Joey Anderson > Recent Status Updates

While the novel has a serious side that a group of planets that depend on an interstellar phenomenon known as the Flow in which to communicate and to trade is transforming and will soon isolate these planets from each other, it also has a quite comic tone that derives from the sarcastic nature of the characters. Some characters simply cannot swear enough. Entertaining parallels to today's politics and society.

James is quite the stylist, but the plot is becoming quite flat. More of a middle-aged man's limp-wristed grasping for an impossible romance than anything else. The situation of an infertile human race facing extinction doesn't seem much more than people just getting old. The Grim Reaper is more frightening to the young, who have not lived, than to the aged who have.

Directed through an Eastern-European gallery of exile and autobiography, I experience what it means when there is no home in which to return. The characters experience their uprooted lives in Berlin, London, and America during the Croatian-Serbian civil war of the 1990's. What do you do when you can't go home?

Completely different from what I had expected. So far, instead of a science fiction narrative of a long and protracted apocalypse (humans become infertile in the 1990's), Theodore Faron's autobiography demonstrates how each one of us suffers his own separate extinction. James' style is luxurious and impeccable.

This delightful new novel has quite exceeded my expectations. As soon as one acclimates to the style, a blending of 17th through 19th literary language with a touch of modern British slang. The future world the author presents is one of a combination of railroads built upon sea and land. The main character desires to know what lies beyond Railsea as do other young people his age.

A time travel romance that not only produces the transfer in time through psychological suggestion and not a mechanical device, but presents a young man, with a terminal disease, who falls obsessively in love with a woman through her photograph. The thrill of RIchard Collier's idealistic quest shows that romance has not disappeared in our very unromantic age.

After a great start, the novel has started to fizzle a bit as the narrator runs over the same ground, but through different perspectives. We also discover who Arch's killer was, which is a surprise.

Think of this: what if General Lee came into possession of AK-47s in 1864?

Ignatius cannot but help get himself into trouble, and he receives support from no one. Even his mother, goaded by others, plots against him. The consequences of the Levy letter begin to mount. The travails of a "medieval" hot dog vendor.

Still good as Ignatius allows his imagination to get the better of him as he assumes one role after another before being grounded again in the reality of living with his mother. The side stories continue to delight, especially Mr Levy's.

Pretty good book. Nice blend of humor and melancholy. I like that the novel does not view the characters as inferior as he works in this low comedic mode.

In Book Two, the fallen angels come to their senses and know they cannot defeat God or regain the peace of Heaven. They can only hurt him by tempting humans, his grand creation, to fall and join the fallen ones in Hell.

Samuel Clemens speaks truth even in this alternative universe:

“Sam …” Herndon’s voice was plaintive. “Why do we have such a pack of confounded dunderheads running this country?”

“My theory used to be that we get the government we deserve,” Sam said. “Bad as we are, though, I don’t think we’re that bad. Right now, I’m taking a long look at the notion that God hates us.”

Hmmm.

After being expelled from heaven, Satan and his minions pursue their grand self-deception that the can regain heaven.

Custer wants to hang Lincoln. Pope wants to exterminate the Mormons. Samuel Clemens is arrested for suspicion of being a Confederate spy.

This novel gets better and better. One of the best I've read this year.

I would never have thought that I would identify with Hungarian characters, but I have. The novel is quite good in showing how a person can become alienated from their family members and their childhood homes simply through the process of education.

In Niarela, be careful what you wish for. Especially if you desire to become a white aristocrat. Yacine, who has always rejected her Senegalese heritage, is granted her sinister wish.

More stories about the French colonial administrators and their relations with Ndimboye.

Poor Abe Lincoln becomes trapped in Salt Lake City.

The Second War Between The States begins when the CSA purchases Sonora and Chihuahua from Mexico. What is interesting is that Turtledove has incorporated the historical figures of Lincoln, Clemens, Custer, Jackson, and Stuart into the narrative. Longstreet is the President of the CSA who plans on emancipating the slaves to save his country since technology will render the economics of slavery obsolete.

The fables and myths continue.

Turtledove's novel is an alternative history where the South won the war, where England and France swung their support toward the South, and Lincoln is scorned by many. People call him the Black Republican. Interesting in how outcomes determine attitudes.