Status
Available
Call number
Genres
Publication
Tordotcom, Kindle Edition, 146 pages
Description
Fantasy. Fiction. Thriller. Historical Fiction. HTML: When you need a memory to be wiped, call me. Transferring unwanted memories to my own mind is the only form of magic I've ever mastered. But now, I'm holding so many memories I'm not always sure which ones are actually mine, any more. Some of them are sensitive; all of them are private. And there are those who are willing to kill to access the secrets I'm trying to bury...A classic Parker tale with a strong supporting cast of princes, courtiers, merchants, academics, and generally unsavory people..
User reviews
LibraryThing member stefferoo
I know I can be quite picky when it comes to short stories and novellas, and in fact there was a time in my life where I simply avoided them all together. I’m big on the immersive reading experience which is something longer novels are in a better position to provide, not to mention characters
But every once in a while, along will come a novella that is so bizarre, so offbeat and so unlike anything I have ever read before, that somehow, against all the odds, it just…works.
The Last Witness by K. J. Parker is such a novella. Its protagonist and narrator is a man with a very special talent. He would be quick to tell you that it is not like mind-reading, not really. What he does is something much more fiddly and delicate. What he can do is enter your mind and take away your memories. A single one or all of them, it doesn’t matter; they would be transferred to his own mind, and it would be like you never had them.
That makes it sound a lot more clear-cut than it is, though. The reality is that things can get a little messy in our narrator’s mind, because all the memories he has ever taken, he retains along with his own. He’s holding so many that he’s not always sure which ones were taken from others and which one are actually his. As you can imagine, that has a profound effect on the narrative.
Also, what would you do if you had an ability like that? Would you use it for good or evil? Our protagonist, who appears to have a dark and mischievous side to him, has decided to let money decide that for him, selling his services to whoever might require them. His clients range from criminals who don’t want anyone to remember their crimes, to traumatized victims who want their bad memories wiped away. Either way, the point is nobody ever asks to get rid of their happy memories. So it’s always the violent, nasty, embarrassing, painful, shameful ones that he has to take away and into himself. And if you’re already someone who’s slightly unhinged, what do think adding that extra load to your psyche does to a person?
The result is a non-linear account of events told through the eyes of a protagonist whom you can’t really count on him to provide a credible narrative. You get also get a sense that he’s not altogether there, or that he’s a twisted guy deep down and all the memories he’s absorbed has only made him even more so. There are moments of clarity in the story, but most of the time you’re also kept guessing – are we still in the character’s present headspace, or are we in a memory? If we are in a memory, is it his or someone else’s? Is it a true memory, or just another “truth” he has created? Because that’s the thing: in addition to his ability to take a memory away, he can also plant seeds of doubt in someone’s mind. If you know someone has been in your head, would you trust what they saw in it? Even if you only half-believed, an innocent comment in passing can sprout into something bigger and change someone’s whole perspective. One of my favorite movies ever, Inception, plays upon this very idea. And our protagonist in The Last Witness, being somewhat of an ass, likes to screw with people the same way, having little to no respect for truths:
“Truth is like love; it’s universally lauded and admired, and most of the time it just causes pain and makes trouble for people.”
Who can blame him, though? To someone who can erase memory and knowledge and history so easily, no wonder truth feels overrated. When you read this, it’s best to brace yourself for a nice little romp through some wild and tangled territory.
I also want to mention that this is the first book I’ve ever read by this author under the name K.J. Parker, even though earlier this year I read a book by Tom Holt, the author behind the pseudonym. After reading The Last Witness, I can really believe the two are one and the same. Though it is completely different from his satirical work, there’s definitely the telltale thread of Holt’s sly and wicked sense of humor lurking beneath the surface. It is a nice, sweet treat.
By all rights I should have found The Last Witness unfulfilling, given the story’s disorganized structure and how impossible it was connect with the character and his haphazard perspective, but it ended up really resonating with me. It’s strange, but in the best way possible – just like this book! The story’s vision was incredible, and K.J. Parker made it work very well. This one gets my recommendation.
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are also very important to me but it’s less likely I can connect to them when the story is over in a blink of an eye.But every once in a while, along will come a novella that is so bizarre, so offbeat and so unlike anything I have ever read before, that somehow, against all the odds, it just…works.
