sects.
The reviews for the Ice Trilogy have unanimously announced Bro as being the weakest of the books, which gives me a strong hope and anticipation for the remaining two. Once I became used to Sorokin's conceit of having Snegirev/Bro narrate his story with a declamatory enthusiasm liberally sprinkled with italics and emphasized phrases when attempting to convey in letter-limited text the ecstatic spiritual union between awakened Heart-Consciousnesses, which often reduces the physical body to exhausted sobbing or vomiting and which occurs with a repetition that, it must be said, approaches the best before date, I really settled into Bro and enjoyed what came forth. Within the arch, increasingly dry voice depicting the tale, Sorokin works in some dark humor and bleak comedy, especially in how his Brotherhood of the Light—in addition and at an angle to the religious fundamentalist aspect mentioned above—serves as a cultish stand-in for Communism: a Utopia attainable only in the distant future, but one which commands a total commitment in the present in order to be achieved, and one which deems human life expendable in pursuit of its eschatological goals. As with most such utopian systems, reason must be sublimated to the Divine Will, to the passionate urgings of the Heart/Destiny; and, as the Earth itself is the material prison enchaining these heavenly pneuma, then any exploitation or destruction of it in pursuit of release, reunion, and redemption is both acceptable and necessary. I am looking forward to seeing how the author will evolve this Gnostic Bolshevism to mirror the post-Soviet authoritarianism and free-market shenanigans erected and committed under the blustery smiles of Yeltsin and impenetrable stare of Vladimir Putin.
Part Two—Ice:
To those many reviewers who have proclaimed that this trilogy only gets better with each book—I'm not buying it, and you shouldn't be selling it. The first story had a progression and a structure that unfolded as it went along, despite the endless repetition of the Ice Hammer ritual—whereas Ice, rollicking around the various inner core and suburban areas of (presumably) late twentieth- or early twenty-first century Moscow, is a rapid-fire assemblage of snapshots of the lives of three blonde Muscovites—student trash, stripper trash, and rich bonds-trader trash—who, having the requisite fair hair and blue-eyes, have been kidnapped by the Brotherhood and given the Hammer ceremony that the latter have been forced into randomly administering to those who fit the genetic profile in order to find where the sleeping Hearts lie. After the bruising deliverance of the chest blows, each of the three is set free to wander around the stale routines of their meat machine lives until their awoken Hearts, attuned to their inherent Light divinity, force them into the week long sob session that announces their full initiation into luminary awareness. Sorokin paints a Moscow life that is suitably grey and grim—rampant drug and alcohol usage, casual sex and hedonistic abandon, rapes, beatings, a listless youth with no hope for the future and slipping back into mysticism or anti-semitic nationalism in order to find some of that fading Russian greatness, organized crime running amok amidst a police force that the citizens seemingly fear more than the criminal gangs; and, lurking behind it all like a Nazi propaganda film cast reunion, the ICE Corporation, the mega-business entity created by the Brotherhood to carry out their grand and sublime eschatological scheme.
The problem is that, while the writing smokes along at a steady clip, the blurred reality it is depicting just isn't that interesting. The characters are flattened cyphers: by the time the story switches to the narrative history of Khamr, Grand Matriarch of the Brotherhood, the elect Sister tutored personally in the 23 Words by Bro from the first book, we know very little about these three acolytes other than that they are intensely irritating and deserving of a swift kick in the ass, the lot of 'em. And since Ice actually preceded Bro in publication, almost the entirety of the tale already related by Bro and fresh in the reader's mind must perforce be retold by Khamr—a differing point of view, certainly, but with details—especially of the Hammer ceremony—virtually the same and truly becoming redundant to the point of absurdity. Perhaps things were about to pick-up where I halted with some seventy pages to go, positioning a Khamr newly returned to Soviet Russia and tentatively setting about the creation of a statewide ICE network using her Brotherhood kin positioned at high levels within the State Security Service MGB (soon to renamed the KGB); but, at this point, I don't really care. I've learned nothing new about the organization that wasn't already related in the first story, or sussed out from the details the latter provided; and the glimpses given of post-Communist Russia are interesting but, really, abstract gazes through moving windows lacking any cohesion. I still mostly enjoyed what I read from an entertainment point of view, but that's about it—and damn it, I was expecting more. Thus, I'm rather sad to say, I believe I'll be reluctantly shelving Sorokin's trilogy until some future date when I feel the urge to finish this up and soothe that part of my mind that excoriates the abandoning of any book, whatever its flaws.
Strangely enough, Sorokin wrote Bro—or at least had it published—a couple of years after he penned Ice, to which the first-named book served as a prequel. It begins in rather commonplace bildungsroman style, recounting the life-forming experiences of a somewhat awkward but vibrant and energetic Russian boy, the son of a wealthy merchant and one apparently being groomed for a career in service of the same. Whilst still a child, however, the Great War befalls the Russian Empire, followed by the Revolution of 1917 and then the Civil War between Reds and Whites, at the end of which our narrator, Alexander Snegirev, finds himself effectively an orphan, the entire male side of his family dead, the female out of reach in Polish exile. In such a lonely, solitary fashion begins his teenage years of restless exile, a peregrine journey across the new Bolshevik State whilst that buoyant enthusiasm that marked his earlier, carefree years slowly ebbs away. Why? Because he has a hazy, premonitory intuition that something way out east, something huge, is exerting a powerful, magnetic attraction upon his de-tuned soul; so it is that, when apparent happenstance offers him the opportunity to partake of Leonid Kulik's third expedition to discover the cause of the mysterious Tunguskan Event—an alleged meteor strike that hit Central Siberia on June 30th, 1908, the exact date that Snegirev was born, and which lit up the blackened Asian sky like a midnight sunrise—he leaps at the chance. By the time the flattened and charred rolling Taiga of the impact zone has been reached—after a lengthy and arduous journey—the other members of the expedition are united in deeming Snegirev, reduced to the rote inertia of a shambling automaton, to have lost his mind, a consensus by all counts confirmed when the latter burns down the base camp and flees, naked, into the bitterly cold Siberian swamp. But there is a method to his madness: he has been pulled in by the Ice, the pyramidal shaped block of frozen, glowing Light that, encased in an iron shell, hurtled into the atmosphere back in 1908; an Ice of cosmic sentience, a primordial luminosity that is kin with what really constitutes the essence of the assemblage of molecules that makes up Snegirev's physical structure: his pneuma, his cosmically-attuned Heart, which, in the presence of the swamp-buried Ice, awakens, coming into an awareness of itself like a pretty stellar-flower unfolding into systemic radiance where previously was an empty, cold, and darkling void.
Attuned to the Ice with a gnostic cardiolucent connection, Snegirev discovers that his true name is Bro, and that he is one of the 23,000, the beams of primordial, eternal, universal, and harmonious light that, in collective concert as they timelessly and tirelessly roamed this expanding multiverse, creating planets and stars and comets and galaxies here and there along the way, somehow took a hankering to construct what came to be know as the Earth, and compounded this error by covering the spheroid in catoptric water, which ensnared them—23,000 light-beams all—and trapped them within the physical confines of that Earth, binding them there within the overarching flow of newly-arisen Time. Slowly-but-surely these smothered spirits, encased within physical structures like amoeba, proto-fish, early mammalians, upright-shuffling apes, and upwards and onwards to fully-formed humans, utterly forgot their Cosmic origins, their refulgent purity and massless eternity. These 23,000 still exist in the Twentieth-Century world, scattered and asleep within the hearts of flesh-and-blood Humanity: but with Bro now conscious of his true Divine nature, his unity with the Universal Harmony of the Divine Light, well, by Ice, he is going to do something about it. He now has a mission, one of overwhelming importance. After immediately awakening another sleeping spirit, a young female whose Light-Name is Fer, Bro discovers that he and his Sister, enjoined at the heart and aware and attuned to each other in a unity and ease incomprehensible to non-luminary mankind, have the combinatory power of functioning as Heart Magnets: in other words, they can, by exerting themselves—a process that prematurely ages them, such is the resistance of this dead and brackish world—discover the other 23,000, enshrouded within vulgar, mortal humanity, who are all fair-haired and blue-eyed, when they are in their proximity. Experimentation reveals to this Cosmological Adam and Eve that by constructing Ice Hammers—shaped chunks of the meteoroid Ice attached via animal skin to regularly formed sticks of wood—and then using such to smash the sternums of the newly discovered dream-stuck, they can shock the heart into knowing itself, discovering its true ethereal identity and its collective interconnectivity with those violent midwifes who comprise their Brethren.
What is the point of all of this strike-and-embrace mummery? Well, it seems that, via the Ice, the vision has been revealed that, if all 23,000 Children of the Divine Light can be awoken from their fleshly prisons and they gather in a circle, by speaking the 23 Light Words of the Heart they will, in effect, snuff this repugnant, vulgar, dead, artificial and universally disharmonious world right the fuck out. It's an Aryan Gnostic Paradise! Evil flesh, with its time-chained excruciations, will instantaneously be rendered into cosmic dust, and the 23,000 can return to their primordial unity within eternal space, shining along the highways of brilliantly aglow galactic nothingness. Gathering the full complement will not prove an easy task, mind you, what with the Stalinist purges and the Second World War doing such a magnificent job of destroying mortal bodies, whether pneuma-enveloping or empty. Bro patiently outlines how the Brotherhood, ever-increasing in size, ever-augments their power and influence—and hence, their ability to locate sleeping hearts—by infiltrating and capturing various levels of the political, commercial, scientific, and cultural hierarchies. The greatest impediment is the fact that only the male-female pair of Heart Magnets can discover the pneuma buried within the flesh, and the effort required to do so drains them of their life-force at an exponential rate. Bro and Fer are dying, dammit, and they must find the young pair who are to succeed them if the Grand Circle is ever to be assembled and this unbearably corrupt and disharmonious Earth be terminated as it oh-so-richly deserves.
Whew. What a story! Sorokin has undoubtedly given his gnostic fantasy a lot of thought, and developed a reasonably consistent and plausible basis for this blonde-haired cult. The reader must indulge him with bouts of suspension-of-belief and a few ridiculous linkages, but on the whole it is a coherent creation. What's more, Sorokin does a nice job of showing Snergirev/Bro's development over time: as a young man describing a world of wonders in flux, then drying out as his Divine Heart assumes control, seizing his reason and enchaining it to a greater cosmological purpose. As Bro, humans become seen, and referred to, as Meat Machines, fleshy systems of growing, eating, digesting, shitting, fucking, killing, mating, and dying, soggily-solid bags of putrescent flesh forever spraying forth liquids and solids, consumed with consuming other inert, lightless items, death-enslaved ghouls living out their purposeless, darkened lives with but one consistency—that of senselessly creating sufficient meat machines to ensure the continuance of this absurd and soulless existence in the service of a corrupted planet. Upon their hammer-wrought rebirth, The Children of Light must enact a material role-playing, pretending to be human when virtually everything humans partake of disgusts and repulses them, especially the eating of cooked flesh or boiled vegetables, the smell of bodies dying with every unaware breath they take. Even when Bro encounters a former first love, or his blood sister lost to him since childhood, since they are not Light-Bearing they hold no more interest for him than driftwood discovered upon a beach.
By the time of the final chapters, Bro takes on a toneless inflection as he labels Nazi Germany the Land of Order and Stalinist Russia as The Land of Ice, where meat machine armies are on the march, using metal pipes to shoot hot objects at each other, or flying in metal containers and dropping heated eggs upon the other's cities. It's the narration of a cold and uninvolved analyst, so removed from the dead world that has entrapped him that he can barely bother to distinguish between the variety of earthly objects that—once he has freed all of the requisite pneuma—will be happily returned to a state of scattered stellar dust. In contrast, whenever Bro or any of his brethren are together, waxing ecstatically about their Hearts and the Divine Light, the book's atmosphere takes on the creepy ebullience of a particularly radiant group of initiates at Jesus Camp. They are Sorokin's gnostic parsing of an experience informed by both Chechen and al-Qaeda terror, of fervent, radical believers willing to countenance indiscriminate violence in order to achieve their horizon-bound goal, though the visceral tinge of delirium within their proclaimed devotions carries the suggestive whiff of Christian mystic cults, or certain Sufi sects.
The reviews for the Ice Trilogy have unanimously announced Bro as being the weakest of the books, which gives me a strong hope and anticipation for the remaining two. Once I became used to Sorokin's conceit of having Snegirev/Bro narrate his story with a declamatory enthusiasm liberally sprinkled with italics and emphasized phrases when attempting to convey in letter-limited text the ecstatic spiritual union between awakened Heart-Consciousnesses, which often reduces the physical body to exhausted sobbing or vomiting and which occurs with a repetition that, it must be said, approaches the best before date, I really settled into Bro and enjoyed what came forth. Within the arch, increasingly dry voice depicting the tale, Sorokin works in some dark humor and bleak comedy, especially in how his Brotherhood of the Light—in addition and at an angle to the religious fundamentalist aspect mentioned above—serves as a cultish stand-in for Communism: a Utopia attainable only in the distant future, but one which commands a total commitment in the present in order to be achieved, and one which deems human life expendable in pursuit of its eschatological goals. As with most such utopian systems, reason must be sublimated to the Divine Will, to the passionate urgings of the Heart/Destiny; and, as the Earth itself is the material prison enchaining these heavenly pneuma, then any exploitation or destruction of it in pursuit of release, reunion, and redemption is both acceptable and necessary. I am looking forward to seeing how the author will evolve this Gnostic Bolshevism to mirror the post-Soviet authoritarianism and free-market shenanigans erected and committed under the blustery smiles of Yeltsin and impenetrable stare of Vladimir Putin.
