Archive for the ‘Reading’ Category
I really wanted to be in NaNoWriMo this year. But reality raised it’s ugly head and I realized I’d have a hard time handling my other commitments without having to lock myself up for several hours every day writing. But, if I had participated, I think this is how I would have started: Gordon’s Knot; Prologue. Enjoy!
Prador Moon: A Novel Of The Polity by Neal Asher
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
I picked this up out of curiosity after seen Neal Asher on the local SF book store. What I was after was a straight forward space opera; I thought anything more than that would be a bonus. And yes, that’s what I got.
Several other reviewers has complained that this book might not be as good as Neal Asher is supposed to be. And having read it, I think I can see that: there is capacity here, there’s good pacing, and interesting characters. However, there’s also a shallowness in the story, the world building and the character interactions.
Did I say character interactions? Er.. Well, there’s one point down then: there really isn’t much of interplay at all. The main characters do their thing separately through much of the book, and when they’re finally put together the author quickly separates them again. As a romantic sucker, I do not agree.
There’s graphic violence. I have however read, say, both Richard K Morgan and Steven Erikson, so I wasn’t too bothered by this.
The action pacing is really nice. In fact, the pacing and spacing in the entire book is good, making it a really quick and engaging read.
Here’s another possible reason the book doesn’t really work: The author tries to tell a surprising amount of the story from the POV of the aliens. It’s kind of dangerous to assume a completely alien mindset as you’re running the risk of 1) removing natural tension as the aliens becomes “knowable”; and 2) humanizing the aliens. Contrasted to some of the best aliens I know of, Stephen Donaldson’s Amnioni, the Prador are easier to understand and hence more predictable and not at all as scary.
So, all in all a fast a furious read. And sometimes, that’s what I want. Also, I do believe this author has more to give, so I’m continuing on, hopeful next book will be a bit better, because then it could be really good.
OK, so here’s a short rant on whet I don’t like with so called “epic” fantasy: the readers and the editors. It’s prompted by a “listopia” list over at Goodreads. Listopia is a place where massive lists of books are created and members vote on the “best” books, and the list changes accordingly. The list triggering my annoyance is of course called “The Best Epic Fantasy“.
I’ll blatantly steal the 20 first books on the list for this post:
So what’s up? A quick look tells us we’ve got Tolkien on 4 spots. Fine, Tolkien is Tolkien, but if we partly discard him we get: 3 children’s books at top 4, Harry Potter as the number one epic fantasy, one science-fiction master piece, 8 standard boring run of the mills fantasy tropes (young man discovers his destiny as king, magician, whatever), no less than 3 George R.R. Martin when there should have been none, only 4 books with any kind of originality, and for fucks sake: the Belgariad? Oh, and I’m ignoring Lewis altogether. Why? Because I really, really don’t like him. This is a rant, remember? My blog, my rules.
(The lists have a problem we should acknowledge: duplications abound. Also, to be “epic” you probably want the entire series, not single books, and hence you’ve got a mismatch of “boxed sets” and single volumes.)
Now then…
Run-of-the-mill fantasy: You know the drill: young man, unknown destiny, dragons, gods trapped under mountains, intelligent horses and a man with fire instead of eyes. Any questions? And yes, that means Tolkien, Eddings, Hobb, Paolini, Goodkind, Rothfuss and Jordan, right there. And to a certain degree Rowling and as well. Not all of them are bad, mind you, but it is extremely annoying that, for example, Goodkind and Eddings ends up a “the best epic fantasy” list.
Romanticism: Certain people are born to rule, born to magic, or otherwise special. Forget egalitarianism, forget democracy, we’re back to the rule of the elite again. OK, so I’m ripping of David Brin here, but the man’s got a point: where’s the visions and the originality? And do we really want a world you’re either born with an ability or you’re not, and you’re not then tough luck. Who questions Aragorns right to rule?
