Science fiction galore
I've worked a lot recently, but at least I've had the time to read on the bus. And during lunch, sometimes...
So, my impressions, cut for lenght and potential spoilers:
And Another Thing is the sixth, and first not-written-by-the-original-author, part of the Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy.
Basic background info: Douglas Adams, author of the Hitchhiker's series, was never satisfied with the end of the fifth book, Mostly Harmless. Too bleak, he found it, and most readers agreed. But then he suffered Sudden Author Existance Failure and, well, that was that. Dead authors do not write books and most fans resolved to just quitly ignore Mostly Harmless.
The publisher otoh decided to celebrate one of the HHGTTG anniversaries by hiring another author to write a sixth book and they picked Eoin Colfer.
Short review: It's not a bad book, but it's nowhere near the screwy brilliance of the original.
I've read one book in the Artemis Fowl series, which is what Colfer generally writes, and I was far from impressed. A rather trite story and characters I couldn't engage myself in at all. So my expectations when reading his take on the HHGTTG were very low... He's better than I expected, at least. The plot is much tighter, the rescue from the certain doom ending of the fifth book didn't feel contrived and he's got Arthur's and Ford's voices decently right.
The jokes, unfortunately, feel very contrived and neither the Guide entries nor Zaphod feel right to me. Zaphod appears both as the (sometimes unknown) driving force behind the plot, in that he saves Arthur and the others, he reqruits Thor for their purposes, he fixed the new planet for the rest of the Earthlings etc. and at the same time, he's practically lobotomized himself by removing one of his heads. The one, according to the narrative, with the logical parts of his mind which is saying something, considering how Zaphod used to act in the original five-part trilogy.
I also dislike how Colfer pairs up Trillian with Wowbagger, of all random characters, and the "humanizing" touched he's added on said Wowbagger and the Vogons. They don't quite work as proper novel characters even when we find out about the inner thoughts and that one almost decent Vogon, but they worked much better as jokes and absurd parodies of reality when they were, well, absurd and rather one-dimensional. Perhaps a better author could have done it, but I don't know.
There aren't really any surprises in the book either. Take for instance the self-sacrificial cows. They're introduced in The Restaurant at the End of the Universe, some short lines basically. They're damn funny for that, an animal that asks to be eaten to which Ford and Zaphod react with enthusiastic carnivorism while Arthur is squicked and Trillian takes a more pragmatic approach. Here, they are returned to argue about how they aren't being properly eaten because apparantly the colonists on the new earth prefer pork or something, but they don't really do much. They hand around and whine a little and that's where I really miss Adam's touch. If he'd return to the animals that enjoy to be eate, I think he'd have added another twist. What twist? Well, I'm no geniues, so don't ask me. But for instance, do the pigs also want to be eaten? Can animals unionize and demand to be slaughtered? Is it at all possible for a bovine with a suicidal gene to become angry, and then what? The absurd chains of association is part of what makes me enjoy the HHGTTG so much, and there's hardly any of that around. Colfer competently rehases old ideas, but he adds far less new material to this base than most competent fanfic authors. And there, he fails.
I do have to say, however, that this is the first Hitchhiker's-related book I've ever seen or owned, which has a nice cover.
First of all, please take a look at this cover. Have you seen a more hideous book? Nah, hardly. Neither have I.
Despite that, Diamond Star is a very entertaining read. It is apparantly part something in a novel series about the Skolian Empire, but it reads perfectly well on its own.
Basically, Del is a prince of the Skolian Empire, which also means that he is a Ruby Telepath. That means he's part of a family of off-the-scale powerful telepaths which the Skolians use to power some kind of instantaneous communications web. Telepathic interstellar internet, yay.
But they've also been at war with the Trader Empire for ages and aaaages, because the traders are ruled by the Aristo lords who are all Lawful Evils. Yes, honestly. Since they're genetically modified to enjoy the pain of telepaths/empaths they torture Del's relatives and own all the non-aristos in their empire (but treat them well, so they don't rebell). Very Lawful, Very Evil.
Anyway, that's just background. Del's got some medical history behind him, which means among other things, that he can never help his family power their multi-planet internet. He also sings amazingly well, looks really good (his ancestors apparantly operating on the principle that if they're gonna genetically modify themselves, then by damn they will look Gorgeous) and has self-confidence issues. His biggest dream is to become a rock singer.
Then, whoops, while stuck on Earth due to diplomacy, he ends up with a contract with one of the biggest entertainment conglomerates on Earth. And they like his strange songs, even if they don't understand him, they think he's got amazing sex-appeal (so does the author, if I'm to judge from the amount of paragraphs dedicated to his sultry hips) and his manager/guard reluctantly agrees to help him... if only he doesn't sing that particular, inflammatory song. The one about the Aristo lords. No, Del promises, of course he wont.
Yes, I saw that coming from page 20 too. Doesn't much matter, it was still an entertaining read. The politics a bit too simple, the sex scenes not all that amazing either - aparantly Asaro writes "Romantic science fiction" which I didn't even know existed before - but she's not Mercedes Lackey or anything in that caliber of pure cheese, so I can live with it. And the main character, despite being drop dead gorgeous, rich and an amazing singer, is still pretty sympathetic. The other people, Mac the manager, or Ricki the hot girl from the corporation, the bodyguards etc are colorful and decently well-rounded.
Fun book, a good summer read.
