Informal book reviews and the occasional essay. Mostly science fiction with a dash of fantasy and mainstream fiction. Spoilers preceded by adequate warning when present. Comments? Recommendations? .
| March 19, 2007 | News: It Liiiiiives | Matt Hilliard |
| Well, after a long timeout, I'm back to updating this site. What happened? Uh, laziness? I didn't actually read a whole lot, unfortunately, though don't be fooled, I don't know how many words House of Niccolo is but it's probably enough for 15 more sensibly sized books. Sorry about the gap in updates. I'd like to think it happens to the best of us, and I am definitely not the best. Anyway, I've updated with everything I've read (though the dates are, I admit, somewhat approximate). I should also have quick reviews of the publicly available Nebula-nominated stories posted in the next few days. | |
| March 18, 2007 | House of Niccolo | Dorothy Dunnett |
Dorothy Dunnett is considered, in some quarters, to be the finest writer of historical fiction, ever. I have only read a handful of such books so I certainly can't make that statement, but I can definitely believe that it might be true. Dunnett is a formidable writer. While not nearly as opaque as Gene Wolfe, her work is if anything even more labyrinthine. As in her earlier six book Lymond series, this tells the story of a fictitious man living in a meticulously researched historical milieu mostly populated by real historical figures. Dunnett takes no liberties with history, instead allowing her story to take place in the margins of the history books. The stories she chooses to tell are both epic and personal, for House of Niccolo's main character, like the hero of the eponymous Lymond books, is something of an epic person. Dunnett has been accused of having Mary Sue protagonists (a term for characters whose traits are chosen with wish fulfillment in mind) but that was more true of Lymond. In both series, though, the protagonist is more or less another species in terms of his intellect and abilities. Sometimes Nicholas is so ridiculously smart (and his life so ridiculously complicated) that I was tempted to throw up my hands at how outlandish it all seemed. But it never quite happened, for Dunnett's studied prose makes everything sound so reasonable. Other times I started to flag from the sheer bulk of the series and its unrelenting detail, but after taking a break from reading I would always find myself coming back, eager for more.
Although Dunnett is nothing if not a plot-heavy writer, ultimately her books are centered on characters. Fortunately her writing is up to the task in this respect, too. The characters are very finely drawn, very real, not just the protagonist but also the wide array of supporting characters that orbit Nicholas' life. Like all great fiction this is ultimately about more than who wins or loses...it takes a while for the themes to manifest but ultimately Dunnett explores just what responsibility man has to family, friends, and society...especially a man of such great talents as Nicholas. If you are at all interested in historical fiction you must try Dunnett. Most (including Dunnett herself before she died) recommend starting with the Lymond Chronicles and I agree. I think the Niccolo books are superior and normally I say start with the best, but in this case an exception must be made for the Niccolo books are so overwhelming in scope it is best to start with the more manageable series. Note, there are some connections between the two series, but there is absolutely no harm done to either narrative if you read one or the other first. | |
| December 10, 2006 | Year of Our War | Steph Swainston |
Science fiction and fantasy are supposed to be genres that are completely wide open, where anything goes. Still, they each have typical trappings and often one can read an entire book without encountering anything remotely new or innovative. Then there are the books that seem like a breath of fresh air because they are packed with ideas that are not only fresh but interesting. Year of Our War is one of those books. It was very well received critically, and I think this is mostly attributable to the world Swainston created. Positing a world where everyone has wings would be interesting enough, but how much more interesting if the wings are vestigial and no one can fly...except the main character, something of a genetic freak with an abnormally light body for his strong wings. But Swainston isn't done. Everyone has a usual three score and ten lifespan, except for the Circle, a group of Immortals kept alive through the magic of the mysterious Emperor because they are each paramount in some skill or discipline. They don't age, but they can be killed, or lose the immortality by being surpassed in their specialty. All this in service to a millennia long "war" against an apparently mindless race of human-scale insects. It's a fascinating backdrop, and I haven't even gotten to the addictive drug that normally just gets you high, but in dangerously high doses transports you to what seems to be an alternate universe.
The book is, alas, somewhat flawed. The main character, though an Immortal and the only one in the world who can fly, is petulant, childish, and a hopeless drug addict and as such is deeply unlikable. This is forgivable as it seems to fit in with the world to some degree: his aging frozen in his teenage years, the main character never matures despite his centuries of life. More disappointing is the way the world nevertheless suffers from a pet peeve of mine when it comes to fantasy: the created world seems rather small and sparsely populated. I suppose this comes from fantasy authors aping the medieval world of Western Europe. But there was more to human civilization than Western Europe, so having an apocalyptic story on that scale just seems wrong. The whole "world" feels like it is about the size of Iowa and (given the medieval technology) considerably less populous, and it detracts from what otherwise would be a suitably epic story. Worst of all the plot towards the end doesn't quite hang together and the conclusion seems a little too easy, a little too pat. But all this is more than made up for by the inventiveness of the story. Hopefully things will improve next time around: Swainston has written a sequel and has more on the way. Not to worry, though, but the book stands fine on its own and is definitely recommended. | |
| November 9, 2006 | Starfish | Peter Watts |
| I have a confession to make. I know modern fiction is supposed to be gritty and realistic. But I can't get around the fact that books in which every single character is a complete psychological screwup depress me. Unfortunately these books are rather common. Starfish is one of these books, but at least it has an interesting reason. Set in a power station on the ocean floor, the book's thesis is that no functioning human being can stand the soul-crushing experience of being surgically modified to survive in the depths and then stuck down where no natural light ever reaches. I'm not at all convinced this is true, but it's a more believable premise than you find in most science fiction, so why not? If you can get past the unpleasant characters Starfish is a pretty interesting little book. It reminds me of Crichton's early work in that its limited cast is sequestered from the rest of the world, allowing the author to carefully sketch out a small social system. As my initial complaint ought to make clear, though, this book is far more concerned with characters than Crichton, though the technological bells and whistles are still nifty. All told it is a pretty effective story and cautiously recommended to science fiction fans. | |
| October 28, 2006 | Lies of Locke Lamora | Scott Lynch |
Scott Lynch took a bizarre route to becoming a published author. He was posting excerpts of this novel on his blog when, yep, a publisher read it, contacted him, and ended up buying it. This is one of those fantasy books that earnestly tells you it is the first of seven...I guess some people find this a selling point, but for me it is just about an immediate deal breaker. Not to worry, though, it stands quite well on its own.
The good news here is that as a reader you are in very capable hands with Lynch. Despite this being his first published work his prose and dialogue is very effective. While a fantasy book with magic and so forth, the overall flavor of the book is sort of Charles Dickens meets Dorothy Dunnett. Or something. The main character starts out as a poor street urchin turned thief turned...uh, adult thief? Unfortunately, the plot is mostly concerned with this unconvincing gangster turf battle and "honor among thieves" business. Throw in some corrupt politicians for a little flavor. Throughout the main character is animated by utterly aimless greed (the proceeds of his crime just pile up while he and his merry band live the life of the noble poor), concern for friends, and self-preservation. There's some nice twists, fun set pieces, and snappy lines, but I was never quite convinced there was any good reason for me to care about any of this. With (sigh) six books to go, perhaps some real character development, themes, or other high minded literary practices will emerge to match Lynch's talent with the nuts and bolts, but for the moment it all feels rather shallow. | |
| October 15, 2006 | Soldier of Sidon | Gene Wolfe |
| The trouble with reading Gene Wolfe is one is never sure whose fault it is when a book doesn't quite come off. But where most books are willing, even eager, to carefully walk the reader through what they have to offer, Gene Wolfe's novels stand there and give you a proud, appraising look. Sometimes the challenge lies in the complexity of the story, as in the Book of the New Sun. Other times, Wolfe expects the reader to have knowledge that they may not possess. Ignorance of ancient Greece was a handicap (though not insurmountable) to enjoying the previous Latro books. This story, a sequel to the excellent previous books that essentially stands alone, is set in Egypt and may have similar requirements, although it's quite a bit more unreasonable to expect the reader to know anything about Hellenistic Egypt's mysticism. So what do we have here? Like the previous stories, it is a fun, swaggering sort of adventure story that is a joy to read. As always in Wolfe's fiction, things happen that are difficult to explain, but it seems like an there is an explanation, so it's easy to let things ride. My complaint is the ending of the book failed to provide any sort of closure. I think Wolfe intends to write another Latro book, but given his age it seems, well, not to be morbid, but a little risky to be leaving things so open. In the meantime, while this is a good book, it is down towards the bottom of Wolfe's works and, unless an illuminating sequel proves to be forthcoming, should probably be left to Wolfe completists only. | |
| September 1, 2006 | Free Live Free | Gene Wolfe |
Gene Wolfe, at least to the extent I have read him (I have read the majority of but by no means all of his books), operates in two modes: the vast epic and the small experimental piece. His vast epics--labyrinthine, intelligent to the point of being overbearing, and concerned with the human condition--are magnificent. His "minor" works, such as Castleview, tend also to be labyrinthine and intelligent to the point of being overbearing, but are focused, perhaps to their detriment, on some peculiar quirk of narrative Wolfe wishes to explore. Free Live Free is a much longer book than Castleview, but fortunately it is also quite a bit more successful. The premise of the story is that a man with a house about to be condemned puts an ad in the paper offering free rent in exchange for helping him save the house. If this sounds a bit like "hey guys, let's put on a play to raise that money!" then, well, it's not. For one thing, the only people willing to occupy rooms in this decrepit old house are some of the most shiftless derelicts you can imagine. Wolfe is engaged in a sort of character study here, so each person comes from a specific type: the failed salesman, the prostitute, the fortune teller, etc.
This is Gene Wolfe, after all, so it eventually turns out much more is going on here. The plot is indeed labyrinthine. However, the prose conforms to what I can only describe as an old-fashioned aesthetic. I'm not well-read enough to identify it better than that, but the prose (by design I am sure) constantly evokes a sort of textual mustiness. I thought this was interesting but somewhat unpleasant. Likewise, reading about such a group of misfits was also relatively uncomfortable. However, I eventually got sucked into the strange story (which is, for Wolfe, unusually accessible) and rather enjoyed it by the end. It's hardly the sort of book I would recommend to someone...if you want to try Gene Wolfe, Book of the New Sun or Fifth Head of Cerberus is where you should start...but for Wolfe fans it is an interesting and rewarding read. | |
| August 11, 2006 | Taltos | Steven Brust |
| To be honest I don't feel there's much point in writing extensive reviews of Brust's Taltos series. They are all more or less of a kind. Although they technically stand alone, they are sufficiently interlinked that they ought to be read in published order. And if you've read the previous three books, then you already can make an informed decision on whether you'd like to read this book. It is, generally, more of the same. Although this book deals with some of the more higher concept areas of Brust's world, namely the divinities and the afterlife, the execution fails to live up to the concepts. It's not my least favorite of the Taltos books, I don't think, but it's not a favorite either. | |
| July 27, 2006 | Teckla | Steven Brust |
| This is the third published Taltos book. The earlier two books were vapid procedurals. By the end of Yendi I was wondering if Vlad Taltos was the least self-aware protagonist I've ever read about. In Taltos Brust switches things up: there's still a procedural detective story plot going on, but finally some larger issues are being raised. Taltos has always seemed like a suspiciously nice guy considering he's an assassin, and finally Brust starts exploring the morality of the situation. In a sophisticated move, he explores the ethics of Taltos' life while also examining the ethics of the empire in which the series takes place. Unfortunately, the political side of the book isn't handled very well, but Brust makes up for it with much better character work than in Yendi. Brust has shown me enough that I'll continue reading the series, but I would still recommend it mainly for fantasy fans who enjoy light plot-driven narratives. Try Jhereg and then this one and you'll have still read less than a typical fantasy novel from the bookstore. | |
| July 26, 2006 | Yendi | Steven Brust |
If you read my review of Brust's Jhereg, which precedes this book in the Taltos series of novels (by publication order though not chronology), you'll get a pretty good idea of what to expect from this book as well. Yendi is more of the same, but like many sequels it isn't quite as well-executed. The plot doesn't fit together quite as well and Brust's rather rough hand with dialogue and characterization beyond the narrative voice makes a mess of the romantic subplot. There's also a really poorly handled Shocking Revelation.
