Book Foo mostly...
May. 13th, 2013 03:22 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
newnumber6Been a while since I posted one of these..
Finished: Queen of Candesce, by Karl Schroeder (Virga, book 2) (reread)
Already read and reviewed here but I'll cut and paste my Goodreads review (as I've done for pretty much all of these).
This is a sequel to Sun of Suns, and focuses on Venera Fanning, the clever and ruthless architect of the mission from the first book (as well as wife of the Admiral who led it), as she's stranded in the ancient and decaying city of Spyre, a huge rotating cylinder. Aided by the aging dandy Garth, who found and nursed her back to health, her efforts to escape back to her homeland quickly embroil her in intrigues that could threaten the entire world of Virga.
Whereas the first book was mostly a travelling naval adventure, this is a city-based story... but when the city in question is in the world of Virga, that still takes a lot of world-building. The way everything works is mind-bending at times, and occasionally difficult to visualize, but the author manages to capture the grandeur of it all nonetheless.
This is the kind of setting that it'd be difficult to portray on film, even with a budget in the hundreds of millions (and, were anyone to try, it would almost certainly bomb... not for any lack of quality, but simply because it's a little too off-kilter to be mainstream). Even the basic landscape shots would need heavy CGI-work, not to mention the dramatic climax.
While the mechanics of the city can occasionally be wild and insane flights of fancy (which are, nonetheless, plausible), the social dynamics are closer to home and yet, at the same time, strain credibility a little more. I can't put my finger on any one thing, but at points I just didn't feel like it was a real functioning (or even dysfunctioning) society. It's a flaw, but ultimately, it's a minor one, for an adventure story like this I'm able to look past it and just have fun.
The star of the book is the characters, and particularly the lead character, probably my favorite from the first book, a character who could easily be a complex villain in any another series. She has a few despicable qualities mixed with some honorable ones, and she winds up being rather compelling, as is her whole journey.
I think it may be the weakest of the series, but it's still enjoyable and well worth reading.
Finished: To Challenge Chaos, by Brian Stableford
To Challenge Chaos tells the story of a world, Chaos X, which is half in our universe and half in another, a dimension where people can survive bodily death, and where one man has set up his own kingdom. Several travelers take the trip to this other dimension, each for their own reasons. Short version: mostly forgettable, but a few good qualities worthy of note.
It sounds like fantasy, but it is at least nominally science fiction, and outlandish as it is it at least pays lip service to science fictional tropes. In many ways, it feels like it's attempting to recast certain old myths in a science fictional context, and it's written in a more stylized, almost poetical way than a traditional adventure. The characters often feel more like archetypes than real people.
It was interesting enough to keep me reading, but the story didn't do much for me. However, there are a lot of great descriptions, both of wondrous environments and about the characters, that really resonated with me and are something I might come back to in the hopes of emulating.
Finished: Pirate Sun, by Karl Schroeder (Virga, book 3) (reread)
The third book in the Virga series (starting with Sun of Suns), this book mostly follows Admiral Chaison Fanning, probably the closest thing to a classic adventure hero in the series, from his imprisonment in a foreign land after the events of the first book, to his rescue by a mysterious woman who looks like an anime character, and getting drawn into conflicts that aren't his own along his way home.
This one's closer to the first book, a journey through the wondrous possibilities that the environment of Virga allows, all in a rollicking adventure plot, and slowly advancing the greater threat to the whole world that's lurking in the background, waiting for its move.
A heck of a lot of fun and would be a reasonably satisfying conclusion if it were the last book in the series, but there are two left to go.
Finished: The City and the City, by China Miéville
A police procedural set in two fictitious European cities with a bizarre relationship. They exist in the same spot, with some areas being entirely in one city, and others being entirely in another, and some shared... however, by an extreme cultural taboo that is also law, it is illegal to interact with, cross over to, or even give any attention to the neighboring city or anybody declared to be inside it, even if they're right in front of you, except through one designated border. But when a murder victim turns out, and evidence suggests they may have been killed in the other city, Inspector Tyador Borlu has find justice for the victim... even if that means a journey across the border.
