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newnumber6End of the year post! As some of you know, I don't really celebrate New Years, both due to being a social hermit and just not liking it. But, why not put up a post to finish off my book review posts as an easy-to-find bookend, and also update on other things.
First, other things. I probably should have posted this earlier, but I hope everyone's had a nice holiday season, regardless of any holidays you celebrate (and if you don't celebrate any, well, I hope you enjoyed the lights and colors of other people celebrating?). I had a fairly quiet Xmas, just my Dad, Grandmother, Stepmother, and Brother having a dinner. It was good, though.
And it goes without saying (except that I'm doing so anyway) that I wish you all a Happy New Year for 2015, even if I don't expect one for myself.
Now that the pleasantries are out of the way, on to the actual update.
Not much has been going on in the TV front other than Legend of Korra finale (Which I discussed in a separate post) and The Doctor Who XMas special (which I don't feel like discussing it at length... suffice it to say it was an episode that was constantly annoying me while it was going on because of things that didn't make sense, but then they explained all of it more or less satisfactory so... I guess I kind of half-liked it? Though it's a weird kind of like. Maybe it'll rewatch better. Also, didn't especially like the ending.
What else... well, I should probably update on the cooking front.
Since I started learning to cook, I've actually cooked, in some limited sense of the word, almost every night for the last three months. A couple "grab fast food" nights and a few family occasions (and inevitable days of leftovers), and a handful of days where my brother cooked (he's busy and stressed with work and school most of the time so I don't want to ask him to do extra... so I like helping him out).
Now, mostly, it's fairly simple stuff... packaged side-dishes where you just have to pour in a pot and follow directions, frozen vegetables, and a couple times were it's something super simple "just pop it in an oven and wait" meals like frozen pizza (though I usually add mushrooms), but a fair number of meats where I actually cook... burgers and sausages being the most common, or ground beef for hamburger helper/tacos. I've also now cooked pork chops (including seasoning, searing, and then finishing in the oven), pork roast (rubbing a seasoning on it and slicing it from a larger roast) with carrots (prepared from fresh, peeled and chopped and) cooked in the juices, bacon and eggs a few different ways, and made what (if I do say so myself) was a pretty excellent meatloaf (in addition to dicing mushrooms for the loaf mix along with other ingredients, I also left three whole mushrooms in the middle as a little surprise which seemed to give it an awesome extra moistness). So I'm glad to be learning new things. And I haven't poisoned anyone yet.
But now let's go to Book Foo. As usual, reviews are usually grabbed from my Goodreads account, and unless otherwise noted don't have what I feel are significant spoilers but may include some minor information outside of the cut (and a 'back-of-the-book' summary before the cut, so if you don't like those you should probably stop reading the entry entirely right now).
Finished: Exo, by Steven Gould (Jumper, Book 4)
Millicent ('Cent') Rice is a teenager who has inherited the otherwise unique ability to teleport from her parents. She can go anywhere she's been, or anywhere she can see clearly, in the blink of an eye, and bring anything she can carry with her. So what does a girl like that do when she wants to make her mark on the world (and also needs a project to distract her from dwelling on a recent breakup)? Why, she starts her own space program, of course.
This book continues the Jumper series, which started out focusing on her father but as of the last book, Impulse changed to Cent, but despite that, and other changes, the series remains a fun and compulsively readable adventure. I don't know if it's deliberate, but I love how, in every sequel in the series, aside from continuing to have imaginative fun with the Jumper concept itself, the author seems to play around with a new genre. The second book had a second level of a spy game, the third was partly a high school teen drama. This one? It seems to harken back to old-school SF juveniles, where a young character gets involved in some science-based adventure and has to go through all the details to reach their goal. It felt a bit like Gould attempted to write a modern-day Heinlein juvenile, his own version of Have Space Suit—Will Travel, although without all the alien stuff and, thankfully, with today's sensibilities. Maybe the next book will merge in galaxy-spanning Space Opera (although at this rate I think we're a few books away).
In any event, a large amount of this book involves the somewhat mundane details of building a functional space-suit and testing it before going into orbit, and then things like matching velocities and dealing with things like space junk and radiation and orbital tracking all crop up. It's here where the book risks turning off readers as dry or boring. It does, at times, threaten to overwhelm exciting with interesting and realistic. I don't personally feel it got there, I thought the mundane details of a fantastic thing were enough to keep me turning pages (in fact, in some levels, that's always been part of the fun of Jumper... the loads of mundane, sometimes slice-of-life details on things the leads do with their teleportation powers), but I can see how other people's mileage may vary. The lack of significant conflict in much of the book, conflict other than "here we've got a technical problem, and here's how we solve it!" may also bother some. There are people actively trying to hurt the main characters, but they play only small parts in the book, a little at the beginning and then again near the end. There are some personal emotional crises and interpersonal drama to give it a heart, but they feel small compared to the big technical project.
Again, I can see how it would turn people off, but I also find it to be a strange source of strength for the book. There's a refreshingly optimistic vibe to the whole book that I almost want to label it in it's own subcategory: Nice SF. SF where most people are nice, good, hardworking people who don't want to hurt anybody (sometimes they do, but they're not cruel about it), where the government ISN'T out to get our characters... there are people who are, and they may control factions of the government, but they're the minority just as evil people are the minority in life, that most people are nice. It's refreshing, and an attitude I've enjoyed all through the series, but it seems especially prevalent here, where when the government notices that Cent's running her own, impossible, orbital operations, they don't try to arrest her or trap her, they notice that she's going about it in a reasonable way and trying to help, and try to help her in kind to do it better. Some might see it as naive, but in a genre dominated by grim (which, don't get me wrong, I love as well... Peter Watts is one of my favorites and grimmer than most!), sometimes a book in the category of "Nice SF" is just what you need.
I do think the above problems (or near-problems) make it possibly the weakest book in the SERIES, it's only by degrees. Ideally, I'd like a bit more of an emotional punch other than the sensawunda (which, granted, is here in spades), and a more directed plot with complications, but I still thoroughly enjoyed reading it, and am totally on board for more. And there's plenty of room for more , even if not jumping to space opera, maybe near-future space colonization could anchor the next book. Whatever happens, I'll be there.
Finished: Pushing Ice, by Alastair Reynolds
When one of Saturn's moons suddenly leaves orbit and takes off for a distant star, revealing itself to be an unfathomably ancient alien starship, a nuclear-powered ice-mining ship is the only one near enough to have a chance at getting some detailed observations before it leaves the system. As they struggle to learn all they can, they soon discover that returning home may not be as simple as they thought, and begin a journey that will take them to the depths of space and time and force them to struggle just to survive.
As a "big idea", this book ranks up there with a compelling premise that grabs you, and, although there are a few missteps in resolution, largely carries through with cool space-operatic ideas often in inventive new contexts, and the author creates a universe that could easily support many different stories. In fact, on that front, one of my biggest complaints was that too much was left unanswered and unresolved, elements that seemed like part of a cool mystery never getting their payoff.
Where the book falters, somewhat, is with the characters. They start off being interesting, and a nice change for most SF (although nothing new for Reynolds, who's done it before), the two main leads are women. Unfortunately, for the novel to progress in the course he's charted, these characters that interested me so much in the beginning must act so unfathomably stupid and petty that I almost just wish they'd die. This is, sadly, also nothing new for Reynolds (that was my reaction to his first book, although I'd hoped he'd grown out of it). I get that he needed conflict and factions and disagreements that turned violent, and even a deep rift that can, in the climax, be dealt with as the characters must either get over their differences or suffer for them, and that ending even mostly works... but how he gets to the point just soured me on things... two characters go back and forth in power and mostly make decisions that everybody else just goes along with because they're in charge, rather than taking their advice when it's good and replacing them with other people when they go off the reservation. I kept hoping there'd be a bloodless coup with the people who weren't ready to let old rivalries risk their future just shunted people out of the reigns of power, or even a decent election. Because, really, if these two are so obviously the most competent people they have available, the ship should have died on the way to their first mining job before the book began. This doesn't destroy the book for me... all it does is turn one which could have been great into merely good, and forcing me to ignore the elements that don't work with an eyeroll.
I have a lesser problem with some of the alien stuff wrapped up, where it seems the only reason one group are the good guys and one group are the bad guys (both of which warned against the intentions of the author) is because the author decided that's how it would turn out, and it feels like the person who chose the "right" side is portrayed as have being obviously right and wise in doing so, when really, there was a lot that was iffy with both sides, and I would have preferred some ambiguity make it into the final resolution. Maybe if there was ever a sequel, this could be improved.