One thing Brust does well is he layers in a lot of hints at backstory without insisting on telling you everything. A lot has happened in these characters pasts, and occasionally its mentioned, but for the most part you don't actually know any details. That can be a nice thing. However, Vlad Taltos is really kind of low on the totem pole in his organization, yet he's got ridiculously powerful and influential buddies. And when I say buddies, I mean buddies. He hangs out with legendary figures, and as far as I can tell the only reason they give him the time of day is because they like being around him. He's not a particularly smart or witty guy and his occupation is one they mostly find distasteful, so it's hard to imagine how he has gotten to know such luminaries. I'm sure Brust has some backstory that will come up later in the series and that will show how reasonable it all is, but based on the material in this book it's all hard to believe.
If you have to fly somewhere this book would make for a pleasant diversion, but like Jhereg this book is short enough it might not last the whole flight. According to Brust he tries to write each book in the Taltos series so that it can stand on its own (good thing, these older ones can be hard to find). That being so, there's no reason to read this book unless you really, really like the others. | |
| July 25, 2006 | Jhereg | Steven Brust |
This is a very lightweight fantasy procedural. It's essentially a detective story, except it has an assassin for a main character instead of a policeman or a private investigator. You might not think those are equivalent roles, but Steven Brust disagrees. Vlad Taltos, the aforementioned assassin, finds that in order to kill his target he must first puzzle out what his target is trying to do, why he's been hired to kill him, etc. In short, nothing short of a grand unified theory of the target is acceptable before killing him. I'm making it sound foolish but Brust engineers the story in such a way this makes sense.
This is a fantasy, so there's some standard fantasy stuff going on as well. The main character has a familiar, virtually everyone can do magic of one kind or another, death is only permanent in the right circumstances, and there's some sort of pseudo-feudal society. No elves or dwarves, thank goodness (not in this book at least), and for the most part the world building is handled well. The main character is a sort of low level functionary in a large scale, quasi-legitimate organized crime syndicate. Brust actually trusts the reader to pick up on some details through context and implication rather than spending page after page of infodumps, which is nice. Ultimately, though, the world building isn't anything to write home about.
If you're going to enjoy this novel, you're going to enjoy the convoluted plot, the laconic first person narrative voice, and perhaps the fact that unlike modern fantasy novels this 1983 book is quite short. The good news is if you liked this, there are something like eight more. If you're not interested in harmless beach reading, look elsewhere. | |
| July 23, 2006 | Parable of the Sower | Octavia Butler |
Parable of the Sower is an unusual post-apolacyptic story. For one thing, there was never an actual apocalypse, just a slide into chaos. Forty years after the novel was written, the theory goes, civilization has for all intents and purposes retreated to fortified enclaves while the disenfranchised poor are left to fend for themselves amid the ashes of America. Meanwhile, the main character, a young girl growing up in poor but at least somewhat secure circumstances in southern California, writes free verse poems that she imagines might one day form a new, rationalist religion.
It should say something about the quality of the writing that, in my opinion, this is a very good novel and well worth reading even though the religious aspects are bunk and the setting is wildly implausible. The religion amounts to "God is Change"...God is a completely impersonal force that can't be prayed to or worshipped, just coped with. As some characters actually complain, this is totally meaningless. It's atheism dressed up with a couple words (i.e. God) used completely divergently from how they are supposed to be used. As for the setting, while the enclave aspect is plausible, her depiction of the anarachy outside them is absurd. There's a never ending stream of people constantly killing and being killed and, apart from a couple vague mentions of gangs, absolutely no authority structure coalescing in the vaccuum. The lack of authority is virtually unprecedented in human history, and maybe there's a case to be made--something about the decline of our culture that would cause it--but Butler doesn't seem to think it is a controversial idea. It brings to mind the suburban idea that inner city gangs are "constantly killing people". Ultimately as many people need to be born as are killed or else the cycle of violence will peter out instead of accelerate.
In spite of all this, the book works. Butler's characters are very well drawn, the story, though a bit aimless at times, is reasonably interesting, and while violent anarchy is often a setting in books and movies it is rarely depicted in such an uncompromising fashion. Butler isn't afraid to hurt her characters, though thankfully, unlike a lot of modern "gritty" authors, she doesn't make us wade through long stretches of angst and grief. Her characters suffer and move on, because that's the only kind of life they have ever known and can ever imagine. What the book lacks in realism it makes up for in impact. It's not so much a vision of the future as it is a dream of the future, often fevered and nightmarish, but through it all still hopeful. | |
| June 27, 2006 | Silverlock | John Myers Myers |
| Silverlock has a reputation as a fantasy masterpiece, but while it is quite a unique piece of work I wouldn't call it a masterpiece. It's also not exactly fantasy. Not really. Published in 1948, this is a story about, well, stories. Myers draws characters and situations from dozens...probably hundreds...of famous public domain stories and legends. If you enjoy spotting references, this is probably worth it on those grounds alone. People who enjoy that are the ones who label this book a masterpiece. I however don't really find reference hunting to be all that entertaining. Consequently I was more interested in the story itself. It's in a mode I'm not too fond of, the picaresque. The main character starts out as a thoroughly unlikable jerk but his strange journeys cause him to change. It's all well executed, but cribbing as it does from so many sources it didn't feel all that original until the last fourth of the book, when the story unexpectedly turns from episodic hijinks into a meditation on the meaning of life. If you've read many of my reviews you know this was more up my alley, and indeed I found it quite interesting. Ultimately I'm not sure many modern readers will enjoy Silverlock, but if you are widely read in pre-1900s literature you probably will find much to like, and for the rest of us ultimately there are some interesting ideas as well. | |
| June 23, 2006 | Paladin of Souls | Lois McMaster Bujold |
| If you asked me I'd say I wasn't really a Bujold fan, but a glance at my web page reveals I've read almost all of her books. So maybe I'm a fan, but compared to her extremely vocal Internet cheering section I'm quite indifferent. She's become a wonderful character writer, but she never lets her characters endure anything very bad or participate in a story where there's any real uncertainty over the outcome. All my complaints about Curse of Chalion, the book to which Paladin of Souls is a sequel, are valid for Paladin, only more so in most cases. The main character is never particularly tested and the events of the novel are extremely predictable. This time, the scope of the novel is smaller (and thus there's not a lot of import to the proceedings) and the protagonist changes only a little bit and this change isn't handled very well at all. Meanwhile, the principal action of the book is rather unsatisfying, since like most magical systems in fantasy, the relgious magic Bujold has created does not benefit from close inspection, and the mechanics of it prove central to the story. If you haven't read Curse of Chalion, you should read it before reading this. If you didn't love Curse than give this one a pass in any case, because it is just more of the same, but watered down further. | |
| June 20, 2006 | Dark Knight Returns | Frank Miller |
In the world of comics and "graphic novels" there are a few titles consistently mentioned as being superlative. One is Watchmen, and I was extremely impressed with it when I read it three years ago. I thought it would therefore be a good idea to read Frank Miller's Dark Knight Returns on the grounds that anything mentioned in the same breath as Watchmen is worth my time, even if it is Batman.
Unfortunately, compared to Watchmen, there's not a lot going on in Dark Knight Returns. Much of it is just procedural. In the second half there are indeed some interesting ideas, but Miller doesn't have the space (and possibly not the ability) to really make his case. It's nifty to say that Batman actually inspires the "supervillains" who oppose him, and furthermore that as a vigilante he is an anarchic force, but ultimately this stuff needs more time than Miller is able to give it. Much of the Batman psychology is relegated to a few stray shots of TV talking heads debating the "Batman issue", for example. Meanwhile, much of Batman's world remains as difficult as ever to take seriously. Even apart from the sort of silliness that is perhaps inevitable in superhero comics, Batman only makes sense in Gotham, a film noir city of boundless crime and corruption. Maybe this was a compelling setting when Dark Knight Returns was published in 1986 and suburbanites were convinced the "inner cities" were going to soon become completely lawless, but after two decades of violent crime holding steady or declining, it all seems kind of irrelevant. Meanwhile, the action storyline is reasonably engaging and probably fun for fans of comics, but as an outsider I didn't get much out of it. I'd recommend it to people who really like comics in general or Batman in particular, but unlike Watchmen there's no need for the rest of us to take note. | |
| June 18, 2006 | Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn | Tad Williams |
Let's get this right out there. It's well known that there are a lot of fantasy books that are basically Tolkien with the serial numbers filed off. Well, this is one of said works. Now, in fairness to Williams, the coming-of-age arc with the protagonist and the romance element are really ripped from Eddings (or Eddings' influences), not Tolkien. But really I was surprised just how many elements from Lord of the Rings are reshuffled and put back on the table. Even minor details, like the Elves (never referred to with that word, but come on) sailing to the hidden West when getting sick of the world, or the big bad guy sending a sun-blocking storm out from his volcanic stronghold, show up. Oh, there's a few elements taken from Arthurian legend and, oh yes, for some reason the Catholic Church (again sans serial numbers) makes an appearance as well, kind of like in Guy Gavriel Kay's later work. All these well-worn elements mean that, for me at least, the trilogy could never be much more than a pleasant diversion. It's like listening to a decent remix of a song you loved: it's still good, but it is hardly as exciting as listening to a good new song.
The good news is that if you are going to copy, you might as well copy from the best, and further Williams is a pretty good writer. As a first published effort Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn is far better executed than Guy Gavriel Kay's similarly Tolkien inspired debut, the Finovar Tapestry trilogy. Williams does some good work both with the characters as well as the story's intricate plot. He falls down a little bit at the ending, but all in all it is pretty well done.
One more important note. This trilogy is very long, even by modern standards. Williams (in almost all his work) moves things along at a very slow pace. He's a good enough writer to pull this off if you are willing to stay with him, but if the idea of someone spending 150 pages doing backstory on his protagonist before actually beginning the story frightens you, this isn't for you. At least Williams finishes his series, unlike certain other long-winded fantasy authors. | |
| June 7, 2006 | Family Trade | Charles Stross |
Note: Family Trade is actually part one of a two book series (i.e. it was really one big novel but the publisher split it into two). This review is for both. Not that there aren't any spoilers for either, but I just want to make clear if you get one you will have to get the other to actually finish the story. There is another sequel, Clan Corporate, and my impression (haven't read it) is that this is part one of a similar duology.
Stross has acquired a reputation as a white-hot SF futurist author. I can see why, though personally he has yet to really impress me. To me he's sort of like a poor man's Neal Stephenson in that he brings a lot of cool ideas to the table, but unlike Stephenson doesn't make you laugh out loud and fails to really have any meaningful character work. On the plus side, he actually writes decent endings to his books and hasn't entered the business of disguising history textbooks as historical fiction. The Family Trade series is billed as his entry into fantasy, but don't be fooled. This may have a magic item, but otherwise there's no magic, and in any case the "outlook" of the story is a forward-looking, future seen as superior, science fictional view. There are also some facile comparisons to Zelazny, but while I admit Stross clearly has read the Amber books, ultimately this is nothing like Amber. No, here Stross is evoking a variation of the scientist-as-hero theme from the classic Asimov/Clarke days that is so rarely seen now, although in fact it is economics, not hard science, in this case. Many sections are reminiscent of Twain's Connecticut Yankee in King Author's Court, showing the modern and progressive protagonist running circles around those who are comparitively primitives.