It's a bit of a weird book, and hard to classify, but for the most part, it reads like a traditional "police investigation" story at first, and gradually introduces you into the strange relationship between the cities... and, by the time the book ends, the author somehow manages to make the situation seem realistic and even plausible, if still pretty weird. The murder plot kept my attention, but of course, it was the "two cities" mystery that really drew me in. I do kind of wish there were a few more definitive answers in some quarters, and found the character ended up more or less where I expected him to (although the journey getting there was interesting).
I wouldn't say I loved the book, but I liked it a lot, and would actually like to see other stories in this setting or these characters, even if, like City, they're mostly police procedurals, which aren't my favorite genre.
A bit of an addendum to this review just for LJ... I could see Mieville being a good guest writer for Doctor Who, and in fact, in some alternate universe, this particular setting (maybe set on an alien planet) could have made a great one for a Doctor Who ep, with 'Breach' being the episode's bogeymen (which may not be all bad). But yeah, I think he might have the right kind of creative mind to both do a good story and introduce some truly weird novel concepts.
Finished: Bios, by Robert Charles Wilson
Short version: Meh.
A young woman is sent to help study a distant alien planet, full of life but that is completely toxic to Earth life... but she's been manipulated her whole life, and there might be ulterior motives for sending her to the planet... and meanwhile, the number of fatal accidents keeps escalating.
There's not much to say about this book. It was okay. I normally come to this author for two things, really great concepts with a hint of weird to them, and well-developed realistic characters. This story pretty much explored a classic SF trope in a way that never really surprised me, and the characters never really engaged me like some of his others. It probably didn't help that I was rooting for most of Earth society's leadership to get infected and die off.
It was competently done and I don't regret reading it, but I doubt I'm going to remember much of it for very long either.
Finished: The Sunless Countries, by Karl Schroeder (Virga, book 4) (reread)
Leal Maspeth is a scholar in the city of Sere, on the edge of winter, far from any of the suns in Virga, and the only light they enjoy is the light they make themselves. But they're approaching a dark age of a completely different sort, as a particularly anti-intellectual religious faction is maneuvering itself into political power... but that may not be the biggest problem. For there's a new force out in the dark, making ships and towns disappear, and the fate of their whole world may depend on learning what's out there.
This is another in the Virga series, which started with Sun of Suns. Each of the three previous books told a complete story, while advancing the story of the world as a whole slowly. This book is not like that, it's clearly gearing up for the series endgame. It brings back the hero of Sun of Suns, Hayden Griffin, this time in a secondary role, with new character Leal taking the lead.
It has all that I've come to love in the series... incredibly strange and yet compelling situations due to the world building (Virga is, for anyone reading this review without reading any of the other books, the interior of an Earth-sized sphere filled with air and small clumps of matter, lit and heated in some parts by fusion suns), fun characters, boatloads of adventure, and, despite the generally low-tech setting, a dollop of really cool high science-fictional ideas.
There are a few problems. The book occasionally jumps forward in time, which happened in the rest of the series, but here it felt jarring and more unnatural... sometimes when I was just getting excited about seeing how something would turn out, we'd jump to weeks later. It's less of annoyance on the second read when you're already prepared for it, but it bothered me the first time around. The other minor flaw is that, as much as Schroeder is capable of creating characters and physical environments that seem well-thought out and believable no matter how crazy they are, sometimes he invents certain social dynamics for a society that strain credibility. In this case, the particular mechanics of the Eternist's reign through "democracy of facts". It might be a little more believable in an internet-enabled society, but I never bought in to it existing in Virga (the religion itself was perfectly believable). I can still appreciate these social musings in his books as a semi-allegorical thought experiment that highlights potential new ways of doing things, or dangerous ways of thinking, or just playing around with a few cool ideas, and it's valuable as that, but it doesn't mesh perfectly with the narrative.
There is one other issue of note: unlike the other books, it ends in something of a cliffhanger, with development but very little resolution, setting up for the final book in the Virga series, which I'm excited to finally be reading.
