Subject: PASSION PLAY by Sean Stewart

From: [email-masked]
Date: 03 Jan 94 05:38:39 GMT

PASSION PLAY by Sean Stewart
                  Ace, ISBN 0-441-65241-7, 1993, US$4.50.
                     A book review by Evelyn C. Leeper
		      Copyright 1993 Evelyn C. Leeper

     I find science fictional looks at religion intriguing, and in that
category I would include future theocracies.  PASSION PLAY is about a near-
future America that is a theocracy, having been taken over by the
Redemptionists.  The "reds" (as they are somewhat confusingly called) have
taken over the entertainment media as well, and everything is now
instructive or uplifting.  The Reds seem to have some idea of art--though
movies and such financed by religious groups now don't seem to show much
evidence of this--and it is during the production of a version of FAUST that
the murder which forms the core of the book's plot occurs.  The story is
told in the first person by an independent investigator (who has some semi-
psychic powers which are never explained).

     Reading the book, I felt like a stone skipping over the surface of a
lake.  There's too much "stuff" in this short book to have any of it
examined in depth.  The Redemptionist government, the religious structure
(what happened to all the non-Christians in the new United States?), new
uses of the media (along with a distrust in technology approaching the neo-
Luddite level--how do these contradictory ideas get resolved?), puritanism
(along with drugs and sex)--all these are touched on, but never examined or
even made consistent.  And wrapping all this around a murder mystery
confuses the issue.  There's too much the reader is trying to figure out
about the background to give him or her a fair chance at figuring out the
crime.  (Yes, I know a murder mystery is not necessarily a puzzle.  Still,
it does seem as though the science fiction nature of this merely mystifies
the reader further.)

     PASSION PLAY suffers from a super-abundance of aspects.  I rarely find
myself complaining that a book is too short, but Stewart needed either to
lengthen the book or cut back on the various changes introduced.  (It's also
possible that an "expository lump" explaining some of what was going on
might have made the rest less confusing.)  PASSION PLAY is an intriguing
novel, but ultimately disappointing.  (In fairness, I show note that many
people have liked it more than I, and it did win the Aurora Award for Best
Canadian Science Fiction Novel in English.  But my reaction was that it
showed a lot of promise, but didn't deliver on it.)

%T      Passion Play
%A      Sean Stewart
%C      New York
%D      December 1993
%I      Ace
%O      paperback, US$4.50.
%G      ISBN 0-441-65241-7
%P      194pp

-- 
Evelyn C. Leeper | +1 908 957 2070 | [email-masked] / [email-masked]