Catching up on book reviews...
SOME OF THE REVIEWS BELOW CONTAIN MINOR SPOILERS. But they are minor. Usually. You have been duly warned.
This post contains 14 book reviews. They are as follows:
1. The Hyperion Cantos by Dan Simmons (4 books in all)
2. The Terror by Dan Simmons
3. Bonnie Before the Brain Implants by Keith Blenman
4. The Cloud Atlas by Liam Callanan
5. Cloud Atlas: A Novel by David Mitchell
6. Phases of Gravity by Dan Simmons
7. Drood by Dan Simmons
8 & 9. Ilium and Olympos by Dan Simmons
10. Life of Pi by Yann Martel
11. The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
Let's do this thing.
1. The Hyperion Cantos by Dan Simmons
This series includes 4 books. I will address each one individually then sum them up at the end.
~Hyperion
I have made note of this in a previous entry, and I hold to what I said in that review. This is the first book to have genuinely FRIGHTENED me since I was maybe 8 years old. That's 20 years of devouring books and not one of them has scared me like this. It's the good kind of scary -- the horror movie kind where you start jumping at every little noise because something is just so vivid, so perfectly terrifying, you have no choice but to start believing it's right… behind… that door…
This book is a compilation of 7 tales from 7 very different characters, all told in the framework of a quest. The stories are all as different as their tellers -- they contain themes of religion, poetry, war and violence, family and honoring one's parents, sex and honoring one's king…
Even if you don't want to read an entire series, you should read this book. Let it stand alone just for those stories, and decide at the end if you want to go on. It's a hell of a journey from here in more ways than one…
~~The Fall of Hyperion
This book branches out from the Pilgrims in the previous book and explores their world… or rather worlds. 150 linked planets throughout the solar system are preparing to go to war against an alien force of evolved humans, while humanity's ascended artificial intelligences try to both guide and hinder them. This story is told mainly from the point of view of Joseph Severn -- the clone of a clone of poet John Keats, who was a character in one of the 7 pilgrims' stories in the previous book -- as he observes how the leader of all 150 worlds, Meina Gladstone, comes to terms with the fact that in order to save humanity, she may have to orchestrate the greatest holocaust in human history.
This is a gear-shifting book that is completely unlike the first book, but for all the right reasons. It's a political thriller IN SPACE.
~~~Endymion
FAST FORWARD! Almost 300 years after the events in book 2, an anonymous dude from an out-of-the-way planet is sentenced to death for being a douchebag to some rich duck hunters, rescued from death by a character from the previous books, and sent on an impossible quest -- first to the Time Tombs (the goal of the original 7 pilgrims), and then to a world that may no longer exist, to topple the empire of the Catholic Church and keep safe the girl who will become the savior of all mankind. Pursued by a warrior-priest and his few loyal holy soldiers, Raoul, the young Aenea, and their cyborg friend A. Bettik flee the Church as they search for an impossible place -- Earth.
Once again, this book represents a major shift in setting a POV from the previous two, but for all the best reasons and with all the best results. This lays the groundwork for the final tale that will answer all questions and determine the fate of the human race…
~~~~The Rise of Endymion
This book describes the final struggle between all previously established groups -- the 150 worlds of the Hegemony, the Ousters, the Shrike, the pilgrims of the Time Tombs, the ascended AIs, Aenea and Raoul -- and determines the fate of mankind.
I will say nothing more.
BOTTOM LINE: This is the best book series I have ever read. This is better than Lord of the Rings. This is better than Discworld. This is better than EVERYTHING. This series speaks to my lit-loving soul. This has everything -- poetry, time travel, religion and the debunking thereof, death and rebirth, artificial intelligences, quantum theory, gods, monsters, epic space battles, Dick Tracey detectives, astonishing settings, adventure, love, technology, politics… If you like science-fiction, it's almost impossible not to LOVE this series. This is the new required reading of sci-fi, in my mind. It is… a perfect series. Perfectly structured, perfectly told, and perfect in the spirit of classic science fiction -- a vision of humanity's hardships that ends in hope and the timelessness of all that we understand to be important now and forever.
Read it. If you do nothing else I ever tell you to do, read these books.
----------
And now… MORE BOOKS! In order of my having read them. Probably.
2. The Terror by Dan Simmons
So having read the Cantos, I needed MORE. I chose this.