Finished: Time Spike, by Eric Flint and Marilyn Kosmatka
A mysterious event catapults an Illinois prison back to the age of the dinosaurs... along with scattered groups of others in the area throughout history. With no idea how they got there and no way back, the group must survive all the dangers both outside of the prison... and within.
This is part of a specific subgenre of SF... I'm not even sure if it has a name. I go back and forth between calling them Cut-and-Paste Settings and Patchwork Fiction... the idea is that some large area is taken out of its normal setting and then pasted onto another, like you were patching a pair of jeans, usually a different time but it could just as easily be another world or dimension. Sometimes multiple patches are taken from multiple places. Usually the displaced area constitutes a particular community of people, maybe a particular military group or a small town, or, in this case, a prison full of dangerous criminals. Usually the how is unimportant: the story is all about what happens next, suddenly cut off from the world they know and interacting in a new one. Short version: Mildly enjoyable as a brainless adventure, but too simplistic to be called 'good'.
This particular one is set in the same 'multiverse' as another series in the genre (and I believe more are intended), that started with 1632. They both come from the same world and are blasted into a divergent timeline in the past. For some reason, in addition to showing what happens to the prison, we have a subplot about what happens to the world left behind. Aside from providing the title and some information those in the prison don't have access to, this plotline feels completely unnecessary and could be cut (or consolidated by having somebody 'in the know' in the area of effect. Perhaps it serves the overarching plot, but it's not necessary in this book.
In fact, 'not necessary' kind of sums up the book. It's okay. You'll be mildly entertained, particularly if you like the subgenre. But it's nothing particularly special, nor does it break any new ground. It doesn't feel like it's particularly daring at all, and some of the writing is just clumsy.
For example, the romantic subplots are pretty blatant. In almost every case, within a few pages of two characters interacting for the first time, it telegraphs that they're romantically interested in each other and will probably wind up together. You could excuse that under the theory that, in a highly stressful situation, people are going to hook up quickly, except it happens in the (superfluous) present-day plot, too. And there's never really any uncertainty about who will end up with who, or even a decent love triangle (surprising, when one of the problems is that the male/female ratio is extremely out of whack). At one point a character was severely wounded and everyone said he would probably die, and I thought, "Oh, at least they're potentially changing things up by killing off one of the romantic pairs"... only to realize a few pages later that I'd gotten him confused, he wasn't the one in the romantic pairing. Which is another big problem in the book, it's not just the relationships that are undistinctive and unsurprising, most the characters are. The good guards are good. The bad guys are bad. You can tell which ones are the prisoners who'll wind up showing a good side pretty early too, from the ones who'll be the threats. And it's almost completely undaring: almost all of the prisoners who make good are given almost cartoonishly innocent backstories: one's wrongly convicted, a few others just lost their temper in one extraordinary situation but are really good guys at heart, others committed serious robberies or arson in which they were careful that nobody ever got hurt but the state threw the book at them anyway, and there's even a hitman who only ever killed other mobsters, so obviously, he's okay too.
So it's hard to recommend this one. It had an intriguing premise, but it didn't live up to it. It's the kind of book that might be worth reading in paperback on a long plane ride, so if you happen to lose the book somewhere along the way, you're not going to be put out.
Finished: Ashes of Candesce, by Karl Schroeder (Virga, book 5 (conclusion))
Leal Maspeth returns to Virga carrying a message, an offer of alliance against the forces that have been trying to infiltrate and destroy her home. But that assumes that it's not merely another trick by those same forces, as the alliance against her is claiming the same thing. Ultimately, Leal and many of the heroes of earlier in the series must make their choices and take their stands to decide the fate of Virga.
This book is intended as a conclusion to the entire series, so it has a lot to live up to. I think it does a pretty good job, although some of the mysteries or ongoing conflicts that had been built up through the series got resolved in a way that felt a little too simplistic. On the whole, though, I quite enjoyed it and would love to see more in the setting.