Now I'm reading Dragon Soul, Metro 2033 (as soon as I find it again...) and Udda Verklighet.
So, my impressions, cut for lenght and potential spoilers:
And Another Thing is the sixth, and first not-written-by-the-original-author, part of the Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy.
Basic background info: Douglas Adams, author of the Hitchhiker's series, was never satisfied with the end of the fifth book, Mostly Harmless. Too bleak, he found it, and most readers agreed. But then he suffered Sudden Author Existance Failure and, well, that was that. Dead authors do not write books and most fans resolved to just quitly ignore Mostly Harmless.
The publisher otoh decided to celebrate one of the HHGTTG anniversaries by hiring another author to write a sixth book and they picked Eoin Colfer.
Short review: It's not a bad book, but it's nowhere near the screwy brilliance of the original.
I've read one book in the Artemis Fowl series, which is what Colfer generally writes, and I was far from impressed. A rather trite story and characters I couldn't engage myself in at all. So my expectations when reading his take on the HHGTTG were very low... He's better than I expected, at least. The plot is much tighter, the rescue from the certain doom ending of the fifth book didn't feel contrived and he's got Arthur's and Ford's voices decently right.
The jokes, unfortunately, feel very contrived and neither the Guide entries nor Zaphod feel right to me. Zaphod appears both as the (sometimes unknown) driving force behind the plot, in that he saves Arthur and the others, he reqruits Thor for their purposes, he fixed the new planet for the rest of the Earthlings etc. and at the same time, he's practically lobotomized himself by removing one of his heads. The one, according to the narrative, with the logical parts of his mind which is saying something, considering how Zaphod used to act in the original five-part trilogy.
I also dislike how Colfer pairs up Trillian with Wowbagger, of all random characters, and the "humanizing" touched he's added on said Wowbagger and the Vogons. They don't quite work as proper novel characters even when we find out about the inner thoughts and that one almost decent Vogon, but they worked much better as jokes and absurd parodies of reality when they were, well, absurd and rather one-dimensional. Perhaps a better author could have done it, but I don't know.
There aren't really any surprises in the book either. Take for instance the self-sacrificial cows. They're introduced in The Restaurant at the End of the Universe, some short lines basically. They're damn funny for that, an animal that asks to be eaten to which Ford and Zaphod react with enthusiastic carnivorism while Arthur is squicked and Trillian takes a more pragmatic approach. Here, they are returned to argue about how they aren't being properly eaten because apparantly the colonists on the new earth prefer pork or something, but they don't really do much. They hand around and whine a little and that's where I really miss Adam's touch. If he'd return to the animals that enjoy to be eate, I think he'd have added another twist. What twist? Well, I'm no geniues, so don't ask me. But for instance, do the pigs also want to be eaten? Can animals unionize and demand to be slaughtered? Is it at all possible for a bovine with a suicidal gene to become angry, and then what? The absurd chains of association is part of what makes me enjoy the HHGTTG so much, and there's hardly any of that around. Colfer competently rehases old ideas, but he adds far less new material to this base than most competent fanfic authors. And there, he fails.
I do have to say, however, that this is the first Hitchhiker's-related book I've ever seen or owned, which has a nice cover.
First of all, please take a look at this cover. Have you seen a more hideous book? Nah, hardly. Neither have I.
Despite that, Diamond Star is a very entertaining read. It is apparantly part something in a novel series about the Skolian Empire, but it reads perfectly well on its own.
Basically, Del is a prince of the Skolian Empire, which also means that he is a Ruby Telepath. That means he's part of a family of off-the-scale powerful telepaths which the Skolians use to power some kind of instantaneous communications web. Telepathic interstellar internet, yay.
But they've also been at war with the Trader Empire for ages and aaaages, because the traders are ruled by the Aristo lords who are all Lawful Evils. Yes, honestly. Since they're genetically modified to enjoy the pain of telepaths/empaths they torture Del's relatives and own all the non-aristos in their empire (but treat them well, so they don't rebell). Very Lawful, Very Evil.
Anyway, that's just background. Del's got some medical history behind him, which means among other things, that he can never help his family power their multi-planet internet. He also sings amazingly well, looks really good (his ancestors apparantly operating on the principle that if they're gonna genetically modify themselves, then by damn they will look Gorgeous) and has self-confidence issues. His biggest dream is to become a rock singer.
Then, whoops, while stuck on Earth due to diplomacy, he ends up with a contract with one of the biggest entertainment conglomerates on Earth. And they like his strange songs, even if they don't understand him, they think he's got amazing sex-appeal (so does the author, if I'm to judge from the amount of paragraphs dedicated to his sultry hips) and his manager/guard reluctantly agrees to help him... if only he doesn't sing that particular, inflammatory song. The one about the Aristo lords. No, Del promises, of course he wont.
Yes, I saw that coming from page 20 too. Doesn't much matter, it was still an entertaining read. The politics a bit too simple, the sex scenes not all that amazing either - aparantly Asaro writes "Romantic science fiction" which I didn't even know existed before - but she's not Mercedes Lackey or anything in that caliber of pure cheese, so I can live with it. And the main character, despite being drop dead gorgeous, rich and an amazing singer, is still pretty sympathetic. The other people, Mac the manager, or Ricki the hot girl from the corporation, the bodyguards etc are colorful and decently well-rounded.
Fun book, a good summer read.
Now I'm reading Dragon Soul, Metro 2033 (as soon as I find it again...) and Udda Verklighet.