This book reads a bit more like a history book with some fictional bits thrown in than like a truly engaging novel. The Franklin Expeition is a particular interest of mine, so I enjoyed it, but it does sort of ramble on a bit and if you don't have an existing interest in the subject matter, this isn't going to convert you. It's also not an especially good "monster story," as the "monster" appears only a handful of times and always only briefly until the end. I'd have liked to read more about the characters as they were in the last 7% of the book, really. Simmons' writing is, as always, very good, but this one is somewhat plodding at times and won't appeal to anyone who doesn't have an inherent interest in historical exploration of the arctic or themes of survival in extreme conditions.
BOTTOM LINE: This book is pretty cool (taking place in the Arctic, it would have to be), and it's being adapted for television soon, but unless you want to read the book before you watch the show, or have an inherent interest in the history of the Franklin expedition, I'd give this one a pass for the time being and pick up something else by Simmons first.
3. Bonnie Before the Brain Implants by Keith Blenman
Not gonna lie… I bought this only because of the title. It's a short novel about some chick in a science lab… something… some stuff… a guy is a bear…
BOTTOM LINE: You know what, don't bother with this one unless you're REALLY bored. It's not horrible, but it's not good, and it feels unfinished. Pass.
4. The Cloud Atlas by Liam Callanan
Let me tell you a story. It's the story you'll see told in a LOT of reviews of this book on Amazon.
This was not the book I MEANT to read, but it is the book I WANTED to read.
Not that I was aware of that fact when I bought it. I believed this to be the book they just adapted into a film. Having no idea what that story was actually ABOUT, going only on a friend's recommendation that the book was good, I did a search for the title, saw that there were numerous options, and picked one, without reading the summary of either, based on some fleeting hunch or logic I can no longer remember despite it having happened less than 48 hours prior to my originally writing this review.
48 hours? Alas... I would have finished it *sooner* had I not been otherwise engaged hauling several thousand pounds of seed at work during what is normally the slow end of my shift. Which is to say... nothing other than my boss or my spouse (...my other boss ;) ) could have convinced me to put this book down. If I'd had the option, I would have simply let the thing take control of my life for an entire night, from the first page to the last.
It's THAT kind of book.
And as for what I meant about this being the book I WANTED to read? More than being true simply as a turn of phrase suggesting that this was a story I wanted to be told but didn't realize that desire until it was fulfilled (which is true as well), there's a coincidental, more literal element: I'd just finished reading "The Terror" by Dan Simmons, which was a satisfactorily engaging novel that might be better described as a compilation of all known facts about the lost Franklin Expedition seeking the Northwest Passage in the mid-1800's with occasional dialogue thrown in oh and P.S. there's a monster or something. While I liked the book, I was a bit disappointed, since I'd gotten it hoping it would be more like "Hyperion," another book by Simmons whose central monster was the first I've read about since I was 8 or 9 years old that LITERALLY gave me chills and actually scared me. Sadly, the titular Terror (which refers to the monster as well as one of the ships) appears only a handful of times in the near-1000 pages of story, never for long, and its explanation felt anticlimactic after so long being built up. However, that book seemed to find its strength in the last 5%, which focused on a surviving member of the expedition as he fell in love with an Inuit woman and became a member of her society and a sort of shaman, having had to set aside his lifelong devotion to his Christian God to do so.
I wanted to read more about THAT. It seemed to me that the book had ended just as it was finally getting to the good part.
"The Cloud Atlas" is that missing "good part." Engaging, haunting, beautifully tragic, with characters who are magnificently-described and astonishingly alive, this book masterfully weaves together themes of propaganda, religion, and shamanic magic during a time of war in a place where survival is so much its own war there may be no way to tell the two apart... or to decide which one is real.
BOTTOM LINE: An easy 5 stars, which is a rating I give out sparingly.
5. Cloud Atlas: A Novel by David Mitchell
This is the one they made into a movie.
This is a VERY VERY different book.
For anyone not acquainted with the premise, this is 5 stories sandwiched within one another like some kind of Oreo Cookie of Time, weaving all 5 tales together and demonstrating an interesting range of writing styles and points of view. Similar to Hyperion but without the super scary monster or space opera thing, this book is effective, fascinating, different…
BOTTOM LINE: A wonderful study of writing technique and an overall pretty good bunch of stories, I give this one 3.5 stars plus points for creativity, netting 4 stars total. Worth a read. (Alas, I STILL haven't seen the movie!)
