Cheap Valentine (Book) (Lucius Shepard) Price

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Customer Reviews of Valentine

Dream lover
A beautifully written little book about love and the illusion of love. Shepard's lyrical yet emotionally precise prose illuminates the mysterious process of the weathers of the heart by choosing to isolate his lovers in a town itself isolated by hurricane whose reality is in question. Is it all a dream, a story the narrator is telling to a woman for whom he longs, or an actual record of a moment in "a serial affair?" Whatever the case, VALENTINE reads like the essence of a love affair, the distillation of a dream. Its intensity and luminous clarity is obviously the product of a man in love--a very talented man named Lucius Shepard.

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Partial return to form
I was surprised to see a new novel by Lucius Shepard as I had thought that he had retired some time ago. I have read all of his novels and was really blown away by the force of his writing in Life During Wartime. I like to think of Golden as an miss step and was hoping that Valentine would be all conquering. Unfortunately, it is closer to Golden than his best work. It is small, perhaps indicating a lack of stamina, and shares some of Shepard's overriding themes. His protagonist has "been around", is a tough guy, a sexual giant. While the love interest is, as usual untrustworthy, a slut and grateful for the sexual gratification the protagonist visits on her.

While this is depicted as a story about love, it could easily be seen as a repetition of his horror fiction, only sanitised for a more main stream audience (Mr Shepard wouldn't be the first SF writer trying to break into another audience in the winter of his career).

I found it strange to return to Shepard's work after the more prolific early 90s. And it resonates, but in a peculiar fashion, as he is now in his 60s.

This book does show promise and hopefully the next one will be longer, more developed and less slavish to his simplistic depictions of men and women.

I look forward to better things to come.

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A review of the book.
The fascinating thing about Lucius Shepard is how he generates debate between intercolutors and the heat of argument.

However, I am puzzled that that debate by one intercolutor should be placed in the forum for criticism of the book itself.

In my work with children with special needs, I am called upon often to offer mediation strategies. I did not think those elective skills would be called upon in science fiction. In offering this balance, I would like to say that yes, Lucius' age is clear from numerous bios on line and off. However, the reviewer may not be aware of the debate in John Clute's Encyclopaedia surrounding the inconsistencies in Lucius' age. The issue therefore may not be arithmetical but about honesty.

Regarding Lucius' alleged retirement, I would again agree that this is incorrect, but only by degree. The reviewer Jay may have meant to pinpoint a trend. Dozois said of Lucius that "no year since has gone by without him adorning the final ballot for one major award or another." That was in 1990. By 1995 Dozois was reduced to republishing mainstream fiction from Playboy ("Beast of the Heartland") and stories that weren't even published _at all_ ("Human History"), in order to get Lucius' name into the science fiction press. This is a dramatic fall off in publishing, but certainly not retirement. Lucius himself said, in Locus, that he didn't see the point in writing for a time and so he stopped.

Regarding labels. I personally know the pain that these can bring, but I think that the label of "science fiction" is an innocent enough one. Again, those of us more familiar with the genre will know that this loosely encapsulates the wider subgenres of horror, fantasy and slipstream.

So I think one reviewer did indeed endeavour to get his facts right. Did the other?

However, these remarks are tangential to the book itself. Those of us who have met Lucius are aware of his towering presence and his command of centre stage. While he may not be above a little personal embellishment, this makes for a mastery of fiction. A man who lives so close to the edge of personal mythologizing (or past it) can bring great gusto to the art of the novel.

I recall my pleasure in my late twenties of discovering Life During Wartime, the story of a strong, vigorous youth rescuing a sexually traumatised woman by sexual expertise. Or "Beast of the Heartland," the story of a strong young boxer teaching a prostitute to love with his sexual expertise. Or "The Last Time," the story of a strong, violent man, coming to a nasty end during bouts of dramatic sex with a sexually traumatised woman. To paraphrase EL Doctorow, he is nothing, Lucius Shepard, if not a writer who knew a good formula when he found one.

Lucius has been one of the most popular science fiction writers of his era, and he is still popular today. Though it is also fair to say that he sits at the genre's table below the salt while the more sophisticated voices of modernist and post modernist irony (Silverberg, Gibson, Le Guin) conduct the conversation.

As always, Lucius remains a big man with a big voice, fearlessly shouting down boundaries, critics, genre distinctions and even those around him who would caution patience and control. While Valentine does not show the command and breadth of emotion that he has has had, the reactions below indicate that he can still create dialogue and polarise opinion.