Please note: I don't review to provide synopses, I review to share a purely visceral reaction to books and perhaps answer some of the questions I ask when I'm contemplating investing time and money into a book.
Please note: I don't review to provide synopses, I review to share a purely visceral reaction to books and perhaps answer some of the questions I ask when I'm contemplating investing time and money into a book.
This is probably the definitive feel-good story for interplanetary botanists everywhere. I can see how this got the funding to get made into a movie; it's a straightforward story with plenty of precedent so audiences won't feel challenged. Make no mistake, this is first and foremost a feel good story cleverly wrapped up in a scifi flag. Our intrepid hero Mark Watney is a study in charisma and I admit I feel a bit of a bro-crush on the fella. I was drawn into his celebrations and disappointments as his strategy for survival unfolded through his log/diary. It's a credit to the author that he made the monotony of marooned survival as exciting as he did.
The pacing is done very well in the purely literary sense, but I feel it was too dramatically perfect to feel realistic. And this is where the book loses a star. The peaks of his successes and the valleys of his failures line up too well; disasters strike at the most opportune time to advance the plot and all of the emotional highs happen on right on cue as our resident Martian completes his Major Projects.
But as so many journals and accounts of marooned people have shown us through the ages, it's not the major accomplishments that define the person or determine the likelihood of survival. It's how the person deals with the day in, day out monotony of solitude and hard labor. It's the gradual physiological changes and the evolution of psychological coping strategies that, in recollection, mark the passage of time. Daily tasks take on enormous importance - but we never learn about the day to life of Mark. Mark himself never really changes; he just disassembles and reassembles some stuff and travels around Mars until finally the [ending I won't spoil]. This illustration of "good ol' immutable American exceptionalism" loses the book a second star.
I've seen some reviews that lambasted the science for being too accessible, and some reviews that feel the science is too obtuse. This shows me the author got it right. I don't think there's anything wrong with the science, but there were certainly some presents lobbed into Mark's court that were there just to fill in some logical holes. I would have liked to see more detail, especially around the chemistry. But my entire background is in science and I do engineering for a living. I had a lot of fun "playing along" and solving some of the problems; but if a proper engineer who thinks about putting people onto stellar bodies all day long were to write a book I'm sure I'd like that more than I liked this book.
It's a quick read and very accessible; this is book was not even fractionally as ambitious as Red Mars. And while KSR's Mars trilogy will forever be amongst my favorite books, this book just doesn't have the depth or breadth to make any lasting impact. ...more
Brainycat's 5 "B"s: blood: [UNSCORED, DNF AT 10%] boobs: [UNSCORED, DNF AT 10%] bombs: [UNSCORED, DNF AT 10%] bondage: [UNSCORED, DNF AT 10%] blasphemyBrainycat's 5 "B"s: blood: [UNSCORED, DNF AT 10%] boobs: [UNSCORED, DNF AT 10%] bombs: [UNSCORED, DNF AT 10%] bondage: [UNSCORED, DNF AT 10%] blasphemy: [UNSCORED, DNF AT 10%] Stars: 2 Bechdel Test: [UNSCORED, DNF AT 10%] Deggan's Rule: [UNSCORED, DNF AT 10%] Gay Bechdel Test: [UNSCORED, DNF AT 10%]
Please note: I don't review to provide synopses, I review to share a purely visceral reaction to books and perhaps answer some of the questions I ask when I'm contemplating investing time and money into a book.
I DNF'd this book at 10%. I found the protagonist unbelievable - I felt no depth to the character, I felt he was just a collection of attributes and a repository of Things That Happened To Him. It was as if he had no agency in his story, but just existed to move the plot along. Not a good place for the main character to live.