If it wasn't for the characters, this would be one of my favorites of Reynolds' books, as it probably has the most appealing (to me) central premise. As it is, it lands somewhere squarely in the middle.
Finished: Ancillary Sword, by Ann Leckie (Imperial Radch, Book 2)
(summary cut because it's slightly spoilery for the ending of the first book)
Continuing the story begun in the multiple-award-winning Ancillary Justice, Breq, who formerly was a starship herself, now commands another. While it's not quite the same, the ship gives her access to multiple points of view of her officers, much like Breq had before she was confined to a single body. As she undergoes her mission, she runs up against not only possible traitors, but systemic abuse and discrimination that her own society sweeps under the rug.
Last year, Ancillary Justice won both the Hugo and Nebula awards, as well as virtually every major award it was eligible for, and it's easy to see why... great space opera, with a strange yet believable new culture, a fascinating main character, and saying some important things cloaked in an exciting story. It also had something of a gimmick, where, because the language of the main character does not distinguish, every character was referred to by female pronouns and other descriptors. This gimmick returns (I can only remember one character who's gender was explicitly identified), but this time around it's a less jarring experience, and almost felt natural to return.
How does the rest of the book stack up?
Well, first, this is a much quieter, more sedate book. There isn't a lot of action, and there's a lot of conversations over tea. Some major issues get resolved this way. And while it sounds like that would be boring, somehow, it largely works. But it does feel a bit like a step down in terms of excitement. It's almost the stereotypical Middle Book Syndrome... the novelty isn't quite there, and there's no resolution to the greater plot. Worse, it almost feels as though there's no advancement of the greater plot, like the whole book is something of a holding pattern... the stakes are pretty low throughout, and the major events are steps towards righting of long-term wrongs local to one planet that we only learn about because we were visiting there - if she visited another planet, she might have done the same there.
That's not to say these parts aren't interesting, and for the most part there's a sense of satisfaction from watching a character trying to do the right thing and disregarding the traditions and blinding privilege that allows them to continue. Moreover, they're one of those things that, without pointing the finger directly at our own society, can open your mind towards similar issues in real life, which makes the book somewhat more meaningful than a straight adventure.
The quieter, lower-stakes nature of the plot is the biggest flaw, but... it's not really all that big. If that's the worst you can say about it, it's almost like you're reaching for something to say. I liked the book, I enjoyed the characters, and even the pace was pretty good. If you liked the first book, you'll probably like this one as well, but if not, there's not a lot to change your mind, either. When the third book comes out, I'll certainly be reading that as well.
Finished: Maelstrom, by Peter Watts (Rifters, Book 2)
(again cutting summary because description is slightly spoilery for book 1) Maelstrom continues the story begun in Starfish. Lenie Clark has narrowly escaped death at the bottom of the sea, and now wants revenge on those that launched the nuclear strike. She doesn't know that the reason for the strike was that she's carrying an organism that could threaten all life on Earth, and is spreading it everywhere she goes.
Watts explores a lot of ideas in this book... computer viruses that co-evolve along with a pandemic, public servants charged with protecting us who are programmed to do the right thing (the rub being, always, who decides what that is), meme manipulation, and more... but they never threaten to overwhelm the story, which deals with extreme issues of balancing the needs of the many vs. the needs of the few, as well as anger of the disenfranchised and rage and revenge.
The author also manages to pull off an incredible trick, he successfully made me kind of root for a person who's not only suffering severe delusions, but is also potentially causing the deaths of millions or billions on her quest. Despite this, I wanted to see her succeed, to avoid the search for her. In this way, I'm much like some other characters in the book. It's not an easy trick to pull off, but Watts has a talent for making me love messed up characters.
Compared to the first book in the series, the book has a much less broken narrative. The first book jumped ahead months at several points, skipping over major events, giving it something of a disjointed feel, something like a series of short stories. This one, although of course there are still jumps in time, it feels like one continuous novel, with nothing important skipped.
The only thing I felt was a little on the weak side was the depictions of all that was going on in the net (now called the Maelstrom)... the general outlines of it were okay and included some novel ideas, but the specific descriptions leaned a little towards some of my pet peeves, describing information networks in an extended metaphor that threatens to confuse the line between the metaphor and reality, and also a bit of inappropriate anthropomorphism of data structures.
Still, on the whole it's a worthy sequel, may even be better than the first (it's a hard call, since they focus on different things and either might appeal to me more when I'm in a certain mood).
Finished: Infoquake, by Daniel Louis Edelmen
Infoquake tells the story of a ruthless businessman in the far future and his attempt to do a product launch for a new technology that's going to change the world. That about describes everything that matters, which doesn't matter a lot to me. I should note here that I'm not spoiling any specific bits that I feel it's worth hiding the review over, but I will be talking generally about how some plot elements crop up and, in my opinion, don't get payoff.
I'm not going to say that this is a bad book... it's just one that is geared very much to tastes that are not mine. Technically I'm not sure there's anything particularly wrong with it, at least anything more than an average first SF novel. I just didn't find the characters terribly sympathetic or interesting, and the exploration of the SF aspects focused on odd areas, and, to a certain extent, an underlying political tone that did not agree with me.
Let's start with the first. The book seems largely to be set in, and to a certain extent, advocate for, a libertarian hyper-capitalist society. That the characters believe certain things doesn't necessarily mean the author shares those beliefs, but here I get the impression he thinks what he's setup is a generally good system. To his credit, though, he also does point out some serious flaws and dangers in the setup, and some benefits in opposing viewpoints. So it's not a political polemic, and if everything else was enjoyable, I could look past it, or even enjoy the alternate viewpoint (Vernor Vinge is an author who manages this).
The biggest problem, though, is the main character, Natch, who seems to be a largely amoral businessman who thinks only of being on top and doesn't much care how he gets there. At first, since the story seemed to be told through his underlings, I thought maybe he was being set up as a semi-antagonist, or at least a virtual force of nature that drives the plots the real protagonists react to, but shortly after the beginning we spend an awful lot of time on his childhood in what I can only assume is an attempt to get you to sympathize with him. It doesn't work. He's too uninterestingly omnicapable and with an unlikeable personality. The other major characters, well, a few of them are okay, but either lack much agency or their opportunities for personal character growth gets sacrificed to showing how awesome (or occasionally how crazy or reckless) Natch is.
A problem almost as big is with the plot itself. The book's titled Infoquake, but that's really only a tiny part of the plot, an unexpected side effect that people fear might happen again, but the book isn't, in an sense, ABOUT an Infoquake. This isn't a big deal. What's more of a big deal is that the new technology that you could argue the plot IS about... gets reduced into the most boring mundane detail of how to get it ready to launch it in the marketplace. It's like if somebody wrote a book about the development of FTL or teleportation that would change the world, but instead of focusing on all the things you could do with it, instead it focused on determining the insurance liablity the company would face if something went wrong. We get a couple descriptions and one example of the technology in action, used in the most mundane and unimaginative context out of all possibilities. To go back to our teleportation example, it'd be like the only actual use of teleportation they showed us was a guy using it to catch the bus he just missed by teleporting to the next stop. This is made more infuriating by the fact that when they revealed what the MultiReal technology was and described it in vague terms, it was the only time I was even a little excited, it finally sound interesting. But it got no payoff. Supposedly it gets some in the sequel. I will never find out from personal experience. Another problem with this approach is that the development of the new technology is essentially a programming problem, but, largely, programming in this new world has changed, described as more an art of manipulating a picture on the screen until it LOOKS just right, rather than actually knowing anything about what you're doing. How future-programming is done may actually be (somewhat) close to how it'll eventually evolve, manipulating large data structures in pre-defined libraries rather than individual variables, but you're telling a story of people pulling all-nighters to code a new product release, you want a better sense that they're actually viscerally connected to it.
