Heroes and Villains
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Average rating3
Sharp-eyed Marianne lives in a white tower made of steel and concrete with her father and the other Professors. Outside, where the land is thickly wooded and wild beasts roam, live the Barbarians, who raid and pillage in order to survive. Marianne is strictly forbidden to leave her civilized world but, fascinated by these savage outsiders, decides to escape. There, beyond the wire fences, she will discover a decaying paradise, encounter the tattooed Barbarian boy Jewel and go beyond the darkest limits of her imagination. Playful, sensuous, violent and gripping, Heroes and Villains is an ambiguous and deliriously rich blend of post-apocalyptic fiction, gothic fantasy, literary allusion and twisted romance.
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warning - contains spoilers
I love a post-apocalyptic dystopian novel and can forgive them almost anything. However, I found this just terribly bland. It was a simple plot buried under pretentious quasi-poetic prose.
Basically, educated city girl is told exotic Barbarians are bad meanwhile Barbarians, stuck in the middle, are taught to fear both the Professors and the mutated Out People. City girl runs away and ends up captured/saved by a beautiful Barbarian man. His tribe fear and distrust her, the man emotionally/physically/sexually abuses her (tableaus painted with abstract imagery interspersed with blunt dialogues). She loves/hates him. He dies, she remains - pregnant with his child and planning to rule his tribe.
Ultimately the title itself sums up and overemphasises Carter's point. There are no Heroes and Villians - everyone is horrific, pitiable and ultimately destroyed. There is no catharsis or hope or even a real ending. Their ugly little world will just continue to turn but I don't need to know any more about it.
This book was so thoroughly weird. Beautiful language, though. I feel like it's hanging between 3 and 4 stars for me, but it's mainly my own lack of understanding holding it back. So a preliminary 4 stars + a reread it is.