This third and final volume in the Milkweed Triptych was enjoyable, but ultimately a disappointment. Tregillis continues to deliver on the fast-paced...moreThis third and final volume in the Milkweed Triptych was enjoyable, but ultimately a disappointment. Tregillis continues to deliver on the fast-paced action, and handles the rewriting of the timeline of Bitter Seeds and The Coldest War well. With two Raybould Marshes running around, his decision to make Old Marsh's perspective first person and Young Marsh's third person kept the two narratives clearly separate. Some of the suspense is lost when it becomes clear that this "new" timeline is our actual history, which presumably isn't going to be obliterated by Eidolons, but the internal suspense (such as Liv and the baby heading off to doomed Coventry for safety) keeps the story moving.
It's the ending I object to, in which all the loose ends are tied up and Gretel finally receives her just reward: (view spoiler)[She's not killed, but marooned on a barren island by Marsh and Marsh with her wires cut off, and left with an ongoing supply of food so she'll live a long life in torment, without being able to use her power. (hide spoiler)]. It's said more than once that Gretel is evil, but aside from those assertions I don't see much evidence for her being anything but criminally insane. In particular, the interludes where we get inside her head reveal that she's completely doolally and focused entirely on creating a reality in which Young Marsh falls in love with her. Her attempts to kill Liv and Agnes are evil, but I'm not sure a person with her type of insanity can really be said to be evil. She is definitely not in the same class as von Westarp, who murdered and tortured children to achieve his goals in perfect sanity, and I don't even think she's in the same class as the necrophiliac Reinhardt, who burned a dozen kids out of vengeance. Gretel, like von Westarp's other children, needed to die to prevent the apocalypse; the two Marshes' justice for her is nothing more than personal vengeance, and it makes them less than heroic. What's unfortunate is that it fits with their personalities, so my question is, why should I have any respect for either of them?
I'm no less a fan of Tregillis's work because of this book, but I hope his next novel is less disappointing for not being part of an otherwise very satisfying trilogy.(less)
The good stuff: Martha Wells has always excelled at worldbuilding, and the alternate reality of this book is no exception. It's strongly reminiscent o...moreThe good stuff: Martha Wells has always excelled at worldbuilding, and the alternate reality of this book is no exception. It's strongly reminiscent of H.G. Wells and Jules Verne's stories--obviously, since it's about a world that exists at the center of ours--and I think it's not a stretch to tag it as steampunk, though the substance powering the devices of that reality is aether, not steam. The story's sustained action keeps things moving; it reads very much like a Victorian adventure novel. And I like the "alien" races Wells creates, villainous and not.
The less good stuff: This is supposed to be a young adult novel, and in terms of content, it is, but stylistically, this is closer to being a juvenile novel. I had the hardest time remembering that Emilie was supposed to be 16; she acted and was treated as if she were closer to 12. I normally won't dismiss a book for being something other than what I wanted, but in this case, I think all the signs point to this being supposed to be a true YA title, so I think this is a valid criticism. A novel in this tradition (the Victorian action-adventure novel) is supposed to be light, but this is maybe too light. I enjoyed it well enough, but frankly, I expect more from Martha Wells.(less)
I'm not sure why I've rated this three stars (probably closer to 3.5) because there was a lot I liked about it. I'm very fond of superhero stories, pa...moreI'm not sure why I've rated this three stars (probably closer to 3.5) because there was a lot I liked about it. I'm very fond of superhero stories, particularly ones like this, and I actually liked that the villain's perspective alternated with the hero's perspective. Actually, that's misleading; the "villain" has some sympathetic traits, and the "hero" is a newbie who's just been invited to join the number one super-group in the world. Both of them have doubts about what they're doing, but not in the sense of questioning whether they're right--they simply don't know how they fit into the world.
Grossman has some interesting and clever ideas about supervillains: why are so many of them super-geniuses? Why do they want to take over the world, anyway? which he answers by creating a mental disorder that drives them toward evil, or at any rate a desperate need for control. His heroine, Fatale, is a cyborg who began as an ordinary woman who suffered a hideous accident and was saved only by the process that made her the super tall, super strong, super fast cyborg she is now. Grossman put a lot of thought into what it would be like to recover from such a process, and as I was reading Keeping It Real at the same time, I kept forgetting which cyborg was which--both Robson and Grossman were on the same wavelength, I guess.
It's a good book. It just didn't pull me in the way I thought it should. For all it's an action book, it's also sort of slow--should it be read as a science fiction novel, or a form of literary fiction (of which it has many hallmarks), or something in between? I think I can recommend it to fans of both--i.e. fans who like both science fiction and a more literary style--because I feel it has a lot to offer to the right reader.(less)
This book was kind of a mess. I don't know if it was listening to it instead of reading it that made it also seem very slow, but I think that was an e...moreThis book was kind of a mess. I don't know if it was listening to it instead of reading it that made it also seem very slow, but I think that was an effect of the author changing her mind in midstream. The setting is fascinating--a "quantum event" breaks reality into seven (?) realms, all of them based on some part of Earth mythology (elemental realm, demonic realm, etc.) and makes Earth history fuzzy so people aren't even sure what parts of it are real. The main character is a woman who was made a cyborg after being horrifically tortured, and Robson has also given this a lot of thought, what with Lila's difficulties in adjusting to her new body, how it feels to carry so much weight, even how the joins between her flesh and metal aren't fully integrated yet.
