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newnumber6Trying to do these more often so I don't have as huge a backlog as last time.
But before we start, Halloween! My schedule changed this year, and this year I actually worked on Halloween night. I was kind to looking forward to seeing Trick or Treaters on the walk to work, but I think I was maybe half an hour too early for that... I saw a few, but not many. A few more on the way home, although that was later so it was mostly older teens and adults. The highlight was a fairly well done Beetlejuice costume, striped suit, hair, face paint... couldn't tell his age because of the makeup, but he was at least with some people in their late teens/early twenties, which was impressive for a costume of a movie that old. Also a few zombies. I actually did dress up, but in my lazy post-apocalyptic drifter costume. I have a decades-old military gas mask (my parents were both in the military) and basically just put that over whatever I wear when I need a really quick costume and call myself a post-apocalyptic drifter. So I brought it with me to work and did manage to wear it for at least a little bit on the walk there and the walk home, although it got a bit awkward to wear it the whole time and my breath started fogging up the glasses after a while. Still, it was incredibly impressive... not the costume itself, but rather that I was able to wear it in public. For those who know me you'll know that dressing up really treads on my irrrational fears. Even wearing a geeky t-shirt in public gives me stupid amounts of anxiety, so wearing an attention-getting costume... well, honestly, when I brought it I gave it 50/50 chance that I'd have the nerve to put it on, even taking into account that it's Halloween and expected. But, maybe partly because it was a costume that hid my face, I did okay with it. Maybe just the fact that it was a costume at all helped too (I mean, not completely, I still felt the internal tremors, but it wasn't as bad)... maybe some kind of convention cosplay, if I can think of a good one, isn't 100% out of the question, because the "stepping outside of myself" aspect might be good for me.
Anyway, on to books!
Finished: Artemis Awakening by Jane Lindskold
The planet Artemis was designed by advanced science to be a perfect, primitive escape for the ultra rich and powerful. Included in that fantasy was the population, who were mostly human but engineered to fulfill a role and not expand outside of that role. So while the masters have been gone for centuries, and Artemis has been lost to the rest of the galaxy, their society still resembles a fantasy kingdom with quaint villages and hunters who share connections with beasts. One such huntress is Adara, and her genetically uplifted puma Sand Shadow, who rescue a man who's crashed from the sky, a scholar from the rest of the galaxy who has been searching for Artemis... and is now stranded there.
I don't really have a lot to say about this book, except that it's mostly in the category of "Not My Thing." It's one of those books that's, in some ways, a fantasy story wrapped in a sci-fi explanation. Sometimes, this can work well, but for my personal tastes, as someone who generally prefers the SF side of the equation and isn't that into straight fantasy anymore, it's a tricky balance. This book, although it has moments that catch my interest, feels a bit too much like a fantasy book with a few SF elements. Granted, there's not explicit magic, but rather psionic powers (some of which might even, reasonably, be explained technologically, but when you throw in the occasional person who seems to have oracle-like precognition, that goes too far and is itself one of my hate-buttons).
The characters are mildly interesting, especially in that there's sort of a completely civil love triangle, where everyone knows everyone else's interest and yet act mature about it and the woman in the middle isn't entirely sure she wants either of them as anything more than friends. It's kind of refreshing.
There are some elements that had my attention, like remnants of AI defense systems coming to life and playing a role, but they didn't spend as much time on them as I'd like, and, in particular, too much of the scenes where we were able to explore that aspect was written as fragments of poetry that I found tiresome (this is not a knock on Lindskold's ability specifically: I find almost all poetry in fiction tiresome... if I want poetry, I'll read a poem, not a novel. I almost never want poetry.).
It's okay. There were some decent elements that kept me interested throughout, but even though the story isn't really complete in the one volume, I don't feel any pressing need to move onto the sequel. I'm sure there are a good number of people who will like it, but for me, meh.
Finished: The Trials by Linda Nagata (The Red #2)
Sequel, so description cut for minor spoilers of the first book inherent...
Picking up after the events of First Light, The Trials has near future soldier James Shelley facing a court martial for the mission he went on at the end of the last book. All they want is to get their side of the story out, which is the last thing everyone else in the traditional chain of command wants. But they're in a difficult spot, as Shelley and his team are considered heroes by a large percentage of the population. A deal might be reached, but that won't be the end of Shelley's fight, or his trials... for there are still major threats out there, and although the Artificial Intelligence known as the Red may not be his personal guardian angel anymore, it doesn't mean it's done with them.