Part Two—Ice:
To those many reviewers who have proclaimed that this trilogy only gets better with each book—I'm not buying it, and you shouldn't be selling it. The first story had a progression and a structure that unfolded as it went along, despite the endless repetition of the Ice Hammer ritual—whereas Ice, rollicking around the various inner core and suburban areas of (presumably) late twentieth- or early twenty-first century Moscow, is a rapid-fire assemblage of snapshots of the lives of three blonde Muscovites—student trash, stripper trash, and rich bonds-trader trash—who, having the requisite fair hair and blue-eyes, have been kidnapped by the Brotherhood and given the Hammer ceremony that the latter have been forced into randomly administering to those who fit the genetic profile in order to find where the sleeping Hearts lie. After the bruising deliverance of the chest blows, each of the three is set free to wander around the stale routines of their meat machine lives until their awoken Hearts, attuned to their inherent Light divinity, force them into the week long sob session that announces their full initiation into luminary awareness. Sorokin paints a Moscow life that is suitably grey and grim—rampant drug and alcohol usage, casual sex and hedonistic abandon, rapes, beatings, a listless youth with no hope for the future and slipping back into mysticism or anti-semitic nationalism in order to find some of that fading Russian greatness, organized crime running amok amidst a police force that the citizens seemingly fear more than the criminal gangs; and, lurking behind it all like a Nazi propaganda film cast reunion, the ICE Corporation, the mega-business entity created by the Brotherhood to carry out their grand and sublime eschatological scheme.
The problem is that, while the writing smokes along at a steady clip, the blurred reality it is depicting just isn't that interesting. The characters are flattened cyphers: by the time the story switches to the narrative history of Khamr, Grand Matriarch of the Brotherhood, the elect Sister tutored personally in the 23 Words by Bro from the first book, we know very little about these three acolytes other than that they are intensely irritating and deserving of a swift kick in the ass, the lot of 'em. And since Ice actually preceded Bro in publication, almost the entirety of the tale already related by Bro and fresh in the reader's mind must perforce be retold by Khamr—a differing point of view, certainly, but with details—especially of the Hammer ceremony—virtually the same and truly becoming redundant to the point of absurdity. Perhaps things were about to pick-up where I halted with some seventy pages to go, positioning a Khamr newly returned to Soviet Russia and tentatively setting about the creation of a statewide ICE network using her Brotherhood kin positioned at high levels within the State Security Service MGB (soon to renamed the KGB); but, at this point, I don't really care. I've learned nothing new about the organization that wasn't already related in the first story, or sussed out from the details the latter provided; and the glimpses given of post-Communist Russia are interesting but, really, abstract gazes through moving windows lacking any cohesion. I still mostly enjoyed what I read from an entertainment point of view, but that's about it—and damn it, I was expecting more. Thus, I'm rather sad to say, I believe I'll be reluctantly shelving Sorokin's trilogy until some future date when I feel the urge to finish this up and soothe that part of my mind that excoriates the abandoning of any book, whatever its flaws.
September 2, 2018
Hmm, I'm going to be legit with you. I'm somewhere deep in the outskirts of Seattle and its strange environs on the Sound, deep in the wet forest of the Salish Sea. Living out of a car, avoiding hard sunlight from a dying planet, selling evermore expensive space in a small building to those that lack it. And as I write this I am even now weeks removed from those last words I've written for you. I am only writing out of an obsessive need to write (and edit and share at a much later date).
I realize that none of this has anything to do with The Ice Trilogy, to think we has any comparison to a Russian novel filled with a strange secret cult insidiously infesting its message of universal Armageddon through the twentieth century. Yet I think the drive for meaning, finding a meaning, any, is on our minds because somewhere along the line our world and time seems to have become chaotic, violent, and disturbingly finite. That is clearly something maybe the globe shares: a lack of any reason for why violence and madness, poverty and conflict, remain and we continue to destroy our earth and both fight for and plunder our dwindling resources. Where in this do people find meaning in their lives? Perhaps we need to find another way of looking at humanity, if we could somehow look from outside our selves (or dare I say souls?) and turn and look back at ourselves and really just observe.
Perhaps here we have one way. If you have some spare reading time, you might want to give this a look. However, I might note that this really is a wonderful mashup of styles. I really put this in with what I think of as a very Russian --, no, almost Eastern European style of aggressive avant-garde. (Did you ever see Sweet Movie? That kind of aggressive avant garde.)
The Ice Trilogy is divided between three different books, Bro, Ice, and 23000. The NYRB edition with all three is the one to get. The first section Ice is about a man with an unusual birth the same night of the Tunguska
Event. We hear of his rough upbringing and in school, in an adolescent fit of hypos,Russian style, sets himself up with a team to investigate the Tunguska blast site. There he finds himself called to the ice from a strange impulse in his heart. There he finds the ice was calling to him, to tell him of his special significance. Long ago the world was made by a brotherhood of light. The entire universe was made by a brotherhood but we were a by-product. That only these souls mattered. But that you could find these beings with Ice.
Things go quite cultish at this point. With the driving narrative becoming about this group of (sect, seed, religion, alien, it's never really clear, intentionally so).
The Bro narrative includes a span of time from the early part of the 20th century and concludes in the fifties to jump quickly in Ice and 23000 to the 90s and current times. In both is a world not just Russian but Global, Chaotic, and Capitalistic.
The most remarkable aspect of the book, which should be read all as one book, is how convincingly Solokin brings the reader into the central theme of the novel by putting us squarely in the POV of the cult itself, leading to a strange sympathy we have for The Brotherhood. This leads to a unique stance at which to raise questions such as "Do we humans really deserve to be here? Why do we have the lives that we have?" And yet, there is always the nagging lack of any sort of actual alien/spiritual presence outside of humans and their interpretation of humanity in the book. Take that into consideration while reading this book. Prepare to be taken for quite the literary roller coaster ride. And just remember that you will have no idea where it ends.
I realize that none of this has anything to do with The Ice Trilogy, to think we has any comparison to a Russian novel filled with a strange secret cult insidiously infesting its message of universal Armageddon through the twentieth century. Yet I think the drive for meaning, finding a meaning, any, is on our minds because somewhere along the line our world and time seems to have become chaotic, violent, and disturbingly finite. That is clearly something maybe the globe shares: a lack of any reason for why violence and madness, poverty and conflict, remain and we continue to destroy our earth and both fight for and plunder our dwindling resources. Where in this do people find meaning in their lives? Perhaps we need to find another way of looking at humanity, if we could somehow look from outside our selves (or dare I say souls?) and turn and look back at ourselves and really just observe.
Perhaps here we have one way. If you have some spare reading time, you might want to give this a look. However, I might note that this really is a wonderful mashup of styles. I really put this in with what I think of as a very Russian --, no, almost Eastern European style of aggressive avant-garde. (Did you ever see Sweet Movie? That kind of aggressive avant garde.)
The Ice Trilogy is divided between three different books, Bro, Ice, and 23000. The NYRB edition with all three is the one to get. The first section Ice is about a man with an unusual birth the same night of the Tunguska
Event. We hear of his rough upbringing and in school, in an adolescent fit of hypos,Russian style, sets himself up with a team to investigate the Tunguska blast site. There he finds himself called to the ice from a strange impulse in his heart. There he finds the ice was calling to him, to tell him of his special significance. Long ago the world was made by a brotherhood of light. The entire universe was made by a brotherhood but we were a by-product. That only these souls mattered. But that you could find these beings with Ice.
Things go quite cultish at this point. With the driving narrative becoming about this group of (sect, seed, religion, alien, it's never really clear, intentionally so).
The Bro narrative includes a span of time from the early part of the 20th century and concludes in the fifties to jump quickly in Ice and 23000 to the 90s and current times. In both is a world not just Russian but Global, Chaotic, and Capitalistic.
The most remarkable aspect of the book, which should be read all as one book, is how convincingly Solokin brings the reader into the central theme of the novel by putting us squarely in the POV of the cult itself, leading to a strange sympathy we have for The Brotherhood. This leads to a unique stance at which to raise questions such as "Do we humans really deserve to be here? Why do we have the lives that we have?" And yet, there is always the nagging lack of any sort of actual alien/spiritual presence outside of humans and their interpretation of humanity in the book. Take that into consideration while reading this book. Prepare to be taken for quite the literary roller coaster ride. And just remember that you will have no idea where it ends.
December 19, 2018
This was my debut and retirement as a reader of Vladimir Sorokin and probably all of Russian sci-fi in general. Not that I was much of a non-Russian sci-fi reader to begin with.
I own a physical copy of this book, which I bought about a decade ago because of some stellar reviews. Finally got around to reading it, wanting to find out if it's worth taking up so much shelf space. Spoiler alert: it wasn't.
It's about 700-pages long, containing the whole trilogy under one cover. So this is what goes toward my reading challenge. But since the trilogy is very jumpy and uneven, compiling all of my thoughts into one review would be too much. So I decided to review books 1-3 separately.
Here are my reviews for:
- Ice;
- Bro;
- 23000.
I own a physical copy of this book, which I bought about a decade ago because of some stellar reviews. Finally got around to reading it, wanting to find out if it's worth taking up so much shelf space. Spoiler alert: it wasn't.
It's about 700-pages long, containing the whole trilogy under one cover. So this is what goes toward my reading challenge. But since the trilogy is very jumpy and uneven, compiling all of my thoughts into one review would be too much. So I decided to review books 1-3 separately.
Here are my reviews for:
- Ice;
- Bro;
- 23000.
September 9, 2018
When you created the entire universe but you also created a a water planet by mistake and you reflect and get trapped inside of it creating something called life that conflicts with the rest of the universe and you evolve with it despising until you reach an hominid form and found another part of you in the form of ice and you have to wake your 23,000 parts punching them in the heart so they can speak and remember who you are so you can become light again and eradicate the Earth and become free of your biological cage but the meat machines start the ww2 and you cant advance until the end of the 20 century becoming a multinational corporation selling them ice videogames and then reunite all your parts advancing the final part of your plan and start talking with the Heart and all of you die while you start talking finding that you ended life on Earth in way because all of your parts are now dead and the Earth will keep existing while you go back to your empty not being state without changing anything at all
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
January 3, 2016
whoa, the ending was unexpected
May 17, 2011
I wanted to like this book. I really did. But I didn't. The concept of a book this large written from the point of view of, or at least spending the most time in the story of, a bunch of primordial light that became trapped in human bodies during the creation of the earth and that now want to destroy Earth in order to become light again. As a reader and a human, it's kind of difficult to root for the light beings. Especially as they aren't written to be terribly sympathetic.
So let's see. Sorokhin uses the actual, historical Tungus Event as an origin, wherein a huge block of ice hits Earth in 1908. But it isn't just any ice. It's special, primordial ice that calls the people who have the primordial light in them to itself and "awakens" them to what they really are and what they must do. What must they do? The must find and awaken their 23,000 "brothers and sisters" so they can stand in a circle and become light again. And in the process they will disintegrate the Earth, which is a mistake, a blight on the otherwise balanced and harmonious universe. In order to awaken their brothers and sisters, the protagonists (if you can call them that), have to break of pieces of the ice, fashion hammers of them, and hit each other in the chest really hard. Oh, and all the brothers and sisters of the light have blonde hair and blue eyes. And they only eat nuts and berries. And their "real names" are mostly one-syllable grunty sounds like "Bro" and "Fer" and "Uf."
A lot of time is spent on the process of hammering potential light people. Their hearts awaken. Their hearts "talk" to each other. There's a lot of crying. Over and over and over and over. Some traditionally narrative hijinks ensue, but none of these passages are sustained enough to really gain my buy-in as a reader.
Set against the backdrop of chaotic 20th-century Russia and Germany, I suppose much of the book can be read as a somewhat comedic commentary on sectarian group-think. There are some clever characterizations of human motivates and behavior as seen from the outside.
HERE BE SPOILERS (i.e., if you think you might make questionable choice to read Ice Trilogy, you'd best stop here)
*
*
*
*
*
OK, so the really fascinating thing about the book, and the thing that kept me reading it, was this: How does one resolve a plotline wherein success for the protagonists = the destruction of the Earth? You know, because your readers are living on Earth, and if you tell them Earth has been destroyed, they might not be able to suspend disbelief enough to go there with you. Even if it means that all the blonde, blue-eyed people get to become rays of light and live in the harmonious universe once more, which hasn't really been built up to seem that awesome, anyway. But maybe that's just my human perspective getting in the way.
So I'll spare you the 900 or so pages of torture. The light people miraculously find and awaken all 23,000 of themselves and somehow gather together and form the circle of mass destruction and light. But apparently they made Earth too strong, because all of their light bounces off it and kills their human bodies. We aren't told what happens to all the light. Presumably, because of certain laws, it still exists somewhere and the light people will continue to reincarnate on Earth or something. Then there are these two regular people who were introduced in the last section of the book who witness the whole shebang and are so mind-blown by it that they decide they believe in God now. Because I guess in the face of total chaos and absurdity, where else is there to turn?
Yeah, I'm not buying what Sorokin's selling. The experience of reading Ice Trilogy is somewhat like that of hearing the joke "golf balls," which is one of those long and sprawling jokes about a person on a quest that goes on forever until--suddenly--the questor is killed in some freak accident before he/she can find the thing he/she is looking for. And the comedy (if you want to call it that) is all in how the teller strung the listener along for so long for absolutely no payoff.