The pacing didn't make sense to me at all. In the first couple of pages, we watch as the protagonist's daughter gets abducted by some sort of dimension hopping demon. Describing this (visually, because other senses and the interior life of the character don't exist in this world) takes only a few more words than driving through the french countryside between plot advancements. I felt a complete lack of economy WRT the wordsmithing. I expect authors of books I'm reading for fun to be able to write better than I can :)
The few pages I read showed me that this book isn't lacking for ideas, but isn't cut of the cloth that I like to read. I didn't see any glaring typos or grammatical errors; this is not from the bottom of the self-published barrel. Unfortunately, I think the author needs to keep working on his craft (characterization, pacing, visualization) before I will feel comfortable investing the time and energy into an entire book. ...more
Brainycat's 5 "B"s: blood: [UNSCORED, DNF AT 10%] boobs: [UNSCORED, DNF AT 10%] bombs: [UNSCORED, DNF AT 10%] bondage: [UNSCORED, DNF AT 10%] blasphemyBrainycat's 5 "B"s: blood: [UNSCORED, DNF AT 10%] boobs: [UNSCORED, DNF AT 10%] bombs: [UNSCORED, DNF AT 10%] bondage: [UNSCORED, DNF AT 10%] blasphemy: [UNSCORED, DNF AT 10%] Stars: 2 Bechdel Test: [UNSCORED, DNF AT 10%] Deggan's Rule: [UNSCORED, DNF AT 10%] Gay Bechdel Test: [UNSCORED, DNF AT 10%]
Please note: I don't review to provide synopses, I review to share a purely visceral reaction to books and perhaps answer some of the questions I ask when I'm contemplating investing time and money into a book.
I picked this up because it was cheap and it has 250+ ratings and a >3.75 star average rating at GR. I'm not sure I got the same edition everyone else has read. The edition I have had some serious pacing problems and glaring issues with the worldbuilding.
Our intrepid hero finds himself dumped off in Las Vegas, some time after it's been taken over by vampires. This is a state sponsored execution - he and his fellow convicts are expected to die. So far so good. This clearly isn't going to be the best book I read all year, but we're off to a good enough start. In the course of the next few paragraphs he manages to break into an as yet unscavenged army surplus store - that none of the hundreds (thousands?) of convicts before him, or undead residents of Las Vegas had yet broken into. How lucky can one guy be? There's a thick layer of dust over everything - but the store is just as it was when the employees last locked up. There's no hint as to why this store is intact when the rest of Las Vegas is run down and decrepit.
During the course of the scavenging, a fight ensues with a vampire and the vampire gets killed. Hero finds out that if he ingests a wee bit of vampire blood he gets superhuman strength etc (yawn). The whole fight didn't convey any sense of danger - it just sort of ambles along at the same pace as everything else we've done so far. Our hero was detected while he was quietly tiptoeing around inside the store, but the fight that knocked over rows of shelves didn't seem to draw attention from any of the other vampires flying around. And of course everything our hero needs for his solitary, Rambo-esque trek out of Las Vegas and back to (wherever) is right there in easy reach.
The city is completely abandoned and run down with no running water, but there's still electricity? This doesn't surprise Hero, nor is it explained at all. Maybe I'm too old, maybe I'm too grumpy, but I just can't tolerate worldbuilding errors like this. The numerous logical fails, coupled with the uninspired writing (short words and small sentences) put this book on my DNF list. ...more
Brainycat's 5 "B"s: blood: [UNSCORED, DNF AT 10%] boobs: [UNSCORED, DNF AT 10%] bombs: [UNSCORED, DNF AT 10%] bondage: [UNSCORED, DNF AT 10%] blasphemyBrainycat's 5 "B"s: blood: [UNSCORED, DNF AT 10%] boobs: [UNSCORED, DNF AT 10%] bombs: [UNSCORED, DNF AT 10%] bondage: [UNSCORED, DNF AT 10%] blasphemy: [UNSCORED, DNF AT 10%] Stars: 1 Bechdel Test: [UNSCORED, DNF AT 10%] Deggan's Rule: [UNSCORED, DNF AT 10%] Gay Bechdel Test: [UNSCORED, DNF AT 10%]
Please note: I don't review to provide synopses, I review to share a purely visceral reaction to books and perhaps answer some of the questions I ask when I'm contemplating investing time and money into a book.
The First Rule of Cyberpunk is: You do not make asides to define your new terms The Second Rule of Cyberpunk is: You do not make asides to define your new terms The Third Rule of Cyberpunk is: If this is the near dark future, it had damn well better make sense
One of my long standing policies is that I will get through 10% of a book before I declare it DNF. It was difficult getting through this ten percent. Not because of typos, but because the writing was so bad. It felt like someone took a standard format script and removed the "character" column from the left side, leaving only lines of dialogue and stage directions floating around on the page unanchored by context. A number of characters were introduced - with some sort of physical attribute to differentiate them - and afterwords they were only ever referenced through dialogue. I had no idea who was saying what to whom. I've never tried to hide the fact that I'm not a very sophisticated reader, but I'm still smarter than the average bear and I've been reading since I was a wee lad. I feel very confident saying that my reading skills are not the weak link in this particular chain.
