Please note: I don't review to provide synopses, I review to share a purely visceral reaction to books and perhaps answer some of the questions I ask when I'm contemplating investing time and money into a book.
Please note: I don't review to provide synopses, I review to share a purely visceral reaction to books and perhaps answer some of the questions I ask when I'm contemplating investing time and money into a book.
What a fantastic find this is! Written against the backdrop of inner city poverty, this is a short story about deeply imperfect people trying to cope with extraordinarily crappy circumstances. Drugs are a major part of this story, as is the supernatural. I found myself reminded of The House by Edward Lee - a miasma from years of psychic pain builds up and takes on a life of it's own, which is the sort of Jungian inspired supernatural shenanigans I like the best.
Speaking as someone with six years of sobriety after a lifetime of chemical addiction, I found the portrayal of addiction in this story to be among the best I've ever read. According to the bios on the usual sites the author's day job is drug counseling. This experience shows through. The horror and depravity of addiction feels gut-wrenchingly visceral. I found parts of this short story difficult to read - they're that powerful. And I'm the guy that can read Edward Lee while eating dinner.
To be frank, I didn't have very high expectations for the book; Wicked Run Press is Mr. Mathew's own label. I was very pleasantly surprised at the quality of the writing - he uses an economy of words that flows very well, the characters were all developed well and voicing was especially well done. I do not recall any typos or grammatical errors. This is a well produced book gloriously free of the problems that beset too many self-published books.
I've since purchased several other books from Mark Mathews. They are not going to sit on my TBR list for years; knowing that I have some more stories that could be this good is like having a stash of the good stuff tucked away for later.
Please note: I don't review to provide synopses, I review to share a purely visceral reaction to books and perhaps answer some of the questions I ask when I'm contemplating investing time and money into a book.
To be honest, I'm not sure I'd call most of the included stories "cyberpunk" but I'm an old school first wave cyberpunker from way back in the days of Omni v1. Hipster reviewer says, "I was cyberpunk before Neuromancer was published". Nor are many of the stories post-cyber or transhumanist. If I were editing the blurb, I'd say most of these are dark-scifi or future-horror. Despite being disappointed that the contents do not match the tin, I persevered on through the 17 included stories. The older stories all feel dated, and most of the new stories feel derivative. Unlike most anthologies, I don't recall any stand-outs - I believe the best of the bunch is "pretty good".
I read a CJ Cherryh novel many years ago; I recall not enjoying the experience and I've since avoided her canon. The short story Mech did nothing to change my opinion of her writing. She's accomplished, skilled and confident - but her tone, verbiage and general "style" just don't do it for me I'm afraid. Let this be an example of my own shortcomings as a reader and not her skills as a writer. Also, the story was originally published over twenty years ago and doesn't survive the "dated" feeling well.
Last Human by Jorge Salgado-Reyes is definitely dark-scifi. "Will the last one left alive please turn off the lights?" would be another apt title. In fact, I think it's the title of a totally unrelated short that covers the exact same territory. That's my long-winded way of saying, "This wasn't particularly original".
Gregory J. Wolos's Annabelle's Children is the first to bring up a theme that's in a lot of these stories - the ubiquity of mass media and it's ability to manipulate people. This story emphasizes the effects on one person's legacy after her death through a mechanism I consider gimmicky; YMMV. I'd file this under future-horror as well.
Tom Borthwick's Living in the Singularity took too long to get to where it was going, and didn't surprise anyone once it got there. Not the strongest story in the anthology by any means. I'd call this future-horror; the only scifi element of the story is the gimmick the author uses to talk about loneliness.
Cotner's Bot by D.L. Young is one of the more traditionally cyberpunky stories in the anthology, and even starts to brush up against interesting notions of how much humanity does an entity need to be human - but rather than dig into the meat of the question, we keep to the periphery with a focus on the shenanigans of the people trying to pass off the forgeries.
Midnight Pearls Blue was "First published in Stardate magazine, Oct. 1985" according to the blurb. The film Bladerunner came out in 1982. "Do you believe [this story] is a replicant, Mr. Deckard?" Yes, Rachael, I do. And I do mean exactly that it's a ripoff of Bladerunner and not DADoES.
Better Than Everything by Malon Edwards is another solidly cyberpunk story, and one of the top three stories in the collection. How can you grow up and move on when your first love is always available in a new iteration?
Cynthia Ward's Ex Machina reads like Sturgeon's More than Human for the Nintendo generation, written with a dose of "Kid Sister's Gangster Street Cred" trope thrown in for absolutely no reason at all. I think there's a kernel of a great story in here, but it needs some more workshopping before it develops it's unique voice.
Island by Terry Faust - As I look over the text for this review, I remember reading this but it made absolutely no impression on me whatsoever. And that's all I have to say about that.
John Shirley comes to the rescue and makes the anthology worth the couple of quid I paid for it with Meerga. Truly cyberpunk, truly thoughtful and truly one of the best stories in the book. Worth most of the price of admission right there.
To Sleep, Perchance is Mark Terence Chapman's contribution to the anthology. A super quick read, I think it's a great premise for the obvious conclusion but just needed a bit more honesty and vulnerability from the author to make the story really connect at a human level. Also, I think this is squarely in the "dark scifi" genre and isn't even remotely cyberpunk.
