New Comic Day + Book Foo
Feb. 11th, 2009 06:29 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
newnumber6This week I got one book:
Captain Britain and MI13 #10 (ahhh, enjoyable crack, should be a good start to the arc)
Full reviews as usual at my comic reviews site for anyone interested.
Work wasn't bad, wasn't too heavy and came on time. Like, right at time. By the time I got there it was starting to pull up. Which, unfortunately, meant that I didn't get any reading done today either. It was drizzily at best, rainy at worst on the walk to the comic store and from there to work, and no time to just chill before starting work, and still rainy on the way home. Ah well, it happens. Would have been a lovely day if not for the rain though, +13 or something.
On to Book Foo...
Finished: Wild Cards, Vol 7: Dead Man's Hand, by George R. R. Martin and John J. Miller (reread)
Started: Spin, by Robert Charles Wilson (reread)
Finished the last of my Wild Card reread, with this book, much of which runs concurrently with the last. Short version: Not bad. Minor spoilers behind the cut.
The last book dealt with the 1988 Democractic Convention. A minor subplot of that was the revelation of the death of Chrysalis, an information-broker in Jokertown, and one of that part of the city's most famous inhabitants. This book has two characters, Detective Jay Ackroyd (who can teleport others but not himself), and Yeoman, a vigilante with a bow and arrow, as they each attempt to track down Chrysalis' killer.
The two authors of the book, I believe, alternated in terms of which character they wrote, as the story goes back and forth between the two viewpoints. George R.R. Martin wrote the sections from Ackroyd's perspective, while Miller wrote Yeoman's bits. Ackroyd's was generally the more appealing, as he can be a funny character at times and his power is cooler.
It did get a bit weird at times, and not in a good way, some of the minor mystery's solutions weren't the greatest, although the final solution to the big murder was pretty good. It also did drag a little, and of course where it crossed over directly with the previous book it was a little odd. If I ever do another reread I might try and remember, and read both of them at once - both books are chronological with time and datestamps, so I could flip back and forth between books and read the whole 'bigger' story in chronological order too. Might be an interesting experiment.
Anyway, it was enjoyable rereading them again, but I'm fine with stopping here. I do think they created a good world here, and Heroes would have been a lot better if they hired George R. R. Martin as a consultant rather than Jeph Loeb. At least Martin tries to think through consequences of what he sets up.
Finished: Olympos, by Dan Simmons (reread)
Started: Dune, by Frank Herbert (reread)
Comments behind the cut, some spoilers. Short version: More disappointing the second time around, and certain questionable plot elements do stand out.
I don't really know Simmons' politics or personal feelings and am not really inclined to look them up, but there does seem to be a trend, particularly in this book. You see, there are certainly a lot of threats in this book, both 'present' threats, and great disasters in history. However, it seems like many of these threats, particularly the most pointlessly threatening (that is, for every other one you can see what they were trying to accomplish, or it's threatening by accident, or people were just in a power grab and didn't much think about the effects on others)... were all put in play by the Eeeeeeevil Muslim Empire of the future (our future, the story's past), and not only that seems to explicitly say at one point that Islam hadn't contributed anything useful to society in 2000 years (in fairness, the story takes place over 2000 years from now, I believe), it's hard not to think that he has a particular axe to grind. I mean, you've got a lot of history to play with, you could have had someone else do a couple of them. Particularly when at least one of them is a last second threat to the whole world. Simmons may have to be another of those authors (like Card) that I have to try and ignore their personal politics to enjoy.
Even beyond this, the explanations for various mysterious phenomenon weren't really satisfying, nor were the conclusion to many of the plotlines. And some explanations were just stupid (the posthumans couldn't kill the evil, people-slaughtering voynix, but were able to reprogram them TO SERVE MAN... and not in the cookbook sense. I mean seriously, if you can reprogram them _all_, and they're evil, why not reprogram them to kill themselves?). It's just full of stupid explanations and the core mechanic behind the universe doesn't really satisfy. I think the author got too tied up in tying together different fictional elements that he forgot to make a good ending. I still quite like Ilium, but Olympos leaves a bad taste in my mouth. I may privately decide to consider Ilium a great book that ended on a cliffhanger and that I wish somebody else would finish someday.
. Dune's next, felt it was time for a reread.
What else? The cat's being a little bit of a pest, always trying to sneak into my room. He used to do it only occasionally, but now it's pretty much every single time. I think he's decided that the laser pointer beast lives in my room, since that's how I always got him to get out from under my bed and so out of the room in the past.
A bit depressed, of course, but that's natural for me in the middle of winter. Kinda sucks though I don't really feel much like writing, so am kinda slogging it. And of course it's the most horrible week of the year, the one where all the media rubs it in your face that you're alone and will likely be so for the rest of your life. :P
It's also Computer Day and Monster Day coming up, but that's not enough to override that.
