[image]
Following the resounding success of my Locus Quest, I faced a dilemma: which reading list to follow it up with? Variety is the spice of lif
[image]
Following the resounding success of my Locus Quest, I faced a dilemma: which reading list to follow it up with? Variety is the spice of life, so I’ve decided to diversify and pursue six different lists simultaneously. This book falls into my HUGO WINNERS list.
This is the reading list that follows the old adage, "if it ain't broke, don't fix it". I loved reading the Locus Sci-Fi Award winners so I'm going to crack on with the Hugo winners next (but only the post-1980 winners, I'll follow up with pre-1980 another time).
I'm feeling confused...
[image] (sorry, my wife has been on a Friends binge so I couldn't resist)
Why didn't I like this book more?
People I trust go nuts over this book: Nikki: "I loved the book. I read it with my teddy, Helen, at all times, because it felt somehow wrong to read something that spoke to my teenage self without her -- this book really felt written for me, and I could talk about it for hours, if given the chance." Appatt:"The most important aspect of this book is that it is a love letter to science fiction and fantasy books" "The little comments about the books and the love the author via her characters show for the books make me want to read sf/f until my eyes fall out." Algernon:"Here is probably an explanation of why I love this story so much. It feels written especially for me. I recognize myself as a member of this group that is unable to pass a bookshop without entering and browsing the shelves."
Sadly, this book did not feel written for me.
Among Others is a massive clash of characters (5 stars) vs plot (2 stars).
I love Mori, she's awesome. She's the kind of gal I could talk books with for hours. She knows her sci-fi. She knows the importance of books on a deep, cellular level. She lives more in her books than she does in a body. We would understand each other, even if we didn't agree about particular authors - I totally don't feel her affection for Le Guin - but I'm pretty sure Mori would forgive me that. I'd be delighted to invite her over for pie and after-dinner Scrabble.
But... just because I think the girl is a kindred spirit, doesn't mean I'm going to love reading her diary. There are three strands to Mori's diary - and I was only totally sold on one.
(SPOILERS FOLLOW)
The first strand is the straight-up adolescent girl's life/drama/angst. Mori has run away from her mother because her mother's mad, and her madness lead to the incident which killed Mori's twin sister, and left Mori walking with a stick. Social services have placed Mori with her estranged Father, who she never knew. Her Father lives with his three kooky sisters, who pay to send Mori away to girl's boarding school. Mori does not fit in. She eventually makes friends in the local town, finds a boyfriend, and goes home to confront her mother.
The second strand is the fantasy element. Mori's mother is an evil witch. Mori and her sister grew up communing with fairies. Magic is real, but always plausibly deniable: magic can make a flower appear in your hand, but only because someone dropped it out of a plane above you and it fell into your hand. Magic can change what was to make what's now - it's twisty and dangerous. Fairies are strange. Mori doesn't know much about how it all works, she's never been taught, she's just grown up with it in the Welsh valleys, but it's real and nobody else knows about it. Mori performs rituals for the fairies and sees the spirit of her dead sister. It's wonderful and strange and nothing like Tolkien or Rowling.
The third strand is the books. Mori reads voraciously; many books a week. She ploughs her way through all the great sci-fi of her era and her informed and insightful extrapolations from themes in books to her own situation and scattered throughout the novel. Her love of books tints everything else she sees.
Overall Among Others is a unique, clever and fascinating book, but I never got that "this was written for me" feeling. I always found it enjoyable to read, but all to easy to put down again. It moves very slowly. For all the motion, there's very little progress. As I mentioned earlier, I'm no Le Guin fan, and Walton carries her torch; the power is in the quiet moments when everything changes.
Among Others won the 2012 Hugo award (fending off A Dance With Dragons, Embassytown, Deadline and Leviathan Wakes). It also won the 2012 Nebula award (fending off Embassytown again, as well as Firebird, God's War, The Kingdom of Gods and Mechanique.) Among Others did not win my personal favourite award, the Locus, where it was nominated for the fantasy award but lost out to A Dance With Dragons.
I've not read any of those (yet) except Embassytown - and I rate the Miéville higher.
[image]
Following the resounding success of my Locus Quest, I faced a dilemma: which reading list to follow it up with? Variety is the spice of lif
[image]
Following the resounding success of my Locus Quest, I faced a dilemma: which reading list to follow it up with? Variety is the spice of life, so I’ve decided to diversify and pursue six different lists simultaneously. This book falls into my HUGO WINNERS list.
This is the reading list that follows the old adage, "if it ain't broke, don't fix it". I loved reading the Locus Sci-Fi Award winners so I'm going to crack on with the Hugo winners next (but only the post-1980 winners, I'll follow up with pre-1980 another time).
Quick - write a review before the toddler gets home!
So... The Fountains of Paradise wasn't what I was expecting. I'm not quite sure what exactly I was expecting, because I'd never read anything by Arthur C Clarke before, but Space Elevators are a staple of space-opera, a sub-genre I'm particularly fond of - so I guess I was expecting more... melodrama?
I said (repeatedly) in my comments while reading that this story is measured, peaceful, even Zen. Now, while I did enjoy those aspects, I didn't find them terribly gripping. Despite the wonderful engineering feat described, I never felt riveted (please excuse the terrible pun).
For anyone (like me) who doesn't know much about this book:
The story is about the greatest engineer of his generation, Van. His masterwork to date was the Gibraltar bridge, so huge it's simply referred to as The Bridge. Now he's got plans for an even bigger bridge - a bridge to the stars - in the form of a space elevator. The only mountaintop site on Earth suitable for this incredible project is already occupied... by an ancient Buddhist temple. The story follows how Van comes to evict the tenants, and then later his involvement in a rescue mission during the construction of the elevator.
We also get a flashback to some ancient history around the location of the elevator, and a flashforward to mirror the distant future when the elevator is, itself ancient.
So, what's to like?
It's accessible - the language, structure and characters are all easy to grab hold of. It's a quick read - it's not a big book. The pure love of engineering, and passion for the idea of a space elevator evident is interesting, powerful, and charming. The tone throughout is mature; thoughtful, contemplative and peaceful.
It's kind of like a charismatic lecturer using an engineer's biography to try and get students to relate to the real-world issues around major projects. Not entirely successful, but you appreciate the effort.
And what's not to like?
The story is interesting, but not 'dramatic' in the traditional sense. Van has no close friends or family. Nobody's life is at risk if his project doesn't get off the ground. It's a fight for an idea... a wonderful idea, but there's no heart-and-soul at stake. The plot is broadly bisected into getting the project started, and the rescue mission. The first challenge is overcome via a deus-ex-fluke. The second has the potential for great heart-string drama, but ducks every bullet - the victim being rescued is not someone we care about, the method of rescue is mostly routine and sedate, the moments of crisis en-route are solved logically and methodically, and the final climax is one of peaceful acceptance... I applaud the mindset of Van throughout these trials - but his careful competence does suck the risk-factor out of the equation. This is Van the man, he gets the job done, now let's look at the scenery...