In between all this we have an action story involving guns, mines, swords, and a conspiracy. To Stross' credit, the fact his protagonist is (like the author) an IT industry journalist and not a cigar chomping action hero only occasionally leads to some incredulous moments. No, the action mostly works. Unfortunately, in the second book Stross can't keep all the balls in the air at once and the plot comes undone. The climax is both predictable and unsatisfying. The first book (i.e. the first half of the story) is pretty strong but with the plot coming apart, the characters are too two-dimensional for there to be anything compelling. As usual Stross does fun things with his concept, but a really satisfying story still eludes him. Recommended for those who like science fiction, economics, and don't mind the fact what's wrapped around it all is a little too fluffy. | |
| June 2, 2006 | Rainbows End | Vernor Vinge |
I feel a little bad giving this book only three stars. Vinge has become a much better writer since he became famous (within the genre, at least) for Fire Upon the Deep. Unfortunately, where his previous two books were hugely fun space opera romps, Rainbows End is a decent but occasionally plodding story with an overcomplicated plot and undercomplicated characters. Vinge has never been a master of characterization, but in his Zones of Thought books that wasn't a big problem since the plot and world were so engaging. In Rainbows End, Vinge is more interested in touring his ideas about the future than making sure the story functions properly, so the plot never really adds up to anything half as impressive as Vinge is capable of. Meanwhile, the tour itself seems woefully incomplete. For someone who has always thought big in his fiction, Vinge is strangely parochial here, confining almost all the narrative to San Diego State University and the nearby community. Those familiar with Vinge's biography will know that he taught there for many years, and indeed this is the only real reason for its extremely prominent presence in the book.
Nevertheless, there are surprisingly few near-future science fiction novels these days so Rainbows End will likely be fairly influential, and in truth it does have a few moments of real poetry (the aside about the title, for example) and humor (the PDF). If you are interested in what life will look like with ubiquitous computing, you could do a lot worse. It's just a shame that it wasn't more. | |
| May 30, 2006 | Storm Front | Jim Butcher |
Detective / science fiction genre crossovers go back a long way, at least as far as Asimov's Caves of Steel, but I'm pretty sure detective / fantasy blending is somewhat more rare. Storm Front is exactly that, however: a first person narration by one Harry Dresden, a hard-boiled detective with an Ugly Past, a Cynical Attitude, and Not Enough Money to Pay the Rent. He's also a wizard, and therefore Knowledgable About the Secret World of Magic, a Summoner of Mystical Creatures and Spirits, Maker of Potions, and of course an Enemy to Dark Mages.
It's all pretty boilerplate. The conjunction of two boilerplates makes it a relatively enjoyable read. The author is capable enough, but never shows any desire, much less ability, to make the story rise above the raw material. Still, it's a quick read and it is easy to see why there are apparently 8 sequels plus an incoming TV series. | |
| May 13, 2006 | Prince of Nothing | R. Scott Bakker |
R. Scott Bakker's The Prince of Nothing trilogy has to be one of the most enjoyable reads I've ever given a rating of just three stars. There is a great deal to like about the books, but while I found them engrossing, particularly the first book, ultimately I enjoyed them much less than I hoped. First, a brief warning, although I only read completed series, by many definitions this series is not over. Much is left open at the end. This didn't bother me too much, as my no-unfinished-series policy is less about avoiding cliffhangers and more about saving time by not having to reread books to get back up to speed when sequels come out. If the second and third books are any indication of the shape of future books in the series, there will be ample "What Has Come Before" material to catch up with.
So these are fantasy books, but what sort of fantasy books? Bakker seems very interested in several things: world-building, realism, intrigue, and philosophy. By realism, I mean this is one of those series where there might be magic, but the story is told without leaving out any of the grit and grime of love and war in a medieval setting. Bakker's done his research and his gritty details are convincing. I found the political intrigue to be very good, which was fortunate since most of the first book is spent on it. The world building seems standard at first but has some very interesting wrinkles to it, but alas these are left firmly in the background for this trilogy. Unfortunately, while it is clear Bakker has an enormous amount of work into the setting, throughout the trilogy there is such a deluge of proper nouns that some readers will bounce off entirely and many more, like myself, will find it ultimately a distancing feature. And the philosophy, well, more on that in a minute. While we're talking about what Bakker does well, I felt that the battle scenes were particularly well done. If you are a fan of intrigue stories and epic fantasy, this is definitely worth a try.
But what went wrong for me? For starters, the animating philosophical principles for the books (despite a lot of name dropping from other sources) seem to be Nietzsche and Dawkins' ideas about memes. In the end, I didn't find this particularly satisfying. The basic framework from the story is taken from the Crusades and I know enough history that I don't need three long fantasy books to remind me how pointless, wasteful, cynical, etc. they were. That's not to say no one can write a great book about clashing religions: Guy Gavriel Kay, an enormously different writer than Bakker, wrote a brilliant book a while back with Lions of Al-Rassan. What made Lions great was its focus on the characters ensnared in the prejudices and grand movements of their time. The Prince of Nothing books also cover this ground, but the way the characters are treated is the opposite of Kay, who in all his books asks the reader to accept the idea that his main characters have modern, progressive attitudes despite being surrounded by realistically bigoted and small-minded countrymen. Bakker takes things in the opposite direction: pretty much no one demonstrates the ability to lift their head above the muck long enough to see what is going on, and so his characters spend their time getting ground up within the wheels of the machine. There's a sort of tragedy in that, but it's also very predictable, and in my opinion is not worth three books to get the reader there.
Of course, one character, the eponymous Prince of Nothing, is indeed capable of seeing everything for what it is. Kellhus, the Nietzschean ubermensch, comes from a monastery where he has been rigorously schooled in a hand waving philosophy that combines analytical thought with Buddhist meditation toward enlightenment. Also, he's the product of a couple thousand years of breeding. This combination of husbandry and philosophy has given him some very useful abilities. He's a perfect actor, capable of completely separating his outside self from whatever he really is feeling inside and further perfectly projecting whatever thoughts, attitudes, and emotions he wants using his expression, mannerisms, and speech. Additionally, he doesn't really feel anything, because his philosophy has made him into some sort of Vulcan. On top of that, he can read other people's faces and achieve results indistinguishable from telepathy. Oh, and did I mention he's got the "body control" to be the equal of thirty men in combat, see a crossbow bolt fired directly at him and pluck it out of the air, and generally be a complete martial arts badass.
Bakker says in the introduction to one of the books that he worked on the first book, The Darkness that Comes Before, for about fifteen years. Unlike Kellhus I can't read minds, but if I had to guess I would think Kellhus and his abilities are some of the earliest elements to the story, because frankly they sound more like the ideas of an adolescent than those of a talented author like Bakker has become. Maybe I'm wrong, and maybe Bakker could read the previous paragraph tomorrow and not feel at least slightly embarrassed, but that's how I see it. Don't get me wrong: he's too smart to make Kellhus utterly perfect. Occasionally Kellhus makes mistakes, although this is generally for lack of sufficient data rather than genuine miscalculation. However, as readers we only hear about these mistakes when the narrative is from Kellhus' perspective, so most of the time we have no indication of it.
Now I'm not arguing that the idea of a combination of Professor X, Spock, and a stock Jet Li character is impossible. When you are waving your hands and talking about long breeding programs, I'm forced to grant a lot things as possible. After all, Frank Herbert did the same thing to produce someone who could see the future and I was fine with it. No, the problem is in addition to having a silly array of abilities, Kellhus is a dramatic black hole. Because he's the perfect manipulator, there's virtually no dramatic tension unless the reader is artificially kept in the dark as to what Kellhus is trying to achieve. His character cannot develop, because he actually has no character, he's a much more fully realized Vulcan than Star Trek ever managed in that respect. Any "development" isn't so much a change as a crack. Given that he is a parody of Nietzsche (who would not have agreed with Kellhus that freedom from society's strictures implies amorality) he is extremely unlikable, and it is pretty frustrating to watch the likeable characters of the story sit in his clutches and know that given the powers assigned to Kellhus they are incapable of breaking free without it seeming like a cheat.
It doesn't help there aren't many likeable characters to begin with. Curiously, despite centering his story on a virtually perfect character, Bakker makes sure to populate the rest of his characters with a healthy number of flaws. And of course, in what has become de rigueur for "gritty" fantasy these days, the likeable characters that we are supposed to be rooting for are subjected to all manner of indignities. I mean that literally, because I think all the bases are covered when it comes to awful things that can happen to someone. Now, I don't mind bad things happening to characters, but it helps if there's some emotional payoff at the end of it. In this case, not really. So at least give me something I can hold on to: Iain Banks at his bleakest (Against a Dark Background) still compensates with moments of humor and wit. That is also mostly absent here.
Finally, it must be mentioned that just about every character, likeable or not, has strange sexual hang-ups of some sort. That's not so uncommon in fantasy these days either, but in an unusual move Bakker basically defines the capital-B Bad Guys, the ones who do a lot of lurking so they can presumably become important in later books, by their carnal appetites. This is a very shallow sort of bad guy, if you ask me. I expected more from someone of Bakker's interest in philosophy, and sure enough towards the end we find out they do actually have some interesting beliefs and convictions. That makes their, ah, cravings all the more pointless if you ask me.
This is a long review, which is very much a compliment. There's a lot going on in these books and the reader is presented a lot to think about. I just can't strongly recommend them because I think so many people, including myself, will find them unpleasant or unsatisfying. I've got high hopes that in the future Bakker will hit his stride and write fiction that is both thought provoking and effective. Until then, consider reading these but pass if they don't sound like the sort of books you really enjoy. | |
| May 6, 2006 | Mars Trilogy | Kim Stanley Robinson |
One of the chapters of Red Mars is titled "The Scientist as Hero". While I was reading it, I thought perhaps the whole trilogy should be called "The Executive As Hero", for in a time when corporate executives as vilified for their huge salaries and lavish benefits, Kim Stanley Robinson seemed to be defending their work as both valuable and necessary. To me, this is typified in the idea of the tour of the facilities. A confession: I am not an executive or administrator, but rather an engineer. From my side of the fence, these are usually a farce, a dog and pony show too abbreviated and (if those giving the tour are at all competent) too staged to grant any real insight. I was surprised, therefore, to find touring is the structural core of the trilogy, in two senses. First, as a narrative device, some characters give tours to other characters constantly. After the initial chapters of Red Mars characters rarely do anything as such beyond attend meetings, coordinate various groups of people, and attempt to synthesize diverse opinions into a single vision. In other words, they do the sort of thing CEOs are supposed to do, and what the popular conception equates to sitting around benefiting from the hard work of the real workers. But on a deeper level, the book itself is really a guided tour, obscured only by the fact it is simultaneously a tour of several things at once: what Martian terraforming might look like, what the author views as a superior society to our present one, and the varied neuroses of intelligent, driven people.