The Last Witness by K. J. Parker is such a novella. Its protagonist and narrator is a man with a very special talent. He would be quick to tell you that it is not like mind-reading, not really. What he does is something much more fiddly and delicate. What he can do is enter your mind and take away your memories. A single one or all of them, it doesn’t matter; they would be transferred to his own mind, and it would be like you never had them.
That makes it sound a lot more clear-cut than it is, though. The reality is that things can get a little messy in our narrator’s mind, because all the memories he has ever taken, he retains along with his own. He’s holding so many that he’s not always sure which ones were taken from others and which one are actually his. As you can imagine, that has a profound effect on the narrative.
Also, what would you do if you had an ability like that? Would you use it for good or evil? Our protagonist, who appears to have a dark and mischievous side to him, has decided to let money decide that for him, selling his services to whoever might require them. His clients range from criminals who don’t want anyone to remember their crimes, to traumatized victims who want their bad memories wiped away. Either way, the point is nobody ever asks to get rid of their happy memories. So it’s always the violent, nasty, embarrassing, painful, shameful ones that he has to take away and into himself. And if you’re already someone who’s slightly unhinged, what do think adding that extra load to your psyche does to a person?
The result is a non-linear account of events told through the eyes of a protagonist whom you can’t really count on him to provide a credible narrative. You get also get a sense that he’s not altogether there, or that he’s a twisted guy deep down and all the memories he’s absorbed has only made him even more so. There are moments of clarity in the story, but most of the time you’re also kept guessing – are we still in the character’s present headspace, or are we in a memory? If we are in a memory, is it his or someone else’s? Is it a true memory, or just another “truth” he has created? Because that’s the thing: in addition to his ability to take a memory away, he can also plant seeds of doubt in someone’s mind. If you know someone has been in your head, would you trust what they saw in it? Even if you only half-believed, an innocent comment in passing can sprout into something bigger and change someone’s whole perspective. One of my favorite movies ever, Inception, plays upon this very idea. And our protagonist in The Last Witness, being somewhat of an ass, likes to screw with people the same way, having little to no respect for truths:
“Truth is like love; it’s universally lauded and admired, and most of the time it just causes pain and makes trouble for people.”
Who can blame him, though? To someone who can erase memory and knowledge and history so easily, no wonder truth feels overrated. When you read this, it’s best to brace yourself for a nice little romp through some wild and tangled territory.
I also want to mention that this is the first book I’ve ever read by this author under the name K.J. Parker, even though earlier this year I read a book by Tom Holt, the author behind the pseudonym. After reading The Last Witness, I can really believe the two are one and the same. Though it is completely different from his satirical work, there’s definitely the telltale thread of Holt’s sly and wicked sense of humor lurking beneath the surface. It is a nice, sweet treat.
By all rights I should have found The Last Witness unfulfilling, given the story’s disorganized structure and how impossible it was connect with the character and his haphazard perspective, but it ended up really resonating with me. It’s strange, but in the best way possible – just like this book! The story’s vision was incredible, and K.J. Parker made it work very well. This one gets my recommendation.
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LibraryThing member AltheaAnn
What if someone had the ability to erase your unwanted memories? The collateral would be that that person would take on your memories as his own, absorbing them in such a way as to make them indistinguishable from his own past.
What kind of person would you have to be in order to agree to do such a
If you answered, "not a very nice person," you would most likely be correct, says K.J. Parker.
The marketing of this novella makes it look like a traditional fantasy story, but it's actually a much more ambitious, philosophical work - part thought experiment, part character study. I thought it was quite successful - if not necessarily very pleasant.
I think it would be enjoyed by people who liked Patrick Rothfuss' 'The Slow Regard of Silent Things,' but I thought that this novella was actually more interesting.
What kind of person would you have to be in order to agree to do such a
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thing? What kind of person would the agglomeration of these memories make you?If you answered, "not a very nice person," you would most likely be correct, says K.J. Parker.
The marketing of this novella makes it look like a traditional fantasy story, but it's actually a much more ambitious, philosophical work - part thought experiment, part character study. I thought it was quite successful - if not necessarily very pleasant.
I think it would be enjoyed by people who liked Patrick Rothfuss' 'The Slow Regard of Silent Things,' but I thought that this novella was actually more interesting.