Well played, Sorokin. You got me.
So let's see. Sorokhin uses the actual, historical Tungus Event as an origin, wherein a huge block of ice hits Earth in 1908. But it isn't just any ice. It's special, primordial ice that calls the people who have the primordial light in them to itself and "awakens" them to what they really are and what they must do. What must they do? The must find and awaken their 23,000 "brothers and sisters" so they can stand in a circle and become light again. And in the process they will disintegrate the Earth, which is a mistake, a blight on the otherwise balanced and harmonious universe. In order to awaken their brothers and sisters, the protagonists (if you can call them that), have to break of pieces of the ice, fashion hammers of them, and hit each other in the chest really hard. Oh, and all the brothers and sisters of the light have blonde hair and blue eyes. And they only eat nuts and berries. And their "real names" are mostly one-syllable grunty sounds like "Bro" and "Fer" and "Uf."
A lot of time is spent on the process of hammering potential light people. Their hearts awaken. Their hearts "talk" to each other. There's a lot of crying. Over and over and over and over. Some traditionally narrative hijinks ensue, but none of these passages are sustained enough to really gain my buy-in as a reader.
Set against the backdrop of chaotic 20th-century Russia and Germany, I suppose much of the book can be read as a somewhat comedic commentary on sectarian group-think. There are some clever characterizations of human motivates and behavior as seen from the outside.
HERE BE SPOILERS (i.e., if you think you might make questionable choice to read Ice Trilogy, you'd best stop here)
*
*
*
*
*
OK, so the really fascinating thing about the book, and the thing that kept me reading it, was this: How does one resolve a plotline wherein success for the protagonists = the destruction of the Earth? You know, because your readers are living on Earth, and if you tell them Earth has been destroyed, they might not be able to suspend disbelief enough to go there with you. Even if it means that all the blonde, blue-eyed people get to become rays of light and live in the harmonious universe once more, which hasn't really been built up to seem that awesome, anyway. But maybe that's just my human perspective getting in the way.
So I'll spare you the 900 or so pages of torture. The light people miraculously find and awaken all 23,000 of themselves and somehow gather together and form the circle of mass destruction and light. But apparently they made Earth too strong, because all of their light bounces off it and kills their human bodies. We aren't told what happens to all the light. Presumably, because of certain laws, it still exists somewhere and the light people will continue to reincarnate on Earth or something. Then there are these two regular people who were introduced in the last section of the book who witness the whole shebang and are so mind-blown by it that they decide they believe in God now. Because I guess in the face of total chaos and absurdity, where else is there to turn?
Yeah, I'm not buying what Sorokin's selling. The experience of reading Ice Trilogy is somewhat like that of hearing the joke "golf balls," which is one of those long and sprawling jokes about a person on a quest that goes on forever until--suddenly--the questor is killed in some freak accident before he/she can find the thing he/she is looking for. And the comedy (if you want to call it that) is all in how the teller strung the listener along for so long for absolutely no payoff.
Well played, Sorokin. You got me.
December 11, 2012
In the beginning there was light and the light moved through the perfect universe, perfect in its motion and its existence. The light moved past perfect worlds in the perfect void. It saw a sphere of pure liquid, beautiful in its perfection. The light shone into it, entered that perfect prison, that labyrinth of refraction that shattered the light into 23,000 pieces!
The light moved about, stirring the waters, heating things up. Life bloomed, countless generations of evolutionary multitudes rising and falling in that perfect sphere. Unthinkable periods of time passed, and the 23,000 pieces of light, blind, deaf, asleep, caught up in that sphere of fecundity, moved in the species, grew in intelligence as its meat grew in capabilities. Each shard of light was imprisoned in a body of meat, and its death sent the light into a new prison of meat.
Enter humanity.
And a meteor from space, carrying precious ice, one of the light's creations from another of its perfect planets. It was time for the light to wake up. To come together once more!
Bro, the first book is a departure from what I've read by Sorokin. Narrated by Snegirev, who would eventually become the figurative Moses of the Brotherhood of the Light, whose heart spoke his true name as "Bro, bro, bro!" Sweeping, spinning off into tangents, it shows the Brotherhood's first difficult steps from Snegirev's hurtling himself onto the ice, that glorious ice from outer space, to split open his breastplate and awaken his heart. Dialogue, one of Sorokin's strengths like you see in "The Queue" or "Day of the Oprichnik", is left at a minimal. You also can't believe it, coming from Sorokin. Is he being facetious, trying to do a pastiche some unknown pulp sentiment or another? There's only people pressing chests together then fainting into a hours long paralysis as their hearts speak together in what can only be described as an orgasm, heroin injection, and a religious epiphany rolled into a single package. Bro has laid out the Brotherhood of the Light's mission... Humans are meat machines, and therefore are obstacles—and tools—to the ultimate goal: the gathering of the 23,000 pieces of light which reside in blue eyed and blonde individuals. Only then may they reunite in an incandescent destruction of the Earth and humans, which they regard as their Great Mistake.
When I read Ice, I was like "There you are, Vladimir!" He's come back, in his gritty irreverence and flawless dialogue. You also realize, Bro was essential in understanding this book. While Bro encompassed time in large brush strokes, you are thrust into the moment in Ice. You see how each individual experiences the awakening,from the first frightening moment you stare into the eyes of the crazed individual rearing back with an ice hammer tied to a piece of wood with the skin of an animal that has died naturally. Then your heart awakens, but you don't believe... until the time of sobbing, and your brothers and sister come unto you and welcome you joyfully to the truth as they press their ice hammer scarred chests against your newly shattered breast to speak with your heart.
23,000 is my favorite part of the whole novel, probably, because of how Sorokin portrays the meat coagulating. Yes, the meat coagulates, they do, and the Brotherhood has to beat back that unconscious desire of Mankind which desists destruction with a collective heart.
Fucking Russian writers. To be fair I should say fucking contemporary Russian writers, but only because that's the limit of my experience. This is uttered with the utmost respect and appreciation.
Coming off Tatalyna Tosalya's The Slynx to this, and seeing how she and Sorokin both gave a conclusion like they did, I beat my head against something. They lay out their tale to you, and at the very end, reveal a hitherto to the moment, non-existent concept or player, which hints at a higher order to things, of larger and darker things afoot. Like the novel was a minnow wallowing in a pool filled with bigger stories, but we can only see that dim deepness from the limited vantage of our our gloaming shoal.
The light moved about, stirring the waters, heating things up. Life bloomed, countless generations of evolutionary multitudes rising and falling in that perfect sphere. Unthinkable periods of time passed, and the 23,000 pieces of light, blind, deaf, asleep, caught up in that sphere of fecundity, moved in the species, grew in intelligence as its meat grew in capabilities. Each shard of light was imprisoned in a body of meat, and its death sent the light into a new prison of meat.
Enter humanity.
And a meteor from space, carrying precious ice, one of the light's creations from another of its perfect planets. It was time for the light to wake up. To come together once more!
Bro, the first book is a departure from what I've read by Sorokin. Narrated by Snegirev, who would eventually become the figurative Moses of the Brotherhood of the Light, whose heart spoke his true name as "Bro, bro, bro!" Sweeping, spinning off into tangents, it shows the Brotherhood's first difficult steps from Snegirev's hurtling himself onto the ice, that glorious ice from outer space, to split open his breastplate and awaken his heart. Dialogue, one of Sorokin's strengths like you see in "The Queue" or "Day of the Oprichnik", is left at a minimal. You also can't believe it, coming from Sorokin. Is he being facetious, trying to do a pastiche some unknown pulp sentiment or another? There's only people pressing chests together then fainting into a hours long paralysis as their hearts speak together in what can only be described as an orgasm, heroin injection, and a religious epiphany rolled into a single package. Bro has laid out the Brotherhood of the Light's mission... Humans are meat machines, and therefore are obstacles—and tools—to the ultimate goal: the gathering of the 23,000 pieces of light which reside in blue eyed and blonde individuals. Only then may they reunite in an incandescent destruction of the Earth and humans, which they regard as their Great Mistake.
When I read Ice, I was like "There you are, Vladimir!" He's come back, in his gritty irreverence and flawless dialogue. You also realize, Bro was essential in understanding this book. While Bro encompassed time in large brush strokes, you are thrust into the moment in Ice. You see how each individual experiences the awakening,from the first frightening moment you stare into the eyes of the crazed individual rearing back with an ice hammer tied to a piece of wood with the skin of an animal that has died naturally. Then your heart awakens, but you don't believe... until the time of sobbing, and your brothers and sister come unto you and welcome you joyfully to the truth as they press their ice hammer scarred chests against your newly shattered breast to speak with your heart.
23,000 is my favorite part of the whole novel, probably, because of how Sorokin portrays the meat coagulating. Yes, the meat coagulates, they do, and the Brotherhood has to beat back that unconscious desire of Mankind which desists destruction with a collective heart.
Fucking Russian writers. To be fair I should say fucking contemporary Russian writers, but only because that's the limit of my experience. This is uttered with the utmost respect and appreciation.
Coming off Tatalyna Tosalya's The Slynx to this, and seeing how she and Sorokin both gave a conclusion like they did, I beat my head against something. They lay out their tale to you, and at the very end, reveal a hitherto to the moment, non-existent concept or player, which hints at a higher order to things, of larger and darker things afoot. Like the novel was a minnow wallowing in a pool filled with bigger stories, but we can only see that dim deepness from the limited vantage of our our gloaming shoal.
May 6, 2013
Um, what now?
My original intention was to review each of the three books in the Ice Trilogy. As you can see below, I only really reviewed the first one, Bro. It also took me 6 months of faffing about to finish the book. (Yes, I read some amazing books in the meantime.)
The beginning was brilliant. The ending was fun and interesting. But, man, I don't think Sorokin makes a very good case for weird or satirical fiction here. There was almost no humor, or at least sideways references to the real world like in most weird fiction. I can't possibly imagine what kind of allegory he might be getting at. The story almost seems gratuitously odd, without much of a payoff for the reader.
It wasn't for me, but it might be for you?
I know that part of the appeal of Sorokin is how much he has pissed off the Russian government by going overboard. (In one of his previous books, he has clones of Stalin and Khrushchev having sex.) This didn't feel overboard at all. Just overly repetitious.
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Christmas present from my husband!
-------------
BRO
Make no mistake, this is metaphysical science fiction with an experimental story telling style, yet really well written. The first third feels like a very traditional Russian storyline. Then the middle third, I was all, "um... whaaa?" It was fairly repetitious though the middle. Finally the last third picked up again and it was fun seeing the story follow history.
Sorry for the vagueness, but it's incredibly hard to describe what's going on without giving the whole thing away.
Putting this aside over the holidays to read some easy, breezy, cheesy books.
My original intention was to review each of the three books in the Ice Trilogy. As you can see below, I only really reviewed the first one, Bro. It also took me 6 months of faffing about to finish the book. (Yes, I read some amazing books in the meantime.)
The beginning was brilliant. The ending was fun and interesting. But, man, I don't think Sorokin makes a very good case for weird or satirical fiction here. There was almost no humor, or at least sideways references to the real world like in most weird fiction. I can't possibly imagine what kind of allegory he might be getting at. The story almost seems gratuitously odd, without much of a payoff for the reader.
It wasn't for me, but it might be for you?
I know that part of the appeal of Sorokin is how much he has pissed off the Russian government by going overboard. (In one of his previous books, he has clones of Stalin and Khrushchev having sex.) This didn't feel overboard at all. Just overly repetitious.
-------------
Christmas present from my husband!
-------------
BRO
Make no mistake, this is metaphysical science fiction with an experimental story telling style, yet really well written. The first third feels like a very traditional Russian storyline. Then the middle third, I was all, "um... whaaa?" It was fairly repetitious though the middle. Finally the last third picked up again and it was fun seeing the story follow history.
Sorry for the vagueness, but it's incredibly hard to describe what's going on without giving the whole thing away.
Putting this aside over the holidays to read some easy, breezy, cheesy books.
March 13, 2014
Full of stunning original ideas, yet somewhat sloppy in the execution. I feel like I'm giving this more stars than it really deserves simply because I've never encountered anything like it.
The first real stumbling block is the fact that the first two books are essentially the same plot (book 2 was actually written first, but book 1 is much better written). The 3rd book really pulls out all of the stops and is enjoyably insane, yet the place it ends up in is sort of unsatisfying (mainly because of the somewhat weak characterization of the book's final protagonists). Still, this is a very cool (GET IT??) take on religion, cultism, and the how one man's heinous evil can be another man's act of salvation.
The first real stumbling block is the fact that the first two books are essentially the same plot (book 2 was actually written first, but book 1 is much better written). The 3rd book really pulls out all of the stops and is enjoyably insane, yet the place it ends up in is sort of unsatisfying (mainly because of the somewhat weak characterization of the book's final protagonists). Still, this is a very cool (GET IT??) take on religion, cultism, and the how one man's heinous evil can be another man's act of salvation.
October 7, 2017
Speculative fiction bordering on fantasy, pretty warped in some ways, but nothing too unacceptable. It’s a fresh plot, though the writing style can be quite tedious to read. Sorokin dipped his toes into history for this one as well, which gave the book more depth. For such a thick book, it was not difficult to get through as the story ambled along. It was interesting that the story could take unexpected turns, not predictable like many plots. However, the ending was unexpected, and I personally felt that it was underwhelming.