The Walk by Druscilla Morgan carries the posthumanist torch for the anthology, though again it would be better labeled Future Horror rather than cyberpunk. Mostly because it features a plot hole so big it could only be filled in with supernatural woowoo.
The Electrified Ants by Jetse de Vries is the third story that carries this anthology, and one of the stories that relies on the relationship between ubiquitous surveillance and nonstop consumerism. Imagine if Mark Zuckerberg ran GCHQ, and 10 Downing Street was a wholly owned subsidiary of Halliburton- that's the setting and origin of the conflict for this story. One of the longer stories in the collection, it reminded me of Wolf Time by Walter Jon Williams because of the bittersweet relationship stuff laid on top of some good ol' fashioned rebels vs. the Corporate Government.
Extrenum is a joint project from R. Thomas Riley and Roy C. Booth. I don't know who was responsible for which part of the finished product. It was originally in Apexology, and I've long been a huge fan of Apex Publications. This is not an example of the best work Apex has ever published. I'd call this just straight horror; the only thing remotely scifi about the whole thing is that it's set on Mars. Other than that, it reads like nearly every other multiple personality inspired short horror story.
Kerry G.S. Lipp's Attention Whore used a lot of words to make it's point. Too many words, actually. Speaking for myself, I'dve liked to have seen more conflict (story) and less exposition. It's a good start to what could be a great short, but like others in this collection it could use some more workshopping to develop the plot and tighten the characters. This story is overtly and self-admittedly based on the woowoo, and as such I'd call it Future Horror.
Frank Roger got shortchanged when they put his Unholy Grail in the same anthology as The Electrified Ants. For all intents and purposes, both of these stories cover EXACTLY the same intellectual territory and this makes it impossible for me not to compare them. I'd say Jetse's story is slightly better; but a significant part of my reasoning is the plot is more developed. Unholy Grail isn't as long, though, so it scores higher on the "brevity breeds eloquence" scale. I'd say this story gets an honorable mention, and helps make the anthology worth what I paid for it.
I think the people who put this anthology together read a lot of the same things I do (actually, they read a lot more than I do which is why they're putting this together and I'm buying it) and we share a lot of the same aesthetics. I am disappointed that the majority of the stories don't fit my strict definition of Cyberpunk, but since I like dark scifi and future horror I was still able to appreciate the stories. There aren't many "top shelf" writers in the collection, and this shows in the overall quality. Nevertheless, nobody gets to launch their writing career fully formed and at the top of their game - so we can forgive a bit of youthful exuberance and appreciate the efforts. I got this on Kindle Unlimited; I think the out of pocket price is about 3 quid, and I think that's a fair deal. ...more
Brainycat's 5 "B"s: blood: [UNSCORED, DNF AT 10%] boobs: [UNSCORED, DNF AT 10%] bombs: [UNSCORED, DNF AT 10%] bondage: [UNSCORED, DNF AT 10%] blasphemyBrainycat's 5 "B"s: blood: [UNSCORED, DNF AT 10%] boobs: [UNSCORED, DNF AT 10%] bombs: [UNSCORED, DNF AT 10%] bondage: [UNSCORED, DNF AT 10%] blasphemy: [UNSCORED, DNF AT 10%] Stars: 2 Bechdel Test: [UNSCORED, DNF AT 10%] Deggan's Rule: [UNSCORED, DNF AT 10%] Gay Bechdel Test: [UNSCORED, DNF AT 10%]
Please note: I don't review to provide synopses, I review to share a purely visceral reaction to books and perhaps answer some of the questions I ask when I'm contemplating investing time and money into a book.
I picked this up because it was cheap and it has 250+ ratings and a >3.75 star average rating at GR. I'm not sure I got the same edition everyone else has read. The edition I have had some serious pacing problems and glaring issues with the worldbuilding.
Our intrepid hero finds himself dumped off in Las Vegas, some time after it's been taken over by vampires. This is a state sponsored execution - he and his fellow convicts are expected to die. So far so good. This clearly isn't going to be the best book I read all year, but we're off to a good enough start. In the course of the next few paragraphs he manages to break into an as yet unscavenged army surplus store - that none of the hundreds (thousands?) of convicts before him, or undead residents of Las Vegas had yet broken into. How lucky can one guy be? There's a thick layer of dust over everything - but the store is just as it was when the employees last locked up. There's no hint as to why this store is intact when the rest of Las Vegas is run down and decrepit.
During the course of the scavenging, a fight ensues with a vampire and the vampire gets killed. Hero finds out that if he ingests a wee bit of vampire blood he gets superhuman strength etc (yawn). The whole fight didn't convey any sense of danger - it just sort of ambles along at the same pace as everything else we've done so far. Our hero was detected while he was quietly tiptoeing around inside the store, but the fight that knocked over rows of shelves didn't seem to draw attention from any of the other vampires flying around. And of course everything our hero needs for his solitary, Rambo-esque trek out of Las Vegas and back to (wherever) is right there in easy reach.
