I came to Paul Park's Celestis after reading his more recent Roumania series. Although Roumania is portal fantasy and Celestis is exoplanetary science fiction, they share a great deal in style and content--and neither sits placidly within its genre.

Park has clearly worked out a terrestrial future for background to this book, but Celestis is the site of the tale, and Earth is far away. Readers get little exposure to it, except via fragmentary memories and remarks of the diplomat Simon, who is part of the most recent (and possibly last) cohort of terrestrial emigrants. There is a subjugated species of indigenous humanoids, and another native race acknowledged to be more intelligent than humans but now largely exterminated after generations of human settlement and conflict.

Reviewers are generally quick to remark the political dimensions of this novel, but I think it is far more than a parable of colonialist decline. The religious features are conspicuous, with Christianity figuring notably in the cultivated mentality of the semi-protagonist Katharine, who is an assimilated aboriginal. (I suspect that her name is deliberately spelled to evoke "Cathar" i.e. Albigensian heresy.) The priest Martin Cohen (another allusive moniker) is a key character, if not exactly an admirable one. The differences in the native sensorium create an explicit multiplication of experiential worlds connected by symbols.

Despite its large themes, the book's action takes place on a very personal level. There is a fair amount of sex and violence, all of it suitably disturbing and difficult. Almost every interaction is fraught with misunderstanding, much of it willful. I was less than twenty pages from the end, and I said to myself, "This can't end well." Indeed, while a screen adaptation might superficially present the final tableau as "happy," any attentive reader should be left with a profound uneasiness. Questions of "fact" about events in the story may prove insoluble, not least because of irreconcilable perspectives, and the ending throws this feature into almost painful relief.

Imperialist HUmans find a planet to sustain life after the Earth is all used up. Two Aboriginal races live there and the humans genocide one of the races, and force the other to take a medication that limits their senses; to enslave them. A good story for a misanthropa like myself, but not for a misandrist like myself. ( )

For sheer imagination I'd like to rate Celestis much higher, and maybe after a time I will, but several factors right now prevent that. Primarily? I wasn't ever quite willing to suspend disbelief. Throughout I detected an 'agenda' and suspected the book of being allegorical, that is, designed to offer a warning lesson to humans in the here and now, rather than as a serious attempt to understand what humans might do upon encountering a species as peculiar and interesting as this one. Not to mention that the exotic dual species set up as well as the planet's hot-cold dichotomy was a bit too similar to Helliconia (as mentioned by another reviewer but independently thought by me as I read). Nothing wrong with that, in my view, when a writer chooses to or even is compelled to develop on a similar theme, but in this case, something about the choice felt more subordinate to the allegorical demands than a creative compulsion. (Most of fantasy is born of the compulsion to find unique ways to describe 'magic', for example.) That said - some of the concepts were quite intriguing, probably the greatest strength of the book for me, lies in the idea that this species uses all of its brain (unlike ourselves who apparently rarely use more than 10% capacity) and therefore live in an environment so rich and multi-planed and multi-faceted that humans, stuck in our limited range of apprehension and understanding, can't understand them..... and yet..... because of human expertise in manipulating that 10% are able to dominate and destroy and alter an entire culture.... never understanding the first thing about what they are destroying. The description of the 'abo' woman reverting to her roots, is also well done. If sociologically/politically oriented sf is what interests you, this is very worthwhile. As entertainment? Not so much. *** ( )

On a planet colonised by humans some time ago the Aboriginals are routinely given drugs and cosmetic surgery to make them more or less indistinguishable from their masters. They have become so human many of them have been converted to Christianity. From a British perspective it is tempting to see this aspect of the novel as an allegory of Empire and the morality of colonisation, of manipulating the natives – even unconsciously – is always in the subtext.

Simon Marayam is an envoy from Earth, which has suffered an environmental and population decline. He becomes involved with Katharine Styreme, a beautiful, piano playing Aboriginal, just as a rebellion against human rule is starting. The situation becomes more intricate when it becomes apparent that the planet’s other sentient inhabitants, the Coelestis of the title, were not totally wiped out by the human settlers. Before humans arrived the Coelestis had exercised a form of mind control over the Aboriginals, who considered them Gods. The drugs the aboriginals are given negate this effect.