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LibraryThing member antao
Unreliable Memories: "The Last Witness" by K. J. Parker/Tom Holt
“I’ve been told I have an unforgettable face. Ironic, really.
I have a gift; I can browse through the library of your mind and remove individual memories. You’ll never know I was there, and you’ll never miss what was taken.
But I’m holding so many memories I’m not always sure which ones are actually mine.
Some of them are sensitive; all of them are private. And there are those who are willing to kill to access the secrets I’m trying to bury…”
Is SF dead in 2015?
I'm not sure. I've stopped reading some current SF because sometimes the feeling of deja vu is so strong that I cannot keep on reading the stuff I'm holding in my hands.
Is the problem the fact that technology seems to have stopped? Where are the new technological equivalent artifacts like the warp drives and teleportation that first appeared in the Golden Age of SF? Did SF writers really run out of ideas? I think the problem has less to do less to do with the inability to imagine new technologies, but rather with the fact that these artifacts are utterly absent from our everyday lives. Many of the SFional things we keep turning to in our lives come from a need, and not from an inability to imagine beyond the realms of reality. Whether the functions of a real world warp drive will be the same as described in the Star Trek universe is not really important. What matters to me is the symbolic idea of the device itself.
Read on, if you feel so inclined.
“I’ve been told I have an unforgettable face. Ironic, really.
I have a gift; I can browse through the library of your mind and remove individual memories. You’ll never know I was there, and you’ll never miss what was taken.
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Useful for grieving widowers, more so for ambitious politicians.But I’m holding so many memories I’m not always sure which ones are actually mine.
Some of them are sensitive; all of them are private. And there are those who are willing to kill to access the secrets I’m trying to bury…”
Is SF dead in 2015?
I'm not sure. I've stopped reading some current SF because sometimes the feeling of deja vu is so strong that I cannot keep on reading the stuff I'm holding in my hands.
Is the problem the fact that technology seems to have stopped? Where are the new technological equivalent artifacts like the warp drives and teleportation that first appeared in the Golden Age of SF? Did SF writers really run out of ideas? I think the problem has less to do less to do with the inability to imagine new technologies, but rather with the fact that these artifacts are utterly absent from our everyday lives. Many of the SFional things we keep turning to in our lives come from a need, and not from an inability to imagine beyond the realms of reality. Whether the functions of a real world warp drive will be the same as described in the Star Trek universe is not really important. What matters to me is the symbolic idea of the device itself.
Read on, if you feel so inclined.
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LibraryThing member jen.e.moore
The first Tor.com novella that's really disappointed me, alas. This has the potential to be really interesting - the narrator has the ability to remove memories from other people, with the caveat that those memories then become his - but it left a bad taste in my mouth. I think that was because the
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story flirts with some interesting social and political implications, but chickens out and winds up just focused on the (male) protagonist's suffering. Show Less
LibraryThing member quondame
Interesting and somewhat different. So who was her father and who was killed in the war?
LibraryThing member LisCarey
In a world that is recognizably not our 18th or early 19th century, the teller of this tale is a man with an interesting talent. He can take memories from your mind so neatly that you'll never know the stolen memory is gone. He's made a nice business of this. Some people will always have memories
And some of the people he does business with are dangerous men, who might want to eliminate the last "last witness." Eventually, he outwits the gambling compulsion he picked up somewhere along the line, and manages to retire in relative comfort, with little need to associate with other people at all.
That's when he discovers there's someone else in the world who has his talent, and even fewer ethical standards. It's someone to whom he has a connection that painfully close.
What follows is a battle of wits, political intrigue, and painful choices for our storyteller, who freely admits he's "no angel." He is no angel, but this time he's determined to retire. And he'll use all the skills he's acquired from memories stolen over the years to do so with no harm to himself, and minimum harm to innocent bystanders.
It's a complicated story, and our narrator would be the last one to claim that he's in any way a reliable narrator. He remembers everything, but often can't keep track of which memories are his own and which originally belonged to someone else. He also won't hesitate to lie. At first I though this was going to be a mildly interesting but not compelling story. In the end, I found that somewhere along the line, I'd been completely drawn in and cared deeply what happened to this character and his, ah, the other person.