As a far-future tale, this feels dated. Apart from the crystal-nanowire the Elevator is built of, there's very little development out into broader technological/social/political progression. This feels like the 80s... with a space elevator.
...And the final score?
I was torn between 3 and 4 stars... I definitely 'liked it' but I didn't 'really like it'. At no point was I not enjoying The Fountains of Paradise, but the overall experience lacked ooomph. In the end I settled on 3 stars because I just didn't have the conviction for 4.
Not a bad introduction, I think, to Arthur C. Clarke. In no way has it put me off reading more when the opportunity arises.
What would you compare it too?
Hmm... tough for me because I don't read much from that era. Asimov is the only peer I've read, and they certainly have some stylistic elements common. Some similarities to Larry Niven too. A modern writer in the same headspace may be Greg Egan?
P.S. - why is there no proper cover for this book? only a photo of a book at a weird angle..? - Huzzah! Librarian David has now fixed this - thanks.
[image]
Following the resounding success of my Locus Quest, I faced a dilemma: which reading list to follow it up with? Variety is the spice of lif
[image]
Following the resounding success of my Locus Quest, I faced a dilemma: which reading list to follow it up with? Variety is the spice of life, so I’ve decided to diversify and pursue six different lists simultaneously. This book falls into my HUGO WINNERS list.
This is the reading list that follows the old adage, "if it ain't broke, don't fix it". I loved reading the Locus Sci-Fi Award winners so I'm going to crack on with the Hugo winners next (but only the post-1980 winners, I'll follow up with pre-1980 another time).
4 and 5 star reviews are easy to write, you just need to articulate all the reasons you loved a book. 1 and 2 star reviews are easy to write, you just need to articulate all the reasons you didn't like a book. It's these 3 star reviews I find hardest.
If you've never read any Cherryh, you need to know what you're getting into before you start - if you're not in the right headspace you may well be frustrated and disappointed by her style.
This is space opera territory - a galactic war between the rag-tag fleet of diehard Earth loyalists and the shiny clone-army future of the new frontier. The battle-lines are moving and space-station Pell (and the Downbelow world with it's gentle alien Hisa which Pell Station orbits) has ended up between the two factions, a neutral dot of strategic importance. Refugees are flooding in from other space-stations which have been overrun or destroyed. Pell's capacity is overstretched time and again. Refugee conditions in 'Quarantine' are appalling (riot, rape, murder, etc). The situation is critical. This is our story.
This is what's great about Downbelow Station. A cracking premise, and more tension than a suspension bridge.
Before coming to Downbelow Station, I'd read one other Cherryh book - Cyteen. I didn't realise before I started that they were set in the same Universe (because Goodreads lists them as different series within that universe, and I hadn't done much further research). It took me a long time to get to grips with Cyteen, but by the end I was a fan.
Cherryh's style is dry (very, very dry... more on that later) and serious. There's very little leeway given in Downbelow Station to ease you in - no exposition, no prevaricating, no tricks to smooth the ride. She presents her cast in difficult situations, and then lets you watch them as they try their best to deal with them. End of.
The benefit of Cherryh's approach is an absorbing, convincing world, full of little details and nuances which bind it into a strongly cohesive experience. The politics of the factions and their tactics and consequences all hang-together in a well designed siege set-piece. It's intricate and marvellous - but it's cold.
Every single character in Downbelow Station is a straight arrow. There's not one moment of humour to lighten the mood - and that was kind of unforgivable to me. Humour is a classic coping mechanism for dealing with stress and I find it hard to believe that trait will be lost in this future world! I find it hard to believe that a spaceship can be crewed by loyal automatons, without banter and wind-ups - have you ever spent time around lads in the forces? Yes, there's love and affection, but no joy. At all. No love of life - no sparkleponies, damnit!
For me (and this is just my opinion, everyone's different) when you're talking about war stories, part of the success lies in the dramatic tension, not just of how the situation will be resolved, who lives and who dies, but which side's principles and way of life will prevail. I don't think Cherryh does enough to embody what the opposing philosophies represent. Life on Pell Station before the war seems... dull. During the war it's... tense. There's not enough colour or flavour to make me believe their way of life is really worth saving. Having said that, there's not enough shown of the Union way of life to really guess if that would be better or worse. It's all just shades of grey and question marks.
I said earlier that this is classic space-opera territory - but one of the hallmarks of space-opera is melodrama; big, bold, sweeping, romance, action - a universe overflowing with life and drama! No, no, no - not here.
I got a little annoyed with another review (I wont name and shame) which suggested this type of dry, almost technical sci-fi can only be appreciated properly by sufficiently intelligent readers. I call elitist bullsh!t when I hear it!
Downbelow Station is a good book - it's not a million miles away from being a great book - but Cherryh deliberately shuns many of the storytelling conventions which would have tugged at the heartstrings as effectively as it interests the head. As such, for me at least, it's found lacking.
[image]
Following the resounding success of my Locus Quest, I faced a dilemma: which reading list to follow it up with? Variety is the spice of lif
[image]
Following the resounding success of my Locus Quest, I faced a dilemma: which reading list to follow it up with? Variety is the spice of life, so I’ve decided to diversify and pursue six different lists simultaneously. This book falls into my HUGO WINNERS list.
This is the reading list that follows the old adage, "if it ain't broke, don't fix it". I loved reading the Locus Sci-Fi Award winners so I'm going to crack on with the Hugo winners next (but only the post-1980 winners, I'll follow up with pre-1980 another time).
The first time I heard the music of Kraftwerk it sounded fresh and timeless – but also remarkably familiar, like I’d heard it a long time ago and forgotten where. They’ve had such a great influence on so many contemporary bands that I’d listened to and loved; there was nothing left to surprise me in their compositions – I’d heard it all before, dissected and reused by a dozen other artists. Despite that, they also sounded purer and more cohesive than any of their followers.
That’s the closest I can come to explaining how I felt reading Neuromancer. Many of the books I love, (Simmons, Morgan, Stephenson, Bacigalupi, Stross, etc) have been influenced and inspired by Gibson’s work. Without having read it myself, I could already feel the ghost of its shape passed down through a dozen other novels. It could have easily gone wrong for me – felt dated, clichéd, done to death or derivative – but it didn’t. Whereas all those other writers bring their own interpretation and additions to cyberpunk, this is the source – the headspring - and it tastes good!
I know a lot of people find Neuromancer hard to get into – the dense technoprose can be offputting and the characters aren’t always immediately likeable – but this kind of novel is my home turf and I was right there, rapt in the front row, from page one. I’d promised myself that I wasn’t going to pick up any new series until I’d finished the many series I already have on the go (I’ve even got a reading list devoted to it), but once I finished Neuromancer I knew that I had to read the Sprawl trilogy, and soon! I should have read this years ago... and I feel kinda stupid that I didn’t!
It’s a heist story. It’s a hacker story. It’s an addict’s story. It’s noir. It’s poetry. It’s taking no prisoners. It’s a dream. It’s prophecy. It’s blood on your tongue and grit in your eyes.
