Borrowed from library - 2 weeks for 8 hours of audio... can I get it done? *fingers crossed*
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welp my concern was mute because at about 15% I've decided I don't want to read it.

I think I added this book based on coming by a list of books and stories that included older female characters and as I tire of reading about "special" young people, I added it to my tbr. Or maybe it was this cover alone that got me:


We are introduced to the characters 1 at a time, meaning one per chapter. So I got a good glance at who I will be spending the 8 hours with and I'm not connecting with them or the story which seems like it will include this group defending themselves and San Francisco from an invading group in this post-apocalyptic world. Our original group are artists, who seem to see the world a bit different than most, are they affecting it or is this normal for the author's world? Idk I'm checking out before that is clear.
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not a fan of the narrator ( )

Pat Murphy is so brilliant. Seriously, everything she's ever written is a joy to read.
This one takes place in and around San Francisco after a global plague has wiped out the majority of the population. The cast of characters who remain in the city consist of "Books" who keeps up the library; "The Machine" who makes crazy robot sculptures; Danny-boy, who wants to paint the whole Golden Gate blue; and others who are mostly focused on using the remnants of what's been left behind to create art or advance knowledge. Unfortunately, there are also survivors who want to amass power and 'save society'. An unbelievably repugnant man who calls himself General Fourstar has built himself a little army, mostly leads by fear, and has decided he's going to bring the City under his dominion. The citizens get really creative in an effort to fight back. ( )

Read for an IRL book group. A post-apocalyptic community of artists use their art to defend San Francisco (population 50) against an invading army (population 150) led by a self-styled General. Written in the late 80's but with a definite 70's sensibility,plus elements of magical realism, which worked for me 90% of the time. Most of the novel is about the post-apocalyptic life of the characters, rural and urban, and I liked it better than the final war, which strayed into YA territory. Interestingly for a book with an anti-war message, the apocalyptic plague was introduced by American peace activists who imported monkeys from a Buddhist monastery in Nepal into the US as a symbol of peace. ( )

This book has been sitting on my bookshelves for years. I can't imagine why I didn't get to it before. It's about peace and war, non-violent and violent disobedience, art, artists, political oppression, and thinking outside the box wrapped in a great story about post-apocalyptic San Francisco. Evidently, Pat Murphy really loves her city. Now I'm going to give it to my daughter. ( )

Reading this for our book group. Wow, my heart is broken by this book - and the reality of the city of San Francisco being no longer a mecca for artists but a hugely overpriced center for tech bros bro'ing out. I have read a lot of post-apocalyptic fiction; this has similarities to (and is definitely in some sort of conversation across the years with) Earth Abides. Because the plague in the book was clearly started by monkeys, and because 1989 was nearing the peak of the AIDS epidemic in the U.S. (and because HIV very, very roughly "comes from monkeys"), I think it's clear this is a response to the idea that most people would have died out, and reactions would have been varied. The book is also a response to theories of peace and war, how artists would fight, what books can do for people, etc. It's lovely and hard and intense. I loved Jax's character, and I enjoyed Ms. Migdol very much, but I felt that only Jax was truly given much depth despite several other close third-person POV chapters.

That said, I also felt that the book sets up weird differences, oppositions, between artists and farmers, between Buddhists and Christians, between San Francisco and Los Angeles (that's only hinted at, but it's there). I wonder how post-apocalyptic SF writers in SF and LA would write about those cities now. I also think @karlthefog on Twitter might have a few thoughts about his vital role in the resistance. ( )

The story is about a post-apocalypse San Francisco, and although there are human characters, the city is the main character. A young woman comes to San Francisco after her mother's death, bringing a warning about a general who wants to take over the city. The crisis takes place in the last 60 pages of the book, and the "war" is largely symbolic, and I found its resolution not entirely satisfying. But the book makes its own rules and mostly follows them. If it really was the end of the world you could do much worse than living in San Francisco. ( )

I have a thing for sentient in unexpected places, so I loved this book with its sentient city. I liked the way it protects its inhabitants and how the artist living there make a life for themselves. It was very interesting to see how they defend themselves when the city is under attack. I also liked that the defensive (and offensive) roles are played by men and women alike. I think I would have preferred a different ending, but I was ok with it. ( )

I really enjoyed reading this book - the tone and concepts were just beautiful. It's a post-apocalyptic scenario infused with magical realism. After a plague spread (accidentally?) by peace-activist Buddhists, only a few survivors live amongst ruins. San Francisco has become a haven of artists, but a military cult based in Sacramento is set on forcefully establishing a new American empire. Pacifism faces down a philosophy of violent force... but primarily, this is the story of the orphaned Danny-boy and the wild girl Jax... and of the city itself, suffused with dreams and nightmares.
My only criticism is that while it's beautiful and poetic, the book paints both sides of the conflict with a broad brush, and avoids engaging some of the obvious questions (is there absolutely no crime or major conflict amongst the happy artists of San Francisco?).
Still, even though it may have limitations, it's still a lovely book. ( )

Several years after a plague has decimated the human population, a group of artists inhabit a mostly empty San Francisco, using the entire city as their blank canvas; then a woman without a name arrives to warn them of a planned invasion, and the artists must come up with a new way to wage war.