A middle book in a trilogy often has an uphill road to climb. It can't bring things to an entirely satisfying conclusion, and it doesn't get the benefit of novelty that the first book did. And, of course, that's even leaving aside the possibility that the author herself might get into a slump, unsure exactly where to go. It almost goes without saying that a middle book isn't as good. And, in all honesty, I did get that feeling from this book pretty strongly at first. I was still interested in the plot and what would happen, but I wasn't digging it quite as much. Yet, as the story went on, the feeling lessened and I was looking more and more forward to where it would go.
For me, the book's biggest strength is the continued detailing of an artificial intelligence that is not good or evil as we understand it, or even human, but something alien and yet mostly believable. That's a tricky but impressive feat, as is telling the story of how people deal with the situation, trying to destroy it, control it for their own ends, or just live with it. On the last point, Nagata also manages to navigate another potentially difficult scenario, a lead character who may well merely be a puppet for that entity. We see his thoughts and his decisions but are aware that he's manipulated and so any any time, he may simply be a tool. Yet I rooted for him all the same.
The book does have a little bit of a feel about being a series of missions rather than a coherent single story. They go from the trial, to another mission, to another one, with a story connecting them but not seeming to be the point. It's also a pretty action-heavy book, which normally is a negative in my book, but here it works for me.
I think, all in all, although it got better the more I read, I still liked it slightly less than the first book, maybe putting it somewhere in the 3.5-4 star range, but since I'm feeling generous today, I'll round it up to a 4. I'm really looking forward to the third book in the series and I am really glad Nagata's writing science fiction novels again, she's proving once again to be a strong voice in the field.
Finished: My Real Children by Jo Walton
Patricia is in a nursing home, suffering from age-related dementia. She's lived a long life... the only problem is, she remembers two of them. In each, she had different loves, different challenges, different children, and the course of history went a different way. She looks back on both of them.
Let's get it out of the way. I guess it's something of a spoiler, but it's the kind of spoiler I wished somebody would have explained to me in advance, attached to the blurb with an asterisk. The premise described above... as interesting as it might sound, is really more of an almost meaningless framing story. The book itself is simply alternating tales from each version of Patricia's life, a split originating when she either accepted or turned down a marriage proposal. It is only the first chapter and the last (and the last takes place when the flashbacks that make up the rest of the book end, and follows directly off the first), where either version of Patricia has even the slightest awareness of her "other life," and at that point in the story, there's only one of them, the question is which world she's in. The book is, then, in effect, simply two fairly conventional life stories, albeit each in a reality different from our own: in one, Kennedy was killed by a bomb. In another, he survives, but there's a limited nuclear exchange between the US and Russia. There is also, by the way, no real indication of how Patricia's life choices lead to either outcome in the world at large (though you could speculate a butterfly-effect-style chain of events that lead from some low-level political activism).
As for the stories themselves? They're done fairly well, but they're very "slice of life" style stories. Walton is skilled at this, and if you liked Among Others but were disappointed that it only took place over the course of a year or so, rather than following the character for their whole life, than this may be the story for you... you not only get another story of a not-terribly exciting but nonetheless likable and compelling character dealing mostly with normal issues in a world that just has a hint of difference from our own... you get two such stories. But for me, I mostly liked Among Others for the character's love of classic science fiction reading, and that's absent here (a fascination with Italy replaces it, in one story, but that does nothing for me), and so this is very much a book that's "not my thing." I'd have been more interested if the gimmick, the alternate worlds, meant more, if I felt it actually mattered to the plot. Because I read SF for the fantastic. I have an ordinary life of my own to not be terribly interested in, when I'm following somebody else's, I'd like there to be a little bit more of a sense of wonder. Yes, there is some enjoyment to be had in the "compare and contrast the ways these two lives have gone," where people from one life show up briefly in another context or one life is getting better while another is getting worse, but... it wasn't enough for me.
I can see how somebody would enjoy this, and it is filled with believable, flawed characters, but for me, it's not why I read, so although I can recognize the skill, as far as my personal enjoyment goes... meh. It's just okay. I never felt like it was a chore to read, but I never felt particularly excited, either. Mostly, I felt like I was waiting for the good stuff, the stuff the synopsis sparked in my imagination, to kick in... I'm still waiting.
Finished: Rapture by Kameron Hurley (The Bel Dame Apocrypha #3)
(Last book in a trilogy, so entire description cut)
Seven years after her last mission, Nyxnissa so Dasheem has retired... or so she thinks. But her old employers, the Bel Dames, call her into service once again, and refusing them would mean putting everything she's built into jeopardy. Accepting the mission also means putting people in danger, but it's her best choice. But times have changed. The centuries-long war has ended, and droves of men are returning from the front lines. But there's always maneuverings, secretive agendas that may reignite the war, or make the world afterward a place possibly even worse for some. As Nyx attempts to sort things out, old enemies and old allies cross her path again and she must make decisions tougher than before.