Secondly, the scenario made absolutely no sense whatsoever. Apparently, it's late Friday night and the most important experiment in the history of a multinational biomedical corporation gets started. RRrrriiiiigggghhht... Ever better, not just one, but two leading researchers independently and without each others knowledge each kick off a major procedure? WTF? How were these doctors able to staff both the surgeries in the same clinic at the same time without knowing about each other? This scenario makes no sense whatsoever. I can't imagine a management or fiduciary policy where running a lab in this manner seems plausible.
We're not even going to get into the nature of the procedure and why it doesn't even stand up to scrutiny under it's own logic. Nor will we get into the unnecessary and sometimes inappropriate use of Technological Terms. I will say that taking time out of the story (via footnotes!) to define and explain technological terms, rather than just showing the characters using the technology and trusting us to figure it out, feels like a slap in the face. Coupled with the pacing and characterization issues, this points to the dire need for some professional editing and a few more rewrites. I didn't see any new ideas in the few pages I read, but I did see a nonstop litany of amateurish mistakes. ...more
Please note: I don't review to provide synopses, I review to share a purely visceral reaction to books and perhaps answer some of the questions I ask when I'm contemplating investing time and money into a book.
Imagine Herman Hesse and Theodore Sturgeon eating acid with Philip K. Dick then spending the whole day reading classic comics while watching Bill Moyers interviewing Joseph Campbell. That's the impression I got from this book; it's a self-confessed pop culture mashup with a thin veneer of Jungian psychobabble plastered over the top. This could have gone either way; in the hands of a less confident or skilled author this story would quickly become a parody of itself and lose respect from any decently read reader.
Fortunately this was not the case. Nobody tried to reach too far nor did the story try to pretend it's more than just a contemporary adult fantasy novel. It's crafted well, the editing/proofreading are all of the standard you'd exepct from Del Rey, the characters have enough life to be interesting and stand on their own while the setting just sort of drifts by and occaisonally interjects itself to complicate the plot on cue. There's not a lot of action in this book, which makes this the sort of book I don't normally read. I felt the pacing was brisk but too tightly managed. There were very few surprises and I never felt compelled to try to prognosticate what was going to happen next. I'm not even sure I ever got emotionally invested in the protagonist, actually. I felt like I was reading an inventory of a lot of conversations that some guy was having with a number of different people with the purpose of deciding if I like the guy or not. And I'm still not sure I like the guy.
That being said, the story has a new twist on a premise that's been touched on in any number of books and movies (some of them mentioned by name, thank you dear author) and faith in the premise is what kept me going despite the occasional plot hole or the contemporary setting full of characters who can travel back and forth across the US at will but don't have cell phones.
There's nothing technically wrong with this book; it's certainly better than most of the swill getting published under the contemporary fantasy banner. It's a great premise that's executed well, the author clearly respects me as a reader and I feel a kinship since we clearly count some of the same writers among our favorites, but ultimately this story lacks a certain frisson and failed to grab me. I think this is a great book for someone else, and could easily be five stars for a different reader. I found myself skimming the last third hoping there would be a surprise that would engage me (there wasn't), but I liked it just a little too much to give up on it. I'm giving this a very solid 3.5 stars....more
Please note: I don't review to provide synopses, I review to share a purely visceral reaction to books and perhaps answer some of the questions I ask when I'm contemplating investing time and money into a book.
The latest installment of the Laundry Files series is the best plot yet, has some brilliant moments but is tempered by whole chapters that feel phoned in. There's whole chunks of backstory and supporting cast member development that feel like they're just there to pad the wordcount. I was reading these chapters and imagined a dialogue between Mr. Stross and his editor:
"Hey Charles, I went over the latest revision with the publisher, they want to up the word count to justify the premium price." "Well, the story is finished as it is..." "Sure, and it's great, but maybe you could, you know, do that writing thing you do and make up some more stuff?" "Where would I put more story? This is already the most complicated plot in the series." "Maybe you could throw in some long expositions about the supporting cast? And do lots of recaps, a'la 'The story so far' - the publisher thinks kids today with their short attention spans won't be able to follow along with all the doublecrossing doubleagents." "Well, I suppose I could add a few paragraphs here and there. How much bigger is the book supposed to be?" "Charles, we need to ask for another ten thousand words." "ARE YOU FUCKING SHITTING ME?!?" "No, I'm afraid not. Say, how's that advance treating you anyways?"
