June Book Foo!
Jun. 1st, 2016 04:14 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
newnumber6Don't really have time for a TV wrapup this time, maybe I'll do a separate one later.
But here are the last batch of books read:
Finished: Against A Dark Background by Iain M. Banks (reread)
As the year 10000 approaches, the Lady Sharrow is marked for assassination by religious extremists, who believe her death, for the actions of her ancestors, will allow a religious prophecy to be fulfilled. Only two things, besides her death, will alter things. If she can stay alive until the decamillenia, or if she can return the priceless artifact that sparked the feud... an impossible weapon that has long been lost. Sharrow assembles her old team from when she was a soldier, and sets out to find the last Lazy Gun, a weapon that kills with a sense of humor, even though the clues to its location are tied to other, also lost, artifacts. Unfortunately, others want the gun.
In fantasy, it's common to create another world that is familiar to use in many touchstones, like the existence of recognizable humans, but also contains different elements (like dragons, or what not), and, more importantly, has a completely different history. In science fiction, they usually go for a slightly different approach... even when telling stories that don't take place on Earth, there's usually some connection... Earth is part of their ancient history, or it's another planet that the action just doesn't happen to be focused on, or, occasionally, it's an alien world but the aliens are totally alien. Banks often, and in this book in particular, takes an approach somewhat more like the fantasy mold... it's the year 10000, but it's not Earth, and there's no indication there ever was an Earth, even if the characters may as well be humans. It's a science fiction world (solar system, really) with its own history that echoes our world in many ways, but slightly different. Imagine if, say, Westeros, lasted not only past the Industrial age, but thousands of years past it, and you'd get sort of the same feel as the setting of this book (only instead of seasons lasting many years, the chief difference from our world is the lack of other stars that are near enough to see).
It allows him to showcase his creative talents, wild ideas that are both a lot of fun to explore and also compelling and familiar. There are several religious orders, political institutions, different types of animals, ages upon ages of history, and artifacts from that history.
But all that is just color, really. To be a great book, it has to hang a good story and characters off it.
Luckily, Banks mostly succeeds at this, too. The characters aren't always likeable (and in fact, although they don't seek to kill or screw people over, they're occasionally awfully blase about deaths, even innocent deaths, they happen to be responsible for), but they're entertaining, particularly the main ones (there are a lot of team members and side characters who unfortunately fade into the background, but it's a pretty big cast). They're the type you tend to root for mostly because they're going up against even worse people. And the story? Well, it's well-paced, exciting, jumping from place to place and caper to caper, largely an excuse to show off cool ideas Banks had for the world, but it's a good excuse and the journey is a lot of fun. So many times I found myself shaking my head and smiling at some particularly cool part of their society (even in the reread, which this was). There's a greater plot that may have been somewhat predictable, but still managed to carry emotional weight.
The weak points? Well, as I said earlier, the characters aren't always likeable and not always well-developed, and they're a little too grim-and-gritty for my tastes. And, towards the end (not quite at the end, the climax works pretty well, but just before that) it starts to drag significantly for me, with long stretches where I found myself skimming because I just wasn't that interested in what was going on and wanted them to get to the next cool part. But on the whole, I really liked that book, even the second time around.
Finished: Future Visions: Original Science Fiction Inspired By Microsoft (short story collection)
As the title suggests, this is a set of stories that were inspired by Microsoft... as I understand it, several authors were invited to tour the facilities and see stuff the company was developing, and write stories if they were inspired.
Now, "inspired" covers a lot of ground. Some of the stories involve ideas that you could see happening even relatively soon... others are stuff you could probably never expect to happen (even if they're based around tech that's reasonably plausible). But, even so, the stories to often seem to tread on each other's toes a little bit, like many of them took the same technology-in-development as a starting point. They still wrote very different stories, but it wasn't as different as you might get in an average anthology.
I mostly read this because it was free and an easy way to read more Hugo-eligible stories this year (since all of the stories were first published in this book, in 2015). None of them absolutely blew me away, but none of them completely stunk either. I think my favorites were Ann Leckie's "Another Word for World" and, to my surprise (because I didn't expect to like it from the first couple pages... I'm not even sure if it's objectively one of the ones I thought was better or if the fact that it became much better than I expected just made me like it more), Jack McDevitt's "Riding with the Duke".
Worth a look, at least.
Finished: Marooned in Realtime by Vernor Vinge (reread)
Wil Brierson is a detective, maybe the last one. Sometime in the twenty-second century, every human on Earth disappeared. The only ones left are those who were, at the time, encased in "bobbles", spheres of absolute stasis that many used to jump ahead through the years... and there are only a few hundred people left, trying to build what society they can by jumping further and further ahead to collect more stragglers. Nobody knows what happened to the rest. But that's not Wil's case. Nor is it his case to find the person who bobbled him for over a hundred years without his consent and separated him from his family forever... although he'd really like to do that, too. No, his case is to solve a murder of one of the few survivors left, who was murdered by being left outside of the bobbles, marooned in realtime, when everyone else jumped a century into the future. Murder by old age. But since the victim is one of the key people trying to keep the human race viable, it's a crime that everyone's got a stake in.
This is technically a sequel the The Peace War, but I feel like it stands alone. So much so that for this reread, I didn't bother to read the first book, which does introduce the bobbling technology, certain elements of the backstory, and one main character (who is changed almost to unrecognizeability by a long time gap), but is a completely different type of book, and, in my opinion, a far less interesting and lower quality one. Vernor Vinge is one of the greats of SF, and the line between where he was worthy of that title and where he was an okay author with a some really cool ideas is right between the The Peace War and Marooned in Realtime. Even to completeists I'd hesitate to recommend the other book, just because they might not think it's worth moving on to the second... and it is, it's a great book that deserves to be read, even standalone. Of course, it should be noted that the book DOES spoil the Peace War, so if you do think you might read both, you probably should do it in order, but if you read only one, read this one. It's not one of Vinge's best, perhaps, but it's still damn good, and it has its own story to tell that doesn't require reading The Peace War, which is good but may appeal more to dedicated SF readers.
There's so much to love in this book... there is of course, the three mysteries being balanced, and they're all handled quite well. There are some twists that are cool, but the story doesn't depend on them, it's built on the characters and, to a degree, the worldbuilding. Worldbuilding is a big factor here, but the world in question is Earth... one of the best things about this book is the view of the types of plants and animals that could exist on Earth millions of years from now. It was vivid, believable, and compelling. And more, the long diary of the victim, telling as she tries to survive and reach help while everyone she knows is bobbled up and completely unaware of her plight, is riveting. Reading about a person reading someone else's story should not be this good.
The book does have flaws, and there were times as they were approaching the climax that I felt it started to lose stream in trying to get across a lot of complicated action and motivations, but what it does well, it does so well that I'm happy to forgive it.
This was my first reread of the book, and I already know I want to reread it again somewhere down the line.
Finished: The Fortunate Fall by Raphael Carter
A reporter in a Russian of the future does more than tell a tale... she sees it, feels it, and the audience is wired into her brain to feel it through her, almost live, ideally with some of the personal or embarrassing bits edited out by a screener. Maya is one such reporter, and she's doing a story about the anniversary of a set of atrocities in a prior war, and working with a new, untested screener. But as she follows the story, she uncovers a lot more than she expected about both the world, and herself.
Wow. This is one of those books I'd only heard of through the occasional, but usually high, recommendation. But it wasn't in print, and I couldn't find a copy in any of the used bookstores I frequent. Eventually, I had to order a copy online from a used bookseller. And I'm glad I did.
The book is about twenty years old now, but it hardly feels dated at all. Sure, some of the tech seems to be based on some older ideas and may not ring completely true to more current readers (and cyberpunk as a genre as a whole may have passed its expiration date according to some), but it's only a small problem... and the many of the ideas and issues it explores are shockingly current.
The universe is full of exciting concepts, and it's set in a world that feels lived in, with history that mattered and affected the world, even though it's all still the future to us. What's more, the book does a really cool twist where a lot of things that seem innocuous at first about the world as it is in the "present" of the book turn out to be a lot more involved and scarier when more is revealed. Similarly with the characters, where you think you've got a handle on them but then gradually come to learn why they are the way they are.
The characters are engaging, even if they occasionally make choices that seem bizarre, but I wanted to follow them all the same, even through scenes where not much was actually happening, where they just seemed to be chasing a story.
Towards the ending, the book does lose me a little... I still enjoyed it (given an definition of "enjoyed" that includes suffering emotional gut punches at certain developments), but it became too much revelation and the author made a few literary allusions, some of which admittedly went over my head. And the ending itself involves certain characters making decisions where, well, I can totally understand the emotion behind them, the actual one makes no sense to me... that may well be part of the point, but still, it hampered my enjoyment slightly.
Even so, I'd rank this as a high four stars... if the ending worked for me a little better, I could guess it might well have been five.