June 3, 2013
This is a delightful fever dream of a science fiction novel. I was a little intimidated when I picked it up because it’s 700 pages. I knew that if it weren’t entrancing, I’d never make it through. Luckily, there was never a dull moment and I had no problem devouring the book.
The narrative starts out as a fairly conventional history of a young man who grew up during the Russian Revolution. Soon, however, the novel takes a sharp left turn into an area of fantasy. The protagonist of the first book, Bro, is awakened to his true nature through contact with an asteroid. He is one of 23,000 light bearers who were the original creators of the universe but are now trapped, asleep, in human form. His mission is to awaken his brothers and sisters and destroy the Earth. This decades long mission intertwines with the turbulent history of Russia in the 1900’s.
Sorokin’s writing is gripping. The book has been translated from Russian but the feeling of the writing comes through loud and clear. The awakening process, which occurs regularly to different characters throughout the novel, and the bizarre connection experienced by members of the Brotherhood are extremely visceral.
The entire premise of the novel, and the ending especially, made me feel very conflicted. It’s a little strange to be asked to identify with the light bearers in the novel. They are cruel and alien and their ultimate goal is the destruction of all life in the universe. They form a creepy cult and have bizarre physical interactions where they speak to each other with their hearts. The discomfort I felt with the protagonists was part of what made this book so interesting. I was never sure exactly who or what I was rooting for.
The suspense of the narrative built steadily throughout the novel. By the end I was in a frenzy to know what happened. I stayed up until 1 a.m. finishing the novel and felt very satisfied by the whole experience.
The narrative starts out as a fairly conventional history of a young man who grew up during the Russian Revolution. Soon, however, the novel takes a sharp left turn into an area of fantasy. The protagonist of the first book, Bro, is awakened to his true nature through contact with an asteroid. He is one of 23,000 light bearers who were the original creators of the universe but are now trapped, asleep, in human form. His mission is to awaken his brothers and sisters and destroy the Earth. This decades long mission intertwines with the turbulent history of Russia in the 1900’s.
Sorokin’s writing is gripping. The book has been translated from Russian but the feeling of the writing comes through loud and clear. The awakening process, which occurs regularly to different characters throughout the novel, and the bizarre connection experienced by members of the Brotherhood are extremely visceral.
The entire premise of the novel, and the ending especially, made me feel very conflicted. It’s a little strange to be asked to identify with the light bearers in the novel. They are cruel and alien and their ultimate goal is the destruction of all life in the universe. They form a creepy cult and have bizarre physical interactions where they speak to each other with their hearts. The discomfort I felt with the protagonists was part of what made this book so interesting. I was never sure exactly who or what I was rooting for.
The suspense of the narrative built steadily throughout the novel. By the end I was in a frenzy to know what happened. I stayed up until 1 a.m. finishing the novel and felt very satisfied by the whole experience.
October 9, 2011
There were several factors that lead me to pick up the Ice Trilogy on a particularly hot, low-key, and eventually more expensive than I planned July 23:
1. It was my birthday
2. It's Russian
3. The synopsis sounded interesting
4. The repetition of the number 23
And now, after two (?) months of reading this book, I think it best that I should learn that not everything that has a 23 is going to be enlightening.
I enjoyed the first chapter. I rather liked the beginning of the second book. And by the time I got to the final book I just wanted to finish the thing so I could read something else.
What is probably a high treatise on the nature of humanity with deference to our moral and, perhaps, religious evolution I found to be a trifle condescending, overly repetitious, and ultimately inconclusive.
Honestly, how many times can one read about people being hammered?! Same old song and dance, no matter which way you say it. And why should I care about all these individuals, who I'm going to forget even if I do see them again? And if there's a point in this sort of hermeneutics, I certainly missed it, since nothing changes from each instance and the conclusions remain the same.
And how is it that, when the rays of Light die, they're reincarnated with different names? Wouldn't they be the same? Wouldn't their hearts know as much as they had? There's 23,000 of them, and have apparently been since the dawn of time, so how is it that they go through permutations? Doesn't that contradict the nature of their immobile, unchanging perfection? (Shouldn't we be awaiting the return of Bro and Fer like some sort of Messiah? It's New Age-y enough for that, I'd think.)
And, so then, is the Brotherhood of the Light the Great Mistake? That their time has come to an end? Because the Earth's still there. Or did the Light grant us pardon?
1. It was my birthday
2. It's Russian
3. The synopsis sounded interesting
4. The repetition of the number 23
And now, after two (?) months of reading this book, I think it best that I should learn that not everything that has a 23 is going to be enlightening.
I enjoyed the first chapter. I rather liked the beginning of the second book. And by the time I got to the final book I just wanted to finish the thing so I could read something else.
What is probably a high treatise on the nature of humanity with deference to our moral and, perhaps, religious evolution I found to be a trifle condescending, overly repetitious, and ultimately inconclusive.
Honestly, how many times can one read about people being hammered?! Same old song and dance, no matter which way you say it. And why should I care about all these individuals, who I'm going to forget even if I do see them again? And if there's a point in this sort of hermeneutics, I certainly missed it, since nothing changes from each instance and the conclusions remain the same.
And how is it that, when the rays of Light die, they're reincarnated with different names? Wouldn't they be the same? Wouldn't their hearts know as much as they had? There's 23,000 of them, and have apparently been since the dawn of time, so how is it that they go through permutations? Doesn't that contradict the nature of their immobile, unchanging perfection? (Shouldn't we be awaiting the return of Bro and Fer like some sort of Messiah? It's New Age-y enough for that, I'd think.)
And, so then, is the Brotherhood of the Light the Great Mistake? That their time has come to an end? Because the Earth's still there. Or did the Light grant us pardon?
August 3, 2011
The book questions whether all of human progress has taken us away from salvation, not along moral channels the way most religions do, but along technological and societal channels. Eternity, Sorokin's sect suggests, is the natural state of being, and human beings were an accidental interruption of it. All of our knowledge and advancement represents a cancer growing upon the pure and lifeless beauty inherent in the universe. This question of progress begets another question, asked directly of religion: does mankind deserve to exist? Our creation is always assumed to be a positive and purposeful development. But there is no guarantee of that, and our failure to establish peace and happiness on the earth could be proof of God's mistake as much as it could be proof of his wrath.
The three books in this bound trilogy chronicle an entire sci-fi noir mythology, told from the cultish perspective of a sect's founder, the confused ramblings of its converts, and the heroic quest of its opposition. At the same time, the story is brilliantly snuck into the main timeline of the 20th century, requiring no alterations to history to work. And the twisted ending goes far beyond what you can imagine, leaving the reader with a much bigger set of ideas and questions than imagined at the start.
The three books in this bound trilogy chronicle an entire sci-fi noir mythology, told from the cultish perspective of a sect's founder, the confused ramblings of its converts, and the heroic quest of its opposition. At the same time, the story is brilliantly snuck into the main timeline of the 20th century, requiring no alterations to history to work. And the twisted ending goes far beyond what you can imagine, leaving the reader with a much bigger set of ideas and questions than imagined at the start.
November 27, 2012
This is an astonishing book, It's not at all what you expect: infuriatingly prolix, grotesquely over-written as only a Russian novel can be. And yet the writing is beautiful and the plot is a tour-de-force leading you into new dimensions without ever letting you know where you are going, right to the climax which is as unexpected as it is startling. You have to sit for a few minutes and let your mind stumble back to reality. Along the way you see the 20th Century from an entirely new perspective. It can make you angry and indignant with the protagonists, who are just as sublime and bestial as zealots always are. Along the way you are never certain whether you want them to succeed or fail, and that alone keeps drawing you foreward. It's not a complex story, You are given the broad outlines right from the start (or somewhere in the last third of the first book). Even so, the author keeps finding new ways to baffle and intrigue, up to the very last page.
April 26, 2017
I kept putting this book off, mainly because of its size, but once I got into it it flew by. I was a fan of the Russian film "4" that Sorokin wrote. Like that film it is uniquely weird and combines so many genres in its sprawling tale of the discovery of the 23,000 that it never really gets boring. Sorokin lets characters die, has them vanish into the prose, it's very clever with its metaphors. I don't think there's really anything quite like it, maybe it gets close to magical realism in a way but still maintains this sci-fi, criminal element. Again, the difficulty to pigeonhole it makes it stand out.
July 24, 2013
Whoa. Not for everyone. But definitely for me! Relates the epic destructiveness of human culture in the 20th century to our drive towards transcendence (be that religious or scientific/technological). It asks the reader to try to understand the viewpoint of essentially in-human beings, and an order to the universe that may not ideally include people. Tough stuff, but utterly fascinating and grandly entertaining to those that have a dark, philosophical bent.
July 21, 2011
I don't claim to be an excellent reviewer, but I loved this book and this is what I thought: http://shorts.nthword.com/2011/07/rev...
June 2, 2011
*GoodReads needs to allow half-stars.*
I think this would make a better miniseries than a book, but it's still fairly interesting. To me. I don't know anyone else who's read this and liked it. It's not particularly well written, the characters are pretty flat, it's extremely repetitive, etc. . . . Yet, the concept of this story--new agey cult believes that the ice meteor that caused the Tungus incident awakens the hearts of a chosen 23,000 who will bring about the transformation of the world--is creepy in a very intriguing way. Especially as all 23,000 are "awoken" and start to gather . . .
**
Here's the full review that I wrote for Three Percent (http://www.rochester.edu/College/tran...
Back a few years ago, New York Review Books released Ice, one of the first books by Russian literati bad boy Vladimir Sorokin to make its way into America. After all the hype surrounding Sorokin--for being the star of post-Glasnost Russian literature, for being well hated by the Putin Youth, for writing fairly offensive books involving people "eating packets of shit" and "fucking the earth"--this novel was a bit disappointing. Not that it was bad, just underwhelming.
In a way, it's unfortunate that Ice ever came out as a standalone volume. Put in context between the novels Bro and 23,000 it feels much more expansive and spooky, making the whole project significantly more fascinating.
That said, this trilogy would work much better as a TV miniseries . . . It's one of those books that I wish I could edit wholesale. I'd love to cut this book apart, partially restructure it, trim away some of the redundancies, speed up the overall pacing, and really play up the Lost-style creepiness.
So, rather than analyze the book as is, I'm going to spoil the whole thing right here and now by recounting the six-part miniseries version that exists in my mind:
Episode One: Open in Siberia 1908 with a woman in Russia giving birth to a baby boy who is born at almost the exact moment of the Tunguska event. Huge explosion in the sky, crazy colors. Should be disorienting and ominous. Camera leaves the intimacy of the house where Alexander was born to pan upwards to show a huge region of Siberia that's been totally flattened by this mysterious event. By a huge ice meteor that's now mostly buried in the permafrost.
In present times, Olga travels to Israel to meet Bjorn, a man that she met through a online message board for people who have suffered and survived the "Ice Hammer." When they meet, they show each other these strange scars on their breastbones. Every time Olga touches her chest, we get a flashback to a time when she was tricked and drugged and bashed in the chest with an "ice hammer" (a stick with a chunk of ice at the end of it) by some strange blond haired and blue eyed people who keep urging her to "speak with her heart." She was left for dead, and is now determined to figure out who the fuck these people are.
These flashbacks correspond with the story they hear from the old man they go to meet--a dying Jew who, during WWII, was part of a group of kids pulled from a camp and taken to the woods where several are smashed in the chests with ice hammers. He describes two ancient, almost otherworldly people who seemed to be in charge, and watched the smashing in silence, with serenely creepy looks on their faces. Episode ends with the camera focusing in on their faces.
Episode Two: Alexander (born at the start of episode one) is now in college. He pines after a pretty young thing, but she's all wrapped up in Kulik, a renegade science professor who is determined to find the Tungus meteor. As a way of impressing the girl, Alexander joins up with Kulik's latest expedition into Siberia. There are trials, tribulations, and as they grow closer to the spot where the meteor landed, Alexander falls into a fugue state resulting in his being separated from the rest of the group. Wandering around, he is drawn to a particular swampy area where he uncovers the Tungus ice meteor. He falls upon the ice, feels his heart "awaken," finds out his true name is "Bro," and hears an otherworldly voice explain how once upon a time there were 23,000 "Light-bearing rays" that created all the worlds of the universe. Their one mistake was creating Earth, which was filled with "disharmonious water." Because of the water's mirror-like qualities, the 23,000 rays of light get trapped, become humans, cause violence, fuck shit up, etc. There is a solution though! Once the hearts of all 23,000 "rays" are awoken and learn all the "heart words," they can form a huge circle and the universe will be reborn in healthy, sublime light. It's like hippy paradise. (See pages 77-80 for the complete new age description.)
Back in current times, Olga and Bjorn are in Guangzhou having dinner with Michael Laird, another ice hammer survivor. He explains a bit more to them about the Brotherhood of the Light and the way they use the ICE Corporation as a front to find the 23,000 who will awake and turn into light, etc., etc. When Olga asks why Michael and his fellow investigators are in Guangzhou, he explains that this is where the Brotherhood is based, where the 23,000 are going to gather and bring about the new world. They toast to the "resistance," the Michael puts down his glass without taking a sip, and Olga and Bjorn slump to the floor. A waiter ties up Olga's and Bjorn's hands and carry them out of the restaurant.