“All the speed he took, all the turns he'd taken and the corners he'd cut in Night City, and still he'd see the matrix in his sleep, bright lattices of logic unfolding across that colorless void...”
“His eyes were eggs of unstable crystal, vibrating with a frequency whose name was rain and the sound of trains, suddenly sprouting a humming forest of hair-fine glass spines.”
Neuromancer receives a lot of mixed reactions. Why? It’s a cult-beast that gained mass-market notoriety. People who don’t normally read sci-fi have read Neuromancer – and you know what, they didn’t love it. It’s like Noisia appearing on Top of the Pops! (Noisia would be my recommended listening for generating the correct atmosphere for reading Neuromancer, btw – clever Dutch drum’n’bass) This isn’t even nice, accessible sci-fi, like Ender’s Game or Dune. People who enjoy The English Patient (as a polar opposite, off the top of my head), should not expect to fall in love with this book.
But... if, like me a few weeks ago, you’ve never read this book – but you have read Hyperion or The Diamond Age or Altered Carbon or Accelerando or The Windup Girl – and liked them, then you owe it to yourself to follow that stream back into the mountains and taste it ice cold and pure as it bursts from the rock.
NOTE: The title, "Neuromancer", is also one of my all-time favourites titles. I've always thought it was a perfect title, from before I'd ever read the book - just like Radiohead is a perfect band name.
[image]
Following the resounding success of my Locus Quest, I faced a dilemma: which reading list to follow it up with? Variety is the spice of lif
[image]
Following the resounding success of my Locus Quest, I faced a dilemma: which reading list to follow it up with? Variety is the spice of life, so I’ve decided to diversify and pursue six different lists simultaneously. This book falls into my HUGO WINNERS list.
This is the reading list that follows the old adage, "if it ain't broke, don't fix it". I loved reading the Locus Sci-Fi Award winners so I'm going to crack on with the Hugo winners next (but only the post-1980 winners, I'll follow up with pre-1980 another time).
According to Goodreads, Ender’s Game is the book most frequently shelved as ‘science-fiction’ or ‘sci-fi’. Since I joined Goodreads, Ender’s Game is the book most frequently recommended to me by friends here. Thank-you, Goodreads and co, for your part in introducing me to Ender’s Game; we got along splendidly.
You know that feeling: when a book just feels right? When you instantly feel at home in this world? When you get annoyed with the real world for introducing upon your time together? When you want to start all over again the moment you hit ‘the end’? When you want to bounce up and press the book into someone else’s hands so they might feel the way you do? Yeah? Like that.
Oddly enough, I started with book two in Ender’s Saga – Speaker for the Dead – which is a very, very different book. I’ve given them both 5-stars, and I’m pretty excited to see what other twists and turns the story takes. I’ve seen some complaints that the series gets weaker as it goes along, but I’ve also seen people complain about the first two, and for me they were flawless victories – so I’m disregarding all naysayers and holding strong to my own opinion as shameless fanboy so far.
Quite simply, Ender is awesome. The scenario he faces is awesome. The challenges he overcomes are awesome. The climax is awesome. The fallout is awesome. The only thing that wasn’t awesome was the slightly contrived way the Hive Queen is delivered to Ender – that felt clunky – but by then there was so much momentum on this wave of awesome-sauce that I was in a forgiving mood.
I don’t have much to say in terms of critical discussion – I totally threw my analytical hat away about three pages into Ender’s Game and just immersed myself in the story. And I had a great time! It’s... extremely accessibly sci-fi. Super-smart, heart-of-gold kid, smacks down the bullies, teaches himself to be a military genius, shoulders the pressure and responsibility of the world, then saves mankind by kicking-ass at videogames. Hell yeah!
The zero-gee battle games (which make up a big part of the story) are a bit a childhood fantasy for me. It’s basically zero-gee laser-quest. It talks directly to my ten-year-old inner child. I had dodgy knees as a child and struggled to run in team games – but I dreamt about zero-gee. This next sentence should be written in giant, flashing capital letters but I’m going to exercise all the restraint I have: I want to play!
I understand that Orson Scott Card has publicly said some reprehensible things and that’s massively pissed some people off. Fine: the guy is a douche and I won’t recommend him as a dinner-party guest. But his work is superb and I would whole-heartedly recommend Ender’s Game to anyone with any interest (at all) in sci-fi!
[image]
Following the resounding success of my Locus Quest, I faced a dilemma: which reading list to follow it up with? Variety is the spice of lif
[image]
Following the resounding success of my Locus Quest, I faced a dilemma: which reading list to follow it up with? Variety is the spice of life, so I’ve decided to diversify and pursue six different lists simultaneously. This book falls into my HUGO WINNERS list.
This is the reading list that follows the old adage, "if it ain't broke, don't fix it". I loved reading the Locus Sci-Fi Award winners so I'm going to crack on with the Hugo winners next (but only the post-1980 winners, I'll follow up with pre-1980 another time).
Long-running series should, ideally, be read in the internal chronological order. Unfortunately, Maestro Bujold did not write her epic Vorkosigan Saga in the obvious order – she’s jumped back and forth in the timeline with each successive book. Under these circumstances, fans that have been with her since the beginning will have experienced the full story in publication order, which also makes perfect sense. Being the contrary and ornery individual that I am, I am reading this wonderful series in neither chronological or publication order, but rather a semi-random and illogical sequence of my own devising! (Faye uses the word ornery a lot in older QuestionableContent issues I’ve been reading and it got lodged in my head.)
I began with Book Nine (Mirror Dance) and then jumped back to Book Two (Barrayar) – both read as part of my Locust Quest. These stories caught me hook, line and sinker: I declared myself a loyal reserve in the Emperor’s Vorkosigan Fan-Club Army.
Next, I found my way here to Book Four, (The Vor Game) as it was flagged for my attention as a Hugo winner from 1991 (more on that later). And I’ve now been given Books 8, 10 and 11 (Borders of Infinity, Memory and Komarr) as Birthday presents. Hurray!
Whereas Barrayar focuses on Miles’ mother around the time of his birth, and Mirror Dance focuses on Miles’ clone-brother when they’re both in their late twenties. The Vor Game focuses exclusively on Miles in his late teens, just after graduating – and more Miles equals more fun! He’s a terrifically likeable lead and Bujold has a real flair for character which isn’t common in sci-fi.
This is a classic book of three acts. Miles starts in the military, gets assigned to some backwater Arctic camp, and has a massive personality clash with the commander, which gets them both fired. He gets re-assigned as a spy, and out in the field, under-cover, he bimbles around for some time, getting a feel for the territory on one mission before he bumps into his old childhood chum, The Emperor, who is on the lam incognito! Miles has to rescue his friend, foil the intergalactic plot that threatens his home-world, defeat his old Arctic-camp nemesis, and dig some other mercenary buddies out of the hole he left them in during his last adventure! It’s a light-hearted, whirlwind adventure in the best traditions of Space Opera. Miles is a fast talking, faster thinking, marginally psychotic, loveable little scamp!
It was one of those books where I spent the whole time reading it with a huge grin plastered on my face, and strangers in coffee shops looked at me with a worried squint. (Or maybe they were just curious if it was really ‘sugar’ I was putting in my drink?)