This is Raphael Carter's first and only novel, which is a huge shame. They seem to have disappeared from the SF scene, but after reading this, I hope they're still out there and may one day make a return, I think they'd fit in well with some of my favorites of today. Also a huge shame is how this book seems to be one of those ones that made a small splash but then disappeared. It really should be remembered.
Finished: The Harvest by Robert Charles Wilson
Aliens visit the Earth, but at first they're silent, visible in the sky but not engaging. Until finally, in mass dream, they speak to everybody at once with an incredible offer. They will give functional immortality to everyone who wants it. As well as other benefits. The only catch is... once death is no longer a concern to you, or anyone else, you can't help but change your outlook, your priorities... you, in essence. And maybe that means you're no longer going to be what you presently consider human. Still, most people accept the offer. The novel follows a few of the small minority that refuse it, who are left unaffected, except that they're in a world full of people who said "yes." Could this all be a sinister ploy by the aliens and those who accepted the offer are enslaved and need rescuing? And, even if it's not... is it that much better?
This type of book is pretty much Robert Charles Wilson's specialty. A big event that can't help but change the world, and yet the focus is on the personal, how individual, rather normal people react to it, often helpless to change the course of events. In this case, it's also somewhat reminiscent of Childhood's End, although different enough that I wouldn't even call it a homage much less a ripoff (although I also wouldn't be terribly surprised if someone told me the author was inspired by the classic work to try this). It's just that a few similar ideas are explored, but with a more modern perspective. Modern to us, but for Wilson, it's one of his older, earlier pieces... and to an extent, it shows. Not that it's bad, but it's less... deft. The characters don't ring quite as true as some of his later work, some lean a little towards stock (but with interesting twists), and the plotting has a few more rough spots.
Two issues in particular stood out to me for the negative. One, there was a fairly obvious question that never seemed to be brought up, or even occur to any of the characters. It does eventually get answered, but it's far too late and feels contrived to provide a surprise to the reader, but not a fair one. I kept waiting and waiting for somebody to bring it up because it would have been one of my first questions and I can't believe it took that long to find out. The other problem is that there seemed to be too much uniformity in how the people who accepted the offer of immortality act. There is some mention of people taking slightly different paths, but just considering the natural variation of human personality, you'd think, given the abilities they have, there would be many more approaches taken. Maybe most people acting similarly allows for a certain creepiness to set into the story, but given the premises it didn't ring true. Even the basic count of how many people refused seemed unlikely to me... I could certainly believe a large majority, but I could see a significant minority refusing for some of the many reasons given by others.
Still, on the whole, I enjoyed the book. Wilson may not have shown himself as capable as he has in other works, but it was still interesting and worth a read. And he avoided several pitfalls that I think others might have fallen into and created a story that was far more conventional and much less interesting. The biggest sin is that I think that if he wrote from the same premise today, I think it might be a great book instead of merely good.
Finished: Sleeping Giants by Sylvain Neuvel
A giant metal hand is found under the ground, one that defies known science and anthropology. At first dismissed, years later it becomes the focus of intense investigation and top-secret efforts to find more of these artifacts and perhaps lay claim to the power behind them.
Full disclosure: I received a copy of this book free through a Goodreads giveaway. I don't think it affected my review.
In fairness, I should probably state up front that I'm probably the wrong audience for this book. While the description in the blurb was interesting enough, a mystery that was potentially cool and engaging, eventually it became clear that the direction the book was taken moved towards a SF trope that I've never been able to buy into, for whatever reason, one that typically makes me lose interest unless it's done really really well. Unfortunately, to say exactly what it is would be spoilery, but I'll say at least that it's not out of the blue, many aspects of the blurb description imply it could go that way, I was just hoping it was going to go in another.
In fact, most of my hopes for the book wound up being frustrated. The official synopsis also makes a big deal about the girl who discovered the hand also, later, getting involved in the effort to study it. So, I had envisioned a story where she was the main character, but she's not, and it's not the story of a person who's whole life was affected by an association with an impossible artifact and a maybe unsolvable mystery. She's a character, but she's not what the book is about... you may even call her an important side character.
The main character, if there is one, would have to be the mysterious "interviewer." The book is told mostly in that format, a series of conversations and interviews with an unnamed person who has connections and influence at the highest levels of government (along with a few other reports and diary entries that it's clear are provided to the interviewer). It's a tricky format, and has mixed results, because when it works it works well. It's a good way to get expository information out of the way without seeming awkward, and I do like the idea that the interviewer's personality is slowly being revealed while you think we're supposed to be learning about the "main characters" that he's interviewing. But it also requires a lot of cheats that pull me right out of the story, where characters describe the actions they're doing, or have recently done, in a detail that you need for a novel but seems out of place in an interview. Or, of course, where you suddenly get detailed descriptions of how characters look, from other characters, which seems especially cringe-worthy when a woman is described (because heaven forbid we don't find out how hot she is!). In the end, though, I found the interviewer not nearly as interesting as the author seemed to. I'd have been much more engaged if the story followed the perspective of some of the other characters more directly.
From a plot perspective, it moved reasonably well, but there were a few rough patches. Even leaving aside the disinterest that came when I realized what SF trope the story was going to be going with, I had trouble with it at several times. I couldn't buy into some of the global reactions, and there were a few too many times when I felt like certain things happened not because they were believable outgrowths of the premise and characters, but merely because they had to happen to solve the problem the author had set up. It led an air of inauthenticity to it, and considering one of the benefits of the epistolary novel format is that it adds a sense of realism even to outlandish premises, these seemed especially counterproductive. And when you add in the premise (again, which is somewhat of a personal peeve of mine) I found myself lightly rolling my eyes on too many occasions, especially when a proposed origin of the artifact was advanced. They were all light eye-rolls though... not enough to seriously hate the book, just that I felt I had to say, on a few too many occasions, "Really? That's what we're going with? Fine, let's just roll with it." With that attitude in place, it was mildly fun from time to time, but it just didn't connect with me as a whole. I'm sure others would have better results.
The book's part of a series, but I'm not interested in continuing and seeing how it wraps up, I think I'd rather be reading other books. This one, it's just not my thing.
Finished: A Darkling Sea by James L. Cambias
The distant planet Ilmatar is a single ocean with a roof of ice, and almost all of that ocean is without light. But it is the home to intelligent life, and humans have been secretly studying the crab-like beings, following the rules of the Sholen, another alien race, who dictate that there be no contact. When poor judgement causes the death of one of the science team, at the hands of an Ilmatarian, the Sholen come to assess the situation and decide whether the human expedition needs to be shut down... but they might not be willing to go along with the Sholen's rules if it means shutting down research rather than merely inconveniencing it.
This book is a lot of fun and will stick with me for a while, and I'm sure I'll reread it, because while it does have its flaws, it succeeds very well at one of of my favorite things in the genre. Cambias has not only created one alien race that was believable, interesting, compelling, and different than us in many fundamental ways (a difficult task)... he's created two. That alone made the book a joy to read, to get into that alien mindset and see how their biology affects their culture and outlook, to see how they might interact with humans, potentially in peace. In one book, the Sholen and Ilmatarians have both made it into my (admittedly rather large) list of favorite alien species.
So there's not a whole lot else to say beyond that I really enjoyed it and want more. The weaknesses it has aren't even that bad. Many of the human characters didn't connect to me as well as the story as a whole, and there were times when I thought the environment people (of all species) were living and working in could have used some more attention, to really sell what it's like from both our perspective and those of other forms. And the prose itself was clear enough but didn't particularly stand out for good or ill. But hey, it's a first novel and a really good one at that. I can't wait to see more.
Finished: Edge of Dark by Brenda Cooper
Long ago, an offshoot of humanity that had embraced technological advancement, transplanting themselves into robot bodies or computer systems, was expelled from the rest of the system. Since then, they've lurked in the dark fringes, occasionally raiding or trading with the stations. But suddenly they launch an attack to show their power and make their demands... they want to be let back in, on their own terms.
This book explores a number of themes that I really like, but it didn't work for me quite as much as I'd hoped. I still enjoyed it, but I certainly liked some storylines much more than others, and there were a few off notes that prevented me from really getting into it.
Starting with the good, I really particularly enjoyed Chrystal's storyline, which tells of an ordinary human who, after an attack by the Next, is converted against her will into a robot body, or, by some people's interpretation, murdered while a robotic copy was made. Cooper does a good job with her ambivalence and confusion, hating what was done to her and yet coming to love the new opportunities and experiences it provides her.
The other stories weren't as compelling, but they were relatively solid, after something of a slower start. Which applies to the book in general... it took a while to really start to get into it. I believe the book is set in the same universe as some prior works that I haven't read, and although I don't think it's required reading, it might have helped... those first few pages where I was busy soaking up what the status quo was, how different factions related, might have been easier if I simply knew all that from prior books. But, of course, I can't say for sure.