It's the third book in a trilogy, so presumably most people aren't going to start here... you could, I guess, and get a gritty action-adventure starring a tough-as-nails mercenary in a fascinating world... but you miss out a lot of the context and the history between characters. So, mostly, if you're reading a review, you want to know whether the book keeps up the quality of the rest of the series, and whether it ties things up in a satisfying way.
Quality-wise, I think I enjoyed this one slightly more than the second book, but not quite as much as the first, which puts it about squarely in the middle of the usual pattern of trilogies. The plot does meander a bit, particularly with a long stretch where everyone's wandering the desert, but it's entertaining and engaging all the way, and although it's the same world as in the previous books, new areas are visited and enough has changed that there are some interesting new dynamics that are explore, but not to exhaustion... just enough to raise a few interesting points and give the sensation that it's a real living place. I also really enjoyed a couple of the newer characters too. Of course, that's a mixed blessing in a book like this, where anyone might suddenly die or turn out to be betraying everyone. On a science fictional level, I was actually pleasantly surprised... while the author didn't come out with a complete SF explanation for certain elements in the universe I would have described as more of a "fantasy" element (like the shifters), she did enough work to convince me that a good explanation was actually under there somewhere. Which is often the best path, really, just enough to let me not think of it as "magic" but not exposing it to super-close scrutiny.
As for a satisfying conclusion? For the most part it does, but you should temper your definition of "satisfying" with the general tone of the series, which has protagonists sacrifice other characters for their own ends, outright murder some people just to stop them from being a potential worry in the future, have unresolved love affairs that tend to go unhappily. It's the kind of ending that rips you up a little, wondering if that's it, but you're already torn up from the rest of the book so one more injury seems appropriate. The conclusion is more like the other books in the trilogy, there's a sense that nothing's completely over, but various people have gone different ways and the world has changed a little from the adventure.
I still quite enjoyed the book and the series, and the characters, especially because they're not the type I usually go for. Somehow it worked here, and I look forward to Kameron Hurley's next foray into SF.
Finished: Alien Contact (themed short story collection)
A collection of stories centering on, surprisingly enough, Alien Contact.
The usual mixed bag, although I will say I was somewhat disappointed on the whole. I was hoping to read interesting first contact tales, and there were a few of those, but also a few where aliens had been known about for some time and maybe it was one individual person's contact with aliens, but they were commonplace to the society as a whole. And, frankly, most of the aliens weren't especially inventive or, well... alien. Too many were Star Trek aliens: human looking with a few variations and a slightly different culture. I was hoping for inventive aliens with completely different life cycles and a society that springs from that. Sure, there were a couple in the book, but not enough. And, although this seems like the opposite complaint, too many stories relied on "oh, they're weird and incomprehensible, that's the point" as a gimmick. This is fine in small doses, but only when it doesn't feel like the author's just using it as an excuse to present a weird or quirky situation and say "aliens did it, who knows why?"
A few of the stories I'd read before, like Harry Turtledove's "The Road Not Taken", or Orson Scott Card's "The Gold Bug" (the former works well in the collection, the latter does not, reading as more of an ad for the Enderverse in general than a story of alien contact).
My favorites of the collection were probably "The 43 Antarean Dynasties" by Mike Resnick (despite not really falling into a First Contact situation), "Swarm" by Bruce Sterling (which is a story in his Schismatrix universe, and made me really interested in finally getting around to reading that). The rest? Not bad on the whole, but not many made me super excited, either. I think my main problem is that I know there are many better alien contact stories out there, and so, as an anthology focused on that theme, it's a bit of a disappointment.
Finished: Abaddon's Gate by James S.A. Corey
The third book in the Expanse series , this one picks up with the discovery of an alien gateway to some other part of space. Nobody knows exactly where it leads, or even if it's safe, but a conspiracy against him forces Holden through the gate to escape... and, not wanting him to be the first contact with aliens, the military of the other political factions in the solar system soon follow...
I liked the first book, but thought it was overhyped. I really liked the second. The third? It's a step down, closer to the first one... better in some ways, worse in others.
The basics of the plot are pretty good, but on some levels feel like a smaller scale, which sounds weird but it's true. Sure, it's one of the biggest events in human history. But at the same time, the first two books I could see as a TV series, with several sprawling plots that don't even seem to directly connect, this one feels more like a movie, everybody's more or less in the same place and dealing with the same issues. There are still multiple viewpoints, sometimes on different ships, but they're all pretty clearly focused on the same big thing.