The world-building in general is somewhat lacking for me. This is a world set several hundreds of years in the future, but it feels it might as well be 20-30. A few societal changes, some huge technological leaps, but everybody's fundamentally the same (I had hopes that the revolutionary new technology might alter that, but apparently while removing the injustices of nature seem what everybody's interested in, nobody really is at all worried about the injustices of capitalism). The two major developments are the science of bio/logics, which essentially let you run software that monitors and improves the human body, like apps, and the ability to project a sort of holographic representation of yourself into public locations (or private ones, with permission) at a distance and feel like you're there. Neither feels like a lot of improvement for such time, and moreover, I'm never entirely sold on them and all the ways they've changed society. The bio/logic programs, for example, all have unbelievably banal brand names and a version number and all seem to do very minor things, yet there's a cutthroat marketplace and everybody upgrades whenever there's a new version. And yet they're paradoxically so afraid of AI and combining human and machine that one character has only the crudest replacement limbs for an old injury. It just doesn't ring true. There are a few other advancements, but none of them figure much into the story and some of them just seem bizarre (I'm not quite sure, for example, what the benefit is of apartment buildings that collapse during the day when nobody's using them... and how/why has everybody migrated to the same schedule?)
This might be somebody's ideal book, but it's not mine. There ARE some cool ideas, but I have to wade through too much stuff I'm not interested in to get to them, and the things that do interest me, they don't really get paid off in a satisfying degree.
Finished: Terminal World, by Alastair Reynolds
Terminal World is the story of Quillon, who lives in a world divided by zones, where the laws of physics are slightly different and different levels of technology work in each zone. Some zones allow only steam and clockwork contraptions, others allow circuitry and computer networks, and still others allow far beyond what Earth has today. A few zones don't even allow life, but even those that do, are optimized for those already born to it... crossing a zone boundary is hazardous, sometimes even fatal, without medication. Spearpoint is a city built on an impossibly tall spire, which contains several zones... but Quillon has to leave. For though he comes from one of the highest-technology zones, he's been in hiding in Neon Heights for years, and the people he's hiding from want him. But that's just the start of his journey, because the zones are unstable, and the whole world is at risk.
Ever since I heard about the book, I was both interested and wary. Interested, because I love the idea of different technology zones and crossing between them. This sounded a little like Vernor Vinge's Zones of Thought universe, except all mashed onto one planet. And yet, two things worried me. First, descriptions of the book made it sound that there would be a heavy steampunk bent, and I'm pretty iffy on steampunk in general. And secondly, because it was written by Alastair Reynolds, and I've been a little iffy on him as well. Sometimes he writes great books, sometimes he has great ideas but I can't stand the characters or ending and it ruins the book for me entirely. So, with two iffy components, there was twice as much room for the book to fail.
Luckily, it didn't, even though some elements of both of my worries came true. There is, in fact, a heavy steampunk component. A good chunk of the book takes place on steam-driven airships. And, to an extent, Reynolds mucks up the ending. But, not too badly... it was merely unsatisfying an ending, an ending where I wanted more, a more firm resolution, but not one that made me angry or feel like the book was a waste.
Regardless of the minor problems with the ending, the book was a lot of fun. I liked the characters, and the adventure kept me engaged all the way through, even through parts that usually don't interest me as much (I'm not a big fan of huge battles between armies, and there was some of that towards the end), and how they played with the central idea helped stoke my sense of wonder. It's probably in fact be one of my favorite books of Reynolds (sharing the list with House of Suns or Century Rain... ranking more finely than that isn't really my thing), both stand-alones.
The only other complaint I have is that I wish he'd played a bit more with the higher-technology level zones. In books where there's some kind of enforced difference between technology levels, too often it's used, as it's most often done here, to take (and mostly strand) characters into a situation with technology less than Earth, making the concept merely an excuse to write steampunk or low-magic fantasy adventure, whereas I'd love to see more of an encompassing look at things across all sorts of different zones, spend some time in a world of computer networks and cell phones and other times in a world where even guns don't work, and show how those societies being next door to each other affects people. Here, we get a few hints at things the highest technology zones can do, but most characters and most of the action don't deal with anything more advanced than we have on Earth right now. And, as a mainly SF reader, that makes me feel it as a missed opportunity.
I would love to see Reynolds come back to this world, maybe not as a sequel (the story could continue, but it doesn't need to, my frustrations with the ending notwithstanding), but merely a different adventure using this world, for I can see plenty of stories left to tell in it.
Finished: This Alien Shore, by C.S. Friedman
The first age of spaceflight ended abruptly when it was discovered that the faster-than-light drive had side effects, altering the genetics of those who used it, which already included millions of colonists bound for different worlds. Earth shut down all travel and left the colonies isolated to survive or fall on their own, and their variants on the human form to develop into their own standards of normal. Centuries later, one of those colonies discovered a new way to travel faster-than-light, and brought together all the human worlds once more... but held a strict and complete monopoly on such travel, forcing everyone else to follow the rules of their Guild or risk being cut off from the rest of the universe. But there's a computer virus spreading which seems to be created to try and learn their secrets, infesting people's brainware and causing more than a few deaths, and the Guild must investigate it. But that's not the only thing that's going on... a teenage girl named Jamiska is on the run and doesn't know why. The subject of an experiment at a young age, she may be another key to toppling the Guild monopoly, and that makes her very valuable to all sorts of people who might not have her personal best interests at heart. But she's on her own... except for the voices in her head.
It's a complicated premise to sum up quickly (I didn't even get into significant spoiler territory), but when reading it, it's fairly easy to grasp, and the author's created a setup for her world and characters that draw you in. With the Hausmann variants (humans from far flung colonies who may look like what in other books would be like a variety of alien races), Friedman gets to have the benefit of humanoid 'aliens' without having to worry about them being TOO alien for the reader to understand, and yet at the same time, she uses them, and people who look completely human, to highlight the alien natures within other humans (and indeed, sometimes within ourselves). The Guerans, who look human but who have greater neural diversity than humans (with the majority of the population having forms one of a myriad kinds of condition some of us might consider a 'disorder', like obsessive compulsive tendencies, social anxiety, autism), and yet celebrate their differences and structure their society around making it easier for everyone to interact in more or less harmony, are a particularly fascinating creation, and the society we spend the most time with, as they are the ones with control of space travel. That element, too, is a more nuanced concept than I expected... usually in stories like these, the one with the monopoly are the obvious bad guys, using their advantage to tyrannize others. Here, there's the sense that they've tried to create a system that benefits everyone, not just them, and although they go too far at times and you may root for the monopoly to be broken, you don't always want to see them punished for it and can see their side of the struggle as a valid one.
Jamiska's story is also reasonably compelling, although a little more conventional aside from her own particular mental quirks. Her story, in general, went pretty much where I expected it to, the mysteries guessed before the author revealed them (although there's the sense that the author expected this, and she didn't build them up as a huger deal than they were), and ended up where I expected she'd go. I wouldn't say there were no surprises, but they were surprises in approach rather than plot developments.
The science fictional elements were mostly handled well... I admit I'm still a little unclear on exactly how the Hausmann variants worked to produce (more or less) one specific, universal variant on humanity on each planet (did each trip alter the genes of everybody in a specific way so that after a few generations everyone on one planet had scales? or was it random and the centuries of isolation molded the differences?), and I don't think the hacking and computer-related scenes were as believable as they could be (though I've read much worse... at least it's clear the author was trying for realistic), but I did like the ubiquitous brainware technology and how it helped provide another counterpoint to the vast differences.
Other than the minor complaints mentioned or hinted above, I did have a slight problem with the ending (or epilogue, maybe), where the main character seemed curiously absent and uninvolved. After we spent a whole book following her adventures, it felt somewhat off to simply be told her fate rather than actually seeing it.
I rated this a three, but it's a high three, nearly a four. I'd happily read something else in this universe. It doesn't absolutely need a sequel, but there's plenty of room in this setting to explore other stories.
Finished: The Human Division, by John Scalzi (Old Man's War universe)
The Human Division takes place in the universe of Old Man's War, after the events of that trilogy, but not focusing on the main characters. Instead, it focuses on Harry Wilson, friend of John Perry from the first books, and his adventures as science adviser on a series of missions, many of which are diplomatic in nature, while meanwhile somebody, possibly somebody in the Colonial Union, seeks to sabotage diplomatic measures.
Generally speaking, this is one of those "optional safe bet" books, at least for fans. If you liked the other books in the series, you'll probably like this... but at the same time, it's not required reading by any means. It does focus much, much less on direct combat than the first book, and, by it's nature, it's a lot less of a cohesive story.
The nature I refer to was that the book started out as a serialized collection of short stories, in more-or-less chronological order, involving usually the same set of characters (though a few focus on people who don't play a significant role in the story of the others), and that's pretty much what it reads like.