A quick note on the cover: I seem to have a copy of The Vor Game that was a short-lived edition. I can’t find the correct cover on GoodReads, and I’ve searched high and low on the internet, and the only version I could find anywhere was an e-bay pic of a guy’s hand holding the book. I now cannot even find that! (I shall add a pic to this review when I find my camera). So apparently this is rare – maybe it would be worth something if my copy wasn’t battered to frack. I take my books wherever I go, in whatever pocket they can be crammed – I am not kind to covers and spines.
Another quick note: After seeing how much I was enjoying this series, my darling wife has now gotten in on the fun, and agrees that Miles is utterly adorable and the books are awesome. We are now a family of Vorkosigan fans together! Double-hurray!
As far as I can tell you can jump into this series at any point because they’re all superbly written, stand-alone novels as well as linking together into an epic sci-fi adventure series. So you’ve got no real excuses – just grab the first one you spot and get involved!
[image]
Following the resounding success of my Locus Quest, I faced a dilemma: which reading list to follow it up with? Variety is the spice of lif
[image]
Following the resounding success of my Locus Quest, I faced a dilemma: which reading list to follow it up with? Variety is the spice of life, so I’ve decided to diversify and pursue six different lists simultaneously. This book falls into my HUGO WINNERS list.
This is the reading list that follows the old adage, "if it ain't broke, don't fix it". I loved reading the Locus Sci-Fi Award winners so I'm going to crack on with the Hugo winners next (but only the post-1980 winners, I'll follow up with pre-1980 another time).
I'm probably in a distinct minority, having read Forever Peace but not Forever War (yet). Apparently, in comparison, a lot of people think this one comes off the weaker - but on it's own, without that comparison I thought it was top notch.
The moments of action have a heart-attack intensity, but the bigger slice of the book is focused on the psychological effect that has on the soldiers, and how turning a weapons-tech on it's head can actually be the spark that unites mankind and triggers a mini-transcendence. This is the eye-of-the-needle between utter-destruction and utopia. Big stakes, a lot of smarts and a flawed hero I really felt my heart go out to.
I'd really like to read the other two books in this series, and will definitely be adding them to my 'Finishing-the-Series' list as soon as I clear enough of the sequels currently clogging it up!
I have 40+ books sitting on my 'review-soon' shelf that I just don't have time to write proper reviews for, so I'm going to bash out as many of these mini-reviews as I can before Christmas :-)
*Note: If you're surprised by how many likes this review has, it's because during the Great Goodreads Debacle following the GRAmazon merger (when good folk were leaving the community due to the unnecessary moderation/censorship of reviews) I used this book review (which I hadn't read at the time) as a place to chip-in my own two cents regarding reconcilliation, community engagement and a route to our own slice of 'forever peace'. That rambling post got a fair amount of likes, and has now been replaced with this stub of a review :-)
I knew practically nothing about this book when I started - except that I hadn't liked the only other Vernor VingI love it when I give a book 5-stars!
I knew practically nothing about this book when I started - except that I hadn't liked the only other Vernor Vinge book I'd read (Rainbow's End). This is about a gazillion times better!
So here's the low down:
This is a far future yarn, with three great 'big ideas'.
1) Space is not uniform. I'm probably going to explain this poorly (my wife looked somewhat unconvinced when I tried to explain it to her), but here goes: there are zones of thought. Somewhere in the centre of the universe is the 'slow zone', where it's impossible to create sentient AI computers, and it's impossible for faster than light (FTL) travel to work. Then outside of that is the beyond, where all kinds of alien races with FTL travel are living and trading and warring and gossiping, etc. The beyond is broken loosely into the low, middle and high beyond, where gradually more advanced technology functions. If you try and fly a high-beyond spaceship down into the low-beyond, it's more advanced functions will gradually shut-down, etc. Then - out in the periphery - is the transcend, where species/beings/entities who have 'transcended' into god-like Powers dwell. They must remain in the transcend to function, and so the 'lower' lifeforms are protected from the wraph of their all-powerful whims. Think of it like a deep ocean - with humans in ships on the surface, lots of interesting life in the shallow seas, and weird things hidden in the depths.
Earth is deep in the slow-zone. At some point in the ancient past we humans escaped into the beyond and joined the great party of alien society - but we can't go home easily, because that would involve century long trips back into the slow-zone. Plus, I think we've forgotten where Earth was.
2) There are lots of aliens out there. Out in the beyond there are thousands of different alien species and Vinge does a great job of capturing the vibrancy of that diversity. The skroderiders are centre stage here - little coral-esque talking plants that drive around on little intelligent carts and waggle their fronds at people. Awesome. Vinge uses these quirky 'net messages', sort of open web postings from different planets, as a narrative device to tie the plight of the humans, and our heroes in particular, into the big picture of the galactic civilization and the various opinions and factions therein. If you haven't read Joel's review, check it out - he's written in in the style of one of these transmissions (which went straight over my head when I first read it, but seems a lot funnier now I'm in on the joke).
Vinge doesn't actually explore this idea a great deal in this book, it's sort of the background setting, but it adds a great deal in terms of tone/atmosphere.
3) The Tines! A large section of the story is set on one alien world. The Tines are without a doubt one of my favourite alien races. Think of wolves, with longer, pointier heads - like a seal/rat. Then think of a pack of these beasts, between four and eight creatures, acting as a hive-mind. Each animal can survive on its own as an animal level intelligent (like a very smart dog) but together, they become a sentient being. In practice, in the book, they're very cool and they're culture is a lot of fun to explore. Vinge did a great job of just dropping you into their story from one alien's POV, and letting you figure out what the hell it is from gradual clues. They're great - trust me!
So those are the big ideas - and to tie them together we have an apocalypse story. Some humans meddling with an artefact in the low transcend, wake up an Evil Power. It takes over the humans, their home planet, and starts to spread through the beyond. No species can stand against The Blight and it absorbs all it touches into it's giant hive-mind of creepy possession type-thing. Standing against that, is the Great Hope, something a small gang of brave humans smuggled out the artefact right before it went all apocalyptic.
The Great Hope is hidden on the planet of the Tines, where brother/sister humans are split on either side of a Tine warzone. Some skroderider plant aliens, a human woman and a human man who's been reconstructed from frozen human spare-parts by a Good Power are on a mission to travel from the high beyond all the way to the edge of the slow zone to grab the Great Hope. The Blight is chasing them. Great drama ensues.
Got all that? This is big, fun, space opera adventure - my favourite kind of book.
There were a couple of tiny issues with credibility - million to one chances occurring a little too often, etc. But I was more than happy to overlook them as I was gleefully swept away on the ride.
I picked this up as a Hugo winner (from 1993). The Locus Sci-Fi award and the Nebula award for that year went to Willis' Doomsday Book, which is utterly different and broke my heart. In terms of emotional reaction, that's the superior novel, but in terms of escapist fun - this smashes it.