Recommended.
I listened to this in the Tor.com Collection: Season 1, which I bought.
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that are too painful and they wish to be free of. Others will have memories that it would make their lives easier to have someone else forget. Unfortunately, once he's removed a memory from your mind, he has it in his--forever.And some of the people he does business with are dangerous men, who might want to eliminate the last "last witness." Eventually, he outwits the gambling compulsion he picked up somewhere along the line, and manages to retire in relative comfort, with little need to associate with other people at all.
That's when he discovers there's someone else in the world who has his talent, and even fewer ethical standards. It's someone to whom he has a connection that painfully close.
What follows is a battle of wits, political intrigue, and painful choices for our storyteller, who freely admits he's "no angel." He is no angel, but this time he's determined to retire. And he'll use all the skills he's acquired from memories stolen over the years to do so with no harm to himself, and minimum harm to innocent bystanders.
It's a complicated story, and our narrator would be the last one to claim that he's in any way a reliable narrator. He remembers everything, but often can't keep track of which memories are his own and which originally belonged to someone else. He also won't hesitate to lie. At first I though this was going to be a mildly interesting but not compelling story. In the end, I found that somewhere along the line, I'd been completely drawn in and cared deeply what happened to this character and his, ah, the other person.
Recommended.
I listened to this in the Tor.com Collection: Season 1, which I bought.
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LibraryThing member pwaites
I’ve been hearing a lot about K.J. Parker, and I figured this novella would be a good way to try out his work.
The narrator of The Last Witness has the ability to go into people’s heads and remove memories. Once he has removed a memory, it becomes his own, as vivid to him as if he had actually
As you can probably imagine, the narrator is not a very pleasant person. It’s difficult to say if he’s always been such, or if the weight of so many abhorrent memories has twisted him. Based off of what we see of his childhood memories, I would guess he’s always been this way. But then again, are those memories of his own childhood? Or has he become lost in all the memories he has stolen?
I can appreciate The Last Witness from an intellectual stand point. A large part of the book deals with how history is created through memories. If nobody remembers an event, is it even part of history? Relatedly, our own identity is shaped through memories of our past. But what if they weren’t all our memories? The themes The Last Witness deals with are fascinating.
However, I still didn’t enjoy the novella that much. The protagonist is always a huge factor in how much I’ll enjoy a book. While I can love a story with an unlikable protagonist, said protagonist needs to fascinate and compel me. I just found The Last Witness’s protagonist unlikable. He was such a horrible person that it was hard for me to care at all about him.
The Last Witness doesn’t inspire me to read more by K.J. Parker, but I’m not entirely adverse to the idea of trying something else by him. It’s just not likely to happen anytime soon.
Originally posted on The Illustrated Page.
The narrator of The Last Witness has the ability to go into people’s heads and remove memories. Once he has removed a memory, it becomes his own, as vivid to him as if he had actually
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lived it, and his victims have no idea that the memory even exists. The narrator uses his talent to earn money – his clients hire him to have memories removed, either something that happened to them that they’d rather not remember, or something they want someone else to forget. As a result, the narrator becomes the last witness to a large number of crimes.As you can probably imagine, the narrator is not a very pleasant person. It’s difficult to say if he’s always been such, or if the weight of so many abhorrent memories has twisted him. Based off of what we see of his childhood memories, I would guess he’s always been this way. But then again, are those memories of his own childhood? Or has he become lost in all the memories he has stolen?
I can appreciate The Last Witness from an intellectual stand point. A large part of the book deals with how history is created through memories. If nobody remembers an event, is it even part of history? Relatedly, our own identity is shaped through memories of our past. But what if they weren’t all our memories? The themes The Last Witness deals with are fascinating.
However, I still didn’t enjoy the novella that much. The protagonist is always a huge factor in how much I’ll enjoy a book. While I can love a story with an unlikable protagonist, said protagonist needs to fascinate and compel me. I just found The Last Witness’s protagonist unlikable. He was such a horrible person that it was hard for me to care at all about him.
The Last Witness doesn’t inspire me to read more by K.J. Parker, but I’m not entirely adverse to the idea of trying something else by him. It’s just not likely to happen anytime soon.
Originally posted on The Illustrated Page.
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Original publication date
2015