It's the story I couldn't take. It starts as a typical bodyguard scenario, with Lila assigned to guard a famous musician who happens to be an elf. This section feels like a bunch of incidents strung together instead of an actual plot, and Lila ends up unconscious way too often. Zal the elf has had death threats, hence the bodyguard, but instead he's kidnapped and taken to the head of this sort of terrorist group (I apologize for the oversimplification), and Lila has to go into one of the elven realms to get him.
Which is where the science fiction story turns into a kind of fantasy quest. Suddenly there's a lot of care and attention lavished on a side character who turns out to be a main character, and then *another* character is introduced and given more care and attention. The first side character, Dar, is a double agent with the terrorists and happens to be the guy who tortured Lila; the second guy whose name I've forgotten is actually a dead elf from the opposition whose "spirit body" (thanks to the audiobook I can't spell what it actually is) latches on to Lila like a parasite. Lila has very little trouble getting over both of these things, which I find improbable, though I admit Robson does a good job rehabilitating Dar--I just don't think it would be that easy for anyone to be able to trust their torturer. Also, Dar's excuse for why he did it is lame and selfish (he wanted to keep her alive but also establish his cred with the bad guys. Way to be compassionate).
This was the point where I decided I didn't care very much about any of the characters, and stopped reading.
That's right, I started the year by reading something called Assassins in Love, which is a dumb title for a book that turned out to be pretty good. Kr...moreThat's right, I started the year by reading something called Assassins in Love, which is a dumb title for a book that turned out to be pretty good. Kris DeLake is a pseudonym for Kristine Kathryn Rusch, whose Retrieval Artist novels I like very much, and she doesn't put her writing ability aside when she's writing romance novels. Her main characters, Rikki and Misha, are both assassins, though Rikki is an independent who doesn't like organizations, and Misha's been part of the Guild almost his whole life. They meet and are instantly attracted to each other, have lots and lots of great sex, but realize that their attraction goes deeper than that. DeLake is good at characterization and creates a believable history for the two of them, so the book is much more than a vehicle for steamy sex scenes. I particularly like that every time one has cause to mistrust the other, they manage to talk it out rather than letting the misunderstanding drive the plot (almost always tedious and lazy). It's too slight a book to give it more than three stars (actually closer to 3.5) but I'll want to read more in this series.(less)
What a fun book! I read this at just the right time, as I began re-watching classic Star Trek episodes with my son, and it's such a clever story. I pa...moreWhat a fun book! I read this at just the right time, as I began re-watching classic Star Trek episodes with my son, and it's such a clever story. I particularly liked that even though I figured out what was going on early in the book, I had no idea how it was happening and it kept me engaged the whole way through. (I don't get any credit for being clever here, because I never figure out plot twists in advance if they aren't really obvious, and this one isn't. I just had one of those rare flashes of insight that would be far more useful if they involved, say, the stock market.) It also explained why there was only one woman in the team--I started out being a little annoyed by it, right up until I got the joke.
But I think my favorite part was the codas, which brought all of the (view spoiler)[real-world (hide spoiler)] characters into contact with each other. Scalzi did a fantastic job telling three stories that connected in a very satisfying way. Excellent story for fans of Star Trek as well as fans of science fiction.(less)
I really enjoyed this entry in the Vorkosigan Saga, since it's been increasingly clear that Ivan Vorpatril deserves more stage time. Or maybe I mean t...moreI really enjoyed this entry in the Vorkosigan Saga, since it's been increasingly clear that Ivan Vorpatril deserves more stage time. Or maybe I mean that I want him to have more stage time; he's gone from being that-idiot-Ivan to someone you'd want to have around in a crisis, if you can get him to make the commitment. Ivan's an easygoing, competent staff officer who does his job well, not least because it keeps him off-planet and away from his mother and her never-ending plans to get him married. Byerly Vorrutyer's request that Ivan make friends with an offworlder woman named Tej who may be in danger seems like the sort of low-key assignment Ivan likes--and, of course, he's never averse to making friends with attractive women. Unfortunately, this simple task turns into a crazy tangle of assassins, Komarran government officials, and ImpSec agents that results in Ivan's marriage and the subsequent arrival of his many, many inlaws, also fleeing danger and plotting schemes of their own.
Ivan is just a fun main character because he really doesn't want to be involved in this mess, but he can't abandon Tej to her enemies and can't sacrifice his honor. He often reflects on what cousin Miles would do, fully aware that he's not able to be Miles and, much as he'd like to dump the mess on his cousin, he doesn't want to be Miles. The scene in which Ivan and Tej try to get divorced is priceless, and Falco Vorpatril is probably my favorite character in the whole book. Even though his refusal to grant the divorce is almost certainly influenced by Ivan's mother Alys, it's also clear that he is genuinely appalled by Ivan's casual assumptions about promising his name's honor so frivolously. I also like Tej's family as a plot complication, though they're sort of obnoxious as relatives.