It has a lot of what I've come to enjoy in the setting... characters who may be antagonists, but have a certain nobility and truly believe they're doing the right thing, a sense of wonder about the most ordinary things in an extraordinary setting (a planet sized ball of air with no internal gravity except what individual ships or towns make by spinning), and the occasional really neat idea. And, rare for SF novels these days, it introduced me to a non-made up word I'd never heard before but that is incredibly useful: "velleity", a wish or inclination that isn't strong enough to lead to action. Like, if in your heart, you're opposed to some latest political outrage but for whatever reason, won't actually get up and do anything about it... which seems startlingly common. How had I never heard this word before? But I digress...
One development in this final installment is that, for the first time, one of the viewpoint characters is from the high-tech society outside of Virga, which allows for some more direct exploration of some of the themes which, previously, had to be looked at through explanations from possibly unreliable sources. And the direct look at the outside universe was refreshing this time around, in that you could see the ways it, and particularly Artificial Nature potentially worked, and the ways it potentially didn't, rather than just being a looming threat. I'm not sure I buy into all the author's stances, but it's still a lot of fun getting through and looking at things from a different angle, and there's enough ambiguity left in there that you don't feel like you're being told you're wrong for disagreeing. You can even agree with the 'bad guys' in philosophy and just disagree with them on the specific decisions they made.
Really, the series as a whole, being mostly a low-tech adventure in a fantastic setting, with a lot of colorful and enjoyable characters, could serve as a good soft-introduction to some weighty SF ideas about artificial intelligence and the nature of consciousness even for people who aren't hardcore into science fiction.
The conclusion wasn't quite everything I wanted, but I still liked it a whole lot. The series as a whole has a lot of value buried within it and will not just be a series I'll read again from time to time, but one of my favorite SF settings.
Started: The Living Dead, (short story collection)
Started: A Deepness in the Sky, by Vernor Vinge (reread)
Okay, now that's done...
Outside of books... well, enjoying Game of Thrones. Doctor Who... not so much, it's been a little bland. Even Gaiman's episode fell pretty flat (although it's pretty clear a lot was cut out... maybe they should have just made it a two-parter, heaven knows we have a lot of useless we could have cut this year!) I really think there needs to be a change in the showrunners, just for new blood's sake. And if not...
I think they need to change how they do things. For one, stop with the big mysteries. They never really live up to the hype, and, lately, they're getting in the way of the stories themselves. Just have great adventures... no huge foreshadowing, either... great adventures and a great finale that doesn't just answer the question "What's the big deal with all that foreshadowing?" but where something big and dramatic actually happens. And companions that are interesting for their own merits (maybe being from another time or planet) rather than trying to make them interesting because they're a "mystery".
Because, there are two big mysteries teased this season. The mystery of Clara, and the Doctor's Name. And the truth is, I don't really care about either of them. Clara, okay, slightly, but I bet it'll be overcomplicated and not make much sense. The Doctor's name... should just have been left alone. If you'd just dropped it in, in one episode as a surprise revelation, okay, that'd be one thing, but to constantly tease it and make the "Doctor Who?" joke and make a whole religion devoted to the question not being answered and foreshadowing a point where it will be... there's no way you can live up to that and make it anything worthwhile. Either it's something silly to take the piss and make the whole exercise into a little bit of a joke, it's a name that means nothing to us and it feels self-important and indulgent to make such a big deal with it, or it's some kind of name with meaning (Rassilion or something connected to him) that needlessly complicates his story. Or they drag back that "Half Human" thing again and reveal that his name actually is I.M. Foreman, not a Time Lord name at all. None of them sound appealing to me, and they should have realized that in advance.
Oh, and apparently the BBC screwed up and shipped out the dvd sets of the last half of this season early... INCLUDING the finale. So some random people have already seen it. I know nothing about it so far, but if you're especially spoilerphobic you might want to avoid looking at stuff for a while. Or you might find out too early that Clara is made of chocolate.
Networks have announced some of their new shows... Agents of SHIELD is the only 'must watch', although there's a "android/human buddy cop" series called Almost Human that might be worth a look (I just wish it wasn't by JJ Abrahms), and a couple others that I'll at least check out the first episode for.
