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| # | cover | title | author | isbn | isbn13 | asin | num pages | avg rating | num ratings | date pub | date pub (ed.) | rating | my rating | review | notes | recommender | comments | votes | read count | date started | date read |
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date purchased | owned | purchase location | condition | format | ||
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5
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| 0316038563
| 9780316038560
| 3.79
| 419
| Dec 16, 2010
| Jan 05, 2011
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For readers familiar with KJ Parker's work, The Hammer can be summarized as the family drama of The Fencer series, the driven hero of The Folding Knif...more
For readers familiar with KJ Parker's work, The Hammer can be summarized as the family drama of The Fencer series, the driven hero of The Folding Knife and the setup of The Company. As a big fan of the author's work, I had the highest expectations for The Hammer - it should top my 2011 Anticipated Fantasy list, though having had the book for a while makes that a bit moot - and it was as good as I expected and it's an early candidate for my best of 2011. So, on a big island, a small subsistence (70 year old) colony of farmers and shopkeepers mostly indentured, taxed and generally kept at that level by Home on the mainland through a charter to The Company which brings them the needed goods in return for large amounts of beef and animal skins/pelts; the colonists are allowed no weapons and no ships But on a nearby plateau - The Tabletop - impregnable from 3 parts and walled on the 4th - an exiled noble family from Home, the met'Ocs made their (illegal as far as Home is concerned but nobody bothers since they still have friends) estate/fortress and they are armed and pretend to keep Home's traditions, though they are poorer than the colonists in many respects, except in books, some more advanced stuff from Home and weapons; and of course dreaming of being recalled and reinstated if their allies manage to gain power The current generation (third since their exile) consists of 3 brothers and a sister, while their father is the patriarch with absolute powers - including life or death - and their mother (imported from Home) is negligible. Stheno(mai) the elder and a huge man is the "farmer" in charge with feeding and clothing them and is continually harried by this or that Luso(mai) the second son is the hunter/warrior who keeps the peace and leads a "gang" recruited from the no-gooders of the colony with occasional cattle raids - the colonists do not mind that since all cattle is Company's - but sometimes for other stuff like pigs or chickens about which the colonists care but can do little not having guns... Gignomai the youngest is more or less surplus so he has no definite role which allows him to "break out" often to the colony where his best friend Furio Opello is the son and nephew of the most important men there by some accounts since they run the monopoly store that sells Company's goods. We see Gig at 7 (Seven Years Before) when he solves a problem with an animal eating the chickens, at 14 in the Year When when he is in charge of some pigs, his "first command" and finally from 21 (Seven Years After) on, when he decides to leave Tabletop and make a living for himself away from his weird family; or maybe he has different and more momentous plans... And there are the "savages", the original nomadic inhabitants of the island who had so far left the colony in peace And things will never be the same. Just awesome stuff; more personal and intimate than the author's earlier books, the novel also asks some of the questions that the author has been exploring in his fiction: how far does one go for "justice", how far does one go for a "noble cause", can a "bad" person do considerably more "general good" than a "good" person, what is civilization? While in The Folding Knife, the knife was clear, here The Hammer is more ambiguous since there are a bunch of them, literal in several incarnations (usual hammer for nails, huge hammer in a forge, hammer of a gun) and figurative that play important roles... Full Fbc Review; INTRODUCTION:Pseudonymous author KJ Parker has made a name in fantasy with 12 novels, 2 long novellas/short novels and 2 short stories of which you can read Amor Vincit Omnia free online at the Subterranean site and get a flavor of the author's work. I have talked about The Scavenger trilogy, while the standalone The Folding Knife is one of my top five novels of 2010. The author's books share some characteristics: setting in a generic pre-industrial society with Roman/Byzantine overtones and naming conventions, dark humor, detached narration, love of details especially about metal working, sword fighting and pre-industrial engineering, themes of betrayal, civilization versus "barbarians", group of extraordinary friends and family feuds that spill into the larger picture. The Hammer expresses some of these themes to perfection, using a far-off colony island of an unnamed aristocratic republic whose population is rigidly divided into three: an isolated exiled noble family, the met'Ocs and their patriarch whose shadow looms over the novel, though we mostly see his three sons in action, the subsistence-level farmer colonists who regard the met'Ocs with a mixture of fear, resentment and jealousy and the enigmatic and remote natives who seem to be incomprehensible to the mainlanders and with whom the colonists thinks they have an unspoken truce. Crossing the implied and sometimes formal boundaries, Gignomai, the youngest met'Oc tries to fulfill what he perceives to be his destiny... OVERVIEW/ANALYSIS: For readers familiar with KJ Parker's work, The Hammer can be summarized as the family drama of The Fencer series, the driven hero of The Folding Knife and the setup of The Company. On a big island, there is a small subsistence 70 year old colony of farmers and shopkeepers mostly indentured, taxed and generally kept at that level by Home on the mainland through a charter to The Company which brings them the needed goods in return for large amounts of beef and animal skins/pelts; the colonists are allowed no weapons and no ships. But on a nearby plateau - The Tabletop - impregnable from 3 parts and walled on the 4th - an exiled noble family from Home, the met'Ocs made their - illegal as far as Home is concerned but nobody bothers since they still have friends in power - estate/fortress and they are armed and pretend to keep Home's traditions, though they are poorer than the colonists in many respects, except in books, some more advanced stuff from Home and weapons; of course most of them are dreaming of being recalled and reinstated if their allies manage to gain control Home. The current generation, third since their exile, consists of 3 brothers and a sister, while their father is the patriarch with absolute powers - including life or death - and their mother imported from Home is negligible. Stheno(mai) the elder and a huge man is the "farmer" in charge with feeding and clothing them and is continually harried by this or that. Luso(mai) the second son is the hunter/warrior who keeps the peace and leads a "gang" recruited from the no-gooders of the colony with occasional cattle raids - the colonists do not mind that since all cattle is Company's - but sometimes for other stuff like pigs or chickens about which the colonists care but can do little not having guns... Gignomai the youngest is more or less surplus so he has no definite role which allows him to "break out" often to the colony where his best friend Furio Opello is the son and nephew of the most important men there by some accounts since they run the monopoly store that sells Company's goods. We see Gig at age 7, mysteriously called "Seven Years Before" when he solves a problem with an animal eating the chickens, at 14 in the "Year When", in charge of some pigs, his "first command" and finally from age 21 on - "Seven Years After" - when he decides to leave Tabletop and make a living for himself away from his weird family; or maybe he has different and more momentous plans... Then there are the "savages", the original nomadic inhabitants of the island who had so far left the colony in peace. And of course things will never be the same... The Hammer is more personal and intimate than the author's earlier books and in some sense it is the "cheeriest" of all, though of course the term is relative. The novel also asks some of the questions that the author has been exploring in his fiction: how far does one go for "justice", how far does one go for a "noble cause", can a "bad" person do considerably more "general good" than a "good" person, what is civilization? The Folding Knife treated the same themes at a more impersonal, state politics level, but here everything is close and personal with no quarter given. The dark humor and superb style of the author are on display continually through the novel, while the twists, turns, jaw dropping moments characteristic of a KJ Parker novel materialize often, sometimes in ways familiar from other novels though with enough of a change to read anew, sometimes in ways that confounded my expectations as a "veteran" KJ Parker reader. We also have the occasion to meet a remarkable set of characters including a mainland aristo cousin of the met'Ocs who is on a "temporary" trip to avoid trial for "sort-of murdering" her husband as she charmingly puts it to Gig, all for his or at least his family's own good by the way, though understandably said family does not quite see it that way, a shopkeeper who finds himself in charge of more than his store and tries to "do good", an elderly native who is quite weird to say the least and a girl shipped from Home to her uncles on the Island and who dreams to become a doctor in a staunch patriarchal society, though the always enigmatic Gignomai, the good natured Furio and the other two met'Oc brothers are center stage throughout. While in The Folding Knife, "the knife" was clear from page one though of course its true significance had to wait a little to be uncovered, here "the hammer" is more ambiguous since there are a bunch of them, literal in several incarnations - usual hammer for nails, huge hammer in a forge, hammer of a gun - and figurative that play important roles... As a big fan of the author's work, I had the highest expectations for The Hammer (A++ and provisional top novel of 2011) and they were surpassed because in addition to the usual great stuff I expected and got - characters, memorable moments, prose style, twists and turns - the novel has great balance and offers a truly complete and satisfying experience you want to revisit often.(less) | Notes are private!
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1
| May 22, 2010
| Sep 22, 2010
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May 22, 2010
| Paperback
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11
| 
| 0345523814
| 9780345523815
| 3.90
| 414
| Dec 30, 2010
| Feb 15, 2011
|
I finished The River of Shadows and it just blew me away and I have a hard time seeing anything else this crazily entertaining in 2011; the 3 books: R...more
I finished The River of Shadows and it just blew me away and I have a hard time seeing anything else this crazily entertaining in 2011; the 3 books: Red Wolf Conspiracy, Rats and the Ruling Sea and The River of Shadows just hang together perfectly and tightly with all the twists and turns you want. The last book The Night of the Swarm hopefully will put the exclamation mark on this superbly entertaining series, but you can read these 3 for a complete experience. Exuberant, crazy, inventiveness, great characters, action - this book has everything and it's full of sense of wonder too. Fantasy at its best. "The River is the dark essence of thought, for thought, more than anything else in the universe, has the power to leap between worlds. It belongs therefore to all worlds where conscious life exists. And yet strangely enough, consciousness tends to blind us to its presence. I have even heard it said that the more a world's inhabitants unlock the secret workings of the universe - its pulleys and gears - the deeper the River of Shadows sinks beneath the earth. Societies of master technicians, those who trap the energy of suns, and grow their food in laboratories, and build machines that carry them on plumes of fire through the void: they cannot find the River at all." Will add the full rv in April as usual(less) | Notes are private!
| none
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1
| not set
| Mar 14, 2011
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Oct 25, 2010
| Hardcover
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15
| 
| 0446198072
| 9780446198073
| 4.15
| 3,710
| Jun 29, 2011
| Jun 29, 2011
|
Naamah's Blessing ends the Moirin saga and possibly the Angeline/Kushiel 9 book series in great style - though the author left open the possibilities...more
Naamah's Blessing ends the Moirin saga and possibly the Angeline/Kushiel 9 book series in great style - though the author left open the possibilities of more and I think there is great potential in a story set in another hundred years or two and dealing with technological expansion rather than the huge geographical expansion here. The book returns to the exuberance of the first volume - though there are quite a few dark moments since no Legacy Kushiel is complete without them - and it was all that i expected and more; the second volume while interesting and with a lot of cool stuff especially in retrospect had two characteristics that made it a little less favorite than the first - it was darker and gloomier and Moirin just does not do dark the way Phedre or to a lesser extent Imriel did, while Bao's character did not tune with Moirin's narrative and the lack of chemistry between the main two leads will always drag a book down. Happily in Naamah's blessing none of these happens - the book is quite lush and exuberant and both the Angeline setting and the New World and the vistas of Mexico and the jungles of Central and South America are much more suited than the barren steppe or the cold of the Himalayas - while Bao here has both a much improved chemistry with Moirin but also while important is only one of the several main characters besides Morin. As the role of Lo Feng's pupil suited him well, so does the role of Moirin' supportive husband is perfect for him letting her and the more flamboyant of the rest of the cast shine - and what a cast is, among the best from the whole series, both in Terre d'Ange with the willful 3 year old Desiree, the bereaved king, the scheming nobles as well in Terra Nova with the D'Angeline adventurers, the Mexica - Nahuatl - warriors, guides and even emperor, to the jungles and peaks of the Incas - Quechas - and the memorable people there A lot of surprises and gasp moments, tragedy but joy, successes and exuberance too and a superb ending to a trilogy that only adds to the impressive achievement that is the whole Kushiel saga This may be my top fantasy for the year especially considering how hard is to end a series in grand style As usual the full FBC review will be added around publication date(less) | Notes are private!
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1
| not set
| Mar 03, 2011
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Oct 25, 2010
| Hardcover
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24
| 
| 0345524497
| 9780345524492
| 3.82
| 8,182
| May 17, 2011
| May 17, 2011
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Utterly impressive sf from China Mieville; in a strange universe, there are even stranger things than "subspace" travel, multiple human habitats and t...more
Utterly impressive sf from China Mieville; in a strange universe, there are even stranger things than "subspace" travel, multiple human habitats and the vast unknown and its rumors. Namely a planet of sentient beings for which Language is organic and essential to their sentience as well as literal in their understanding of the world - so for example they cannot lie, they cannot understand machine talk however perfect is reproducing their sounds and they cannot understand humans unless the humans mimic the aliens physicality of speech in the person(s) of the Ambassadors; so despite their utter bio sophistication, the Hosts - as the aliens are called by the inhabitants of Embassytown the human city/outpost on their planet - are less sophisticated in some ways than the experienced human operators both native and "colonial" since they cannot literally conceive of various things; add to this politics, intrigue and simple unintended consequences of inter-human power plays and we get this superb novel that explores the same narrative space as City and the City but in a far more imaginative and interesting way. The usual Mieville technique and superb world building enhance the book, though the novel's storyline turned out to be simpler and more predictable than I thought in the beginning and I could see from a long way where it will go but this does not detract a jot from the achievement of the author here. For people who will come to sf for China Mieville, I would say that you have even more of a treat than more experienced sf readers who've seen the story - of course in complete different circumstances and world building - before (less) | Notes are private!