The book gets four stars because I'm dissatisfied with how Ivan and Tej's marriage is treated by Ivan (and to some extent by everyone around them). Both of them enter into it out of desperation, and they both intend to get divorced as soon as possible--this is a marriage of convenience. Yet Ivan, once on Barrayar, treats Tej in every way as if she's his wife in truth instead of in name, and his family members behave the same despite being in on the truth. Since the point of the story is to have Ivan really fall in love and want to be married, his attitude gives this narrative less power. I can see them not protesting about not really being married for fear that could reduce the protection Tej gets from it, but internally, Ivan never really thinks of her as anything but his wife. To me, that was dissatisfying, but in every other respect I really enjoyed the book.(less)
It's a romance novel that looks like science fiction but is really a Western/frontier book. No, really. It's light and fluffy and very enjoyable, and...moreIt's a romance novel that looks like science fiction but is really a Western/frontier book. No, really. It's light and fluffy and very enjoyable, and I feel cheerful every time I read it.(less)
It took me a while to warm up to this book. I hate it when well-meaning characters are betrayed by people who want power, but who claim to be acting "...moreIt took me a while to warm up to this book. I hate it when well-meaning characters are betrayed by people who want power, but who claim to be acting "for the greater good." That made the first third of the book unpleasant to me even though I realized what was happening with the humans on Tines World grew naturally out of their situation (the now-adult children, remembering their lives in the highly advanced Straumli Realm, resent being trapped in a medieval world). But then that pattern keeps repeating itself: liars achieve power, selfish people of both races are free to be cruel and violent, and ultimately the worst offender goes unpunished (and continues to stay in power through plausible lies). I kept wanting to smack people.
On the other hand, Vinge successfully develops the alien society described in A Fire upon the Deep, adding another two "kingdoms" to produce a three-sided struggle among the Tines, with the humans having their own society that intermingles with each of the three. The creatures of the Tropics are more fully explained and become an important part of the story. Aside from two short chapters, the novel begins ten years after humans landed on Tines World, and the returning characters act as if it's ten years later, which I admire. There's even a couple of unexpected returns, both of which were satisfying to me.
Much as I enjoyed the book, it suffers from being a rather long interlude in what I think many readers will see as the true story, the eventual arrival of the Blight. Two fluctuations in which Tines World is elevated out of the Unthinking Depths, one of them high enough for the Blight to close the distance rapidly, imply that the next novel (and I have no doubt there will be a next novel) will resolve that story. But if you were expecting this book to be entirely about dealing with the Blight, those two episodes can only be frustrating. In the end, I think its greatest flaw is simply that it isn't A Fire Upon the Deep or A Deepness in the Sky; both were true, space-based science fiction, and this reads more like a medieval/pre-Renaissance historical fiction. Good enough--in some places excellent--but disappointed expectations can ruin even the best story.(less)
I hate it when I read a book that's beautifully written, but has a clumsy plot. I was seduced by the writing while I was reading it, and it wasn't unt...moreI hate it when I read a book that's beautifully written, but has a clumsy plot. I was seduced by the writing while I was reading it, and it wasn't until after I finished that I started realizing how many problems I had with it. In this alternate history/SF world, people's guilt over their mistakes or crimes manifests as animals that are emotionally or psychically attached to them, sort of like having an albatross hung around your neck, except living and not so corpsey. This was interesting to me, since becoming a Zoo is all about feeling guilt and not about whether you're really culpable of whatever you feel guilty about. Zinzi gained her Sloth because her brother died over something she did, which makes sense (her whole background makes sense, even). But she went to prison for it, convicted either of murder or manslaughter, and that doesn't fit at all with her memories of the event. It bugged me that this was never explained, because it made her prison time (an important part of how she's treated in the book) seem irrational.
Mostly I felt like I wasn't getting the right kind of clues about where the story was going. The book starts with one of Zinzi's clients (she specializes in finding lost things) being gruesomely murdered, and because the crime scene is described in such detail, and Zinzi herself is temporarily suspected of doing it, it seems like finding the murderer, or finding out why the woman was killed, is what the plot will be about. But it isn't. The story immediately veers away into a missing-persons' investigation, and then *that's* derailed by a return to the murder, which is important after all. But the murder thing is just a distraction from the missing-person story, which is still the important one, except that it's really a cover for something else. The whole plot felt like it was there to give the beautiful writing a framework to hang on.
And boy, is this beautiful. Beukes is amazing at describing places and characterizing people. Even when I didn't like her characters, and even when I thought their motivations were unrealistic, I was still impressed by how easy it was to envision everything that was going on. One of the most elegant and horrifying moments is when Zinzi and her supplier/employer/loan shark pull an email scam on a sweet, generous couple. Zinzi's job is normally to write the emails, but if a potential victim insists on meeting the orphan/rape victim/lost tribal princess, she has to play that role in person. It was sickening and infuriating not only for what it was, but because Beukes did an amazing job in showing how easy it was for Zinzi and her boss to take advantage of innocents.