I've jumped straight into the prequel following this (which is just as good so far, with some excellent spider-aliens), and my new book to read at work is Forever Peace (which has also started out excellent) so I'm definitely on a good run at the moment :-)
Seriously. Go read his review first, and then come back to hear me witter on if you're still interested...
...
...
...
...
So what can I add to that?
My first experience with Vinge was Rainbow's End, which I did not get along with. I thought it was rubbish. I picked up A Fire Upon the Deep as a Hugo winner, with a kind of grim determination to trudge through it, come what may. Instead, I loved every second of it and have since enthusiastically recommended it to friends. So coming into A Deepness in the Sky I had a kind of hopeful trepidation - would it be another smash hit, or another dreadful miss?
It's a definite hit. It's a really good, interesting book - Vinge does a fabulous job (again) with his alien characters and creates a culture that will live long in the memory.
As Apatt aluded to though, there's something about the book that doesn't ring 'right' to start with. By the end, that all makes sense, but it makes the reader suspicious, you're trying to put your finger on what's out of kilter - it makes the book a bit of a puzzle - and in that mindset you're not engaging with the characters, you're not investing emotionally. It takes longer than it should for the ties to grow strong enough to tug on your heart-strings, and somewhere in that delay the fifth star is lost from the rating.
The third in the trilogy, The Children of the Sky scores significantly lower here on Goodreads than either of the first two (an average of 3.5 vs 4.1 & 4.3), and considering only fans of the series are likely to have carried on to book three - that doesn't bode particularly well.
On reflection, I think Vinge has earned enough goodwill with me to give him that chance - and I'll be adding book three to my labyrinthine reading/shopping list system tonight :-)
[image]
Following the resounding success of my Locus Quest, I faced a dilemma: which reading list to follow it up with? Variety is the spice of lif
[image]
Following the resounding success of my Locus Quest, I faced a dilemma: which reading list to follow it up with? Variety is the spice of life, so I’ve decided to diversify and pursue six different lists simultaneously. This book falls into my HUGO WINNERS list.
This is the reading list that follows the old adage, "if it ain't broke, don't fix it". I loved reading the Locus Sci-Fi Award winners so I'm going to crack on with the Hugo winners next (but only the post-1980 winners, I'll follow up with pre-1980 another time).
In my last review (Downbelow Station) I mentioned that I find 3-star reviews the hardest kind to write, because they're always a muddle of good and bad - or in more extreme cases excellent and terrible!
This is one of the latter kind - equally excellent and terrible.
I don't often do this, but it this case I feel it's necessary:
-- THIS IS A (RANTING) SPOILER REVIEW --
Please do not read if you wish to be surprised by anything in this novel ^^(If I used spoiler tags you'd need to click-show half the review)^^
Hominids is a parallel world story. There's a parallel world where Homo Sapiens went extinct, and Neanderthals became the dominant civilization. In that Neanderthal version of Canada, there's a pair of Neanderthal quantum physicists working on quantum computing in the bottom on an old mine. They accidentally create a portal to our world and one of the Neanderthals gets sucked through it.
As far as a premise goes, that's a pretty interesting ground zero in my book. Flips the classic parallel world story on it's head, with the 'alien' scientist being sucked into our world, rather than the human scientist being sucked into an alien world.
Unfortunately, Hominids gets a bit flaky from there on in.
The story splits in two - one half following Ponter, the Neanderthal scientist in Ourworld, and the other half following Adikor, his partner left back in Neanderthalworld.
The dramatic question remains the same as the standard Parallel World story: Can Ponter get home to his own world?
The answer: Yes. Adikor goes back to the lab, re-runs the experiment which created the dimensional rift, and Ponter goes back through the hole. Hurray! It's actually very simple and undramatic - which means the drama, the impediments to stall this simple solution, are rather forced.
With no evidence to back-up Adikor story about Ponter disappearing into another dimension, Adikor gets accused of murdering Ponter and hiding the body. The murder trial is the lens through which we explore Neanderthalworld, it's culture, judiciary system, familial relationships, etc. While accused, Anders is not allowed to return to his lab (stalling the rescue), and in the end has to get help breaking the law to clear his name, to allow him to rescue Ponter, etc. From a pure plotting perspective, this isn't a great adventure.
But the cultural exposition is interesting - kind of. Neanderthalworld is not quite a Utopia, but certainly idyllic. Low population, high tech, high personal values, pure atheist/logical, etc... It's preachy. It grated. What the author has done - taking a few facts about Neanderthal culture and extrapolating them as consistent trends through to a high-tech society is interesting and imaginative... but shallow.
Take the technology for example. 1) Out protagonists are experimental scientists, creating Quantum Computers. 2) Everybody has embedded technology in their arms which constantly records/broadcasts their environment 3) They travel in flying cubes
From which we can infer that they're a pretty high-tech culture.
But they've retained a hunter-gatherer monoculture - no agriculture, no population boom, no cities, etc. None of the environmental pressures which have driven technological progress. How can you get to high-tech without the industrial revolution? How do you get to modern computing without the need for sophisticated encryption/decryption systems (as as result of secrecy in war)? For a sci-fi novel, these matters of science and technology are skirted with an almost embarrassing lack of detail. It's more - quick, look over there! It's a mammoth! Aren't these people cool? They didn't hunt the mammoths to extinction! Now don't ask how they developed anti-gravity. Shhh...
I didn't buy it.
On the other side of the divide, we've got Ponter suddenly appearing in Ourworld, and learning how stupid and wicked we human are. Overpopulation? War? Religion? Rape? You creatures are barely more than beasts! No wonder; your brains are tiny and you can't smell each other's pheromones properly with those tiny noses!
*facepalm*
Which brings us on to the element of the story I found weakest - the human scientists. Now, the Neanderthals are doing their Quantum Computing experiment in the bottom of an old Nickel mine to shield it from radiation. Our scientist are doing Neutrino detection (or something like) in the bottom of the same mine on our Earth. Our experiment involves a cavern full of water, so when Ponter slides sideways, he emerges in the water and almost drowns.
Ponter gets passed along a chain of scientists... 1) sexy young female particle physicist (are these real?!) rescues him from the water, before passing him on to 2) quirky hip black Canadian professor who takes him to the hospital where 3) clichéd Indian doctor recognises the Neanderthal skull shape, causing the hip black academic to contact 4) stuffy, female Neanderthal expert geneticist (the love interest).
And here's the whammy: in the first scene where we meet stuffy, female geneticist - she gets raped. Oh yes. At what stage in the novel's development process did THAT seem like a good idea? To say it seemed random, unnecessary and clumsily handled would be a gentle summary of my feelings on the matter! It sets her up as the victim from day one, has no bearing on the parallel world story except to make her more amazed that she could develop feelings for Ponter... and became the dominant feature of a character who was otherwise paper thin. She's literally, that genetics woman who got raped. I disapprove. Very strongly.
As another reviewer said -
"when you begin with a rape scene, it doesn't leave much scope for a character arc."