Finished: Queen of Candesce, by Karl Schroeder (Virga, book 2) (reread)
Already read and reviewed here but I'll cut and paste my Goodreads review (as I've done for pretty much all of these).
This is a sequel to Sun of Suns, and focuses on Venera Fanning, the clever and ruthless architect of the mission from the first book (as well as wife of the Admiral who led it), as she's stranded in the ancient and decaying city of Spyre, a huge rotating cylinder. Aided by the aging dandy Garth, who found and nursed her back to health, her efforts to escape back to her homeland quickly embroil her in intrigues that could threaten the entire world of Virga.
Whereas the first book was mostly a travelling naval adventure, this is a city-based story... but when the city in question is in the world of Virga, that still takes a lot of world-building. The way everything works is mind-bending at times, and occasionally difficult to visualize, but the author manages to capture the grandeur of it all nonetheless.
This is the kind of setting that it'd be difficult to portray on film, even with a budget in the hundreds of millions (and, were anyone to try, it would almost certainly bomb... not for any lack of quality, but simply because it's a little too off-kilter to be mainstream). Even the basic landscape shots would need heavy CGI-work, not to mention the dramatic climax.
While the mechanics of the city can occasionally be wild and insane flights of fancy (which are, nonetheless, plausible), the social dynamics are closer to home and yet, at the same time, strain credibility a little more. I can't put my finger on any one thing, but at points I just didn't feel like it was a real functioning (or even dysfunctioning) society. It's a flaw, but ultimately, it's a minor one, for an adventure story like this I'm able to look past it and just have fun.
The star of the book is the characters, and particularly the lead character, probably my favorite from the first book, a character who could easily be a complex villain in any another series. She has a few despicable qualities mixed with some honorable ones, and she winds up being rather compelling, as is her whole journey.
I think it may be the weakest of the series, but it's still enjoyable and well worth reading.
Finished: To Challenge Chaos, by Brian Stableford
To Challenge Chaos tells the story of a world, Chaos X, which is half in our universe and half in another, a dimension where people can survive bodily death, and where one man has set up his own kingdom. Several travelers take the trip to this other dimension, each for their own reasons. Short version: mostly forgettable, but a few good qualities worthy of note.
It sounds like fantasy, but it is at least nominally science fiction, and outlandish as it is it at least pays lip service to science fictional tropes. In many ways, it feels like it's attempting to recast certain old myths in a science fictional context, and it's written in a more stylized, almost poetical way than a traditional adventure. The characters often feel more like archetypes than real people.
It was interesting enough to keep me reading, but the story didn't do much for me. However, there are a lot of great descriptions, both of wondrous environments and about the characters, that really resonated with me and are something I might come back to in the hopes of emulating.
Finished: Pirate Sun, by Karl Schroeder (Virga, book 3) (reread)
The third book in the Virga series (starting with Sun of Suns), this book mostly follows Admiral Chaison Fanning, probably the closest thing to a classic adventure hero in the series, from his imprisonment in a foreign land after the events of the first book, to his rescue by a mysterious woman who looks like an anime character, and getting drawn into conflicts that aren't his own along his way home.
This one's closer to the first book, a journey through the wondrous possibilities that the environment of Virga allows, all in a rollicking adventure plot, and slowly advancing the greater threat to the whole world that's lurking in the background, waiting for its move.
A heck of a lot of fun and would be a reasonably satisfying conclusion if it were the last book in the series, but there are two left to go.
Finished: The City and the City, by China Miéville
A police procedural set in two fictitious European cities with a bizarre relationship. They exist in the same spot, with some areas being entirely in one city, and others being entirely in another, and some shared... however, by an extreme cultural taboo that is also law, it is illegal to interact with, cross over to, or even give any attention to the neighboring city or anybody declared to be inside it, even if they're right in front of you, except through one designated border. But when a murder victim turns out, and evidence suggests they may have been killed in the other city, Inspector Tyador Borlu has find justice for the victim... even if that means a journey across the border.