6. Phases of Gravity by Dan Simmons
This short novel describes the life of an aging astronaut as he fights to get past the loss of his wife and son, the longing to walk on the moon once again that will never be fulfilled, and the need to find love in a world that feels increasingly hostile and lonely.
This is a beautiful book, but it is a character study more than anything. There's not what you could call a ton of plot or a gripping tagline… this isn't about adventure and grand shit. This is about a man who once set his feet on a world that isn't Earth, and he grows older, and he lives his life.
BOTTOM LINE: A very real study of human condition. Give it a read, it's a short one.
7. Drood by Dan Simmons
This novel is about the creation and relationship of Charles Dickens with his final character -- Edwin Drood. It is narrated by Dickens' friend Wilkie Collins, another writer.
This book is told in the language of its time, so it's not what you'd call light reading. It's… DARK. Very INTERESTINGLY dark, at that. Wilkie is an incredibly fucked-up character, a man with good intentions who slips slowly further and further into the madness of addiction and physical infirmity of old age throughout the course of the book… I might designate him as an Unreliable Narrator. Dickens is also both lovable and detestable in turn throughout the story. Drood is an enigma that is never truly solved, just as Dickens' novel was never finished.
I… loved this. I loved Dickens as a child, and while I am not exactly intimately familiar with ALL of his works, and had never heard of Wilkie Collins at all before now, reading this book… kind of makes me feel bad that I hadn't. Wilkie, despite being a really despicable person ultimately, is also strangely sympathetic, especially if you're a writer or an artist, or have ever struggled with addiction. Also, don't feel as if having read Dickens or Collins is a prerequisite to reading this book -- in keeping with the authorial techniques of the age this book's writing emulates, neither the author nor the narrator expects the reader to understand any references made to any of the characters' lives or works, and all are explained sufficiently for the novel to flow well and be emotionally impactful without getting bogged down and feeling like reading a history book or Wikipedia page.
BOTTOM LINE: Victorians Behaving Badly… (Or was Dickens an Edwardian? I forget…) This is a fantastically bizarre and twisted tale perfect for anyone who appreciates the mid-1800's as a literary device and culture.
8 & 9. Ilium and Olympos by Dan Simmons
I'm covering these two books as one because there really is no significant break in the story or change in style between them.
Plot number 1: A resurrected 20th-century scholar who once taught Homer is tasked with observing what seems to be the real life Trojan War, complete with gods and other immortals, for the purpose of reporting all deviations to a Muse while not interfering with events directly. Guess how well that goes.
Plot number 2: Some humans on a distantly future Earth, "post-literate" people living in a tightly controlled environment with their every need taken care of by mysterious robot servants and guardians who allow the humans to maintain a Gatsby-like lifestyle while not usually getting eaten by dinosaurs, learn that death is death and their lives are being controlled by Shakespeare characters. Yes, really.
Plot number 3: Some robotic literary nerds are sent to go check out WTF is causing weird quantum fluxes on Mars (spoiler: it's the Trojan War… weird that it's on Mars now, huh?)… they are fucking adorable.
These three plots eventually link up in an epic battle in which some robotic lit nerds and a resurrected Homeric scholar save and repopulate the human race while some illiterate Gatsby characters battle Calaban, Prospero, and Ariel. In space.
BOTTOM LINE: I love these books almost as much as I love the Hyperion Cantos. If you want an intro to Simmons writing amazing sci-fi but don't want to dive into a 4-book epic, start here. Everyone I am aware of who might be reading this review is almost guaranteed to fall in love with the two robot characters, Mahnmut and Orphu.
10. Life of Pi by Yann Martel
I've heard people say it's something most would have thought would be "impossible to adapt into a movie." It's not nearly intelligent enough to be difficult to adapt into a movie. It's trying to be, but it fails on every level. The only element of the story with so much as the POTENTIAL to be interesting is the bit about Pi faithfully devoting himself to three different religions... an aspect of his character that is never revisited after the first quarter of the book. The kid-in-a-boat-with-a-tiger bit is nothing but an abridged version of Poe's "Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym" with a tiger for no reason and an inexplicable... carnivorous meerkat island-creature... thing.
Honestly it seems like the author read Arthur Gordon Pym while watching The Lion King and decided to write his own Guy In A Boat story, doing the rest of his research by watching "Big Cat Diary" and visiting a zoo once or twice. Also he happened to have a cookbook of Indian food in the house, apparently.