| none
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1
| not set
| Mar 09, 2011
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Oct 25, 2010
| Hardcover
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13
| 
| 1841498874
| 9781841498874
| 3.75
| 3,659
| Apr 01, 2011
| Apr 07, 2011
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Excellent series debut and while a partly introductory book, there are a lot of goodies, a great ending at a perfect stopping point and potential for...more
Excellent series debut and while a partly introductory book, there are a lot of goodies, a great ending at a perfect stopping point and potential for this to become of my top series of all time. I will add more as the release date gets closer and of course I will add the full FBC review later in the year but for now if you want a reasonable comparison, i would say that this reads like a much better Way of Kings without all the unnecessary verbiage that was such a drag there - traditional fantasy but with no cliches and with enough "newness" not to be fully predictable, great characters and set-up. My take from the full FBC review done with Robert Thompson and available on FBC: While previously I have enjoyed some of Daniel Abraham's short fiction, I am not a fan of The Long Price Quartet, so I had a mixed feeling about The Dragon’s Path - an extremely tempting premise, but what if the author's style just does not match my taste at novel length? Happily, I really loved The Dragon’s Path and the book quickly vaulted to my ongoing Top 25 2011 novels list and so far it is the only new fantasy series to do so. The Dragon’s Path is traditional fantasy as best as it gets for me : nothing that we have not seen before as content goes, but pitch perfect execution, vivid characters that we get to know and love during the course of the book and ones we are eager to spend more time with, beautiful writing, action, intrigue and well thought world building with great expansion potential. The book is also tightly written so despite its almost 600 pages, it does not feel long and I strongly regretted when I turned the last page - the review copy I got has the traditional Orbit "goodies" from the finished product including an interview with the author and an extract from the next book and I just lapped that up and was really sad that I won't get to read the next installment for a while. The structure of the novel is discussed above with four main threads following Cithrin, Marcus Wester, Geder Palliako and Dawson Kalliam, while several other characters play important roles too, most notably Dawson' wife Clara, the master showman Kit who leads a performing troupe that will have its destiny intertwined with our heroes and Marcus' sidekick, his Tralgu faithful companion Yardem Hane, but the cast of the novel is large and varied as befits an epic. The younger heroes, Geder and Cithrin who are set to be the main drivers of the action - however unwittingly - combine both expected traits: destined, try and achieve hard things despite the odds against them, with some unusual ones: Geder is not in that great physical shape to start with, he is both the "nerd" and the lowest ranking noble of his small circle and the butt of the jokes for both reasons, not to speak of his secret interest in "speculative fiction" that sparks derision from his peers and superiors, but which of course will prove important as the story progresses. Growing up as the ward of an important banker, Cithrin is manipulative and in love with numbers and with finance, so she is determined to have her own trading house which again is not quite what usual fantasy heroines who tend to be princesses or magicians desire... Of the older heroes, Marcus is probably the most stock - the silent strong type with a tragic past, a cynical but generally accurate view of life and who finds himself doing the "right thing" despite all. While in The Dragon’s Path, Marcus is outshined by Cithrin and Geder, I expect him to play an increasingly important role as the series goes on. Dawson on the other hand is an unapologetic ultra-conservative noble with clear ideas about his well deserved importance in life, ready to commit what is essentially treason to further his class' interests against the upstart "new men" who compete for the king's influence by among other things daring to promote the interests of the common people... And the author' skill is such that what in other books would be the quintessential villain who opposes progress, turns out here to be an interesting character who also fights the "good fight" in his own way, however ideologically wrong it reads for us modern readers from a democratic age. The Dragon’s Path world building discussed above by Robert at greater length is actually very good in my opinion - sure it is not yet spelled out in full detail, but there is enough to give a clear impression of what's what and to achieve a sense of the big picture, while of course leaving a lot of scope for expansion in latter installments. To me this is ideal since one of the things I dislike about fantasy series is predictability and conversely one of the things I appreciate the most is finding out new unsuspected things about the universe in cause and here we just scratch its surface, so this is another reason the next book is such a huge asap. Overall The Dragon’s Path (A++) is a first superb installment in a series that has established itself already in my top level of current ongoing fantasy series and moreover one I easily see becoming one of my top-top if the promise implied here continues to be fulfilled. (less) | Notes are private!
| none
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1
| not set
| Jan 05, 2011
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Oct 25, 2010
| Paperback
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20
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| 0451463749
| 9780451463746
| 4.19
| 610
| Jan 04, 2011
| Jan 04, 2011
|
Just awesome, this takes the Collegia Magica series to the next level with a gripping tale that essentially ends all the threads from Spirit Lens thou...more
Just awesome, this takes the Collegia Magica series to the next level with a gripping tale that essentially ends all the threads from Spirit Lens though enough loose ends are left so new series books can follow. Spoilers for Spirit Lens follow: spoiler space spoiler space Four years after the end of The Spirit Lens, 22 year old Anne du Vernase, goddaughter of King Philippe is trying hard to keep her family estate going with a disappeared father condemned in large part by her testimony as murderer and traitor, a mad mother now in keeping of her brothers far away, an imprisoned brother and a magician younger sister whose discoveries kill her at the magical College at Seravain where the 17 year old was studying, just before the novel starts. And they don't even let Anne inside when she goes to collect her sister's belongings The hated Portier, the investigator who broke open the big treason/necromancy case in Spirit Lens and was the prosecutor in the King's name at the trial in-absentia of her father and main accomplices, arrives with a royal warrant for Anne to come to the Queen's palace in Merona as a maid of honor while also announcing the dispossession of the Vernase estates for the treason of the former king's bosom friend. Portier is now chief of the Queen's household administration, his former friend/helper Dante is Queen's magician and a figure of dread and darkness, Ilario is still playing the fool, and the Queen's (adopted) mother and former Regent, Antonia is playing a 'I want power" manipulation game with the Queen and her semi-estranged and pretty much always away husband King, while portents of dread and magic are continually seen in Merona. So Anne is thrown into the fray where nothing is at is seems, friends and enemies are hard to discern, the Aspirant (supposedly her traitor father) and his clique is ready to take the final step in the plans laid so long ago and that were only partly thwarted in Spirit lens... There are so many superb moments in the book and Anne makes an awesome heroine, while we see Portier from afar now. Intrigue, magic, suspense and just pure awesomeness (A++) will add the full FBC review As promised here is the FBC review: INTRODUCTION: "The Spirit Lens" was the first novel by the author that I read completely and I quite liked it. Towards last January's review of it, I said: "After I got into the style of the novel and its happenings started hooking me, its main attraction were the twists and turns and the characters about whom slowly we start having quite different impressions than at the start. Revelations from the past coupled to traits that come at fore only after a while mean that what we believe at the beginning will be quite changed by the end. This unpredictability raised The Spirit Lens most in my estimation since in so many genre books the characters are marked: "the destined one, the sidekick, the love interest, the villain, the noble but doomed one", while here there is much more subtlety and even at the end when we seemingly know a lot more, there is a lot of uncertainty at least with regard to the big picture." As time passed, The Spirit Lens stayed much more in memory than other books I seemingly enjoyed more on first read, so it got a place in my recommended books of 2010, while its sequel "The Soul Mirror" became a high expectation novel for 2011. And it delivered! The following part will have spoilers for The Spirit Lens, so beware if you have not read it so far. OVERVIEW/ANALYSIS: The first thing to know about "The Soul Mirror" is that while a first person narration as The Spirit Lens, it switches narrators from Portier to Anne du Vernase who was a relatively minor character in the first novel, though her actions are quite important at the end of it. Four years after the end of The Spirit Lens, 22 year old Anne du Vernase, goddaughter of King Philippe is trying hard to keep her family estate going with a disappeared father condemned in large part by her testimony as murderer and traitor, a mad mother now in keeping of her brothers far away, an imprisoned brother and a magician younger sister whose discoveries kill her just before the novel starts - at the magical College at Seravain where the 17 year old was studying. And they don't even let Anne inside when she goes to collect her sister's belongings. The hated Portier, the investigator who broke open the big treason/necromancy case in The Spirit Lens and was the prosecutor in the King's name at the trial in-absentia of her father and his accomplices, arrives with a royal warrant demanding Anne to come to Queen Eugenie's palace in Merona as a maid of honor while also announcing the dispossession of the Vernase estates for the treason of the king's former bosom friend. Portier is now the chief of the Queen's household administration, his former friend/helper Dante is the Queen's magician and a figure of dread and darkness, Ilario is still playing the fool, and the Queen's (adopted) mother and former Regent, Antonia is playing an "I want power" manipulation game with the Queen and her semi-estranged and pretty much always away husband King, while portents of dread and magic are continually seen in Merona. Anne is thrown into the fray where nothing is at is seems, friends and enemies are hard to discern, while the Aspirant (supposedly her vanished traitor father) and his clique are ready to take the final step in the plans laid so long ago and that were only partly thwarted in The Spirit Lens... If this description does not hook you let's talk about the other strengths of the novel. The narration of Anne is pitch perfect and seemed to me much smoother than Portier's from the first page. It may just be that I got used with the author' style in this series, but the pages really turned by themselves and the book hits no narrative walls. The characters of The Spirit Lens are now seen through Anne's quite different perspective and I greatly enjoyed the glimpses we got of Portier and Ilario, while Dante becomes the truly dominant character - even as an object of fear and dread for Anne - that Portier's narration could not really portray him. We encounter other old friends and sometimes quite different facets of them than in The Spirit Lens, while the nasty and power-hungry Antonia is enjoyably loathsome and naive new Queen's physician Roussel, a kindly middle-aged commoner may be Anne's only friend at the court, or at least this is what she believes... The Soul Mirror takes place in a shorter period of time than The Spirit Lens - as in there chapters are named by day/time - and the tension builds inexorably towards a powerful action filled last part that is awesome. Twists and turns abound and while some are of "could it really be?" far-fetched ones that experienced fantasy readers always enjoy guessing, others are more easily discernible, though all-in-all they keep the reader on his or her toes all the time. The only minor niggle I has was that the author truly puts a lot on Anne's shoulders and at some point, I was thinking, enough, let the girl have a break, though she proves more than adept to handle her known enemies. The world building is even better than in the first novel - again familiarity helps, but The Soul Mirror brings quite a lot of new things to what we know from The Spirit Lens - and there are quite a few moments that make one want to revisit the book quite a few times. A novel that stakes an early claim to my Top 10 list of 2011 - currently at #2-#3 - The Soul Mirror (A++) takes the Collegia Magica series to the next level with a gripping tale that essentially ends all the threads from The Spirit Lens, though enough loose ends are left so new series books can follow. Magic, science, family feuds, a kingdom and maybe even a world - or at least its laws of nature - in peril, a great heroine with a superb cast and traditional fantasy does not get better than this!(less) | Notes are private!
| none
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1
| not set
| Nov 14, 2010
|
Oct 25, 2010
| Paperback
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21
| 
| 0765328186
| 9780765328182
| 3.17
| 349
| 2011
| Jan 18, 2011
|
Very entertaining mind-bender from Gene Wolfe that ultimately makes full sense though for a long while keeps one guessing while adding new twists ever...more
Very entertaining mind-bender from Gene Wolfe that ultimately makes full sense though for a long while keeps one guessing while adding new twists every page; the world building while scant in some ways is also excellent since we get all the little details we need about this future Earth split into several not-so-friendly blocks (NAU, EU, Eastasia, third world...) facing a war in space with the mysterious Os over habitable planets with no real inkling about the tech involved; a familiar but also strange future in which the author drops his little bombshells (sometimes in a literal sense too) quite often. The structure of the novel is also quite interesting - and not dissimilar with Sorcerer's House except that here there is more conventional 3rd person action plus first person interludes rather than letters - with present action followed by interludes narrated except once by the main hero Skip Grisom, 49 year old managing partner of a well know law firm who keeps telling us he wants only one thing - that his "contracta" - civil law wife - master-gunner Chelle Blue coming back a bit earlier from space due to injuries - earlier being relative as 20+ years have passed on Earth, while only several for her - stays with him, age difference and all So he has a plan to woo her including 'resurecting" her deceased mother (whom actually Chelle has divorced before enlisting but to whom she turns when back on Earth as a familiar presence as Skip guessed right) and taking her on a cruise, while dumping Susan his secretary and longtime lover in the process too Things start going wrong soon, but Skip is nothing but inventive A great ending - which in many ways it was the only one reasonable to boot - and a page turner you want to parse carefully when reading first time and immediately reread to see what you missed earlier Another winner for Gene Wolfe and mind-bending sf-without-gadgets/tech/superscience at its best Full Fbc Rv below: INTRODUCTION: After last year's super fun The Sorcerer's House, I was very excited about the announcement for Home Fires, though the blurb below made me a bit unsure if we will get an entertaining mind-bender like last year or a mess like An Evil Guest which I found unreadable. "Gene Wolfe takes us to a future North America at once familiar and utterly strange. A young man and woman, Skip and Chelle, fall in love in college and marry, but she is enlisted in the military, there is a war on, and she must serve her tour of duty before they can settle down. But the military is fighting a war with aliens in distant solar systems, and her months in the service will be years in relative time on Earth. Chelle returns to recuperate from severe injuries, after months of service, still a young woman but not necessarily the same person—while Skip is in his forties and a wealthy businessman, but eager for her return. Still in love (somewhat to his surprise and delight), they go on a Caribbean cruise to resume their marriage. Their vacation rapidly becomes a complex series of challenges, not the least of which are spies, aliens, and battles with pirates who capture the ship for ransom. There is no writer in SF like Gene Wolfe and no SF novel like Home Fires." For anyone interested in collecting books, UK boutique PS Publishing has come up with some awesome-looking editions of both The Sorcerer's House and Home Fires and I have to include their cover of Home Fires here since it is much more suggestive than the bland US cover released for the general market, while in the US, Subterranean is also selling the PS editions in limited quantities. OVERVIEW/ANALYSIS: "Home Fires" turned out to be a very entertaining mind-bender from Gene Wolfe that ultimately made full sense, though for a long while it kept me guessing while adding new twists every page. The world building while scant in some ways, is sketched perfectly for the needs of the book since we get all the little details we need about this future Earth split into several not-so-friendly blocks - NAU, EU, Greater Eastasia, Third World - which faces a war in space with the mysterious Os over habitable planets with no real inkling about the technology involved. A familiar but also strange future in which the author drops his little bombshells - sometimes in a literal sense too - quite often. The structure of the novel is also interesting - and not dissimilar with The Sorcerer's House except that here there is more conventional 3rd person action plus first person interludes rather than letters. The main storyline of the book is followed by interludes narrated - except once - by the main hero, Skip Grisom, a 49 year old managing partner of a succesful law firm who keeps telling us he wants only one thing - that his "contracta" - civil law wife - master-gunner Chelle Blue coming back a bit earlier from space due to injuries - earlier being relative as 20+ years have passed on Earth, while only several for her - stays with him, age difference and all. So he has a plan to woo her including "resurrecting" her deceased mother Vanessa - whom actually Chelle has "divorced" before enlisting but to whom she turns when back on Earth as a familiar presence since after all Vanessa now still looks near the 40's she was when Chelle left Earth, while Skip at 49 is not instantly recognizable to his chagrin. The "wooing over" includes taking Chelle on a cruise, while dumping Susan, his secretary and longtime lover, in the process too, though of course things start going wrong soon, but Skip is nothing but inventive. One of the narrative devices that confounded me in the beginning was that the introspective interludes in which we learn a lot about this future world and about Skip, are followed by forward jumps in the main action that pass over quite important happenings that are then mentioned. So, at least to start with, I was like: "Oh, this happened? When and how could I miss it?", only to realize that actually what we get now is everything we will know. So lots of space for misdirection, clues and disorientation, but done so well that the pages turn by themselves. There is quite a lot of action with occasional unforgettable moments are just. The main draw of the novel is Skip Grissom who is one of the most compelling and unusual for the sff genre characterized by "young guns and old mentors" - sfnal characters in recent memory, with Vanessa also stealing the show in all her appearances. Chelle remains mostly an enigma though we get to see a little of her "true self" at some point. Adding to the above we have a remarkable secondary cast, including the aforementioned Susan, the handless beggar Achille - a refugee from Sharia law EU with hands cut for stealing - who attaches himself to Skip, various other returning comrades of Chelle, cruise ship officers, hijackers, Skip's junior partner Mick and more... Home Fires has also a great ending - which in many ways it was the only one reasonable to boot - and you want to parse it carefully when reading it the first time, followed by an immediate reread to see what you missed earlier. The title has also an interesting connotation, being explicitly linked to the situation of Skip (remained on Earth to "keep the home fires" going) and Chelle (went to fight in space to preserve humanity at great costs for her and her loved ones - and here there is this nice touch too, of the reversal of the usual sex roles), but also to the quite unsettled situation on Earth that is glimpsed in the action of the novel and the reminiscences of Skip. All in all, Home Fires (A+/A++) is another winner for Gene Wolfe and mind-bending sf-without-gadgets/superscience at its best.(less) | Notes are private!