What editor? Hello Goodkind, Rothfuss, Jordan, Rowling, Paolini, Hobb and Martin! Some of the blame of the state of fantasy must be put at the feet of the editors. When an author becomes famous, apparently all rules are off. There’s a very simple explanation for it as well: the readers does not care, they expect the books to be massive. If I’m not mistaken it’s been shown that when it comes to fantasy, thick books sells more than thin ones. Now tell me what that says about the readers…
What does that leave us with? Well, Tolkien should be on the list, that’s a given, and you could argue that he shouldn’t even be on the list at all. But after that? From the top: Jordan had a brilliant voice the first couple of volumes, and for that he deserves recognition. Then of course the “what editor?” sickness kicked in. It’s a pleasant surprise to find Pullman on the list so high up. Originality? Really? I loved Rothfuss flair, but then the “what editor?” destroyed the second book. Stephen King? Well… Yeah, why not? I haven’t read the entire saga yet so I won’t comment. But what I’ve read is certainly head and shoulders above much of the competition. Then Gaiman, and an applaud from me. And Dune, which is undeniably science fiction (although I agree some so called SF is actually Fantasy in space-clothes), but: still damn good.
That’s the rant for tonight: You understand why I don’t like it now? This is apparently what people want. It is what they think is the best. Children’s books, reused plots and romanticism. It’s depressing as hell. I love Fantasy, but I understand why people look down on it: just read that list one more time and I think you’ll understand as well.
A Shadow in Summer by Daniel Abraham
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
This will be a short review as I actually finished this book a while back, and it wouldn’t be fair trying to outline more than the big pictures given my horrible memory.
I really wanted to give this book more than 3 stars. On a scale of 10 it would have been a strong 7. And the reason I wanted to rate it higher is simple: It is not you ordinary run of the mill fantasy. No any orphan discovering their destiny as kings/magicians/gods. No cheesy love story (but a nice triangle, if you know your Arthurian legend you’ll be right at home). A unique magic system. And so on.
However, I never really got gripped by the characters, and I never believed in the story, and here’s why: The magic system, unique as it is, is presented without limits. In this book we’re led to believe that there is *no* boundary in sight; one single “demon” can reach out and rip every single unborn baby right out of their mother’s womb. Literally. From a continent away. And naturally the first thing I ask myself is: why don’t they?
So let’s get abstract for a moment: why don’t they? In any believable world there will be people taking advantage of power, and if you introduce magic that is controllable, you need to explain why the greedy, evil or power hungry has not taken over the world. If you’re going to employ magic make sure there’s things you can’t do, and make sure your readers, who don’t have the implicit knowledge of your characters, are told. You don’t have to go to Harry Potter extremes, nor Eddings but both are examples of magician stories, and within both it is clear that you can’t do everything you want, that there are boundaries for you might.
Power without boundaries is meaningless.
So no, I didn’t really get gripped. I probably will read the rest in the quartet. But not for a while. There’s a lot of other books out there.
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
This is, beyond doubt, a very ambitious book. Playing with the idea of language as the foundation of our self-awareness, the author builds up a world where humans live by the grace of their “hosts”, a wildly alien species which does not understand speech if it is not spoken by two mouths simultaneously, but one mind. All utterances the hosts make in Language (notice capital ‘L’) are true; they cannot consciously lie. Also, strangely enough, they cannot “refer”: all symbols in the language must be precise. For example they’ll say “the glass which is half-full sitting in the window”, instead of simply “that glass”. The word “that” does not exist in Language. From there on it gets stranger.
This is “the new weird”, so don’t expect anything you can relate to. Perhaps my attention span is low, or my memory for detail deficient, but I never got hooked, the expositions always left me hanging. There was always this thing or creature I wasn’t quite sure what it actually was, and it distracted me from the story. I cannot for the life of me even describe what the “hosts” look like, according to the author, even now: I have no clue.
The character building is sketchy, but wonderful, and together with the cheer “what the hell is this really about”-ness kept me going.
Now. I’m a lunch-time poet and a couch philosopher, and I admit to some confusion: philosophy of language was never my strong point. Also, it get’s harder due me never getting the hang of the world building. But here’s some questions: Is it at all possible to imagine a creature which is not incapable of lying due to nature, but to language? Does a language which does not allow for referrals at all make sense? And the big one: the hosts only understand Language spoken by humans if it is spoken with two voices but a unified mind, but this begs the questions: how the hell does it know it’s a unified mind?
That last question almost had me stop reading. As far as I can tell we get no good answer to that, and it is central to the entire story.
