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newnumber6First, to all the Americans on my flist, I hope you have a Happy Thanksgiving, even if you are celebrating it more than a month late.
Now, Book Foo:
Finished: Axis, by Robert Charles Wilson
Started: The Atrocity Archives, by Charles Stross
Thoughts on Axis behind the cut, not really very spoiler except in vague details (tiny bit spoilery for Spin though). Non-spoilery verdict: Not nearly as good as Spin.
Axis deals with a bunch of people on the world through the portal the Hypotheticals opened up in Spin, and an attempt by some people on that world to build a human with the ability to communicate with them, as well as some mysterious unexplained goings-on.
I loved Spin. Axis was okay, but not nearly as good. There are a number of reasons for this. First, the world of Spin was fairly well defined, by default. It was our world, essentially, just our world where something unexpected happened that changed everything. Here, it's another world connected to Earth and I never really felt we got a good sense of it other than it being a mildly unsettled frontier. The characters felt a good deal more complex and rich in Spin, which might be a result of this - since you already knew the world, you could focus much more on the people within it, and they felt more real. In this one, I never really felt a connection to most of the characters.
Also, the "big mystery" of Spin wasn't so much a 'what', as a 'why'. You could easily wrap your head around what was happening, and what it meant for humanity in general, but you, like everybody else, didn't know why it was happening. In Axis, there are more mysterious goings on, but for much of the book, while you can tell what is happening in terms of what physically is happening, nobody really knows what it means. It's kind of like the difference between it raining acid and it raining miniature oranges. Even if you don't know why it's happening, there's a clear difference. In the first everybody's worried about damage to themselves and the structure and oh my god we're in danger, the second it's just... "WTF?". It wasn't as engaging to me, the reader.
That's not to say the book didn't have enjoyable elements, it's just on the whole it's a bit of a letdown after Spin. It didn't even really feel to me to deliver on the promise from the end of the book of the coolness of the New World.
I'll probably read the third book in the series, Vortex, when it comes out, but I'm not as excited anymore.
Now, Book Foo:
Finished: Axis, by Robert Charles Wilson
Started: The Atrocity Archives, by Charles Stross
Thoughts on Axis behind the cut, not really very spoiler except in vague details (tiny bit spoilery for Spin though). Non-spoilery verdict: Not nearly as good as Spin.
Axis deals with a bunch of people on the world through the portal the Hypotheticals opened up in Spin, and an attempt by some people on that world to build a human with the ability to communicate with them, as well as some mysterious unexplained goings-on.
I loved Spin. Axis was okay, but not nearly as good. There are a number of reasons for this. First, the world of Spin was fairly well defined, by default. It was our world, essentially, just our world where something unexpected happened that changed everything. Here, it's another world connected to Earth and I never really felt we got a good sense of it other than it being a mildly unsettled frontier. The characters felt a good deal more complex and rich in Spin, which might be a result of this - since you already knew the world, you could focus much more on the people within it, and they felt more real. In this one, I never really felt a connection to most of the characters.
Also, the "big mystery" of Spin wasn't so much a 'what', as a 'why'. You could easily wrap your head around what was happening, and what it meant for humanity in general, but you, like everybody else, didn't know why it was happening. In Axis, there are more mysterious goings on, but for much of the book, while you can tell what is happening in terms of what physically is happening, nobody really knows what it means. It's kind of like the difference between it raining acid and it raining miniature oranges. Even if you don't know why it's happening, there's a clear difference. In the first everybody's worried about damage to themselves and the structure and oh my god we're in danger, the second it's just... "WTF?". It wasn't as engaging to me, the reader.
That's not to say the book didn't have enjoyable elements, it's just on the whole it's a bit of a letdown after Spin. It didn't even really feel to me to deliver on the promise from the end of the book of the coolness of the New World.
I'll probably read the third book in the series, Vortex, when it comes out, but I'm not as excited anymore.