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| Jan 30, 2011
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Oct 25, 2010
| Hardcover
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16
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| 1841498831
| 9781841498836
| 4.03
| 1,334
| Sep 26, 2011
| Sep 26, 2011
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After the unexpected hit that Cold Magic turned out to be, Cold fire has become one of my highly awaited novels of the year and while the way it start...more
After the unexpected hit that Cold Magic turned out to be, Cold fire has become one of my highly awaited novels of the year and while the way it started surprised me to a large extent considering how Cold magic ended, the novel went back to its main storyline soon - though indeed in a stranger way than i expected and after some 100 pages which were actually good though again different than expectations - and from then on it just became the hit i expected. I will add the full review soon, but I will note that despite being a middle trilogy book a lot happens and the story ends at another very satisfactory point, while there was one niggle in the way the people of the Antiles were described to talk which sounded too much like the Victorian description of "native talk" (Kipling anyone?) for comfort and while i think that was not what the author tried to achieve in the "bad English" used, it grated nonetheless. After all Cat, Vai and the rest of the European characters do not speak English, academic or otherwise either, so the reader and the author share this suspension of disbelief as the book is narrated in English, so making natives speak "bad English" is not that inspired imho Full FBC Review: INTRODUCTION: Last year's Cold Magic has been an unexpected hit with me and I have reread it twice this year too, once earlier when I was in the mood for an exuberant read and once a week or so ago, just after I got a copy of Cold Fire, so I could read them back to back. Very high expectations and after a somewhat surprising beginning and some 150 pages that were more of a retread of the action in Cold Magic than what I expected to see in Cold Fire - pages that were engrossing but felt a little repetitive - Cold Fire got into high gear and delivered the story I was looking forward to. I discussed the world building in detail in my Cold Magic review and the following will contain spoilers for the first installment. Since the two novels are part of one long story and they have the same "feel", I recommend reading Cold Magic before Cold Fire since the odds are high that you will love - or not - both the same way. OVERVIEW/ANALYSIS: While Cold Fire is still a voice novel first and foremost and the exuberant narrator Catherine Bell Barahal aka Cat is back on form trying to navigate the changed situation in which she discovers herself after the revelations of Cold Magic, the structure of the book is quite interesting too. So far there have been three main aspects: the sociopolitical situation which is at a cusp, the interaction with the spirit world which seems to be out of balance too and the personal saga of Cat with both its romantic and emancipation parts, not to speak her deep personal bond with her cousin Beatrice who is another pivotal character in all three aspects above. The way Cold Magic ended, it clearly suggested that Cold Fire will continue to follow these three themes with the "big picture" moving center stage and this is why the first 150 pages surprised me since they were partly a retread of events in Cold Magic - though indeed the subtle differences that appear due to the new circumstances make quite a difference and the supernatural rather than the political is thrown into prominence. Then with a little authorial "magic", the novel moves back to the expected channel and from there on it just rolls over 300 pages that I really did not want to end and I would have gladly read another 300. We get everything we want - the right mix of old and new both in world building and characters, in adventure and romance, not to speak of superb twists and turns and a powerful ending that promises so much for the last trilogy volume. Cold Fire also becomes Andevai's novel too from about halfway on and the arrogant cold mage of the first volume now thrown into a different realm where his kind are lowly "fire banes" and cannon fodder for the powerful local fire mages, disguises himself as - or maybe reverts to - the "simple" worker of his childhood and becomes much more human and likable in the process. But there is more - pirates, invasion and revolution, powerful mages, a look at the "salt sickness" that threw the world in chaos centuries ago, the simple pleasures of life and family and overall the yearning for "freedom" that most characters have and which is so eloquently expressed by Cat here: “I want this chain off my tongue, Vai. Just as you want the chains off your village, just as Bee wants to live. I want not to live at the mercy of Four Moons House, or a prince’s militia, or the general’s schemes. Surely it’s the same thing most people want. Health and vigor. A refuge which is not a cage but those who care for us and whom we care for." Besides the first 150 pages detour - which on balance works well enough, while the stuff in there is interesting in itself though its main point did not justify the time spent getting to it - there was one thing that bothered me, namely the way the people of the Antilles were described to talk which sounded too much like the Victorian description of "native talk" for comfort. After all Cat, Vai and the rest of the European characters do not speak English either, academic or stilted, so the reader and the author share this suspension of disbelief as the book is narrated in English, and making the natives speak "bad English" is not that inspired. Overall Cold Fire (A++, top 10 novel of 2011 for me) is a remarkable achievement since it expands the universe of the series, ends at a definite point while promising a lot for the last volume, all narrated in the same wonderful exuberant voice that enchanted me so much in Cold Magic.(less) | Notes are private!
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1
| not set
| Sep 20, 2011
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Dec 04, 2010
| Paperback
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18
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| 0718155211
| 9780718155216
| 3.49
| 1,926
| 2011
| Apr 01, 2011
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Below quick thoughts as I was reading the book; as usual I will c/p the full FBC review in due course 4/16; Some 1/3-1/2 in the book and it is as crazi...more Below quick thoughts as I was reading the book; as usual I will c/p the full FBC review in due course 4/16; Some 1/3-1/2 in the book and it is as crazily inventive and good as The Left Hand of God, with the same alternating of styles, tones and narrative modes; there is considerably more backstory and world building and things make sense and hang together well, but the same "all but the kitchen sink" is thrown in and this one has some stuff that's even more outrageously funny than in The Left Hand of God and I found myself shaking with laughter often, though the book is also pretty dark and not for the easily offended. The Pyramid of Lincoln and (the Bosco ordered forgery to save his and Cale's bacon) The Protocols of the Moderators of Antagonism are among the many early "pearls", and even more than in The Left Hand of God, The Last Four Things abounds with such play on the famous and infamous from history, always well done imho... And there are battles, treachery, fights, blunders, deep seated plans that may or may not work... Edit 4/18: About 100 pages to go out of 400+ and The Last Four Things has been all I expected and more; I would have easily finished the book in the weekend but I enjoy it so much that I do not want it to end so every 100-150 pages I reread them before going forward. Even now and I have no real idea where it will go - I expect a particular ending to this one but who knows, the author keeps throwing surprises as well as underlining how the best laid plans just break because of stupidity, misunderstandings or pure chance. The "all but the kitchen sink" famous and infamous from history continues to delight and the book is just awesome - better than The Left Hand of God in some ways because it hangs things together and makes sense of the "big picture"... Cale, Bosco, Vague Henry, Kleist and a few more new characters are shining - of course Cale first and foremost - but the rest have also great lines on occasion. Edit 4/18 later I finished the book and while what I expected to happen, happened, the book went further, twisted again and left me a bit stunned without again having much of a clue about what's going to happen in the 3rd volume; this time the author has a great two page explanation about his sources, including famous philosophers,Catholic thinkers, poets, obscure manuals of war that are available online and one (in)famous speech of Saddam Hussein (seems to be on YouTube) that *** cribs here before ***. All in all The Last Four Things takes the promise of the Left Hand of God, fulfills it and more in a considerably more complex book this time with all the world building that was only hinted there, but keeping the narrative switches and the many twists, while the trilogy finale is something I really, really want asap... Also this is another book like The Clockwork Rocket that will take a while to process, though here I am just somewhat stunned by the ending since the book kept getting darker and darker and went beyond emotion in some ways, more like say The Kindly Ones than the usual sff Full FBC Review: INTRODUCTION: Last year's The Left Hand of God was a novel that elicited very powerful but mixed responses; there were people that loathed it or thought it's the worst hyped debut of the year and there were people, including myself, that utterly loved it and thought it was awesome. So The Last Four Things was one the five novels I marked as must read, try and get a copy as soon as possible, etc for 2011 though I was a little apprehensive if the "magic" of The Left Hand of God will still be there for me, or the series will be exposed as "emperor's new clothes" as many others have claimed. Once I opened it and I got entranced once more in the twisted world of Thomas Cale and the Redemeers, I applied my reading method for books I do not want to end - read 100 pages, reread them, read another 100 pages and then read the full 200, etc. Due to circumstances I was not able to write this review for the earlier UK publication, so I postponed it for today's US publication and that added the time dimension since now after several months I can look back and evaluate it better. OVERVIEW/ANALYSIS: I want to start by remarking that The Last Four Things is a book that most likely will have the same resonance as The Left Hand of God with the reader. You hated that, don't bother; you loved it, get this asap. I make this claim since the things that distinguished The Left Hand of God from the run-of-the-mill dark bad boy fantasy that is in vogue today - the alternation of styles, from exuberant to really dark, the mostly superb word plays on the famous and infamous in history, the strange and occasionally merciless undertones and the twists and turns that truly made the next pages unpredictable are still there. However there are some notable differences too. The Last Four Things has considerably more backstory and world building - and indeed things make sense and hang together eliminating one of my fears after the sketched world of the previous novel, namely that the author's world won't make sense in detail. But it does and here we see things like logistics, speed of communication, population sizes, etc, all adding depth and painting a full 3D picture. The characters also get more texture, though the third person narrative allows Thomas Cale to still remain a mystery; now he is coming into his own, far from the scared boy genius of The Left of God, to the outwardly confident man that events if not age made him be. His master, tormentor and protector, Redemeer Bosco comes also into his own here and the novel is as much about his plans as about Thomas Cale's odyssey, so now we have two extremely powerful and larger than life characters not only one. And in a partly comic relief, partly wistful role, Kleist gets his own thread too, though I found it less interesting than the main Bosco/Cale one. The other personages from the debut - Vague Henry, IdrisPukke, Vipond, Arbell and Conn Materazzi, etc - make also appearances and several more secondary but quite interesting characters are introduced too, while some of the scenes between them and Cale are utterly memorable and constitute a key to the ending which is another stunner. There was a point in the book where I thought I know what will happen and how The Last Four Things will end, but the author turned and surprised me once again making the trilogy ending another book to beg and cajole for as early a copy as possible. "All but the kitchen sink" is still thrown in and The Last Four Things has some stuff that's even more outrageously funny than in The Left Hand of God, so I found myself shaking with laughter often, though the book is also pretty dark and not for the easily offended. The Pyramid of Lincoln and The Protocols of the Moderators of Antagonism - the Bosco ordered forgery to save his and Cale's bacon after the events in The Left Hand of God and Cale's defection - are among the many early "pearls" and the book abounds with these historical allusions as interpreted by the author. In a very nice touch, the author has a great two page explanation about his sources, including famous philosophers, Catholic thinkers, poets, obscure manuals of war that are available online and one (in)famous speech of Saddam Hussein which seems to be on YouTube, speech that *** cribs in the book before ***. Since it's a Saddam speech, the last **** should be easily guessed at. After some months have passed from finishing the novel, there is one weakness I missed in the emotion of the first read - The Last Four Things is ultimately a transitional middle book and while it has a clear theme and an ending to one of its main threads, we still remain a bit in the dark where all ultimately will go; as mentioned, I thought I had an idea, but the ending quickly disabused me of that. Overall The Last Four Things (A++) takes the promise of The Left Hand of God and fulfills it in a more complex book with all the world building that was only hinted there, but keeping the narrative switches and the many twists, while the trilogy finale is something I really want asap... (less) | Notes are private!
