Genius Squad
by Cathering Jinks
This is the sequel to Evil Genius, and it sadly failed to improve on its predecessor. The plot moves slowly, the characters are only sometimes interesting, the conflicts feel contrived, the villians are practically bas-relief, and the books are far, far, far too thick for the story they contain.
This book took nearly six months to finish reading, despite a strong desire to get it out of the way, so more interesting books could be started. It never quite got to the point of uttering the eight deadly words, but it was a near thing.
I would not inflict this book on a child; it is the sort of book that would
drive a child to abandon reading entirely, in favor of more intellectually
stimulating entertainment, such as daytime television.
posted at: 10:12 | path: | permanent link to this entry
Empire
by Orson Scott Card
It's clear that the political divisiveness in American culture bothers Mr. Card; the afterword lays out his viewpoint pretty clearly, and for what it's worth, he's right.
Both sides do engage in unapologetic vicious rhetoric; to disagree is not just to be wrong, but to be evil.
Supposedly, that's one of the points of this book. And you can see the attempt being made, as if the author believed the point intellectually, but was emotionally grounded in one of those extremes. I wouldn't have believed that Mr. Card had written this book, had his name not been on the cover.
Perhaps Mr. Card is more clever than I give him credit for. The book reads like those dreadful "military thriller" pulp novels I encountered in my youth, so perhaps adopting the tone and attitude of those terrible novels, he's appealing to that market.... but that seems a bit subtle.
This is not a subtle book.
The president (obviously GW Bush) is assassinated. He was loved by all the right-thinking people in the book, so obviously the crazy Left did it. But no! Our Hero is married to a Democrat, so that's not a reasonable assumption! And it turns out that ... the crazy Left did it.
Perhaps it's just that the doubts about the elections were dismissed out of hand by authorial fiat, given that my personal viewpoint is that an election with such irregularities is fundamentally untrustworthy to the point that the only legitimate thing to do is to do is to vote again.
Not even the supposedly Democratic wife of Our Hero was bothered with such things, and that's probably where my suspension of disbelief utterly collapsed.
Mr. Card is to be admired for attempting this story. And he certainly is a more accomplished story-teller than many others. I just don't think he quite managed to pull it off. I have it in hardcover, but I wish I would have waited for the mass-market paperback.
The best part of the book is the afterword.
The rest? Don't bother unless you're playing the game.
Zoe's Tale
by John Scalzi
An overlapping telling of The Last Colony from Zoe's point of view. A fairly engrossing read, and it's fun to see what some of those mysterious events were from the other side of the story.
Recommended.
On The Edge: The Spectacular Rise and Fall of Commodore
by Brian Bagnall
This book is a must-read for anyone interested in the history of computers or in technological businesses; further, it ought to be read by anyone who owns an IBM or Apple, as a sort of antidote for the revisionism that they've always been fed.
Brian details the history of Commodore and its impact on the industry, and brings to light the many personalities involved in the company over the years. The history shows clearly that sustianed incompetent management is what killed the company.
The one big problem with the book is that it consistently uses the possessive endings for words ("'s") when what was clearly meant was the plural. I would not recommend buying this book without first checking to ensure that this sort of widespread error doesn't drive you batty. Borrow it from a friend or from the library instead.
Old Man's War series
by John Scalzi
This trilogy is made up of Old Man's War, The Ghost Bridgades, and The Last Colony. It's a fun story about aliens, space travel, augmentation, genetic engineering, consciousness, and the problem of power.
I was given the first book (Old Man's War) as a used paperback; I bought the last book (The Last Colony) has hardcover. Consequently, this trilogy is never going to fit on my shelf unless Scalzi decides to release an omnibus edition at some point in time.
A good engrossing read. Recommended.
Spaceman Blues
by Brian Francis Slattery
In a word: Abysmal.
Only the blessedly short length of this book kept it from my "Abandoned" list, and upon completion, I read the praise on the back cover... and realized I should have done this first.
This book is there compared to Pynchon, and indeed, it has that same flavor: that taste of impending story any page now, never realized, never delivered. Like Pynchon, the prose is florid, and essentially meaningless; like Pynchon, the characters are developed to the point of being lifeless caricatures, the motivations unbelievable, the speech incomprehensible, the personalities unlikable; like Pynchon, this book did not satisfy.
My fault, really. I should have thrown it away at the start of the second chapter, third at the latest. Instead, like a literary colic, it blocked my reading queue, displacing no doubt better books.
This book will be discarded, given away, donated... it will only temporarily take up valuable shelf space in my library. I am immensely glad I did not get this book in hardcover. I would not recommend this book to any, except those few who have read, and enjoyed, Pynchon. For those who like that sort of thing, they'll probably love this book.
But not I.
The Lies of Locke Lamora
By Scott Lynch
This is the story about a master-thief and his grand caper. It's set in a medievaloid world with SF frosting (ancient aliens, "fuck" used as an adjective, etc.), and is padded out to 500 pages by intermixing the tedious main story with a slightly-less tedious (most of the time) backstory in "interludes".
I only got fifty pages into the book before I gave up the linear approach, and started skipping ahead to read just the "interludes". Every so often I'd dip in to the main story again, and verify that yes, it was still tedious.
When I finally got to the end, I just didn't care about The Grand Caper enough to bother with going back and reading the rest of the story.
So it goes on the "Abandoned" list, not the completed.
Which is a pity, because the book came with high recommendations. And it's a hardcover, too, so it sucks up valuable shelf space.
Would I read another book by this author?
Maybe. But if it's another 500 page monstrosity, not so much, and almost
certainly not as a hardcover. Ah well. . .
posted at: 00:56 | path: | permanent link to this entry
Proven Guilty
by Jim Butcher
I do like Jim Butcher. He's consistently good. He tells a gripping tale.
And I really love his Dresden Files series... Highly recommended. But
start at the beginning.
posted at: 06:09 | path: | permanent link to this entry
The Gap Series
by Stephen R. Donaldson
I first picked up The Gap Into Conflict: The Real Story years ago, and found the concept quite interesting: the same sequence of events could be interpreted in so many plausible ways. I did not manage to pick up the rest of the series as it was published (in part because I don't much care to read series like that... I like standalone novels with a common world-view far more than multi-volume series).
But I picked up the whole stack in paperpack when I found it on the shelf at my local bookstore. And then I had some time, so I read it.
I'm pretty sure I'm not going to reread it.
I never got to the point of saying the eight deadly words, but I was never very far away from doing so. Mostly, I found this series discomfiting because the characters are nasty, selfish, and cowardly monsters, freaks, and victims. They are practically forced into saving humanity against their will, and they often behave in ways I find quite incomprehensible.
No doubt, this all all by design.
I think perhaps the curtain was twitched aside a bit too much. The books are long, and quite a lot of the prose is dedicated to telling the reader how confused, shamed, frightened, angry, etc. the character is. In other words, B-O-R-I-N-G. It reminded me of Lovecraft, rather -- spending that much effort telling me what I'm supposed to be feeling kinda keeps me from actually feeling that way.
I find this a bit discomfiting. Donaldson's Thomas Covenant series had some of the same features -- namely, characters who end up preoccupied with introspective self-abuse that is terribly boring to read about -- but I've reread many of that series. And, as I said above, I'm not likely to reread this series.
Can't say I'd recommend this series to anyone. It's too depressing.
posted at: 08:33 | path: | permanent link to this entry
A Dirty Job
by Christopher Moore
Moore is great. This one is worth reading just for the metaphysics.
Recommended.
posted at: 07:00 | path: | permanent link to this entry