Those viewpoints are also not as engaging as the second book. There was one I found unsympathetic and something of a waste... I can understand why they focused on her, but I'd rather see her actions as they affected other people, rather than the authors seemingly trying to make me empathize with her stupid, petty quest by putting her front and center to one of the plots. Again, I can see why, and by the end... well, it sort of works, I guess, but not as well as I think the authors were hoping. If the status quo at the end of the book continues into the next (although it shouldn't without some fancy footwork), it might be somewhat interesting to explore, but taken as a single unit, it reads somewhat sappy. The others new viewpoints, well, one is mildly interesting, but, in retrospect, feels mostly constructed to arrange that particular ending. The second was better, still not quite as engaging as Prax or the UN SecGen in the second book, who do not make any appearances, but better than Miller. The characters who do return and play a front-and-center role in every book so far, Holden and his crew, remain likable and interesting, but they're at the stage where they're essentially the protagonists of a long-term series, that's expected, and it's also expected that they don't go through too dramatic of an arc.
There is still some really nice sense-of-wonder moments, and good action, although some of the villains are well-worn tropes and things wrap up too neatly. It's good, but it's just not as exciting. After the last book, I rushed to order the third. After this one... I'm still absolutely going to read the next book, but I can wait a while.
Finished: The Peripheral by William Gibson
In the near future, Flynne is filling in for her brother, working for home at his job, which they both think is testing a new product from a video game company,. It seems like a boring game... she controls a drone pilot and is supposed to keep other drones away from a building in a futuristic city. But she does her job... until she witnesses what looks like a murder inside the building, and soon finds out that she wasn't playing a game, but rather that she's stumbled upon a much bigger game, where her old world could be merely a minor game-piece. Luckily, she does have allies of a sort... not only her own friends and family, but also her employers, who live in that futuristic world she saw in the game, and want her to identify the murderer.
This is one of those books that I'm probably going to have to read a few times just to grasp fully. When it started, I didn't really know what was going on in much of one of the two alternating plot threads. And to be perfectly honest, after reading the entire book, I really don't know what the plot was about: that is, the specific motives for the murder and how the various plans came together and things got resolved. Something got lost along the way, maybe because I skimmed at the wrong place or forgot some key details between reading days. But, about a fifth of the way in, I did start to get at least a clue about what was going on, and started to quite enjoy the reading of it. The in-a-nutshell premise of the world (worlds?) turned out to be fascinating, and watching the interactions, and learning about the different situations each was in... that started to really draw me in. Sometimes, such a thing can be enough to make me like a book even if everything else doesn't entirely measure up.
That's almost the situation here, although with the disclaimer that on a second or third reread I might not find the problems so bad. But the characters were rather flat, sometimes even blase and emotionless in the face of huge developments. I didn't particularly like most of them, although there were a few. And the prose had a clipped quality, often starting sentences with words like "The" cut out, sometimes also skipping the noun entirely and starting directly with the verb. This stylistic quirk may well have contributed to my difficulty understanding what was going on... not that each individual sentence was hard to understand, but rather that the rhythm of everything was off and made it harder to absorb the relevant details. Of course, sometimes sentences also WERE hard to understand, just because, like happens in a lot of science fiction, they used terms that don't exist in our world and didn't define them. It's also one of those kinds of books, where you have to absorb a lot of the details through context, at least at first. Later, things start to get explained more explicitly. These things are pretty common in other works by Gibson that I've read which is probably why I haven't read more of his. And yet, I loved the ideas so much that somehow, I liked the book despite all these issues.
It's not a high like, maybe just barely at three stars. Possibly on the reread I'll like it more. Or maybe the novelty will wear off some and I'll just think the book was okay. But for now, three stars.