It's a bit of a weird book, and hard to classify, but for the most part, it reads like a traditional "police investigation" story at first, and gradually introduces you into the strange relationship between the cities... and, by the time the book ends, the author somehow manages to make the situation seem realistic and even plausible, if still pretty weird. The murder plot kept my attention, but of course, it was the "two cities" mystery that really drew me in. I do kind of wish there were a few more definitive answers in some quarters, and found the character ended up more or less where I expected him to (although the journey getting there was interesting).
I wouldn't say I loved the book, but I liked it a lot, and would actually like to see other stories in this setting or these characters, even if, like City, they're mostly police procedurals, which aren't my favorite genre.
A bit of an addendum to this review just for LJ... I could see Mieville being a good guest writer for Doctor Who, and in fact, in some alternate universe, this particular setting (maybe set on an alien planet) could have made a great one for a Doctor Who ep, with 'Breach' being the episode's bogeymen (which may not be all bad). But yeah, I think he might have the right kind of creative mind to both do a good story and introduce some truly weird novel concepts.
Finished: Bios, by Robert Charles Wilson
Short version: Meh.
A young woman is sent to help study a distant alien planet, full of life but that is completely toxic to Earth life... but she's been manipulated her whole life, and there might be ulterior motives for sending her to the planet... and meanwhile, the number of fatal accidents keeps escalating.
There's not much to say about this book. It was okay. I normally come to this author for two things, really great concepts with a hint of weird to them, and well-developed realistic characters. This story pretty much explored a classic SF trope in a way that never really surprised me, and the characters never really engaged me like some of his others. It probably didn't help that I was rooting for most of Earth society's leadership to get infected and die off.
It was competently done and I don't regret reading it, but I doubt I'm going to remember much of it for very long either.
Finished: The Sunless Countries, by Karl Schroeder (Virga, book 4) (reread)
Leal Maspeth is a scholar in the city of Sere, on the edge of winter, far from any of the suns in Virga, and the only light they enjoy is the light they make themselves. But they're approaching a dark age of a completely different sort, as a particularly anti-intellectual religious faction is maneuvering itself into political power... but that may not be the biggest problem. For there's a new force out in the dark, making ships and towns disappear, and the fate of their whole world may depend on learning what's out there.
This is another in the Virga series, which started with Sun of Suns. Each of the three previous books told a complete story, while advancing the story of the world as a whole slowly. This book is not like that, it's clearly gearing up for the series endgame. It brings back the hero of Sun of Suns, Hayden Griffin, this time in a secondary role, with new character Leal taking the lead.
It has all that I've come to love in the series... incredibly strange and yet compelling situations due to the world building (Virga is, for anyone reading this review without reading any of the other books, the interior of an Earth-sized sphere filled with air and small clumps of matter, lit and heated in some parts by fusion suns), fun characters, boatloads of adventure, and, despite the generally low-tech setting, a dollop of really cool high science-fictional ideas.
There are a few problems. The book occasionally jumps forward in time, which happened in the rest of the series, but here it felt jarring and more unnatural... sometimes when I was just getting excited about seeing how something would turn out, we'd jump to weeks later. It's less of annoyance on the second read when you're already prepared for it, but it bothered me the first time around. The other minor flaw is that, as much as Schroeder is capable of creating characters and physical environments that seem well-thought out and believable no matter how crazy they are, sometimes he invents certain social dynamics for a society that strain credibility. In this case, the particular mechanics of the Eternist's reign through "democracy of facts". It might be a little more believable in an internet-enabled society, but I never bought in to it existing in Virga (the religion itself was perfectly believable). I can still appreciate these social musings in his books as a semi-allegorical thought experiment that highlights potential new ways of doing things, or dangerous ways of thinking, or just playing around with a few cool ideas, and it's valuable as that, but it doesn't mesh perfectly with the narrative.
There is one other issue of note: unlike the other books, it ends in something of a cliffhanger, with development but very little resolution, setting up for the final book in the Virga series, which I'm excited to finally be reading.