This may also be it's greatest flaw, because you can evaluate it both on the sum of it's parts, and as a whole, and it comes up a little bit short on each category. Does each individual short story satisfy? Mostly. But they're snacks, not filling in the way a really good short story can be, but just something that passes the time. Does the overall story they tell satisfy? Again, mostly. But too much time feels wasted on useless things and gags, and we don't even get a decent resolution to it. My other minor complaint is that really, the characters seem to differ more in terms of roles than personality. There's the 'hero', his put-upon 'sidekick', a potential 'romantic interest'... but they all feel like they're the same guy, they have the same sorts of conversations, the same sense of humor, they banter in the same ways (and it's funny, but it gets old by the end). Then there's the other type, the grim "scare the heck out of their allies and subordinate" types (usually with a softer interior). But that's about it. Even among aliens, this is often the case. There doesn't seem to be range or depth beyond that. Which could be the short version of my complaints in general: lacking in range and depth.
Because the book seems to suffer from this lack of depth (and the series in general is not typically deep SF), the whole thing winds up feeling a little disposable... fun, mind you, but disposable fun. Like watching one of those milestone episodes of a TV series, where instead of going for big events they let the actors just have fun doing wacky stuff, and you could skip the ep if you had to... you might miss a few plot points, but nothing major. I enjoyed it. But not as much as I did the other books in the series.
Finished: Leviathan Wakes, by James S.A. Corey (Expanse, Book 1 )
Leviathan Wakes tells the story of a spaceship crew who respond to a distress call and get way over their heads, and a cop on an asteroid colony trying to find a missing girl, who may have been on the ship giving the distress call.
This is a rollicking space adventure that combines SF, noir, action, and horror, and the first book of a series that has not only become very popular, but is also being made into a TV series. And I can see why... there's a lot of neat stuff here. And yet... I also was left, just a little, underwhelmed. It may merely be a function of the hype... it's hard to live up to, after all. But I think it's also that there's a certain TV/Movie vibe to everything... now granted, a show based on this is going to be, if done well, a very GOOD TV show, but it feels like the book was designed to sort of skim the surface of characters and ideas in the same way a TV show does, and plot beats that felt like things a TV show would do. And the fact that this is part of a planned 9 book series does not fill me with confidence either... I like series, but I'm really worried things are going to be dragged out unnecessarily.
Still, concerns aside, there aren't really any major problems... it's just the things I liked were usually tempered by caveats. I enjoyed the two alternating viewpoints, largely, until the two stories met, after which it felt like an unnecessary distraction (indeed, I had trouble remembering who was supposed to be the viewpoint character in each of those chapters)... though luckily, the stories diverged again and it ceased to be a problem. The characters were mostly entertaining and relateable... although I found them to be pretty close to SF tropes (and indeed, regularly thought of some of them as combinations of specific TV characters I've loved in the past... there's certainly a Firefly vibe among many of them).
It did really start to pick up my interest towards the end, as what seemed at first like a fairly brainless horror movie trope got some interesting development, such that I want to see where it goes. And I appreciate the hard SF feel... the authors insist it's not hard SF, and I suspect they probably fudged things like travel times a lot, but the book is regularly aware of things like gravity and acceleration and how they complicate things, and doesn't invent magic technologies that take care of it.
I did like it, and I almost gave it four stars, there was just that niggling TV-vibe that made it feel a little shallower. But I'm almost certainly going to be checking out the sequels, at least the first two or three. I'm not yet sure it's worth committing to all nine.
Started: The Martian, by Andy Weir
Started: Behemoth, by Peter Watts (Rifters, Book 3)
Started: Burning Paradise, by Robert Charles Wilson
That makes my total list for the year:
1. Briarpatch, by Tim Pratt
2. Feed, by Mira Grant (Newsflesh Trilogy, #1)
3. vN: The First Machine Dynasty, by Madeline Ashby (The Machine Dynasty, #1)
4. Deadline, by Mira Grant (Newsflesh Trilogy, #2)
5. Nexus, by Ramez Naam (Nexus, #1)
6. Blackout, by Mira Grant (Newsflesh Trilogy, #3)
7. Deception Well, by Linda Nagata
8. Coyote, by Allen Steele (Coyote Trilogy, #1)
9. Limit of Vision, by Linda Nagata
10. Saturn's Children, by Charles Stross (reread)
11. The Player of Games, by Iain M. Banks (Culture, #2) (reread)
12. The Troop, by Nick Cutter (recieved for free)
13. Among Others, by Jo Walton
14. Great North Road, by Peter F. Hamilton
15. War and Space: Recent Combat (short story collection)
16. Voice of the Whirlwind, by Walter Jon Williams
17. Only Superhuman, by Christopher L. Bennett
18. The Living Dead, Volume 2 (zombie-focused short story collection)
19. Year's Best SF 16 (short story collection)
20. The Halcyon Drift, by Brian Stableford (Star-Pilot Grainger, #1) (reread)
21. Redshirts, by John Scalzi
22. Rhapsody in Black, by Brian Stableford (Star-Pilot Grainger, #2) (reread)
23. The Risen Empire, by Scott Westerfeld (Succession, #1)
24. Promised Land, by Brian Stableford (Star-Pilot Grainger, #3) (reread)
25. Memory, by Linda Nagata
26. The Stories: Five Years of Original Fiction on Tor.com (short story collection)
27. The Killing of Worlds, by Scott Westerfeld (Succession, #2)
28. The Paradise Game, by Brian Stableford (Star-Pilot Grainger, #4) (reread)
29. The Apex Book of World SF (short short collection)
30. The Fenris Device, by Brian Stableford (Star-Pilot Grainger, #5) (reread)
31. Swan Song, by Brian Stableford (Star-Pilot Grainger, #6) (reread)
32. The Last Policeman, by Ben H. Winters (The Last Policeman, #1)
33. Countdown City, by Ben H. Winters (The Last Policeman, #2)
34. Ventus, by Karl Schroeder (reread)
35. World of Trouble, by Ben H. Winters (The Last Policeman, #3)
36. Little Brother, by Cory Doctorow (Little Brother, #1) (reread)
37. Lockstep, by Karl Schroeder
38. The Causal Angel, by Hannu Rajaniemi (Jean le Flambeur #3)
39. Neptune's Brood, by Charles Stross (Freyaverse #2)
40. The City and the Stars, by Arthur C. Clarke
41. Zero Echo Shadow Prime, by Peter Samet (recieved for free)
42. Year's Best SF 17 (short story collection)
43. Blindsight, by Peter Watts (reread)
44. Crux, by Ramez Naam (Nexus, #2)
45. Echopraxia, by Peter Watts (sequel to Blindsight) (recieved for free, technically, though I also bought it)
46. Homeland, by Cory Doctorow (Little Brother, #2)
47. The Ultra Thin Man, by Patrick Swenson (recieved for free)
48. Last Plane to Heaven: The Final Collection, by Jay Lake (short stories) (recieved for free)
49. iD: The Second Machine Dynasty, by Madeline Ashby (The Machine Dynasty, #2)
50. Starfish, by Peter Watts (Rifters, #1) (reread)
51. Grass, by Sheri S. Tepper
52. Exo, by Steven Gould (Jumper, #4)
53. Pushing Ice, by Alastair Reynolds
54. Ancillary Sword, by Ann Leckie (Imperial Radch, #2)
55. Maelstrom, by Peter Watts (Rifters, #2) *
56. Infoquake, by David Louis Edelman
57. Terminal World, by Alastair Reynolds
58. This Alien Shore, by C.S. Friedman
59. The Human Division, by John Scalzi (Old Man's War, #5)
60. Leviathan Wakes, by James S.A. Corey (Expanse, #1)
Some stats on what I read:
This year I read 60 books.
According to Goodreads, they totalled 26676 pages, which means I read about 3 pages every hour of the year (though of course, not read that way or I'd go insane).
(Though of course, this is slightly inaccurate as I read something like a 3000 page book of short stories slowly, some in 2013, some in 2014, but since I finished in 2014, they count it there... but, whatever, close enough)
I reread 12 books (vs 48 new to me)
Number of books recieved for free (through giveaways, contests, etc, rather than just given or available free by the author): 5
Favorite Books: Echopraxia by Peter Watts, The Causal Angel but both are parts of series I really enjoyed. For completely new finds, The Newsflesh series by Mira Grant and The Last Policeman series by Ben H. Winters were nice surprises that gripped me.