I thought this was a very interesting entry in the post-apocalyptic genre. Unlike other post-apocalyptic fiction, it rejects the notion that humans will regress to violence and savagery if civilization blinks out. In fact, this San Francisco is an anarchic utopia, marred only by elements from the outside. This is a different take on the well-worn themes of war and peace (although concluding that some violence and probably a lot of death is inevitable to avoid one and achieve the other). I appreciated the city as a major character in the book, actually intervening at certain points; these incidents of magical realism seemed appropriate for the tone and setting, and contributed some lovely images, such as blue butterflies painting the Golden Gate Bridge and golden flowers raining from the sky. A good read for post-apocalypse fans looking for something different. ( )

Alone, she felt the city around her: a fragile and elaborate construction; a maze of streets as complex as the strands of a spider’s web; houses in which people had lived and slept and made love, each individual leaving an indelible mark on the place.

Ever since I first read a book by Pat Murphy that was being offered on Netgalley I have grown to really love her books. I can honestly say that I probably would never had discovered her had it not been for Netgalley. While most of her books are fantasy or sci-fiction they all seem so unique and different that I honestly never know what I'll get when I start one of her books.

This book was no exception to that. This books follows a group of artists who live in San Francisco after a plague has wiped out most of the population. The group of artists must ban together when a stranger with no name comes to town warning them that a General most people call Fourstar wants to take control of San Francisco.

I loved reading about the artists and reading all of their backstories and seeing what they did before the plague came. The girl with no name (she eventually gets a name but I will refer to her as 'the girl with no name') absolutely fascinated me at first and I was dying to know all that had previously happened with her mother. The further along in the story I got the more her stubbornness and aggressiveness annoyed me.

I loved the way that the artists fought back (and how the city itself helped them). I became a bit wary with where the book was going towards the end but ultimately I ended up enjoying the end. If you are looking for a dystopian book with a cast unique but extremely interesting characters then I would definitely recommend you read this book. ( )

Nope. It had its moments... but you've got to stomach that post-Plague San Francisco is the gentle city (or rather a village now) of artists and mystics, watched over by a guardian angel, and Oakland, that BAD place, is ruled by violent motorcycle gangs... and you realize just like Callenbach with his laughable description of Oakland as "Soul City" in Ecotopia, you're dealing with more silly elitist futurism. Sociologist Mike Davis called it on the post-apocalyptic genre, he said it was often used as a way to imaginatively cleanse a feared underclass population from a fictional landscape, and he is, unfortunately, quite right here. ( )

Post-apocalyptic fantasy, with a feminist, pacifist slant. The reason I say fantasy, rather than SF, is that things happen in the city of San Francisco that are along the lines of an active spirit of the city, rather than anything explainable by technology.

"Dahlgren" light ( )

Interesting post-apocalyptic fantasy with a dream-like feel. The characters are good, if a bit blank in many ways; they aren't so much meant to be people as ideas, I suspect. Once it gets to the end it feels like Murphy realized she was running out of pages, so shifted gears to wrap-up mode, making it feel more than a little rushed. I would have liked to have read more after the climax, but that's asking for more linearity than the author was interested in providing. ( )

Pleasant post-plague romp.
Cast: Evil militarists, SF hippies
Timeframe: recovery-era
Mary Sue: SF pacifists and flower children ( )

This is my first novel from Pat Murphy. Not sure I'm really that excited about reading more from her. I thought it was okay at first, then I thought it was really bad, then the last 3rd got interesting. Overall it felt really dated. There were supernatural elements that seemed extremely out of place in a post holocaust world. At first I couldn't tell if they were events that were actually happening or if they were somehow metaphorical. When it started raining flowers I thought I had missed something and that maybe it was someone dropping flowers on to the main character from above but later I realized it was literally raining flowers. The best part was the creative way that the San Franciscans "fought" the war.

So if you're looking for post apocalyptic sci-fi, I would suggest -Blood Music- from Greg Bear or -The Postman- from David Brin. ( )

I loved this book. To be honest there are some caricatured characters, some elements of the plot are stereotypic, and the writing is sometimes weak.

But there were several aspects that bring me such pleasure, such wonder, that i have to give it so high a rating. First, the city is the center point, a major character, and that city is San Francisco, which i have always found magical (and i moved to the SF Bay Area after living in Chicago and NYC). And the "heros" are almost entirely artists, certainly not typical of most sciffy/fantasy novels, and many of my friends have been artists (visual, musical, dance).

Ultimately for me the wondrous and imaginative parts of the book outweighed the "same old" parts. ( )

I really enjoyed this. It was kind of weird and quirky in a most delightful way. My only disappointment was that the ending didn't seem to match the rest of the book. More accurate, the very end did, but the few pages before as the "current time" action ended, just sort of ran out of steam without the delicacy of the rest of the book.

The characters were all delightful - and the descriptions of their art and their weapons, both variations on the same thing, were beautifully done.

Each person was well described, not only in who they were at the time of the story, but in how they came to be that way.

A lovely story, if not exactly straightforward, kind of like the title, which I love. ( )

This is another adult sf novel, repackaged for YAs. It's a post-apocalyptic yarn about California after a plague has wiped out most of the population. Parts of Northern California have come under the sway of a general people call Four Star, who wants to rebuild America as an ultraconservative dictatorship. The denizens of San Francisco, on the other hand, have created an anarchist art colony and have no desire to have their way of life disrupted.

The whole thing's ever-so-slightly hippie-dippy, but it's an engaging story and I loved the characters. Plus I'm a sucker for post-apocalyptic scenarios. ( )

NIL