ISBN: 0-34541-436-5 Order from: Amazon.com Barnes & Noble.com
A novel full of colorful characters and worlds, which tries to convey profound ideas about art and freedom, but ends up as a superficial travelogue.
Reviewed by David on June 29, 1998
Genre: Science Fiction (Intrigue, Interstellar Civilizations, Dance)
Synopsis: The life of a galactic performance master, a superb singer/dancer/actor/magician, is recalled as he awaits punishment for performing a banned dance. The growth and experience of Mikk, from his traumatic childhood, through the art school and apprenticeship, to the respected and contraversial force of cultural exchange, is shown upon a tapestry of alien beings and civilizations.
Full Review: Most of the book takes place as Mikk recollects his adventures while being tried for violating the galactic ban on the performance of an exotic dance. As he recounts his extraordinary life, his teachers, lovers and countless performances, Mikk reaffirms his absolute need to be free to perform, to borrow and transform the art of different worlds and to entertain and enlighten the others, even at the risk of his own life.
This book is long, but it is crammed with material. In fact, so much material that no worlds or characters are properly developed. The science is implausible, the cultures unbelievable. For instance, at his trial, one of the tribunes appears to mock him about being nearly raped by a female alien, apparently with the attitude of a ridiculing redneck, all the while being a very strange alien himself.
Most of the opposition are 2-dimensional cartoons: the immensely obese, and apperently cannibalistic art censor; the shadowey censorship cartel, which, apparently not content with using judicial homocide, tries to have Mikk assassinated in jail with an unreliable poison; the xenophobic chain-smoking Brooklyn art critic.
New cultures appear and disappear with bewildering speed: giant bees that talk to the dead, complete with miraculous royal jelly, apparently more potent than enriched uranium but less toxic; fragile ephemeral singers; vulcan-like people of pure logic; blue-skinned seductive women whose sweat burns like acid. Even a semi-sentient gaseous being, easily befriended by a bit of juggling.
In fact, some of it reads suspeciously like Star Trek episodes. At the end, everything miraculously falls into place: the evil all-powerful cartel falls apart, the various mysterious beings fall all over themselves to help Mikk, and the murderous Godfather-like villain has a change of heart and pardons the hero.
The sex encounters are incredible as well: Mikk is a bisexual herpetophile, and most of the aliens are just like horny humans, except in different colors. The Vyzanians themselves, of whom Mikk is one, are just like humans, except they live 12 times longer. Despite that, they react exactly the same. A 150-year Vyzanian is obviously a 13-year old boy with different hair color.
Much of this would have been entertaining in a space opera. Unfortunately, this book is too long and too serious to be taken in this vein.
The ideas of the transforming power of art, along with the cross-species sex has been undertaken by Ann Maxwell, for instance in Fire Dancer and its ilk, however, with less pretense and more romance. Anne McCaffrey has also dabbled with these themes.
However, The Merro Tree is too ambitious to have much fun with its material, and too flawed to be taken seriously. There is not much to recommend this first novel.
Overall: 5; Plot: 5; Characters: 4; Style: 4; World-building: 5; Originality: 5;
Copyright date 1998, Ballantine Publishing Group (Del Rey), October 1997, Mass-market
ISBN: 0-34541-436-5 Order from: Amazon.com Barnes & Noble.com