The city is completely abandoned and run down with no running water, but there's still electricity? This doesn't surprise Hero, nor is it explained at all. Maybe I'm too old, maybe I'm too grumpy, but I just can't tolerate worldbuilding errors like this. The numerous logical fails, coupled with the uninspired writing (short words and small sentences) put this book on my DNF list. ...more
Please note: I don't review to provide synopses, I review to share a purely visceral reaction to books and perhaps answer some of the questions I ask when I'm contemplating investing time and money into a book.
"I could not put this book down" is a phrase that gets thrown around a lot in book reviews. I try to avoid hyperbole and just stick to the details of my experience with a book in my own reviews. That being said, I did put this book down - when I was too tired to keep my eyes open. As soon as I woke up, I grabbed my reader and started again before I even got out of bed. I read it while I was fixing my tea, I read it while I was eating breakfast, I read it while I should've been tending to grownup responsibilities during the morning. And then I ran out of book.
Which is not to say the story ends too suddenly. It ends in exactly the right place in exactly the right way. The entire story has a sense of harmony and balance; not a single word is out of place, every detail is important and what happens to our protagonists happens for reasons that are both obvious and laden with layers of symbolism. The world is sketched in broad charcoal strokes, the visible parts filled in with garish shades of watercolor and then important details are lined in with a fine point pen. The scope of the story slowly escalates from the minutiae of a daily ritual that runs like clockwork until we are casually tossing the fate of humanity around like a rock during a game of hopscotch.
For a proper discussion of the important symbolic themes, please see Bookaneer's reviews "I Need Another Star" and "You can't save people from the world. There's nowhere else to take them." - she's done a much better job of collecting and discussing details than I ever could. Remember, dear reader, this book is not the intensely allegorical jizz from some self-important author's mental masturbation. This is a post-zombie-apocalyptic adventure/thriller in a world that's genuinely frightening and populated by characters who feel like real people doing what they need to do to try and survive.
M.R. Carey has always been good at developing rounded characters; this time he's absolutely blown me away with the depth and breadth of the cast he's put together. This is a story that's driven by women and the Jungian Anima - the male characters are (complicated) guns on legs, providing enough Animus to highlight the feminine energy and move the plot along. Which is entirely appropriate for a story set at the end - and rebirth - of humanity.
Pandora is a theme that is mentioned specifically a number of times, which counterpointed the strong Eve subtext. And what's the difference between the two symbols, besides the attitude of the author? "History is written by the winners", and while Ms. Justineau sees Melanie as Pandora untold later generations will remember her as Eve. Melanie and her cohorts are like the fruiting bodies of Ophiocordyceps - tough, resilient, and waiting for a catastrophe to set them free.
This is the best book I've read in a few years. It's worth every scrap of praise it's gotten, and them some.
Please note: I don't review to provide synopses, I review to share a purely visceral reaction to books and perhaps answer some of the questions I ask when I'm contemplating investing time and money into a book.
A list of shorts with the likes of Swanwick, Stross, and Bear? Yes Please! This was one of those "you might also like..." suggestions from That Monolithic Online Retailer. It showed up while I was filling in my Laundry Files collection, and on a whim and without even looking at any reviews I bought it. Say what you like about the way Mr. Bezos runs his business, but the boffins who write the code that glues purchasing patterns to the inventory are doing some good work - I really liked this collection. All of the stories are strong enough that I feel no ambiguity; the stories I like I like a lot, the stories I don't like I really don't like.
Unfortunately, demands on my time dictate that I can only reliably allocate the time between getting in bed and falling asleep for reading every day. The stories in this collection were exactly the right length for this interval. I doubt this was intentional on Tor's part but it was nice for once to be able to pick up my reader and start at the beginning of a new story for a few nights in a row. The volume appears to be an amalgamation of complete ebook files from each story; there's an overall cover and title page, then each story has it's own cover and title page. This is no doubt the result of some laziness on Tor's part, as combining small standalone files into a single compendium only takes a few keystrokes, but I didn't mind at all. As we'd expect from a large publisher like Tor, all the mechanics of a proper book like formatting, spelling and grammar were spot on.
Dormanna, by Gene Wolfe, is yet another reinterpretation of the childhood imaginary friend. I'm not sure it really added much to the genre to be honest. As I was reading the story, I kept hoping something horrible and twisted was going to happen. The ending is ambiguous enough to let each to let the reader decide the fate of humanity but I never got the dark twist I was hoping for. This is a story I didn't like. The whole tone was all sweetness and bubbles, and the dark forces that were hinted at never materialized enough to provide a meaningful (or entertaining) counterpoint.
The second story in the collection is Portrait of Lisane de Patagnia by Rachel Swirsky. This is the only story I didn't finish. I just couldn't get into the first person POV; I feel like the characterization didn't put enough hooks into the protagonist to make learning about the world (and therefore deciphering what's happening) worthwhile. I think a more dedicated reader, who is more appreciative of intensely allegorical introspective relationship studies would do much better with this than I did. I have nothing bad to say about the quality of Ms. Swirsky's writing, but unfortunately the POV and conflict push all my DNF buttons.