By the way, consider this: Asked by Edge.org, “what do you believe but cannot yet prove?”, American philosopher of mind (and, I admit, my one of my heroes) Daniel C. Dennet, answered something along the lines of “that language is a prerequisite for consciousness”. That without language we wouldn’t have been able to be conscious, or even get there: first you get the language, then you evolve the consciousness from there.
So yes, I accept that language shapes the way we are and the way we see ourselves, but most of the time, when the book lingers over some strange detail of the hosts communications, I was distracted by “how the hell would that work?”, or “is that even possible?”, or simply “er… what?”. Which somewhat diminishes my returns from this book.
However, in the end the author kept me reading. And, I’ll give him extra points for trying, and some more more originality. But it is not a book I expect to return too.
Born to Run by Christopher McDougall
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
Here’s a hyped book indeed, but having sat through it in one go (6 hours) it is a well deserved 5 star.
Others will expand on the content, so I’ll concentrate on a few highlights. And there are many in this book. Part adventure story, scientific discovery and party book, it’s a rip roaring extacy ride with a lot of impossible-to-let-go pages.
Characters: what an intriguing lot of personality! From the cadaverous mystery of Caballo Blanco (“the white horse”) to narcoleptic hipster kids and obsessed ultra-marathon runners, this book has them in abundance. And the author treats them all fair and square. Very nicely done.
Language: erratic, somewhat slang-ridden, but in my mind, nicely flowing and entirely appropriate. If it leaves you put off, I can sympathise, but when I got past the first 5% (yes, I’m on a Kindle) it just felt… Right.
Interesting stuff: shitloads. I’m a nerd with a passion for hiking, I’ve been running since early adulthood, and yes, last couple of months I’ve started looking into the whole “barefoot movement” thing. Still, this book had me hooked to figure out what the scientist would say, something you don’t always associate with “page turning”.
On the whole, it is a charismatic book about charismatic people and the lost love for running. It resonated in me as it seemed to have done in many others.
And yes, I’m now officially playing with a very different way of running than I’m used to. If it works out, I’ll let you know.
As you can see on the posts below, I reviewed a couple of books today… Well, truth be told I moved from LivingSocial and their Visual Bookshelf Facebook app to Goodreads instead.Visual Bookshelf was just way too slow. And also, LivingSocial is doing Groupon like offers nowadays, so I don’t really trust them to stay around.
So Goodreads? Well, we’ll see. Seems alright at first light. Fairly decent UI, and fairly quick. Also, it can cross post to WordPress (as seen below), Twitter and Facebook. So that makes me a happy panda.
Here’s to technology!
Fooled by Randomness: The Hidden Role of Chance in Life and in the Markets by Nassim Nicholas Taleb
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
A really enjoyable book although somewhat idiosyncratic and un-even. The author does not apologize though and have even refused to even it out for the later editions. That way it stays personal and interesting. Another word on the style, it is easy to misread it as an attack and only see the snark, whereas the author is failry clear about his goals, he puts them clearly down, but it’s easy to loose them on the way. I didn’t care though, as I found it hilarious at times.
The content is about the randomness in many of our environments and our inability to cope with much of it. Most of the examples comes from Wall Street as the author not only have experience from that particular arena but also sees it as a highly random business. On the way we’re sail past Hume (induction), Popper, Kahneman, Soros, Pinker as well as poets and artists and… Clearly, mr Taleb is a very well read man.
For those interested I highly recommend his (slightly more technical) Edge.org piece “THE FOURTH QUADRANT: A MAP OF THE LIMITS OF STATISTICS”: http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/taleb08/…
The Books of the South: Tales of the Black Company by Glen Cook
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
Very good indeed. I felt some of the originality went away as the story teller becomes, not a spectator, but a leader and “cause” in himself. However, it is still very good and I’m looking forward to the “glittering stone” compilation.
But oh, the pregnancy and “herald child” business was all too predictable and cheesy. I did feel a bit let down by that, let’s hope it turns to something interesting in the last books.
Chronicles of The Black Company by Glen Cook
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Excellent. It takes you a while to get into the language, which is a bit more terse than your usual fantasy brick. You can see where Steven Erikson is coming from. This is far better than most run of the mill fantasy, even though… a map wouldn’t have hurt. I was completely hooked after 50 pages or so, and just couldn’t stop reading the last 100. Excellent indeed.