Still Reading (or finished but haven't done my review): Ancillary Mercy by Ann Leckie (Raddch series #3), Forgotten Suns by Judith Tarr, Crashing Heaven by Al Robertson, Children of the Comet by Donald Moffitt (received for free from a giveaway)
But before we start, Halloween! My schedule changed this year, and this year I actually worked on Halloween night. I was kind to looking forward to seeing Trick or Treaters on the walk to work, but I think I was maybe half an hour too early for that... I saw a few, but not many. A few more on the way home, although that was later so it was mostly older teens and adults. The highlight was a fairly well done Beetlejuice costume, striped suit, hair, face paint... couldn't tell his age because of the makeup, but he was at least with some people in their late teens/early twenties, which was impressive for a costume of a movie that old. Also a few zombies. I actually did dress up, but in my lazy post-apocalyptic drifter costume. I have a decades-old military gas mask (my parents were both in the military) and basically just put that over whatever I wear when I need a really quick costume and call myself a post-apocalyptic drifter. So I brought it with me to work and did manage to wear it for at least a little bit on the walk there and the walk home, although it got a bit awkward to wear it the whole time and my breath started fogging up the glasses after a while. Still, it was incredibly impressive... not the costume itself, but rather that I was able to wear it in public. For those who know me you'll know that dressing up really treads on my irrrational fears. Even wearing a geeky t-shirt in public gives me stupid amounts of anxiety, so wearing an attention-getting costume... well, honestly, when I brought it I gave it 50/50 chance that I'd have the nerve to put it on, even taking into account that it's Halloween and expected. But, maybe partly because it was a costume that hid my face, I did okay with it. Maybe just the fact that it was a costume at all helped too (I mean, not completely, I still felt the internal tremors, but it wasn't as bad)... maybe some kind of convention cosplay, if I can think of a good one, isn't 100% out of the question, because the "stepping outside of myself" aspect might be good for me.
Anyway, on to books!
Finished: Artemis Awakening by Jane Lindskold
The planet Artemis was designed by advanced science to be a perfect, primitive escape for the ultra rich and powerful. Included in that fantasy was the population, who were mostly human but engineered to fulfill a role and not expand outside of that role. So while the masters have been gone for centuries, and Artemis has been lost to the rest of the galaxy, their society still resembles a fantasy kingdom with quaint villages and hunters who share connections with beasts. One such huntress is Adara, and her genetically uplifted puma Sand Shadow, who rescue a man who's crashed from the sky, a scholar from the rest of the galaxy who has been searching for Artemis... and is now stranded there.
I don't really have a lot to say about this book, except that it's mostly in the category of "Not My Thing." It's one of those books that's, in some ways, a fantasy story wrapped in a sci-fi explanation. Sometimes, this can work well, but for my personal tastes, as someone who generally prefers the SF side of the equation and isn't that into straight fantasy anymore, it's a tricky balance. This book, although it has moments that catch my interest, feels a bit too much like a fantasy book with a few SF elements. Granted, there's not explicit magic, but rather psionic powers (some of which might even, reasonably, be explained technologically, but when you throw in the occasional person who seems to have oracle-like precognition, that goes too far and is itself one of my hate-buttons).
The characters are mildly interesting, especially in that there's sort of a completely civil love triangle, where everyone knows everyone else's interest and yet act mature about it and the woman in the middle isn't entirely sure she wants either of them as anything more than friends. It's kind of refreshing.
There are some elements that had my attention, like remnants of AI defense systems coming to life and playing a role, but they didn't spend as much time on them as I'd like, and, in particular, too much of the scenes where we were able to explore that aspect was written as fragments of poetry that I found tiresome (this is not a knock on Lindskold's ability specifically: I find almost all poetry in fiction tiresome... if I want poetry, I'll read a poem, not a novel. I almost never want poetry.).
It's okay. There were some decent elements that kept me interested throughout, but even though the story isn't really complete in the one volume, I don't feel any pressing need to move onto the sequel. I'm sure there are a good number of people who will like it, but for me, meh.
Finished: The Trials by Linda Nagata (The Red #2)
Sequel, so description cut for minor spoilers of the first book inherent...
Picking up after the events of First Light, The Trials has near future soldier James Shelley facing a court martial for the mission he went on at the end of the last book. All they want is to get their side of the story out, which is the last thing everyone else in the traditional chain of command wants. But they're in a difficult spot, as Shelley and his team are considered heroes by a large percentage of the population. A deal might be reached, but that won't be the end of Shelley's fight, or his trials... for there are still major threats out there, and although the Artificial Intelligence known as the Red may not be his personal guardian angel anymore, it doesn't mean it's done with them.
A middle book in a trilogy often has an uphill road to climb. It can't bring things to an entirely satisfying conclusion, and it doesn't get the benefit of novelty that the first book did. And, of course, that's even leaving aside the possibility that the author herself might get into a slump, unsure exactly where to go. It almost goes without saying that a middle book isn't as good. And, in all honesty, I did get that feeling from this book pretty strongly at first. I was still interested in the plot and what would happen, but I wasn't digging it quite as much. Yet, as the story went on, the feeling lessened and I was looking more and more forward to where it would go.