I was forced to give the books a low rating because I had to force myself to finish them. It must be said that there are many, many people who love these books. They have some very real strengths, and if you as a reader value them then much can be forgiven. Robinson has done a vast amount of research into his subject and holds little back, spending literally hundreds of thousands of words on descriptions of Martian geography and the scientific details (both real and postulated) of the physics, biology, and chemistry involved with life on Mars. The trilogy is audacious even within the science fiction genre, attempting to chronicle the Martian equivalent of the rise of America from the first settlements to its emergence as a great power in the twentieth century. This sort of epic is rarely seen, and further the sheer length gives the reader a relatively unusual sense of the sweep of time. Events early in the trilogy feel distant towards the end because the reader read about them many hundreds of thousands of words ago. Also, I was surprised to find that while Robinson sticks to a fairly transparent third person narrative he dashes the story with some real literary flair, subtly melding his prose to the psychology of the viewpoint character. The section of Red Mars from Michel Duval's viewpoint was particularly excellent.
Alas, if, like me, you are not entranced by the endless description of the Martian landscape or convinced by Robinson's complicated extrapolations of economics and sociology, the books drag mercilessly. When dealing with political intrigue, Robinson is capable of telling a pretty interesting story, but only glimpses of it survive the deluge of details in Red Mars and get completely snowed under somewhere in Green Mars. The characters we spend so much time with never really escape their classifications: Frank is a Machiavellian Politician, Nadia is an Engineer, Sax is a Scientist, and so forth. They also rarely change, and such changes as we see are often attributed to biochemistry. This vision of people as static and unable to escape from their formative influences is depressing and surely untrue in most cases. Minor characters are stereotyped by nationality, a rather shocking attribute for a trilogy that was obviously intended to be very progressive. The plot is relatively focused for most of Red Mars, but the various elements drift apart as the series continues until by Blue Mars it is as diffuse as the solar system whose politics Robinson is describing: characters and plot elements swing around in their designed paths with great gulfs separating them. The characters are often (especially in Blue Mars) curiously passive, rarely influencing events for all their earnest fact-finding and coordinating.
Meanwhile, despite all the descriptions the real focus is not to describe Mars but to describe utopia. This is unfortunate because Robinson is not too convincing when he discusses politics and sociology. His vision of the Earth has dangerously overpopulated was obsolete when he wrote it and now almost comical, his idea that any nation or corporation would pour money into Mars (much less all of them) for some vague hope of mining or creating new markets seems ludicrous in light of the continued failure of the US space program to economically justify itself, and his never-justified use of "metanational" corporations as the snarling villains of his story (surprising, given what I said about his apparent vindication of the executive as a valuable entity) seems hackneyed. Normally, it's not a big deal if predictions an SF novel makes turn out to be wrong. Brave New World predicted personal helicopters, but it's not about helicopters, so who cares that turned out to be mistaken? The Mars trilogy is about economics and sociology, so if these age poorly, there's not much left to like.
Ultimately, if you are fascinated by Mars and interested in an extremely detailed account of humans settling there, the Mars trilogy is definitely worth a try. Otherwise, I would give it a miss. If you read it and find yourself bogged down in Red Mars, then I would give up. I stuck with it mainly because I felt I ought to be familiar with such widely read books, but even that, in hindsight, doesn't really justify it. | |
| March 12, 2006 | A Night in Lonesome October | Roger Zelazny |
Roger Zelazny is probably best known for his Amber series, which are kind of lightweight adventure fantasy stories. His best work (in my opinion, of course) is Lord of Light, where he tells a more sober story with a lot of mythic and religious elements. A Night in Lonesome October is something of a hybrid between the two. It takes the lightweight style of Amber and the mythic elements from Lord of Light...although here the myths are popular myths of vampires, werewolves, and Elder Gods. Well, I'm not sure if Lovecraft is popular, but you get the picture.
There is good and bad in this combination. The good news is Zelazny is almost without peer when it comes to writing light intrigue. The plot involves a lot of maneuvering through a somewhat tangled web of alliances and plots as various supernatural entities cooperate and compete in an attempt to open (or close, as the case may be) a gate that will allow Cthulhu and friends to return to the Earth. Zelazny doesn't make it so complicated it becomes confusing and the narrator...the familiar of one of the participants...is very engaging. The downside is the book is ultimately no more than a confection. There's no deeper meaning here, it's just a fun ride. There's not even any real tension, because even though the fate of the earth hangs in the balance, the characters themselves don't seem to be all that concerned. Oh, they occasionally allude to the seriousness of the situation, but they don't seem to be losing any sleep over it. And since the characters aren't tense, the reader isn't either.
There's no law that says every book has to have Deep, Important Thoughts or even Spine-Wrenching Tension and for what it is this is a very good book. It's even a quick read, by modern standards. Recommended to those who enjoyed Amber or who like the sound of a light hearted supernatural romp. | |
| March 5, 2006 | Ender's Shadow | Orson Scott Card |
This was one of those books that I felt was going to be so often discussed I ought to read it, even though I basically gave Card up for dead after Xenocide and Children of the Mind. As it turns out, my perceptions going in are precisely the same as my reactions after reading it, so in one sense it was a waste of time.
But it wasn't really that big a waste. Early on I found myself enjoying the book much more than I expected. For all his faults, Card knows how to pull the strings, and the chess match approach Bean (like Ender in Ender's Game) takes towards dealing with people can be fun to read. When the action finally moved from the mean streets to good old battle school, the setting that single-handedly made Ender's Game a massive hit, I figured I had been selling the book short all along.
Unfortunately, it starts out all right, and then goes flying off the rails the moment Bean and Ender actually meet. From then on, the story "shadows" the original book's story precisely. Not only does this make for an uncoupling narrative since I still remember what happens and Ender is still the prime mover, but it serves to exaggerate the flaws of the original book.
And once you got beneath the enormously enjoyable battle school sequences, the original book had a ton of flaws. The depiction of the children was ludicrous (they are so much smarter than real children their age they all must be another species), the psychology of the training questionable at best, and worst of all, the last third of the book is unforgivably vague. All that remains true, with added flaws from Card's desperate attempts to make Bean really relevant to what is going on. The book might still have been worthwhile if he had taken it as an opportunity to flesh out battle school and the "command school" scenes in the asteroid, but they remain just as poorly described as before.
Rarely has a book been so aggressively "more of the same" than Ender's Shadow. I'm sure there's a lot of demand for that from Ender's Game fans that found Speaker for the Dead perplexingly different in tone and complexity, but anyone whose tastes are remotely like mine is advised to look elsewhere for their next book. | |
| February 11, 2006 | The Golden Age | John Wright |
This is a trilogy made up of three books that are all one continuous story. It happens to be the best far future story I've read. That makes it the big fish in a rather small pond...Clarke's City and the Stars, Egan's Diaspora, and Bear's Eon books come to mind as other examples of this subgenre. Like those who came before him, John C. Wright examines what form humanity might take thousands of years from now, what they might do for fun, and what they would care deeply about. This is dangerous, because if humans are too different it is easy to alienate the reader (this happened to me with Diaspora). On the other hand, when humans are too close to being the same it threatens the sense of disbelief. Wright walks this line with care and all things considered does a pretty good job at it.
The books that are easiest to compare this to are Banks' Culture books, because Wright, like Banks, posits a human society that is managed by superintelligent AI. Where Wright differs from Banks in that his society is not post-scarcity (and, in fact, the main character gives a detailed and fairly convincing explanation for why there will always be scarcity) and so there is a comprehensible economic order. It's unfair to infer the author's beliefs from a book, but let's be honest, it's clear that Wright is as much of a libertarian as Banks is a socialist. This makes it interesting to compare the two societies, since they aren't as different as one might expect.
If you are getting bored by this talk of scarcity and libertarianism, you may want to give these books a pass. Although you can technically classify this as a space opera, it is a novel of ideas both technological and philosophical. That's not to say Wright ignores characters and plot...there is a very complicated plot and the character and dialogue is decent with occasional flashes of brilliance. However, there is very little "action". Many confrontations are resolved through argument.
The biggest downside to the books is there is a lot of lingo thrown around. Some it, as far as I can tell, is intended to be decorative. In particular, there is a lot of magic physics being thrown around (although FTL is still impossible) and described at length. I tended to just skim those descriptions. Occasionally the terminology becomes important, mainly when it relates to how humans or AIs think, but for the most part, you can just let it wash over you. The other aspect that might be considered a downside is that in a book like this that is full of philosophical arguments there are going to be a lot of people who feel their opinion wasn't properly represented. Wright caught a lot of flack from some reviewers over this, but even though I disagree with some of what the main character thinks and even with some of the author's assumptions in building the world, I can still recommend the books wholeheartedly because they don't try to hoodwink the reader into thinking something but genuinely argue. There's just as many controversial assumptions in a typical Iain Banks or Ken MacLeod or Charlie Stross book but somehow they get a pass. To me, a book that provokes thought and argument afterward is a good book. If you agree, definitely give Golden Age a try. | |
| January 21, 2006 | The Book of Knights | Yves Meynard |
I learned of this book because Gene Wolfe dedicated a volume of the Wizard Knight duology to Yves Meynard ("with greatest respect") and quoted from it in the other. As I understand it, Gene Wolfe had not read The Book of Knights when he wrote the first draft of his work but after reading it and seeing there were some common elements, he contacted Meynard.
The similarities between the two works are not many. A few of the surface details are the same...it would spoil Meynard's book slightly to say which ones. More meaningfully, both books are about how people should live, or at least aspire to live. Each author codifies the principles they think are important into "knighthood" and, to sidestep the small problem that real knights were none too respectable in hindsight, both use a fantasy world.
So the books have a few similar details and the same overall message, but otherwise they couldn't be more different. Gene Wolfe is an author of mazes and metaphysics. His settings are always compelling both in their complexity and in the way all the seemingly disparate elements serve the story's aims. Meynard, at least here, is working in the fairy tale subgenre, so while there are many fantastic creatures and settings to be found, what is important is less the setting than the hero's ability to react to it.
I like complex stories if the author can pull it off, so Gene Wolfe is my favorite author, but Meynard has probably knocked off Neverwhere on my list of best "fairy tale" stories. This is the sort of story that Neil Gaiman was trying to write with Stardust but couldn't quite get down on the page. Where Gaiman seems to have trouble making his fantasy seem significant, Meynard carries off every facet of the fairy tale solidly. His imagination in contriving settings and characters is superb and though the story is simple it takes itself seriously. Finally, the use of adult themes and struggles is handled much better than in Stardust, and indeed much better than anything similar I have read. I'm not sure if I agree philosophically with the conclusions the author seems to endorse at the end, but that's not reason for complaint as it's uncommon enough for there to be anything to disagree with in the first place.
I recommend the book very strongly to those who like the fairy tale side of fantasy, though keep in mind this is still an adult work (i.e. King Rat not The Hobbit). | |
| January 9, 2006 | Second Chronicles of Thomas Covenant | Stephen Donaldson |
Given that I wasn't hugely impressed with the first Thomas Covenant trilogy you might be wondering why I read the sequel trilogy. Well, because I was on a trip and that's what I had brought, that's why. So much for that.
In any case, this is more of the same. In fact, it is too much more of the same. The fatal flaws from the first trilogy are back in force: prefunctory quest plot, flimsy world-building, and worst of all, a massive emphasis on the exploration of the psyches of people who are far too traumatized for me to relate to them. Yes, people, since in this trilogy Thomas Covenant has a female partner who has also undergone a series of soap operaish melodramatic tragedies and been terribly scarred.
This time, though, the books suffer in a big way from fantasy inflation. I think when they were published the big honking door stop as fantasy materwork must have been taking hold. There's one book...maybe one and a half books...worth of story here, but it is brutally overwritten. Meanwhile, the plot coupon quest has some arbitrary events happen to stretch it out. I'm sure that Donaldson and perhaps his fans could enumerate Important Changes that occurred in the main characters as a result of these events that were crucial for the ending to take place, but I cared so little about those characters I didn't follow closely enough. It's not just that they are having boring angst, but so many pages and pages of boring angst! I had to skim. Sue me.