Once again I'm not sure how to rate a book like this. I know I gave it way more credit, and stuck with it to the end, because I'm a sucker for really good writing. But that's the same as saying I didn't like the plot. So I'd give it 2.5 stars if I could, but I'll mark it up rather than down.(less)
This book left me terribly conflicted. On the one hand, I love Garth Nix's writing, and I love the worlds and ideas he comes up with. This one is no e...moreThis book left me terribly conflicted. On the one hand, I love Garth Nix's writing, and I love the worlds and ideas he comes up with. This one is no exception. Much as Prince Khemri's arrogance and selfishness is obnoxious, it's also justified by the world he lives in, and ultimately he overcomes it enough to be someone you can cheer for. Khemri's adventures take him through many different places and cultures, all of which interested me (I think inventing new cultures is something Nix is consistently good at). And I was especially fond of Khemri's priest/assassin/babysitter Haddad, who truly has the patience of a saint and a genuine affection for Khemri all out of proportion to how much he deserves it.
So why only two stars? Because so much of the rest of the book dissatisfies me. My general complaint is that I don't feel this has the same polish, the same unity, that has distinguished Nix's other books. The plot seems disjointed, as though individual moments (Khemri's military service, his time in the training habitats, etc.) are connected the way a set of independently-published stories might be fitted into a frame novel; they're related, but they don't flow together. Also, the narrative is Khemri's first-person story, something he's telling after all the events of the novel have passed, and it often slips into a dull "here's what happened, and then this happened" voice that kept me somewhat alienated from the novel.
More specifically, while I could see that Khemri's personality at the end was a possible outgrowth of his personality at the beginning, he didn't always learn from his experiences the lessons he should have. Example: Khemri's sent to a set of four artificial environments to learn important survival skills, including humility. He quickly discovers that his arrogant assumptions of privilege will get his teeth kicked in by regular folks. It's *stated* in his narrative that he learned that ordinary humans (Princes are genetically enhanced for strength, intelligence, what have you) are deserving of respect and aren't just inferiors to be ordered around. Yet in his very next "mission," he goes back to acting as though he'd never learned that lesson. (It apparently takes the magic of sex to make this lesson permanent.) Ultimately, I liked the Khemri at the end of the book despite his character transformation and not because of it.
But this is just nit-picking by comparison to what really bugged me: Am I the only person who was seriously disturbed at the idea of mind-programmed humans serving the Princes? They're mentioned only briefly near the beginning, something Khemri takes for granted, so my first thought was that their introduction was to show Khemri being a self-absorbed jerk. The next time, I wondered if these were people who'd volunteered for the position, and thus they'd chosen to give up their free will. But no, when Khemri starts considering bringing someone he cares about back to the Empire so they can stay together, he remembers that she'd have to be mind-programmed for obedience and that this would be required of her. And yeah, it turns them into slaves with no will of their own, effectively killing the person they once were. At no time is it ever suggested that turning people into robots--robots who, among other things, may become sex toys for Princes--is a bad thing on a universal scale; it's wrong only so far as individuals Khemri cares about are concerned. Khemri's newfound respect for non-augmented people doesn't seem to extend far enough to even wonder where mind-programmed servants come from. While I'm not faulting the book for not being about Khemri freeing the slaves, I am faulting it for not even subtextually suggesting that this practice is evil.
Boneyards picks up five years after the conclusion of City of Ruins, but the plot doesn't suffer for it. Rusch handles the inevitable changes in the c...moreBoneyards picks up five years after the conclusion of City of Ruins, but the plot doesn't suffer for it. Rusch handles the inevitable changes in the characters over such a length of time, mainly because so much of it was set up in the previous book--did anyone not realize that Boss and Coop were going to end up together? Boss's team and the crew of the Ivoire have spent the last five years searching for some remnant of the civilization Coop and his crew left behind, five thousand years in the past, and constant failure has taken its toll on everyone. Rather than continue to search for still-active planet-based stations the Ivoire might use to get home, they decide to look to the stars--to seek out ancient starbases that might still have power, and possibly learn why so much of what they've found looks like it was destroyed in war.
The primary storyline is as compelling as the last, with Coop's increasing irrationality as he faces the reality that he and his crew are never going home providing interesting conflicts with Boss. There's more exploration of the Nine Planets worlds and systems and a return to the Room of Lost Souls, and the ending is tense and, as before, has a lack of resolution that makes you eager to see what happens next.
It's the secondary plot that I found most interesting, in which Squishy (a long-time friend of Boss's who was an important part of the first book) organizes a plan, without Boss's approval or help, to destroy the Empire's "stealth tech" research. Her execution of said plan alternates with scenes from Squishy's past that explain a lot about why she got involved in stealth tech in the first place, and what happened to make her so violently opposed to it. My problem is that Squishy was such a thoroughly unpleasant character in the first book, with her irrational and unexplained refusal to help Boss investigate the stealth tech in the first Dignity Vessel, that at first it felt like an attempt at rehabilitating her character. We learn, for example, that Squishy's absolute recalcitrance was because of a loyalty oath she'd sworn to the Empire when she first started working for them on stealth tech. That makes no sense to me. Keeping to an oath when you've already abandoned your committments, fled the Empire, given up completely on the research? When your silence is going to cost *more* lives? Not convincing. It seemed from the way Squishy's story was told that I wasn't supposed to have reacted to her in Diving Into the Wreck the way I did, that she wasn't intended to be so unpleasant, but it just didn't work for me. Despite this, I really enjoyed and admired the way past and present worked together; Rusch played out the revelations from the past at exactly the right pace.