First, other things. I probably should have posted this earlier, but I hope everyone's had a nice holiday season, regardless of any holidays you celebrate (and if you don't celebrate any, well, I hope you enjoyed the lights and colors of other people celebrating?). I had a fairly quiet Xmas, just my Dad, Grandmother, Stepmother, and Brother having a dinner. It was good, though.
And it goes without saying (except that I'm doing so anyway) that I wish you all a Happy New Year for 2015, even if I don't expect one for myself.
Now that the pleasantries are out of the way, on to the actual update.
Not much has been going on in the TV front other than Legend of Korra finale (Which I discussed in a separate post) and The Doctor Who XMas special (which I don't feel like discussing it at length... suffice it to say it was an episode that was constantly annoying me while it was going on because of things that didn't make sense, but then they explained all of it more or less satisfactory so... I guess I kind of half-liked it? Though it's a weird kind of like. Maybe it'll rewatch better. Also, didn't especially like the ending.
What else... well, I should probably update on the cooking front.
Since I started learning to cook, I've actually cooked, in some limited sense of the word, almost every night for the last three months. A couple "grab fast food" nights and a few family occasions (and inevitable days of leftovers), and a handful of days where my brother cooked (he's busy and stressed with work and school most of the time so I don't want to ask him to do extra... so I like helping him out).
Now, mostly, it's fairly simple stuff... packaged side-dishes where you just have to pour in a pot and follow directions, frozen vegetables, and a couple times were it's something super simple "just pop it in an oven and wait" meals like frozen pizza (though I usually add mushrooms), but a fair number of meats where I actually cook... burgers and sausages being the most common, or ground beef for hamburger helper/tacos. I've also now cooked pork chops (including seasoning, searing, and then finishing in the oven), pork roast (rubbing a seasoning on it and slicing it from a larger roast) with carrots (prepared from fresh, peeled and chopped and) cooked in the juices, bacon and eggs a few different ways, and made what (if I do say so myself) was a pretty excellent meatloaf (in addition to dicing mushrooms for the loaf mix along with other ingredients, I also left three whole mushrooms in the middle as a little surprise which seemed to give it an awesome extra moistness). So I'm glad to be learning new things. And I haven't poisoned anyone yet.
But now let's go to Book Foo. As usual, reviews are usually grabbed from my Goodreads account, and unless otherwise noted don't have what I feel are significant spoilers but may include some minor information outside of the cut (and a 'back-of-the-book' summary before the cut, so if you don't like those you should probably stop reading the entry entirely right now).
Finished: Exo, by Steven Gould (Jumper, Book 4)
Millicent ('Cent') Rice is a teenager who has inherited the otherwise unique ability to teleport from her parents. She can go anywhere she's been, or anywhere she can see clearly, in the blink of an eye, and bring anything she can carry with her. So what does a girl like that do when she wants to make her mark on the world (and also needs a project to distract her from dwelling on a recent breakup)? Why, she starts her own space program, of course.
This book continues the Jumper series, which started out focusing on her father but as of the last book, Impulse changed to Cent, but despite that, and other changes, the series remains a fun and compulsively readable adventure. I don't know if it's deliberate, but I love how, in every sequel in the series, aside from continuing to have imaginative fun with the Jumper concept itself, the author seems to play around with a new genre. The second book had a second level of a spy game, the third was partly a high school teen drama. This one? It seems to harken back to old-school SF juveniles, where a young character gets involved in some science-based adventure and has to go through all the details to reach their goal. It felt a bit like Gould attempted to write a modern-day Heinlein juvenile, his own version of Have Space Suit—Will Travel, although without all the alien stuff and, thankfully, with today's sensibilities. Maybe the next book will merge in galaxy-spanning Space Opera (although at this rate I think we're a few books away).
In any event, a large amount of this book involves the somewhat mundane details of building a functional space-suit and testing it before going into orbit, and then things like matching velocities and dealing with things like space junk and radiation and orbital tracking all crop up. It's here where the book risks turning off readers as dry or boring. It does, at times, threaten to overwhelm exciting with interesting and realistic. I don't personally feel it got there, I thought the mundane details of a fantastic thing were enough to keep me turning pages (in fact, in some levels, that's always been part of the fun of Jumper... the loads of mundane, sometimes slice-of-life details on things the leads do with their teleportation powers), but I can see how other people's mileage may vary. The lack of significant conflict in much of the book, conflict other than "here we've got a technical problem, and here's how we solve it!" may also bother some. There are people actively trying to hurt the main characters, but they play only small parts in the book, a little at the beginning and then again near the end. There are some personal emotional crises and interpersonal drama to give it a heart, but they feel small compared to the big technical project.
Again, I can see how it would turn people off, but I also find it to be a strange source of strength for the book. There's a refreshingly optimistic vibe to the whole book that I almost want to label it in it's own subcategory: Nice SF. SF where most people are nice, good, hardworking people who don't want to hurt anybody (sometimes they do, but they're not cruel about it), where the government ISN'T out to get our characters... there are people who are, and they may control factions of the government, but they're the minority just as evil people are the minority in life, that most people are nice. It's refreshing, and an attitude I've enjoyed all through the series, but it seems especially prevalent here, where when the government notices that Cent's running her own, impossible, orbital operations, they don't try to arrest her or trap her, they notice that she's going about it in a reasonable way and trying to help, and try to help her in kind to do it better. Some might see it as naive, but in a genre dominated by grim (which, don't get me wrong, I love as well... Peter Watts is one of my favorites and grimmer than most!), sometimes a book in the category of "Nice SF" is just what you need.
I do think the above problems (or near-problems) make it possibly the weakest book in the SERIES, it's only by degrees. Ideally, I'd like a bit more of an emotional punch other than the sensawunda (which, granted, is here in spades), and a more directed plot with complications, but I still thoroughly enjoyed reading it, and am totally on board for more. And there's plenty of room for more , even if not jumping to space opera, maybe near-future space colonization could anchor the next book. Whatever happens, I'll be there.
Finished: Pushing Ice, by Alastair Reynolds
When one of Saturn's moons suddenly leaves orbit and takes off for a distant star, revealing itself to be an unfathomably ancient alien starship, a nuclear-powered ice-mining ship is the only one near enough to have a chance at getting some detailed observations before it leaves the system. As they struggle to learn all they can, they soon discover that returning home may not be as simple as they thought, and begin a journey that will take them to the depths of space and time and force them to struggle just to survive.
As a "big idea", this book ranks up there with a compelling premise that grabs you, and, although there are a few missteps in resolution, largely carries through with cool space-operatic ideas often in inventive new contexts, and the author creates a universe that could easily support many different stories. In fact, on that front, one of my biggest complaints was that too much was left unanswered and unresolved, elements that seemed like part of a cool mystery never getting their payoff.
Where the book falters, somewhat, is with the characters. They start off being interesting, and a nice change for most SF (although nothing new for Reynolds, who's done it before), the two main leads are women. Unfortunately, for the novel to progress in the course he's charted, these characters that interested me so much in the beginning must act so unfathomably stupid and petty that I almost just wish they'd die. This is, sadly, also nothing new for Reynolds (that was my reaction to his first book, although I'd hoped he'd grown out of it). I get that he needed conflict and factions and disagreements that turned violent, and even a deep rift that can, in the climax, be dealt with as the characters must either get over their differences or suffer for them, and that ending even mostly works... but how he gets to the point just soured me on things... two characters go back and forth in power and mostly make decisions that everybody else just goes along with because they're in charge, rather than taking their advice when it's good and replacing them with other people when they go off the reservation. I kept hoping there'd be a bloodless coup with the people who weren't ready to let old rivalries risk their future just shunted people out of the reigns of power, or even a decent election. Because, really, if these two are so obviously the most competent people they have available, the ship should have died on the way to their first mining job before the book began. This doesn't destroy the book for me... all it does is turn one which could have been great into merely good, and forcing me to ignore the elements that don't work with an eyeroll.
I have a lesser problem with some of the alien stuff wrapped up, where it seems the only reason one group are the good guys and one group are the bad guys (both of which warned against the intentions of the author) is because the author decided that's how it would turn out, and it feels like the person who chose the "right" side is portrayed as have being obviously right and wise in doing so, when really, there was a lot that was iffy with both sides, and I would have preferred some ambiguity make it into the final resolution. Maybe if there was ever a sequel, this could be improved.