The books salvage, just barely, a three star rating because I found the concept of the Sunbane (introduced in the first book to great effect and then ignored thereafter in favor of standard fantasy locales) to be remarkable. Because of that I thought the first book threatened to be the best of any of the six Covenant books, but what follows was so dull it didn't amount to anything.
If you liked the original Thomas Covenant series then by all means read this one. If you didn't like the original Covenant books, avoid. If you haven't read the books at all, I'd advise against it. There's too much mediocre series fantasy out there to settle for something this arduous to read. | |
| December 29, 2005 | Secret Country Trilogy | Pamela Dean |
These books are technically young adult, but they offer a great deal to interested adults. Essentially the books are an update of Lewis' Narnia books that subtracts the Christian allegory and adds in modern fantasy attitudes as well as a heavy dose of Shakespeare. The high concept here is that, like Lewis' children, a group of five related kids ranging from eleven to sixteen cross over into a fantasy world but, the difference is, this fantasy world is the one they have imagined for years to the point of acting out crucial historical moments and devising languages. As such, they have knowledge of the future, since they were the ones who plotted it, but they are constrained to the roles they assigned themselves and, as children, even royal children, their influence is relatively small. From that intriguing starting point, a host of complications ensue as differences in what they imagined and what they are living prevent their knowledge from being absolute and, most interestingly, they have problems when their roles differ from their own personalities.
The writing, especially the dialogue, is sharp and often humorous. If I had to raise any complaints, the characters are a little too passive, a big battle scene is envisioned in an uncharacteristically lame manner, and the villain is ultimately defeated just a little too easily. These are very good books though, and strongly recommended to people who enjoy fantasy, especially material like Narnia. The only people I'd warn off are those who can't tolerate prose written at a YA level or who require a lot of blood and adrenaline from their fiction. | |
| December 27, 2005 | Blade of Tyshalle | Matthew Stover |
| The first few chapters of the book are really, really good. Better than I thought Stover was capable of. Needless to say I was pretty excited. Then everything reverted to Heroes Die levels. That's not bad, per se, since Heroes Die was a very competent procedural and this is its sequel. Like its predecessor, this book features solid writing, an intricate plot, and even more intricately choreographed action scenes. If you liked Heroes Die then you will probably like this as well. If you didn't like it, stay away. If you didn't read it, read that before reading this, as this is a direct continuation sequel. | |
| December 26, 2005 | Chronicles of Thomas Covenent | Stephen Donaldson |
As I said in an earlier review, if I think something is Important enough that I ought to read it out of sheer obligation then I will deliberately try to avoid getting any details before I read it. The Thomas Covenant books have been on my radar for a long time. Opinions vary wildly as to whether the books are great or awful. There's only agreement on one thing: Covenant is intensely unlikeable and almost certainly the genre's foremost anti-hero.
This reputation led me astray. I was expecting Covenant to go around being a complete bastard, but instead, he is a decent enough person except for one nasty thing he does very early in the first book. He feels really guilty about that, too, and in the process blames himself for a whole lot of other stuff over the course of the trilogy. Most of this blame is overblown or fabricated entirely. Covenent, I was somewhat disappointed to discover, is not a bad person so much as he is a degenerate whiner.
If you are unfamiliar with the series, the high concept is this: Covenant crosses over to a fantasy world, but chooses not to believe that it really exists, perferring instead the interpretation that it is all a hallucination. This is a clever twist on the very old idea of crossing over into faerie, but it doesn't exactly go anywhere. It seems to me like either you'd reject what your senses were telling you (presumably doing nothing or alternately act completely selfishly) or accept it. Covenant seems to think accepting the fantasy means madness, so he doesn't do that, but he mostly goes along with it anyhow, exact at points convenient to the plot he will do odd things due to his alleged unbelief.
Mixed in with this is Covenant's leprosy. Today leprosy is curable, but when the book was written it could not be cured. Thanks to what I think is a far fetched view of small town America's reaction to having a leper living in their midst, Covenant is completely alienated from society in the real world. His acceptance by the people of the fantasy world he crosses into (they don't know what leprosy is) for some reason makes him mistrustful and angry.
Thanks to America's fascination with serial killers, there are a lot of fiction that deals with the psychology of what I would term broken people. By the standards of Hannibal Lector, Covenant isn't that bad off, but still his leprosy (and the hateful response of his town) has turned him into someone who cannot successfully relate with other people. This all ties in somehow or other with the series' big bad guy, whose defining characteristic is hatred. The problem with all this is I don't sympathize with Covenant's psychological hurdles because I find them arbitrary. He's broken not by something I can understand like the death of someone close to him or some particularly tragic medical condition like paralysis, but by an imaginary scenario (imaginary both in that his contracting leprosy happens miraculously and his rejection by society is totally unrealistic).
Well, since Covenant is unappealing and perhaps unrealistic, what are we left with? A paint-by-numbers high fantasy that beyond its main character does nothing to make you forget it comes from a period when fantasy was deeply influenced by Tolkien. For some eason a lot of arguments in this line seem to revolve around whether it was cheating for Covenant's talisman of power to be a ring, but I didn't have a problem with that at all. As Tolkien himself answered the criticism that his One Ring was too similar to Wagner's, "They are both round and there the resemblence ceased." But in many other respects, from his use of poetry to his names to his language choices to his pro-nature themes, Donaldson owes much to Tolkien. Unfortunately, he isn't nearly as effective as Tolkien was with any of these things. The poetry never matches Tolkien's own uneven standard. The language and history fails to be compelling since it is not backed by a lifetime's thought the way Tolkien's was. And the nature themes seem to betray a lack of enthusiasm. If Donaldson really cares about nature and the environment, he fails to translate that successfully into his prose.
The saving grace of these books is that Donaldson is a very competent writer, for all his other faults. In this he reminds me of Eddings, although Eddings had a better hand with dialogue. Nevertheless, the writing moves the reader briskly from points A to B to C. If you love high fantasy and can't think of any others you'd prefer to read right now, you'll probably enjoy these books. If you really enjoy alienated main characters, run, don't walk, to the bookstore to get this. And if, like me, you just want to be able to know what people are talking about when they are discussing fantasy, you probably ought read these at some point as well. Otherwise, I'd give them a pass. | |
| December 18, 2005 | Schismatrix | Bruce Sterling |
Schismatrix is described by Sterling as the most "cyberpunk" work he has ever written and will ever write. It's funny that he associates it so strongly with a modern literary movement (I'm not saying he's wrong, I don't know enough about what makes something cyberpunk to evaluate it) given its structure is of the sort of novel that is rarely written these days: the episodic biography. There used to be a lot of these back when short fiction dominated the field and novels tended to be either padded out shorts or several shorts strung together. The book follows its main character throughout his life (a very long life, thanks to medical advances) and in so doing charts the evolution of the human society throughout the solar system.
It is this society that gives the book its title, as it is deeply fragmented and full of small units and factions. Sterling has crafted what must be over a dozen ideologies and social structures to populate his solar system, some more understandable than others. His inventiveness is remarkable and I didn't find myself complaining that a branch of future technology had been overlooked. Either Sterling was complete or I share his biases.
Unfortunately, when you get past the world building the story, plot, and characters leave a little bit to be desired. The episodic format moves us from one startling world to another in a manner that dazzles the reader with Sterling's creativity but prevents any true attachment to the characters. It doesn't help that most of them, especially early on, are deeply unlikable.
I'm giving this four stars because I think it succeeds in what it set out to do, which is form an engaging chronicle of future history. If you prefer character-driven fiction you probably ought to give it a pass.
One final note, I read this in an edition called Schismatrix Plus which tacks on some short stories Sterling wrote in the universe. They are decent, but only one, "Swarm", is of real quality. Their placement after the novel is logical because, even though they were published first, they surely are easier to understand if you come in armed with the basics of Sterling's complicated universe. | |
| December 17, 2005 | Curse of Chalion | Lois McMaster Bujold |
Back when I was plowing through most of the available Miles Vorkosigan books, essentially the only thing Lois Bujold published before Curse of Chalion, I used words like "light" and "fun" to try to convey the low-impact nature of the books. Bujold was not trying to dazzle the reader with amazing ideas, postmodern style, or gutwrenching emotion, she was just spinning a fun story. Some of the series' later books flirted with emotional resonance. I hoped that by leaving Miles and indeed SF itself behind, Bujold was going to aim a little higher.
Well, no. Chalion is technically fantasy, but as I categorize things it is an intrigue novel. There aren't a lot of swords and sorcery, just schemes and plots. If you like such things, this might be good beach reading. It's competently written and ruthlessly predictable. The Evil characters are utter caricatures. The Good characters are so blandly good, perhaps so as not to offend any possible reader, they threaten to bore. The world building is kind of standard...the only feature of the world that approaches being unusual is the religion, which is extremely simple.
Thinking after I finished, I decided that Bujold is a character author. She has a genuine liking for her protagonists. Too much of a liking to put them through anything truly difficult. To be sure, the main character, Cazaril, has a relatively interesting backstory. He's not of the sword-swinging school (although, infuriatingly, Bujold succumbs to the temptation to make him a skilled fighter regardless) and though a member of the nobility he has no direct power. Instead, he has a hand in great events by working for others. In that sense, the book reminds me slightly of Hobb's Farseer books. I say slightly, because those books might as well be in a different genre. Hobb is a much better writer (this is no slight on Bujold, who--aside from her earliest work--is solid, it's just I consider Hobb to have about the best technique fantasy has to offer) but more importantly she writes very hard books. By hard, I mean she pulls no punches emotionally. Her characters face genuinely terrible situations and suffer enormously. Because Hobb is such a good writer, the reader empathizes and suffers too. So while I think the Farseer books are great, I must concede that at times reading them is like going to the dentist. It's good for you, but it can be hugely uncomfortable at times. I say all of this by way of comparison because compared to those sorts of books, Curse of Chalion is a confection. It is utterly painless. Though the characters go through privation and even seem despairing, none of it ever seems serious and sure enough, it passes quickly. Even though this book was a much easier read than the Farseer trilogy, I've already reread the trilogy once and expect to do so again. I don't think I'll read this book again. I recommend it if you enjoy intrigue, really like fantasy, or really like Bujold's other work. If you don't like the idea of a painless confection, give it a pass.
Before I go I want to complain about one aspect of this book which, though hugely obvious from the get-go, might be considered a spoiler, so if you haven't read it and plan to do so, you might want to stop reading. Towards the end, two characters (keeping this vague in case of wandering eyes) have a fairy tale romance. That's fine, but the man is in his mid-thirties and the woman is twenty. Now there isn't anything technically wrong with this, and certainly in a faux-midieval world it would be common, but I felt this was rather dubious on the part of the author. Somehow, I get the feeling the author felt the ending wouldn't have been as happy if the character had had a fairy tale romance with a woman his own age. Or, god forbid, a woman fifteen years older. Since the author is a woman herself (not to mention middle-aged) I can hardly accuse her of the male wish-fulfillment that still pollutes science fiction and fantasy, so I'm rather perplexed. My only explanation is she wants to make the ending as satisfying as possible for the reader and figures male readers consider the ending much better if the guy gets paired off with a young woman. This lack of faith in the readers, while probably justified, is kind of dispiriting. | |
| December 13, 2005 | Heroes Die | Matthew Stover |
If I think it is likely I will read a book I usually do my best to avoid all details before I read it. This is supposed to leave me open minded, but occasionally it backfires and I get a set of expectations that are completely mismatched to the book when I eventually read it. Stover has been on my radar for a while after I read a number of surprisingly positive comments on his mercenary work for the Star Wars licensed books. It'll be a rainy day indeed when I go back to reading that kind of stuff, but I figured I'd give his original work a try. So far so good, but somehow I got the impression that Heroes Die was some sort of grim deconstruction of the Ultimate Warrior cliche. I mean, look at that title!
