{"id":1209,"date":"1998-10-06T15:03:28","date_gmt":"1998-10-06T15:03:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.fact.org\/reading\/?p=1209"},"modified":"2012-04-25T15:04:26","modified_gmt":"2012-04-25T15:04:26","slug":"an-exchange-of-hostages","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.fact.org\/reading\/?p=1209","title":{"rendered":"An Exchange of Hostages"},"content":{"rendered":"<h3><em>An Exchange of Hostages<\/em> by Susan R. Matthews<\/h3>\n<p>Ten people attended the discussion of <em>An Exchange of             Hostages<\/em>, the first novel by Campbell Award nominee             Susan R. Matthews. This is a science fiction novel             about a military doctor who is forced to attend a             school for torturers. The story describes the training             in detail and also depicts the complicated political             and psychological environment at the school and in the             world outside.<\/p>\n<p>This book produced strong and varied responses. Eight             people finished the book and had positive things to say             about it. Two of us were so turned off by the graphic             depiction of torture sequences that we were unable to             finish the book. I fell into the latter category, and             had to quit halfway through the first<!--more--> intermediate             torture exercise. I hope to never find out about the             advanced material&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>Those who finished the book were impressed by the             book&#8217;s ambition and its attention to detail. Generally             Matthews&#8217;s prose style was considered compulsively             readable. We felt that this novel was a good             examination of a corrupt society and its corrupt             inhabitants. It&#8217;s a character-driven story about             control. The complicated social structure in the school             seemed believable as a military extreme. The author             gets deep into the minds of some of the torturer             students (and their subjects), which leads to an             uncomfortable level of reader identification. Someone             commented that a novel about a torturer should be this             introspective. The emotions seem so realistic that some             of us speculated that the author might be writing from             experience.<\/p>\n<p>If the idea of a graphic torture novel doesn&#8217;t turn you             off, we recommend that you read <em>An Exchange of             Hostages<\/em>. Susan R. Matthews undeniably has talent.             We were all impressed by the author&#8217;s bravery in             writing such a book and the publisher&#8217;s bravery in             publishing it.<\/p>\n<p><em>&#8212; A. T. Campbell, III<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>An Exchange of Hostages by Susan R. Matthews Ten people attended the discussion of An Exchange of Hostages, the first novel by Campbell Award nominee Susan R. Matthews. This is a science fiction novel about a military doctor who is forced to attend a school for torturers. The story describes the training in detail and [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1209","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fact.org\/reading\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1209","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fact.org\/reading\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fact.org\/reading\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fact.org\/reading\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fact.org\/reading\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1209"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.fact.org\/reading\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1209\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1211,"href":"https:\/\/www.fact.org\/reading\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1209\/revisions\/1211"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fact.org\/reading\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1209"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fact.org\/reading\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1209"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fact.org\/reading\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1209"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}