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| Apr 18, 2011
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Dec 04, 2010
| Hardcover
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14
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| 1841499889
| 9781841499888
| 4.03
| 9,794
| 2011
| Jun 02, 2011
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Superlative series debut from the duo Abraham/Franck writing under one pen name; after the excellent The Dragon Path, D. Abraham helps deliver a great...more
Superlative series debut from the duo Abraham/Franck writing under one pen name; after the excellent The Dragon Path, D. Abraham helps deliver a great hard-sf/solar system adventure with the best world building in its category I've seen in a while and on par with Paul McAuley Quiet War duology. While a lacking the ensemble voice of that superb series and focusing on alternate POV chapters from the two main characters, the novel features a lot of other memorable characters too, though the two main heroes are clearly the stars. In a future several centuries ahead with the Solar System led by an an uneasy coalition between 30 billion UN Earth and upstart but with better toys Congressional Mars Republic, the Belt is a varied place under various corporate governance agreements while the native Belters are starting to diverge physically from humanity as well as resent the heavy taxes the Coalition imposes, while the partly underground OPA (Outer Planets Alliance) is actively working for some form of autonomy/independence. Racism flourishes with "inners" tending to suffer accidents in the Belt mini-states whenever out of reach of local authorities, while for some on earth, the Belters are good for mass murder experiments in the name of progress or race - here race being humanity as seen on Earth - that could make even the horrible 20th century ones pale A bureaucratic and corporate world on the inner planets and a freewheeling one in the Belt with tensions simmering all the time is brought to a boiling point by a sequence of events that feature heavily one of our heroes, former UN space officer James Holden, an earnest and righteous man whose motto is that everything will be better if everything is known - not unlike recent newsworthy personages and of course with the same end result, though in this case his "leaks" - at large broadcasts - involve considerably more momentous events he witnessed; canned from the UN space force for insubordination, Holden found a place as XO on a huge water-hauler that brings ice-comets from the moons of Saturn to the Belt, especially to Ceres one of the core city-states there with a population of some 7 million, one million of which being transients from the thousands of ships that pass by daily; on such a routine haul, a distress signal requires assistance and despite the old captain misgivings - regarding costs and delays, the inter solar law is strict and XO Holden is strict too, if humans are in danger, they need rescue; he leads a five person team there and what he finds starts changing the big picture forever... On Ceres, Belter cop Miller is passing through a rough time in his mid-forties after a bitter divorce and hitting the bottle, being relegated from hotshot star to the one "senior detective" - technically the Ceres cops are the security arm of the corporation governing Ceres which is Earth based, but practically they are the law on Ceres - for disposable partners (like Earth native Havelock who even after 2 years on Ceres is seen as subhuman by most of his colleagues) or s..y jobs that need to be seen as looked at like finding the headstrong daughter of one of the inner family corporations that are shareholder in Ceres, Julie Mao who moved across "lines" to the Belt and the OPa side; though of course Miller does not know he is the "dump on" guy, so he earnestly tries to make Havelock a true partner and as welcome as possible, while also slowly getting to investigate Julie and becoming engrossed by her revealed personality so deciding to find her at all costs; to start though Miller has a problem, the low level mafia guys on Ceres have been disappearing and while for his boss Capt Shaddid, that's not unwelcome, fro Miller it is wearisome since there always will be someone new to take their place... And so it starts and it goes on for a long while the novel being one i really did not want to end; great, great characters, action scenes, mysteries, an excellent ending that promises more though being a great stopping point since it offers a complete package too, Leviathan Wakes is as good as sf gets without ftl... An A++ an a top 2011 novel, the sequel is a huge asap(less) | Notes are private!
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1
| Jan 08, 2011
| Jan 16, 2011
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Jan 08, 2011
| Paperback
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2
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| 0575095113
| 9780575095113
| 3.40
| 404
| Jun 21, 2011
| Sep 15, 2011
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This is the perfect sf novel and a clear example why sf is still my favorite genre; besides the strong sfnal content though it is very well written an...more
This is the perfect sf novel and a clear example why sf is still my favorite genre; besides the strong sfnal content though it is very well written and flows on the page and it has in Yalda one of the best characters in recent memories, with a good supporting cast too. Shapeshifter (for good reasons explained at the author's site about how molecules look like in the universe he describes) generally (see before) six limbed aliens symmetric in 3D in their "normal" form - so they have eyes both back and front for example - that emit light, sleep in beds dug in the ground to cool down (emitting light generates heat in their universe) though of course the well off in cities have special cooled beds, that reproduce by the mother being divided into four - 2 twin pairs that each generally forms a reproducing couple, though there are the occasional solos like Yalda and the social misfits - while the men are conditioned to take care of the children... A harsh universe with unstable matter, but also a culture of cities, science, technology, society, books, philosophers, scientists... The people in this universe are "not us" and in some ways are very strange due to their biology - "being able to fly is like being able to know your mother" is one of the simple proverbs that appear in the book - but they are also "us" in many important ways that matter and this is why this book is both a pitch perfect example of how to imagine aliens that are simply not "costume-ones", but that are similar enough that we understand and care about them... And not to speak of the main story with the orthogonal stars, the threat to their civilization... The novel moved me deeply too and I almost cried at the end despite that I saw what will happen from a long time back and I *really, really* want the second installment. I will have a coherent review in due time since these ramblings really need editing, but for now I am still under the influence of this powerful novel... FULL FBC Rv HERE: INTRODUCTION: While contemporary sf is very diverse, encompassing everything from space opera to near-future to alt-history and steampunk, when I think of "pure sf" as the genre has originally evolved to intermix scientific speculation with literature, there are only two authors of today that stand at the top and one of them is Greg Egan whose superb far-future novels like Incandescence, Schild's Ladder or Diaspora combine the cutting edge of today's science with entertaining story-lines. Also Mr. Egan's short stories which are combined in several collections, most notably Luminous, Oceanic, Dark Integers and Crystal Nights and contain some of the most mind-blowing sf at short length that I've ever read, are mileposts of today's genre. I have read almost all of Mr. Egan's work from the first novels like Permutation City and Quarantine to his prodigious short fiction output with only the two notable exceptions of his near future novels (Teranesia and Zendegi) which are of less interest for me and I never failed to be blown away by his ability to put the most abstract and farthest reaching concepts of modern science in a story that entertains and moves. So when I read about his planned new series that takes place in a "Riemannian universe", one where the metric - the math concept that encodes the basic physics of the universe - is positive definite and symmetric in space and time as opposed to the indefinite antisymmetric metric in the Einsteinian universe we seemingly inhabit, I was truly intrigued and indeed The Clockwork Rocket was what I expected and more and so far it is my all around top novel of the year for the combination of sense of wonder, great world building, characters and general "human interest" - the shape-shifting, weird biology aliens of The Clockwork Rocket are both strange and familiar and the story of the main character Yalda is as emotional as any I've read this year... OVERVIEW/ANALYSIS: "The Clockwork Rocket" is the perfect sf novel and a clear example why sf is still my favorite genre; on the one hand there is sense of wonder given by the speculative but informed exploration of an universe with definite though different laws of physics than ours, on the other hand the book flows on the page and it has in Yalda one of the best main characters in recent memories, while the supporting cast is well drawn and distinctive. The protagonists of the story are strange: the metric of the universe requires complex molecules to be really complex so to speak, so all life is shapeshifting; our heroes are six limbed shapeshifters, symmetric in 3D in their "normal" form - so they have eyes both back and front for example - that emit light, sleep in beds dug in the ground to cool down - though of course the well off in cities have special cooled beds. They reproduce by the mother being divided into four - two twin pairs, each usually forming a new reproducing couple, though there are the occasional solos like Yalda and the social misfits mostly female, that run away from their twin, not to speak of the usual hardships of life that prevent exponential overpopulation from the generational doubling above, while the longer lived men are conditioned to take care of the children... A harsh universe with unstable matter, but also a culture of cities, science, technology, society, books, philosophers, scientists... The people in this universe are "not us" and in some ways are very strange due to their biology - "being able to fly is like being able to know your mother" is one of the simple proverbs that appear in the book - but they are also "us" in the ways that matter. So The Clockwork Rocket is a pitch perfect example of how to imagine aliens that are not "costume aliens" ie pseudo-humans with one human characteristic expanded to usually grotesque proportions a la Star Trek species, but that are similar enough that we understand and care about them... The book follows the "solo" Yalda - ie she "ate" her twin in the womb as the other "normal" children tease her - from a farmer family but who is lucky enough to have a father who appreciates learning and who has promised Yalda's mother to school any of the offspring that shows inclination. So despite being almost twice as big as the normal female - and females are considerably bigger than males here for obvious biological reasons - and not expected to reproduce - ie be quartered in four - in the usual age range due to the lack of a twin mate, so being potentially of huge help on the family farm, Yalda gets to go to school and later is admitted to the university in one of the cities that form the civilization of the planet. Soon she starts rewriting the physics books by some ingenious experiments, while becoming involved with a group of "liberated" professional females who had learned how to extend their lives and avoid the harsh fate nature destined for them, since even if they do not mate, there is "spontaneous" reproduction and the chances of such increase drastically with age, while the special drug that prevents it, needs to be taken in larger and larger doses... And then of course comes the main story we read about in the blurb with the orthogonal stars, the threat to Yalda's civilization and the crazy solution she and some of her friends come up with... So there is discovery, drama, even the stirrings of social change, while in the second part of the book the pace accelerates and the book becomes a true sf classic of people learning to cope with new, challenging and unforeseen circumstances, while Yalda's saga continues towards its clear conclusion. The novel moved me deeply too and I *really* want the second installment to see where the story goes next since there is ample scope for surprises and the author surely did not show his full hand about his exploration of this wonderfully imagined universe. Overall, The Clockwork Rocket (A++) is the one sf novel I strongly recommend to read if you want to understand why the genre has fascinated so many people for so long. Even if you are confused at the beginning by the seemingly familiar but actually strange people of the book, keep reading since things will start making sense soon and the story is captivating from the first page till the superb but emotional last paragraph... "When Yalda was almost three years old, she was entrusted with the task of bearing her grandfather into the forest to convalesce. ************** After squeezing and prodding the old man all over with more hands than most people used in a day, Doctor Livia announced her diagnosis. “You’re suffering from a serious light deficiency. The crops here are virtually monochromatic; your body needs a broader spectrum of illumination.” (less) | Notes are private!
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1
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| Apr 14, 2011
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Jan 21, 2011
| Hardcover
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4
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| 4.13
| 315
| Oct 01, 2011
| 2012
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I have finished Heirs of the Blade (book 7 of the Apt series) and I enjoyed it a lot as expected though I am yet unsure where I would rate it - Scarab...more
I have finished Heirs of the Blade (book 7 of the Apt series) and I enjoyed it a lot as expected though I am yet unsure where I would rate it - Scarab path is still my all time favorite with salute the Dark next and while recreating the dark and moody atmosphere of Scarab, Heirs is not quite there maybe because it is second after Scarab, but i think it worked better than the complete change of feel in Sea Watch which was enjoyable but "lighter" in many ways Heirs of the Blade is a follow-up of The Scarab Path though it also references Blood of the Mantis/Salute the Dark too and has a clear "this is what's next" ending which neither Scarab nor Sea Watch had ( Heirs is parallel chronologically to Sea Watch as far as I can see), so one can say that Heirs concludes the "middle part" of the 10 volume series after the first part of four volumes and with the last part of three volumes to come in 2012 and beyond. And the most magic so far - in that sense the book reads like a major amplification of the magic in Scarab Path; dark, moody, lots of fights and duels, new kinden too as usual The ending was both a homage to one of the most cliched tropes of sff and a masterstroke; and it really worked well Full FBC Rv: INTRODUCTION: There is no secret that in the past three years the Shadows of the Apt has become one of my favorite ongoing fantasy series for its combination of superb world building, great characters and extreme inventiveness. Salute the Dark ended quite emphatically the first part of the series dealing with the war between the Collegium and the Empire in Black and Gold, while The Scarab Path, a standalone withing the larger series context, has been my personal favorite to date and I rated it the best fantasy of 2010. In The Sea Watch the author changed the feel and the focus from the heavily atmospheric and magical, to a fast adventure style with a science fictional bent and while I enjoyed it quite a lot, I missed the more "doom and gloom" darkness of the magical world. I strongly recommend to go and get the first six books and read them before proceeding further here, though I will try to keep the spoilers to the minimum possible. Be warned that even the blurb of Heirs of the Blade consists of huge spoilers for the ending of the first part. OVERVIEW/ANALYSIS: In talking about Heirs of the Blade, there are at least three aspects to consider. The writing style, the way the book belongs in the series as characters and feel and the way it belongs as storyline. I will just mention that the more we are advancing in the series, the better the author has been getting at writing technique and Heirs of the Blade just flows on the page. But the real tests of the novel are in the second and third parts since it is easy for long series to get bogged down in repetition of events, sameness of "feel" and generally leave the impression that the author copied and pasted from an earlier book and just changed a little here and there. And I am happy to say that Heirs of the Blade overall passes these tests with flying colors and I will explain why I think so. The novel focuses on Tynisa, Che, Thalric and Seda, while introducing several new characters that play important roles here, as well as bringing back some characters from earlier novels and short stories, most notably Felipe Shah, Angved, Praeda and Ammon. Geographically, most of the action takes place in the part of the Commonweal visited in earlier novels too, but there is a lot of surveying of the wreckage of the Wasp invasion in its eastern parts and we return to Khanaphes and the Nem desert too for some memorable scenes. As usually, new kinden are introduced. As can be seen from the above, Heirs of the Blade is a direct follow-up of The Scarab Path though it also references Blood of the Mantis/Salute the Dark too and has a clear "this is what's next" ending which neither The Scarab Path nor The Sea Watch had. Chronologically Heirs of the Blade seems to be parallel to The Sea Watch, so one indeed can say that the book concludes the "middle part" of the 10 volume series after the first part of four volumes and with the last part of three volumes to come in 2012 and beyond. Heirs of the Blade is a pure fantasy book in many ways - though there is a technological advance subplot - and it has the most magic so far, reading like a major amplification of the magic in The Scarab Path; the feel is dark and moody and it works extremely well. Nothing symbolizes this better than the famous prophecy line from Salute the Dark which I thought I understood at the time but it seems to be even deeper, as now someone else utters it in trance, adding more: "Falling leaves, red and brown and black and gold." "A rain of burning machines over a city of the Apt. The darkness between trees. The Seal of the Worm is breaking." There is a lot of action - fights and duels, intrigue and skirmishes, while the overall feel is one of darkness descending and the characters trying to keep it at bay a moment longer; another line emphasizes this: "Let us have peace and prosperity, as much as this late age allows it." And of course the ending is the final masterstroke of the novel, being an homage to one of the most cliched tropes of sff and which worked really well. So the stage is now set for the last part of the series and while through both volume five and six, I have wondered where the author intends to go, now there is a clear sense of the storyline. I am still wondering where the events of The Sea Watch will fit, since now that novel rather than The Scarab Path feels a little out of joint as the series goes heavily magic rather than sfnal. Very interesting times are announced for the Kinden world and I am eager to be there. Overall, Heirs of the Blade (A++) was the Shadow of the Apt novel I have expected after the awesome The Scarab Path and it immediately jumped into my top ten novels of the year. (less) | Notes are private!