Michael Swanwick has created some of the most engaging worlds I've ever had the pleasure of visiting. I remember reading Vacuum Flowers in highschool; his use of dialogue to bring the world to life still sticks in my brain today[1]. The Mongolian Wizard, like all of his works I've read since, does the same and breathes some sophistication into what would otherwise be a straightforward steampunks and wizards jaunt through a quasi Hapsburgian Europe. This would be an example of story that didn't rely on depth, sex, violence or gimmicks to keep me involved, but instead was so expertly crafted it was just a pleasure to take it in.
A Tall Tail by Charles Stross would be a great introduction to Stross for the uninitiated. Mr. Stross knows engineers; he gets us folk with an affectionate sarcasm that can only come from being and accomplished engineer himself. This little story has accurate science, caricatures of people you know, a bit of cloak and dagger conspiracy and more than a few good jokes. Again, not a story that's going to echo through your worldview and knock the cobwebs down, but a great way to spend a few minutes and learn a little about rocket propulsion.
Time travel is very difficult to do well; all too often we see it used as a gimmick to artificially create resonance between elements on different arcs. The Ghosts of Christmas by Paul Cornell neatly avoids this trap by making the entire arc of the story a fractal exploration of itself. It's elegant, it's engaging and it kept me interested with a believable protagonist and multi-dimensional supporting characters. Kudos to Mr. Cornell, and I'm looking forward to read more of his work.
Brit Mandelo's The Finite Canvas follows a well worn path to redemption through all our favorite cyberpunk tropes, but it did keep me engaged up until the end - the protagonist has a choice to make, and her character is layered deep enough it's not clear what she'll do until the end of the story. After that, the inevitable gracefully concludes itself with a minimum of chatter which I appreciate. Ms. Mandelo is also on my "authors to look for" list.
Am I Free To Go? is Kathryn Cramer's dystopia about the police state encroaching on american liberal-centrist middle class sensibilities. It feels quite preachy; Kathryn has a Point to make so she Wrote A Story to illustrate her Point. I think it didn't cover enough nuance to justify the word count, and the plot was too disjointed and the characterization too thin to feel engaged with the protagonist. Everything Kathryn is warning us about has been covered at nymag, hufpo, theatlantic, etc ad nauseum. I'm not at all opposed to politics in my scifi - it's what scifi is supposed to be about IMHO - but this attempt feels like a miss for me.
Every collection of shorts always has that one story that surprises me with how much it sticks with me. I liked Pat Murphy's About Fairies for it's imagination and it's dark undertone that rose up in unexpected places. I didn't like the pace at all; it veered dangerously close to some allegorical, introspective soliliquies in a couple of places but managed to pull itself back from the brink. It seems a lot of words were spent in the interstitial places between realms, and I think I would have liked to see a more intricate plot that wove the different realms together in a more symbolic manner. Despite this, it is a story that has stayed with me and I appreciate that.
Our Human by Adam-Troy Castro wasn't poorly written, but it did bore me. I had the "surprise" worked out about seven paragraphs into the story. This is NOT to say I'm a sophisticated reader; instead, I'm a voracious reader of the sorts of stories that use all these tropes so I knew what to expect right away. That being said, I played Jane's Addiction in my head and it was an easy enough way to spend a few minutes before drifting off to sleep. Not a story brimming with originality, but the author showed skill and confidence and I felt it worthwhile to finish it.
Elizabeth Bear's contribution Faster Gun ticks all the boxes to squeeze my DNF gland dry: alternate history, the wild west, steampunky time travel and little green men who come in peace. On paper, this looks like a story I'd avoid at any cost. Quite to the contrary, I enjoyed the heck out of it. The whole story had a self-deprecating, tongue in cheek quality that gave a dimension to the tropes I hadn't seen before. Because of the way it was handled, what could have been a vile dud is actually one of the three best stories in the collection.
I paid about two quid for this, and I feel like I got my money's worth. I don't know if I'll ever come back to reread any of it, but it satisfies my criteria for a good collection: the majority of the stories were good and I found some new authors to look for. This would be a good survey of contemporary scifi; there's a variety of settings, plots and tropes to select from that illustrate where the "mainstream" is at these days.
[1] "I saw a brontosaurus by the Thames this morning." "Oh, lovely! It's been a warm winter, I suspect that's why they've come out so early" ...more
Please note: I don't review to provide synopses, I review to share a purely visceral reaction to books and perhaps answer some of the questions I ask when I'm contemplating investing time and money into a book.
I'm going to share an uncomfortable truth with you here. This is not the best book in the series, and in fact it's not even a very good final episode. One of the things I've always liked about this series is the frenetic pace; "no rest for the wicked" and all that. This book, however, doesn't really start to take off until around the 50% mark. Once it picks up a lot of long lingering plot lines are resurrected and thrown into the mix, the tension builds until the last 20% of the book, and then SPLAT! The apocalypse blows it's load into a climax that's - we're friends, I'll be honest - is disappointing.
The casual cynicism, saucy word play and nonstop pop culture references are still in abundance, and once the violence gets started it's a good as any of the other books. All the things we love about Sandman Slim aka Jim Stark are here, and the weird little circle of friends he's accumulated are just as weird and fun as ever. Reading this book felt a lot like getting in touch with some old friends.