For me, the book's biggest strength is the continued detailing of an artificial intelligence that is not good or evil as we understand it, or even human, but something alien and yet mostly believable. That's a tricky but impressive feat, as is telling the story of how people deal with the situation, trying to destroy it, control it for their own ends, or just live with it. On the last point, Nagata also manages to navigate another potentially difficult scenario, a lead character who may well merely be a puppet for that entity. We see his thoughts and his decisions but are aware that he's manipulated and so any any time, he may simply be a tool. Yet I rooted for him all the same.
The book does have a little bit of a feel about being a series of missions rather than a coherent single story. They go from the trial, to another mission, to another one, with a story connecting them but not seeming to be the point. It's also a pretty action-heavy book, which normally is a negative in my book, but here it works for me.
I think, all in all, although it got better the more I read, I still liked it slightly less than the first book, maybe putting it somewhere in the 3.5-4 star range, but since I'm feeling generous today, I'll round it up to a 4. I'm really looking forward to the third book in the series and I am really glad Nagata's writing science fiction novels again, she's proving once again to be a strong voice in the field.
Finished: My Real Children by Jo Walton
Patricia is in a nursing home, suffering from age-related dementia. She's lived a long life... the only problem is, she remembers two of them. In each, she had different loves, different challenges, different children, and the course of history went a different way. She looks back on both of them.
Let's get it out of the way. I guess it's something of a spoiler, but it's the kind of spoiler I wished somebody would have explained to me in advance, attached to the blurb with an asterisk. The premise described above... as interesting as it might sound, is really more of an almost meaningless framing story. The book itself is simply alternating tales from each version of Patricia's life, a split originating when she either accepted or turned down a marriage proposal. It is only the first chapter and the last (and the last takes place when the flashbacks that make up the rest of the book end, and follows directly off the first), where either version of Patricia has even the slightest awareness of her "other life," and at that point in the story, there's only one of them, the question is which world she's in. The book is, then, in effect, simply two fairly conventional life stories, albeit each in a reality different from our own: in one, Kennedy was killed by a bomb. In another, he survives, but there's a limited nuclear exchange between the US and Russia. There is also, by the way, no real indication of how Patricia's life choices lead to either outcome in the world at large (though you could speculate a butterfly-effect-style chain of events that lead from some low-level political activism).
As for the stories themselves? They're done fairly well, but they're very "slice of life" style stories. Walton is skilled at this, and if you liked Among Others but were disappointed that it only took place over the course of a year or so, rather than following the character for their whole life, than this may be the story for you... you not only get another story of a not-terribly exciting but nonetheless likable and compelling character dealing mostly with normal issues in a world that just has a hint of difference from our own... you get two such stories. But for me, I mostly liked Among Others for the character's love of classic science fiction reading, and that's absent here (a fascination with Italy replaces it, in one story, but that does nothing for me), and so this is very much a book that's "not my thing." I'd have been more interested if the gimmick, the alternate worlds, meant more, if I felt it actually mattered to the plot. Because I read SF for the fantastic. I have an ordinary life of my own to not be terribly interested in, when I'm following somebody else's, I'd like there to be a little bit more of a sense of wonder. Yes, there is some enjoyment to be had in the "compare and contrast the ways these two lives have gone," where people from one life show up briefly in another context or one life is getting better while another is getting worse, but... it wasn't enough for me.
I can see how somebody would enjoy this, and it is filled with believable, flawed characters, but for me, it's not why I read, so although I can recognize the skill, as far as my personal enjoyment goes... meh. It's just okay. I never felt like it was a chore to read, but I never felt particularly excited, either. Mostly, I felt like I was waiting for the good stuff, the stuff the synopsis sparked in my imagination, to kick in... I'm still waiting.
Finished: Rapture by Kameron Hurley (The Bel Dame Apocrypha #3)
(Last book in a trilogy, so entire description cut)
Seven years after her last mission, Nyxnissa so Dasheem has retired... or so she thinks. But her old employers, the Bel Dames, call her into service once again, and refusing them would mean putting everything she's built into jeopardy. Accepting the mission also means putting people in danger, but it's her best choice. But times have changed. The centuries-long war has ended, and droves of men are returning from the front lines. But there's always maneuverings, secretive agendas that may reignite the war, or make the world afterward a place possibly even worse for some. As Nyx attempts to sort things out, old enemies and old allies cross her path again and she must make decisions tougher than before.
It's the third book in a trilogy, so presumably most people aren't going to start here... you could, I guess, and get a gritty action-adventure starring a tough-as-nails mercenary in a fascinating world... but you miss out a lot of the context and the history between characters. So, mostly, if you're reading a review, you want to know whether the book keeps up the quality of the rest of the series, and whether it ties things up in a satisfying way.