I am even more eager to see what happens next than I was with the last book, which promises not only new discoveries, but new conflicts both with the Empire (thanks to Squishy) and with new forces (thanks to Boss and Coop).(less)
This sequel to Diving Into the Wreck feels very different, and while I wouldn't say it's a better book, I do think it's more suited to an ongoing seri...moreThis sequel to Diving Into the Wreck feels very different, and while I wouldn't say it's a better book, I do think it's more suited to an ongoing series. Where Diving Into the Wreck was a thriller, City of Ruins is science-fiction adventure at its finest.
A few years after Boss (and now it's established that this isn't her name, but a title) and her team discover stealth tech, she's established an organization dedicated to finding Dignity Vessels and securing them so the Empire (which is trying to recreate stealth tech to help them take over the galaxy mwahahaha) can't get them. One of Boss's researchers has found what she believes is a sign of stealth tech; the problem is, it's on a planet, not in space. Boss investigates reluctantly, but she and her team soon discover that what's under the surface of this planet is worth far more than all the ships they've found to date.
This feels a lot less bleak than the first one, as though there's hope for a better future instead of inevitable pain and death. It's a little annoying that the characters only fall into two categories: people who agree with/are admired by Boss, who are worth admiring; and people who oppose Boss, who are greedy, selfish, arrogant, whiny, or some combination of the above. I like the parallel storyline, with Boss's investigation alternating with (view spoiler)[the experiences of the Ivoire's crew from the far past (hide spoiler)] (I won't say much about the plot, because I enjoyed working out what was happening as it happened). And unlike the first volume, this ending leaves a lot of room for future adventures and made me look forward to reading more.(less)
I liked parts of this more than others--typical for a book of short stories, but atypical for one that's a lot closer to being a cohesive novel than,...moreI liked parts of this more than others--typical for a book of short stories, but atypical for one that's a lot closer to being a cohesive novel than, say, The Martian Chronicles. I actually enjoy the contrast between how SF authors of the 1950s imagined the future and how it really worked out, and I, Robot is great for that. There's a lot more humanity in these stories than I expected, though having read many of Asimov's other works, I don't know why I was surprised. Susan Calvin is a remarkable character for the time, even if her portrayal draws attention to certain stereotypes about brilliant science-minded women being plain and spinsterish. On the other hand, isn't the gorgeous, brilliant, sexually-available woman just as much a stereotype of the time?
(I saw the movie that happens to share the book's title before I read the book, but I knew there was very little of the book in the movie. Now that I've read it, I really have to wonder why somebody didn't just make a movie of The Caves of Steel, because Will Smith was obviously playing some variation on Lije Baley.)(less)
**spoiler alert** I really wanted to like this book. Turns out I liked parts of it. The idea of millions of Earths branching out from ours--a variatio...more**spoiler alert** I really wanted to like this book. Turns out I liked parts of it. The idea of millions of Earths branching out from ours--a variation on different choices creating different realities--is pretty cool, as is the mechanism by which people reach them. Pratchett and Baxter gave a lot of thought to how the Earth might have developed differently under different circumstances, such as the lack of a moon altering tides and climate or even failing to deflect large asteroids from the planet. I also liked the vignettes interspersed with the main plot, about how the discovery of Stepping affected ordinary people. The characters were charming and the aliens were interesting, if not particularly original.
Unfortunately, what should have been the high point of the story fell flat. The mystery of who or what they're going to find at the far end of the Long Earth grows increasingly suspenseful--and then the answer is...sort of blah. The reason for the disaster that's driving the aliens inward toward our Earth, the origin Earth, is in fact disastrous, but doesn't feel disastrous--and it's dispensed with too easily, no sacrifice (literally none, as the last sentence of the book proves) and no payoff.
I was more dissatified with the social ramifications the authors believed would arise from this situation:
1. Supposedly, Stepping off to new and untamed wildernesses means the economy of Datum Earth (the main world) would start to collapse. That's sort of true in the sense that if you remove enough of any vital material from an economy, it will destabilize. But the historical example of the depopulation that happened because of the Plague in the 14th century says that not only will the economy restabilize, it can do so in a way that improves the lives of the survivors. Since it's impossible to bring anything made of iron into the other Earths, the people who stay behind get to keep all the resources of civilization. And since the authors also argue that violence and crime are almost entirely caused by overpopulation, wouldn't that mean that Datum Earth would see a similar drop in crime when the poverty-stricken rise out of poverty?
2. Except I don't actually buy the whole "crime is caused by competition for resources" thing. People kill for a lot of reasons that don't have anything to do with theft, and even if you look at one person killing another to take the second person's mate as competition for resources, it only takes three people for that to happen. The utopian settlements of the Long Earth come off, to me, as more of a social statement than a realistic possibility--a given outcome, based on assumptions that they didn't try to prove.