This book shows a deeper interior life for Stark, and I think Kadrey worked very hard to develop the character and round him out. Unfortunately, this happens at the expense of a lot of action and intrigue. I don't believe in an either/or dichotomy between actioning and adventuring OR feeling and relating. I think what happened was the author tried too hard to grow the character and lost track of his cadence, and let the interior development drive too much of the plot.
We're told many times that the apocalypse is upon creation, and several details are repeated to this effect: nonstop rain and flooding in LA and Hell for example. But I never felt any impending doom. Maybe because Stark and Candy are too busy lovingly quipping at each other? Maybe because there's not enough time spent with the supporting cast to get a feel of how the world is falling apart, because are protagonists are too wrapped up in themselves and their relationship with each other? All I know for sure is that any sense of impending doom was told rather than shown and this really didn't help me to get to the final conflict.
The final conflict was... I've already used the word "disappointing" once in this review, so let's say it was "unsatisfying". Unlike the final conflicts in the other books, I knew what he was working on ahead of time. I love to see a plan come together in unexpected ways. But I wasn't surprised. In fact, the whole battle felt like it was phoned in. The oldest of the old gods is invading creation to take it back from god, and the best we can do is tear up a few blocks of LA across a couple of pages? It just felt like it was too little too late and didn't engage me. I didn't feel afraid, I didn't feel cosmic forces wreaking havoc on all the physics I've ever known, I didn't feel like these characters that I've known for 5 or more books were ever in any real danger. It just felt like I needed to consume the words to get through the pages to reach the conclusion.
A whole host of lingering plot lines were brought up in this book, but most of them did not end satisfactorily - see "phoning it in", above. I suppose the ends are loose enough to squeeze a few more novels out of some of them, but at some point I think epic characters in long series' need to find a new set of Major Antagonists to up the stakes and move the whole arc of the world into new territories. I feel an opportunity to do just that was lost here.
If this had been the first book in the series, I don't think I would have read any of the others. I feel really bad writing such damning words. Maybe this book is just mediocre, but the rest of the series is so much fun and so well written that it feels like The Getaway God is worse than it really is. I do know that I hope this review doesn't put anyone off of starting the series; up until this installment, they've been top notch rollicking good times and a total hoot to read. It's entirely possible I brought too much expectation into this book, and my disappointment has nothing to do with Kadrey and everything to do with what I wish I had read.
Is this the last Sandman Slim novel? My halfhearted attempts at googlefu don't turn up any interviews saying so, but the book ends on a note that's suitable to end the series. On the other hand, it also ends on a note that leaves room for a nearly infinite stream of sequels. I guess it's a matter of what Kadrey wants to do with the series. Personally, I'd like to see him baby the thing into a Netflix miniseries a'la GRRM and GoT....more
Please note: I don't review to provide synopses, I review to share a purely visceral reaction to books and perhaps answer some of the questions I ask when I'm contemplating investing time and money into a book.
This collection is exceptionally well curated; I feel like every story fits the theme and every story is strong enough to stand on it's own and provide it's own interpretation of the topic. I really enjoyed the way each story took off in an entirely new and unexpected direction. Perhaps because the topic is so big there's lots of room for wildly different interpretations (and there are!) but the total collection leaves an impression bigger than just the sum of the stories. This is proper Capital "S" Science Capital "F" Fiction that asks the reader to interpret and define their own humanity.
There were two stories in the collection that I didn't finish. Musée de l’Âme Seule by E. Lily Yu isn't bad, it's just written in that dreamy stream of conscious second person POV that I loathe with an irrational passion. You know the kind of writing: every paragraph tries to stand on it's own like a lone tree in a deserted field, and little details weighted with importance glitter throughout every sentence like shards from a broken bottle in an empty alley. I don't doubt that it's fun to write, but I've never seen an example that's compelled me to pretend I'm someone else long enough to read their story.
The other story I didn't finish was Alex Dally MacFarlane's Coastlines of the Stars. It's written in the third person, but it's too lyrical with new chapter headings every two or three paragraphs. This is another device that I'm just not wired to appreciate properly, and while I'm sure it's an accomplished story I just couldn't bear to sit through it.
The real standouts in this collection, for me, are The Sarcophagus by Robert Reed, who takes the standard question "how much of your humanity can you change and still be human" and extrapolates it out to the nth degree in an engaging and thoughtful way. Taking the Ghost by A.C. Wise is another winner; what could have fallen into every post-apocalyptic cliche actually emerged as an example of how to do paranormal sci-fi correctly. E. Catherine Tobler's The Cumulative Effects of Light Over Time is one of those allegorical "the deeper they go into this cave the deeper they go into their self" stories, but it's done very well and kept me interested right up until the predicted end. I'll definitely be looking for more of her work. Seventh Sight by Greg Egan works for me on a number of different levels; I'm not sure it's remarkable in the objective sense but I felt a number of parallels between the protagonist and myself and that counts a lot for me.
Memories and Wire by Mari Ness sort of fell off my radar, but as I went back through the TOC for this review it sparked a rush of affection. IIRC, it's a brilliant concept but needs a bit more development to really come into it's own.
