Slow River
by Nicola Griffith

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Book Reviews of Slow River

Book Review: Gtreat read
Summary: 5 Stars

Summary of Slow River

Born into a bioengineering family made wealthy by cleaning up after humanity, Lore leads a life of privilege and power. Riches don't bring happiness, though, and the van de Oest family hides its share of dark secrets. Lore is kidnapped, but escapes from her captors when she realizes her family isn't going to pay the ransom. Naked, alone, and wounded, she is saved by the brutally street-smart Spanner, who teaches Lore to survive by exploiting the Net (and human) weaknesses. To learn to trust, though, Lore must face her demons, one by one, until she can begin again.

Griffith's biotech-science details are accurate, and she fits them smoothly into the story in the manner of a cyberpunk master. This novel's real strength is its characters, though. The van de Oest family, Spanner, even characters who appear only briefly, are all distinct and consistent--not to mention very human. Lore herself seems so personal that Griffith's note about the story's disturbing aspects not being autobiographical was probably wise. Slow River is more than good enough to transcend genre and appeal to both queer SF readers and a more broad audience looking for an excellent character-driven SF story. --Therese Littleton

Winner of the 1996 Nebula Award for Best Novel

Nicola Griffith, winner of the Tiptree Award and the Lambda Award for her widely acclaimed first novel Ammonite, turns her attentions nearer to the present in Slow River, the dark and intensely involving story of a young woman's struggle for survival and independence on the gritty underside of a near-future Europe.

She awoke in an alley to the splash of rain. She was naked, a foot-long gash in her back was still bleeding, and her identity implant was gone. Lore Van Oesterling had been the daughter of one of the world's most powerful families... and now she was nobody, and she had to hide.

Then out of the rain walked Spanner, predator and thief, who took her in, cared for her wound, and taught her how to reinvent herself again and again. No one could find Lore now: not the police, not her family, and not the kidnappers who had left her in that alley to die. She had escaped... but the cost of her newfound freedom was crime and deception, and she paid it over and over again, until she had become someone she loathed.

Lore had a choice: She could stay in the shadows, stay with Spanner... and risk losing herself forever. Or she could leave Spanner and find herself again by becoming someone else: stealing the identity implant of a dead woman, taking over her life, and creating a new future.

But to start again, Lore required Spanner's talents -- Spanner, who needed her and hated her, and who always had a price. And even as Lore agreed to play Spanner's game one final time, she found that there was still the price of being a Van Oesterling to be paid. Only by confronting her family, her past, and her own demons could Lore meld together who she had once been, who she had become, and the person she intended to be...

"A dark and intensely involving story... In Slow River, Griffith -- with language brilliant and clear as sun-glittered water -- delineates a woman's struggle to remain herself and to stay alive."
   THE PHOENIX GAZETTE

"Griffith's heroine, Lore van de Oest, is a futuristic lesbian Patty Hearst. Kidnapped from her wealthy family shortly before her eighteenth birthday, Lore is abused, degraded, and ultimately left half dead on the streets of an unnamed European city. Salvation comes in the form of Spanner, a charismatic outlaw, who both seduces and manipulates Lore.... This is a character who always knows who she is. And that puts Lore, along with her creator, among the most intriguing women in sci-fi."
   DENEUVE

"With her first novel Ammonite... Griffith revealed herself to be fluent in presenting realistic science and its implications, capable of cinematic clarity in her prose, insightful with emotions and character.... Replicating many of her debut's themes and strengths, Slow River nonetheless expands into new territory."
   THE WASHINGTON POST

"With its persuasive characters trying to form identities in an unstable society, its midnight streets and shabby apartments, and its vast industrial engines, Slow River is a powerful prose poem on issues that are already with us.... It's a worthy and radically different successor to its author's acclaimed debut."
   LOCUS

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