And thus we see the author playing around with different expositionary styles in a "let's break the fourth wall" kind way. We see the author spend a lot of time developing characters that are going to be dead by the end of the book. We get an inordinate amount of exposition with some ancillary plot twists, to the point where I think this book marks a sea change in Bob Howard's career at the Laundry. Previous books had Bob getting thrown around by bureaucratic forces outside of his comprehension or control, forcing him to battle Lovecraftian horrors on one hand while trying to find his way through Gilliam-esque horrors (see [1] and [2]) on the other hand, and this was part of the charm. This book sees Bob take control of major operations, manipulate the bureaucratic to his needs, play office politics with the best of them and generally act like a middle-management, PDA wielding Indiana Jones.
I'm glad to see Bob's arc progressing so well, and the level of danger and plot complication get amped up to match. This is no Monty Haul campaign: the conflict in this story is something the likes of which the Laundry has never had to deal with before. Mr. Stross has clearly done his homework with regards to contemporary vampire mythology, and has worked very hard to put his own unique spin on it. I shan't spoil it for other readers but I'll say he stays true to the core concepts and ideals of vampirism while adding his specific spin on it and brilliantly lampoons the glut of popular vampire stories that have come out in the last few years. He's read everything from Stoker through Hamilton (at one point Bob is tasked with reading this same canon, and we clearly hear Charles whining about it through Bob's mouth) and he uses this knowledge to drop more than a few shoutouts to some of the better vampire stories. Let The Right One In and Near Dark get major nods, while the rest of the stories get their barbs here and there.
When the story is moving along, this is probably the best Laundry Files book yet. It's brilliantly plotted, the conflict is refreshing and interesting and the cast of characters is the best yet. But it felt like every time I was really into the pace, really absorbed by the story and the plot - oomph! - I ran headlong into pages of exposition that felt like trying to walk through knee deep mud. There's a lot of ancillary info thrown around that didn't directly affect the plot. This was necessary to provide the emotional backdrop of some of the characters to explain their motivations in subsequent chapters, and I have a very strong suspicion a lot of what we learned about these character's interior lives will be relevant in subsequent installments of the series. Which is great in the context of the whole series, but within the scope of this book it felt like clumsy writing. In the scope of this book alone, I would've appreciated some reworking of certain sections to make them more elegant and fit into the overall pace of the book better.
Charles's scathing treatment of the curses of modern life - particularly agile project management - should be studied by anyone who ever works with technology engineers. While parts of the plot drag, the insightful snarkiness of Bob's observations are hardly tempered at all. Technology plays less of a role in this book however; there's not as much here for the programming nerds to sink their teeth into. Overall, this book felt less like "Joe Programmer vs. The Eldritch Horrors, hilarity ensues" and more like "Bob the Middle Manager plays Van Helsing, hilarity ensues". At this rate of progression, however, there can't be many books left in the series.
Unless CASE NIGHTMARE GREEN comes about, and the publisher tries to pad the word count into a second series...
Two memorable quotes from this book: "It suddenly dawns on me that I know about as much about looking after a pet cat as I know about flying a jet fighter: it’s all MEOW DAKKA-DAKKA ZOOM to me."
Please note: I don't review to provide synopses, I review to share a purely visceral reaction to books and perhaps answer some of the questions I ask when I'm contemplating investing time and money into a book.
"I could not put this book down" is a phrase that gets thrown around a lot in book reviews. I try to avoid hyperbole and just stick to the details of my experience with a book in my own reviews. That being said, I did put this book down - when I was too tired to keep my eyes open. As soon as I woke up, I grabbed my reader and started again before I even got out of bed. I read it while I was fixing my tea, I read it while I was eating breakfast, I read it while I should've been tending to grownup responsibilities during the morning. And then I ran out of book.
Which is not to say the story ends too suddenly. It ends in exactly the right place in exactly the right way. The entire story has a sense of harmony and balance; not a single word is out of place, every detail is important and what happens to our protagonists happens for reasons that are both obvious and laden with layers of symbolism. The world is sketched in broad charcoal strokes, the visible parts filled in with garish shades of watercolor and then important details are lined in with a fine point pen. The scope of the story slowly escalates from the minutiae of a daily ritual that runs like clockwork until we are casually tossing the fate of humanity around like a rock during a game of hopscotch.