There are several taboo subjects which are the radioactive matter of popular fiction - rape, abortion, incest, paedophilia, etc - and like radioactive matter should only be handled with extreme care, caution and stringent executive oversight. I feel like chastising Sawyer's editor on this for dropping the ball. What was the purpose? What did it add to the story? This is the equivalent of juggling depleted uranium for the heck of it. No. Bad author. Naughty! Ruler over the back of the knuckles!
*sigh*
Hominids is a very good book - as long as you never notice the above issues - but once you do notice them, it's very difficult to stop noticing them - and then it's impossible to enjoy properly.
Much like Spin, I'm kind of curious about where this Neanderthal Parallax series goes - but not enough to overcome my reservations. I won't be putting book 2, Humans, on my shopping list.
[image]
Following the resounding success of my Locus Quest, I faced a dilemma: which reading list to follow it up with? Variety is the spice of lif
[image]
Following the resounding success of my Locus Quest, I faced a dilemma: which reading list to follow it up with? Variety is the spice of life, so I’ve decided to diversify and pursue six different lists simultaneously. This book falls into my HUGO WINNERS list.
This is the reading list that follows the old adage, "if it ain't broke, don't fix it". I loved reading the Locus Sci-Fi Award winners so I'm going to crack on with the Hugo winners next (but only the post-1980 winners, I'll follow up with pre-1980 another time).
First of all – if you haven’t already – please go and read Keely’s wonderfully tongue-in-cheek review of this book. It’s one of my top-ten GR reviews and makes me chuckle every time!
Second, I thought this was a great quote from the blurb on the back of the book:
This is a quite remarkable book – a true blend of diverse styles that creates something new. One of those books where I started to tell my friend that “It’s a bit like...” and then tailed off, waving my hand around, unable to locate the end of that sentence. It’s a bit like many things. It’s a bit like nothing I’ve read before! It’s a bit good (but that’s a bit of an understatement).
Winner of the Hugo in 2005 (holding off one of my all-time favourites in Miéville’s Iron Council), I can’t help but feel I should have read Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell earlier than this – but I’m very pleased I’ve gotten around to it now.
Let me get in my quick warning: it’s a slow burner. I think I turned to my wife at one point and said “I’m five hundred pages in and I think we’re getting to the good bit”. I have no probem with leisurely pacing, but not everyone has the patience for that kind of shenanigan.
There are many things I enjoyed enormously, but here are my top three:
The characters! Fantasy is not always renowned for multi-faceted, complex and believable characters, but the cast of JS&MN are varied and superb – Strange, Norrell, Childermass, Black, Drawlight, Lascelles, Wellington, Segundus and Honeyfoot are all sketched elegantly and convincingly. The female characters are less attention catching, Mrs Strange and Mrs Poole both fall victim to the evil fairy, but there’s enough shown of their individual natures before that to carry them. Nobody felt like a caricature, or cliché, or only there to fulfil a plot requirement, and there was a touch of Dickens’ flair for minor characters really owning their appearances.
The magic! Magic in fantasy can take so many different forms and flavours. Clarke has managed to create a world where magic is dreamy and amazing, but also somehow gritty and grounded. My favourite example is the ship stuck on the sandbar. Strange makes magical horses out of the sandbar to help pull the ship free, and as they’re made of the sandbar itself they help float her free when they move. But getting the magic sand-horses tied to the ship is a nightmare and when they lie down to sleep and turn back into sandbar’s in new places the sailor are angry at the disruption to their maps! Magic is slippery and innately difficult to wield accurately. Consequences are often unintended. Being a magician is hard work! There’s no point-and-click reliability.
The footnotes! A bit of a deal-breaker for some it seems. Clarke makes extensive use of footnotes to expand and illustrate the history of the story. I read every single one (and even flicked back to find old ones where required). For me, these footnotes really highlight the passion and labour that’s been put into this book. They’re brilliant! Some people apparently find them frustrating and boring (I just don’t get it).
One of the ways I judge a book is by how much time you spend thinking about the book when you’re NOT reading it. I found my head drifting back to JS&MN many times, in many different ways. I found myself longing to pick it back up, just to feel the weight in my hand and let the pages flick past. I found myself imagining living in the world of the story, meeting the characters, strolling through their houses, going out on their campaigns. I found myself daydreaming about what else could have been done with the story, the places Clarke didn’t take the tale, the magic never done. I felt drawn to the book (and still do – I’ve got it next to me on the desk now, and I want to stroke it like a cat).
It’s definitely a book that people connect with. The training manager at work interrupted a meeting to gush about the book when he spotted it sitting on my desk. Our shy office newbie, who had barely said a word all day, suddenly started chattering away when she noticed it. I’ve had more comments at work about this book than the last dozen added together!
I have one complaint. I had a big issue with the ending. It made me feel: “What? No! You can’t just leave it like that! What happens next? Tell me more! Damn you, book, tell me more!”
Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell is a very, very fine book and even more remarkable for being a debut. It’s not always easy to read for everyone – but it’s highly recommended.
[image]
Following the resounding success of my Locus Quest, I faced a dilemma: which reading list to follow it up with? Variety is the spice of lif
[image]
Following the resounding success of my Locus Quest, I faced a dilemma: which reading list to follow it up with? Variety is the spice of life, so I’ve decided to diversify and pursue six different lists simultaneously. This book falls into my HUGO WINNERS list.
This is the reading list that follows the old adage, "if it ain't broke, don't fix it". I loved reading the Locus Sci-Fi Award winners so I'm going to crack on with the Hugo winners next (but only the post-1980 winners, I'll follow up with pre-1980 another time).
Spin was my first meeting with Robert Charles Wilson and I came away impressed and disappointed in equal measure.
Glowing reviews from Goodreads members had raised the bar of expectation... too far.
Let’s start with the good: the premise is excellent, a really original and compelling idea. What would happen if one night the stars just went out? Some hypothetical alien race (or God?) has wrapped the Earth in a bubble, a membrane – an event, christened by us Earthlings as the Spin. The membrane is sophisticated, it allows sunlight through to enable our biosphere to survive and it allows us to send probes, etc, out to investigate its nature. But it doesn’t take long to realise that the bubble is messing with time – it’s flowing a lot faster outside the bubble than inside... like a million times faster.
Some hypothetical alien race (or God?) has put Earth on slow-mo, like a museum exhibit, while the universe grows old around it.
I think that’s an amazing idea! It throws up so many questions and I’ve never read anything like it before. So from pure premise, we’re at a 5-star start.
So next we need our human lens on this story – if it was put to me, I’d have probably suggested multiple protagonists spread around key countries, to give a sense of the varied reactions and consequences to this global predicament, with a matter-of-fact tone, in the style of Robinson’s Mars trilogy.
Wilson prefers to keep the lens a little tighter – he focuses on one family, specifically twin boy-girl siblings who are teenagers at the time of the Spin. The boy, Jason is a physics genius destined for great things – and their father is a big player in the American aerospace industry. So Jason grows up as one of the key thinkers in the human reaction, a leader in the fight. His sister, Diane, takes the opposite path – throwing herself into the religious reaction, apocalypse is coming, etc. Good idea, very interesting to see the different stages of that journey. Again, if we’re talking concepts, with an editor hat on – so far, so good – I can see this all working.