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1
| Oct 08, 2011
| Oct 12, 2011
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Feb 06, 2011
| Paperback
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6
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| 1409114864
| 9781409114864
| 3.73
| 157
| 2011
| 2011
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A Place Called Armageddon was the number one expected historical fiction of mine in 2011 and one my top expected books overall and I bought it the fir...more
A Place Called Armageddon was the number one expected historical fiction of mine in 2011 and one my top expected books overall and I bought it the first moment i could and read it asap; high, high expectations and what can I say: the author not only delivered but surpassed them. I will write the FBC review and c/p it here INTRODUCTION: C.C. Humphreys came to my attention with “Vlad: The Last Confession”; despite my deep misgivings about it being another stupid rehashing of the myth of Dracula, the novel was actually very well researched and offered maybe the best English language portrait of the real-life Vlad the Impaler and his lifelong fight against the Turks without glossing over his darker impulses, but without any Dracula nonsense either. So when not that long ago, I found out about Mr. Humphreys' new offering "A Place Called Armageddon" about the siege of Constantinople in 1453, the novel became the number one expected non-sff of mine in 2011 and I bought it the first moment I could and read it asap. Ultra high expectations and what can I say: the author not only delivered but surpassed them and I will explain why next. Before continuing, I would add two things: despite being a very well researched and reasonably accurate historical novel, "A Place Called Armageddon" is also brimming with the fantastic - there are prophecies, mystic books, alchemists and fortune tellers and while it is a stretch to call the novel speculative fiction, it should greatly appeal to sff lovers for those elements and the superb world building the authors manages in the book's almost 500 pages. There a lot of nice touches in the novel that tie-in with “Vlad: The Last Confession” including recounting of some earlier events there and a prophecy about one of the main characters here that we know how it will be fulfilled in the earlier book. Of course the structure of the two books is very different since "A Place Called Armageddon" is about a moment in historical time, so it essentially takes place over some weeks with a prologue a year before and an epilogue years later, while “Vlad: The Last Confession” takes place over decades, so there is no particular order in which to read the two novels. OVERVIEW/ANALYSIS: "To the Greeks who love it, it is Constantinople. To the Turks who covet it, the Red Apple. Safe behind its magnificent walls, the city was once the heart of the vast Byzantine empire." When looking at a novel like "A Place Called Armageddon" that is about a pivotal moment in world history, moment that has been studied intensively across time and has been fictionalized in many novels of which in English, Dark Angel by Mika Waltari remains my big favorite, there are several aspects to consider. Paramount remains reasonable historical accuracy, meaning being accurate about all main events of the siege and getting right the atmosphere of the time since I have never understood why someone writing historical fiction alters major events and says: "well you know, it's fiction"; why bother writing about event "x" rather than write a fantasy/alt-history in which you can modify what happened to your own heart's content? And here "A Place Called Armageddon" delivers in spades with an impressive recreation of the major moments of the siege; as one of many such examples, the naval battle between the four big Genoese vessels trying to break the blockade and the hundreds strong Ottoman fleet and the reactions of both the besiegers and Mehmed and his entourage, as the fight turned and twisted is done in such a manner that despite knowing very well how things ended, it still felt like reading it for the first time. And I could go on and on, from the firing of the huge siege gun, to the Galata crossing, to the various wall battles, everything is memorable and true to the numerous accounts we have of the siege. The world building and the little details are pitch perfect: weapons, buildings, ships, armies, historical characters and their psychological makeup - the untried, moody and easily angered but brilliant young Sultan Mehmet whose determination to become Fatih aka "The Conqueror" and practical ideas keep the siege going despite the early reverses and the long history of failed sieges across almost 1000 years, the last major one being led by none other than his father, the late Sultan Murat a warrior of much higher repute than Mehmet at the time, Hamza Bey, the tanner's son from the middle of nowhere who became the Sultan's falconer and confidant and who knows that the siege will make or break Mehmet and his "new men" like himself so he does his utmost to "manage" the Sultan, intrigue with possible Byzantine turncoats and lead soldiers when it comes to crunch time, or the relatively new emperor Constantine who wears the same name as the founder of the city - a bad omen as the last (western) emperor of Rome was Romulus Augustulus after all - a notable soldier but untried as politician and leader of a state and whose continual defiance and determination in face of the steadily worsening odds is also unforgettable. But "A Place Called Armageddon" is also a human story with four major fictional characters at its center. The twin Lascari brothers with vastly different personalities and destinies: Theon, the smart diplomat, confidant of Constantine and Gregoras, the formerly handsome and valiant soldier, exiled as a mutilated cut-nose traitor, now moonlighting as the Ragusan mercenary "Zoran" in the famous' Genoese condotierre Giovanni Giustiniani Longo's army and who wants nothing to do with his erstwhile native city. And the women in their lives: Gregoras' former fiance and secret lover Sophia, now (un)happily married with Theon, mother of boy Thakos and girl Minerva who is turning to God for solace and hope amid despair and fortune teller Leilah, a former slave who tries to make her own way in a harsh man's world and whose prophecies inspire Mehmet among others, though of course there is a huge risk in fortune telling for the mighty. In addition, there are two more important characters: Johannes Grant a Scotland alchemist who is badly wanted by the Sultan (dead) and by Longo and the Byzantines (alive) for his presumed knowledge of how to recreate the famous Greek Fire recipe and Achmed, a huge but gentle poor Anatolian peasant whose much loved daughter Abal's death at 5 mostly due to poverty, leads him to enroll in the "canon fodder" troops recruited for the siege and whose pov shows the siege from the rank and file Ottoman side. Each of the characters is very distinctive and the interaction between them ranges from the expected to quite a few twists and turns. All these personal threads mix in various ways and produce a lot of emotional moments, sometimes in quite unexpected places. Despite the different and often opposite interests and goals, the author is very skilled at making us care for all his main characters, including the ones who would have been so easy to depict as "evil", like Theon Lascari or the Sultan Mehmet. Of course by the same token, not everyone can succeed, so there is heartbreak galore, but there is joy too and the ending is just superb with an epilogue 7 years later, followed by one just three weeks after the end of the siege. This offers a chance at a great twist which actually surprised me though I have seen it before in a G.G. Kay novel. Overall "A Place Called Armageddon" (A++) is a magnificent accomplishment, a novel that is both a recreation of a pivotal moment in history and a tale of interesting characters we get to care and root for.(less) | Notes are private!
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1
| Jul 20, 2011
| Jul 25, 2011
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May 13, 2011
| Hardcover
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3
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| B003YL4LYI
| 4.20
| 123,524
| Sep 01, 2007
| Jul 12, 2011
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A very quick mostly spoiler free paragraph of impressions; full review on Saturday most likely since by then many people had a chance to read the book...more
A very quick mostly spoiler free paragraph of impressions; full review on Saturday most likely since by then many people had a chance to read the book The one thing that surprised me is that the book does not have the "each word counts" finished feel I expected after the 7 year struggle of the author with it; it's early and I need at least one reread but to be honest for the first 600 pages I felt like almost nothing happens, just going back and forth to mark the time until the timeline gets to the end of AFFC and things can start happening; when things start to happen, yes the action is mostly awesome, but there is some silliness too What I liked is that almost everybody appears even if briefly. Of the shocking Martin moments, there is one that blew me away and the ending is pretty good, though it has a little bit of deja vu and what was first ultra-awesome, second is just great; overall, like with AFFC, ADWD is a transitional book without much resolution and which adds to the complexity and expands the story, rather than starting to pull it together as it might be expected in book 5/7 Of the characters the one that shined the most imho was Ser Barristan and the one that disappointed the most except at the very, very end was Tyrion. The other thing I really liked is that GRRM keeps his "action have consequences and there is no get out the jail card" stance that so shocked people including myself in the earlier volumes - eg Ned's political folly leads to his death, Rob's sentimental one ... - and here there is no exception. (less) | Notes are private!
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1
| not set
| Jul 12, 2011
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Jul 12, 2011
| Kindle Edition
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27
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| 1409114082
| 9781409114086
| 4.27
| 107
| Aug 18, 2011
| Aug 18, 2011
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I finished Marathon after a complete rereading of Killer of Men to get in the spirit of the series and while I liked it a lot, it stopped a little sho...more
I finished Marathon after a complete rereading of Killer of Men to get in the spirit of the series and while I liked it a lot, it stopped a little short of blowing me away and I think that Killer of Men is a better book overall; trying to think why - since the writing is very good, the atmosphere pitch perfect as usual and the voice still the same Arimnestos of the series debut with the powerful cast from there - I think that the main reason is that Killer of men was structured after the hero, while Marathon is structured after historical events and because of that it becomes more rigid and predictable. By the way Marathon is slightly a misnomer since the novel is about two major battles, each taking about half the book including of course the period up to it. Starting where Killer of men ends with Arimnestos back home, there is a stretch of passing time and then the hero's return to action under Miltiades is a also a bit contrived, but the part from there to the battle of Lade and its aftermath is superb and that maybe 1/3 of a book is what I expected the novel to be and a blow me away narrative. After Lade, there is another stretch of passing time and while things happen, the tension is simply not there and Arimnestos becomes a pretty awkward narrator. Then there is the lead up to Marathon and the battle itself and here for some reason I felt the tension from Killer of Men or from the battle of Lade was somewhat lacking and a lot of the action read repetitive and a bit by the numbers. Overall, Marathon is a very good book but fails to reach the power of Killer of Men outside the events of the battle of Lade I am still very interested in the series and look forward to following Arimnestos' tale Updated FBC review here: http://fantasybookcritic.blogspot.com...(less) | Notes are private!
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1
| Aug 21, 2011
| Aug 23, 2011
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Jul 19, 2011
| Hardcover
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17
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| 0575070048
| 9780575070042
| 3.79
| 269
| Sep 22, 2011
| Jun 01, 2012
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While I reserve the right to change my mind and proclaim this the best novel of 2011, so far after 1 read and a half I am unimpressed; bland prose mar...more
While I reserve the right to change my mind and proclaim this the best novel of 2011, so far after 1 read and a half I am unimpressed; bland prose mars a very clever novel, but the cleverness is literary and that does not get that high grade marks by itself since a novel has to live so to speak and this one is a bit on life support from that point of view. Literary cleverness is essentially a game and while some like it, i really do not and the book abounds with examples that are absurd and solipsistic to the extreme - eg a character sculpts a mountains with paid help, but the locals seem blissfully unaware, while there is no discussion of how the character pays for the materials, help... That's fine on paper but it breaks the suspension of disbelief instantaneously unless the lively prose is there to mask it and make you immersed rather than thinking - and here that lively prose is missing so instead you get to think about the book and all these absurd things start niggling badly Will do one more full read and then a full review, but so far Islanders is a clever but sterile book that is far off from the huge achievements of The Affirmation and The Glamour After a reread of the novel intertwined with the more dramatic The Dream Archipelago to which episodes of The Islanders are prequels, sequels or just related, I have to say that together the two are indeed superb, but this novel - which is not really a novel in many ways after all- really needs the collection for full appreciation. Will have the full review of both soon and will c/p it on the Dream Archipelago page too(less) | Notes are private!
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1
| Sep 22, 2011
| Sep 24, 2011
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Jul 19, 2011
| Hardcover
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12
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| 0765329557
| 9780765329554
| 4.04
| 752
| Nov 2011
| Nov 08, 2011
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This is a book that starts a prequel series to Imager but it is a standalone as storyline goes with a definite ending to its main thread though of cou...more
This is a book that starts a prequel series to Imager but it is a standalone as storyline goes with a definite ending to its main thread though of course more is to come. It has some similarity with the 3rd Imager book as it being more of a fantasy thriller than anything though it has quite a lot of battles and fights too, so it moves toward clear adventure in the last third It is also a very clear example of the classical approach to sff - the super competent but not destined hero that was favored in the genre for a long time though today the destined one is more common in fantasy, the super competent remaining more of a sf approach As such the novel heavily depends on how you find Quearyt, the orphan scholar turned sailing master, turned scholar back when one of his legs got injured, secret imager and all around expert at intrigue and getting out of sticky situations while working for the greater good. His adventures in the service of Lord Bhayar and his task of "solving" the tricky situation in a conquered but still restive a decade later northern province, takes him from the sea to the forests, from hovels to places, from corrupt officials to fighting bandits and even rebel armies, while having to deal with corruption and even treason in both his scholar order as well as in the officialdom of the country... A dash of romance too and a superb ending makes Scholar (A++) one of my top 25 novels of the year. Full FBC rv to come later(less) | Notes are private!