Finished: Time Spike, by Eric Flint and Marilyn Kosmatka
A mysterious event catapults an Illinois prison back to the age of the dinosaurs... along with scattered groups of others in the area throughout history. With no idea how they got there and no way back, the group must survive all the dangers both outside of the prison... and within.
This is part of a specific subgenre of SF... I'm not even sure if it has a name. I go back and forth between calling them Cut-and-Paste Settings and Patchwork Fiction... the idea is that some large area is taken out of its normal setting and then pasted onto another, like you were patching a pair of jeans, usually a different time but it could just as easily be another world or dimension. Sometimes multiple patches are taken from multiple places. Usually the displaced area constitutes a particular community of people, maybe a particular military group or a small town, or, in this case, a prison full of dangerous criminals. Usually the how is unimportant: the story is all about what happens next, suddenly cut off from the world they know and interacting in a new one. Short version: Mildly enjoyable as a brainless adventure, but too simplistic to be called 'good'.
This particular one is set in the same 'multiverse' as another series in the genre (and I believe more are intended), that started with 1632. They both come from the same world and are blasted into a divergent timeline in the past. For some reason, in addition to showing what happens to the prison, we have a subplot about what happens to the world left behind. Aside from providing the title and some information those in the prison don't have access to, this plotline feels completely unnecessary and could be cut (or consolidated by having somebody 'in the know' in the area of effect. Perhaps it serves the overarching plot, but it's not necessary in this book.
In fact, 'not necessary' kind of sums up the book. It's okay. You'll be mildly entertained, particularly if you like the subgenre. But it's nothing particularly special, nor does it break any new ground. It doesn't feel like it's particularly daring at all, and some of the writing is just clumsy.
For example, the romantic subplots are pretty blatant. In almost every case, within a few pages of two characters interacting for the first time, it telegraphs that they're romantically interested in each other and will probably wind up together. You could excuse that under the theory that, in a highly stressful situation, people are going to hook up quickly, except it happens in the (superfluous) present-day plot, too. And there's never really any uncertainty about who will end up with who, or even a decent love triangle (surprising, when one of the problems is that the male/female ratio is extremely out of whack). At one point a character was severely wounded and everyone said he would probably die, and I thought, "Oh, at least they're potentially changing things up by killing off one of the romantic pairs"... only to realize a few pages later that I'd gotten him confused, he wasn't the one in the romantic pairing. Which is another big problem in the book, it's not just the relationships that are undistinctive and unsurprising, most the characters are. The good guards are good. The bad guys are bad. You can tell which ones are the prisoners who'll wind up showing a good side pretty early too, from the ones who'll be the threats. And it's almost completely undaring: almost all of the prisoners who make good are given almost cartoonishly innocent backstories: one's wrongly convicted, a few others just lost their temper in one extraordinary situation but are really good guys at heart, others committed serious robberies or arson in which they were careful that nobody ever got hurt but the state threw the book at them anyway, and there's even a hitman who only ever killed other mobsters, so obviously, he's okay too.
So it's hard to recommend this one. It had an intriguing premise, but it didn't live up to it. It's the kind of book that might be worth reading in paperback on a long plane ride, so if you happen to lose the book somewhere along the way, you're not going to be put out.
Finished: Ashes of Candesce, by Karl Schroeder (Virga, book 5 (conclusion))
Leal Maspeth returns to Virga carrying a message, an offer of alliance against the forces that have been trying to infiltrate and destroy her home. But that assumes that it's not merely another trick by those same forces, as the alliance against her is claiming the same thing. Ultimately, Leal and many of the heroes of earlier in the series must make their choices and take their stands to decide the fate of Virga.
This book is intended as a conclusion to the entire series, so it has a lot to live up to. I think it does a pretty good job, although some of the mysteries or ongoing conflicts that had been built up through the series got resolved in a way that felt a little too simplistic. On the whole, though, I quite enjoyed it and would love to see more in the setting.