Episode Three: Bro leaves the swamp with a huge chunk of the Tungus ice, in search of some guidance as to how to start this rebirthing process. He finds a girl; in his eyes, her chest glows. He bashes her with some ice (thank you very much!) and "Fer's" heart is awoken. They embrace in a loving, still asexual way as their hearts speak to one another. In a Zen bliss that's as creepy as it is content, they wander Siberia, discovering other chosen people, and indoctrinating them into the Brotherhood by slamming them with ice until their heart speaks their true name. During this phase of the Brotherhood, there's a lot of "heart conversations" and weeping over the sadness of the world. There's also a lot of hope--these people truly believe that they will bring about universal nirvana. They are sweet, totally asexual, and operate in a sort of benevolent hive-mind fashion. Their numbers grow slowly, but since Fer & Bro (when together) can see exactly who is a chosen person and who isn't, they are extremely efficient in their operations. But then Fer dies . . .
Olga and Bjorn are now working in the "Dead Bitches Factory" where they skin dead dogs in order to make the straps for the ice hammers. There are 189 people trapped in this underground factory filled with hanging dogs and sterile jail-cell dormitories. Olga tries to rebel, yelling "Fuck you!" at one of the cameras. A bunch of Chinese men flood into the factory and tase the shit out of her. Fade to black.
Episode Four: After the passing of Fer, the Brotherhood searches for another person with her abilities. Eventually, they awaken Khram, who sort of has the gift of being able to identify other "rays of light," but not really. So the Brotherhood starts kidnapping and bashing all sorts of blond-haired, blue-eyed people in search of new members and the heartmate that would enhance Khram's abilities. Bro dies and it's up to her to lead the Brotherhood on the path toward 23,000. Their numbers increase steadily through random attempts, but it's slow going through Soviet times when they face persecution from a few sides. Nevertheless, when people's hearts are awoken, the Brotherhood takes care of them physically and financially, and they all have a chance to do some naked (non-sexual) heart-bonding. And based on the looks on their faces, this is some good stuff.
A really old man invites Olga to sit with him during lunch. She's still a bit discombobulated from the post-outburst beatdown, but she senses that this man knows more than he's letting on. The guy--Ernst Wolf--ends up explaining that his father is one of the main leaders of the Brotherhood. Ernst ended up down here after he was bashed at age 17 and it was determined that he was an "empty shell," and not one of the rays of light. He tells Olga about a time he saw his father and 22 others in a small circle, unmoving, speaking with their hearts, etc. Ernst trying to disrupt the hippy heart speak by hitting his father with a red-hot poker, but his dad didn't even flinch, even as his skin burned. Ernst believes in the Great Transformation of the 23,000. But he also thinks this could be very bad shit. As he's carted off to be killed (sub-plot: Ernst has cancer, no one who is sick can remain in the factory, etc.), he slips Olga a note and a key to a possible way out.
Episode ends with an infomercial for the ICE Machine--a high-tech flak jacket complete with an "ice chamber" over the middle that, once you put this on and plug it in, bashes you in the chest until your heart wakes up and you hallucinate a circle of happy people. According to the infomercial, this device will fix all the world's problems--violence, depression, anxiety, pain--thanks to the special qualities of the Tungus ice. This is obviously an extremely quick way for the Brotherhood to find their 23,000, and a perfect front for all their questionable activities . . .
Episode Five: Opens with a young, possibly mentally challenged boy waking up and searching for his mom. She's mysteriously disappeared, so he tries to get his own breakfast. As he falls from the stove while reaching for the cupboard, a man catches him. They talk for a minute, and the man reassures the boy that his mom is visiting her sister, that she sent the man to bring the boy there. Everything seems sweet and on the up-and-up. The boy asks what's in the man's suitcase: "Nothing," he says with a laugh, as he gasses the boy and stuffs him into the suitcase.
We find out through conversations among the leader of the ICE Corporation that there are only a handful of people left to find, the main one being a young boy who is pretty much the Brotherhood Jesus. This boy is en route to their headquarters where his heart will be awoken and Khram can pump some heart-knowledge into him. Once he arrives and the last few people are bashed awake, the ICE suits turn some keys in a special circular device, and around the world people are notified via cellphones and whatnot that it's time for the Great Transformation. They all start heading to China . . .
Olga enlists Bjorn in her escape plan. They use the key to open the special passageway and make a run for the surface. Alarms go off, and after lots of running around in air vents and trying to find a way out via a secret elevator, Michael Laird captures them and tells them that he needs their help.
Episode Six: Starts right where #5 left off. Michael brings Olga and Bjorn into a room and explains the Brotherhood, the joy of becoming light, the rebirth of the world, the end to all problems, how they're correcting the one great mistake, that this is all good shit, etc. Over the course of this conversation, Olga and Bjorn's demeanor changes. They seem to be more at peace . . . almost happy. Michael tells them that he needs them to hold the two weaker members of the brotherhood (two children) in the circle so that all 23,000 hearts can speak the 23 heart words 23 times and the world comes to a blissful end. Won over by the simplicity of Michael's viewpoint and the enveloping calmness that he exudes, they agree.
On a marble covered island, 23,000 naked people start joining hands. All is silent as they assume the lotus position. Everything is peaceful, calm. There is a low level buzzing. Olga and Bjorn are on opposite sides of the circle, each with a young kid on their lap, giving off the best vibes they can. The screen goes white.
Olga is the first to awaken. Everything is extremely bright. She can't really make out much of anything at first. As her eyes adjust, she notices that everyone around her is unconscious and flat on the earth. She checks the man next to her--dead. As is the woman next to him. In fact, they're all dead. Everyone except for Bjorn. They repeat "By God" a series of times ("By God?" "By God." "By God!"), join hands, and walk off.
*
OK, that interpretation may be a bit self-indulgent, but the point is that there's something fundamentally interesting about Sorokin's trilogy. When I saw the play version of Ice in New York last month, I was struck by just how adaptable this material is--a testament to the fact that Sorokin has tapped into something.
(I don't think I did this justice, but there's a great tension among the innocent beliefs of the Brotherhood, the sort of latent human desire to witness the end of the world and for this experience to be rapturous, and the hyperviolent and invasive way in which the Brotherhood finds its members.)
That said, this trilogy is loaded with flaws and shortcomings. I mentioned this in my review of Day of the Oprichnik, but Sorokin's use of italics is baffling and all over the place. For the most part, the prose itself is utilitarian to the point of awkwardness ("Later I dreamed about that lard. Dreamed I grabbed hold of it, but it was like the oat pudding they boil up for wakes--it slipped between my fingers!"), with the exception of three more "experimental" set-pieces, which, due to their brevity and uselessness in advancing the story, seem unnecessary and out-of-place. There's a ton of repetition in these books, especially when someone's heart is awoken--there must be two dozen near identical descriptions of how people are hit with an ice hammer until their heart speaks its name, then there's the pressing of bare chests, the weeping, etc. Finally, the fixedly chronological telling of events can get rather boring, especially since the reader can see the end goal from a very early point and has to wade through all those repetitions to find out what happens . . .
This tension--between the compelling core of the trilogy and the less than amazing way in which it's related--is what makes the Ice Trilogy so frustrating as an artistic object. It's powerful stuff, but, at the risk of ending this epically long review with a crappy metaphor, the greatness of this book is like ice buried in the permafrost--chisel that all away and you'd have a very pretty object.
I think this would make a better miniseries than a book, but it's still fairly interesting. To me. I don't know anyone else who's read this and liked it. It's not particularly well written, the characters are pretty flat, it's extremely repetitive, etc. . . . Yet, the concept of this story--new agey cult believes that the ice meteor that caused the Tungus incident awakens the hearts of a chosen 23,000 who will bring about the transformation of the world--is creepy in a very intriguing way. Especially as all 23,000 are "awoken" and start to gather . . .
**
Here's the full review that I wrote for Three Percent (http://www.rochester.edu/College/tran...
Back a few years ago, New York Review Books released Ice, one of the first books by Russian literati bad boy Vladimir Sorokin to make its way into America. After all the hype surrounding Sorokin--for being the star of post-Glasnost Russian literature, for being well hated by the Putin Youth, for writing fairly offensive books involving people "eating packets of shit" and "fucking the earth"--this novel was a bit disappointing. Not that it was bad, just underwhelming.
In a way, it's unfortunate that Ice ever came out as a standalone volume. Put in context between the novels Bro and 23,000 it feels much more expansive and spooky, making the whole project significantly more fascinating.
That said, this trilogy would work much better as a TV miniseries . . . It's one of those books that I wish I could edit wholesale. I'd love to cut this book apart, partially restructure it, trim away some of the redundancies, speed up the overall pacing, and really play up the Lost-style creepiness.
So, rather than analyze the book as is, I'm going to spoil the whole thing right here and now by recounting the six-part miniseries version that exists in my mind:
Episode One: Open in Siberia 1908 with a woman in Russia giving birth to a baby boy who is born at almost the exact moment of the Tunguska event. Huge explosion in the sky, crazy colors. Should be disorienting and ominous. Camera leaves the intimacy of the house where Alexander was born to pan upwards to show a huge region of Siberia that's been totally flattened by this mysterious event. By a huge ice meteor that's now mostly buried in the permafrost.
In present times, Olga travels to Israel to meet Bjorn, a man that she met through a online message board for people who have suffered and survived the "Ice Hammer." When they meet, they show each other these strange scars on their breastbones. Every time Olga touches her chest, we get a flashback to a time when she was tricked and drugged and bashed in the chest with an "ice hammer" (a stick with a chunk of ice at the end of it) by some strange blond haired and blue eyed people who keep urging her to "speak with her heart." She was left for dead, and is now determined to figure out who the fuck these people are.
These flashbacks correspond with the story they hear from the old man they go to meet--a dying Jew who, during WWII, was part of a group of kids pulled from a camp and taken to the woods where several are smashed in the chests with ice hammers. He describes two ancient, almost otherworldly people who seemed to be in charge, and watched the smashing in silence, with serenely creepy looks on their faces. Episode ends with the camera focusing in on their faces.
Episode Two: Alexander (born at the start of episode one) is now in college. He pines after a pretty young thing, but she's all wrapped up in Kulik, a renegade science professor who is determined to find the Tungus meteor. As a way of impressing the girl, Alexander joins up with Kulik's latest expedition into Siberia. There are trials, tribulations, and as they grow closer to the spot where the meteor landed, Alexander falls into a fugue state resulting in his being separated from the rest of the group. Wandering around, he is drawn to a particular swampy area where he uncovers the Tungus ice meteor. He falls upon the ice, feels his heart "awaken," finds out his true name is "Bro," and hears an otherworldly voice explain how once upon a time there were 23,000 "Light-bearing rays" that created all the worlds of the universe. Their one mistake was creating Earth, which was filled with "disharmonious water." Because of the water's mirror-like qualities, the 23,000 rays of light get trapped, become humans, cause violence, fuck shit up, etc. There is a solution though! Once the hearts of all 23,000 "rays" are awoken and learn all the "heart words," they can form a huge circle and the universe will be reborn in healthy, sublime light. It's like hippy paradise. (See pages 77-80 for the complete new age description.)
Back in current times, Olga and Bjorn are in Guangzhou having dinner with Michael Laird, another ice hammer survivor. He explains a bit more to them about the Brotherhood of the Light and the way they use the ICE Corporation as a front to find the 23,000 who will awake and turn into light, etc., etc. When Olga asks why Michael and his fellow investigators are in Guangzhou, he explains that this is where the Brotherhood is based, where the 23,000 are going to gather and bring about the new world. They toast to the "resistance," the Michael puts down his glass without taking a sip, and Olga and Bjorn slump to the floor. A waiter ties up Olga's and Bjorn's hands and carry them out of the restaurant.
Episode Three: Bro leaves the swamp with a huge chunk of the Tungus ice, in search of some guidance as to how to start this rebirthing process. He finds a girl; in his eyes, her chest glows. He bashes her with some ice (thank you very much!) and "Fer's" heart is awoken. They embrace in a loving, still asexual way as their hearts speak to one another. In a Zen bliss that's as creepy as it is content, they wander Siberia, discovering other chosen people, and indoctrinating them into the Brotherhood by slamming them with ice until their heart speaks their true name. During this phase of the Brotherhood, there's a lot of "heart conversations" and weeping over the sadness of the world. There's also a lot of hope--these people truly believe that they will bring about universal nirvana. They are sweet, totally asexual, and operate in a sort of benevolent hive-mind fashion. Their numbers grow slowly, but since Fer & Bro (when together) can see exactly who is a chosen person and who isn't, they are extremely efficient in their operations. But then Fer dies . . .
Olga and Bjorn are now working in the "Dead Bitches Factory" where they skin dead dogs in order to make the straps for the ice hammers. There are 189 people trapped in this underground factory filled with hanging dogs and sterile jail-cell dormitories. Olga tries to rebel, yelling "Fuck you!" at one of the cameras. A bunch of Chinese men flood into the factory and tase the shit out of her. Fade to black.
Episode Four: After the passing of Fer, the Brotherhood searches for another person with her abilities. Eventually, they awaken Khram, who sort of has the gift of being able to identify other "rays of light," but not really. So the Brotherhood starts kidnapping and bashing all sorts of blond-haired, blue-eyed people in search of new members and the heartmate that would enhance Khram's abilities. Bro dies and it's up to her to lead the Brotherhood on the path toward 23,000. Their numbers increase steadily through random attempts, but it's slow going through Soviet times when they face persecution from a few sides. Nevertheless, when people's hearts are awoken, the Brotherhood takes care of them physically and financially, and they all have a chance to do some naked (non-sexual) heart-bonding. And based on the looks on their faces, this is some good stuff.