I remember seeing this book many times in the bookstore and finding the cover intriguing but always inevitably deciding it wasn't worth reading. I finally read it as a challenge after being told by several friends how disappointing it was, and by another that it was really good. Challenge accepted -- I had to decide for myself.
I have decided that it is a weak, disjointed disaster of an untidy narrative that flirts with some ideas and situations that COULD have been interesting if they had been explored in any particular depth, but there are too many themes and too many situations that fail to become a single cohesive story in the end, and are frankly annoying in how overly simplified they are.
BOTTOM LINE: This book reads like cliff notes of better books all tossed into a grade schooler's attempt to make Calvin and Hobbes into an epic adventure story... an attempt that succeeds only in missing its own point every time. Read it for a laugh at the hilarious awfulness, but don't wast time you don't have on this piece of rank-ass shit.
Also, the movie is absolute crap.
11. The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
I won't bore you all with a plot summary. This was a REALLY quick read -- took me about 4 hours, while at work.
Most of the characters are intriguingly deplorable people. The descriptions of Daisy's voice are STUNNING. I like Gatsby, though I doubt he'll look/feel the way he does in my head when played onscreen. The narrator is interesting in his blandness... it'll be fascinating to see how he's played, ultimately. I was surprised at how graphic it got at the very end, compared to the rest of the book... I expect it must have been fairly shocking in its time.
BOTTOM LINE: Glad I read it. Intriguing look at 1920's culture. Anyone who hasn't read it really should. Fitzgerald's descriptive writing is an absolute treat -- the descriptions of Daisy's voice and the smell of flowers and the colors of things are just… delicious.
----------
THAT'S ALL FOLKS!
14 books in 5 months. Wow.
You may have noticed I have a sort of a… thing… for Dan Simmons.
I have realized that he is easily by this point my favourite author. I cannot get enough of his writing. I have, now, read over 6,000 pages of it, and I still want more. I've almost read more of his writing than all of my other favourite authors COMBINED.
I actually managed to hunt down his mailing address and sent him actual fan mail. That is massively dorky but for me, it's quite a novelty to have a favourite author who didn't die 100+ years before I was born. And who is still alive. Yeah.
Anyway, here are the coming attractions:
Currently Reading:
1. American Gods by Neil Gaiman
2. Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse
3. Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert M. Pirsig
COMING SOON: (In no particular order)
1. American Psycho by Bret Easton Ellis
2. Long Time Passing by Thomas Watson
3. The First Four Notes: Beethoven's Fifth and the Human Imagination by Matthew Guerrieri
4. Special Topics in Calamity Physics by Marisha Pessl
5. Songmaster by Orson Scott Card
6. Mirror, Mirror by Gregory Maguire
7. The Fault in Our Stars by John Green
This entry was crossposted from http://gethenian.dreamwidth.org/17176.html by means of a complex system of gears and levers run by a squirrel-powered perpetual motion machine and operated by volunteer Buddhist robots. The establishment thanks you for leaving all lolcat-themed items with the attendant dressed as a mince pie in the lobby before commenting. Ovaltine. Burma-Shave.
This post contains 14 book reviews. They are as follows:
1. The Hyperion Cantos by Dan Simmons (4 books in all)
2. The Terror by Dan Simmons
3. Bonnie Before the Brain Implants by Keith Blenman
4. The Cloud Atlas by Liam Callanan
5. Cloud Atlas: A Novel by David Mitchell
6. Phases of Gravity by Dan Simmons
7. Drood by Dan Simmons
8 & 9. Ilium and Olympos by Dan Simmons
10. Life of Pi by Yann Martel
11. The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
Let's do this thing.
1. The Hyperion Cantos by Dan Simmons
This series includes 4 books. I will address each one individually then sum them up at the end.
~Hyperion
I have made note of this in a previous entry, and I hold to what I said in that review. This is the first book to have genuinely FRIGHTENED me since I was maybe 8 years old. That's 20 years of devouring books and not one of them has scared me like this. It's the good kind of scary -- the horror movie kind where you start jumping at every little noise because something is just so vivid, so perfectly terrifying, you have no choice but to start believing it's right… behind… that door…
This book is a compilation of 7 tales from 7 very different characters, all told in the framework of a quest. The stories are all as different as their tellers -- they contain themes of religion, poetry, war and violence, family and honoring one's parents, sex and honoring one's king…
Even if you don't want to read an entire series, you should read this book. Let it stand alone just for those stories, and decide at the end if you want to go on. It's a hell of a journey from here in more ways than one…
~~The Fall of Hyperion
This book branches out from the Pilgrims in the previous book and explores their world… or rather worlds. 150 linked planets throughout the solar system are preparing to go to war against an alien force of evolved humans, while humanity's ascended artificial intelligences try to both guide and hinder them. This story is told mainly from the point of view of Joseph Severn -- the clone of a clone of poet John Keats, who was a character in one of the 7 pilgrims' stories in the previous book -- as he observes how the leader of all 150 worlds, Meina Gladstone, comes to terms with the fact that in order to save humanity, she may have to orchestrate the greatest holocaust in human history.
