Used price: $14.37
Used price: $0.72
Collectible price: $0.96
Used price: $2.96
The story moves along very well with asides to explain various Jewish traditions and customs. This may have been geared to a different time and generation, when the Jewish religion was still strange and foreign to many Americans on the East Coast. Certainly Kemelman's characters like to use phrases like "you people" and "your Yom Kippur", phrases that I have not heard in many, many years. Times have changed. But this story still stands as a monument to its times, to that period when New England Christians and Jews were still getting to know one another. If you know or want to know a New England town with its various characters, pressures, and patterns, if you want to read an enjoyable story with a Jewish background, then be sure to read this book.
Collectible price: $30.00
But with "Bill", we reach this point after Book 1. The character is not as accessible, his lot in life not as enjoyable to read about, the reversals he suffers tiresome. Add in some often appallingly bad attempts at genre parody (the Cyberpunk and Orson Scott Card efforts in one of this series, in particular, were cringe-makingly horrible) and it's no surprise that in every used SF bookstore I've seen, a chunk of the Harry Harrison shelfspace is taken by barely-touched copies of "Bill the Galactic Hero And Something Or Other" by Harry Harrison And Some Guy. I've read them all once and will never touch any of them again. Harrison clearly doesn't care about Bill, and nor do I.
Used price: $2.94
Collectible price: $8.99
Used price: $0.74
Collectible price: $5.29
Instead of being a collaborative novel, "Murasaki" is a mixed bag of science fiction stories that share a setting, each written by a different award-winning author. Mind the fact that the only interesting part is the fairly in-depth world-creation notes (included as appendices), and that the stories are pathetically shallow and lead virtually nowhere...
...That is precisely what I though about this "science fiction novel in six parts" prior to reading the last two parts, which are so refreshingly, profoundly excellent that I almost wept with awe. A mystery of interplanetary proportions is suddenly built up and then revealed in flying colors.
It's really a pity that the rest of Murasaki doesn't follow suit.
All in all, I would definitely recommend this book for anyone who likes the work of Brin, Bear, Anderson, Pohl, Kress etc etc etc.. They all wrote parts of it.
A good read.
Used price: $3.45
Collectible price: $5.77
Used price: $8.95