Tread Lightly: Form, Footwear, and the Quest for Injury-Free Running by Bill Katovsky
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
I haven’t read very many running books. In fact, I’ve only read three that I can remember, one being Christopher MacDougal’s legendary “Born to Run”, and Jason Robillard’s excellent “The Barefoot Running Book”. Continue reading
My rating: 1 of 5 stars
This will be a short review. It’s a fairly fast read, but not very consistent, not very interesting. The characters are flat and uninteresting and the plotting doesn’t work. But mostly, I’m rating it low because it doesn’t fit together very well. Here’s two short examples (with spoilers): Continue reading
The Dark Tower by Stephen King
My rating: 2 of 5 stars
This will be a rant born out of disappointment, and probably a long one at that. I love Stephen King, but here I’m afraid he put his foot in his mouth just one time too many. Also this, which we will call ‘review’, but which is only really a pretense for a rant, will contain serious spoilers, so if you haven’t yet read the seventh and final installment of the Dark Tower, consider yourself duly warned. Continue reading
Blue Remembered Earth by Alastair Reynolds
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
I have to date read all of Alistair Reynolds books (at least I think I have, he is after all rather prolific). So. I’m a fan.
I’ve always seen him as slightly uneven though, and although a brilliant story-teller, not always the perfect craftsman, and his characterization leaves at times things to which for.
(Usual self-repeat: I won’t cover the story in this review, plenty of others do).
So let’s start with the major let down: characterization. The main character (Geoffrey) starts out a whining bitch and continues so for half of the book. This is a characteristic he seems to share with his sister, unless their together at which point the sister seems to grow a bit: clearly you can’t have two characters who’s only contribution to the dialogue is “it won’t work”, “we’ll all die”, or “what makes you think I like you”. Really, that’s a fair summary of nearly 85% of all Geoffrey’s dialogue through the first half of the book.
I’m all for anti-heroes, but there’s got to be something interesting in the character you can latch onto. But for Geoffrey there is nothing. His love for the elephants? Meh…
So in order to move the story along there has to be other people than the main characters around to not only explain things but also to take initiatives at all… Let’s just say that there is a certain construct who got a lot of disposition on her plate, poor thing.
Interestingly enough, I think my other major problem with the book stems from the first: When Geoffrey “grows up” and stop whining (which is, by the way, through with a suitably transparent kill-move) the feel of the entire story changes. From an anti-hero travelogue to an ordinary space opera. It felt… A bit abrupt and… sloppy.
That’s my whining out of the way. This is still a terrific read. Everything else is exactly where I want it. Pace, scenery, grandeur and story. It all slot together in a slick machinery that you just want to continue forever.
Although this is, by Alistair Reynolds measuring, fairly near future, and contained around the solar system, the feeling of awe and grandeur that Reynolds can magic up at times is astonishing. Someone said that the hallmark of great SF is the feeling of opening-up, of a sense of wonder, and this book has it in abundance.
A 3/5 rating? Well… It really is a very strong 3. Had the transition from anti-hero to “normal” story been smoother this would have been a 4. And with the whining toned down a bit and Geoffrey fleshed out a bit earlier in the book it would have been a border-line 5.
Good stuff! I can’t wait for the next volume.
The Gunslinger by Stephen King
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
“The man in black fled across the desert and the Gunslinger followed.”
Honestly, if that doesn’t go down as one of the great openings of all time, to be remembered long after we’re gone, even if the the person recognizing it doesn’t even know where it comes from, I’ll be sorely disappointed.
In fact, this reading is a re-read, but I hardly remembered anything but the opening line from the first read-through; which must have been back in the eighties.
I remember being somewhat nonplussed with it though, without being able to articulate exactly why at the time. Perhaps I can now: it is the overall, sweeping, “introduction-type” style to the text that I didn’t really grasp. It is in effect, one long setup of a much longer tale to come. And read in that function, it succeeds admirably: It sketches at the grandeur, the mystery and the size to come.
As usual I’ll not cover the plot, you can find that elsewhere.
It is somewhat crude; if you read later King you’ll realize that he has indeed learned a thing or two about story-telling a the craft of stringing words together since this was written. But regarded as an introductory piece it still works well.
(Here’s a minor issue though: I had no problem with the town of Tull. The Isaac-moment I had forgotten though. And I probably didn’t care about it when I was sixteen, but now this particular version of Abraham’s dilemma doesn’t sit very well. I look forward to see if it’s going to be explained or resolved later.)
So: this time around I love it. What a brilliant setup! The lone gunslinger chasing his destiny across a Sergio Leone inspired waste land entirely owned by Stephen King. Awesome!
Now on to book number two, the plan is to read it all in one go. Wish me luck!
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.