Overall, it was enjoyable once, but not a book I'd want to read again.(less)
I don't think I appreciated Christopher Golden's contribution to the Hellboy series until I read this--an unrelated, illustrated novel, but one that c...moreI don't think I appreciated Christopher Golden's contribution to the Hellboy series until I read this--an unrelated, illustrated novel, but one that clearly shows how Mignola and Golden make a good creative team. It felt a little too much like a movie for me to fully enjoy it as a book, but it's a good story in a dramatic setting, and I liked it very much.(less)
I went into this knowing that it was a very early example of steampunk fiction, so if the science/steampunkiness was lacking, I wasn't going to mark i...moreI went into this knowing that it was a very early example of steampunk fiction, so if the science/steampunkiness was lacking, I wasn't going to mark it down for that. And it turned out that the science/steampunkiness was very good! Lots of clockwork things and people, and you can tell that Jeter came out of the same primordial puddle as Tim Powers. The plot was also pretty good. It was the characters that killed it for me.
Basically, the hero, George, is a gormless panty-waisted wuss of the first order, complete with spine of jelly and brain of pudding. He spends most of the book stumbling into all sorts of trouble because he can't learn from the past. I can understand him being out of his depth at first, but he continues to be confused and useless whenever something weird happens. I was also frustrated that his adventure was a long series of misunderstandings in which he could never explain the truth. When it happens to Bertie Wooster, it's funny, because Bertie at least tries to act on his own initiative, but George is just as dumb as a bag of hammers. And this is more or less the entirety of the story--George stumbles into a situation in which he is either accused of something he didn't do, or is manipulated by someone else, and hilarity doesn't ensue.
There's a bit of authorial manipulation near the end, when we learn (view spoiler)[that Sir Charles, who's been a major antagonist for most of the book, is actually one of the good guys. In at least two instances, if he'd really been a good guy, he would have behaved very differently than he did, but then we couldn't have had the big reveal at the end. I don't have any respect for this kind of story manipulation. (hide spoiler)]. Between this and George's complete wussiness, I couldn't enjoy the book, though I'm not enough turned off that I won't read any of Jeter's other books if I happen upon them.(less)
I really wish I was connecting with this series better. I like the setting a lot, and the alternate history is very well thought out. But even though...moreI really wish I was connecting with this series better. I like the setting a lot, and the alternate history is very well thought out. But even though the characters are well-rounded, I have trouble caring about them, and I feel like I should. It's like I enjoy the concept of these characters--brothel madam, her former lover-slash-air pilot, the Texas Ranger who showed up in the previous book...actually, I think I like him a lot. In general, this seems like a mismatch with the reader rather than a criticism of the book. Four stars for the setting and craft, three for not liking the characters, and I'm rounding up because I admire what Priest is doing here.(less)
Kristine Kathryn Rusch's books fill a very specific niche in my reading--serious SF, a little bleak, with some fascinating explorations of alien minds...moreKristine Kathryn Rusch's books fill a very specific niche in my reading--serious SF, a little bleak, with some fascinating explorations of alien mindsets. In this case, it's not so much aliens as humans she's exploring, but the central idea is that some humans can think and do things that might as well be alien to everyone else. This novel was constructed from two stories Rusch published in Asimov's, but you can't see the seams. (I think Rusch is a far better short story writer than novelist, and since she's an excellent novelist, you can just imagine how incredible her short fiction is. My point is that I feel she has such a handle on her stories that she understands how they might fit together and how they need to be joined.) The idea is that this woman--her name becomes Boss in the second and third sections, but it looks like just a title in the first, so I don't know what the deal is--leads teams of "divers" into wrecked and abandoned spaceships, just as 21st century explorers might search the ocean depths for treasure. Except Boss cares more about the historical sites, so when she comes across an impossible derelict, she can't pass up the opportunity. Unfortunately for her and her crew, there's something else on that ship that's been forgotten for five thousand years, and once they've found it, there's no way to hide it again.
I get seriously creeped out by underwater stories. You can't see far enough ahead of you, and all sorts of things could be lurking down there. This felt exactly like they were diving in an actual ocean; Rusch puts limitations on her technology that are a lot shorter than we usually see in SF, so the divers have barely an hour to explore on each trip, and getting stuck in a wreck can have deadly consequences. She also plays out the discovery of the ancient artifact (you thought it was an alien creature from what I wrote above, huh? That was on purpose) slowly, so the book also reads like a thriller, possibly by the bastard child of Michael Crichton and Dean Koontz. Despite the fact that they're dealing with a mysterious thing, it sometimes seems alive, probably because it has such terrifying powers.
There's a small problem with the transition between the first and second parts of the book, because the story in first section is self-contained, and the second seems to be about something entirely different. It takes a little while for the two stories to connect, but after they do, the transition, in retrospect, doesn't seem so abrupt. Most of what dissatisfied me about the book had to do with the ending. It's a little "rah rah let's all devote our lives to stamping out this evil" and sort of melodramatic. The book did a good job of establishing how serious a threat this technology could be and how hard it would be to stamp it out, so we didn't need Boss reflecting on how the quest was going to consume her whole life but she had to for the sake of humanity and her dead friends.