It has a lot of what I've come to enjoy in the setting... characters who may be antagonists, but have a certain nobility and truly believe they're doing the right thing, a sense of wonder about the most ordinary things in an extraordinary setting (a planet sized ball of air with no internal gravity except what individual ships or towns make by spinning), and the occasional really neat idea. And, rare for SF novels these days, it introduced me to a non-made up word I'd never heard before but that is incredibly useful: "velleity", a wish or inclination that isn't strong enough to lead to action. Like, if in your heart, you're opposed to some latest political outrage but for whatever reason, won't actually get up and do anything about it... which seems startlingly common. How had I never heard this word before? But I digress...
One development in this final installment is that, for the first time, one of the viewpoint characters is from the high-tech society outside of Virga, which allows for some more direct exploration of some of the themes which, previously, had to be looked at through explanations from possibly unreliable sources. And the direct look at the outside universe was refreshing this time around, in that you could see the ways it, and particularly Artificial Nature potentially worked, and the ways it potentially didn't, rather than just being a looming threat. I'm not sure I buy into all the author's stances, but it's still a lot of fun getting through and looking at things from a different angle, and there's enough ambiguity left in there that you don't feel like you're being told you're wrong for disagreeing. You can even agree with the 'bad guys' in philosophy and just disagree with them on the specific decisions they made.
Really, the series as a whole, being mostly a low-tech adventure in a fantastic setting, with a lot of colorful and enjoyable characters, could serve as a good soft-introduction to some weighty SF ideas about artificial intelligence and the nature of consciousness even for people who aren't hardcore into science fiction.
The conclusion wasn't quite everything I wanted, but I still liked it a whole lot. The series as a whole has a lot of value buried within it and will not just be a series I'll read again from time to time, but one of my favorite SF settings.
Started: The Living Dead, (short story collection)
Started: A Deepness in the Sky, by Vernor Vinge (reread)
Okay, now that's done...
Outside of books... well, enjoying Game of Thrones. Doctor Who... not so much, it's been a little bland. Even Gaiman's episode fell pretty flat (although it's pretty clear a lot was cut out... maybe they should have just made it a two-parter, heaven knows we have a lot of useless we could have cut this year!) I really think there needs to be a change in the showrunners, just for new blood's sake. And if not...
I think they need to change how they do things. For one, stop with the big mysteries. They never really live up to the hype, and, lately, they're getting in the way of the stories themselves. Just have great adventures... no huge foreshadowing, either... great adventures and a great finale that doesn't just answer the question "What's the big deal with all that foreshadowing?" but where something big and dramatic actually happens. And companions that are interesting for their own merits (maybe being from another time or planet) rather than trying to make them interesting because they're a "mystery".
Because, there are two big mysteries teased this season. The mystery of Clara, and the Doctor's Name. And the truth is, I don't really care about either of them. Clara, okay, slightly, but I bet it'll be overcomplicated and not make much sense. The Doctor's name... should just have been left alone. If you'd just dropped it in, in one episode as a surprise revelation, okay, that'd be one thing, but to constantly tease it and make the "Doctor Who?" joke and make a whole religion devoted to the question not being answered and foreshadowing a point where it will be... there's no way you can live up to that and make it anything worthwhile. Either it's something silly to take the piss and make the whole exercise into a little bit of a joke, it's a name that means nothing to us and it feels self-important and indulgent to make such a big deal with it, or it's some kind of name with meaning (Rassilion or something connected to him) that needlessly complicates his story. Or they drag back that "Half Human" thing again and reveal that his name actually is I.M. Foreman, not a Time Lord name at all. None of them sound appealing to me, and they should have realized that in advance.
Oh, and apparently the BBC screwed up and shipped out the dvd sets of the last half of this season early... INCLUDING the finale. So some random people have already seen it. I know nothing about it so far, but if you're especially spoilerphobic you might want to avoid looking at stuff for a while. Or you might find out too early that Clara is made of chocolate.
Networks have announced some of their new shows... Agents of SHIELD is the only 'must watch', although there's a "android/human buddy cop" series called Almost Human that might be worth a look (I just wish it wasn't by JJ Abrahms), and a couple others that I'll at least check out the first episode for.