As for the things that turned me off? I think Cooper was trying to be fair but came down a little too hard against the Next, portraying most of them, aside from recent converts, as a little one-note and even unfeeling. That may be simply a factor of having most of the viewpoint characters from the rest of humanity, that have preconceived notions and prejudices (the extent of which I also found annoying at times), but still, I'd have liked to see a more balanced portrayal. The pacing also seemed a little off, particularly with the ending, which, granted, isn't the ending at all (because there's a sequel), but it's a sort of strange kind of book where the entire book seems to lead to making a decision. Which can be fine, but seemed a little anticlimactic in this case.
There was also one particularly weird thing about how the robot bodies worked, and more specifically generated power, where... I don't know if it just wasn't explained well, or I missed something vital, but it really didn't really make any scientific sense and what's more seemed to render the basis for any conflict between the two groups obsolete. I could see some possible explanations for how it might sense (and certainly, the character we learn about it from might simply have been ignorant of what was going on, so it's easy to let that explanation stand in the back of my head), but as I read it, it didn't work. And, worse... it didn't even seem to be that vital to the story. If you took out those sections entirely, nothing about this book would have changed much. If this power-generation aspect was intended to function in the way that it came across, it's a huge flaw. If it was merely poorly described, it's still a flaw, just a less severe one.
Overall, I liked it, but not as much as I'd hoped to. Still, I might read the sequel, see how it all turns out.
Finished: The Diving Bundle: Six Diving Universe Novellas by Kristine Kathryn Rusch
Space is really big, and really dangerous. That means there are a lot of wrecks, damaged ships, abandoned stations, and more. Some people, for money, knowledge, or glory, like to explore these wrecks, much like people in bygone eras would put on a diving suit to explore a sunken ship. But in space, it's a lot more dangerous, as the wrecks mght contain technologies that are lost or poorly understood, and still active, or worse, malfunctioning. And sometimes, even weirder things can be found...
This is a set of novellas, loosely connected, set in the same universe. Many of them are also parts of longer novels. This makes a decent way to sample the universe, but at the same time makes it a little trickier to go further, since chances are you're going to have to commit to rereading something in order to get a fuller story that a novel provides, or risk missing out on something by reading something out of order.
On the whole, though, I liked it. The central diving motif works extremely well, and something I'm surprised isn't hit a lot more in space-based stories (after all, astronauts often train for some of the weirdness of microgravity inside massive water tanks). And a few of the stories genuinely had me swept up and excited to see what happened next... although, at the same time, some of them dragged on a little bit. I don't begrudge this, because it's one of those things where characters have to operate out of an abundance of caution because that makes sense... that discoveries move slowly because the investigators aren't idiots rushing to look at things (mostly) but instead take a slow methodical approach, is actually refreshing, even if it's not always as exciting. And although the novellas are linked, they did offer more variety than I expected. Just when I was beginning to think, "Okay, this is interesting, but I don't know if I can take another few novellas all following the same pattern" the collection switches it up and gives a completely different kind of story.
They do tend to revolve around a single technological thread, in many forms, and it was interesting enough but by the end of the collection, it did start to wear a little thin. I might have liked to see a few stories that involved completely different types of wrecks, maybe even some that are completely conventional but there's a mystery involved. But it's clear the universe and major stories and character arcs are built around this single mostly-lost technology that crops up again and again, and, as I said, it started to wear thin. It's not that I'm not interested in continuing, it's just that I would need a break from it before reading more in this universe. If not for that feeling (and the previously mentioned difficulty of deciding where to go next), I might have gone out and purchased a novel in this universe right away. Instead, I'll merely mark it down as a universe and writer I'm interested in checking out again somewhere down the line.
Finished: The Diamond Age: or, a Young Lady's Illustrated Primer by Neal Stephenson (reread)
In the future, most basic needs are taken care of, with nanotechnology producing food, clothing, and furniture... but that doesn't mean there aren't the rich and the poor, or conflicts. One rich man commissions an intelligent book for his daughter, to educate her and give her the mindset needed to challenge ideas and become a leader. However, an illegal copy of the book also falls into the hands of Nell, a poor girl in an unstable family situation, and her stories may also change the world.
I read this once, long long ago, probably around the time it first came out (about twenty years ago). I remembered liking the central plot, but finding many of the other storylines confusing or tiresome. This time around, I certainly have much more appreciation for everything else surrounding it, although in some ways my opinion hasn't changed much... loved the main story, and everything else didn't quite engage me as much, although it was certainly full of interesting ideas sprinkled throughout.
In particular, while I get what the author was going for, the whole Neo-Victorian aspect didn't really feel real to me (which, considering the steampunk subculture, may be a failure of imagination on my part), nor did some of the other phyles (self-chosen social groupings) which seemed based on aping historical eras. And some of it feels especially dated... not the technology, but the sort of attitude and approach to depicting some of the other cultures. I wouldn't say it was racist exactly, but it had the vibe of someone using pieces of another culture as a cool prop (albeit, a very well-detailed one), rather than really portraying them. Again, I don't think it was too bad, particularly for the time (and in many ways it's probably better to have done it this way than to just tell a story that completely dismisses and discounts the parts of the world not part of mostly-English-speaking culture), but it did feel like something that, were it written today, you'd hope was done better.
My other major problem was with the ending, which seems to be a tendency Stephenson has. The story was great and engaging, but, towards the end, it became a little of a mess and it didn't feel like it resolved in a satisfying way. It was like a series that didn't know it was going to be cancelled until the last episode was filming and they tried to wrap years of plotlines up but it just didn't hang together.
Still the book is awash with cool ideas, many of which are still mind-blowing and relevant (maybe even more relevant) today, and an appealing tale of both the power and risks of technology, without losing sight of the human element. Even in the storylines I wasn't quite feeling as much, I found myself stopping and thinking, "Wow, that's so neat," many times.
And I wish I had a Primer of my own.
Finished: Vicious by V.E. Schwab
Two college students discover how to give people super powers, and try it on themselves. Ten years later, one finally breaks out of prison, bent on revenge against the other. Each finds allies with unique powers of their own. But in this story, the heroes and villains aren't as easy to pick out as they are in the comics.
I'm going to do something a bit unusual and start by talking about the score. Or should I say scores. Because generally speaking, I'd rate this book three stars on here. But... when I pick up a superhero book (or one involving super-powers at least), it's because I'm looking for something that's a bit simpler, lighter, more fun than what I'm usually into. Since, unlike other types of books, I'm not likely to pick it up when I'm not specifically in the mood for that sort of thing, it's more fair to score it based on that, compared to other superhero tales. And for this, I'd rate it four stars.
It does a good job... not very much that's extremely novel for the superhero genre, but there are a few things, and everything else is handled pretty well. I should also say that it's not really a "superhero" book, more of a "people with super-powers" but for the sake of ease I'll use "superhero" to be interchangeable with that. I feel like I need to make that distinction because it is in fact, one of the more interesting things about it, although some characters may be better than others, there really aren't heroes, and one of the few relatively new things it does with the genre is raise the possibility that this is in fact part of the nature of EOs (their name for people with powers). You find people to root for, but sometimes those people change and even many of the people doing heroic things are sometimes surprisingly cold.
The book's a more grounded take on the genre than most comics, something like Heroes, where people don't really wear flashy costumes or take on code names, but just have powers and exist in the world. That's generally my favorite type of superhero story though, so that's a benefit in my book.
The powers aren't really anything a fan of the superhero genre hasn't experienced before (Victor's is at least a bit more creative than most), but they're fun to read about, and at least on a few fronts things didn't develop how I assumed it was going to, based on the people and powers involved. Which made for a nice surprise while reading.
It's not really ground-breaking, but it does what it does quite well, the story's engaging and kept me turning pages, wanting to follow flashbacks, and there were only a few stumbles (including, I think, choosing EOs as the umbrella term for people with powers... but it's understandable, most of the best ones have already been taken). While mostly the tropes of the superhero genre are used well, occasionally subverted, sometimes things fall flat and people do things that are driven more by the need to follow through with the story rather than because that's what they'd actually do.
Overall I really liked it... I liked the characters, the world is interesting, and I could easily see myself reading this again when I'm in the mood for superhero stories, and I do want to see a sequel at some point.
I'd recommend the book to people who like superhero comics or shows or movies, even if they're not huge novel readers in general. The book's enough of a page-turner that if you think you might enjoy a novel but are just not sure where to start, and are afraid of being bogged down in something huge and dense, and the subject matter seems to your liking, this is a pretty good choice, maybe better than any other superhero novel that immediately comes to mind (with the possible exception of the Jumper books).
Finished: Ninefox Gambit by Yoon Ha Lee
Disclaimer: I recieved an electronic ARC from Netgalley for free. I don't think it affected my review.
In the far future, as part of a ploy to retake control of a space station that has fallen to heresy, a brilliant but disgraced, mass-murdering and long-dead general is bonded to a loyal soldier with a mathematical gift and given command of a group of ships.
I've had a somewhat of a mixed relationship with Yoon Ha Lee's short fiction. A few I've really enjoyed, while some of what he's written has done nothing for me. Still, the ones I liked I liked enough that I was really interested to see what he'd write at novel length.