I'd recommend this book to readers who like their science fiction to fall somewhere between hard SF a la Niven and Pournelle and more character-driven SF like by Moon or possibly Bujold. Also to readers who like a bleak perspective on a future society; some of Rusch's stories could have been written by Thomas Hardy, if he'd lived a century later and didn't like Wessex so much.(less)
When I reviewed (elsewhere) Kitty and the Dead Man's Hand last year, I said I felt Carrie Vaughn was writing down to her audience just a little--that...moreWhen I reviewed (elsewhere) Kitty and the Dead Man's Hand last year, I said I felt Carrie Vaughn was writing down to her audience just a little--that she had more literary ability in her than was on display in that book, or series. (Don't misunderstand; I like the Kitty Norville series a lot and I think it's one of the best in the urban fantasy subgenre. There are just moments where Vaughn makes comments, either as narrator or in dialogue, that are a lot more intellectually elevated than everything around them.) I think After the Golden Age proves that theory. In description, dialogue, and even plot, it's more mature than Vaughn's earlier works, and I'm glad to see her doing something beyond just the one series.
The main character, Celia West, is the child of two powerful superheroes, and ones whose civilian identity is known to everyone. Celia, a completely non-super-powered person, pays the price for this by being easy prey for anyone who wants to challenge her parents. So she's been kidnapped who knows how many times since she was in her late teens, which makes it nearly impossible for her to establish her own identity. The return of the Destructor, her personal nemesis as well as the most terrible villain her parents ever defeated, forces her to actually confront her parents, her past, her identity, and her choices for the future.
There's a strong similarity to the movies Sky High and The Incredibles here--Celia's relationship with her parents echoes the first movie, and the difficulty of juggling private and public identities reflects the second. If After the Golden Age seemed slightly inferior to these, I think it's just because superheroic stories benefit so much from a visual component. I loved the superheroes Vaughn invented--she definitely gave them and their powers a lot of thought, pros and cons both. I also liked that there were all these superheroes running around the city and they didn't all know each other's secret identities. Celia's having grown up around masked avengers makes her able to spot the hero Typhoon when she's out of costume, and they end up becoming good friends, which leads to some awkward moments when she encounters Celia's parents--she knows who they are, they don't know who she is, she wants to maintain her identity, etc. And despite being a little put off by his name, I liked Arthur Mentis a lot. (Seriously. He's a telepath and his name happens to be Mentis? His family name, not his superhero handle?) He's sweet and patient and very much in control of his ability, despite its being a handicap to developing close relationships with anyone.
One of the more off-putting story elements was Celia's relationship with her mercurial and super-strong father. It's realistic that they butt heads all the time because they're so much alike, but it always felt as if there was some deeper reason for her father's attitude towards her. There was at least one moment where her father came close to losing his temper, and Celia cringed; to me, that read like the behavior of an abuse victim, and implied some event in the past that put all of that into perspective. But there wasn't. Toward the end, there's a short flashback where we see her father reading all sorts of meanings into everything his baby does: will she have super strength, flight, heat vision...and of course we know that she never gets any of those things, so it's implied that his disappointment about that spilled over into disappointment with her--but that makes him an extremely unsympathetic character. I also wasn't satisfied with the ending, which wrapped up all the loose ends in the span of one chapter. It felt rushed, and it felt like Vaughn was deliberately cutting off any possibility of writing a sequel. But to me, the book already felt like a complete story, not one that needed a second or even third volume, so that final chapter seemed heavy-handed.
There's a scene near the middle of the action--the turning point of Celia's story, really--in which she meets the now-retired Hawk, a superhero in the Batman mode who was the first of the "vigilante" costumed heroes. Celia tells him that she can't go out and stop the Destructor's plan because she's not like her parents, she doesn't have superpowers. He tells her, "Neither did I." After the Golden Age isn't just about the super-powered heroes; Celia West stands for all those ordinary people who put on the costume anyway.(less)
I had a hard time deciding how to rate this. Cherie Priest has a beautiful writing style and her alternate-history world interests me. I especially li...moreI had a hard time deciding how to rate this. Cherie Priest has a beautiful writing style and her alternate-history world interests me. I especially like the idea that the Civil War has stretched on for twenty-plus years, with all its implications. Mercy, the protagonist, is a Confederate nurse whose husband died in Andersonville (a Confederate POW camp for Union soldiers), and her perspective of the Union as the wrong side makes for a great story. "Wrong side," not "bad guys," because there are plenty of good guys on both sides of the divide. The story of the rotters, begun in Boneshaker, expands beyond Seattle as a division of Mexican soldiers goes missing in northern Texas, only to reappear as a growing horde of ravenous undead. The scene where the rotters attack the train Mercy is traveling on is deliciously horrible and creepy. Priest's skill with description and world-building is superb, as usual.
On the other hand, this felt very much like a string of events rather than a real plot. Mercy has to travel from Richmond, Virginia, to Seattle in Washington Territory, to answer her estranged father's plea for her presence. That's a lot of ground to cover when you can't fly there directly, and the changing war front means the route is even more circuitous than usual. But the story doesn't really begin until Mercy boards the war-engine Dreadnought, which happens more than a third of the way through; her earlier journey is a series of stops and short journeys by dirigible and train, providing color and background but nothing in terms of plot development. In most other books, this would have been tedious; I like Priest's writing enough that I was willing to stick with it, and the rest of the book made up for any flaws in the beginning.(less)
I'm always in the mood for a good alternate-history novel, and one with steampunk underpinnings is even better. Sixteen years ago, in Washington Terri...moreI'm always in the mood for a good alternate-history novel, and one with steampunk underpinnings is even better. Sixteen years ago, in Washington Territory, possibly-mad scientist Leviticus Blue built a machine to break the Alaskan ice to reach the gold underneath. Instead, the Boneshaker tore Seattle apart and ruptured some underground seam that began leaking poisonous, heavy yellow gas. The gas can kill you, but what's worse is that it doesn't let you stay dead. The survivors built an enormous wall around most of downtown Seattle to keep the undead, and the gas, at bay, but life on the frontier didn't get any easier. It's worse for Briar Wilkes, Blue's widow, and her son Ezekiel (Zeke), born after Blue's death; many believe Blue's disaster was intentional, and Briar was (and is) suspected of complicity. Zeke has never believed it, and sneaks into the walled-off city to prove it, and Briar has to follow to get him back alive.