Quality-wise, I think I enjoyed this one slightly more than the second book, but not quite as much as the first, which puts it about squarely in the middle of the usual pattern of trilogies. The plot does meander a bit, particularly with a long stretch where everyone's wandering the desert, but it's entertaining and engaging all the way, and although it's the same world as in the previous books, new areas are visited and enough has changed that there are some interesting new dynamics that are explore, but not to exhaustion... just enough to raise a few interesting points and give the sensation that it's a real living place. I also really enjoyed a couple of the newer characters too. Of course, that's a mixed blessing in a book like this, where anyone might suddenly die or turn out to be betraying everyone. On a science fictional level, I was actually pleasantly surprised... while the author didn't come out with a complete SF explanation for certain elements in the universe I would have described as more of a "fantasy" element (like the shifters), she did enough work to convince me that a good explanation was actually under there somewhere. Which is often the best path, really, just enough to let me not think of it as "magic" but not exposing it to super-close scrutiny.
As for a satisfying conclusion? For the most part it does, but you should temper your definition of "satisfying" with the general tone of the series, which has protagonists sacrifice other characters for their own ends, outright murder some people just to stop them from being a potential worry in the future, have unresolved love affairs that tend to go unhappily. It's the kind of ending that rips you up a little, wondering if that's it, but you're already torn up from the rest of the book so one more injury seems appropriate. The conclusion is more like the other books in the trilogy, there's a sense that nothing's completely over, but various people have gone different ways and the world has changed a little from the adventure.
I still quite enjoyed the book and the series, and the characters, especially because they're not the type I usually go for. Somehow it worked here, and I look forward to Kameron Hurley's next foray into SF.
Finished: Alien Contact (themed short story collection)
A collection of stories centering on, surprisingly enough, Alien Contact.
The usual mixed bag, although I will say I was somewhat disappointed on the whole. I was hoping to read interesting first contact tales, and there were a few of those, but also a few where aliens had been known about for some time and maybe it was one individual person's contact with aliens, but they were commonplace to the society as a whole. And, frankly, most of the aliens weren't especially inventive or, well... alien. Too many were Star Trek aliens: human looking with a few variations and a slightly different culture. I was hoping for inventive aliens with completely different life cycles and a society that springs from that. Sure, there were a couple in the book, but not enough. And, although this seems like the opposite complaint, too many stories relied on "oh, they're weird and incomprehensible, that's the point" as a gimmick. This is fine in small doses, but only when it doesn't feel like the author's just using it as an excuse to present a weird or quirky situation and say "aliens did it, who knows why?"
A few of the stories I'd read before, like Harry Turtledove's "The Road Not Taken", or Orson Scott Card's "The Gold Bug" (the former works well in the collection, the latter does not, reading as more of an ad for the Enderverse in general than a story of alien contact).
My favorites of the collection were probably "The 43 Antarean Dynasties" by Mike Resnick (despite not really falling into a First Contact situation), "Swarm" by Bruce Sterling (which is a story in his Schismatrix universe, and made me really interested in finally getting around to reading that). The rest? Not bad on the whole, but not many made me super excited, either. I think my main problem is that I know there are many better alien contact stories out there, and so, as an anthology focused on that theme, it's a bit of a disappointment.
Finished: Abaddon's Gate by James S.A. Corey
The third book in the Expanse series , this one picks up with the discovery of an alien gateway to some other part of space. Nobody knows exactly where it leads, or even if it's safe, but a conspiracy against him forces Holden through the gate to escape... and, not wanting him to be the first contact with aliens, the military of the other political factions in the solar system soon follow...
I liked the first book, but thought it was overhyped. I really liked the second. The third? It's a step down, closer to the first one... better in some ways, worse in others.
The basics of the plot are pretty good, but on some levels feel like a smaller scale, which sounds weird but it's true. Sure, it's one of the biggest events in human history. But at the same time, the first two books I could see as a TV series, with several sprawling plots that don't even seem to directly connect, this one feels more like a movie, everybody's more or less in the same place and dealing with the same issues. There are still multiple viewpoints, sometimes on different ships, but they're all pretty clearly focused on the same big thing.