Also notable is The Regular by Ken Liu isn't as allegorical as most short stories, but it's also the longest story in the book and reads like a simple whodunnit. I liked it well enough, but I think I'd like it a lot more if it were fully developed into a novel length story.
This is a great collection of short stories. There is a depth and breadth represented here that makes the collection feel much larger than just the 26 stories it contains, and any fan of scifi should find more than enough worthwhile writing to justify buying this....more
Please note: I don't review to provide synopses, I review to share a purely visceral reaction to books and perhaps answer some of the questions I ask when I'm contemplating investing time and money into a book.
I finished this book a few weeks ago, and to be completely honest I'm having a hard time recalling any details of it. I remember the first book in the series, and I remember reading this book and thinking, "Where did the awesome go?" My recollection of this book is of some ridiculous plot twists and a Mary Sue revenant coming to save the day too often. Where the first book was gloriously dark and dystopic and our intrepid hero was properly cynical and jaded, this book just felt like it was full of whiny characters who were being shuffled from one plot twist to another. I just didn't like it nearly as much as the first.
I hope this is just the "second book slump", and the series continues to a third edition to wrap up the Big Boss Fight that's been lurking on the horizon. I'll definitely buy the next book in the series, but I'll be reading it with a healthy dose of trepidation rather than the unbridled optimism I had when I started this book....more
Please note: I don't review to provide synopses, I review to share a purely visceral reaction to books and perhaps answer some of the questions I ask when I'm contemplating investing time and money into a book.
This is a short story tucked into the Sandman Slim series. I read it out of order (I'd already finished Kill City Blues) but that didn't change my enjoyment of the story. As a huge fan of Sandman Slim, my only problem with this book is that it was too short. It had everything we like about this guy - violence, wry self deprecating humor, a wicked (pun intended) sense of sarcasm and tidy little story line that wraps itself up at the end.
The story takes shortly after Sandman takes over hell and revolves around him taking a couple of legions of hellspawn out to the far reaches to take care of some business left over by the last Lucifer. Naturally, chaos, violence, horror, death and destruction ensue.
I'm not sure this would be a good way for people who haven't read the earlier books to dip into the series. It might be a little difficult to follow along; Mr. Kadrey expects the reader to have a firm grasp of the mythology he's created and the history of his major characters. On the other hand, as a quick little horro/action-adventure/romp it's a fun little diversion and for readers don't mind being a little behind on the backstory and motivations, this would be good introduction to the style and tone of the Sandman Slim series....more
Please note: I don't review to provide synopses, I review to share a purely visceral reaction to books and perhaps answer some of the questions I ask when I'm contemplating investing time and money into a book.
One thing about Peter Watts - he has one of the most distinctive voices in scifi since Theodore Sturgeon. Despite the depth and breadth of topic, setting and POV this collection of shorts reads like a cohesive whole. All of these stories are worthwhile, which is unfortunately more than I expect from an anthology, though naturally I felt a few were stronger than most and the weakest are easy to pick out.
First of all, there are two shorts from the Rifters world: "Home" and "A Niche". These are among my favorites if only because I like the Rifters world so much. Other stories that stood out for me are "A Word for Heathens", a morality play in a world where Jerry Falwell and Farenheit 451 intersect. It took a few pages for me to warm up to "The Island", but by the end I was completely hooked and it's message of humility and the limitations of the human scope stick deeply with me.
I wasn't such a big fan of "Repeating the Past"; I felt like I've read that story a number of times before and I'm not sure it adds anything to the canon. I felt much the same for "Flesh Made Word", actually. The first story "The Things" only makes sense when you realize it's a first person account of the alien's perspective from the movie "The Thing". A cynical part of me feels that a story that needs an introduction like that has fundamentally failed to set it's scene properly; but it would be hard to know if it's possible to set the scene in-story without plaigerising the movie. Perhaps I'm asking too much?
This is a great set of short stories. None of them are long enough to need more than a single sitting to read, but nearly all of them contain ideas and emotions with subtle barbs that have sat with me long after I finished the book.
The outro - wherein Mr. Watts talks about his infamous detention at the hands of the US Border Patrol and his feelings about his canon being labeled "unrelentingly dark, "misanthropic" or "savage" is some of the best discourse on the nature of horror and how "bad things" is an entirely relative term that's entirely dependant on scope. Worth the price of admission just for that essay, actually....more
Please note: I don't review to provide synopses, I review to share a purely visceral reaction to books and perhaps answer some of the questions I ask when I'm contemplating investing time and money into a book.
I read this in the "wrong order". I finished Firefall before I started this, so reading this wasn't as much about whetting my appetite for a new book as much filling in a couple of gaps in the epic I just finished.
Protip: The correct order to read the Firefall series is:
Blindsight The Colonel Echopraxia
You can also read The Colonel first, but it'll very slightly spoil Blindsight. Please note that Blindsight does not have a surprise ending; but reading The Colonel first may slightly change your viewpoint while you read Blindsight.
That being said, it's a nice little short. I think I would have liked it more if I'd read it before I finished the series, because there is some intense (eloquent) characterization and the post/transhuman future he details is deeply thought provoking. But I already knew the characters and had gotten my thoughts provoked by Firefall, so all this did was fill in some details about a time and place that hadn't had much attention in Firefall.