A really old man invites Olga to sit with him during lunch. She's still a bit discombobulated from the post-outburst beatdown, but she senses that this man knows more than he's letting on. The guy--Ernst Wolf--ends up explaining that his father is one of the main leaders of the Brotherhood. Ernst ended up down here after he was bashed at age 17 and it was determined that he was an "empty shell," and not one of the rays of light. He tells Olga about a time he saw his father and 22 others in a small circle, unmoving, speaking with their hearts, etc. Ernst trying to disrupt the hippy heart speak by hitting his father with a red-hot poker, but his dad didn't even flinch, even as his skin burned. Ernst believes in the Great Transformation of the 23,000. But he also thinks this could be very bad shit. As he's carted off to be killed (sub-plot: Ernst has cancer, no one who is sick can remain in the factory, etc.), he slips Olga a note and a key to a possible way out.
Episode ends with an infomercial for the ICE Machine--a high-tech flak jacket complete with an "ice chamber" over the middle that, once you put this on and plug it in, bashes you in the chest until your heart wakes up and you hallucinate a circle of happy people. According to the infomercial, this device will fix all the world's problems--violence, depression, anxiety, pain--thanks to the special qualities of the Tungus ice. This is obviously an extremely quick way for the Brotherhood to find their 23,000, and a perfect front for all their questionable activities . . .
Episode Five: Opens with a young, possibly mentally challenged boy waking up and searching for his mom. She's mysteriously disappeared, so he tries to get his own breakfast. As he falls from the stove while reaching for the cupboard, a man catches him. They talk for a minute, and the man reassures the boy that his mom is visiting her sister, that she sent the man to bring the boy there. Everything seems sweet and on the up-and-up. The boy asks what's in the man's suitcase: "Nothing," he says with a laugh, as he gasses the boy and stuffs him into the suitcase.
We find out through conversations among the leader of the ICE Corporation that there are only a handful of people left to find, the main one being a young boy who is pretty much the Brotherhood Jesus. This boy is en route to their headquarters where his heart will be awoken and Khram can pump some heart-knowledge into him. Once he arrives and the last few people are bashed awake, the ICE suits turn some keys in a special circular device, and around the world people are notified via cellphones and whatnot that it's time for the Great Transformation. They all start heading to China . . .
Olga enlists Bjorn in her escape plan. They use the key to open the special passageway and make a run for the surface. Alarms go off, and after lots of running around in air vents and trying to find a way out via a secret elevator, Michael Laird captures them and tells them that he needs their help.
Episode Six: Starts right where #5 left off. Michael brings Olga and Bjorn into a room and explains the Brotherhood, the joy of becoming light, the rebirth of the world, the end to all problems, how they're correcting the one great mistake, that this is all good shit, etc. Over the course of this conversation, Olga and Bjorn's demeanor changes. They seem to be more at peace . . . almost happy. Michael tells them that he needs them to hold the two weaker members of the brotherhood (two children) in the circle so that all 23,000 hearts can speak the 23 heart words 23 times and the world comes to a blissful end. Won over by the simplicity of Michael's viewpoint and the enveloping calmness that he exudes, they agree.
On a marble covered island, 23,000 naked people start joining hands. All is silent as they assume the lotus position. Everything is peaceful, calm. There is a low level buzzing. Olga and Bjorn are on opposite sides of the circle, each with a young kid on their lap, giving off the best vibes they can. The screen goes white.
Olga is the first to awaken. Everything is extremely bright. She can't really make out much of anything at first. As her eyes adjust, she notices that everyone around her is unconscious and flat on the earth. She checks the man next to her--dead. As is the woman next to him. In fact, they're all dead. Everyone except for Bjorn. They repeat "By God" a series of times ("By God?" "By God." "By God!"), join hands, and walk off.
*
OK, that interpretation may be a bit self-indulgent, but the point is that there's something fundamentally interesting about Sorokin's trilogy. When I saw the play version of Ice in New York last month, I was struck by just how adaptable this material is--a testament to the fact that Sorokin has tapped into something.
(I don't think I did this justice, but there's a great tension among the innocent beliefs of the Brotherhood, the sort of latent human desire to witness the end of the world and for this experience to be rapturous, and the hyperviolent and invasive way in which the Brotherhood finds its members.)
That said, this trilogy is loaded with flaws and shortcomings. I mentioned this in my review of Day of the Oprichnik, but Sorokin's use of italics is baffling and all over the place. For the most part, the prose itself is utilitarian to the point of awkwardness ("Later I dreamed about that lard. Dreamed I grabbed hold of it, but it was like the oat pudding they boil up for wakes--it slipped between my fingers!"), with the exception of three more "experimental" set-pieces, which, due to their brevity and uselessness in advancing the story, seem unnecessary and out-of-place. There's a ton of repetition in these books, especially when someone's heart is awoken--there must be two dozen near identical descriptions of how people are hit with an ice hammer until their heart speaks its name, then there's the pressing of bare chests, the weeping, etc. Finally, the fixedly chronological telling of events can get rather boring, especially since the reader can see the end goal from a very early point and has to wade through all those repetitions to find out what happens . . .
This tension--between the compelling core of the trilogy and the less than amazing way in which it's related--is what makes the Ice Trilogy so frustrating as an artistic object. It's powerful stuff, but, at the risk of ending this epically long review with a crappy metaphor, the greatness of this book is like ice buried in the permafrost--chisel that all away and you'd have a very pretty object.
Read
January 22, 2020Лёд вибрирует, мясо клубится
Я читала трилогию не в той хронологической последовательности, в которой она включена в одно издание ("Путь Бро", "Лёд", "23000"), а в той, в которой она была написала (сначала "Лёд", потом приквел "Путь Бро", потом "23000"). Поэтому по отдельные книги пишу именно в таком порядке.
Лёд
В сюжете три линии трёх основных героев: это студент, проститутка и бизнесмен. По сути это рассказ о трех параллельных историях – друг за другом с героями происходят одинаковые события. Они встречают светловолосых людей, которые производят над ними очень странные манипуляции, физически эти манипуляции на грани жизни и смерти. И после этого герои начинают меняться уже сами, без посторонней помощи, меняться сердцем:
Несмотря на одинаковость событий, сюжет в итоге выглядит разрозненным. Первую половину книги пытаешься разобраться, о чём это всё, вторую – ждёшь, когда это всё закончится. И с середины скучно. Во-первых, от повторения одной и той же последовательности событий, которое на протяжении всей книги преследует читателя. Во-вторых, герои, которые могли бы быть разными хотя бы из-за своего социального положения, получились одинаково никакими – мало того, что с ними одно и то же происходит, они даже разговаривают одинаково.
Путь Бро
"Путь Бро" другой по структуре и по стилистике. Это книга с часто встречающимся сюжетом – жизнеописание главного героя. И вот здесь, в приквеле, автор объясняет, откуда взялись эти светловолосые люди с ледяными молотами, и зачем они делают странные вещи с другими людьми.
В самом начале книги история обычная, и главный герой обычный: родился, рос, взрослел. Но в какой-то момент студент Саша почувствовал необъяснимую тягу к... Тунгусскому метеориту (моя прелесссть), глыбе космического льда, которая упала на землю в день, когда Саша родился:
Но вот Бро находит метеорит, нового себя, история входит в колею, и начинается... Повторение! Эволюционировав из Саши в Бро, главный герой друг за другом обретает братьев и сестер. И это опять занудно, так как с каждым и каждой из них происходит одно и то же: странный сон-встреча с братьями-ледяной молот-пробуждение-сердечный плач-очищение, – и это всё детально описано.
Примерно с середины книги сам Бро становится беспристрастным рассказчиком. Это, вроде бы, понятно – основатель братства, секты, если хотите, эмоции не по статусу проявлять, – но из-за этого книга теряет остатки человеческого. Автор в этот момент драматически меняет столь повествования – Бро начинает говорить как инопланетянин, выучивший язык аборигенов, но плохо знакомый с терминологией:
Или вот так:
Подстрочный нелитературный перевод: немцы, сев в танки и вооружившись ружьями, быстро продвигались на восток СССР, уничтожая русских и их танки. Русские отступали, бросив оружие.
Тут получается, что стиль изложения связан с эволюцией Бро, и заодно он должен зацепить внимание читателя. Но вот нелогично выходит, и по Станиславскому – не верю. Да, стилистика, концептуальность и все дела, но так не может говорить человек, обладающий предыдущим житейским опытом, какие бы метаморфозы с ним не происходили.
Местами обыденные вещи в изложении Бро звучат интересно, как, например, то, что он говорит о книгах. И здесь как раз важно, как он это говорит:
Но, если смотреть на книгу в целом, железных яиц было много, а необходимости в них не было никакой.
После пробуждения обновлённые братья и сестры пытаются зацепиться в старом мире:
С идеями тоже получилось скучно. В какой-то момент Братьев Света становится достаточно много – это уже не просто Бро и Фер, – их уже действительно можно назвать сектой. А вот методы у них шаблонные: внедрение в высшие эшелоны власти, максимально высоко, использование кино для пропаганды – всё это уже где-то было.
23000
Тут – всё, к��нец и логическое завершение. Братья Света – окончательно секта, у них не только свой язык, но и свои ритуалы. У Братьев также есть конечная цель – стать Светом:
Естественно, Братья Света противопоставляют себя всему остальному населению планеты. Как любая секта, они считают себя выше и лучше остальных:
Помимо ритуалов и стремлений Братья – могущественная корпорация "LЁD" с тайными фабриками по производству ремешков из собачьих шкур, на которых работают похищенные рабы. Ничего нового. И заранее понятно, как закончится путь Братьев.
Книга достаточно сильно отличается от двух предыдущих – это не то остросюжетный боевик, не то антиутопия. Но опять есть лишнее: пересказ истории СССР языком Братьев Света, истории новообретённых братьев.
Помимо этого есть один необычный для трилогии стилистический приём, когда с персонажем начинает происходить что-то параноидальное, а потом вдруг оказывается, что это сон. И он тоже повторяется.
Всё вместе
Во многом последовательность наложила отпечаток на мои впечатления от книг. Стоит ли начинать читать с приквела? Непонятно. Так как на фоне "Льда" "Путь Бро" выглядит сильнее и целостнее, нравится книга больше, чем могла бы, если читать её первой. Если же начинать читать в сюжетно-хронологическом порядке, то от книги к книге становится всё хуже: от интересно ("Путь Бро") к ровно ("Лёд"), и дальше к никак ("23000"). Это никак всё равно случилось, поскольку конец трилогии достаточно однозначный и открытых вопросов не оставляет, но при этом он умудрился остаться абсолютно невнятным. Остаётся ощущение, что задача автора заключалась в том, чтобы дописать хоть как-нибудь.
У Владимира Сорокина есть стабильный клуб почитателей, в который я не вхожу по разным причинам. Это и метания от стиля к стилю, и местами чудовищное и необоснованное количество нецензурной лексики. При этом – и "Ледяная трилогия" этому ещё одно доказательство – писать так, чтобы цепляло, он умеет. Но не всегда. И сюжеты интересные придумывать он тоже умеет. А вот прорабатывать их так, чтобы из этого вышло что-то действительно хорошее, не получается.
Я читала трилогию не в той хронологической последовательности, в которой она включена в одно издание ("Путь Бро", "Лёд", "23000"), а в той, в которой она была написала (сначала "Лёд", потом приквел "Путь Бро", потом "23000"). Поэтому по отдельные книги пишу именно в таком порядке.
Лёд
В сюжете три линии трёх основных героев: это студент, проститутка и бизнесмен. По сути это рассказ о трех параллельных историях – друг за другом с героями происходят одинаковые события. Они встречают светловолосых людей, которые производят над ними очень странные манипуляции, физически эти манипуляции на грани жизни и смерти. И после этого герои начинают меняться уже сами, без посторонней помощи, меняться сердцем:
… очень такое… острое и нежное чувство. Это трудно объяснить… ну, вот есть как бы тело, это просто мясо какое-то бесчувственное, а в нем сердце, и это сердце… оно… совсем не мясо, а что-то другое. И оно стало так очень неровно биться, как будто это аритмия… вот. А девочка… эта… застыла так неподвижно. И я вдруг почувствовал своим сердцем её. Просто как своей рукой чужую руку. И её сердце стало говорить с моим. Но не словами, а такими… как бы… всполохами, что ли…
Несмотря на одинаковость событий, сюжет в итоге выглядит разрозненным. Первую половину книги пытаешься разобраться, о чём это всё, вторую – ждёшь, когда это всё закончится. И с середины скучно. Во-первых, от повторения одной и той же последовательности событий, которое на протяжении всей книги преследует читателя. Во-вторых, герои, которые могли бы быть разными хотя бы из-за своего социального положения, получились одинаково никакими – мало того, что с ними одно и то же происходит, они даже разговаривают одинаково.
Путь Бро
"Путь Бро" другой по структуре и по стилистике. Это книга с часто встречающимся сюжетом – жизнеописание главного героя. И вот здесь, в приквеле, автор объясняет, откуда взялись эти светловолосые люди с ледяными молотами, и зачем они делают странные вещи с другими людьми.
В самом начале книги история обычная, и главный герой обычный: родился, рос, взрослел. Но в какой-то момент студент Саша почувствовал необъяснимую тягу к... Тунгусскому метеориту (моя прелесссть), глыбе космического льда, которая упала на землю в день, когда Саша родился:
И я наконец понял всем своим существом, ДЛЯ ЧЕГО пришли сюда люди! Они пришли, чтобы найти огромное и родное. И навсегда отобрать его у меня! Я затрепетал в ужасе, комок мха и молоток вывалились из рук. Для чего они так долго шли сюда? Для чего терпели трудности? Для чего построен этот барак?! Чтобы найти мою радость! Чтобы НАВЕК лишить меня встречи с ней!