Alas, nothing could be further from the truth. If anything, Heroes Die is a celebration of the procedural beat-em-up. Reading through the opening scene, which tries too hard for that Stephensonian edge and loses itself in the minutiae of the choreography, I thought I might be in for a pretty bad book. This impression was just as wrong as my initial one, however. It turns out that Heroes Die is about as a good as a fighting procedural can possibly be. It's got a couple flaws, namely the aforementioned lapses into scripting stunts for Hollywood and the overly metaphysical ending, but in spite of them it is a very solid pageturner. In fact, I finished it in one sitting. Amazon claims it is 200,000 words, so I really don't recommend this. But I couldn't help myself, since if the ending had been executed better I might have given it five stars. As it stands, it very much deserves four. What seperates Heroes Die from the shelves of similar books you can find at any Borders? For starters, the writing, once Stover hits his stride, is pretty sharp. Second, I found the setting to be extremely impressive. It's wholly unbelievable in every respect, from the alternate universe angle to the castes of Earth society, but man, it's fun. It's a little too complicated to do justice to here, so you'll have to go to the back cover or someone else's review, but I was really impressed by the whole Actor thing. Finally, by virtue of his dual nature, the protagonist is a little more self-aware than your typical sci-fi or fantasy Ultimate Warrior type. Don't get me wrong, Caine is no FitzChivalry, but the book avoids the trap of just letting ethics slide because this is an "edgy" story about a guy who can kill you eighteen ways with his bare hands.
If you like novels that mix hand to hand combat with political intrigue, don't miss this. If you are sick of that sort of thing, then give it a pass. | |
| December 12, 2005 | V for Vendetta | Alan Moore |
I actually read this a couple weeks ago but forgot to review it. I hate to cheap out on you like this, but V for Vendetta is the sort of work I can either write something brief or something extremely long and detailed but can't do any justice to it with something of more typical length. If you haven't already, I would strongly recommend reading Alan Moore's Watchmen. If you have and you liked it, then I definitely recommend reading V for Vendetta as well. It is a shade less brilliant than Watchmen and occasionally infuriating, but it is a great piece of fiction. Moore is a great writer.
Having tossed out the recommendation, and not having enough time to properly discuss these issues, I will have to settle for making some assertions that I hope to write more about later. Since the movie is coming out in a few months, you will probably hear a lot about V for Vendetta. Some people see it as a haunting vision, a cautionary tale about fascism that is more relevant today than ever. Forgive me if I disagree. I think Moore gravely misread the overall motion of western culture (mass execution of homosexuals and black people? mmmkay). Additionally, the anarchy proposed and modeled in the book is just another disguised dictatorship, with V as ubermensch giving the people what they are too stupid to want. Meanwhile, nothing that could even be confused with a viable alternative to the story's straw man fascist state is proposed. Instead, apparently riots and mob rule will somehow sort themselves into the ideal state. Whatever. Finally, much will be made no doubt about how the movie or graphic novel "glorifies terrorism." I don't know and don't particularly care what Moore wanted to glorify, so I won't analyze whether it is supposed to glorify terrorism, but by any sensible, the main character is a terrorist. Having a brutal, almost nihilist (if you don't believe the anarchy bit) protagonist battling a thoroughly evil police state means there's no one you can truly vote for and makes the story a great discussion piece.
Too bad the public discourse these days has sunk to such abysmal levels that no one on either "side" will actually have a rational discussion about these ideas with anyone they disagree with. A big part of Moore's brilliance as an artist is he can write a gigantic speech in favor of something I find ridiculous and I still love reading it. And for all his eccentricities, he is subtle enough to let the reader come to their own conclusions about the important points. In the past year or two I've read political novels of revolution from MacLeod, Mieville, Stross, etc., but this is by far the best. | |
| December 10, 2005 | Soldier of Arete | Gene Wolfe |
This historical fantasy is the sequel to Wolfe's excellent Solder in the Mist. Unlike Wolfe's other series, the Soldier books more or less stand on their own in the sense there is no gigantic cliffhanger at the end. On the other hand, it would help if you read Solder in the Mist before reading this one. For an overall summary of the character and setup, see my review of that book. This book is more of the same, which is a very good thing. That said, it is more opaque. On the Wolfe difficulty scale from one to 10 (keeping in mind the conversion factor...I don't think Wolfe has ever written a novel easier than a 9 on a normal SF or fantasy scale) the first Soldier book was a 3 or a 4, with much of the difficulty coming less from narrative obfuscation and more from the lack of familiarity a typical reader, including myself, has with classical Greece. Solder of Arete still demands an understanding of ancient Greece I don't quite have, but it supplements that with quite a bit of Wolfean narrative misdirection. It hits about an 8 on the scale (where Short Sun and Castleview are 10s and Fifth Head of Cerberus is a 9), I think.
Wolfe is infamous for his unreliable narrators, and Latro may set some sort of record. He is truthful, as far as I know, but there is a very, very great deal he leaves out for a wide variety of reasons. Wolfe cheats a little bit, in my opinion, in having Latro have all the habits of an ordinary person (since he wouldn't be able to function otherwise) despite losing just about all of his memory. There's some good reasons why this makes sense. On the other hand, Latro doesn't have a firm idea of what is unusual, which makes the narrative quite difficult to follow at times since the unusual happens to Latro pretty much all the time, but he usually doesn't realize it. I would think that someone who understood how to interact with people as well as Latro does would realize it is odd to be able to see and speak with people that no one else can see.
Even though there is a fair amount I don't understand, it didn't keep me from enjoying the ride. Hopefully the promised two sequels, when they appear, will clarify matters (but I'm not getting my hopes up...if anything Soldier of Arete muddies the waters of Soldier in the Mist). Ultimately, Soldier of Arete still comes together as a very enjoyable novel and one I would recommend to anyone who enjoyed the previous book. | |
| November 27, 2005 | Count of Monte Christo | Alexander Dumas |
| I decided to read the Count of Monte Cristo because I was traveling and it seemed to have two attributes that would make it ideal for keeping me occupied: First, it was really, really long. Second, despite being 480,000 words the book was relatively compact. I hadn't read anything by Dumas since Three Musketeers ten years ago, so I didn't exactly know what to expect. Turns out, the book is quite good. If the idea of a 1200 page, small type book makes you nervous, then forget about it, there's plenty more for you to read. However, if you aren't scared off by the length, the long format (and let's not beat around the bush, it's that long because Dumas was paid by the line and had ghostwriters helping him) turns out to have some advantages. Unlike Dickens, Dumas uses the padding for conversations instead of tedious or obscure descriptions, and he has both the wit and the ear for dialogue to make it work. The cast of this novel is large (though by modern standards perhaps not exceptionally so) and each character is carefully drawn. It's this detail...plus the almost philosophical introspection that Dumas isn't afraid to work in...that makes the book rise above its rather adolescent revenge fantasy plot and become something that is actually worth reading. I should also mention that unlike Three Musketeers (which if memory serves is adventure) is more of a story about intrigue, plotting, and manipulation. Recommended to anyone interested in the period (France after the second Restoration) or the genre. | |
| November 15, 2005 | The First Chronicles of Amber | Roger Zelazny |
The Chronicles of Amber were originally published as five books, but today they would be published in one since they form one long story so as is my custom I will review all of them together. These books are decent but flawed and I almost gave them four stars, but ultimately they are just so frustratingly mediocre I couldn't do it. Plenty of people absolutely love these books and I can see why, so let me make clear what you are getting (spoiler free, of course) so you know whether you should give them a try. First, these are technically fantasies but really they fall into a combination of mystery and intrigue. If you like books filled with plots within plots, duplicity, and unexpected revelations, then this might be up your alley. The first person narration is somewhat uneven but effective when it has to be. Although I anticipated one major twist by a couple hundred pages, there were several others I didn't, and the story kept me turning the pages.
So what's not to like? I have a whole laundry list of complaints, with no individual one being so serious as to keep me from enjoying the books but together they make the affair rather less than memorable. First, the main character is a gigantic tease in that he is initially painted as a complete rogue but pretty quickly--before he does anything that's genuinely unlikable--he becomes nice to a fault. We hear that he has changed, but no evidence is given for it. After I was done I knew what he had become...a boilerplate goody two shoes protagonist...but I knew almost nothing about who he had been. Second, I said this was really a mystery novel and not a fantasy, and this is particularly noticable in the world building, or lack thereof. Zelazny was nothing if not creative, and his world is full of interesting features and ideas. It's a terrible shame, then, that is must remain a static backdrop occasionally remarked upon and never truly explored. In the wake of the Lord of the Rings films I have heard Amber proposed as a great candidate for the big screen treatment, but in truth the book's true form is a stage play. What's important here are the characters and their efforts at outwitting each other. It's absolutely criminal that (this isn't a spoiler) Amber is apparently the "true city" from which all other cities gain their form and yet at the end I had a vague idea as to the surrounding terrain but no understanding of what was in Amber itself, how big its population is (the size of its army suggests its population is quite small), and what, if anything, makes it so much better than Rome, Paris, or, let's face it, Gary, Indiana. Meanwhile, the Shadows cast by the true city form an infinite number of universes, and this infinity is hardly touched upon. That's not to say I want a lot of dilly-dallying filler adventures along the lines of Otherland, but this infinite tapestry just provides a few boilerplate settings that serve just as matte paintings behind the dialogue. As for the strength of the book, the intrigue, the dialogue was clever enough but not exceptionally smart or subtle. The narration was, well, linguistically naive. Several times each book I hit a sentence or word choice I found quite jarring. It doesn't help that Zelazny never quite takes himself completely seriously, which to my mind undermines the supposed import of what is going on. Either the universe hangs in the balance, or we're trying to be witty, but not both, surely? Finally, although the plot is the book's best feature, it begins to break down towards the end as the author gets distracted by his own metaphysics. This is such a common feature of modern fantasy and science fiction that when things began to seriously go off the rails in book five it was like I was meeting an old friend.
This review may sound more like a one or two star review, but really taken as a whole it is a competent fantasy. It is a blissfully quick read, so its flaws are quickly passed over. If you like intrigue and want some relatively light and quick reading, give it a try. | |
| October 6, 2005 | Little, Big | John Crowley |
I believe this book to be a masterpiece, but I cannot prove it, because I simply am not equipped to appreciate it. There is absolutely no question it is well written...more, it is as well written as anything I have ever read. However, my tastes are out of phase with this book...if you have read it (this isn't a spoiler), the book provides an able metaphor for my experience in Smoky, who cannot truly be an active player in the Tale despite being in it. I read the book and appreciated its obvious technical merits, but the higher beauty all that gorgeous prose was striving for eludes me.
Will it elude you too? No way to be sure, but here's what you need to know. Although this has a pretty intricate story, the book is very much an atmosphere piece. That's not to say I dislike all atmosphere pieces, but there's something else to add: it is a Faerie story. Don't get me wrong, I enjoy that sort of thing in its more accessible forms, like Gaiman's Neverwhere. However, here you do not just catch a whiff of Faerie, it is the very air you breathe as a reader. It is the haze through which you perceive the story. If you like Faerie stories, I would conjecture Little, Big is the highest, purest, and even best such story. When you get down to it I don't like Faerie stories, so while the quality of the writing kept me reading, I didn't truly enjoy the book. It's a slow read regardless because the long and twisting story never quite grabbed me. The flow of the narrative is that of a wide, ambling river instead of the fast moving rapids that our culture tends to encourage in its entertainment.