For a proper discussion of the important symbolic themes, please see Bookaneer's reviews "I Need Another Star" and "You can't save people from the world. There's nowhere else to take them." - she's done a much better job of collecting and discussing details than I ever could. Remember, dear reader, this book is not the intensely allegorical jizz from some self-important author's mental masturbation. This is a post-zombie-apocalyptic adventure/thriller in a world that's genuinely frightening and populated by characters who feel like real people doing what they need to do to try and survive.
M.R. Carey has always been good at developing rounded characters; this time he's absolutely blown me away with the depth and breadth of the cast he's put together. This is a story that's driven by women and the Jungian Anima - the male characters are (complicated) guns on legs, providing enough Animus to highlight the feminine energy and move the plot along. Which is entirely appropriate for a story set at the end - and rebirth - of humanity.
Pandora is a theme that is mentioned specifically a number of times, which counterpointed the strong Eve subtext. And what's the difference between the two symbols, besides the attitude of the author? "History is written by the winners", and while Ms. Justineau sees Melanie as Pandora untold later generations will remember her as Eve. Melanie and her cohorts are like the fruiting bodies of Ophiocordyceps - tough, resilient, and waiting for a catastrophe to set them free.
This is the best book I've read in a few years. It's worth every scrap of praise it's gotten, and them some.
Please note: I don't review to provide synopses, I review to share a purely visceral reaction to books and perhaps answer some of the questions I ask when I'm contemplating investing time and money into a book.
I don't recall exactly why it seemed like a good idea to buy this and read it again; I believe I heard a mention that the BBC4 dramatisation will be available for sale soon. In an inexplicable fit of nostalgia I bought a copy and for reasons I can't quite fathom I actually reread the whole thing. I first read this book right as it came out in paperback - about the time I graduated high school. It must be understood that the young Mr. Brainycat was drunk nearly every night and stoned more often that not. Way back in the day, I thought it was brilliant satire that was sticking it right to the man where it'd hurt him the most. Neil Gaiman was the new Ambrose Bierce!
Growing up in middle America made any story set in England seem vastly important; it was the land of Monty Python, Benny Hill and Proper Tradition. England was a wonderland of glorious villages and endearing people with a brilliant sense of humor, and an affinity for anything English gave me a feeling of being cultured (superior) to the rednecks surrounding me. A quarter of a century later, six years sober and living in England has wiped the gloss right off of that fantasy in no uncertain terms.
I think being more familiar with the English culture is the biggest factor in my disappointment with this rereading. It doesn't seem cute and quaint; the difficulties of trying to do things in England (like drive around the M25) are cute when you're reading about them from 10 000km away; when you're living there it's maddeningly frustrating[1]. I didn't realize how much of this book is taking the piss out of the British way of doing things until now, but this time around I didn't find it LOL funny. It's cute, it's funny, and it's totally forgettable.
I had a notion to reread American Gods, which I liked when I was really high, but I think I'm going to let that one lie. Some things are best left as (scattered) memories and vague impressions. I believe the fact of the matter is that except for Sandman, I'm not a Neil Gaiman fan and as I grow older and more cynical I'm diverging further and further away from his canon. By the same token I've never disliked Terry Pratchet, but I've never been a huge fan either - I found the couple of Discworld books I read to be cute, funny and totally forgettable. This is a great pairing of authors but I don't think they worked out a whole that's any greater than the sum of their parts.
[1] Example: restaurants run and staffed by English people cannot get a meal delivered to a table in less than 45 minutes. This is an example of the attitude that lost them their empire.
Please note: I don't review to provide synopses, I review to share a purely visceral reaction to books and perhaps answer some of the questions I ask when I'm contemplating investing time and money into a book.
I'm going to share an uncomfortable truth with you here. This is not the best book in the series, and in fact it's not even a very good final episode. One of the things I've always liked about this series is the frenetic pace; "no rest for the wicked" and all that. This book, however, doesn't really start to take off until around the 50% mark. Once it picks up a lot of long lingering plot lines are resurrected and thrown into the mix, the tension builds until the last 20% of the book, and then SPLAT! The apocalypse blows it's load into a climax that's - we're friends, I'll be honest - is disappointing.