If it wasn't for the characters, this would be one of my favorites of Reynolds' books, as it probably has the most appealing (to me) central premise. As it is, it lands somewhere squarely in the middle.
Finished: Ancillary Sword, by Ann Leckie (Imperial Radch, Book 2)
(summary cut because it's slightly spoilery for the ending of the first book)
Continuing the story begun in the multiple-award-winning Ancillary Justice, Breq, who formerly was a starship herself, now commands another. While it's not quite the same, the ship gives her access to multiple points of view of her officers, much like Breq had before she was confined to a single body. As she undergoes her mission, she runs up against not only possible traitors, but systemic abuse and discrimination that her own society sweeps under the rug.
Last year, Ancillary Justice won both the Hugo and Nebula awards, as well as virtually every major award it was eligible for, and it's easy to see why... great space opera, with a strange yet believable new culture, a fascinating main character, and saying some important things cloaked in an exciting story. It also had something of a gimmick, where, because the language of the main character does not distinguish, every character was referred to by female pronouns and other descriptors. This gimmick returns (I can only remember one character who's gender was explicitly identified), but this time around it's a less jarring experience, and almost felt natural to return.
How does the rest of the book stack up?
Well, first, this is a much quieter, more sedate book. There isn't a lot of action, and there's a lot of conversations over tea. Some major issues get resolved this way. And while it sounds like that would be boring, somehow, it largely works. But it does feel a bit like a step down in terms of excitement. It's almost the stereotypical Middle Book Syndrome... the novelty isn't quite there, and there's no resolution to the greater plot. Worse, it almost feels as though there's no advancement of the greater plot, like the whole book is something of a holding pattern... the stakes are pretty low throughout, and the major events are steps towards righting of long-term wrongs local to one planet that we only learn about because we were visiting there - if she visited another planet, she might have done the same there.
That's not to say these parts aren't interesting, and for the most part there's a sense of satisfaction from watching a character trying to do the right thing and disregarding the traditions and blinding privilege that allows them to continue. Moreover, they're one of those things that, without pointing the finger directly at our own society, can open your mind towards similar issues in real life, which makes the book somewhat more meaningful than a straight adventure.
The quieter, lower-stakes nature of the plot is the biggest flaw, but... it's not really all that big. If that's the worst you can say about it, it's almost like you're reaching for something to say. I liked the book, I enjoyed the characters, and even the pace was pretty good. If you liked the first book, you'll probably like this one as well, but if not, there's not a lot to change your mind, either. When the third book comes out, I'll certainly be reading that as well.
Finished: Maelstrom, by Peter Watts (Rifters, Book 2)
(again cutting summary because description is slightly spoilery for book 1) Maelstrom continues the story begun in Starfish. Lenie Clark has narrowly escaped death at the bottom of the sea, and now wants revenge on those that launched the nuclear strike. She doesn't know that the reason for the strike was that she's carrying an organism that could threaten all life on Earth, and is spreading it everywhere she goes.
Watts explores a lot of ideas in this book... computer viruses that co-evolve along with a pandemic, public servants charged with protecting us who are programmed to do the right thing (the rub being, always, who decides what that is), meme manipulation, and more... but they never threaten to overwhelm the story, which deals with extreme issues of balancing the needs of the many vs. the needs of the few, as well as anger of the disenfranchised and rage and revenge.
The author also manages to pull off an incredible trick, he successfully made me kind of root for a person who's not only suffering severe delusions, but is also potentially causing the deaths of millions or billions on her quest. Despite this, I wanted to see her succeed, to avoid the search for her. In this way, I'm much like some other characters in the book. It's not an easy trick to pull off, but Watts has a talent for making me love messed up characters.
Compared to the first book in the series, the book has a much less broken narrative. The first book jumped ahead months at several points, skipping over major events, giving it something of a disjointed feel, something like a series of short stories. This one, although of course there are still jumps in time, it feels like one continuous novel, with nothing important skipped.
The only thing I felt was a little on the weak side was the depictions of all that was going on in the net (now called the Maelstrom)... the general outlines of it were okay and included some novel ideas, but the specific descriptions leaned a little towards some of my pet peeves, describing information networks in an extended metaphor that threatens to confuse the line between the metaphor and reality, and also a bit of inappropriate anthropomorphism of data structures.
Still, on the whole it's a worthy sequel, may even be better than the first (it's a hard call, since they focus on different things and either might appeal to me more when I'm in a certain mood).
Finished: Infoquake, by Daniel Louis Edelmen
Infoquake tells the story of a ruthless businessman in the far future and his attempt to do a product launch for a new technology that's going to change the world. That about describes everything that matters, which doesn't matter a lot to me. I should note here that I'm not spoiling any specific bits that I feel it's worth hiding the review over, but I will be talking generally about how some plot elements crop up and, in my opinion, don't get payoff.
I'm not going to say that this is a bad book... it's just one that is geared very much to tastes that are not mine. Technically I'm not sure there's anything particularly wrong with it, at least anything more than an average first SF novel. I just didn't find the characters terribly sympathetic or interesting, and the exploration of the SF aspects focused on odd areas, and, to a certain extent, an underlying political tone that did not agree with me.
Let's start with the first. The book seems largely to be set in, and to a certain extent, advocate for, a libertarian hyper-capitalist society. That the characters believe certain things doesn't necessarily mean the author shares those beliefs, but here I get the impression he thinks what he's setup is a generally good system. To his credit, though, he also does point out some serious flaws and dangers in the setup, and some benefits in opposing viewpoints. So it's not a political polemic, and if everything else was enjoyable, I could look past it, or even enjoy the alternate viewpoint (Vernor Vinge is an author who manages this).
The biggest problem, though, is the main character, Natch, who seems to be a largely amoral businessman who thinks only of being on top and doesn't much care how he gets there. At first, since the story seemed to be told through his underlings, I thought maybe he was being set up as a semi-antagonist, or at least a virtual force of nature that drives the plots the real protagonists react to, but shortly after the beginning we spend an awful lot of time on his childhood in what I can only assume is an attempt to get you to sympathize with him. It doesn't work. He's too uninterestingly omnicapable and with an unlikeable personality. The other major characters, well, a few of them are okay, but either lack much agency or their opportunities for personal character growth gets sacrificed to showing how awesome (or occasionally how crazy or reckless) Natch is.
A problem almost as big is with the plot itself. The book's titled Infoquake, but that's really only a tiny part of the plot, an unexpected side effect that people fear might happen again, but the book isn't, in an sense, ABOUT an Infoquake. This isn't a big deal. What's more of a big deal is that the new technology that you could argue the plot IS about... gets reduced into the most boring mundane detail of how to get it ready to launch it in the marketplace. It's like if somebody wrote a book about the development of FTL or teleportation that would change the world, but instead of focusing on all the things you could do with it, instead it focused on determining the insurance liablity the company would face if something went wrong. We get a couple descriptions and one example of the technology in action, used in the most mundane and unimaginative context out of all possibilities. To go back to our teleportation example, it'd be like the only actual use of teleportation they showed us was a guy using it to catch the bus he just missed by teleporting to the next stop. This is made more infuriating by the fact that when they revealed what the MultiReal technology was and described it in vague terms, it was the only time I was even a little excited, it finally sound interesting. But it got no payoff. Supposedly it gets some in the sequel. I will never find out from personal experience. Another problem with this approach is that the development of the new technology is essentially a programming problem, but, largely, programming in this new world has changed, described as more an art of manipulating a picture on the screen until it LOOKS just right, rather than actually knowing anything about what you're doing. How future-programming is done may actually be (somewhat) close to how it'll eventually evolve, manipulating large data structures in pre-defined libraries rather than individual variables, but you're telling a story of people pulling all-nighters to code a new product release, you want a better sense that they're actually viscerally connected to it.