Absolutely worth more than the £0.39 I paid for it....more
Please note: I don't review to provide synopses, I review to share a purely visceral reaction to books and perhaps answer some of the questions I ask when I'm contemplating investing time and money into a book.
Peter Watts makes scifi exciting for me again. This omnibus reads like a single epic; much like his beloved Rifters trilogy, the action in the latter book picks up right where it left off in the former book. Reading this book felt, to me, like Charles Stross meets Rifters and the Rifters win. We've got near-light speed travel, wildly augmented humans bashing headlong against the outdated confines of Abrahamaic morality and gloriously alien intelligences that are actually alien in the way the think, communicate, perceive and breed.
After all that, though, the series winds down into some familiar territory. The last few chapters of this merry-go-round don't hold as many surprises as much as they carefully tuck us gentle readers into a bed of nails with a blanket of stinging nettles. Anyone who's read Rifters will know how good at Mr. Watts is at putting an apocalypse together, and this time around he didn't have to drag up any archeobacteria. This apocalypse is the scariest kind, the perfectly plausible way humans will happily act in their own shortsighted interest to the detriment of the species, ecosystem, etc.
I think some parts of Firefall get a little bit preachy - but that may be a side effect of what happens when people try to communicate when they're lightyears apart. There aren't any "No Mr. Bond, I expect you to die" soliliquies but there are a lot of paragraphs where people try really hard to explain Their Big Idea. That being said, these are interesting ideas in interesting circumstances and I didn't mind the verbiage as much as I would have rather kept the pace of the story moving a little faster.
I really hope Mr. Watts writes some stories around his vampires; I think they're the best incarnation of humanity(ish) to come out of the posthumanist canon yet. ...more
Please note: I don't review to provide synopses, I review to share a purely visceral reaction to books and perhaps answer some of the questions I ask when I'm contemplating investing time and money into a book.
I like to think of myself as a HUGE Gibson fan. I was but a wee lad when Neuromancer came out, and I absorbed it as greedily as I did every issue of Omni. The Chiba City trilogy has had a profound effect on my entire life; it's shaped my aesthetics, informed my worldview and provided a schema into which I sort the minutae of my culture.
I hadn't been reading any fiction for a while, so when I decided I needed to read "recreational" books again I was excited to find this release. While the Chiba City trilogy is part of my Holy Pantheon of Greatest Books Ever Written, his later works didn't make such a deep impression on me. The reviews indicated this book incorporated more of the gritty, technologically oriented "street" than Idoru or Pattern Recognition and I eagerly tried to immerse myself into Gibson's latest near dark future.
I didn't finish the book. I got about 2/3 of the way through it and gave up. I was ready to give up at one third, but in honor of the memory of Case and Molly I soldiered on. There were two problems that I just couldn't get around that ultimately ruined the book for me.
First, I feel like I've read this story already. A plucky young lady with more brains than brawn gets involved with organized criminals who need her unique skills and experience. She's assisted by a team of wealthy criminals and brawny older men as she tries to figure out the new rules of her life and manipulate those around her to her own best advantage. Yawn.
Secondly, I couldn't keep the different characters apart. The voicing felt amateurish and the characterization was interesting for the characters that had access to the futuristic timeline, but the characters back in the (almost) contemporary timeline (with the exception of our plucky heroine) all blurred together into one mass that manifested itself as necessary to move the plot along.
Clearly, a lot of other people like the book so I suppose I'm the oddball here. I think it's fair to say I started the book with a lot of expectations; would I like the story better if I'd never read any Gibson before? In all honesty - probably. But I have read lots of Gibson and I found myself wanting more chrome and blood and corruption and grit and broken emotions than this provided me....more
This book kept showing up in results from the Goodreads autorecommendation tool. I put it on my TBR, and then I found an excerpt at the back of another book I finished. Initially, I wasn't excited about the book because the writing was very staccato and didn't use a very expansive vocabulary - it looked like a candidate for my small words and short sentences shelf, which is a euphemism for "young adult or otherwise poorly written". But then Carly specifically said I should read it since I think there can never be too much gore or noir in a book.
I'm glad she did. I really liked this book. I like Joe. He's a survivor and an iconoclast; he's not entirely happy about his situation (Anne Rice romanticists need not apply here) but he's making the best of a less than ideal situation and unliving his unlife on his own terms. I respect the hell out of that. While Joe would never be confused with a pacifist, he constantly grapples with the idea of "appropriate force" and the proper application thereof. This is the real antagonism in the story. Joe was never humanity's biggest fan while he was alive, and it's taken a few decades of undeath for him to come to appreciate the things that most people appreciate so easily they're taken for granted. Things like trust, loyalty, intimacy and all the other trappings of friendship and love. I felt a resonance between Joe's feelings about what he needs to do to survive with my own relationship to alcohol, actually, and this endeared me to Joe from about the second chapter onwards.
