Imperium Without End (Pangeae, Book 1)

Pangaea I is one of those marvelous stories where you get to gradually figure out the rules of an artfully crafted, but ultimately totalitarian, Big Brother (actually "Angel Dreamer") society. Pangaea is an obliquely alternative earth, now beginning to fall apart in literally all respects, rather like our own gondwanaland and plate tectonics (which they haven't quite figured out on Pangaea, to their sorrow). The story's structure is episodic (cleverly "faceted" like its Orbs of Power), featuring a rotating cast of characters, before it all begins to hang together. While you get to see all sides of Pangaea, of course it therefore takes a while to identify, come to know, or care for our heroes--and then the story cuts off abruptly. The plot about power slowly becomes spell-binding. The characters come from diverse walks of life, called "pures," in an extraordinary, genetically stratified, human society. The opening pages are difficult, for they abound in truly obscure, incantatory words appropriate to the aethereal "angel" who has the first scene. The whole story feels much more like a mainstream novel because Mason is stronger on characterization than most traditional SF, and doesn't delay things with long descriptions of technical minutia. "Things" are just there (hence touched with seeming magic); instead we get to see the interactions develop among the strongly drawn characters, as their world opens to our view. Reviewers say the sequel, Imperium Afire, is a bummer, so we are, sadly, left well and truly hanging about the involving, cross-caste partnering Mason carefully developed for the characters here. Ah well, Pangaea vol. 1 is worth re-reading instead. The paper quality is cheap, but there's no better hardback if you want to treasure this.

Pangaea 1 is the first installment of a series about a decadent future society of strict castes. I have it on good authority that the word "pure", used throughout the book, is a direct translation of the word "caste". Those in the higher castes (and subcastes or subpures) consider themselves more pure or more nearly godlike. The god here is called Pan, but His ideal of sexless Platonic love seems less like the Greek god Pan - Dionysus and more like "pan" meaning "all", perhaps. "Gaea", I guess, is "earth".Each chapter is introduced with a quotation from an I-Ching like oracle, which has been banned by the rigidly hierachical totalitarian police state that runs the place.The world of Pangaea seems to be built on something like San Francisco on the San Andreas fault, except with a lot more earthquakes, everyone waiting for "the big one". The government trys to control the people just as it tries to convince the people it has earthquakes under control.As is stated above, sex is considered a disgusting bestial remnant of the past. Children are cloned or bred in government breeding stations. The breeding and caste system is somewhat like that descibed in Aldous Huxleys' "Brave new World". Women's eggs are harvested at puberty and become property of the state. Married partners in Pangaea are not expected to have sex with each other, but visit and "erotician", of either sex, who takes care of the occational bestail urge.To me, Pangaea with it's fascists, earthquakes, drugs, bizarre religion and sexual mores is sort of like an echo of late 60's underground San Francisco pushed onto the far future. Pangaea is a decadent world of Supression, supression of people, supression of sex, supression of alternate opinions and supression of the earth. And we know what happens when things are supressed... The book is clever and literate. I eventually figured out how Ms. Mason was using her words but a glossary might have been helpful. Pangaea has a profusion of vivid Dickensonian characters. Pangaea 1 starts very slowly, but builds to a fevered pitch at the end leaving the reader hungering for the next installment!

This was a very interesting book, and once it got rolling (about halfway through, after all the introduced characters finally got tied in) I could not put it down either. But at points the elaborate vocabulary got to be a "little" excessive. I would put the book down and still have weird words and phrases ringing in my head such as, `times lost to antiquity' `pure, subpure, impure' `imperial this and that'. But other than those things, it was a quick and enjoyable read, and I will probably hunt down the next book when it comes out.

I couldn't put this blasted book down! A compeling, complex world that is written with a firey eloquence. I'm already ready already for the next book in the series :]. BRING IT ON!

In the best SFnal tradition, Mason turns our most basic assumptions about life upside down in this truly exotic world. With deeply drawn characters and a complex, layered plot (that apparently is just unfolding), I felt like I was entering a vision (not slogging through techie excess). The tight lyrical prose reads like Beat poetry. Destined to become a cult classic