Unfortunately, the results are also somewhat mixed, for me, at least, although some of that is because of personal distaste for some of the approach and worldbuilding. In fact, for the first third or so, I was convinced I was going to give it two stars at best.
Let's start with the big conceit, I guess. I don't feel it's tremendously spoilery because it's mentioned almost right off the bat (although it may take a little while before you understand that that's really what they're saying). This is a universe in which the calendar you follow determines how science and physics work, as does, to a smaller degree, what formations you put your soldiers or ships in during an attack. If enough people follow a different calendar, then your exotic weapons might not work. If you're in an area where most people celebrate slightly different holidays, they might be able to do wild and crazy things you've never seen before. Now, you can write about how mathematics governs the relationships all you want, but to me, that's effectively magic, as are most of the technologies itself (as does having a ghost that you bind to a person and manifests as a shadow), which puts this firmly in the category of fantasy, albeit science fantasy. Not my tastes, even if some of the magical weaponry have some pretty cool effects, that's not enough for me. But, even so, I could have gotten behind the idea a lot more, if the author gave me more to hang onto, set up the rules clearly in advance, maybe explained a little how this weird phenomenon came to be discovered, do something to support my suspension of disbelief. Instead, it's simply a given and we're expected to accept it as a fact.
And even that, I might have rolled with, if the characters and societies were easier to latch onto. But instead, the society they exist in is highly regimented (which you might expect, I suppose, if people following a different calendar might make your defenses not work), caste-like society, pretty much unlike anything I'm familiar with, and the main character we meet first is of the militaristic, ultra-loyal branch, known for being relatively humorless. So, it's hard to get behind the character (who seemed extremely bland, as did many of the temporary viewpoint characters who appeared for scenes from the front), the world, or, for that matter, the plot, because, for me, I couldn't really root for them to win. Any time in a novel people fight against "heretics", I'm instantly predisposed to rooting for the heretics, even if they're just as totalitarian in viewpoint, because at least they haven't fossilized and are potentially more open for change. I didn't really feel like there was anything in the book to latch onto and focus my enjoyment... the SF elements were fantasy and effectively made up as they went along, the characters were generally rigid, and the I wasn't especially caring about whether anyone accomplished their goals. All of that together made it hard to care about anything that happened, frankly, even the smaller character interactions.
Yet I did, eventually. Once Jedeo entered the story, it began picking up, although it still took a while before the interactions between him and Cheris were anything but more pages to get through in a book I wasn't really digging. But as it progressed, I found myself enjoying those exchanges, and wanting to know what happened. And, towards the end, and especially as we got some significant backstory of one of the characters, I started to get really interested... unfortunately, I got the feeling that THIS was where the book should have STARTED. Maybe the author felt he needed that long setup of the status quo in order to subvert some expectations, and there's probably some merit to that, but from my reading perspective, I felt like I had to wade through a lot of stuff I wasn't interested in to reach anything I really liked.
I think in total, I'd give it three stars, but it's on the lower end of three stars. And yet, the ending does interest me enough that I might want to continue. I don't know for sure yet, honestly... it might be the kind of situation where I probably wouldn't buy it for myself unless I heard from people I trust that it did indeed get much better, but I'd probably jump at the chance to read it for free to see for myself. And even though my rating is only three stars, I can see certain types of SF readers really liking this first book as it is, craving the complete dislocation that was a bit much for me.
Finished: Glasshouse by Charles Stross (reread)
It's the far future. Earth is a distant memory... most people don't even live on planets anymore, but rather small habitats linked by wormhole gates. And death's difficult to come by, because you can back yourself up as easily as taking a shower. If you want, you can change your body-plan or gender while you're at it. But there are still wars, and in the wake of one, many people have chosen to wipe their memories and start fresh. Some of these people, including Robin, an ex-spy who may have a mission so secret even he isn't aware of it, are recruited into what seems like an innocent three-year experiment, to examine how the society of the 20th century worked, by establishing a community following similar rules as they had to live under. No choosing your body. No instant repair. No ability to leave early if you don't like it. And a lot of expectations for how you behave. And Robin's worried the experiment may be run by war criminals with a nefarious agenda.
I've read this book at least four times now. That alone should tell you that I really enjoy it. In fact, it may be my favorite of Stross' novels that I've read (unfortunately, I believe it was also one of his lowest selling, which derailed chances of a follow-up or something in the same universe).
It's got a nice mix of different things I love in SF, things that don't always go together... wildly imaginative (but still somehow feeling plausible) speculation about the future and what kinds of technologies we'll have and how they'll shape our lives, as well as an engaging, easily relatable story. It's at time funny, fascinating, chilling, and making important points in a rather subtle way.
Of particular note is the look at how things we consider natural are often mostly matters of social comformity that can be manipulated from the top down, and how hard it is to fight it from the bottom when everyone else has bought in. I also really loved the brief glimpses we get at the censorship wars and wanted more about that, somehow, though I suppose it's hard to tell a satisfying complete story about a war where the people fighting it aren't allowed to remember why.
The book does have a few bumps, moments where either something felt obvious to me, the reader (even on the first read) but characters remained ignorant, or where interactions just felt slightly off... and, for that matter, there were times where the author handwaves reasons for the enemies to be defeatable. At least several times in the book, I was thinking, "Okay, but, really, if they wanted to, they could monitor that," and the reason given for why they wouldn't I just had to accept even though I didn't entirely buy into it.
There's also some treatment of gender that sometimes felt, at first glance, a little broad, even near the point of stereotypical. I do think it's a lot more nuanced than it looks, but the fact that it's a society where gender roles are being deliberately enforced and also that characters are sometimes in bodies specifically what they wouldn't choose (and so, the more unpleasant aspects would certainly weigh more heavily on their minds), but the first few reads I counted it as more of a (very slight) negative than I do now.
Still, I enjoy rereading this book every once in a while. I also think it could make a great TV or Netflix series. That's not to say books need that to be considered good, but part of the fun I get out of rereading in general is, since I don't have to spend as much effort undertanding what's going on, I can use some of the spare thinkspace to imagine how it might be adapted, if it were going to happen. I enjoy it. But I reread a lot of books, and while I might play this game with many of them, I think this could be one of the easier ones to do that way. Even though it's got big, complex SF ideas in there, most of it could be done on a budget of any non-genre show. That seems like a recipe for success (although, ignorant people would probably call it a Wayward Pines knock off or something. :P).
Finished: Permanence by Karl Schroeder (reread)
Rue Cassels steals her inheritance, which includes part-ownership of a ship, in order to escape her older half-brother and forge a new life for herself outside of his control. While in transit, she stumbles upon on unregistered comet, and stakes a claim, making her wealthy... but things only get more complicated when the comet turns out to be a cycler, a starship that runs on a cycle around the dim, chilly worlds that have been colonized between stars, like Rue's. Cyclers haven't been coming by as often as they used to, since the development of FTL that only works near stars, and Rue's society is slowly withering. A single cycler would help, but she soon learns that there's a lot more going on, and the stakes are a lot bigger than one person, one world, or even one species.
I read this book once before, and although it wasn't my favorite of Schroeder's, by far, I still quite enjoyed it. There's a lot packed into this book, ideas about the destiny of intelligent life, inventive and bizarre alien races, speculation on how people might live, a new, non-mystical religion for humanity, a new form of capitalism based on microtransactions, and plenty more. There's also a lot of plot. It's not a simple "get to the space ship and explore" book, even though that could easily have filled a whole novel... but there's a lot more plot than that.
Maybe, unfortunately, a little too much. Because with all the ideas Schroeder likes to explore, and all the plot he has to get through, a book only has so many pages and unless you do it very very well, things will fall by the wayside. In this case, the pacing feels off, as characters jump from situation to situation constantly, sometimes with rather convenient plot railroading to make it possible, and without much chance to explore any of them in particular, except in some cases where there's long digressions to explore some neat idea about how to build a livable world under a particular set of harsh conditions. And, also, unfortunately, character development suffers a little. I wouldn't call the characters two-dimensional, but there is still the sense that they're a lot more vivid in the author's head than comes across. There's obviously potential for in-depth, compelling characters... one struggles with something like bipolar disorder, others have lost their faith, and others with their own goals and motivations, but we don't spend enough time digging in to really make them come alive. Similarly, the romantic interactions that eventually develop lack a little depth. with characters falling for each other because they're the designated interest rather than because a connection was felt. The author has done better in other books, and again, it's not terrible, and I've seen much worse in this regard from books considered classics of the SF field... but it does make it a little harder to get into unless you're in it strictly for the cool ideas (in which case, this may well be right up your alley).
Despite this, I had a lot of fun revisiting the story and ideas, and thinking about some of the issues it brought up. Schroeder remains one of my favorite authors, this simply isn't one of his best works.
Currently reading: Nemesis Games, by James S.A Corey (Expanse #5), Echopraxia by Peter Watts (reread), and A World Out of Time by Larry Niven (honestly I don't even know if it's a reread or not, I found it on my shelf but it inspires no memory in me, not even of when I acquired it).