And then... and then Wilson takes an additional step which I didn’t understand and didn’t like. He brings in an additional character as the narrator. Dr Tyler Dupree. Tyler is the son of Jason and Dianne’s housekeeper. He lives in the cottage on the corner of their estate. He’s their friend as they grow-up. He’s a decent, smart, everyman. He’s been placed in the story to give readers an easy ride, to give them someone they can relate to and experience this madcap world with. He’s supposed to ground the story. Where Jason and Dianne represent the extremes, Tyler is just a normal guy trying to make the best out of things and muddle along.
I hated Tyler. No, wait, hate is too strong a word. I was bored by Tyler. I pitied Tyler. Tyler is nothing to this story... Jason is a world changer, and Tyler is his tag-along buddy. Dianne is an emotional rollercoaster and Tyler is her childhood sweetheart. Tyler himself is an emotional vacuum, paralysed by circumstances outside of his control playing it safe every step of the way.
For me, this story would have been far more dramatic, tense, emotional, vivid, gripping – all the good things I look for in a story – without Tyler. Why couldn’t we just follow Jason and Dianne first-hand, rather than hearing a reduced and diluted version of their tales through wet-rag Tyler? We could have been seeing the life that inspired Jason’s schemes (and those schemes are brilliant!) rather than the every day tedium that is Tyler.
I’m going to quote the book and Paul’s review here – because he nailed it:
The day I left Perihelion the support staff summoned me into one of the now seldom-used boardrooms for a farewell party, where I was given the kind of gifts appropriate to yet another departure from a dwindling workforce : a miniature cactus in a terracotta pot, a coffee mug with my name on it, a pewter tie pin in the shape of a caduceus.
Yeah right so the world is about to end and there are millenial cults trashing the place which the woman he loves has married into one of them and his friend the genius has a grim disease and there's this stuff about a man from Mars but let's suspend all that and get the pot, the mug and the tiepin down, don't want to let that stuff go by unrecorded. Yeah they're little human touches amongst the catastrophes but let me tell you, Robert Charles Wilson, the pot, the mug and the tiepin are boring and if I may say so, so is your protagonist, a guy you'd rather jab needles into your sinuses than share a railway journey with, Doctor Humourless Dullard should be his name, not Tyler Dupree, which sounds like a guy who made two blues records for Paramount in 1928, but anyway, I'm straying from the point - what was the point?
So I’m not alone with my gripe here, even if I’m swimming against the tide. A lot of people found the Tyler-device to be stonking success – it helped non-sci-fi geeks to get a handle on this very human, very accessible story. I can see that – I can – but I’m not that reader. I am the sci-fi-geek, and I found it unnecessary and irritating. Far too much drivel amidst the gems for anything more than a three-star rating, and far too many gems amongst the drivel for anything less.
[image]
Following the resounding success of my Locus Quest, I faced a dilemma: which reading list to follow it up with? Variety is the spice of lif
[image]
Following the resounding success of my Locus Quest, I faced a dilemma: which reading list to follow it up with? Variety is the spice of life, so I’ve decided to diversify and pursue six different lists simultaneously. This book falls into my HUGO WINNERS list.
This is the reading list that follows the old adage, "if it ain't broke, don't fix it". I loved reading the Locus Sci-Fi Award winners so I'm going to crack on with the Hugo winners next (but only the post-1980 winners, I'll follow up with pre-1980 another time).
I had mixed feelings before I read this book. It had been on my shelf for a few months and - on the one hand - most reviews were in agreement that this is a great book with brilliant writing, but - on the other hand - most reviewers were also in agreement that this is an incredibly bleak and disheartening vision of the future.
I sometimes find it hard to get excited about stories that I know are going to bring me down. I had a copy of Schindler's List for years before I watched it. I knew it would be amazing but it wasn't until a day I was already down in the dumps that I found the motivation to put it on - and then, oddly, it made me feel better, because, "hey, my day wasn't that bad in comparison!"
Generally I'm a happy soul at the moment, in my contented little bubble with my wife and baby son, so why go looking for the book that will bum you out? Because it really is brilliant, that's why!
Yes - The Windup Girl is bleak as f#ck. It does not pull punches. The world we meet is a sad and down-at-heel place. These characters are not nice people. Great things do not happen to them. They do not feel good about that. Most of them do not survive. We do not leave this world in a better state than we met it. That sucks.
But this is a writer who has really, really honed their craft. It's damn near flawless writing. Tense, vivid, original, expectant, gripping, sensual, imaginative, bold, mature, relentless, exciting, fascinating, provocative, exotic, timely, memorable... and yes, I really have run out of superlatives!
Every character here is expertly balanced. Each is powerful and driven, but also fundamentally flawed. Every character grows and changes in convincing and unexpected ways. Even though they're all working at cross-purposes, they all still endeared themselves to me. The Tiger, The Yellow-Card Spider, The Windup Girl, The Calorie Man and The New Tiger will all live long in my memory.
It was really refreshing to read a sci-fi set in Asia, with Thai words sprinkled throughout. A dystopian future in a Buddhist culture! You're plunged into this world, with all these superb little details and it's tightly woven and cohesive and... just a great setting!
The blend of technology got a big tick from me too. Kink springs, meagadonts, spring guns, clippers, methane lamps - each invention a plausible reaction to a post-oil, post-gun powder world. Technology is a cornerstone of sci-fi, and Bacigalupi has done a sterling job of high-tech/low-tech innovation.
I've seen The Windup Girl described as steampunk, which got me thinking. Steampunk is a derivative of cyberpunk, and this book definitely riffs off cyberpunk - the back cover blurb even name-checks Gibson. And a lot of the visuals and aesthetics do fit the steampunk ethos, but steampunk is conceptually a kind of pre-oil sci-fi, whereas this is post-oil, and although they may be in similar places on opposite sides of that curve, they're definitely not in the same head-space. I've seen this described as biopunk, which had a certain ring to. It would be interesting to see a little cloud of sf-punk subgeres evolve. Cyberpunk, steampunk, biopunk... What next? Spacepunk? Psypunk? Ecopunk? Funkpunk? :-)
The ending of the book has this little sequel-hook which didn't work for me. That's about my only complaint, really. I wouldn't complain about a sequel - I'd love to read a sequel! But the book was strong enough to stand alone in all respects, and I felt the little scene with the girl and the generipper saying "hmm, I wonder what happens next?" felt tacked on at the publishers request rather than fitting naturally within the narrative arc. Just my two cents.
My penultimate point is how hard this is to compare. Whenever I describe a book to someone who reads a lot, I try to say "it's a bit like..." But this one is tricky! It's a bit like Stephenson (if he stayed more disciplined). It's a bit like Simmons (if he narrowed his scope). It's a bit like Hamilton (if he had a grimmer outlook). It's a bit like Baxter (if he had more flair). It's a bit like Egan (if he could write deeper characters). It's a bit like Morgan (if he went multi-perspective). It's a bit like Robinson (if he got a lot more intense). But Bacigalupi is, at the end of the day, a strongly original author who has carved out a superb new niche - who I can't wait to read more from!