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1
| not set
| Sep 2011
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Jul 19, 2011
| Hardcover
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10
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| 0575083646
| 9780575083646
| 3.29
| 199
| Aug 2011
| Aug 18, 2011
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I finished By Light Alone and it's one of the few books I read that I cannot truly make my mind about it since the ending utterly baffled me structure...more
I finished By Light Alone and it's one of the few books I read that I cannot truly make my mind about it since the ending utterly baffled me structure-wise. It is hard to discuss why without spoilers, but the book's structure and direction do not really balance with the ending so By Light Alone feels unfinished; on the other hand the ending in itself has power and a sense of conclusion but not for this book so to speak, but for a book that would have consisted of (an expansion of) its last fourth part only. So I need some time to pass and let the book settle to write a more coherent review; otherwise By Light Alone has the great writing style of the author, excellent characters and it's structured as a successive tale of four pov's that advance the story and interpret somewhat what came before, though neither is an "unreliable" narrator, just that each sees the picture in a very narrow way. I will add the full FBC review here soon where I plan to talk in more detail about the novel, but overall it's Adam Roberts at his most literary like in Splinter (a huge favorite of mine) and the book is one I would like to see on a mainstream literary prize like The booker longlist since it fits there the way say The Testament of Jessie Lamb does. Though i still have to decide if the ending is a masterstroke or a huge flaw... Full FBC Review INTRODUCTION: After recently reading and enjoying Adam Roberts first experiment in independent publishing, the "dwarf novel" Anticopernicus, his main 2011 novel By Light Alone became even a bigger expectation book than before and I got it on its publishing day on August 18. I will present its blurb below though I want to note that while generally accurate, it does not convey the power and richness of By Light Alone which turned out to be the best of the author's more literary offerings and climbed to my top three overall of his generally superb body of work alongside Land of the Headless and Stone which are both huge favorites of mine. "In a world where we have been genetically engineered so that we can photosynthesise sunlight with our hair hunger is a thing of the past, food an indulgence. The poor grow their hair, the rich affect baldness and flaunt their wealth by still eating. But other hungers remain ...The young daughter of an affluent New York family is kidnapped. The ransom demands are refused. Years later a young women arrives at the family home claiming to be their long lost daughter. She has changed so much, she has lived on light, can anyone be sure that she has come home? Adam Roberts' new novel is yet another amazing melding of startling ideas and beautiful prose. Set in a New York of the future it nevertheless has echoes of a Fitzgeraldesque affluence and art-deco style. It charts his further progress as one of the most important writers of his generation." Link OVERVIEW/ANALYSIS: By Light Alone is a difficult novel to review because most of its power resides in the main characters and their interactions between themselves and the interesting but weird world the author postulates once a genius geneticist had offered humanity the gift of the "hair bug", allowing people to grow special hair which synthesizes food from sunlight, gift which turned out to be a mixed blessing to say the least. "Preacher said: ‘Hair’s made all men preachers, now. Made all men preachers or else lazy dogs in the sun. Hair took our work, which had sustained us for millennial generations. It took our power over women and our power over the things of the Earth. These things were ours, and the Hair took them away.’" So the book strongly depends on style and your enjoyment will correlate with how much you will appreciate the rich and luxuriant prose of the author. In the first part of the book that takes roughly a third of the total number of pages, we meet George Denoone, an aimless and bored member of the super wealthy class that regards Earth as its playground even more than usually in the past, disdaining both what has remained of the middle classes aka the "jobsuckers" and the poor aka "the longhairs". "He swept out, past his upended and absorbed daughter. A flash of Arsinée’s aghast face. And, in the elevator going back up to the penthouse bar, he did feel a little better. These footling little humps of up-and-down emotion. Demeaning really. Not for the first time in his life he was aware of the sense that he needed some project. It didn’t really matter what, of course; only to find something purposeful to help elevate him, keep him on a more noble emotional level." Married with a rich woman on her own, Marie Lewinsky and having two kids, 11 year old Leah and five year old Ezra, George is drifting through life, occasionally seducing the wives of his wealthy companions while paying scant attention to his wife or children. Until on a skiing vacation on Mount Ararat's slopes, the incredible happens and Leah is kidnapped, crime that is the only one authorities cannot solve however much money George throws at them, for the reasons explained below, reasons that have a lot to do with the way the world has rearranged itself once most people starting feeding on light: "Dot nodded, as if this were fair comment. ‘Now, the bosses aren’t stupid,’ she went on. ‘And women aren’t stupid. Easier to grab a child than carry it two thirds of a year in your womb. The women get a kid; the bosses get their population of serfs renewed. That’s why they’re so reluctant to intervene. If a Turk or Iranian had stolen your gold-plated Fwn, then the police would’ve run the news round the local villages, a boss would have shaved a couple of heads, pocketed the reward and the trinket would have come back to you. But the bosses make a point of not getting involved where child theft is concerned.’" In the second part of the book, we follow the retrieved Leah adjusting to her life back in New York, while then the novel continues for some time with Marie's tale only to end in the fourth revelatory part with the tale of Issa, a strange girl from the underclass with a true odyssey of her own. So By Light Alone is structured as the consecutive tales of four characters where pov follows pov and illuminates what happens before while also moving the story forward, and once this structure is understood everything falls into place and the novel comes together perfectly well in a very powerful ending that first threw me off a bit since I did not expect it... Of course as an Adam Roberts novel you get a lot of musings through the characters voices and there is a lot of interesting stuff thrown almost casually in there, stuff about the nature of historical inquiry, the whys and how the world works in addition to sfnal speculation and ideas. And there is action too since from about half on, the novel changes pace somewhat starting with Marie's tale, only to accelerate with Issa's pov in a crescendo till the powerful finale. There is romance, revolution, brutality, joy and sorrow, all in a superb weave it truly pays to reread at least once. Overall By Light Alone (A++, top 25 novel of 2011) is a masterpiece of literary sf and a book that could stand proudly alongside any literary novel of 2011. The novel's pieces fit perfectly together and I strongly recommend to reread it once you finish it since you will appreciate it in a different way once you understand everything that has been going on. (less) | Notes are private!
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1
| Aug 21, 2011
| Aug 26, 2011
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Jul 19, 2011
| Hardcover
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23
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| 0224094157
| 9780224094153
| 3.69
| 52,416
| Aug 04, 2011
| Aug 04, 2011
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This is a gem of a novel; short but condensed and one that needs at least one reread considering the last two pages - or after 50 pages, you can jump...more
This is a gem of a novel; short but condensed and one that needs at least one reread considering the last two pages - or after 50 pages, you can jump at the end and then get back and continue reading. The blurb gives you an idea what the book is about but does not convey its richness as well its twisted and very compelling narrative. All about Tony Webster - the average middle class Englishman in a way - his first girlfriend Veronica and his smart school friend Adrian Finn whose destiny catches up unexpectedly with Tony some 40 years late but still in a very intriguing and poignant way. And of course the novel is about much more - the human condition if you want a short description - but for me the narrative voice and the "unexpectedness" of what truly has happened which Tony discovers after a curious letter and bequest reaches him made this novel a big favorite and a top 25 novel of the year. (less) | Notes are private!
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1
| not set
| Aug 17, 2011
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Jul 26, 2011
| Hardcover
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25
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| 085766154X
| 9780857661548
| 3.56
| 347
| Sep 27, 2011
| Sep 27, 2011
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This has been a surprisingly compelling book that took over my reading a bit unexpectedly; I took a fast look when I got the earc from Angry Robot and...more
This has been a surprisingly compelling book that took over my reading a bit unexpectedly; I took a fast look when I got the earc from Angry Robot and I thought "I've seen this story hundreds of times before and this does not stand out" but the first person voice of the novel stayed with me so some days later when in the mood for such, I got back to the novel and once i opened I had to read it before I could move on to something else. Not only that but I really liked it so I will reread it first before reading something else; and it's all because of the compelling narration from the main heroine, showing once again that when first person narration works for me, it really does so to speak (and of course the reverse as in the recent Prince of Thorns misfire for example) As mentioned the storyline is very standard - well off, high achiever but from no account family, respected professional is set up and thrown out of her job, has to start doing some nasty job instead, finds crew of oddballs, tough, rough but ultimately likeable, and presumably works towards getting her revenge, finding the dark secrets that her dismiaal covered etc - you've seen it I bet many times either in sff or in thrillers/crime... The setup is covered in the blurb above and it has some resemblance with the awesome JC Wright Golden Age - still the best US sf debut of the 00's so far imho - though it is not as sophisticated sfnal as there. Still, the worldbuiliding is quite interesting, but of course the strengths of the novel are in the voice, the characters - both the heroine and the supporting cast and the mysteries of the universe; there is action, romance, some twists and the story ends at a good point while I really want the sequel and further adventures of Tanyana and her friends. Highly recommended, will add the FBC review closer to pub date FBC Review: INTRODUCTION: When I saw the blurb below for Debris in the Angry Robot fall 2011 lineup, I was intrigued, so I took a fast look when I got the e-arc from the publisher. At that very short glance, I thought "I've seen this story hundreds of times before and this does not stand out", but the first person voice of the novel unexpectedly stayed with me, so some days later I got back to the novel and once I opened it, I had to read it before I could move on to something else. Debris is advertised as the first book in the Veiled Worlds trilogy. "Tanyana is among the highest ranking in her far-future society – a skilled pionner, able to use a mixture of ritual and innate talent to manipulate the particles that hold all matter together. But an accident brings her life crashing down around her ears. She is cast down amongst the lowest of the low, little more than a garbage collector. But who did this to her, and for what sinister purpose? Her quest to find out will take her to parts of the city she never knew existed, and open the door to a world she could never have imagined. " OVERVIEW/ANALYSIS: Debris has been a surprisingly compelling book that took over my reading a bit unexpectedly. All because of the compelling narration from the main heroine, showing once again that when first person narration works, it really does so. As mentioned above, the storyline is very standard at least in the first half of the novel - well off, high achiever but from a family that is not really important, Tanyana, a respected professional is set up to spectacularly and expensively fail in an important task and is thrown out of her job, so she has to start doing some nasty low-level work instead. There she meets a crew of oddballs, tough, rough but ultimately likeable, and from then on she presumably works towards getting her revenge, finding the dark secrets that her dismissal covered etc - you've seen it I bet many times either in sff or in thrillers/crime... The setup is covered in the blurb above and it has two main characteristics: urban action and a far future technology that allows people with the right talents and training to manipulate matter at its basic level. While considering the second part of the novel, there is a case for considering Debris as fantasy, especially that the novel focuses on people, their interactions and abilities rather than on technology, its ethos is clearly modern and science fictional, based on rationality and technology however advanced and unexplained, with the backward looking and conservative elements associated with fantasy - destined ones, bloodlines, etc - missing. So the strengths of the novel are in the voice, the characters - both the heroine and the supporting cast - and the mysteries of the universe. There is action, romance, some twists and the story ends at a good point while I really want the sequel and further adventures of Tanyana and her friends. Another aspect I enjoyed about Debris, was its fast moving style that flows well on the page and compelled me to turn the pages once I got hooked by the narrator's voice: “Enough of this,” I told the pions. My pions. Stern, but kind, I was a mother, a teacher, a firm hand. “We have a job to do. Enough.” But they couldn’t hear me, or wouldn’t. So I approached them, balancing on hot steel beams wet with condensation. I reached up to the closest finger bone, placed my hand against its stretching, writhing not-quite-metal-anymore form so the pions in me and the pions in it could touch, could mingle. “Listen–” But then, only then, so connected to the finger bone, so focused, did I see them. Pions, yes, but not like any pions I had never known. Red, painfully red, and buried so deep inside reality that even the collective skill in the building site below hadn’t seen them. When I tried to communicate with them they burned like tiny suns and heat washed over me, and anger, such a terrible tearing anger I could feel from my head to my chest and deep, deep inside me. In my own pion systems." Overall, Debris (A+) is a fascinating sff adventure that grabs you from the first page and does not let go till the end, delivering a tale of fall and redemption as narrated by a very intriguing heroine. One of my highly recommended novels of 2011 for which the sequel has become another read on receive book. (less) | Notes are private!
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1
| Jul 30, 2011
| Aug 09, 2011
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Jul 30, 2011
| Paperback
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7
| 
| 1603818103
| 9781603818100
| 4.23
| 69
| Aug 18, 2011
| Sep 01, 2011
|
INTRODUCTION: "A 40th-Century drifter follows a beautiful woman across the galaxy. A funny and thought-provoking novel that challenges our traditional...more
INTRODUCTION: "A 40th-Century drifter follows a beautiful woman across the galaxy. A funny and thought-provoking novel that challenges our traditional beliefs about love, sex, immortality and spirituality." When I saw the blurb of Dancing with Eternity which is published by the new Camel Press, I was intrigued so I downloaded the 20% Smashwords sample and I read it and was so impressed that I immediately bought the ebook. The more I progressed through the novel, the more impressive it became and while I will explain some of the reasons later, I will say that Dancing with Eternity turned out to be the first mind blowing 2011 sff novel I did not previously know about. OVERVIEW/ANALYSIS: Dancing with Eternity stands out in three areas; world building which includes both natural philosophy and strange societies, voice and characters. It is the 40th century and Mo aka Mohandas born on Mars in the 22nd century and named for the famous 20th century Indian leader, has been a lucky man. Born on the cusp of the great revolutions that transformed humanity for ever - the understanding of mind which led to the "net of human minds" and then to effective immortality and ftl by harnessing the power of minds traveling near light speed - he became a relatively famous architect, wealthy enough to afford the very expensive immortality treatments and weather the three centuries of turmoil when humanity adapted to this radical change. Led by the amoral but efficient multinational corporation known today as "syndicates", the human race's ruthless expansion into the universe created enough wealth to afford everyone's "rebooting" - as the immortality treatments came to be known - at a price though. And Mo has not passed unscathed through the turmoil, so despite becoming even wealthier, from the stabilization of the 25th century on, he started drifting through life, exploring the ever expanding human reach, mostly as a musician or actor with occasional "domestic lifetimes". Two other major events disrupted the continual expansion: the brutal "gender war" of the 30th century - the millennial anniversary of its cessation has been celebrated some five decades before the start of the novel and was partly the impulse motif of the book's plot - in which the Pleiades worlds tried to secede under the Yin radical feminist movement, expelling all males under the "new gender laws" and creating their own "net". The main human polity, now known as Draco from its stellar position, responded brutally and the ensuing war was terrible ending in a truce under which the Pleiades remained politically independent but repelled the gender discrimination laws and reintegrated into the original "net" - this last being crucial since its effectiveness depends on the number of minds logged on. Even scarier was humanity's "first contact" with a mysterious alien civilization on what is now named Brainard's Planet in the 35th century. Despite the best efforts of the expedition led by the aforementioned Brainard, humans could not initiate contact with the natives, but instead a mysterious "plague" destroying all Earth originated lifeforms at cellular level - and with rebooting accelerating the destruction, the death is final unless the personality is stored on the net and the body cloned from earlier genetic material, happenings that are not computationally feasible on a large scale - starting to spread with the return of the expedition to human space. Only the brutal quarantine of several planets and the ensuing billions of deaths spared humanity. Today Brainard's planet is under strict quarantine and orbital observation, though nobody is insane to go there anyway, while five hundred years of observations produced some startling results and even more mysteries... So back to the late 40th century and Mo now an actor with a lizard-like scaly body form gets marooned on a resort planet 350 light years from Earth over a tax dispute with "the system". Not only that but he is kicked off net and has to practice daily to keep up in shape, while providing "physical comfort" to a local shopkeeper for shelter and food. When a mysterious beautiful woman going by the nickname of Steel makes him an offer to pay his back taxes and take him to space in return for him completing her seven member starship crew and being able to go ftl again, Mo cannot refuse and the adventure starts - as mentioned ftl aka freewheeling happens by the melding of minds at near light speed and each starship has a required minimum crew needed - here there is a little niggle since I would expect that each starship to have an "extra" just in case, the way today's airplanes have copilots, though maybe the all around existence of the "net" made that seem unnecessary. I hope the above tidbits about the superb world building of the author intrigued you to try the sample at least, but I want to discuss the characters starting with the narrator himself. Mo's voice is very distinctive and sounds pitch perfect within the universe of the novel and as one of the oldest humans around, his experience and store of odd knowledge comes in handy on occasion also. Here he is at a party "celebrating" a local woman who goes to pay for her needed "reboot" the usual way: "Everybody started somewhere. Most of them were between six and ten ’boots old, products of the Great Expansion of the early thirties. They’d all been hatched by the corps or syndicates to be used as labor to hew habitable worlds out of the raw material of creation. And for most of them that’s what they’d done every other life. It’s what they would do. ... Somebody said, “How many verses?” and I replied, “Nineteen.” A kind of ripple went through the crowd and I looked around to see if I could find Steel or Yuri or Marcus. I spotted them; they were all in one of the gazebos. They’d evidently been following the action, or they’d heard the crowd hush. They were all looking at me, looking for the groove, trying to match my energy. I realized that, even though I hadn’t said anything yet, I’d already started. My silence was the beginning of my first verse. I saw Matessa smiling at me and I didn’t want her to be lonely before she left simply because I wasn’t in the habit of letting people know who I was. Even so, it was hard to start. What do I tell them, I thought, who are so much younger, who had not experienced the world before the net, before re-booting, before freewheeling, before... “I wasn’t started. I was born—”" Of the other seven members of the crew, Steel aka Estelle the mysterious rich captain starts being the focus, but slowly we meet the other three main characters: Archie of the Yin, the Pleiades doctor/life scientist, Yuri, the tech/hard science wizard with a continual teenager like personality of the geek/genius that hides a painful secret from his early life in the terrible war of a 1000 years ago and Steel's protege, Alice who seems to be very young or to have had a very traumatic last reboot since she seems to be aware only of very recent events. And since for more than a thousand years, humans have not been born anymore, only being artificially brought up by the syndicates when/where labor was needed with the promise of the second life and capital in return for the first life of labor - one of the hard prices humanity is still paying for eternal life - Alice is indeed a mystery for us and for Mo. Dancing with Eternity flows very well on the page and both the universe and the characters are revealed slowly with moments of tension, adventure, desperate situations and escapes, while twists and turns abound. The novel so impressed me that I had to reread it immediately after finishing it and then I appreciated even better the little tidbits from whose full import the reader won;t realize until much later. Overall Dancing with Eternity (A++, top 10 novel of 2011) is a stellar debut that shows why science fiction is still the most interesting genre of today.(less) | Notes are private!