I love that this is a story about a mother and son and their relationship. Through most of the book, chapters alternate between Briar's and Zeke's point of view, and Priest handles the alternating viewpoints very well. I never felt impatient at being forced to sit through one person's part of the story when I wanted to see what the other was doing. All the secondary characters were interesting, too; I liked it when someone from the beginning of the story showed up later, especially Andan Cly and the Princess. It's also a very exciting story, mostly because the zombies ("rotters") crank up the tension as Briar and Zeke try to find their answers. The rotters are your basic nouveau zombies, super-fast and super-strong, but the story isn't about them, so they don't need to be innovative. The scenes where Briar or Zeke are running away from them are very tense.
The plot is well-defined and well-paced, so it's a good story, but I think what makes it excellent is Priest's worldbuilding. She's changed a number of historical details (the Civil War has lasted for 20 years and is still going on; gold was discovered much earlier, so settlement and development are accelerated) to support the story she wants to tell, but she's given a lot of thought to the rationale for and the consequences of those changes. The Civil War, for example, has lasted so long because the South has railroads and an infrastructure that better supports their military. And the scenes in Seattle are simply creepy; it's like late-Victorian London with its pea-souper fogs, with dozens of Rippers around every corner. The descriptions are evocative enough that I'd have liked it even if the characters and story weren't as good as they are. Excellent beginning to a series.(less)
I had high hopes for this book; the premise is a clever take on the alien-abduction story, and though I was familiar with Mark Teague mainly as an ill...moreI had high hopes for this book; the premise is a clever take on the alien-abduction story, and though I was familiar with Mark Teague mainly as an illustrator of children's books, his collaborations have been good enough that I was willing to take a chance on this. Unfortunately, the concept isn't well supported by the execution. The third-person narrative veers between omniscient and limited in a way that comes across as awkward, as does the shifting POV, and some of the descriptions come across as too self-consciously clever. The pacing between sections is also irregular, as if Teague is rushing through one to get to another. I'm pretty sure this is intended to be a middle-grade novel, and the characterization bears this out; these are mostly stock characters, but with enough alterations that they don't seem like stereotypes (the smart science-kid is a black girl, the hero is tough and good-hearted, but also a redneck). On the other hand, some of the plot elements are harsh enough that they don't seem to fit. Example: the aliens are spider-like, carnivorous, and obsessed with food, and the human characters always have the threat of death hanging over them. That's all fine, but the alien captain is just a little *too* vicious and violent, the hero's Uncle Bud is maybe just a bit too selfish (the kind of selfish that gets other people killed)...it all seems just a little off to me. Ultimately, when I realized that I not only hadn't picked up the book for several days, but couldn't remember where I'd left it, I decided it was time to give it up.(less)
I couldn't believe how much I liked this book. I thought it would be your typical early-20th-century Anglocentric sexist thinly-veiled allegory of Wes...moreI couldn't believe how much I liked this book. I thought it would be your typical early-20th-century Anglocentric sexist thinly-veiled allegory of Western cultural dominance. Then I got over myself. Like H. Rider Haggard (a near-contemporary of Burroughs, and probably a more direct influence on the Barsoom novels than Jules Verne or H.G. Wells) Edgar Rice Burroughs has some attitudes that modern readers find uncomfortable, but in the context of his time, he's a remarkably liberal thinker.
John Carter is strong but generous of spirit, a powerful warrior but respectful of women, a staunch defender of what he believes to be right, and completely aware of his weaknesses instead of pretending they don't exist. I think his personality is best defined by how he becomes a "chieftain" among the green Martians totally by accident. Among the Martians, status is gained by killing other warriors, usually only for that purpose; John Carter kills to defend himself and then others, completely unaware of how green Martian society works, but doesn't change his behavior once he learns the truth--even though gaining status would help both him and Dejah Thoris, the titular princess. His falling in love with her is so sweet--there's something very touching about a strong man who's completely at a loss before the woman he loves.
Burroughs's world building is at times inconsistent, but since this novel was originally published serially, it's not surprising that he changed his mind about stuff between issues. It was incredibly easy to lose myself in the story, and the only thing I couldn't quite believe was that John Carter was able to control his physical urges even though he and Dejah Thoris were naked the whole time. Seriously? I could buy Dejah Thoris being unaffected on the grounds that it's how her people live, but a red-blooded Virginia boy? Who came from a time when women showed almost no skin below the neckline? Maybe that makes Burroughs even more of a liberal thinker than I thought.(less)
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