The casual cynicism, saucy word play and nonstop pop culture references are still in abundance, and once the violence gets started it's a good as any of the other books. All the things we love about Sandman Slim aka Jim Stark are here, and the weird little circle of friends he's accumulated are just as weird and fun as ever. Reading this book felt a lot like getting in touch with some old friends.
This book shows a deeper interior life for Stark, and I think Kadrey worked very hard to develop the character and round him out. Unfortunately, this happens at the expense of a lot of action and intrigue. I don't believe in an either/or dichotomy between actioning and adventuring OR feeling and relating. I think what happened was the author tried too hard to grow the character and lost track of his cadence, and let the interior development drive too much of the plot.
We're told many times that the apocalypse is upon creation, and several details are repeated to this effect: nonstop rain and flooding in LA and Hell for example. But I never felt any impending doom. Maybe because Stark and Candy are too busy lovingly quipping at each other? Maybe because there's not enough time spent with the supporting cast to get a feel of how the world is falling apart, because are protagonists are too wrapped up in themselves and their relationship with each other? All I know for sure is that any sense of impending doom was told rather than shown and this really didn't help me to get to the final conflict.
The final conflict was... I've already used the word "disappointing" once in this review, so let's say it was "unsatisfying". Unlike the final conflicts in the other books, I knew what he was working on ahead of time. I love to see a plan come together in unexpected ways. But I wasn't surprised. In fact, the whole battle felt like it was phoned in. The oldest of the old gods is invading creation to take it back from god, and the best we can do is tear up a few blocks of LA across a couple of pages? It just felt like it was too little too late and didn't engage me. I didn't feel afraid, I didn't feel cosmic forces wreaking havoc on all the physics I've ever known, I didn't feel like these characters that I've known for 5 or more books were ever in any real danger. It just felt like I needed to consume the words to get through the pages to reach the conclusion.
A whole host of lingering plot lines were brought up in this book, but most of them did not end satisfactorily - see "phoning it in", above. I suppose the ends are loose enough to squeeze a few more novels out of some of them, but at some point I think epic characters in long series' need to find a new set of Major Antagonists to up the stakes and move the whole arc of the world into new territories. I feel an opportunity to do just that was lost here.
If this had been the first book in the series, I don't think I would have read any of the others. I feel really bad writing such damning words. Maybe this book is just mediocre, but the rest of the series is so much fun and so well written that it feels like The Getaway God is worse than it really is. I do know that I hope this review doesn't put anyone off of starting the series; up until this installment, they've been top notch rollicking good times and a total hoot to read. It's entirely possible I brought too much expectation into this book, and my disappointment has nothing to do with Kadrey and everything to do with what I wish I had read.
Is this the last Sandman Slim novel? My halfhearted attempts at googlefu don't turn up any interviews saying so, but the book ends on a note that's suitable to end the series. On the other hand, it also ends on a note that leaves room for a nearly infinite stream of sequels. I guess it's a matter of what Kadrey wants to do with the series. Personally, I'd like to see him baby the thing into a Netflix miniseries a'la GRRM and GoT....more
Please note: I don't review to provide synopses, I review to share a purely visceral reaction to books and perhaps answer some of the questions I ask when I'm contemplating investing time and money into a book.
I left my "5Bs" blank because I didn't read enough of the book to make a valid score.
I made it about 12% into this book before I gave up. Not because it was too "extreme" or "graphic", but because it just wasn't written very well. I'm all about the splatterpunk - I don't even blink an eye at Edward Lee - and I took a chance on this at amazon when I saw the 3.6 average review at GR. I'm glad I didn't pay very much for it.
The content wasn't the problem. The problem is the writing. All of the sentences looked the same. All of the dialogue sounded the same. The author didn't show me anything. The author only told me things. The main character was boring. And she was predictable. I knew what was going to happen to her after her first "test".
There's just too many good books that are crafted by wordsmiths rather than written by content producers and lovingly edited by professionals that are advocating on the reader's behalf to spend time on books that are substandard. I do hope this author continues to refine his craft, the world needs more splatterpunk and I'm sure he has important stories to tell, but until he's better at telling them I'm going to spend my scant reading time on books that are produced to a higher caliber....more
Please note: I don't review to provide synopses, I review to share a purely visceral reaction to books and perhaps answer some of the questions I ask when I'm contemplating investing time and money into a book.
