Book Foo! 241 special!
Jun. 8th, 2007 10:47 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
newnumber6Finished: The Reality Dysfunction, by Peter F. Hamilton
TRD is the first part a big galactic space opera which involves a freak incident which allows the souls of the dead to come back and start possessing the living. They spread quickly and become a big threat.
I'll start out by mentioning that one of my usual pet peeves about science fiction is where they have something like 'the devil' or, as in this case 'the souls of the damned' as actual facts, without a damn good non-supernatural explanation. So far, there hasn't been one. However, I also can't really claim being surprised - I knew the dead coming back was part of it when I bought the series. Still, I would have liked there to be something that took it out of the realm of 'OMG religion was right all along'. Just my personal tastes.
Still, that aside, there are a fair number of cool ideas and I like the Edenism culture described. Some of the plot threads, such as the scavengers of the ruin ring and the nearby Tranquility habitat engaged me more than some of the others. Not all that fond of the habits of who is probably the main hero character, but hopefully it's leading towards a shift in character.
I do think the book suffered a little bit from 'too many characters' syndrome. Although many of the main characters I could remember, there were a score of minor characters that I had to think for a while to remember who they were and where they were - the problem compounded by the fact that the narrative switches locales within chapters and sometimes without much of a sign of break. (In the copy I read there was a blank space indicator, but sometimes the shifts happened at the end of a page, which left me turning the page into a new scene and being lost for half a page before I realized they were on a completely other planet). Also compounded by the 'strange name' problem. The Edenist pilots with their sentient ships kept confusing me, I could never remember if strange-name-A was the pilot, or the ship, or the _other_ pilot who was friends with the main pilot, or the other ship that pilot was bound to, or whatever.
Not my favorite big space opera story, but interesting enough to read the rest of the series at least, which I'm doing.
Also Finished: Worlds, by Joe Haldeman
The Worlds are space habitats of varying sizes, but the story mostly focuses on one resident of the Worlds who goes to university on Earth. While she's there, she gets involved in a revolution.
Elements of the story seem a little charmingly dated, what with the Soviet Union still existing, and people writing letters instead of email.
The style of the book also needs to be talked about, because there wasn't really a consistent one. Parts of the book are written in the style of diary entries of the main character on Earth. Parts of it are written first person by that character, but from a perspective long after the events of the story. Parts are letters written by other characters to the main character. Parts are written from some sort of omniscient perspective, but extremely sparse - dialog only, or dialog with only a few descriptions of action (and at least in one case, only one side of the dialog). It felt like the author couldn't make up his mind about how he wanted to write it, so it was harder to just slide into the story and take everything for granted.
I think I enjoyed the diary entries most, though. It's a format I've experimented with in my![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
alternaljournal and I might want to use sometime in my more serious writing. It enables that easy slip-in (even despite the character being very different from me), and allows you to jump in time in natural ways, rather than writing transitions.
All in all, I liked the early parts of the book, but I became less interested as the book went on, perhaps mostly because it went into political stuff I didn't particularly care about or feel connected to, and there weren't enough good ideas to sink my imaginary teeth into to carry me through despite that. I also could have done without the repeated rapes/attempted rapes of the main character for dramatic effect.
The book was okay, but I liked some of Haldeman's other works better.
Started: The Neutronium Alchemist, by Peter F. Hamilton (Wednesdays)
and Next of Kin, by Eric Frank Russell (Fridays and Sundays)
That's the 2nd part of the Night's Dawn trilogy, and a story by an author I've never tried before about a long range galactic recon pilot stranded behind enemy lines.
TRD is the first part a big galactic space opera which involves a freak incident which allows the souls of the dead to come back and start possessing the living. They spread quickly and become a big threat.
I'll start out by mentioning that one of my usual pet peeves about science fiction is where they have something like 'the devil' or, as in this case 'the souls of the damned' as actual facts, without a damn good non-supernatural explanation. So far, there hasn't been one. However, I also can't really claim being surprised - I knew the dead coming back was part of it when I bought the series. Still, I would have liked there to be something that took it out of the realm of 'OMG religion was right all along'. Just my personal tastes.
Still, that aside, there are a fair number of cool ideas and I like the Edenism culture described. Some of the plot threads, such as the scavengers of the ruin ring and the nearby Tranquility habitat engaged me more than some of the others. Not all that fond of the habits of who is probably the main hero character, but hopefully it's leading towards a shift in character.
I do think the book suffered a little bit from 'too many characters' syndrome. Although many of the main characters I could remember, there were a score of minor characters that I had to think for a while to remember who they were and where they were - the problem compounded by the fact that the narrative switches locales within chapters and sometimes without much of a sign of break. (In the copy I read there was a blank space indicator, but sometimes the shifts happened at the end of a page, which left me turning the page into a new scene and being lost for half a page before I realized they were on a completely other planet). Also compounded by the 'strange name' problem. The Edenist pilots with their sentient ships kept confusing me, I could never remember if strange-name-A was the pilot, or the ship, or the _other_ pilot who was friends with the main pilot, or the other ship that pilot was bound to, or whatever.
Not my favorite big space opera story, but interesting enough to read the rest of the series at least, which I'm doing.
Also Finished: Worlds, by Joe Haldeman
The Worlds are space habitats of varying sizes, but the story mostly focuses on one resident of the Worlds who goes to university on Earth. While she's there, she gets involved in a revolution.
Elements of the story seem a little charmingly dated, what with the Soviet Union still existing, and people writing letters instead of email.
The style of the book also needs to be talked about, because there wasn't really a consistent one. Parts of the book are written in the style of diary entries of the main character on Earth. Parts of it are written first person by that character, but from a perspective long after the events of the story. Parts are letters written by other characters to the main character. Parts are written from some sort of omniscient perspective, but extremely sparse - dialog only, or dialog with only a few descriptions of action (and at least in one case, only one side of the dialog). It felt like the author couldn't make up his mind about how he wanted to write it, so it was harder to just slide into the story and take everything for granted.
I think I enjoyed the diary entries most, though. It's a format I've experimented with in my
alternaljournal and I might want to use sometime in my more serious writing. It enables that easy slip-in (even despite the character being very different from me), and allows you to jump in time in natural ways, rather than writing transitions. All in all, I liked the early parts of the book, but I became less interested as the book went on, perhaps mostly because it went into political stuff I didn't particularly care about or feel connected to, and there weren't enough good ideas to sink my imaginary teeth into to carry me through despite that. I also could have done without the repeated rapes/attempted rapes of the main character for dramatic effect.
The book was okay, but I liked some of Haldeman's other works better.
Started: The Neutronium Alchemist, by Peter F. Hamilton (Wednesdays)
and Next of Kin, by Eric Frank Russell (Fridays and Sundays)
That's the 2nd part of the Night's Dawn trilogy, and a story by an author I've never tried before about a long range galactic recon pilot stranded behind enemy lines.