The world-building in general is somewhat lacking for me. This is a world set several hundreds of years in the future, but it feels it might as well be 20-30. A few societal changes, some huge technological leaps, but everybody's fundamentally the same (I had hopes that the revolutionary new technology might alter that, but apparently while removing the injustices of nature seem what everybody's interested in, nobody really is at all worried about the injustices of capitalism). The two major developments are the science of bio/logics, which essentially let you run software that monitors and improves the human body, like apps, and the ability to project a sort of holographic representation of yourself into public locations (or private ones, with permission) at a distance and feel like you're there. Neither feels like a lot of improvement for such time, and moreover, I'm never entirely sold on them and all the ways they've changed society. The bio/logic programs, for example, all have unbelievably banal brand names and a version number and all seem to do very minor things, yet there's a cutthroat marketplace and everybody upgrades whenever there's a new version. And yet they're paradoxically so afraid of AI and combining human and machine that one character has only the crudest replacement limbs for an old injury. It just doesn't ring true. There are a few other advancements, but none of them figure much into the story and some of them just seem bizarre (I'm not quite sure, for example, what the benefit is of apartment buildings that collapse during the day when nobody's using them... and how/why has everybody migrated to the same schedule?)
This might be somebody's ideal book, but it's not mine. There ARE some cool ideas, but I have to wade through too much stuff I'm not interested in to get to them, and the things that do interest me, they don't really get paid off in a satisfying degree.
Finished: Terminal World, by Alastair Reynolds
Terminal World is the story of Quillon, who lives in a world divided by zones, where the laws of physics are slightly different and different levels of technology work in each zone. Some zones allow only steam and clockwork contraptions, others allow circuitry and computer networks, and still others allow far beyond what Earth has today. A few zones don't even allow life, but even those that do, are optimized for those already born to it... crossing a zone boundary is hazardous, sometimes even fatal, without medication. Spearpoint is a city built on an impossibly tall spire, which contains several zones... but Quillon has to leave. For though he comes from one of the highest-technology zones, he's been in hiding in Neon Heights for years, and the people he's hiding from want him. But that's just the start of his journey, because the zones are unstable, and the whole world is at risk.
Ever since I heard about the book, I was both interested and wary. Interested, because I love the idea of different technology zones and crossing between them. This sounded a little like Vernor Vinge's Zones of Thought universe, except all mashed onto one planet. And yet, two things worried me. First, descriptions of the book made it sound that there would be a heavy steampunk bent, and I'm pretty iffy on steampunk in general. And secondly, because it was written by Alastair Reynolds, and I've been a little iffy on him as well. Sometimes he writes great books, sometimes he has great ideas but I can't stand the characters or ending and it ruins the book for me entirely. So, with two iffy components, there was twice as much room for the book to fail.
Luckily, it didn't, even though some elements of both of my worries came true. There is, in fact, a heavy steampunk component. A good chunk of the book takes place on steam-driven airships. And, to an extent, Reynolds mucks up the ending. But, not too badly... it was merely unsatisfying an ending, an ending where I wanted more, a more firm resolution, but not one that made me angry or feel like the book was a waste.
Regardless of the minor problems with the ending, the book was a lot of fun. I liked the characters, and the adventure kept me engaged all the way through, even through parts that usually don't interest me as much (I'm not a big fan of huge battles between armies, and there was some of that towards the end), and how they played with the central idea helped stoke my sense of wonder. It's probably in fact be one of my favorite books of Reynolds (sharing the list with House of Suns or Century Rain... ranking more finely than that isn't really my thing), both stand-alones.
The only other complaint I have is that I wish he'd played a bit more with the higher-technology level zones. In books where there's some kind of enforced difference between technology levels, too often it's used, as it's most often done here, to take (and mostly strand) characters into a situation with technology less than Earth, making the concept merely an excuse to write steampunk or low-magic fantasy adventure, whereas I'd love to see more of an encompassing look at things across all sorts of different zones, spend some time in a world of computer networks and cell phones and other times in a world where even guns don't work, and show how those societies being next door to each other affects people. Here, we get a few hints at things the highest technology zones can do, but most characters and most of the action don't deal with anything more advanced than we have on Earth right now. And, as a mainly SF reader, that makes me feel it as a missed opportunity.
I would love to see Reynolds come back to this world, maybe not as a sequel (the story could continue, but it doesn't need to, my frustrations with the ending notwithstanding), but merely a different adventure using this world, for I can see plenty of stories left to tell in it.
Finished: This Alien Shore, by C.S. Friedman
The first age of spaceflight ended abruptly when it was discovered that the faster-than-light drive had side effects, altering the genetics of those who used it, which already included millions of colonists bound for different worlds. Earth shut down all travel and left the colonies isolated to survive or fall on their own, and their variants on the human form to develop into their own standards of normal. Centuries later, one of those colonies discovered a new way to travel faster-than-light, and brought together all the human worlds once more... but held a strict and complete monopoly on such travel, forcing everyone else to follow the rules of their Guild or risk being cut off from the rest of the universe. But there's a computer virus spreading which seems to be created to try and learn their secrets, infesting people's brainware and causing more than a few deaths, and the Guild must investigate it. But that's not the only thing that's going on... a teenage girl named Jamiska is on the run and doesn't know why. The subject of an experiment at a young age, she may be another key to toppling the Guild monopoly, and that makes her very valuable to all sorts of people who might not have her personal best interests at heart. But she's on her own... except for the voices in her head.
It's a complicated premise to sum up quickly (I didn't even get into significant spoiler territory), but when reading it, it's fairly easy to grasp, and the author's created a setup for her world and characters that draw you in. With the Hausmann variants (humans from far flung colonies who may look like what in other books would be like a variety of alien races), Friedman gets to have the benefit of humanoid 'aliens' without having to worry about them being TOO alien for the reader to understand, and yet at the same time, she uses them, and people who look completely human, to highlight the alien natures within other humans (and indeed, sometimes within ourselves). The Guerans, who look human but who have greater neural diversity than humans (with the majority of the population having forms one of a myriad kinds of condition some of us might consider a 'disorder', like obsessive compulsive tendencies, social anxiety, autism), and yet celebrate their differences and structure their society around making it easier for everyone to interact in more or less harmony, are a particularly fascinating creation, and the society we spend the most time with, as they are the ones with control of space travel. That element, too, is a more nuanced concept than I expected... usually in stories like these, the one with the monopoly are the obvious bad guys, using their advantage to tyrannize others. Here, there's the sense that they've tried to create a system that benefits everyone, not just them, and although they go too far at times and you may root for the monopoly to be broken, you don't always want to see them punished for it and can see their side of the struggle as a valid one.
Jamiska's story is also reasonably compelling, although a little more conventional aside from her own particular mental quirks. Her story, in general, went pretty much where I expected it to, the mysteries guessed before the author revealed them (although there's the sense that the author expected this, and she didn't build them up as a huger deal than they were), and ended up where I expected she'd go. I wouldn't say there were no surprises, but they were surprises in approach rather than plot developments.
The science fictional elements were mostly handled well... I admit I'm still a little unclear on exactly how the Hausmann variants worked to produce (more or less) one specific, universal variant on humanity on each planet (did each trip alter the genes of everybody in a specific way so that after a few generations everyone on one planet had scales? or was it random and the centuries of isolation molded the differences?), and I don't think the hacking and computer-related scenes were as believable as they could be (though I've read much worse... at least it's clear the author was trying for realistic), but I did like the ubiquitous brainware technology and how it helped provide another counterpoint to the vast differences.
Other than the minor complaints mentioned or hinted above, I did have a slight problem with the ending (or epilogue, maybe), where the main character seemed curiously absent and uninvolved. After we spent a whole book following her adventures, it felt somewhat off to simply be told her fate rather than actually seeing it.
I rated this a three, but it's a high three, nearly a four. I'd happily read something else in this universe. It doesn't absolutely need a sequel, but there's plenty of room in this setting to explore other stories.
Finished: The Human Division, by John Scalzi (Old Man's War universe)
The Human Division takes place in the universe of Old Man's War, after the events of that trilogy, but not focusing on the main characters. Instead, it focuses on Harry Wilson, friend of John Perry from the first books, and his adventures as science adviser on a series of missions, many of which are diplomatic in nature, while meanwhile somebody, possibly somebody in the Colonial Union, seeks to sabotage diplomatic measures.
Generally speaking, this is one of those "optional safe bet" books, at least for fans. If you liked the other books in the series, you'll probably like this... but at the same time, it's not required reading by any means. It does focus much, much less on direct combat than the first book, and, by it's nature, it's a lot less of a cohesive story.
The nature I refer to was that the book started out as a serialized collection of short stories, in more-or-less chronological order, involving usually the same set of characters (though a few focus on people who don't play a significant role in the story of the others), and that's pretty much what it reads like.