| none
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1
| Aug 31, 2011
| Sep 15, 2011
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Aug 15, 2011
| Paperback
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26
| 
| 1905207581
| 9781905207589
| 3.11
| 727
| Jun 06, 2011
| unknown
|
INTRODUCTION: As noted in the recent post discussing novels by Alison Pick, Julian Barnes and Patrick McGuiness, the annual Booker longlist is one the...more
INTRODUCTION: As noted in the recent post discussing novels by Alison Pick, Julian Barnes and Patrick McGuiness, the annual Booker longlist is one the most important sources of books I would probably not hear about otherwise. So when The Testament of Jessie Lamb appeared on the 2011 list, I became very intrigued by the novel and I decided to read it as soon as possible. The blurb below while generally accurate, is a little misleading in that the novel is a very personal one where Jessie Lamb's tale is more gripping than the world's reaction to the devastating maternal death syndrome aka MDS. "Women are dying in their millions. Some blame scientists, some see the hand of God, some see human arrogance reaping the punishment it deserves. Jessie Lamb is an ordinary girl living in extraordinary times: as her world collapses, her idealism and courage drive her towards the ultimate act of heroism. If the human race is to survive, it’s up to her.But is Jessie heroic? Or is she, as her father fears, impressionable, innocent, incapable of understanding where her actions will lead? Set just a month or two in the future, in a world irreparably altered by an act of biological terrorism, The Testament of Jessie Lamb explores a young woman’s determination to make her life count for something, as the certainties of her childhood are ripped apart." OVERVIEW/ANALYSIS: The Testament of Jessie Lamb is a novel advertised as literary dystopia though first and foremost it is a voice novel which kept me hooked me from the first to the last page with its poignant and emotional style. Looking at the science fictional aspect of the novel, I had several quibbles with the ideas presented in the book - I believe that the whole setup of the MDS does not really hold water since humanity is way too diverse for something of this finesse to work, but I was fine with it as a thought experiment. The more serious issue for me was the societal reaction to the MDS, which seemed way too rational and moderate; yes there is panic and hardship in the book, but society still stands and science still gets done, while personally I have doubts that a singularity event like MDS would not cause the total collapse of civilization. Similarly the way science deals with MDS seemed quite simplistic if you accept the original sophistication of the virus that induced it, so basically these three issues made The Testament of Jessie Lamb more of a "scary tale" for adults rather than "serious sf". These being said though, the novel is really compelling and its narrator Jessie Lamb of the title comes out as very plausible; a determined girl which is set on making a difference - whether her choices are stupid, courageous, right, wrong, etc is for the reader to determine and I thought her father's arguments quite grounded, so I inclined more towards his position, but not that strongly so to speak. After a prologue which gives a hint of the future direction of the book and to which we will return in due time, the first paragraph of the novel introduces the heroine: "I used to be as aimless as a feather in the wind. I thought stuff on the news and in the papers was for grownups. It was part of their stupid miserable complicated world, it didn’t touch me." Compare the above with Jessie of the future as seen in the prologue: "The logical thing is to do as he’s asked; to think about it. Indeed. Write it down. Remember it, re-imagine it, gather it together. Because it’ll be proof – won’t it? – proof that you really are doing what you want. Proof that I, Jessie Lamb, being of sound mind and good health, take full responsibility for my decision, and intend to pursue it to its rightful end." So in a sense the huge change in the world that MDS induces - a real and much more plausible singularity if you want rather than the tech nirvana of the geeks that usually comes under that heading - radically transforms our heroine and you can read the novel as her personal odyssey, though of course there is much more. The supporting characters - especially her father and her school friends Baz and Sal are also superbly drawn and the world building is excellent assuming you accept the assumptions above. The combination of normality and madness in the MDS world is finely balanced in the novel and while a lot of the ideology of the book is the expected one, I was surprised a little by the nuanced portrait of science which is the usual culprit with/or religion in such dystopias; sure enough the religious fanatics are there, but there are fanatic environmentalists too, ready to bomb left and right, while Jessie ultimately renounces her "activism" as pointless. All in all, The Testament of Jessie Lamb (A+) is a worthy Booker addition and a very well written book I would wholly recommend and which I hope will make the shortlist to show that science fiction - however not that original as sf per se - has a place on any literary prize list if the writing style is there. (less) | Notes are private!
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1
| Aug 16, 2011
| Aug 18, 2011
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Aug 16, 2011
| Paperback
| ||||||||||||||
22
| 
| 057507793X
| 9780575077935
| 3.87
| 1,750
| 2010
| Oct 13, 2011
|
As this is another book I will soon do a full FBC review to be c/p here, I will just put some points for now; I will mention that I read The steel Rem...more
As this is another book I will soon do a full FBC review to be c/p here, I will just put some points for now; I will mention that I read The steel Remains end to end before reading this - actually after reading the first 50 pages of TCC and realizing that I forgot most about its universe except for a few details and of course the main Morgan twist, which surprise, surprise is present in The Cold Commands too, though for once is done in a subtler way - like TSR, TCC is a book that mixes sff - directly as in the Kiriath and the echoes of the Kovacs series (Takavach and Dakovash, come on can it be less subtle than that?) and indirectly in attitude and language with fantasy tropes like empires, pre-modern civilization, ancient evil, etc... the sf part works wonderfully and there are a ton of quotable lines and moments in the book, while the fantasy part is ok'ish, a bit boring as in very canned stuff I've seen a million times - TCC though coheres much better than TSR - it is longer and that helps (remember that in TSR the main 3 characters stayed well apart from one another for like 90% of the book with the convergence in a pretty rushed climax), while here the characters come together and separate much more often and there is more unity - TCC also is Ringil's novel in a way that TSR was not quite; there Ringil's thread was still the main one but again maybe due to the smaller number of pages, it felt a bit undeveloped after the very promising start; here though Ringil rocks from the moment he appears till the end; I actually liked Archeth thread a lot too, while Egar is more picaresque in some ways and while it brings a piece of the puzzle, it is the least important and tangential; the emperor also rocks too - as highlights that show the brutality of the book and of the heroes - one early review summarized TCC as a book that focuses on how nasty the usual fantasy universe is and I agree to some extent with that, also noting that this aspect is one Mr. Morgan is keen to emphasize in his interviews - we have Ringil giving one of his nasty enemies to be gang raped by his motley crew and then when he got tired of listening to her screams, personally cutting her throat, or the emperor also personally water boarding his enemies - though in a pool with the analogues of sharks/piranhas - and they are the good guys; what the bad guys do, well, you can imagine... All in all a superior effort to TSR and a very good fantasy that's definitely not for everyone; a little more imagination on the fantasy plot and full coherence would make it a blow me away novel, but even so highly recommended FULL FBC Rv: INTRODUCTION: Richard (K) Morgan is the acclaimed author of five science fiction novels including the 2008 Arthur C. Clarke Award-winning “Black Man/Thirteen”, “Woken Furies”, “Market Forces”, “Broken Angels”, and “Altered Carbon”, a New York Times Notable Book that also won the Philip K. Dick Award. Both “Altered Carbon” and “Market Forces” have been optioned for film adaptation with the latter novel a winner of the 2005 John W. Campbell Award. In 2008, Mr. Morgan turned his hand to fantasy in “The Steel Remains” which was so hyped including by the author who was a bit ignorant that fantasy had moved from Tolkien for a good while before 2008, that it simply could not live up to expectations; it made though a valiant try not by its very traditional subject, but by Mr. Morgan's original take with modern and very dark and explicit language in a pre-modern context that had sfnal elements too. My opinion of The Steel Remains varied quite wildly over time - loved it on first read, then later thought more and saw its many weaknesses, then almost completely forgot it. I even expected to open its direct sequel, The Cold Commands, and put it down since recently I have moved away from traditional fantasy, but the author's extremely vigorous style hooked me. However I had a problem: I had forgotten what was what except for the strong beginning and the author's trademark twist at the end that appears in all his novels. So I went back to re-reading The Steel Remains before continuing with The Cold Commands and today after the hype has vanished and enough time has passed, I would say that it is a novel with great parts, superb lines and well done and interesting characters, but it fails to fully cohere and it is considerably less than the sum of its parts. For convenience I will present FBC's 2008 take on the plot of The Steel Remains: PLOT SUMMARY FOR The Steel Remains: Ringil Eskiath, the hero of the bloody slaughter at Gallows Gap, is a legend to all who don't know him and a twisted degenerate to those that do. A veteran of the wars against the Scaled Folk, he makes a living from telling credulous travelers of his exploits. Until one day he is pulled away from his life and into the depths of the Empire's slave trade, where he will discover a secret infinitely more frightening than the trade in lives... Egar Dragonbane, a Majak steppe-nomad and one-time fighter for the Empire, is now the Skaranak clanmaster. Pining for the past, Egar finds himself entangled in a small-town battle between common sense and religious fervor. But perhaps there is some truth behind the tribe’s gods, the Sky Dwellers… Archeth, an abandoned 207-year-old Kiriath half-breed advisor to Jhiral Khimran II of the Yhelteth Empire, is sent to investigate a demonic incursion against the Empire's borders. What she uncovers is evidence of a terrifying new enemy that makes the Scaled Folk seem like children… Anti-social, anti-heroic, and decidedly irritated, all three of these veterans of the War against the Scaled Folk are about to be called upon to fight again for a world that owes them everything and has given them nothing… OVERVIEW/ANALYSIS: The Cold Commands starts almost a year later after the end of The Steel Remains though later we find out what happened in the meantime too. While Archeth and Egar star immediately, Ringil takes a while to make his appearance, but when he does, it is a with quite a bang and from then on he really takes over the book and makes it a much more memorable experience than The Steel Remains. The Cold Commands also mixes sfnal tropes - directly as in the technologically advanced Kiriath and their AI-like Helmsmen, as well as in echoes of the Takeshi Kovacs series that made the author's name starting from his explosive debut Altered Carbon - Takavach and Dakovash - and indirectly in attitude and language with fantasy tropes like magic swords, empires, slavery, pre-modern civilization, ancient evil, etc... The sfnal part works wonderfully and there are a ton of quotable lines and moments in the book, while the fantasy part is ok'ish, a bit boring as in very canned stuff I've seen a million times and with some of the least unsubtle and moronic but powerful villains around. The Cold Commands coheres much better than The Steel Remains. For once, it is longer by 100 pages or so and that helps - let us remember that in The Steel Remains the main three characters stayed well apart from one another for like 90% of the book with the convergence in a pretty rushed climax - while here the characters come together and separate much more often, so there is more unity. I also think that The Cold Commands being Ringil's novel in a definite way is very important in ensuring this unity. I quite liked Archeth's thread a lot too as it is both the most political and the most sfnal one, while Egar's deeds are more picaresque and while they add a piece of the puzzle to the storyline, this thread is less important, even tangential to a large extent. The secondary characters are better developed here too than in the first novel - again I think that having more than 500 pages and not having to introduce the world and characters helped a lot, showing again that there is a reason epic fantasy novels must go towards the higher page count and come as series if they are to be very good. Most notable of all, the Emperor, Jhiral Khimran II, lights up each page he appears on. "The degenerate apostate" as the fanatics of the main imperial religion call him - and which Ringil gleefully enjoys as usually those epithets have been applied to him - is on a roll in this volume, but there are a few more others that add color and depth. Even the usual Morgan twist, while present as expected, is done in a subtler way and we find out about it later as back story. Only the villains are really cartoonish and one dimensional, but that is in many ways a traditional fantasy requirement since how could otherwise so powerful personages be defeated by the rag-tag heroes... As highlights that show the brutality of the book and of the heroes, early on there is Ringil capturing one of his nasty enemies and giving her to his motley mercenary crew to be gang raped and then when he got tired of listening to her screams, personally cutting her throat, or Jhiral Khimran II also personally water boarding his enemies - though in a pool with the analogues of sharks/piranhas - and they are the good guys; what the bad guys do, well, you can imagine... Overall The Cold Commands (A++) is a superior effort to The Steel Remains and an excellent novel, though one that's definitely not for everyone; a little more imagination on the fantasy plot and full coherence would make it one for the ages, but even so, the author's powerful writing style, the memorable characters, superb one liners and many other goodies made it one of my top 25 novels of the year.(less) | Notes are private!