Но вот Бро находит метеорит, нового себя, история входит в колею, и начинается... Повторение! Эволюционировав из Саши в Бро, главный герой друг за другом обретает братьев и сестер. И это опять занудно, так как с каждым и каждой из них происходит одно и то же: странный сон-встреча с братьями-ледяной молот-пробуждение-сердечный плач-очищение, – и это всё детально описано.
Примерно с середины книги сам Бро становится беспристрастным рассказчиком. Это, вроде бы, понятно – основатель братства, секты, если хотите, эмоции не по статусу проявлять, – но из-за этого книга теряет остатки человеческого. Автор в этот момент драматически меняет столь повествования – Бро начинает говорить как инопланетянин, выучивший язык аборигенов, но плохо знакомый с терминологией:
Летающие машины открыли свои животы. И сбросили вниз большие железные яйца, набитые яростным веществом. Железные яйца полетели сверху. Их было сорок. Мы увидели их над нами. И поняли, что кто-то из нас погибнет. Железные яйца стали падать. Как только они ударялись о землю, яростное вещество разрывало их. А вместе с ними – все вокруг. Скорлупа железных яиц разлеталась с силой во все стороны.
Или вот так:
Мясные машины страны Порядка, сев в свои железные машины и вооружившись мощными трубами, плюющимися горячим металлом, быстро продвигались на восток по стране Льда, уничтожая мясных машин и железных. Мясные машины страны Льда отступали, побросав свои трубки, плюющиеся горячим металлом.
Подстрочный нелитературный перевод: немцы, сев в танки и вооружившись ружьями, быстро продвигались на восток СССР, уничтожая русских и их танки. Русские отступали, бросив оружие.
Тут получается, что стиль изложения связан с эволюцией Бро, и заодно он должен зацепить внимание читателя. Но вот нелогично выходит, и по Станиславскому – не верю. Да, стилистика, концептуальность и все дела, но так не может говорить человек, обладающий предыдущим житейским опытом, какие бы метаморфозы с ним не происходили.
Местами обыденные вещи в изложении Бро звучат интересно, как, например, то, что он говорит о книгах. И здесь как раз важно, как он это говорит:
Машины в рамках производили бумагу, покрытую буквами. Это была их работа. Сидящие за столами совершали другую работу: они изо всех сил верили этой бумаге, сверяли по ней свою жизнь, учились жить по этой бумаге – чувствовать, любить, переживать, вычислять, проектировать, строить, чтобы в дальнейшем учить жизни по бумаге других.
Но, если смотреть на книгу в целом, железных яиц было много, а необходимости в них не было никакой.
После пробуждения обновлённые братья и сестры пытаются зацепиться в старом мире:
Нужно было понять – как нам жить дальше среди людей. И не просто жить, а искать наших. Возникало множество вопросов: где жить, кем быть в этой большевистской стране, как и в каких местах искать, где прятать найденных, как доставлять Лед, где его хранить и самое главное – что сделать, чтобы нас не арестовали как заговорщиков и после пыток не расстреляли в подвалах ОГПУ.
С идеями тоже получилось скучно. В какой-то момент Братьев Света становится достаточно много – это уже не просто Бро и Фер, – их уже действительно можно назвать сектой. А вот методы у них шаблонные: внедрение в высшие эшелоны власти, максимально высоко, использование кино для пропаганды – всё это уже где-то было.
23000
– Надо положить себя на Лед.
– Лед – наш престол. Он дает равновесие. А Свет дает силу.
Тут – всё, к��нец и логическое завершение. Братья Света – окончательно секта, у них не только свой язык, но и свои ритуалы. У Братьев также есть конечная цель – стать Светом:
– Нагонялся в футбол, поди? – с улыбкой покосился лейтенант на спящего мальчика, ставя в паспорте штамп «вылет».
– Если бы! – грустно покачал головой Уф, забирая паспорт. – Компьютерные игры. И оторвать невозможно.
– В шесть лет? Здорово! – лейтенант одобр��тельно покачал головой.
– И куда все катится с этими компьютерами? – заискивающе заглянул в глаза Уф круглолицый таможен��ик.
– На тот Свет, – серьезно ответил Уф.
Борк и Но сладко вздрогнули сердцем. Таможенник как-то потух и заскучал, кивнул и направился к выходу.
Естественно, Братья Света противопоставляют себя всему остальному населению планеты. Как любая секта, они считают себя выше и лучше остальных:
Каждая мясная машина хотела прежде всего счастья своему телу. Ради счастья тела мясные машины могли обмануть, ограбить и убить. Поэтому они не могли долго жить в мире. Мясные машины постоянно соревновались, враждовали, притесняли и обворовывали друг друга. Одни страны нападали на другие. Мясные машины постоянно вооружались, изготовляя оружие все более совершенное. И постоянно убивали друг друга из-за счастья тела. Счастье тела было главной целью мясных машин. А счастье тела наступало тогда, когда телу мясной машины было приятно и удобно существовать. Жизнь ради счастья собственного тела – вот главный закон всех мясных машин на планете Земля.
Помимо ритуалов и стремлений Братья – могущественная корпорация "LЁD" с тайными фабриками по производству ремешков из собачьих шкур, на которых работают похищенные рабы. Ничего нового. И заранее понятно, как закончится путь Братьев.
Книга достаточно сильно отличается от двух предыдущих – это не то остросюжетный боевик, не то антиутопия. Но опять есть лишнее: пересказ истории СССР языком Братьев Света, истории новообретённых братьев.
Помимо этого есть один необычный для трилогии стилистический приём, когда с персонажем начинает происходить что-то параноидальное, а потом вдруг оказывается, что это сон. И он тоже повторяется.
Всё вместе
Во многом последовательность наложила отпечаток на мои впечатления от книг. Стоит ли начинать читать с приквела? Непонятно. Так как на фоне "Льда" "Путь Бро" выглядит сильнее и целостнее, нравится книга больше, чем могла бы, если читать её первой. Если же начинать читать в сюжетно-хронологическом порядке, то от книги к книге становится всё хуже: от интересно ("Путь Бро") к ровно ("Лёд"), и дальше к никак ("23000"). Это никак всё равно случилось, поскольку конец трилогии достаточно однозначный и открытых вопросов не оставляет, но при этом он умудрился остаться абсолютно невнятным. Остаётся ощущение, что задача автора заключалась в том, чтобы дописать хоть как-нибудь.
У Владимира Сорокина есть стабильный клуб почитателей, в который я не вхожу по разным причинам. Это и метания от стиля к стилю, и местами чудовищное и необоснованное количество нецензурной лексики. При этом – и "Ледяная трилогия" этому ещё одно доказательство – писать так, чтобы цепляло, он умеет. Но не всегда. И сюжеты интересные придумывать он тоже умеет. А вот прорабатывать их так, чтобы из этого вышло что-то действительно хорошее, не получается.
June 27, 2017
ICE TRILOGY is sprawl, is girth. Daunting but maybe a little (pleasantly) silly. But careful, sophisticated, tending to accrue in weird ways. Part of this sprawl is of course born of the fact the novel traverses a fairly considerable expanse of time, roughly a century (we begin in the early 20th and end in the early 21st). But the timeframe is uniquely broken up so that literary forms germane to the periods depicted are correspondingly deployed. The sections of the novel that lead from 1908 to the years directly following the second world war are written in a style that demonstrates Sorokin's debt to the 19th Century Russian Novel (please note the caps). Sorokin has elsewhere (look at his recent THE BLIZZARD) done weird sci-fi-type reimaginings of the templates of his national literature. ICE TRILOGY begins in this mode and later returns to it. The sections of the novel that take place closer to the present, however, are fragmented, self-reflexive to an extent, and more likely to enact discomfiting shifts in tone that bespeak their alliance to certain tendencies of the postmodern. The book is in some sense balletic, and capable of encompassing worlds, though the book is itself wonderfully contained. It is definitely a book that is a single world. The back cover would lead us to expect a genre-mashup. And indeed that is part of what we get. If you want a generalized idea of what to expect, the two tendencies most pronounced here are referred to on the back cover as "science fiction" and "New Ageism." I would suggest to you that though New Ageism is definitely a huge part of what is at work here, you would do yourself a considerable disservice if you let that prospect turn you off. Why? Most especially because of what is most sly, underhanded, and piercing about the novel's (or three novels') fundamental critique. This is above all else a book about the inhuman cruelties and insidious practices that it is possible for people to engage in when they believe they see "the way." Thus is probably a valuable lesson for any of us. It is rare to find a man or woman incapable of excusing much when he or she believes his or herself right. Also: a must read for anybody into parables about eugenics.
May 25, 2022
BRO:
“Dependent on flesh and time, people began to live by the laws of the brain. They thought that the brain helped them to dominate space and time. In fact, it only enslaved them to disharmonious dependence on the surrounding world. People with well-developed brains were called intelligent. Intelligent people were considered the elite of humankind. They lived by the laws of the mind and taught them to others. People began to live by the mind, enslaving themselves in flesh and time.”
Part one of this trilogy down and I’m reeling! It starts out as a fairly typical realist novel of pre-revolutionary Russia. Alexander is drifting through a life with his light-aristocratic family (obviously doomed in the coming revolution), going from happy family life to abject poverty, to total nihilism, and finally finding a sense of hope in astronomy and contemplation of the cosmos. But when he goes on an expedition to find the remains of a meteor that crashed to earth on the day he was born, everything goes sideways. He’s not Alexander, he’s Bro, a manifestation of cosmic light tasked with assembling 23,000 other rays of cosmic light with the power of the Ice that fell to earth.
From this point on the book turns to a semi-scriptural origin story of a new religion/cult and then to a pulpy sci-fi novel, and then something like speculative fiction. The twist is that it’s not really speculative, it’s just real history (rise of Stalin, rise of Hitler, Berlin Olympics, WWII, Death Camps, etc.) filtered through the bizzaro lens of the Brotherhood of Light. The slip from genre to genre really helps speed up the pace of the book and as you surrender to the flow of it you almost don’t even notice the intense tonal shift to referring to all humans as “meat machines” and all the other alternate vocabulary that goes along with it.
I will say, I was very thrown by the italics, not really sure what they accomplished beyond making me consciously slow down my pace. It’s also quite clear that this was written after the first volume, it almost assumes that the reader knows the conclusion before it begins the story, that this is all just the collection of the legend.
Almost abandoned it before it picked up the pace and am glad I stuck through it.
ICE:
“Time made way for eternity. We passed through time like rays of light through an icy thickness. And we reached the depths...”
Much like “Bro” we’re doing major genre shifts in this one. Part 1 starts off as a thriller with a sort-of DeLillo-ish style of writing. There’s a secret cult nabbing new members and we follow three of these newly awakened members of the Brotherhood: a layabout 20-something, a sex worker wrapped up in mafia activity, and a higher-up in the FSB. This allows us a bit of an outsider perspective on the Brotherhood.
In Part 2 we shift to a realist story of World War II German occupation of Russia. Our narrator is Sister Khram (of the final chapter of “Bro”) and this story is being told to our newly awakened members. We essentially pick up where we left off in “Bro” and get a history of the Brotherhood up to the events of Part 1. Khram’s story is more straightforwardly told than “Bro,” less of the mythologizing/religiosity and more “history.” Regardless, it’s very interesting to see the history of the USSR from 1950 onward through the lens of this bizarro cult.
And then we’re in Part 3 which is an instruction manual for a futuristic device that seems like it simulates the stages of awakening. After the instructions and counter indications and warnings, there are testimonials from a variety of people, all of which culminate in the wearer dissolving into light. Fascinating and interestingly written.
Part 4 was especially neat, sort of vague and weird and whimsical. We know that the Ice system has been mainstreamed and have to assume the Brotherhood has taken a new tack to try to find their 23,000.
Sure, the writing is a bit uneven, swerving from beautifully grimy and insightful to (at times) just sort of ugly. But at the end of the day? Fascinating. I liked “Ice” a lot more than “Bro,” but having read “Bro” definitely prepared me to fully lose myself in the light.
23,000:
“The body’s happiness was the main purpose of meat machines. And the body’s happiness occurred when it was pleasant and convenient for the meat machines’ bodies to exist. To live for the happiness of their own bodies — this was the primary law of all meat machines on the planet Earth.”
““Whatever doesn’t participate in the exchange of commodities simply doesn’t exist,” the professor of macroeconomics at the university Olga attended like to say. Olga never believed in God, or in the supernatural. But as a Jew she believed in fate. Although fate wasn’t so simple, either.”
The action picks up exactly where it left off in “Bro” and we’re dropped into an action scene/ dream state where the highly efficient Brotherhood has pulled off the kidnapping of an important child (we have to assume the reincarnated Bro or Fer, feels very Dalai Lama) but feels the hot breath of an unknown adversary at their backs.
We shift from Brotherhood stronghold to stronghold, perspective to perspective: we see the shipments of Ice coming in, the final Ice hammers being constructed, Khram preparing herself, the gathering of the Lesser Circle and the Greater Circle and the awakening of Gorn. In parallel to Khram and Gorn, we have Olga—a surviving “empty nut” trying to find out what the Brotherhood is up to. She only gets a few moments of insight before she’s captured by the Brotherhood and imprisoned in the ice hammer factory.