But here are the last batch of books read:
Finished: Against A Dark Background by Iain M. Banks (reread)
As the year 10000 approaches, the Lady Sharrow is marked for assassination by religious extremists, who believe her death, for the actions of her ancestors, will allow a religious prophecy to be fulfilled. Only two things, besides her death, will alter things. If she can stay alive until the decamillenia, or if she can return the priceless artifact that sparked the feud... an impossible weapon that has long been lost. Sharrow assembles her old team from when she was a soldier, and sets out to find the last Lazy Gun, a weapon that kills with a sense of humor, even though the clues to its location are tied to other, also lost, artifacts. Unfortunately, others want the gun.
In fantasy, it's common to create another world that is familiar to use in many touchstones, like the existence of recognizable humans, but also contains different elements (like dragons, or what not), and, more importantly, has a completely different history. In science fiction, they usually go for a slightly different approach... even when telling stories that don't take place on Earth, there's usually some connection... Earth is part of their ancient history, or it's another planet that the action just doesn't happen to be focused on, or, occasionally, it's an alien world but the aliens are totally alien. Banks often, and in this book in particular, takes an approach somewhat more like the fantasy mold... it's the year 10000, but it's not Earth, and there's no indication there ever was an Earth, even if the characters may as well be humans. It's a science fiction world (solar system, really) with its own history that echoes our world in many ways, but slightly different. Imagine if, say, Westeros, lasted not only past the Industrial age, but thousands of years past it, and you'd get sort of the same feel as the setting of this book (only instead of seasons lasting many years, the chief difference from our world is the lack of other stars that are near enough to see).
It allows him to showcase his creative talents, wild ideas that are both a lot of fun to explore and also compelling and familiar. There are several religious orders, political institutions, different types of animals, ages upon ages of history, and artifacts from that history.
But all that is just color, really. To be a great book, it has to hang a good story and characters off it.
Luckily, Banks mostly succeeds at this, too. The characters aren't always likeable (and in fact, although they don't seek to kill or screw people over, they're occasionally awfully blase about deaths, even innocent deaths, they happen to be responsible for), but they're entertaining, particularly the main ones (there are a lot of team members and side characters who unfortunately fade into the background, but it's a pretty big cast). They're the type you tend to root for mostly because they're going up against even worse people. And the story? Well, it's well-paced, exciting, jumping from place to place and caper to caper, largely an excuse to show off cool ideas Banks had for the world, but it's a good excuse and the journey is a lot of fun. So many times I found myself shaking my head and smiling at some particularly cool part of their society (even in the reread, which this was). There's a greater plot that may have been somewhat predictable, but still managed to carry emotional weight.
The weak points? Well, as I said earlier, the characters aren't always likeable and not always well-developed, and they're a little too grim-and-gritty for my tastes. And, towards the end (not quite at the end, the climax works pretty well, but just before that) it starts to drag significantly for me, with long stretches where I found myself skimming because I just wasn't that interested in what was going on and wanted them to get to the next cool part. But on the whole, I really liked that book, even the second time around.
Finished: Future Visions: Original Science Fiction Inspired By Microsoft (short story collection)
As the title suggests, this is a set of stories that were inspired by Microsoft... as I understand it, several authors were invited to tour the facilities and see stuff the company was developing, and write stories if they were inspired.
Now, "inspired" covers a lot of ground. Some of the stories involve ideas that you could see happening even relatively soon... others are stuff you could probably never expect to happen (even if they're based around tech that's reasonably plausible). But, even so, the stories to often seem to tread on each other's toes a little bit, like many of them took the same technology-in-development as a starting point. They still wrote very different stories, but it wasn't as different as you might get in an average anthology.
I mostly read this because it was free and an easy way to read more Hugo-eligible stories this year (since all of the stories were first published in this book, in 2015). None of them absolutely blew me away, but none of them completely stunk either. I think my favorites were Ann Leckie's "Another Word for World" and, to my surprise (because I didn't expect to like it from the first couple pages... I'm not even sure if it's objectively one of the ones I thought was better or if the fact that it became much better than I expected just made me like it more), Jack McDevitt's "Riding with the Duke".
Worth a look, at least.
Finished: Marooned in Realtime by Vernor Vinge (reread)
Wil Brierson is a detective, maybe the last one. Sometime in the twenty-second century, every human on Earth disappeared. The only ones left are those who were, at the time, encased in "bobbles", spheres of absolute stasis that many used to jump ahead through the years... and there are only a few hundred people left, trying to build what society they can by jumping further and further ahead to collect more stragglers. Nobody knows what happened to the rest. But that's not Wil's case. Nor is it his case to find the person who bobbled him for over a hundred years without his consent and separated him from his family forever... although he'd really like to do that, too. No, his case is to solve a murder of one of the few survivors left, who was murdered by being left outside of the bobbles, marooned in realtime, when everyone else jumped a century into the future. Murder by old age. But since the victim is one of the key people trying to keep the human race viable, it's a crime that everyone's got a stake in.
This is technically a sequel the The Peace War, but I feel like it stands alone. So much so that for this reread, I didn't bother to read the first book, which does introduce the bobbling technology, certain elements of the backstory, and one main character (who is changed almost to unrecognizeability by a long time gap), but is a completely different type of book, and, in my opinion, a far less interesting and lower quality one. Vernor Vinge is one of the greats of SF, and the line between where he was worthy of that title and where he was an okay author with a some really cool ideas is right between the The Peace War and Marooned in Realtime. Even to completeists I'd hesitate to recommend the other book, just because they might not think it's worth moving on to the second... and it is, it's a great book that deserves to be read, even standalone. Of course, it should be noted that the book DOES spoil the Peace War, so if you do think you might read both, you probably should do it in order, but if you read only one, read this one. It's not one of Vinge's best, perhaps, but it's still damn good, and it has its own story to tell that doesn't require reading The Peace War, which is good but may appeal more to dedicated SF readers.
There's so much to love in this book... there is of course, the three mysteries being balanced, and they're all handled quite well. There are some twists that are cool, but the story doesn't depend on them, it's built on the characters and, to a degree, the worldbuilding. Worldbuilding is a big factor here, but the world in question is Earth... one of the best things about this book is the view of the types of plants and animals that could exist on Earth millions of years from now. It was vivid, believable, and compelling. And more, the long diary of the victim, telling as she tries to survive and reach help while everyone she knows is bobbled up and completely unaware of her plight, is riveting. Reading about a person reading someone else's story should not be this good.
The book does have flaws, and there were times as they were approaching the climax that I felt it started to lose stream in trying to get across a lot of complicated action and motivations, but what it does well, it does so well that I'm happy to forgive it.
This was my first reread of the book, and I already know I want to reread it again somewhere down the line.
Finished: The Fortunate Fall by Raphael Carter
A reporter in a Russian of the future does more than tell a tale... she sees it, feels it, and the audience is wired into her brain to feel it through her, almost live, ideally with some of the personal or embarrassing bits edited out by a screener. Maya is one such reporter, and she's doing a story about the anniversary of a set of atrocities in a prior war, and working with a new, untested screener. But as she follows the story, she uncovers a lot more than she expected about both the world, and herself.
Wow. This is one of those books I'd only heard of through the occasional, but usually high, recommendation. But it wasn't in print, and I couldn't find a copy in any of the used bookstores I frequent. Eventually, I had to order a copy online from a used bookseller. And I'm glad I did.
The book is about twenty years old now, but it hardly feels dated at all. Sure, some of the tech seems to be based on some older ideas and may not ring completely true to more current readers (and cyberpunk as a genre as a whole may have passed its expiration date according to some), but it's only a small problem... and the many of the ideas and issues it explores are shockingly current.
The universe is full of exciting concepts, and it's set in a world that feels lived in, with history that mattered and affected the world, even though it's all still the future to us. What's more, the book does a really cool twist where a lot of things that seem innocuous at first about the world as it is in the "present" of the book turn out to be a lot more involved and scarier when more is revealed. Similarly with the characters, where you think you've got a handle on them but then gradually come to learn why they are the way they are.
The characters are engaging, even if they occasionally make choices that seem bizarre, but I wanted to follow them all the same, even through scenes where not much was actually happening, where they just seemed to be chasing a story.
Towards the ending, the book does lose me a little... I still enjoyed it (given an definition of "enjoyed" that includes suffering emotional gut punches at certain developments), but it became too much revelation and the author made a few literary allusions, some of which admittedly went over my head. And the ending itself involves certain characters making decisions where, well, I can totally understand the emotion behind them, the actual one makes no sense to me... that may well be part of the point, but still, it hampered my enjoyment slightly.
Even so, I'd rank this as a high four stars... if the ending worked for me a little better, I could guess it might well have been five.
This is Raphael Carter's first and only novel, which is a huge shame. They seem to have disappeared from the SF scene, but after reading this, I hope they're still out there and may one day make a return, I think they'd fit in well with some of my favorites of today. Also a huge shame is how this book seems to be one of those ones that made a small splash but then disappeared. It really should be remembered.