| none
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1
| Oct 12, 2011
| Oct 20, 2011
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Oct 12, 2011
| Hardcover
| ||||||||||||||
8
| 
| 0307593312
| 9780307593313
| 3.79
| 47,590
| 2010
| Oct 25, 2011
|
I will have a full review soon; for now I will say that despite a little slowing down in the 3rd book (the original Japanese publication was in 3 volu...more
I will have a full review soon; for now I will say that despite a little slowing down in the 3rd book (the original Japanese publication was in 3 volumes and the author actually wrote only the first two initially and then wrote #3 a year later and it shows a little as mentioned, with this last book less tight and with some filler), the book is close to genius and it will be most likely my #1 novel of the year and while i need some time to pass, I see it getting to my list of all time favorites too. Full FBC Rv INTRODUCTION: "The year is 1984 and the city is Tokyo. A young woman named Aomame follows a taxi driver’s enigmatic suggestion and begins to notice puzzling discrepancies in the world around her. She has entered, she realizes, a parallel existence, which she calls 1Q84 —“Q is for ‘question mark.’ A world that bears a question.” Meanwhile, an aspiring writer named Tengo takes on a suspect ghostwriting project. He becomes so wrapped up with the work and its unusual author that, soon, his previously placid life begins to come unraveled. As Aomame’s and Tengo’s narratives converge over the course of this single year, we learn of the profound and tangled connections that bind them ever closer: a beautiful, dyslexic teenage girl with a unique vision; a mysterious religious cult that instigated a shoot-out with the metropolitan police; a reclusive, wealthy dowager who runs a shelter for abused women; a hideously ugly private investigator; a mild-mannered yet ruthlessly efficient bodyguard; and a peculiarly insistent television-fee collector. A love story, a mystery, a fantasy, a novel of self-discovery, a dystopia to rival George Orwell’s—1Q84 is Haruki Murakami’s most ambitious undertaking yet." While I have owned pretty much all the major works of the famous contemporary Japanese author Haruki Murakami for some time now, I have to confess I only browsed several of them along the years, always with an "I plan to read them some day" thought. So when I read about 1Q84 and the considerable hype surrounding it, I thought, well I will take a look and maybe get it for later, but to my considerable surprise, once I opened the book I just could not put it down until I absolutely had to. Some 900+ pages later I have to say that for once hype (masterpiece, Nobel book, genius, etc) is utterly warranted. 1Q84 has been translated by Jay Rubin (books 1 and 2) and Philip Gabriel (book 3). OVERVIEW/ANALYSIS: I will talk here about 1Q84 from a sff reader's perspective, while if you want a more "mainstream" discussion, you can check this NYT article. I am making this distinction because when reading 1Q84 I was struck by how much some elements mentioned in the above article - and in a few other similar places - as strange or outlandish seemed to me just regular sffnal stuff, as did a lot of the plot twists and turns, all quite typical of the better secondary world fantasies or space operas out there. Conversely, 1Q84 brings a very adult attitude to its main characters, attitude which is most of the time missing from sff which either shies away from the topic or goes to the other extreme essentially for shock's value. The content of 1Q84 is well summarized in the blurb above, so I will refer to it when discussing the structure and highlights next. The novel is divided into three books that each cover three months from 1984 starting in April, when Aomame starts her adventure in the parallel universe with two moons, magic and "the little people" that she calls 1Q84. In the other thread, former "boy wonder" Tengo, now living an obscure but fulfilling life as a math teacher at an elite school and aspiring novelist, is so compelled by the fantasy story in a manuscript written by a 17 year old girl, that he accepts a dodgy proposition from his editor and his adventure starts also. The first two books were published simultaneously in Japan and alternate chapters from Aomame and Tengo, each with a subheading that is both appropriate and subtle. These two books are very tightly woven and they twist, turn, amplify and scale down the story perfectly, while ending in a way that would have been maddening were not the third book available immediately. The last book that is both a prologue and an epilogue, introduces a third viewpoint which at first seems out of place, but it soon integrates well with Tengo and Aomame's. This third pov is crucial to the structure of this part as it provides both the back story and most of the narrative tension, while Tengo and Aomame take a detour so to speak. As noted above, while the story twists and turns a lot, the experienced sff reader will most likely figure it out well ahead of time with motifs like the destined ones, parallel universes and portals, magical links and prophecies, though here all happens in Tokyo 1984, so we have the mundane world of subways, cars, bars, news, a secretive cult etc. And it works perfectly, while the magic is slowly introduced, first in the "fantasy novel" of Fuka Eri that Tengo ghost rewrites into a masterpiece - though in a nice touch that should resonate, it is snubbed by the main Japanese literary prize as bestselling and genre - and later in revelation after revelation. Another thing I really appreciated about 1Q84 was that it kept away from the pitfalls of solipsism. Parallel universes, portals and the existence of those special few who know/use them always invite this immediate breaking of the suspension of disbelief by un-substantiating the "real world" but the author is clearly aware of this and discusses it quite a few times: "Komatsu considered this for a long time, wrinkles forming on either side of his nose. Finally he sighed and glanced around. “What a strange world. With each passing day, it’s getting harder to know how much is just hypothetical and how much is real. Tell me, Tengo, as a novelist, what is your definition of reality?” “When you prick a person with a needle, red blood comes out—that’s the real world,” Tengo replied." The novel also keeps things ambiguous enough to allow us to speculate, while the ending adds one extra twist which for once I did not quite see and which deepened my appreciation of Haruki Murakami's genius. 1Q84 contains so much that even enumerating things that are of note in the book would take quite a lot of space and while I think that the novel is one than can be read many times and still fully enjoyed, I will mention only the "levitating clock" that startled quite a few early (mainstream readers) as it marked in a way the clear dividing line where the novel fully moves into the sff-nal space so no one can deny it is a work of speculative fiction anymore, two moons or not... Overall 1Q84 (A++) is simply the best novel released in 2011 so far. (less) | Notes are private!
| none
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1
| Oct 19, 2011
| Oct 26, 2011
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Oct 19, 2011
| Hardcover
| ||||||||||||||
1
| 
| 0374229767
| 9780374229764
| 3.53
| 139
| 2005
| Oct 25, 2011
|
after several weeks of reading, rereading, going back and forth and extensively using the search button on my epub version which i alternated with the...more
after several weeks of reading, rereading, going back and forth and extensively using the search button on my epub version which i alternated with the print version, I finished (at least temporarily and tentatively since this is a book to be reread quite a few times) the novel. I plan to have a full review on FBC soon so again several points for now; - the book is extremely dense and jumps between pov's, narrative forms, tenses, characters, so it is best read as a collection of vignettes; some shorter, some longer as in the (in)famous seventy page sex scene that is like most of this novel not for the easily offended (did not count the pages though it seemed to be 50 pages at least but others did and it sounds right) - some haunting descriptions from war to sex to death - bodily fluids left and right - very deep and subtle connections between characters that are easy to miss - the parallel stories of the title have rarely any finality and characters jump in and out though there are several mainstays in the sort of bedrock part of the novel that takes place in Budapest 1961 and revolves around several late middle aged women with troubled past, their sons, nephews, husbands... and especially the Lippay-Fehr household - but there is much more that it is really hard to convey what the novel is about unless you start reading -worth all the money and time i spent on it, no question about it on the other hand the scathing review of Tibor Fischer in the Guardian has a kernel truth and the novel may turn readers off easily, but I am in the "masterpiece camp" - as for comparisons with something like 2666, i would say that the Bolano novel reads like a page turner thriller against this one, but I also think that Bolano is a very readable author and in 2666 the ultra-dark middle part with its repetitions of murders is the reason the novel got the reputation of a "hard read" as otherwise it really flows very well and is quite entertaining all in all Parallel Stories is a truly impressive achievement and while for sheer entertainment and readability 1q84 is still my favorite, this one will easily be my #2 novel of the year if not a co-#1(less) | Notes are private!
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1
| Oct 26, 2011
| Nov 15, 2011
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Oct 26, 2011
| Hardcover
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28
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| 0297868098
| 9780297868095
| 3.91
| 10,764
| Jan 01, 2011
| Jun 21, 2012
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(thoughts in Nov 20111 from the Spanish lang edition) Some weeks ago the third installment of the awesome series that started with The Shadow of the W...more
(thoughts in Nov 20111 from the Spanish lang edition) Some weeks ago the third installment of the awesome series that started with The Shadow of the Wind and continued with The Angel's Game has been published in Spain. As FBC is an English language site, I usually refrain from talking about books that are not available in English, but in this case as the UK publication of "El Prisionero del Cielo" has been tentatively set on June 2nd, 2012 and presumably the US publication will soon follow, I will note several things about the novel with a full review to follow next year as I sometimes do with (English language) advance review copies of great interest. "El Prisionero del Cielo" is shorter than the previous books and is also thematically different, forgoing the dual - past/present - love affairs of the first two books. Also while the book keeps the past/present threads, this time they are clearly divided with Daniel and Fermin as the respective narrators. As the title character is David Martin (!), it should be clear that familiarity with both books is necessary and I found myself darting back and forth through Shadow of the Wind and The Angel's Game too. Great prose, great characters and all that you expect from a CR Zafon novel, the one niggle I had is that "El Prisionero del Cielo" is the least self-contained of the novels so far both as backstory goes which I noted above and with an ending that while not quite a cliffhanger, definitely begs the fourth and presumably last "Cemetery of Forgotten Books" novel. Still a clear Top 25 novel of 2011 for me and I am really looking forward to the English language version to see the subtleties I missed. Currently reading the Engl. lang. version As impressive as I remembered from the Spanish version; full rv in a few days Here is the FBC Rv link: http://fantasybookcritic.blogspot.com...(less) | Notes are private!
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1
| not set
| Jul 06, 2012
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Nov 26, 2011
| Hardcover
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9
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| 0810126370
| 9780810126374
| 4.01
| 84
| 1983
| May 04, 2011
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FBC Rv: INTRODUCTION: 2011 has had some very successful nostalgia books like The Art of Fielding by Chad Harbach which is a top 10 Amazon pick for exam...more FBC Rv: INTRODUCTION: 2011 has had some very successful nostalgia books like The Art of Fielding by Chad Harbach which is a top 10 Amazon pick for example or Ready Player One by Ernest Cline which was a NYT bestseller and second pick in the 2011 Goodreads Choice Awards. As I grew up in a completely different culture, both the above books left me utterly cold, but I will present you my nostalgia pick 0f 2011, "Wasted Morning" by Gabriela Adamesteanu which has just been published this year in English with a superb translation by Patrick Camiller. "Upon its original publication in 1983, Wasted Morning catapulted Gabriela Adamesteanu to the first rank of Romanian novelists. She has since been translated into many languages, and now her most famous novel is available in English for the first time. At the center of Wasted Morning is Vica Delca, a simple, poor woman in her seventies who has endured the endless series of trials and tribulations that was Romanian history from WWI to the end of the twentieth century. She's a born storyteller, chatting and gossiping tirelessly. But she also listens, so it is through her that Adamesteanu is able to show us a panoramic portrait of Romanian society as the fortunes of its various strata shift violently. Rich or poor, honest (more or less) or deceitful, all of the characters in this polyphonic novel are brought vividly to life. From Bucharest's aspirations to be the Paris of Eastern Europe to the darkest days of dictatorship, the novel presents a sweeping vision of the personal and collective costs of a turbulent century." OVERVIEW/ANALYSIS: "Wasted Morning" is a novel originally released in 1983-4 in communist Romania, so by necessity it was censored/self-censored, but as it quickly became one of the most important works of contemporary Romanian literature, it was reedited several times and while I am not entirely sure, I think the 2011 English translation is based on the definitive 4th edition included in the reissued author's complete works as volume 1, so with all the censored stuff reintroduced, etc. Even censored and I was a bit surprised the novel was published in 1984 as it fails to do even the smallest bow to the regime, though I assume the harsher criticism was that "censored part". The novel fully deserves its status as is an excellent combination of psychological study and historical sweep. The book is divided into several parts: the first and last are taking place in an eventful day in the mid 70's when Vica Delca, the simple poor woman in her seventies from the blurb, decides to brave the cold and ice of Bucharest to go visit first her relatives and then Yvonne a sixty-ish "good family lady", where Vica used to work for her formerly wealthy family and from whom she now receives a little monthly allotment, to maybe just get that a week in advance. The middle part takes place in 1916 on the eve of the mid-August entrance of Romania in the Great War on the Entente part and later during the first euphoric and then soon catastrophic days of the war that lead to the two year occupation of Bucharest by German troops in the fall of 1916 and features prominently Yvonne's family and many of the characters that the two women talk/think about in their meeting. If you have not grown up in Romania and want to understand it, this book offers a great primer, highlighting both the good and the bad - as one of the characters in the historical thread puts it, when Romanians want to say "hasty/poor/thoughtless work" they say "Romanian work" for example - so the utter corruption under the old - landed aristocracy and then bourgeois- and the new communist regime is presented unsparingly, but also we see the welcoming and generous character of the people and their sharp tongues but good private deeds. If you have grown in Romania but do not live there anymore, this will be a great nostalgic novel while also assuring one why it was a great idea to leave and settle somewhere else. From a literary point of view, the book is a tour-de-force, alternating internal monologue that is quite uninhibited and sharp with the 'real conversation" that is guarded and polite, while the historical part with its mosaic of characters and later first person narration offers a great contrast, showing how adept the author is at handling multiple and quite different viewpoints. Overall, "Wasted Morning" (top 10 2011 book) is a superb and highly recommended novel and a literary masterpiece that deserves as wide an audience as possible.(less) | Notes are private!
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1
| Dec 08, 2011
| Dec 15, 2011
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Dec 08, 2011
| Hardcover
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19
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| 0375726535
| 9780375726538
| 3.79
| 879
| 1964
| Feb 04, 2003
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This is a difficult novel to talk about; its main idea is simple - a scientist gets burned by liquid nitrogen and his face becomes ruined so he starts...more
This is a difficult novel to talk about; its main idea is simple - a scientist gets burned by liquid nitrogen and his face becomes ruined so he starts trying to get an artificial one as close as possible to lifelike; in the process he splits his identity in two - the "original" and the "mask" and they start to compete for the affections of his wife of eight years. However the novel is much, much more than that as a meditation on identity, on what it means to be human, on what visual impressions (including skin color for example) mean and how they ultimately shape our destiny. Structured as a three notebook tale told to his wife - and with lots of additional noted and a prologue that needs rereading at least once, when you get a feel for the book - the novel takes place in a Japanese city in the 1960's but outside of a few details (apartments, workplaces, transportation) and of course the available technology/knowledge about skin cells and the like, it is really timeless and place-less. There are moments of utter brilliance and moments where you feel the book goes towards the deep end in self-pity and even madness; worth reading for the meditations on the subjects above - you will come with a deeper appreciation of how much our physical appearance defines us - but it is much more(less) | Notes are private!
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1
| Feb 06, 2012
| Feb 12, 2012
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Feb 06, 2012
| Paperback
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