The Brotherhood are 3 away from their 23,000 and we get the stories of their acquisitions: a hit man, a mole woman (?) with the wildest narrative voice, and the greatest jumper of all countries and continents (?). Ultimately we find that Olga and Bjorn, our captured detectives are key (as “half-hammered” people) in the final joining of the great circle.
At the risk of spoiling the whole ending, I’ll just say it’s just how I like it! Nice and vague with hints of Heaven’s Gate and run of the mill millenarian groups. We’re left at the end with the desire to talk direct to God, to find out what the hell just happened and if it’s all going to happen again.
Summary:
A hell of a ride! “Bro” was definitely the weakest of the three, but without it I suppose “23,000” wouldn’t have fully clicked into place. As a whole, the trilogy is wildly uneven, the writing is either brilliant or just downright bad (with some strange in-between moments). Ultimately though, I like what it’s reaching for, how it wrestled with the human need to relate to something bigger whether it’s the essential nature of life, or commerce, or politics, or sex, or God, or Light, or the whole damn Universe. I’ve never quite read anything like it and I’m interested to see what another Sorokin book that’s not a genre-shifting, grotesque, sci-fi mega chronicle looks like.
“Dependent on flesh and time, people began to live by the laws of the brain. They thought that the brain helped them to dominate space and time. In fact, it only enslaved them to disharmonious dependence on the surrounding world. People with well-developed brains were called intelligent. Intelligent people were considered the elite of humankind. They lived by the laws of the mind and taught them to others. People began to live by the mind, enslaving themselves in flesh and time.”
Part one of this trilogy down and I’m reeling! It starts out as a fairly typical realist novel of pre-revolutionary Russia. Alexander is drifting through a life with his light-aristocratic family (obviously doomed in the coming revolution), going from happy family life to abject poverty, to total nihilism, and finally finding a sense of hope in astronomy and contemplation of the cosmos. But when he goes on an expedition to find the remains of a meteor that crashed to earth on the day he was born, everything goes sideways. He’s not Alexander, he’s Bro, a manifestation of cosmic light tasked with assembling 23,000 other rays of cosmic light with the power of the Ice that fell to earth.
From this point on the book turns to a semi-scriptural origin story of a new religion/cult and then to a pulpy sci-fi novel, and then something like speculative fiction. The twist is that it’s not really speculative, it’s just real history (rise of Stalin, rise of Hitler, Berlin Olympics, WWII, Death Camps, etc.) filtered through the bizzaro lens of the Brotherhood of Light. The slip from genre to genre really helps speed up the pace of the book and as you surrender to the flow of it you almost don’t even notice the intense tonal shift to referring to all humans as “meat machines” and all the other alternate vocabulary that goes along with it.
I will say, I was very thrown by the italics, not really sure what they accomplished beyond making me consciously slow down my pace. It’s also quite clear that this was written after the first volume, it almost assumes that the reader knows the conclusion before it begins the story, that this is all just the collection of the legend.
Almost abandoned it before it picked up the pace and am glad I stuck through it.
ICE:
“Time made way for eternity. We passed through time like rays of light through an icy thickness. And we reached the depths...”
Much like “Bro” we’re doing major genre shifts in this one. Part 1 starts off as a thriller with a sort-of DeLillo-ish style of writing. There’s a secret cult nabbing new members and we follow three of these newly awakened members of the Brotherhood: a layabout 20-something, a sex worker wrapped up in mafia activity, and a higher-up in the FSB. This allows us a bit of an outsider perspective on the Brotherhood.
In Part 2 we shift to a realist story of World War II German occupation of Russia. Our narrator is Sister Khram (of the final chapter of “Bro”) and this story is being told to our newly awakened members. We essentially pick up where we left off in “Bro” and get a history of the Brotherhood up to the events of Part 1. Khram’s story is more straightforwardly told than “Bro,” less of the mythologizing/religiosity and more “history.” Regardless, it’s very interesting to see the history of the USSR from 1950 onward through the lens of this bizarro cult.
And then we’re in Part 3 which is an instruction manual for a futuristic device that seems like it simulates the stages of awakening. After the instructions and counter indications and warnings, there are testimonials from a variety of people, all of which culminate in the wearer dissolving into light. Fascinating and interestingly written.
Part 4 was especially neat, sort of vague and weird and whimsical. We know that the Ice system has been mainstreamed and have to assume the Brotherhood has taken a new tack to try to find their 23,000.
Sure, the writing is a bit uneven, swerving from beautifully grimy and insightful to (at times) just sort of ugly. But at the end of the day? Fascinating. I liked “Ice” a lot more than “Bro,” but having read “Bro” definitely prepared me to fully lose myself in the light.
23,000:
“The body’s happiness was the main purpose of meat machines. And the body’s happiness occurred when it was pleasant and convenient for the meat machines’ bodies to exist. To live for the happiness of their own bodies — this was the primary law of all meat machines on the planet Earth.”
““Whatever doesn’t participate in the exchange of commodities simply doesn’t exist,” the professor of macroeconomics at the university Olga attended like to say. Olga never believed in God, or in the supernatural. But as a Jew she believed in fate. Although fate wasn’t so simple, either.”
The action picks up exactly where it left off in “Bro” and we’re dropped into an action scene/ dream state where the highly efficient Brotherhood has pulled off the kidnapping of an important child (we have to assume the reincarnated Bro or Fer, feels very Dalai Lama) but feels the hot breath of an unknown adversary at their backs.
We shift from Brotherhood stronghold to stronghold, perspective to perspective: we see the shipments of Ice coming in, the final Ice hammers being constructed, Khram preparing herself, the gathering of the Lesser Circle and the Greater Circle and the awakening of Gorn. In parallel to Khram and Gorn, we have Olga—a surviving “empty nut” trying to find out what the Brotherhood is up to. She only gets a few moments of insight before she’s captured by the Brotherhood and imprisoned in the ice hammer factory.
The Brotherhood are 3 away from their 23,000 and we get the stories of their acquisitions: a hit man, a mole woman (?) with the wildest narrative voice, and the greatest jumper of all countries and continents (?). Ultimately we find that Olga and Bjorn, our captured detectives are key (as “half-hammered” people) in the final joining of the great circle.
At the risk of spoiling the whole ending, I’ll just say it’s just how I like it! Nice and vague with hints of Heaven’s Gate and run of the mill millenarian groups. We’re left at the end with the desire to talk direct to God, to find out what the hell just happened and if it’s all going to happen again.
Summary:
A hell of a ride! “Bro” was definitely the weakest of the three, but without it I suppose “23,000” wouldn’t have fully clicked into place. As a whole, the trilogy is wildly uneven, the writing is either brilliant or just downright bad (with some strange in-between moments). Ultimately though, I like what it’s reaching for, how it wrestled with the human need to relate to something bigger whether it’s the essential nature of life, or commerce, or politics, or sex, or God, or Light, or the whole damn Universe. I’ve never quite read anything like it and I’m interested to see what another Sorokin book that’s not a genre-shifting, grotesque, sci-fi mega chronicle looks like.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
January 24, 2015
I must have read a pretty glowing review of this somewhere and felt ambitious, because I'm kind of sizist about books. That is to say, I am generally not inclined to make time for one 700-page book, when I could instead read two 350-page books. In any event, the first volume in this Russian trilogy ("Bro"), begins with great promise. We meet and follow a boy born at the same moment of the 1908 Tunguska "event" (there is still debate over whether or not it was a comet or asteroid or something else that knocked over almost 100 million trees in deepest Siberia).
Born into a wealthy family in Ukraine, we follow the boy's comfortable upbringing until it is upended by the Revolution and he becomes another orphaned piece of flotsam in the new Soviet Union. He develops a strange obsession with space, and eventually joins a scientific expedition heading to the Tunguska blast site. As they get closer and closer, things get weirder and weirder, to the point where I just lost interest. The writing devolves into some trippy, almost stream of consciousness stuff that just didn't work at all for me. Even though I've heard the middle book of the trilogy ("Ice") is much more readable and engaging, now that I've set it aside, I am less motivated by the day to pick the book back up and slog on. But give it a shot if you're into science fiction that's more metaphysical than genre, or just interested in contemporary Russian fiction.
Note: For those that find the idea of Tunguska an interesting one, there are at least 20-30 other novels, including quite a few from big name authors, that feature it in their plotlines. And if you start peeking into the corners of geek culture, you'll find it crop up everywhere (Ghostbusters, Buffy, X-Files, Hellboy, Star Trek, Dr. Who, and a gazillion comics and games).
Born into a wealthy family in Ukraine, we follow the boy's comfortable upbringing until it is upended by the Revolution and he becomes another orphaned piece of flotsam in the new Soviet Union. He develops a strange obsession with space, and eventually joins a scientific expedition heading to the Tunguska blast site. As they get closer and closer, things get weirder and weirder, to the point where I just lost interest. The writing devolves into some trippy, almost stream of consciousness stuff that just didn't work at all for me. Even though I've heard the middle book of the trilogy ("Ice") is much more readable and engaging, now that I've set it aside, I am less motivated by the day to pick the book back up and slog on. But give it a shot if you're into science fiction that's more metaphysical than genre, or just interested in contemporary Russian fiction.
Note: For those that find the idea of Tunguska an interesting one, there are at least 20-30 other novels, including quite a few from big name authors, that feature it in their plotlines. And if you start peeking into the corners of geek culture, you'll find it crop up everywhere (Ghostbusters, Buffy, X-Files, Hellboy, Star Trek, Dr. Who, and a gazillion comics and games).
January 16, 2016
It was well suited to collect the three parts of "Ice Trilogy" into a single volume. Inside you will find all manner of post-modern tricks of the trade, broken story lines, abrupt changes in form and style, juxtaposition of the old and new, and confused wanderers desperately searching for something greater than themselves in a world where everything is vacuous.
Sorokin rejects the emptiness of 20th century life, using post-modern forms against themselves, showing us a group of people whose happiness comes from embracing each other - literally - and discovering that the only thing that really matters in their lives is each other's company.
This is intentionally sentimental and melodramatic. Post-modernism cannot tolerate earnestness and sincerity. In "Ice Trilogy," we are told, earnestness and sincerity are all that matter.
Dragging the reader through a surfeit of 20th century media forms and styles, from the cynical to the obscene, "Ice Trilogy" tells us to reject the cynicism and incoherence of modern society and embrace what might only be accurately described as our own 'true nature.'
Sorokin rejects the emptiness of 20th century life, using post-modern forms against themselves, showing us a group of people whose happiness comes from embracing each other - literally - and discovering that the only thing that really matters in their lives is each other's company.
This is intentionally sentimental and melodramatic. Post-modernism cannot tolerate earnestness and sincerity. In "Ice Trilogy," we are told, earnestness and sincerity are all that matter.
Dragging the reader through a surfeit of 20th century media forms and styles, from the cynical to the obscene, "Ice Trilogy" tells us to reject the cynicism and incoherence of modern society and embrace what might only be accurately described as our own 'true nature.'
February 2, 2014
This was terrible.
Preachy, over written to the point of incoherence, stupid amounts of capitalized words and italics that distract instead of enhance. Toward the end there are pages-long smug, nonsensical paragraphs about "meat machines" and "metal tubes".
For example: "Eighty-eight years ago this meat machine, with the help of his cohorts, had overturned a dynasty of meat machines that had ruled the Country of Ice for more than three hundred years."
Alternates between pointless minutia and long rambling summaries of telling (info dumps). Lots of CAPITAL letters and italics for NO reason and exclamation points! Also if you aren't well versed in Russia's history, trying to follow meandering stories of people with nonsense names and no personality plus "meat puppets" as every other character is impossible.
New characters are sometimes introduced in bold with a colon and a stilted description, even minor one use characters.
Every thing is described as "could be seen/heard", a passive, filtered bit of telling.
Preachy, over written to the point of incoherence, stupid amounts of capitalized words and italics that distract instead of enhance. Toward the end there are pages-long smug, nonsensical paragraphs about "meat machines" and "metal tubes".
For example: "Eighty-eight years ago this meat machine, with the help of his cohorts, had overturned a dynasty of meat machines that had ruled the Country of Ice for more than three hundred years."
Alternates between pointless minutia and long rambling summaries of telling (info dumps). Lots of CAPITAL letters and italics for NO reason and exclamation points! Also if you aren't well versed in Russia's history, trying to follow meandering stories of people with nonsense names and no personality plus "meat puppets" as every other character is impossible.
New characters are sometimes introduced in bold with a colon and a stilted description, even minor one use characters.
Every thing is described as "could be seen/heard", a passive, filtered bit of telling.
July 24, 2011
At this point my conclusion is as a stand-alone piece of work the middle section of the Ice Trilogy is brilliant, bizarre and terrifying. As part of the whole, the second book Ice feels more like a way-station on a journey that is swinging toward tedium. It feels like blasphemy because my meat machine heart has loved almost everything that has been translated by Sorokin thus far, for its violence, its objectivism, its alien tone, but Ice Trilogy is an epic undertaking that seems better suited to the small form, where not all the answers are visible and the anthropological detail is not so thick. By itself the previously published Ice felt like a Korean horror film, where the lack of explanation was part of the terror. By page 400 I'm starting to feel glad that Krom, Gorg, and Blurp are on the verge of destroying themselves and the rest of the human race.
I'd recommend reading Ice alone or definitely The Queue if you can get your hands on it.
I'd recommend reading Ice alone or definitely The Queue if you can get your hands on it.
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