Finished: The Harvest by Robert Charles Wilson
Aliens visit the Earth, but at first they're silent, visible in the sky but not engaging. Until finally, in mass dream, they speak to everybody at once with an incredible offer. They will give functional immortality to everyone who wants it. As well as other benefits. The only catch is... once death is no longer a concern to you, or anyone else, you can't help but change your outlook, your priorities... you, in essence. And maybe that means you're no longer going to be what you presently consider human. Still, most people accept the offer. The novel follows a few of the small minority that refuse it, who are left unaffected, except that they're in a world full of people who said "yes." Could this all be a sinister ploy by the aliens and those who accepted the offer are enslaved and need rescuing? And, even if it's not... is it that much better?
This type of book is pretty much Robert Charles Wilson's specialty. A big event that can't help but change the world, and yet the focus is on the personal, how individual, rather normal people react to it, often helpless to change the course of events. In this case, it's also somewhat reminiscent of Childhood's End, although different enough that I wouldn't even call it a homage much less a ripoff (although I also wouldn't be terribly surprised if someone told me the author was inspired by the classic work to try this). It's just that a few similar ideas are explored, but with a more modern perspective. Modern to us, but for Wilson, it's one of his older, earlier pieces... and to an extent, it shows. Not that it's bad, but it's less... deft. The characters don't ring quite as true as some of his later work, some lean a little towards stock (but with interesting twists), and the plotting has a few more rough spots.
Two issues in particular stood out to me for the negative. One, there was a fairly obvious question that never seemed to be brought up, or even occur to any of the characters. It does eventually get answered, but it's far too late and feels contrived to provide a surprise to the reader, but not a fair one. I kept waiting and waiting for somebody to bring it up because it would have been one of my first questions and I can't believe it took that long to find out. The other problem is that there seemed to be too much uniformity in how the people who accepted the offer of immortality act. There is some mention of people taking slightly different paths, but just considering the natural variation of human personality, you'd think, given the abilities they have, there would be many more approaches taken. Maybe most people acting similarly allows for a certain creepiness to set into the story, but given the premises it didn't ring true. Even the basic count of how many people refused seemed unlikely to me... I could certainly believe a large majority, but I could see a significant minority refusing for some of the many reasons given by others.
Still, on the whole, I enjoyed the book. Wilson may not have shown himself as capable as he has in other works, but it was still interesting and worth a read. And he avoided several pitfalls that I think others might have fallen into and created a story that was far more conventional and much less interesting. The biggest sin is that I think that if he wrote from the same premise today, I think it might be a great book instead of merely good.
Finished: Sleeping Giants by Sylvain Neuvel
A giant metal hand is found under the ground, one that defies known science and anthropology. At first dismissed, years later it becomes the focus of intense investigation and top-secret efforts to find more of these artifacts and perhaps lay claim to the power behind them.
Full disclosure: I received a copy of this book free through a Goodreads giveaway. I don't think it affected my review.
In fairness, I should probably state up front that I'm probably the wrong audience for this book. While the description in the blurb was interesting enough, a mystery that was potentially cool and engaging, eventually it became clear that the direction the book was taken moved towards a SF trope that I've never been able to buy into, for whatever reason, one that typically makes me lose interest unless it's done really really well. Unfortunately, to say exactly what it is would be spoilery, but I'll say at least that it's not out of the blue, many aspects of the blurb description imply it could go that way, I was just hoping it was going to go in another.
In fact, most of my hopes for the book wound up being frustrated. The official synopsis also makes a big deal about the girl who discovered the hand also, later, getting involved in the effort to study it. So, I had envisioned a story where she was the main character, but she's not, and it's not the story of a person who's whole life was affected by an association with an impossible artifact and a maybe unsolvable mystery. She's a character, but she's not what the book is about... you may even call her an important side character.
The main character, if there is one, would have to be the mysterious "interviewer." The book is told mostly in that format, a series of conversations and interviews with an unnamed person who has connections and influence at the highest levels of government (along with a few other reports and diary entries that it's clear are provided to the interviewer). It's a tricky format, and has mixed results, because when it works it works well. It's a good way to get expository information out of the way without seeming awkward, and I do like the idea that the interviewer's personality is slowly being revealed while you think we're supposed to be learning about the "main characters" that he's interviewing. But it also requires a lot of cheats that pull me right out of the story, where characters describe the actions they're doing, or have recently done, in a detail that you need for a novel but seems out of place in an interview. Or, of course, where you suddenly get detailed descriptions of how characters look, from other characters, which seems especially cringe-worthy when a woman is described (because heaven forbid we don't find out how hot she is!). In the end, though, I found the interviewer not nearly as interesting as the author seemed to. I'd have been much more engaged if the story followed the perspective of some of the other characters more directly.
From a plot perspective, it moved reasonably well, but there were a few rough patches. Even leaving aside the disinterest that came when I realized what SF trope the story was going to be going with, I had trouble with it at several times. I couldn't buy into some of the global reactions, and there were a few too many times when I felt like certain things happened not because they were believable outgrowths of the premise and characters, but merely because they had to happen to solve the problem the author had set up. It led an air of inauthenticity to it, and considering one of the benefits of the epistolary novel format is that it adds a sense of realism even to outlandish premises, these seemed especially counterproductive. And when you add in the premise (again, which is somewhat of a personal peeve of mine) I found myself lightly rolling my eyes on too many occasions, especially when a proposed origin of the artifact was advanced. They were all light eye-rolls though... not enough to seriously hate the book, just that I felt I had to say, on a few too many occasions, "Really? That's what we're going with? Fine, let's just roll with it." With that attitude in place, it was mildly fun from time to time, but it just didn't connect with me as a whole. I'm sure others would have better results.
The book's part of a series, but I'm not interested in continuing and seeing how it wraps up, I think I'd rather be reading other books. This one, it's just not my thing.
Finished: A Darkling Sea by James L. Cambias
The distant planet Ilmatar is a single ocean with a roof of ice, and almost all of that ocean is without light. But it is the home to intelligent life, and humans have been secretly studying the crab-like beings, following the rules of the Sholen, another alien race, who dictate that there be no contact. When poor judgement causes the death of one of the science team, at the hands of an Ilmatarian, the Sholen come to assess the situation and decide whether the human expedition needs to be shut down... but they might not be willing to go along with the Sholen's rules if it means shutting down research rather than merely inconveniencing it.
This book is a lot of fun and will stick with me for a while, and I'm sure I'll reread it, because while it does have its flaws, it succeeds very well at one of of my favorite things in the genre. Cambias has not only created one alien race that was believable, interesting, compelling, and different than us in many fundamental ways (a difficult task)... he's created two. That alone made the book a joy to read, to get into that alien mindset and see how their biology affects their culture and outlook, to see how they might interact with humans, potentially in peace. In one book, the Sholen and Ilmatarians have both made it into my (admittedly rather large) list of favorite alien species.
So there's not a whole lot else to say beyond that I really enjoyed it and want more. The weaknesses it has aren't even that bad. Many of the human characters didn't connect to me as well as the story as a whole, and there were times when I thought the environment people (of all species) were living and working in could have used some more attention, to really sell what it's like from both our perspective and those of other forms. And the prose itself was clear enough but didn't particularly stand out for good or ill. But hey, it's a first novel and a really good one at that. I can't wait to see more.
Finished: Edge of Dark by Brenda Cooper
Long ago, an offshoot of humanity that had embraced technological advancement, transplanting themselves into robot bodies or computer systems, was expelled from the rest of the system. Since then, they've lurked in the dark fringes, occasionally raiding or trading with the stations. But suddenly they launch an attack to show their power and make their demands... they want to be let back in, on their own terms.
This book explores a number of themes that I really like, but it didn't work for me quite as much as I'd hoped. I still enjoyed it, but I certainly liked some storylines much more than others, and there were a few off notes that prevented me from really getting into it.
Starting with the good, I really particularly enjoyed Chrystal's storyline, which tells of an ordinary human who, after an attack by the Next, is converted against her will into a robot body, or, by some people's interpretation, murdered while a robotic copy was made. Cooper does a good job with her ambivalence and confusion, hating what was done to her and yet coming to love the new opportunities and experiences it provides her.
The other stories weren't as compelling, but they were relatively solid, after something of a slower start. Which applies to the book in general... it took a while to really start to get into it. I believe the book is set in the same universe as some prior works that I haven't read, and although I don't think it's required reading, it might have helped... those first few pages where I was busy soaking up what the status quo was, how different factions related, might have been easier if I simply knew all that from prior books. But, of course, I can't say for sure.
As for the things that turned me off? I think Cooper was trying to be fair but came down a little too hard against the Next, portraying most of them, aside from recent converts, as a little one-note and even unfeeling. That may be simply a factor of having most of the viewpoint characters from the rest of humanity, that have preconceived notions and prejudices (the extent of which I also found annoying at times), but still, I'd have liked to see a more balanced portrayal. The pacing also seemed a little off, particularly with the ending, which, granted, isn't the ending at all (because there's a sequel), but it's a sort of strange kind of book where the entire book seems to lead to making a decision. Which can be fine, but seemed a little anticlimactic in this case.
