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Description
San JuanSan Juan is a card game based on Puerto Rico. The deck of 110 cards consists of production buildings (indigo, sugar, tobacco, coffee, and silver) and "violet" buildings that grant special powers or extra victory points. Cards from the hand can be either built or used as money to build something else; cards from the deck are used to represent goods produced by the production buildings, in which case they are left face down. A seven card hand limit is
San Juan is a card game based on Puerto Rico. The deck of 110 cards consists of production buildings (indigo, sugar, tobacco, coffee, and silver) and "violet" buildings that grant special powers or extra victory points. Cards from the hand can be either built or used as money to build something else; cards from the deck are used to represent goods produced by the production buildings, in which case they are left face-down. A seven-card hand limit is enforced once per round.In each round (or governorship), each player in turn selects from one of the available roles, triggering an event that usually affects all players, such as producing goods or constructing buildings. The person who picks the role gets a privilege, such as producing more goods or building more cheaply.
Though similar in concept to Puerto Rico, the game has many different mechanisms. In particular, the game includes no colonists and no shipping of goods; goods production and trading are normally limited to one card per phase; and trades cannot be blocked. Victory points are gained exclusively by building, and the game ends as soon as one player has put up twelve buildings.
AWARDS & HONORS
2013 Juego del Año Finalist
2008 Hra roku Nominee
2005 Hra roku Nominee
2004 Spiel des Jahres Recommended
2004 Spiel der Spiele Hit für Zwei Recommended
2004 Nederlandse Spellenprijs Nominee
2004 Japan Boardgame Prize Best Japanese Game Winner
2004 Japan Boardgame Prize Best Japanese Game Nominee
2004 International Gamers Awards - General Strategy; Multi-player Nominee
2004 Fairplay À la carte Winner
2004 Deutscher Spiele Preis Best Family/Adult Game 2nd Place
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4.9 ★★★★★
Based on 7 reviews
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Product Reviews
★★★★★ 5
Staying is the making. The real making.
Format: Paperback
The tyrant owns form, doesn’t he? This is a book for anyone who might be no one, or anyone who is worried, or anyone who has ever thought about women, epic poetry, or both.
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Reviewed in the United States on October 8, 2019
★★★★★ 5
Exquisite, enrapturing
Format: Paperback
Loved the gritty, visceral language and the epic nature of this poem. Notely blows me away -- the loss of memory, the tangled and eternal subway, the owls and masks.
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Reviewed in the United States on May 29, 2014
★★★★★ 5
Five Stars
Format: Paperback
Brilliant, lucid, engaging and brave, a feminist chthonic journey shimmering with poetic bravado.
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Reviewed in the United States on December 18, 2014
★★★★★ 5
A Feminist Divine Comedy?
Format: Paperback
Let me start with this: The Descent of Alette is difficult to read at first. Notley "puts quotation marks around" "groups of words" "in lines" "that can be off-putting." Note that I'm not quoting from the book there, just giving an example of what the book's text appears like. This forces us to read more slowly, taking in each line a few words at a time. What appears to be awkward is in fact a great solution to the speed-reading most of us do these days. That being said, it's troublesome for the first few poems, less so after that, virtually invisible by the end of the first section.
When talking about this book, I immediately compare it to Dante's Divine Comedy, and I commonly see others do the same (see an earlier review here on Amazon.com). Exchange Hell for a subway, and you've basically got it: an underground realm ruled over by a Tyrant, poor souls being tortured, though in this case there is no indication that they have done anything to deserve it. Notley's language might not be quite as beautiful/harsh as Dante's, but her images stand with anything he created. After introducing two characters on a subway, a woman and her baby, both on fire, Notley writes:
"another woman" "in uniform" "from above ground"
"entered" "the train" "She was fireproof" "she wore gloves, & she"
"took" "the baby" "took the baby" "away from the"
"mother" "Extracted" "the burning baby" "From the fire" "they
made together" "But the baby" "still burned"
("But not yours" "It didn't happen" "to you")
"We don't know yet" "if it will" "stop burning,"
"said the uniformed" "woman" "The burning woman" "was crying"
"she made a form" "in her mind" "an imaginary" "form" "to
settle" "in her arms where" "the baby" "had been" "We saw
her fiery arms" "cradle the air" "She cradled air" ("They take your
children" "away" "if you"re on fire")
"In the air that" "she cradled" "it seemed to us there" "floated"
"a flower-like" "a red flower" "its petals" "curling flames"
"She cradled" "seemed to cradle" "the burning flower of" "herself gone"
"her life" ("She saw" "whatever she saw, but what we saw" "was that flower")
After surviving the horrors of the subway, Alette goes even deeper underground, passing through a series of psychological challenges that at times seem straight out of Freud, at times out of Classical mythology, at times out of collective dreams. Throughout it all, we learn more and more about Alette, who is not just a "hero" who goes through the motions necessary to the plot, but who considers and stumbles and is confused and learns.
The third section of the book is a rebirth, wherein Alette finds a source for a stronger power than the Tyrant's, and it is distinctly feminist in its nature. I need to note here for those who react to feminism in a knee-jerk way: Notley's feminism is not a militant feminism, though it requires brief "military" action on Alette's part. Men are helpful in the story, have purpose besides being the bad guy. If anything, what Notley attacks in the form of the Tyrant is the idea of a corrupt masculinity, a kind of Big Brother who would easily stand as an antagonist in any number of 20th/21st century literary works. Alette's feminism is the discovery of her place in the world, and that place is not slaving away mindlessly for the Tyrant, not acting as just a womb or pair of hands or pretty face. It's a nuanced message, despite the epic (and therefore presumably black-and-white) nature of the whole book.
The fourth section is the showdown with the Tyrant, a great deal of philosophizing, and an ending that I actually find more satisfying than that of Paradiso. I won't spoil it here, but it just works extremely well in conjunction with the themes of Descent as a whole.
If you want to be challenged, if you want to think deep thoughts, if you want surreality and magic, pick up The Descent of Alette. For even more interesting reading from the author and her partner, you could also turn to The Scarlet Cabinet, which contains but actually predates the on-its-own publication of Descent.
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Reviewed in the United States on October 11, 2010
★★★★★ 5
A Contemporary Epic
Format: Paperback
I have a complicated relationship with most of the books I've read by Alice Notley. I admire her facility with the lyric, her ability to get just beneath a concept or sentiment using a very talk-y style so that I always feel like I'm with whatever speaker she's using, inside that mind and her mind all at once. This is a good kind of complication. It's one I yearn for with poems.
The unpleasant complications are when I feel as though I'm just being subjected to her unedited notebook entries. Too much, too much, too much. It comes up especially with her book Mysteries of Small Houses.
I mention these difficulties only to sharpen the accomplishment of The Descent of Alette. Like other reviewers, I feel the tonal similarities to Dante's Inferno. Which becomes a subversive allusion considering Alette seeks after a male Tyrant in order to destroy him, while Dante sought after his Beatrice out of desire. But I read and reread Alette, because Notley continually subverts patriarchal conventions in the book.
I actually find I crave the speaker's intellect, and the mythic logic that gives the book its arc. I want it more. Yes, there are quotations around each fragment in the poems. I actually appreciate them for slowing my reading down, and for sharpening my focus on the use of Notley's language. And it's not just a stylistic tic, or something to be endured. It could actually be described as further subversion of The Tyrant Alette pursues.
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Reviewed in the United States on August 25, 2011