Those viewpoints are also not as engaging as the second book. There was one I found unsympathetic and something of a waste... I can understand why they focused on her, but I'd rather see her actions as they affected other people, rather than the authors seemingly trying to make me empathize with her stupid, petty quest by putting her front and center to one of the plots. Again, I can see why, and by the end... well, it sort of works, I guess, but not as well as I think the authors were hoping. If the status quo at the end of the book continues into the next (although it shouldn't without some fancy footwork), it might be somewhat interesting to explore, but taken as a single unit, it reads somewhat sappy. The others new viewpoints, well, one is mildly interesting, but, in retrospect, feels mostly constructed to arrange that particular ending. The second was better, still not quite as engaging as Prax or the UN SecGen in the second book, who do not make any appearances, but better than Miller. The characters who do return and play a front-and-center role in every book so far, Holden and his crew, remain likable and interesting, but they're at the stage where they're essentially the protagonists of a long-term series, that's expected, and it's also expected that they don't go through too dramatic of an arc.
There is still some really nice sense-of-wonder moments, and good action, although some of the villains are well-worn tropes and things wrap up too neatly. It's good, but it's just not as exciting. After the last book, I rushed to order the third. After this one... I'm still absolutely going to read the next book, but I can wait a while.
Finished: The Peripheral by William Gibson
In the near future, Flynne is filling in for her brother, working for home at his job, which they both think is testing a new product from a video game company,. It seems like a boring game... she controls a drone pilot and is supposed to keep other drones away from a building in a futuristic city. But she does her job... until she witnesses what looks like a murder inside the building, and soon finds out that she wasn't playing a game, but rather that she's stumbled upon a much bigger game, where her old world could be merely a minor game-piece. Luckily, she does have allies of a sort... not only her own friends and family, but also her employers, who live in that futuristic world she saw in the game, and want her to identify the murderer.
This is one of those books that I'm probably going to have to read a few times just to grasp fully. When it started, I didn't really know what was going on in much of one of the two alternating plot threads. And to be perfectly honest, after reading the entire book, I really don't know what the plot was about: that is, the specific motives for the murder and how the various plans came together and things got resolved. Something got lost along the way, maybe because I skimmed at the wrong place or forgot some key details between reading days. But, about a fifth of the way in, I did start to get at least a clue about what was going on, and started to quite enjoy the reading of it. The in-a-nutshell premise of the world (worlds?) turned out to be fascinating, and watching the interactions, and learning about the different situations each was in... that started to really draw me in. Sometimes, such a thing can be enough to make me like a book even if everything else doesn't entirely measure up.
That's almost the situation here, although with the disclaimer that on a second or third reread I might not find the problems so bad. But the characters were rather flat, sometimes even blase and emotionless in the face of huge developments. I didn't particularly like most of them, although there were a few. And the prose had a clipped quality, often starting sentences with words like "The" cut out, sometimes also skipping the noun entirely and starting directly with the verb. This stylistic quirk may well have contributed to my difficulty understanding what was going on... not that each individual sentence was hard to understand, but rather that the rhythm of everything was off and made it harder to absorb the relevant details. Of course, sometimes sentences also WERE hard to understand, just because, like happens in a lot of science fiction, they used terms that don't exist in our world and didn't define them. It's also one of those kinds of books, where you have to absorb a lot of the details through context, at least at first. Later, things start to get explained more explicitly. These things are pretty common in other works by Gibson that I've read which is probably why I haven't read more of his. And yet, I loved the ideas so much that somehow, I liked the book despite all these issues.
It's not a high like, maybe just barely at three stars. Possibly on the reread I'll like it more. Or maybe the novelty will wear off some and I'll just think the book was okay. But for now, three stars.
Still Reading (or finished but haven't done my review): Ancillary Mercy by Ann Leckie (Raddch series #3), Forgotten Suns by Judith Tarr, Crashing Heaven by Al Robertson, Children of the Comet by Donald Moffitt (received for free from a giveaway)
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Date: 2015-11-02 10:48 pm (UTC)I've been burning through a fair few books lately myself, which is good, as I have waaaaaaaaay too much backlog and no shelf space left.
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Date: 2015-11-04 05:40 pm (UTC)Agreed on how today's market supports more niche interests, and it being in a good place, even if there are segments of the fandom that are going through some awkward growing pains (notwithstanding the outright toxic parts, of course). And personally, I always feel a kinship when I know someone reads SF/F, even if I know none of what they read interests me and vice versa. They're still my kind of people. (Although, the same is true if they read for pleasure and avoid SF/F, but to a lesser degree).
>I've been burning through a fair few books lately myself, which is good, as I have waaaaaaaaay too much backlog and no shelf space left.
Lol, yeah, I've run out of traditional shelf space and am finding ways to double up, stacking them on top of shelves, etc. This year in particular's been bad because I'm making "zero rereads" a goal, so I'm collecting a lot more books than I otherwise would have (even though I'm also reading more ebooks). My backlog of books I have bought but haven't read is reasonably manageable though, at least.