There was also one particularly weird thing about how the robot bodies worked, and more specifically generated power, where... I don't know if it just wasn't explained well, or I missed something vital, but it really didn't really make any scientific sense and what's more seemed to render the basis for any conflict between the two groups obsolete. I could see some possible explanations for how it might sense (and certainly, the character we learn about it from might simply have been ignorant of what was going on, so it's easy to let that explanation stand in the back of my head), but as I read it, it didn't work. And, worse... it didn't even seem to be that vital to the story. If you took out those sections entirely, nothing about this book would have changed much. If this power-generation aspect was intended to function in the way that it came across, it's a huge flaw. If it was merely poorly described, it's still a flaw, just a less severe one.
Overall, I liked it, but not as much as I'd hoped to. Still, I might read the sequel, see how it all turns out.
Finished: The Diving Bundle: Six Diving Universe Novellas by Kristine Kathryn Rusch
Space is really big, and really dangerous. That means there are a lot of wrecks, damaged ships, abandoned stations, and more. Some people, for money, knowledge, or glory, like to explore these wrecks, much like people in bygone eras would put on a diving suit to explore a sunken ship. But in space, it's a lot more dangerous, as the wrecks mght contain technologies that are lost or poorly understood, and still active, or worse, malfunctioning. And sometimes, even weirder things can be found...
This is a set of novellas, loosely connected, set in the same universe. Many of them are also parts of longer novels. This makes a decent way to sample the universe, but at the same time makes it a little trickier to go further, since chances are you're going to have to commit to rereading something in order to get a fuller story that a novel provides, or risk missing out on something by reading something out of order.
On the whole, though, I liked it. The central diving motif works extremely well, and something I'm surprised isn't hit a lot more in space-based stories (after all, astronauts often train for some of the weirdness of microgravity inside massive water tanks). And a few of the stories genuinely had me swept up and excited to see what happened next... although, at the same time, some of them dragged on a little bit. I don't begrudge this, because it's one of those things where characters have to operate out of an abundance of caution because that makes sense... that discoveries move slowly because the investigators aren't idiots rushing to look at things (mostly) but instead take a slow methodical approach, is actually refreshing, even if it's not always as exciting. And although the novellas are linked, they did offer more variety than I expected. Just when I was beginning to think, "Okay, this is interesting, but I don't know if I can take another few novellas all following the same pattern" the collection switches it up and gives a completely different kind of story.
They do tend to revolve around a single technological thread, in many forms, and it was interesting enough but by the end of the collection, it did start to wear a little thin. I might have liked to see a few stories that involved completely different types of wrecks, maybe even some that are completely conventional but there's a mystery involved. But it's clear the universe and major stories and character arcs are built around this single mostly-lost technology that crops up again and again, and, as I said, it started to wear thin. It's not that I'm not interested in continuing, it's just that I would need a break from it before reading more in this universe. If not for that feeling (and the previously mentioned difficulty of deciding where to go next), I might have gone out and purchased a novel in this universe right away. Instead, I'll merely mark it down as a universe and writer I'm interested in checking out again somewhere down the line.
Finished: The Diamond Age: or, a Young Lady's Illustrated Primer by Neal Stephenson (reread)
In the future, most basic needs are taken care of, with nanotechnology producing food, clothing, and furniture... but that doesn't mean there aren't the rich and the poor, or conflicts. One rich man commissions an intelligent book for his daughter, to educate her and give her the mindset needed to challenge ideas and become a leader. However, an illegal copy of the book also falls into the hands of Nell, a poor girl in an unstable family situation, and her stories may also change the world.
I read this once, long long ago, probably around the time it first came out (about twenty years ago). I remembered liking the central plot, but finding many of the other storylines confusing or tiresome. This time around, I certainly have much more appreciation for everything else surrounding it, although in some ways my opinion hasn't changed much... loved the main story, and everything else didn't quite engage me as much, although it was certainly full of interesting ideas sprinkled throughout.
In particular, while I get what the author was going for, the whole Neo-Victorian aspect didn't really feel real to me (which, considering the steampunk subculture, may be a failure of imagination on my part), nor did some of the other phyles (self-chosen social groupings) which seemed based on aping historical eras. And some of it feels especially dated... not the technology, but the sort of attitude and approach to depicting some of the other cultures. I wouldn't say it was racist exactly, but it had the vibe of someone using pieces of another culture as a cool prop (albeit, a very well-detailed one), rather than really portraying them. Again, I don't think it was too bad, particularly for the time (and in many ways it's probably better to have done it this way than to just tell a story that completely dismisses and discounts the parts of the world not part of mostly-English-speaking culture), but it did feel like something that, were it written today, you'd hope was done better.
My other major problem was with the ending, which seems to be a tendency Stephenson has. The story was great and engaging, but, towards the end, it became a little of a mess and it didn't feel like it resolved in a satisfying way. It was like a series that didn't know it was going to be cancelled until the last episode was filming and they tried to wrap years of plotlines up but it just didn't hang together.
Still the book is awash with cool ideas, many of which are still mind-blowing and relevant (maybe even more relevant) today, and an appealing tale of both the power and risks of technology, without losing sight of the human element. Even in the storylines I wasn't quite feeling as much, I found myself stopping and thinking, "Wow, that's so neat," many times.
And I wish I had a Primer of my own.
Finished: Vicious by V.E. Schwab
Two college students discover how to give people super powers, and try it on themselves. Ten years later, one finally breaks out of prison, bent on revenge against the other. Each finds allies with unique powers of their own. But in this story, the heroes and villains aren't as easy to pick out as they are in the comics.
I'm going to do something a bit unusual and start by talking about the score. Or should I say scores. Because generally speaking, I'd rate this book three stars on here. But... when I pick up a superhero book (or one involving super-powers at least), it's because I'm looking for something that's a bit simpler, lighter, more fun than what I'm usually into. Since, unlike other types of books, I'm not likely to pick it up when I'm not specifically in the mood for that sort of thing, it's more fair to score it based on that, compared to other superhero tales. And for this, I'd rate it four stars.
It does a good job... not very much that's extremely novel for the superhero genre, but there are a few things, and everything else is handled pretty well. I should also say that it's not really a "superhero" book, more of a "people with super-powers" but for the sake of ease I'll use "superhero" to be interchangeable with that. I feel like I need to make that distinction because it is in fact, one of the more interesting things about it, although some characters may be better than others, there really aren't heroes, and one of the few relatively new things it does with the genre is raise the possibility that this is in fact part of the nature of EOs (their name for people with powers). You find people to root for, but sometimes those people change and even many of the people doing heroic things are sometimes surprisingly cold.
The book's a more grounded take on the genre than most comics, something like Heroes, where people don't really wear flashy costumes or take on code names, but just have powers and exist in the world. That's generally my favorite type of superhero story though, so that's a benefit in my book.
The powers aren't really anything a fan of the superhero genre hasn't experienced before (Victor's is at least a bit more creative than most), but they're fun to read about, and at least on a few fronts things didn't develop how I assumed it was going to, based on the people and powers involved. Which made for a nice surprise while reading.
It's not really ground-breaking, but it does what it does quite well, the story's engaging and kept me turning pages, wanting to follow flashbacks, and there were only a few stumbles (including, I think, choosing EOs as the umbrella term for people with powers... but it's understandable, most of the best ones have already been taken). While mostly the tropes of the superhero genre are used well, occasionally subverted, sometimes things fall flat and people do things that are driven more by the need to follow through with the story rather than because that's what they'd actually do.
Overall I really liked it... I liked the characters, the world is interesting, and I could easily see myself reading this again when I'm in the mood for superhero stories, and I do want to see a sequel at some point.
I'd recommend the book to people who like superhero comics or shows or movies, even if they're not huge novel readers in general. The book's enough of a page-turner that if you think you might enjoy a novel but are just not sure where to start, and are afraid of being bogged down in something huge and dense, and the subject matter seems to your liking, this is a pretty good choice, maybe better than any other superhero novel that immediately comes to mind (with the possible exception of the Jumper books).
Finished: Ninefox Gambit by Yoon Ha Lee
Disclaimer: I recieved an electronic ARC from Netgalley for free. I don't think it affected my review.
In the far future, as part of a ploy to retake control of a space station that has fallen to heresy, a brilliant but disgraced, mass-murdering and long-dead general is bonded to a loyal soldier with a mathematical gift and given command of a group of ships.
I've had a somewhat of a mixed relationship with Yoon Ha Lee's short fiction. A few I've really enjoyed, while some of what he's written has done nothing for me. Still, the ones I liked I liked enough that I was really interested to see what he'd write at novel length.