New York City is much more than a setting, it's a character in it's own right. I've been to NYC once, years ago, and I didn't like it very much. I felt it was full of dirt, litter and old buildings[1]. I feel like a lot of the backstory on NYC was skipped, and this took away from my enjoyment of the story - I feel I was expected to know the socioeconomic background between the different neighborhoods, but I don't, so I was struggling for clues to get an idea of what Joe could expect as he wandered around different parts of the city. This was really the most difficult part of the book for me, because I wanted to be as immersed in the world as Joe is.
As a mystery goes, the plot was good enough but not great. I don't really have anything to add to that that hasn't been mentioned in other reviews. I really liked the way the supernatural is handled in this world, and while Joe has some attributes that make him a little bit special, these are only alluded to and definitely don't make him into a superhero (cue sequels here...). I like the story, it was an easy read and all but one or two of the characters were fleshed out believably. The pace was excellent, it kept moving and provided lots of plot detail without bogging down on itself. The cadence was, in fact, staccato throughout the book but that's more of a function of Joe - he's not a genius and he has a touch of the OCD, so his thoughts and observations tend to be direct and to the point. There's some pretty good witticisms, not of the Felix Castor caliber, but I LOL'd more than once. The author treated the goth/rivethead and BDSM cultures well, poking at the same points I do while not treating them as some kind of freakish "other". Major points earned, right there. The kindle edition converted to epub without any issues, and had no typos or noticeable grammatical errors, and the TOC works.
I really liked this book, even if it isn't as complicated as other PI mysteries or as gory as other horror books. I think Joe is a fascinating character and I'm looking forward to reading the rest of the series.
[1] Ironically, I've since moved to the UK where everything is older and dirtier.
Please note: I don't review to provide synopses, I review to share a purely visceral reaction to books and perhaps answer some of the questions I ask when I'm contemplating investing time and money into a book.
This is a collection of short horror stories, most of them written by people who's names I don't recognize. There was quite a disparity between the quality of the stories; a couple of standouts really shined but most of the collection is mediocre and two or three of the stories felt like they were below par for the collection. The anthology covered all the usual themes in horror, and frankly I didn't think any of them were especially "extreme". I did not finish this book with a sense of having discovered any new writers, either, which I find very unfortunate - I look forward to anthologies like this to find new talent.
The highlights of the collection are "Little Blenny Bunting" by Airika Sneve. The voicing was especially good in this, and the persepective from the learning-disabled protagonist played well against the setting where he finds himself in a corner of reality where the rules are suddenly different to anything he's experienced before. The other standout story is "Mother's Little Helper" by Tom Olbert, a cautionary tale of what can go wrong when technology and morality collide.
I felt "Sanctity of Passion" by Daniel Fabiani and "Strength" by Alec Cizak were the weakest in the collection. They were written well in the technical sense, but the stories covered well trod ground and failed to bring any new insights or conclusions to the reader, finally leaving me with a feeling of jaded disappointment.
Each of the stories are well written in the technical sense. All of the authors showed an understanding of pace, and the cadence was well handled through vocabulary and grammar. I did not see any typos. However, the epub I have did not have any links from the TOC. This means to go to a particular story you have to page through the whole book until you find it.
I'm torn between two and three stars. If the book weren't labeled "Extreme" and the TOC functioned correctly, I would probably give this three stars. But because it was mislabled, and I had to page back and forth through the whole book to find the stories to jog my memory (yes, most of them are that forgettable) I'm going to go with two stars. I believe that less jaded readers, or people who haven't read as much horror as I have, would enjoy this book more than I did.
Please note: I don't review to provide synopses, I review to share a purely visceral reaction to books and perhaps answer some of the questions I ask when I'm contemplating investing time and money into a book.
A very short collection of even shorter stories. Most of them were really good; the weakest pieces in the collection I'd still consider to be decent writing. I'm not too familiar with this "microshort" format, this was essentially my first introduction. I liked it a lot. While the collection is only 53 pages in my reader, it was the right length. Too many of these shorts and it would feel like a chore to plow through them all. I didn't count how many stories are in here, but I'd wager there's 50-60 stories total in the collection.
The problem with the format, however, is that it's so short there's only so many ways to create the 'A-Ha! Gotcha!" moment. Usually with the last sentence that reframes the earlier paragraphs in a new light. Given that I'm pretty sick and twisted anyway, I'm usually reframing everything I read and watch all day long so there weren't a lot of shocks or suprises for me in the stories. Also, IIRC all the stories are set in contemporary western society. It would be an interesting excercise for the authors to use some of their scant words to try to evoke some different settings.
I still enjoyed reading this though. It's like popcorn and jelly beans for the horror fan - tiny little nuggets of demented goodness in easy to digest chunks. The collection is divided into four groups, roughly analagous to major subgenres in horror: "Encounters in the Dark", "Sinister Shadows on a Sunny Day", "Madmen Amongst Us" and "The Beast Inside". I felt the first section had the most interesting stories, as the microshort format lends itself to leaving much to the readers imagination while the other three genres covered such familiar ground it was hard to feel any surprises or insights.
This is a great little book that I recommend to anyone interested in horror. Because it's so short and the stories even shorter, this would probably be a good introduction to the genre for someone looking for a survey of the typical tropes and techniques - a Horror Types and Tropes Primer, if you will. I am looking forward to more collections from this group....more
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