Another Kind of Life, Shamus Young
I finally read the new novel by Shamus Young (who did the DM of the Rings screencap webcomic).
The previous one was the Witch Watch, a 19th century adventure when the protagonist an introspective unfilfilled soldier is killed in a scuffle and is resurrected by mistake by minions of a necromancer.
This one is a cyberpunk mystery reminiscent of Caves of Steel.
The Good
The setting is great. A fictional tropical city, exploited by colonial-ish powers not by direct conquest per se, but by economic leverage, now a densely populated but not the most technologically advanced world city. Increasing penetration of robots into the workforce, not completely realistically, but from a very 2020 perspective not a 1950 one.
An introspective, meticulous but idiosyncratic crook, specialising in rewarding low-violence crimes sucked into a robot who-dunnit mystery, while being pursued by various mobsters and corrupt police. A very sympathetic robot character with a lot to say about how it feels to be built around a drive to serve humans and to protect humans.
A lot of delving into the philosophy of being a robot, how robots learn, how they have drives, the practicalities of what robots are manufactured, which brains are duplicated, etc, etc.
A lot of goon-banter, a minor genre of scene where the protagonist and the goons chat while waiting for the boss.
The Niggles
Two things niggled at me, both hard to describe. The first is going to be a bit difficult to try to talk about. Shamus Young is probably neurodivergent of some sort: he's talked about not being officially diagnosed, but seeming different to most people. It doesn't come up much, but in his memoir blog posts (https://www.shamusyoung.com/twentysidedtale/?p=12687) he talks a lot about how other people just seem weird to him.
It's especially weird for me because a lot of the things he says really resonate with me, but I don't think I'm coming from the same place. My theory is that the "understanding people" bit of my brain is ok, but the "if you failed once you probably learned something and it's worth trying again, not hiding from it forever" bit of my brain was really wonky for some reason, but that's obviously just a metaphor I use somehow, I can't really see what's going on in my head.
The protagonist of Another Kind of Life isn't definitively neurodiverse, but enough things about his experience make me read him as someone who finds people weird but has learned how to interact well with them (possibly as Shamus is, I don't know). But what I'm about to talk about seems to apply to almost all the characters in both books.
But anyway, a few things in both books really jump out into my notice when I don't know if other people would notice them in the same way. Something like, characters having a running narrative in their head of why someone else is reacting a certain way, when I would really, really have expected that to be sufficiently common for soldiers or crooks (or just most people) that the character would be used to it, either just subconsciously interpreting the behaviour, or annoyed that people KEEP doing that even though it makes no sense, but not "oh, he's obviously doing this because he thinks that" when it's something I'd expect to happen all the time. But I don't know if my expectation is more right than his is, maybe people do have mental narratives like that and it just sticks out to me more.
The other thing is also hard to describe, the book had the sort of arc of solving the murder and other professional and personal problems of protagonist that I'd expect, but somehow it didn't feel satisfying and tense the way I felt it should. I can't say what's wrong, but it felt like he just worked through everything and worked it all out, even though he definitely did run into a lot of sticky situations along the way. So I was left with a feeling of "that was nice, but it felt like it was lacking something, but I can't really point to what" which is annoying to try to describe (sorry), despite really liking most of the book.
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comments so far.
The previous one was the Witch Watch, a 19th century adventure when the protagonist an introspective unfilfilled soldier is killed in a scuffle and is resurrected by mistake by minions of a necromancer.
This one is a cyberpunk mystery reminiscent of Caves of Steel.
The Good
The setting is great. A fictional tropical city, exploited by colonial-ish powers not by direct conquest per se, but by economic leverage, now a densely populated but not the most technologically advanced world city. Increasing penetration of robots into the workforce, not completely realistically, but from a very 2020 perspective not a 1950 one.
An introspective, meticulous but idiosyncratic crook, specialising in rewarding low-violence crimes sucked into a robot who-dunnit mystery, while being pursued by various mobsters and corrupt police. A very sympathetic robot character with a lot to say about how it feels to be built around a drive to serve humans and to protect humans.
A lot of delving into the philosophy of being a robot, how robots learn, how they have drives, the practicalities of what robots are manufactured, which brains are duplicated, etc, etc.
A lot of goon-banter, a minor genre of scene where the protagonist and the goons chat while waiting for the boss.
The Niggles
Two things niggled at me, both hard to describe. The first is going to be a bit difficult to try to talk about. Shamus Young is probably neurodivergent of some sort: he's talked about not being officially diagnosed, but seeming different to most people. It doesn't come up much, but in his memoir blog posts (https://www.shamusyoung.com/twentysidedtale/?p=12687) he talks a lot about how other people just seem weird to him.
It's especially weird for me because a lot of the things he says really resonate with me, but I don't think I'm coming from the same place. My theory is that the "understanding people" bit of my brain is ok, but the "if you failed once you probably learned something and it's worth trying again, not hiding from it forever" bit of my brain was really wonky for some reason, but that's obviously just a metaphor I use somehow, I can't really see what's going on in my head.
The protagonist of Another Kind of Life isn't definitively neurodiverse, but enough things about his experience make me read him as someone who finds people weird but has learned how to interact well with them (possibly as Shamus is, I don't know). But what I'm about to talk about seems to apply to almost all the characters in both books.
But anyway, a few things in both books really jump out into my notice when I don't know if other people would notice them in the same way. Something like, characters having a running narrative in their head of why someone else is reacting a certain way, when I would really, really have expected that to be sufficiently common for soldiers or crooks (or just most people) that the character would be used to it, either just subconsciously interpreting the behaviour, or annoyed that people KEEP doing that even though it makes no sense, but not "oh, he's obviously doing this because he thinks that" when it's something I'd expect to happen all the time. But I don't know if my expectation is more right than his is, maybe people do have mental narratives like that and it just sticks out to me more.
The other thing is also hard to describe, the book had the sort of arc of solving the murder and other professional and personal problems of protagonist that I'd expect, but somehow it didn't feel satisfying and tense the way I felt it should. I can't say what's wrong, but it felt like he just worked through everything and worked it all out, even though he definitely did run into a lot of sticky situations along the way. So I was left with a feeling of "that was nice, but it felt like it was lacking something, but I can't really point to what" which is annoying to try to describe (sorry), despite really liking most of the book.
You can also comment at https://jack.dreamwidth.org/1096048.html using OpenID.
comments so far.