Unfortunately, the results are also somewhat mixed, for me, at least, although some of that is because of personal distaste for some of the approach and worldbuilding. In fact, for the first third or so, I was convinced I was going to give it two stars at best.
Let's start with the big conceit, I guess. I don't feel it's tremendously spoilery because it's mentioned almost right off the bat (although it may take a little while before you understand that that's really what they're saying). This is a universe in which the calendar you follow determines how science and physics work, as does, to a smaller degree, what formations you put your soldiers or ships in during an attack. If enough people follow a different calendar, then your exotic weapons might not work. If you're in an area where most people celebrate slightly different holidays, they might be able to do wild and crazy things you've never seen before. Now, you can write about how mathematics governs the relationships all you want, but to me, that's effectively magic, as are most of the technologies itself (as does having a ghost that you bind to a person and manifests as a shadow), which puts this firmly in the category of fantasy, albeit science fantasy. Not my tastes, even if some of the magical weaponry have some pretty cool effects, that's not enough for me. But, even so, I could have gotten behind the idea a lot more, if the author gave me more to hang onto, set up the rules clearly in advance, maybe explained a little how this weird phenomenon came to be discovered, do something to support my suspension of disbelief. Instead, it's simply a given and we're expected to accept it as a fact.
And even that, I might have rolled with, if the characters and societies were easier to latch onto. But instead, the society they exist in is highly regimented (which you might expect, I suppose, if people following a different calendar might make your defenses not work), caste-like society, pretty much unlike anything I'm familiar with, and the main character we meet first is of the militaristic, ultra-loyal branch, known for being relatively humorless. So, it's hard to get behind the character (who seemed extremely bland, as did many of the temporary viewpoint characters who appeared for scenes from the front), the world, or, for that matter, the plot, because, for me, I couldn't really root for them to win. Any time in a novel people fight against "heretics", I'm instantly predisposed to rooting for the heretics, even if they're just as totalitarian in viewpoint, because at least they haven't fossilized and are potentially more open for change. I didn't really feel like there was anything in the book to latch onto and focus my enjoyment... the SF elements were fantasy and effectively made up as they went along, the characters were generally rigid, and the I wasn't especially caring about whether anyone accomplished their goals. All of that together made it hard to care about anything that happened, frankly, even the smaller character interactions.
Yet I did, eventually. Once Jedeo entered the story, it began picking up, although it still took a while before the interactions between him and Cheris were anything but more pages to get through in a book I wasn't really digging. But as it progressed, I found myself enjoying those exchanges, and wanting to know what happened. And, towards the end, and especially as we got some significant backstory of one of the characters, I started to get really interested... unfortunately, I got the feeling that THIS was where the book should have STARTED. Maybe the author felt he needed that long setup of the status quo in order to subvert some expectations, and there's probably some merit to that, but from my reading perspective, I felt like I had to wade through a lot of stuff I wasn't interested in to reach anything I really liked.
I think in total, I'd give it three stars, but it's on the lower end of three stars. And yet, the ending does interest me enough that I might want to continue. I don't know for sure yet, honestly... it might be the kind of situation where I probably wouldn't buy it for myself unless I heard from people I trust that it did indeed get much better, but I'd probably jump at the chance to read it for free to see for myself. And even though my rating is only three stars, I can see certain types of SF readers really liking this first book as it is, craving the complete dislocation that was a bit much for me.
Finished: Glasshouse by Charles Stross (reread)
It's the far future. Earth is a distant memory... most people don't even live on planets anymore, but rather small habitats linked by wormhole gates. And death's difficult to come by, because you can back yourself up as easily as taking a shower. If you want, you can change your body-plan or gender while you're at it. But there are still wars, and in the wake of one, many people have chosen to wipe their memories and start fresh. Some of these people, including Robin, an ex-spy who may have a mission so secret even he isn't aware of it, are recruited into what seems like an innocent three-year experiment, to examine how the society of the 20th century worked, by establishing a community following similar rules as they had to live under. No choosing your body. No instant repair. No ability to leave early if you don't like it. And a lot of expectations for how you behave. And Robin's worried the experiment may be run by war criminals with a nefarious agenda.
I've read this book at least four times now. That alone should tell you that I really enjoy it. In fact, it may be my favorite of Stross' novels that I've read (unfortunately, I believe it was also one of his lowest selling, which derailed chances of a follow-up or something in the same universe).
It's got a nice mix of different things I love in SF, things that don't always go together... wildly imaginative (but still somehow feeling plausible) speculation about the future and what kinds of technologies we'll have and how they'll shape our lives, as well as an engaging, easily relatable story. It's at time funny, fascinating, chilling, and making important points in a rather subtle way.
Of particular note is the look at how things we consider natural are often mostly matters of social comformity that can be manipulated from the top down, and how hard it is to fight it from the bottom when everyone else has bought in. I also really loved the brief glimpses we get at the censorship wars and wanted more about that, somehow, though I suppose it's hard to tell a satisfying complete story about a war where the people fighting it aren't allowed to remember why.
The book does have a few bumps, moments where either something felt obvious to me, the reader (even on the first read) but characters remained ignorant, or where interactions just felt slightly off... and, for that matter, there were times where the author handwaves reasons for the enemies to be defeatable. At least several times in the book, I was thinking, "Okay, but, really, if they wanted to, they could monitor that," and the reason given for why they wouldn't I just had to accept even though I didn't entirely buy into it.
There's also some treatment of gender that sometimes felt, at first glance, a little broad, even near the point of stereotypical. I do think it's a lot more nuanced than it looks, but the fact that it's a society where gender roles are being deliberately enforced and also that characters are sometimes in bodies specifically what they wouldn't choose (and so, the more unpleasant aspects would certainly weigh more heavily on their minds), but the first few reads I counted it as more of a (very slight) negative than I do now.
Still, I enjoy rereading this book every once in a while. I also think it could make a great TV or Netflix series. That's not to say books need that to be considered good, but part of the fun I get out of rereading in general is, since I don't have to spend as much effort undertanding what's going on, I can use some of the spare thinkspace to imagine how it might be adapted, if it were going to happen. I enjoy it. But I reread a lot of books, and while I might play this game with many of them, I think this could be one of the easier ones to do that way. Even though it's got big, complex SF ideas in there, most of it could be done on a budget of any non-genre show. That seems like a recipe for success (although, ignorant people would probably call it a Wayward Pines knock off or something. :P).
Finished: Permanence by Karl Schroeder (reread)
Rue Cassels steals her inheritance, which includes part-ownership of a ship, in order to escape her older half-brother and forge a new life for herself outside of his control. While in transit, she stumbles upon on unregistered comet, and stakes a claim, making her wealthy... but things only get more complicated when the comet turns out to be a cycler, a starship that runs on a cycle around the dim, chilly worlds that have been colonized between stars, like Rue's. Cyclers haven't been coming by as often as they used to, since the development of FTL that only works near stars, and Rue's society is slowly withering. A single cycler would help, but she soon learns that there's a lot more going on, and the stakes are a lot bigger than one person, one world, or even one species.
I read this book once before, and although it wasn't my favorite of Schroeder's, by far, I still quite enjoyed it. There's a lot packed into this book, ideas about the destiny of intelligent life, inventive and bizarre alien races, speculation on how people might live, a new, non-mystical religion for humanity, a new form of capitalism based on microtransactions, and plenty more. There's also a lot of plot. It's not a simple "get to the space ship and explore" book, even though that could easily have filled a whole novel... but there's a lot more plot than that.
Maybe, unfortunately, a little too much. Because with all the ideas Schroeder likes to explore, and all the plot he has to get through, a book only has so many pages and unless you do it very very well, things will fall by the wayside. In this case, the pacing feels off, as characters jump from situation to situation constantly, sometimes with rather convenient plot railroading to make it possible, and without much chance to explore any of them in particular, except in some cases where there's long digressions to explore some neat idea about how to build a livable world under a particular set of harsh conditions. And, also, unfortunately, character development suffers a little. I wouldn't call the characters two-dimensional, but there is still the sense that they're a lot more vivid in the author's head than comes across. There's obviously potential for in-depth, compelling characters... one struggles with something like bipolar disorder, others have lost their faith, and others with their own goals and motivations, but we don't spend enough time digging in to really make them come alive. Similarly, the romantic interactions that eventually develop lack a little depth. with characters falling for each other because they're the designated interest rather than because a connection was felt. The author has done better in other books, and again, it's not terrible, and I've seen much worse in this regard from books considered classics of the SF field... but it does make it a little harder to get into unless you're in it strictly for the cool ideas (in which case, this may well be right up your alley).
Despite this, I had a lot of fun revisiting the story and ideas, and thinking about some of the issues it brought up. Schroeder remains one of my favorite authors, this simply isn't one of his best works.
Currently reading: Nemesis Games, by James S.A Corey (Expanse #5), Echopraxia by Peter Watts (reread), and A World Out of Time by Larry Niven (honestly I don't even know if it's a reread or not, I found it on my shelf but it inspires no memory in me, not even of when I acquired it).