Final point (I promise, I know this has been a long review) - this got on to my reading list as a Hugo winner. It was the joint 2010 winner with China Miéville's The City & The City. My first big award-winners reading list was the Locus Sci-Fi winners - and they gave it to Boneshaker that year (huge mistake!). I'm a big Mieville fan, but of the three I'd give my award to The Windup Girl. It pushed all my buttons, and I kept being surprised by how much I was enjoying it. Definitely, highly, repeatedly recommended!
[image]
Following the resounding success of my Locus Quest, I faced a dilemma: which reading list to follow it up with? Variety is the spice of lif
[image]
Following the resounding success of my Locus Quest, I faced a dilemma: which reading list to follow it up with? Variety is the spice of life, so I’ve decided to diversify and pursue six different lists simultaneously. This book falls into my LOCUS Y-A list.
I think I’ll always have a soft-spot for imaginative young-adult speculative fiction and as the good people at Locus did such a grand job with picking their Sci-Fi winners, I’ll trust them to single out some special y-a books too.
There were some complications when my son, Fin, was born which meant Mum and baby needed to stay in hospital for a week after the birth. During that time, both did a lot of sleeping. There was no chance I was going to leave them - and there's only so many crosswords, sudoku and logic puzzles you can do. The Graveyard Book was there to keep me sane.
In my world, Gaiman is one of the heavy-hitters. He rarely puts a step wrong - from his Sandman comics, through Good Omens (his collaboration with Pratchett), the epic American Gods and the quite brilliant Neverwhere, his movie script for Mirror Mask - the books (and films) Coraline and Stardust - the man simply excels at whatever form of storytelling he turns his hand to.
If my expectations weren't already pumped enough, The Graveyard Book won the 2009 Hugo Award ahead of Neal Stephenson's Anathem. If that name means nothing to you, Anathem is one of my all-time favourite books (to the extent that I named a cat after it's protagonist), so to learn that a panel of literary judges had decided that Gaiman's young-adult fantasy retelling of The Jungle Book was even better... my mind was blown.
It's a good book. It's a very good book. I just didn't love it as much as I expected.
It's easy to point at all the wonderful elements - the overall concept, the rich and varied characters which populate this world, the eccentric little funny moments ("why are you carrying the pig?", "for luck!"), the dreamy but complex tone, the bittersweet ending, etc.
It's been much harder (for me) to figure out what was missing.
I think part of it was the antagonist, Jack. True to the Jungle Book inspiration it's an episodic tale - which limits Jack's influence to the beginning and the end. His entrance at the beginning is perfect - but the unveiling of who exactly the antagonist(s) is and the following climax was the only specific thing I can point at and say "dissa! dissa!" (That's a pun by the way - point at and say 'dissa' = disa-ppointing, get it? *sigh* I can but try...)
I thought the identity of The Jacks a little disjointed. Gaiman's Graveyard world is full of ghosts, witches, vampires, warewolves, ghouls and mummies, etc - classic 'halloween' characters - all spun in a new and interesting direction. The Jacks do not fit this template... their secret society seemed more like something from one of Fforde's Nursery Crime books. It's a fun idea, but I felt it jarred in this scenario.
My next complaint may be a little more controversial for fans of the book. I thought Bod himself was little bit... forgettable. Gaiman often uses an ordinary 'everyman' character as his portal to a fantastic world, and Nobody Jones fits the bill. He is a nice, pleasant kid with perfectly understandable, reasonable desires. But he himself is not the show stopper. I know it's a lot to ask, but I'm picturing the same The Graveyard Book but with a Naruto-eque kid front and center... and it's better! In my head it's definitely better!
Aside from those couple of small gripes, this is a solid 4-star, give it to your kids, read it every year, love it, treasure it, modern classic.
[image]
Following the resounding success of my Locus Quest, I faced a dilemma: which reading list to follow it up with? Variety is the spice of lif
[image]
Following the resounding success of my Locus Quest, I faced a dilemma: which reading list to follow it up with? Variety is the spice of life, so I’ve decided to diversify and pursue six different lists simultaneously. This book falls into my LOCUS FANTASY list.
As the Locus Sci-Fi Award winners list treated me so kindly, I figure I’ll trust those same good folk to pick me some stars in their sister-list, the Locus Fantasy Award winners.
While I was predominantly reading my way through every winner of the Locus Sci-Fi award, I decided to sample a few of the equivalent Fantasy winners. I’d already read a good percentage of the 21st century winners (all the Mieville, Gaiman, Pratchett, etc) so I decided to fill in a few of those gaps. I ordered a trio of books: Paladin of Souls (2004 winner), The Privilege of the Sword (2007 winner) and Lavinia (2009 winner). This is my pick of the three – it was a whisker away from getting a four star rating from me.
This is the second book of the Chalion trilogy, but I read it out of order and have only recently gotten around to buying the first in the series (Curse of Chalion). The events of that book are occasionally referred to, but as going-ons from the distant past with no direct bearing on the current plot, so Curse of Chalion is certainly not essential reading to appreciate Paladin of Souls, which stands up just fine on its own.
Bujold takes an unconventional approach to her female lead. I’m casting my mind about for other adult fantasy woks with a female lead and I’ve got Phedre’s Trilogy (young and sexy), Thursday Next (young and smart), Mistborn (young and dangerous), Greywalker (young and sassy), The Privilege of the Sword (young and romantic), Lavinia (young and homely) – what I aint seeing a whole caboodle of is anything comparable to Paladin of Souls (middle-aged and dotty).
That’s not being entirely fair to our heroine here, Ista – she’s far more than just dotty. She’s a complex, intelligent, god-touched (bit mental), bitter and depressed noblewoman, who’s trying to seize control of her cosseted life from her overly-controlling family. She dragoons an independent-minded female horseback courier into being her lady’s maid, collars an obese priest from an inappropriate sect, and then convinces her family to release her on a religious pilgrimage. Magical adventure ensues.
Paladin of Souls is written superbly; likeable characters, some good action scenes, a nice little mystery at the heart of the plot and a solidly constructed and imaginative world, faith and magic system. I’ve become a big fan of Bujold’s work with her Vorkosigan Saga and a lot of the trademark wry wit and quips are here – yet I’ve scored this lower than any of her sci-fi works. Why?
I enjoyed it, no doubt about that, and as I said at the start – it was only a whisker away from a four-star, “I loved it” rating – but I had just a few too many reservations, none of which were individually overwhelming but cumulatively they weighed me down. I found it a bit predictable. While the variations on fantasy tropes were imaginative, none were a revelation. The overall tone felt a bit safe. And, while I can applaud the brave choice of depressed middle-aged heroine, I didn’t ever truly connect with Ista – not like I have done with Miles and Cordelia in her Vorkosigan books.
Paladin of Souls was good enough that I plan to finish the trilogy, but flawed enough that I’m feeling no great urgency to do so imminently.
** Update: I have now read book one, The Curse of Chalion, and it's solid gold....more
Loading...
