The Sentimental Agents in the Volyen Empire by Doris Lessing
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

The last book in the Canopus in Argos series may not be a traditionally good book in any sense of the word, but it has something many do not: a purpose that is both interesting, sharp, and as tragic as it is funny.

For the first four books, we always get oblique views of WHAT Canopus is, a force of good, of spiritualism in empire form, always being subverted by its evil counterpart. It's the spirit of cooperation and the rising tide against those who betray and twist for their own benefit.

This is obvious and simplistic, of course, and the books are rich and complicated and even rather natural in the evolution of all this, but that doesn't change the basic fact.

This last book focuses almost entirely on words, words, words. Good god, the words. How to completely destroy an empire using little more than words. But here's the good part: it may as well be us. Everyone seems to be going through quite a bit of all we see here, written timelessly.

How to turn words meaningless, how to reverse their meanings, how to turn vital services into caricatures, how to enslave people while making them clamor for it until it's too late. The propaganda.

The goddamn propaganda.

The endlesss goddamn propaganda.

You might say it's a sore spot with me. And perhaps this book hit harder than it should just because of how like a spear it is with the goddamn propaganda.

But just as it is asked in the book: "Just imagine what you'd be if you turned all that to better purposes?"

Yeah. This is actually a rather dark book.

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