If you think there is even a chance you like Faerie stories (I assume most people, based on the imperfect description here, will not be sure) you owe it to yourself to give this book a try. However, plowing through it requires a larger than usual commitment from the reader, so don't be afraid to give up if after two hundred pages you aren't enjoying it. If you don't feel yourself to be in the book's audience by that point, that will never truly change. | |
| September 2, 2005 | The Anubis Gates | Tim Powers |
It's easy to see why Anubis Gates is a popular book. It was, I think, in many ways ahead of its time. Since its publication in 1983 there has been enough fantasies set in Victorian and pre-Victorian England to found a new subgenre, but this book was there first (all right, I'm not nearly enough of a scholar to know this with any certainty, but it was early at least). Another plus is that it isn't nearly as cloying in its use of the English setting as many of its successors, making it a much more enjoyable read for those, like me, who are less than enchanted with merry olde England. It also anticipates the so-called "New Weird" movement of Mieville with a wide array of unusual creatures, magical effects, and so on. There are traces of the depression and near nihilism of Mieville without being quite such a downer.
All right, so the book has some of the best features of current fads despite being over twenty years old. But is it good? Well...yes and no. The introduction to the main character seems to indicate a novel in the Hyperion mold, heavily influenced by and allusive to literature. However, ultimately the poetry of Coleridge and Byron turn out to be props for the book's narrative gymnastics, not pathways toward any higher meaning. For most of the book, the reader might not care, because Powers writes a decent procedural.
Unfortunately, it is just decent. The first problem is the book's pacing. Some sequences are fantastic page-turners, but too often the narrative bogs down in unmotivated quagmire. The second problem is the lack of a compelling antagonist. Oh, the larger than life characters that oppose the main character are interesting in their own way, but while they commit various petty evils to get what they want it is not immediately obvious why I should desperately want their master plan to cause control of Egypt to revert from Britain to France to fail. Third, while the book's quirky approach to magic is by turns refreshing and delightful, it takes a back seat to time travel. That's fair enough, but as soon as you realize the approach the book takes to time travel, the plot becomes extremely predictable. I anticipated pretty much every important point or "surprise" in the final act hundreds of pages in advance. Fourth, the ending is not only without dramatic tension, it is executed in what must be described as a stunningly unsuccessful manner. It's hard to imagine it having less pathos. Powers does a decent job setting up his dramatis personae and their problems throughout most of the book, so it was hugely disappointing to have it all resolved so poorly. It's reminiscent of Stephenson's endings to Snow Crash and Diamond Age, but worse because this book has less of an emphasis on style and needs to stand or fall based on the story.
In spite of its problems, Anubis Gates is a fun if light book, and I'll be willing to try another Powers book if it comes recommended. If you are fascinated by England in the early 19th century or time travel stories in general, give it a try, but otherwise I'd look elsewhere. | |
| August 28, 2005 | Innocents Aboard | Gene Wolfe |
Gene Wolfe is a writer of difficult but surpassingly wonderful novels. Even at his most accessible, he is too indirect to ever really achieve the popularity he deserves. Unusually in this age when it is not unfairly alleged that established writers write short fiction just to win awards, he is extremely prolific when it comes to writing short stories. With any other author, I would interpret this as merely evidence he or she has a lower standard than most. But this is Gene Wolfe, the most intimidatingly sophisticated writer in the genre...he wouldn't lower himself to churning out mediocre stories to make a quick buck, right?
Well, apparently he does. There's no other way to put it. This is billed as a fantasy collection, but in truth most stories are either short folk tales or horror stories. Now, there's nothing wrong with folk tales or horror stories, but these are really your stereotypical folk tales and horror stories: The former are cute but specious and the latter are an exercise in cheap thrills. Wolfe turns out to be very much into ghost stories, and it doesn't help that I am not, but for the most part there's nothing remarkable enough to be worth reading (or, I would have thought, worth writing). It's humorous that even many of the people who are turned off by what they would say is the purposeless complexity of his novels will here be turned off by a lack of complexity.
This is still Gene Wolfe, so there are a few caveats for this mostly negative review. First, the writing is for the most part extremely sharp. No surprise there. I just wish he was writing about something I can bring myself to care about. Second, this book was headed for two stars until I hit some relatively strong stories in the second half. It starts with "Houston, 1943", a story which was confusing and bizarre the way Wolfe's novels are, but (for me at least) without the rush of understanding towards the end. It doesn't help I could barely understand what the characters were saying. Nevertheless it seemed like something was lurking under the surface. Then, a couple stories later, "The Night Chough", which was the best story of the collection, but I am willing to admit much of my enormous enjoyment came from its connections to Book of the Long Sun. Finally, the book closes on a very high note with "The Lost Pilgrim", which was--in tone, not literally--a longish (by this collection's standards at least) cross between the Latro novels and the Wizard Knight books and quite fantastic. Not sure that two or maybe three stories justify purchasing a collection...perhaps not, but I gave the book three stars anyway. If you do really like simple ghost stories, run, do not walk, to your bookstore to get this. Otherwise, think about grabbing it from the library for the stories I mentioned. | |
| August 7, 2005 | Olympos | Dan Simmons |
Typically, when faced with the all-too-common reality of one story spread across several volumes for publishing reasons, I review and rate them as one work. I make exceptions, however, when the quality of the work changes significantly between them. Dan Simmons has written two excellent science fiction novels, Hyperion and Ilium. Unfortunately, Fall of Hyperion wasn't so much a sequel as a necessary second half, and an inferior one at that. That duology remained good enough for me to recommend. I'm not so sure I can say the same thing about Olympus. I give it three stars because in spite of its many flaws it has some compelling scenes and much of it is competently written.
It's not a new observation in science fiction criticism that it is easier to pose fascinating mysteries than resolve them, and it is unfortunately true here. However, unlike Hyperion, most of Ilium's charm came not from the mysteries it posited but from the characters and the use of the Trojan War setting. It is unexpectedly disappointing that neither of these qualities carries over to the sequel. We don't find out anything new about the characters in Olympos and they don't grow very much, either. I'm not going to spoil anything here but suffice to say the Iliad is left behind in Olympos and indeed, except for some very unnecessary riffs on Euripides and the usual long Proust quotes, most of the literary aspects are left behind. The characters move around the world, enduring action set pieces here and there and only occasionally learning anything. Simmons seems to have a blind spot which manifested in the Endymion books but is even more prevalent here. He has two characters talking, one of vast knowledge and power and the other an ordinary person, and the former refuses to say anything the other person has a prayer of understanding. Instead of speaking simply, they speak in riddles. And not because Simmons is going in a Gene Wolfe sort of direction and writing a puzzle-narrative, but for no good reason. The reader can more or less follow what the powerful character says and is meant to. Instead of someone who knows just saying what the voynix are in simple terms, for example, we have to endure it being said forty times in different vague ways. There's no good reason for the various characters in the know to be obscure, they all just are obscure by nature, even though they are of many different natures. The reader will understand after five or no more than ten oblique explanations but the book's ordinary characters must continue wondering. Meanwhile, these already annoying conversations are made considerably worse by having the response to each bit of information inevitably be, "I don't understand."
Of course, the mysteries from Ilium are basically resolved. I say basically because while at the end the reader understands everything, most of the explanation is handwaving in any case. People who read the Hyperion and Endymion books will be familiar with Simmons' approach to science: have enough science concepts floating near the surface (leaving aside just how scientific string theory really is) to make for long, tedious explanations but ultimately grounded in good, old-fashioned magic. Sorry, but the word "quantum" does not give free reign to do whatever one likes. There's nothing wrong whatsoever with magic, but if Olympos was more honest on this point it would make for a more readable and streamlined narrative.
In the two books--probably clocking in at around 500,000 words--Simmons wields a formidable array of characters and stories. He does this with the competence you expect from an author of his experience and reputation, at least until the end. The end is deeply perplexing to me, for it resolves some issues with the status of humanity in its various forms, but does nothing to clear out some of the dozen or so petty gods floating around the narrative, many of them profoundly malign and the rest with interests best described as perpendicular to the characters we are supposed to care about. With these agents still outstanding, nothing has really been resolved. If this was a trilogy it might be understandable, but I've heard no evidence of that and the way the ending is handled suggests it is meant to be The End. His failure to deal in any real way with the Quiet is particularly obnoxious. He explains everything else at length but leaves this rather obscure reference to reader to decode. I'm not sure which is worse, not understanding what he means as I fear most will not, or understanding as I'm pretty sure I do and wishing he'd done more with it.
Some people will no doubt find deep meaning here, for Simmons has left things just ambiguous enough that enterprising readers can imagine some flame of greatness is casting all the shadows. For myself, as fond as I am of some of his literary invocations in Ilium, I can't condone what (little) he does with them in Olympos. His attempt at making some sort of grand statement on suffering and fate founders due the characters being left behind alternately in the trivia of his metaphysics and the directionless action scenes. I'm glad Simmons aspires to great things, but I wish he would consider a more streamlined approach. I think he overuses literary references, but since his books run off the rails without these references supporting them I will instead ask that in the future he simply consider simpler narratives. If you haven't read anything by Simmons, Hyperion and its first sequel are worth your time. If you really like it, by all means read Ilium and the rest. If you aren't a fan of Hyperion, give Olympos and its predecessor a pass. | |
| August 2, 2005 | Farseer Reread | Matt Hilliard |
| Some of the reviews I wrote early in this site's development are pretty short, and coincidentally those are some of the best books I've ever read. I've been meaning to go back and update them for a long time, but have been waiting to reread the works in question. This process is beginning with a reread-prompted mini-essay added to the Farseer Trilogy. Next up, in a few weeks, will be Book of the Long Sun. | |
| July 28, 2005 | A Civil Campaign | Lois McMaster Bujold |
| This is, like Komarr and Cetaganda, a somewhat "light" Miles book. In fact, the genre is really romantic comedy. If the idea makes you squeamish, well, if you like the Miles books, there's more than enough here to make this a great book for you. In a rather unusual move for the series, Bujold uses a narrative with many viewpoints. From a plot and character perspective, nothing really happens (that wasn't obvious from the end of the last book, at least), but it's thoroughly well written and enjoyable. Like Memory there is a bit of intrigue half-heartedly tacked on at the end, and it doesn't entirely work, but it doesn't really matter. As with all the Miles books, the standard disclaimers apply: if you didn't like the Miles books, you won't like this one. If you haven't read any Miles books, start elsewhere. I recommend Warrior's Apprentice. | |
| July 23, 2005 | Stories of Your Life and Others | Ted Chiang |
Let's get two things out of the way. First, this is an outstanding collection of short fiction. I strongly recommend it to anyone. Second, it fell just short of getting a five star rating, and since I think it is so good I need to explain that while the stories are all excellent, they just don't quite have the oomph of the books I have given 5 stars to. No doubt some of this is simply my bias against short stories, and the fact novels allow the author to work up to a bigger crescendo. Nevertheless, while the stories are great, I feel like the impact on the reader is exaggerated due to the modern rarity of this type of story and not entirely from their intrinsic worth.
