I rate this one as just OK. There's lots of detail, and it's all very nice, and for an info-dump it's very well presented. Unfortunately, though, nothing really happens anywhere in the story.
The characters are clearly drawn, but with no real depth. The American tourists are stupid, ignorant and dismissive of other cultures, everything that Stereotypical American tourists are usually portrayed as being. To be fair, I've encountered people like this while abroad in Germany, but even so, I would think there's still more to them than this one style of behavior.
The major problem is, as I've said, that nothing really happens. We're presented with a problem (an ancient civilisation has fallen to becoming a tourist attraction) but nothing is resolved, the status quo is exactly the same at the end of the story as the beginning, and there's no character development, none of the characters are any different after the story ends.
This feels something like the first chapter of a potentially interesting novel, setting the scene and the main character, but nothing more than that.
I may well be mistaken, but it gives me the impression that this story comes from the Author's view of himself as being worldly and well-travelled, as represented by the narrator; which is in contrast to his fellows, as represented by the tourists. This is all fine as an underlying theme, but doesn't make a good story unless we have a plot.
The other major problem I had with it was that the SF element wasn't essential to the story, by changing just a few words the alien city could have been Cairo, Delhi or any number of other Third World cities.
On a side note, it's interesting to see that this was a Hugo winner, it bears some resemblance to Tk'tk'tk, which was presented on Escape Pod some time ago (Except that one had a plot
). I wonder if they have a thing for Travelogues?
I don't want to give out the impression that I hated this, though. It was OK, but just that. It's fun enough, but I doubt I'll give it much thought again now I've finished it.
Simon Painter
Shropshire, UK