Styreme and Mayaram are imprisoned by the rebels and as her drugs wear off she becomes increasingly detached from what Mayaram perceives as reality and more under the influence of the Coelestis.

Park employs various points of view to narrate his story and one of the strengths of the book is the divergence of the views of humans and Aboriginals over the same event(s). Styreme’s perceptions are depicted as more and more dream-like. This is one of the best explorations of what it might mean to be alien I can remember reading.

The planet itself is less convincing. Since it is tide-locked, life can only exist within a few hundred miles of the terminator. Yet the landscape and weather are described as if they were somewhere on 20th century Earth. A journey into the darkside does give us a glimpse over the horizon of a hellish Black Hole at the centre of the galaxy, though.

On a technical level as time went by I found Park’s stylistic tic of repeating a phrase within a sentence of it already being used – sometimes as the very next phrase – increasingly wearing.

Despite the resolution being what you might expect of a traditional SF story, Coelestis does not have the overall feel of Science Fiction. It is, however, a novel which transcends quibbles, illuminating about the self-deceptions people have about their relationships, how others see them, and how they believe only what they want to. ( )

Paul Park first appeared with the Starbridge Chronicles - Soldiers of Paradise, Sugar Rain and The Cult of Loving Kindness - an ambitious science fiction trilogy set on a world with seasons which last centuries, much like Brian Aldiss' Helliconia trilogy. From the first page of that trilogy, it was clear that Park was a distinctive voice. And his follow-up, Coelestis, more than proved it. In some respects, Coelestis remains unique in the genre. And that's not an easy accomplishment.

Simon Mayaram is attached to the British Consulate on the only colony world on which an alien race was discovered, homo coelestis. These aliens were actually two races - Demons, and the Aboriginals, who the Demons had telepathically enslaved. The humans hunted the Demons to extinction, and freed the Aboriginals. Who now ape humanity - the rich members of the race undergo comprehensive surgery, and require a strict regimen of drugs, in order to appear and behave human. Katharine Styreme is one such Aboriginal. To all intents and appearances, she is a beautiful young human woman.

Simon is invited to a party given by a prominent member of the human community. Katharine - whom he has admired from afar - is also there, with her father Junius, a wealthy merchant. During the party, Aboriginal rebels attack, kill almost everyone and kidnap Simon and Katharine. Without her drugs, Katharine begins to revert to her alien nature - a process that is exacerbated by the presence among the rebels of the last surviving Demon. When human vigilantes attack the rebels, Simon and Katharine are forced to flee... and Katharine's meagre grip on humanity begins to erode even further.

Coelestis is one of those science fiction novels which follows a logic all its own. It is, in a sense, post-rational. Although the story is set an indeterminate time in the future, the community to which Simon belongs bears an uncanny, and deliberate, resemblance to early Twentieth Century colonial British and American. Even the Aboriginals themselves - particularly the Styremes, who are made to appear human, and show no alien side - are hardly convincing in any scientific sense. Earth is described as a dying planet, and the colony planet has been cut off from its nearest neighbour. If there is an interstellar federation or empire, then it bears no resemblance to any other in the genre.

John Clute described Coelestis as a "Third World SF novel". It's sheer hubris on my part, but I think this is wrong. Coelestis is a post-colonial sf novel. It is clearly inspired by Park's own years in India. And to call India a member of the Third World is to ignore its long and deep cultural heritage - and the Aboriginals (or rather, the Demons) are implied to have an equally long cultural heritage in Coelestis. The novel is not about living in a Third World analogue, it is about the gentle wind-down from colonialism and its often bloody consequences. Park makes as much clear in events described in the book. Mayaram is of Indian extraction (although born in the UK), and during his abduction by the Aboriginals, he rapes Katharine. It's perhaps a somewhat blunt metaphor for John Company and the Raj, but it makes the point. Even the Aboriginals' attempt to ape human ways is a reflection of the Indian adoption of some elements of British culture - and especially the English language. The Aboriginals' ersatz humanity is little more than surface - Katharine may resemble a young human woman, but whatever gender she possesses is what's attached to her mimicry (the Aboriginals are actually one-sexed). She is not a viewpoint on the alien - Coelestis is a description of her fall from humanity, not of her imitation of it. ( )