So having established that you should read this collection, but that it isn't quite the greatest thing the genre has ever produced, I want to spend the rest of this review explaining just what "type of story" these are and so defend my statement. These are science fiction stories. Reading them made me realize how little science fiction I read. Oh, sure, if you look at the books I've rated on this site, it's embarrassing how limited in scope most of my reading is. But out of all this alleged science fiction, some of it is admitted fantasy and much of the remainder is implicit fantasy (Startide Rising for example is all fiction, no science). And the science in, say, Book of the New Sun is extremely sparse...the book is concerned more with the human condition, metaphysics, character, etc. I knew all this intellectually before, but when I thought of "hard" science fiction (I'd rather call it true science fiction) I thought of the dreary, soulless stuff that Clarke and Asimov mostly put out.
There's no way around it. Ted Chiang writes true science fiction. And he writes it very, very well. Each of his stories is grounded on speculation in mathematics, linguistics, neuroscience, physics, and engineering. That's not to say the fiction is "hard" the same way the word is usually used...several stories are not meant to be plausible by any means. Instead, they are explorations of the world built upon different scientific principles. People operating logically in a world governed by different rules. You can define these stories as fantasy if you like, but throughout the collection there is always a governing principle of observation, experimentation, and applying logic to these observations.
It's a shame how rare genuine scientifically oriented fiction is, especially well written examples of such fiction. If you have even the slightest interest in reading well written scientific fiction, you must read Stories of Your Life and Others. | |
| July 12, 2005 | Quicksilver | Neal Stephenson |
Note: The purpose of this site is to quickly summarize my feelings about a book while it is still fresh on my mind: i.e. after I have read it. Because of this I have not gone back to write reviews for the many books that I have rated but not reviewed...it's not fair to the books. The ones I like a lot, I will review after rereading them. Recently though some people have wondered about my low rating for Quicksilver, and since I don't intend to read it again my recall of the book (which I read a little less than two years ago) will never be better, so I thought I would go ahead and explain my problems with the book. Additionally, though it is lengthy, there are no spoilers in this review. In fact, few books have been written that are more impossible to spoil than Quicksilver.
I really, really was looking forward to Quicksilver. Having watched Neal Stephenson grow as a writer from Zodiac through Snow Crash to Cryptonomicon, I had high hopes that he had finally developed into the great author he always seemed on the cusp of being. Certainly he has raised his aim significantly since Crytonomicon. Where Cryptonomicon was, boiled down, a witty celebration of information theory, Stephenson clearly wants the Baroque Cycle to be a witty celebration of the European enlightenment. It is almost a propoganda document for what today are called "western values" (though, hopefully, many Asians would disagree): rationality, individualism, and meritocracy.
I am certainly deeply in favor of everything Stephenson is advocating, so what problem could I possibly have with the book? Alas, the execution is unfortunate. More than unfortunate, perplexing.
Quicksilver is historical fiction. Hopefully there was no disagreement on this score, but even today there are still people who insist on defining Cryptonomicon as science fiction when it is clearly a hybrid technothriller / historical fiction novel (the only reason Cryptonomicon, to these people, must be SF is because they like the book and they hate technothrillers...yet these same people complain that critics have stripped 1984, Brave New World, etc. from science fiction's account for precisely the same reason). The reason Quicksilver's genre is important is that the very qualities that make Stephenson such an amazing author of science fiction (and technothrillers) completely sabotage the basis of historical fiction. After all, most historical fiction, and Quicksilver is undoubtably in this category as well, seeks to present an accurate picture of life in the given time period. Yet Stephenson's humor and wit pervades his writing and he is always on the lookout for a good joke or clever turn of phrase. While this makes the book engaging (I would have never finished Quicksilver without it) it also means it is impossible to know whether a given detail is present because it is accurate or because it is working in service to Stephenson's humor. To a small extent all historical fiction has this problem: what is fiction and what is history? Yet in Master and Commander this is easy enough to parse: the setting, technology, and politics are ruthlessly researched and accurate while the characters and events are fictitious. This division does not exist in Quicksilver because Stephenson's wit operates on so many levels: puns, one liners, the written equivalent of sight gags, situational comedy, satire, and absurdism are all at work on every part of the story, from the dialogue to the characters to the setting to the events to the footnotes. What then are we to believe?
Of course, one solution to this problem is to read Quicksilver as straight fiction (leaving aside, temporarily, the fact this leaves Stephenson's defense of western tradition, the book's raison d'etre, twisting in the wind). But even as such, the fiction is stretched incredibly thin across a deluge of historical trivia. I may not be able to evaluate the history to know what is true and what Stephenson is making up, but I'm sure the vast majority of it is true. The amount of research that must have gone into the book is disturbing to contemplate. The trouble is, I just am not that interested. This is clearly a matter of taste. I'm well aware that many people are interested in the history on display in Quicksilver. Nevertheless, I am not interested enough to read a whole book on it, and I think I am very much not alone.
This problem carries over when we consider Stephenson's mission. He wants to show people just how important science is in changing the face of the world, but by drenching his novel in detail he is ensuring he is only preaching to the converted. It is my opinion that very few people not already quite interested in history will get through Quicksilver and, of these, most will already have an appreciation for the role of the enlightment.
Still, despite the tedious stretches of detail, Stephenson's humorous writing is in full effect and he is unquestionably more skilled now than he was when he wrote Snow Crash, which frequently made me laugh out loud. Unfortunately, as part of his quest to show the reader just how privledged they are to have been born after these brave men reformed their primitive civilization into the science enabled jewel it is today, Stephenson spends a great deal of time in a very cruel type of humor. The best way to put it is that much of Quicksilver's humor is about making fun of the people in the 1600s for being irrational, barbaric, and, most importantly, extremely dirty. I don't debate that they bathed rarely if at all, had very mistaken ideas about the transmission of disease, etc., but I found it poor taste to constantly laugh at them for it. If it had been one joke, or a couple hundred, I wouldn't have noticed. Instead, practically every page somehow refers to how deplorably wretched their condition is. Again, the reason this is so prominent is Stephenson is showing the horrors that science has saved us from. And while I am glad I am living in a more enlightened age, I'm well aware of the fact had I been born in that time I wouldn't realize anything was amiss. Humanity changes, if at all, much slower than technology, and it is odd that such a talented futurist would lose sight of this. I played along with the narrative on this for a while, but my breaking point was when someone dies of plague and the whole scene is played for laughs. A few weeks earlier I had read a book whose name escapes me where the process of dying of the plague was outlined in excruciating detail. That story brought home the heartbreak of watching your family die, and not just die, but die in fear and pain. I understand that Stephenson is not writing in that tone, but surely he had better options that to have a laugh at someone inconveniencing people by up and dying of the plague in a public place. In fact I think he misses a lot of power by never being serious, never showing the very real pain and suffering that science (particularly medical science) has saved all of us from having to face. That would be a lot more effective than just talking about how dirty it was back then, or how even the enlightened scientists keep dissecting dogs and getting the guts all over themselves.
Plenty of people love Quicksilver and the rest of the books in the Baroque Cycle. They're welcome to it, but count me out. If I want to learn about the enlightenment, I'll read a history book. If I want to read excellent historical fiction, I'll read something by Dorothy Dunnett. If I want to read a really engaging narrative, well, there are many, many choices. If you haven't read Stephenson's other work, start with Snow Crash or Cryptonomicon. If you have, then give Quicksilver a try, but don't be surprised if you find your patience being sorely tested. | |
| July 10, 2005 | Iron Dragon's Daughter | Michael Swanwick |
This novel is three things. First, it is an absolutely devastating demolition of fantasy tropes. Second, it is a satire of modern life. Third, it is hugely unpleasant to read.
These days, it seems like everyone has written a demolition of fantasy tropes, but this was 1993. You probably don't even remember what it was like in 1993. You probably weren't even born yet. Well, I'm not ashamed to admit it is so long ago that even I was a schoolboy trudging barefoot five miles to school every morning. OK, so 1993 isn't so long ago, but I do think that this novel was probably a great deal more shocking when it first was published. For one thing, there is an excellent chance anyone reading this for the first time now has read Mieville's Perdido Street Station and/or its successors. There is no doubt in my mind that Mieville was influenced enormously by this book. I ran a search on Mieville's name and Iron Dragon's Daughter and found this quote by Mieville as part of a larger discussion of how his book is an alternative sort of fantasy to Tolkien elves and dwarves. "Nor would I claim that it's impossible to write a good fantasy book with elves and dwarfs in it - Michael Swanwick's superb Iron Dragon's Daughter gives the lie to that." It's nice to see some old fashioned rhetorical sleight of hand, specifically a thoroughly false comparison. Swanwick's book is in my estimation farther from Tolkien than Mieville's work. A writer who thinks as deeply as Mieville will understand there is more to Tolkien than elves and dwarves, and likewise there is more to Iron Dragon's Daughter. The book's title speaks to the central conceit of the story: an industrialized and unpleasant fairy world. Swanwick's dragons are built and piloted like jet fighters, though they are thinking, manipulative, malignant demons of Tolkien at heart. The main character starts out slaving away as a child in an exploitive factory straight out of Dickens. Then things get worse. Standard fantasy has a call to adventure, an arduous quest, and a defeat of evil. Swanwick has written a story with a call to misfortune, an arduous quest for happiness, and a very different sort of conclusion. When he's finished, the genre conventions of fantasy lie in a smoking ruin, a devastation of a magnitude that Mieville still only aspires to.
The main character's meandering path through the novel forms what I'm sure Swanwick would call a satire of American life, but really it is life viewed, as Dick would say, through a scanner darkly. It is life viewed through the lens of despair. I've read my share of bleak science fiction novels by the likes of Iain Banks and John Brunner, but while some were more intense none were as unrelenting as this novel. The tone causes the whole thing to come off as less a satire (remember when satires were supposed to be funny?) and more of a cynical, nihilist dismissal. Perhaps Swanwick was doing a bit of a narrative stunt with the point of view in doing this, but you don't write this many words of bleak unless you feel it means something. And it does, but I'm not sure it is worth suffering through.
Because you will suffer. The book is not without humor or hope, but those moments are very few and very far apart. Even Banks (at least in his science fiction books) uses humor to relieve the darkness or at least works up to a crescendo of despair. Swanwick starts out grim and stays that way throughout. He is a very good writer, better than Banks, really, and at least as inventive, but you have to earn it here. The trouble with books like this is that while this is a Serious and Important Novel, those capital letters are driven home by how Difficult the story is to experience. I recommend it to anyone who wants to read a very intelligence fantasy novel and isn't afraid of a bit of depression, but those looking for more happy narratives should definitely steer clear.
I will add that it is an interesting contrast to read this book only a little while after reading Tad Williams' War of the Flowers, which was written much later. The fairy worlds of the two books are so similar that it cannot have been a coincidence. Williams is a writer of limited skill and limited ambitions compared to Swanwick, and without question Iron Dragon's Daughter is better by any measure...except one, which is the enjoyment gained from reading the novel. Williams book, in its own light, pleasant, and occasionally awkwardly written way, manages to hit a lot of same satirical bases that Swanwick does. It would make for an interesting paired reading, that's for sure. Perhaps the right word is antidote. Of course, I can't recommend that, because anyone who would love Iron Dragon's Daughter will not like Williams book, and vice versa. Unfortunately I think there are many people like myself who want more sophistication from Williams and just a bit less despair from Swanwick. | |
| July 9, 2005 | Komarr | Lois McMaster Bujold |
| After writing a quiet, character novel that happened to have a half-hearted mystery embedded in it (Memory), Bujold gets back to her roots by writing a full fledged mystery. Unfortunately, the mystery isn't particularly interesting. In keeping with the new depth of the series, there is plenty of character development here for Miles and Ekatarin, the book's other viewpoint character. Unfortunately, it's not particularly interesting ei | |