I finished this book a few weeks ago, and to be completely honest I'm having a hard time recalling any details of it. I remember the first book in the series, and I remember reading this book and thinking, "Where did the awesome go?" My recollection of this book is of some ridiculous plot twists and a Mary Sue revenant coming to save the day too often. Where the first book was gloriously dark and dystopic and our intrepid hero was properly cynical and jaded, this book just felt like it was full of whiny characters who were being shuffled from one plot twist to another. I just didn't like it nearly as much as the first.
I hope this is just the "second book slump", and the series continues to a third edition to wrap up the Big Boss Fight that's been lurking on the horizon. I'll definitely buy the next book in the series, but I'll be reading it with a healthy dose of trepidation rather than the unbridled optimism I had when I started this book....more
Please note: I don't review to provide synopses, I review to share a purely visceral reaction to books and perhaps answer some of the questions I ask when I'm contemplating investing time and money into a book.
Peter Watts makes scifi exciting for me again. This omnibus reads like a single epic; much like his beloved Rifters trilogy, the action in the latter book picks up right where it left off in the former book. Reading this book felt, to me, like Charles Stross meets Rifters and the Rifters win. We've got near-light speed travel, wildly augmented humans bashing headlong against the outdated confines of Abrahamaic morality and gloriously alien intelligences that are actually alien in the way the think, communicate, perceive and breed.
After all that, though, the series winds down into some familiar territory. The last few chapters of this merry-go-round don't hold as many surprises as much as they carefully tuck us gentle readers into a bed of nails with a blanket of stinging nettles. Anyone who's read Rifters will know how good at Mr. Watts is at putting an apocalypse together, and this time around he didn't have to drag up any archeobacteria. This apocalypse is the scariest kind, the perfectly plausible way humans will happily act in their own shortsighted interest to the detriment of the species, ecosystem, etc.
I think some parts of Firefall get a little bit preachy - but that may be a side effect of what happens when people try to communicate when they're lightyears apart. There aren't any "No Mr. Bond, I expect you to die" soliliquies but there are a lot of paragraphs where people try really hard to explain Their Big Idea. That being said, these are interesting ideas in interesting circumstances and I didn't mind the verbiage as much as I would have rather kept the pace of the story moving a little faster.
I really hope Mr. Watts writes some stories around his vampires; I think they're the best incarnation of humanity(ish) to come out of the posthumanist canon yet. ...more
Please note: I don't review to provide synopses, I review to share a purely visceral reaction to books and perhaps answer some of the questions I ask when I'm contemplating investing time and money into a book.
I like to think of myself as a HUGE Gibson fan. I was but a wee lad when Neuromancer came out, and I absorbed it as greedily as I did every issue of Omni. The Chiba City trilogy has had a profound effect on my entire life; it's shaped my aesthetics, informed my worldview and provided a schema into which I sort the minutae of my culture.
I hadn't been reading any fiction for a while, so when I decided I needed to read "recreational" books again I was excited to find this release. While the Chiba City trilogy is part of my Holy Pantheon of Greatest Books Ever Written, his later works didn't make such a deep impression on me. The reviews indicated this book incorporated more of the gritty, technologically oriented "street" than Idoru or Pattern Recognition and I eagerly tried to immerse myself into Gibson's latest near dark future.
I didn't finish the book. I got about 2/3 of the way through it and gave up. I was ready to give up at one third, but in honor of the memory of Case and Molly I soldiered on. There were two problems that I just couldn't get around that ultimately ruined the book for me.
First, I feel like I've read this story already. A plucky young lady with more brains than brawn gets involved with organized criminals who need her unique skills and experience. She's assisted by a team of wealthy criminals and brawny older men as she tries to figure out the new rules of her life and manipulate those around her to her own best advantage. Yawn.
Secondly, I couldn't keep the different characters apart. The voicing felt amateurish and the characterization was interesting for the characters that had access to the futuristic timeline, but the characters back in the (almost) contemporary timeline (with the exception of our plucky heroine) all blurred together into one mass that manifested itself as necessary to move the plot along.
Clearly, a lot of other people like the book so I suppose I'm the oddball here. I think it's fair to say I started the book with a lot of expectations; would I like the story better if I'd never read any Gibson before? In all honesty - probably. But I have read lots of Gibson and I found myself wanting more chrome and blood and corruption and grit and broken emotions than this provided me....more
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