Captain Britain and MI13 #10 (ahhh, enjoyable crack, should be a good start to the arc)
Full reviews as usual at my comic reviews site for anyone interested.
Work wasn't bad, wasn't too heavy and came on time. Like, right at time. By the time I got there it was starting to pull up. Which, unfortunately, meant that I didn't get any reading done today either. It was drizzily at best, rainy at worst on the walk to the comic store and from there to work, and no time to just chill before starting work, and still rainy on the way home. Ah well, it happens. Would have been a lovely day if not for the rain though, +13 or something.
On to Book Foo...
Finished: Wild Cards, Vol 7: Dead Man's Hand, by George R. R. Martin and John J. Miller (reread)
Started: Spin, by Robert Charles Wilson (reread)
Finished the last of my Wild Card reread, with this book, much of which runs concurrently with the last. Short version: Not bad. Minor spoilers behind the cut.
The last book dealt with the 1988 Democractic Convention. A minor subplot of that was the revelation of the death of Chrysalis, an information-broker in Jokertown, and one of that part of the city's most famous inhabitants. This book has two characters, Detective Jay Ackroyd (who can teleport others but not himself), and Yeoman, a vigilante with a bow and arrow, as they each attempt to track down Chrysalis' killer.
The two authors of the book, I believe, alternated in terms of which character they wrote, as the story goes back and forth between the two viewpoints. George R.R. Martin wrote the sections from Ackroyd's perspective, while Miller wrote Yeoman's bits. Ackroyd's was generally the more appealing, as he can be a funny character at times and his power is cooler.
It did get a bit weird at times, and not in a good way, some of the minor mystery's solutions weren't the greatest, although the final solution to the big murder was pretty good. It also did drag a little, and of course where it crossed over directly with the previous book it was a little odd. If I ever do another reread I might try and remember, and read both of them at once - both books are chronological with time and datestamps, so I could flip back and forth between books and read the whole 'bigger' story in chronological order too. Might be an interesting experiment.
Anyway, it was enjoyable rereading them again, but I'm fine with stopping here. I do think they created a good world here, and Heroes would have been a lot better if they hired George R. R. Martin as a consultant rather than Jeph Loeb. At least Martin tries to think through consequences of what he sets up.
Finished: Olympos, by Dan Simmons (reread)
Started: Dune, by Frank Herbert (reread)
Comments behind the cut, some spoilers. Short version: More disappointing the second time around, and certain questionable plot elements do stand out.
I don't really know Simmons' politics or personal feelings and am not really inclined to look them up, but there does seem to be a trend, particularly in this book. You see, there are certainly a lot of threats in this book, both 'present' threats, and great disasters in history. However, it seems like many of these threats, particularly the most pointlessly threatening (that is, for every other one you can see what they were trying to accomplish, or it's threatening by accident, or people were just in a power grab and didn't much think about the effects on others)... were all put in play by the Eeeeeeevil Muslim Empire of the future (our future, the story's past), and not only that seems to explicitly say at one point that Islam hadn't contributed anything useful to society in 2000 years (in fairness, the story takes place over 2000 years from now, I believe), it's hard not to think that he has a particular axe to grind. I mean, you've got a lot of history to play with, you could have had someone else do a couple of them. Particularly when at least one of them is a last second threat to the whole world. Simmons may have to be another of those authors (like Card) that I have to try and ignore their personal politics to enjoy.
Even beyond this, the explanations for various mysterious phenomenon weren't really satisfying, nor were the conclusion to many of the plotlines. And some explanations were just stupid (the posthumans couldn't kill the evil, people-slaughtering voynix, but were able to reprogram them TO SERVE MAN... and not in the cookbook sense. I mean seriously, if you can reprogram them _all_, and they're evil, why not reprogram them to kill themselves?). It's just full of stupid explanations and the core mechanic behind the universe doesn't really satisfy. I think the author got too tied up in tying together different fictional elements that he forgot to make a good ending. I still quite like Ilium, but Olympos leaves a bad taste in my mouth. I may privately decide to consider Ilium a great book that ended on a cliffhanger and that I wish somebody else would finish someday.
. Dune's next, felt it was time for a reread.
What else? The cat's being a little bit of a pest, always trying to sneak into my room. He used to do it only occasionally, but now it's pretty much every single time. I think he's decided that the laser pointer beast lives in my room, since that's how I always got him to get out from under my bed and so out of the room in the past.
A bit depressed, of course, but that's natural for me in the middle of winter. Kinda sucks though I don't really feel much like writing, so am kinda slogging it. And of course it's the most horrible week of the year, the one where all the media rubs it in your face that you're alone and will likely be so for the rest of your life. :P
It's also Computer Day and Monster Day coming up, but that's not enough to override that.