This may also be it's greatest flaw, because you can evaluate it both on the sum of it's parts, and as a whole, and it comes up a little bit short on each category. Does each individual short story satisfy? Mostly. But they're snacks, not filling in the way a really good short story can be, but just something that passes the time. Does the overall story they tell satisfy? Again, mostly. But too much time feels wasted on useless things and gags, and we don't even get a decent resolution to it. My other minor complaint is that really, the characters seem to differ more in terms of roles than personality. There's the 'hero', his put-upon 'sidekick', a potential 'romantic interest'... but they all feel like they're the same guy, they have the same sorts of conversations, the same sense of humor, they banter in the same ways (and it's funny, but it gets old by the end). Then there's the other type, the grim "scare the heck out of their allies and subordinate" types (usually with a softer interior). But that's about it. Even among aliens, this is often the case. There doesn't seem to be range or depth beyond that. Which could be the short version of my complaints in general: lacking in range and depth.
Because the book seems to suffer from this lack of depth (and the series in general is not typically deep SF), the whole thing winds up feeling a little disposable... fun, mind you, but disposable fun. Like watching one of those milestone episodes of a TV series, where instead of going for big events they let the actors just have fun doing wacky stuff, and you could skip the ep if you had to... you might miss a few plot points, but nothing major. I enjoyed it. But not as much as I did the other books in the series.
Finished: Leviathan Wakes, by James S.A. Corey (Expanse, Book 1 )
Leviathan Wakes tells the story of a spaceship crew who respond to a distress call and get way over their heads, and a cop on an asteroid colony trying to find a missing girl, who may have been on the ship giving the distress call.
This is a rollicking space adventure that combines SF, noir, action, and horror, and the first book of a series that has not only become very popular, but is also being made into a TV series. And I can see why... there's a lot of neat stuff here. And yet... I also was left, just a little, underwhelmed. It may merely be a function of the hype... it's hard to live up to, after all. But I think it's also that there's a certain TV/Movie vibe to everything... now granted, a show based on this is going to be, if done well, a very GOOD TV show, but it feels like the book was designed to sort of skim the surface of characters and ideas in the same way a TV show does, and plot beats that felt like things a TV show would do. And the fact that this is part of a planned 9 book series does not fill me with confidence either... I like series, but I'm really worried things are going to be dragged out unnecessarily.
Still, concerns aside, there aren't really any major problems... it's just the things I liked were usually tempered by caveats. I enjoyed the two alternating viewpoints, largely, until the two stories met, after which it felt like an unnecessary distraction (indeed, I had trouble remembering who was supposed to be the viewpoint character in each of those chapters)... though luckily, the stories diverged again and it ceased to be a problem. The characters were mostly entertaining and relateable... although I found them to be pretty close to SF tropes (and indeed, regularly thought of some of them as combinations of specific TV characters I've loved in the past... there's certainly a Firefly vibe among many of them).
It did really start to pick up my interest towards the end, as what seemed at first like a fairly brainless horror movie trope got some interesting development, such that I want to see where it goes. And I appreciate the hard SF feel... the authors insist it's not hard SF, and I suspect they probably fudged things like travel times a lot, but the book is regularly aware of things like gravity and acceleration and how they complicate things, and doesn't invent magic technologies that take care of it.
I did like it, and I almost gave it four stars, there was just that niggling TV-vibe that made it feel a little shallower. But I'm almost certainly going to be checking out the sequels, at least the first two or three. I'm not yet sure it's worth committing to all nine.
Started: The Martian, by Andy Weir
Started: Behemoth, by Peter Watts (Rifters, Book 3)
Started: Burning Paradise, by Robert Charles Wilson
That makes my total list for the year:
1. Briarpatch, by Tim Pratt
2. Feed, by Mira Grant (Newsflesh Trilogy, #1)
3. vN: The First Machine Dynasty, by Madeline Ashby (The Machine Dynasty, #1)
4. Deadline, by Mira Grant (Newsflesh Trilogy, #2)
5. Nexus, by Ramez Naam (Nexus, #1)
6. Blackout, by Mira Grant (Newsflesh Trilogy, #3)
7. Deception Well, by Linda Nagata
8. Coyote, by Allen Steele (Coyote Trilogy, #1)
9. Limit of Vision, by Linda Nagata
10. Saturn's Children, by Charles Stross (reread)
11. The Player of Games, by Iain M. Banks (Culture, #2) (reread)
12. The Troop, by Nick Cutter (recieved for free)
13. Among Others, by Jo Walton
14. Great North Road, by Peter F. Hamilton
15. War and Space: Recent Combat (short story collection)
16. Voice of the Whirlwind, by Walter Jon Williams
17. Only Superhuman, by Christopher L. Bennett
18. The Living Dead, Volume 2 (zombie-focused short story collection)
19. Year's Best SF 16 (short story collection)
20. The Halcyon Drift, by Brian Stableford (Star-Pilot Grainger, #1) (reread)
21. Redshirts, by John Scalzi
22. Rhapsody in Black, by Brian Stableford (Star-Pilot Grainger, #2) (reread)
23. The Risen Empire, by Scott Westerfeld (Succession, #1)
24. Promised Land, by Brian Stableford (Star-Pilot Grainger, #3) (reread)
25. Memory, by Linda Nagata
26. The Stories: Five Years of Original Fiction on Tor.com (short story collection)
27. The Killing of Worlds, by Scott Westerfeld (Succession, #2)
28. The Paradise Game, by Brian Stableford (Star-Pilot Grainger, #4) (reread)
29. The Apex Book of World SF (short short collection)
30. The Fenris Device, by Brian Stableford (Star-Pilot Grainger, #5) (reread)
31. Swan Song, by Brian Stableford (Star-Pilot Grainger, #6) (reread)
32. The Last Policeman, by Ben H. Winters (The Last Policeman, #1)
33. Countdown City, by Ben H. Winters (The Last Policeman, #2)
34. Ventus, by Karl Schroeder (reread)
35. World of Trouble, by Ben H. Winters (The Last Policeman, #3)
36. Little Brother, by Cory Doctorow (Little Brother, #1) (reread)
37. Lockstep, by Karl Schroeder
38. The Causal Angel, by Hannu Rajaniemi (Jean le Flambeur #3)
39. Neptune's Brood, by Charles Stross (Freyaverse #2)
40. The City and the Stars, by Arthur C. Clarke
41. Zero Echo Shadow Prime, by Peter Samet (recieved for free)
42. Year's Best SF 17 (short story collection)
43. Blindsight, by Peter Watts (reread)
44. Crux, by Ramez Naam (Nexus, #2)
45. Echopraxia, by Peter Watts (sequel to Blindsight) (recieved for free, technically, though I also bought it)
46. Homeland, by Cory Doctorow (Little Brother, #2)
47. The Ultra Thin Man, by Patrick Swenson (recieved for free)
48. Last Plane to Heaven: The Final Collection, by Jay Lake (short stories) (recieved for free)
49. iD: The Second Machine Dynasty, by Madeline Ashby (The Machine Dynasty, #2)
50. Starfish, by Peter Watts (Rifters, #1) (reread)
51. Grass, by Sheri S. Tepper
52. Exo, by Steven Gould (Jumper, #4)
53. Pushing Ice, by Alastair Reynolds
54. Ancillary Sword, by Ann Leckie (Imperial Radch, #2)
55. Maelstrom, by Peter Watts (Rifters, #2) *
56. Infoquake, by David Louis Edelman
57. Terminal World, by Alastair Reynolds
58. This Alien Shore, by C.S. Friedman
59. The Human Division, by John Scalzi (Old Man's War, #5)
60. Leviathan Wakes, by James S.A. Corey (Expanse, #1)
Some stats on what I read:
This year I read 60 books.
According to Goodreads, they totalled 26676 pages, which means I read about 3 pages every hour of the year (though of course, not read that way or I'd go insane).
(Though of course, this is slightly inaccurate as I read something like a 3000 page book of short stories slowly, some in 2013, some in 2014, but since I finished in 2014, they count it there... but, whatever, close enough)
I reread 12 books (vs 48 new to me)
Number of books recieved for free (through giveaways, contests, etc, rather than just given or available free by the author): 5
Favorite Books: Echopraxia by Peter Watts, The Causal Angel but both are parts of series I really enjoyed. For completely new finds, The Newsflesh series by Mira Grant and The Last Policeman series by Ben H. Winters were nice surprises that gripped me.