This is a gear-shifting book that is completely unlike the first book, but for all the right reasons. It's a political thriller IN SPACE.
~~~Endymion
FAST FORWARD! Almost 300 years after the events in book 2, an anonymous dude from an out-of-the-way planet is sentenced to death for being a douchebag to some rich duck hunters, rescued from death by a character from the previous books, and sent on an impossible quest -- first to the Time Tombs (the goal of the original 7 pilgrims), and then to a world that may no longer exist, to topple the empire of the Catholic Church and keep safe the girl who will become the savior of all mankind. Pursued by a warrior-priest and his few loyal holy soldiers, Raoul, the young Aenea, and their cyborg friend A. Bettik flee the Church as they search for an impossible place -- Earth.
Once again, this book represents a major shift in setting a POV from the previous two, but for all the best reasons and with all the best results. This lays the groundwork for the final tale that will answer all questions and determine the fate of the human race…
~~~~The Rise of Endymion
This book describes the final struggle between all previously established groups -- the 150 worlds of the Hegemony, the Ousters, the Shrike, the pilgrims of the Time Tombs, the ascended AIs, Aenea and Raoul -- and determines the fate of mankind.
I will say nothing more.
BOTTOM LINE: This is the best book series I have ever read. This is better than Lord of the Rings. This is better than Discworld. This is better than EVERYTHING. This series speaks to my lit-loving soul. This has everything -- poetry, time travel, religion and the debunking thereof, death and rebirth, artificial intelligences, quantum theory, gods, monsters, epic space battles, Dick Tracey detectives, astonishing settings, adventure, love, technology, politics… If you like science-fiction, it's almost impossible not to LOVE this series. This is the new required reading of sci-fi, in my mind. It is… a perfect series. Perfectly structured, perfectly told, and perfect in the spirit of classic science fiction -- a vision of humanity's hardships that ends in hope and the timelessness of all that we understand to be important now and forever.
Read it. If you do nothing else I ever tell you to do, read these books.
----------
And now… MORE BOOKS! In order of my having read them. Probably.
2. The Terror by Dan Simmons
So having read the Cantos, I needed MORE. I chose this.
This book reads a bit more like a history book with some fictional bits thrown in than like a truly engaging novel. The Franklin Expeition is a particular interest of mine, so I enjoyed it, but it does sort of ramble on a bit and if you don't have an existing interest in the subject matter, this isn't going to convert you. It's also not an especially good "monster story," as the "monster" appears only a handful of times and always only briefly until the end. I'd have liked to read more about the characters as they were in the last 7% of the book, really. Simmons' writing is, as always, very good, but this one is somewhat plodding at times and won't appeal to anyone who doesn't have an inherent interest in historical exploration of the arctic or themes of survival in extreme conditions.
BOTTOM LINE: This book is pretty cool (taking place in the Arctic, it would have to be), and it's being adapted for television soon, but unless you want to read the book before you watch the show, or have an inherent interest in the history of the Franklin expedition, I'd give this one a pass for the time being and pick up something else by Simmons first.
3. Bonnie Before the Brain Implants by Keith Blenman
Not gonna lie… I bought this only because of the title. It's a short novel about some chick in a science lab… something… some stuff… a guy is a bear…
BOTTOM LINE: You know what, don't bother with this one unless you're REALLY bored. It's not horrible, but it's not good, and it feels unfinished. Pass.
4. The Cloud Atlas by Liam Callanan
Let me tell you a story. It's the story you'll see told in a LOT of reviews of this book on Amazon.
This was not the book I MEANT to read, but it is the book I WANTED to read.
Not that I was aware of that fact when I bought it. I believed this to be the book they just adapted into a film. Having no idea what that story was actually ABOUT, going only on a friend's recommendation that the book was good, I did a search for the title, saw that there were numerous options, and picked one, without reading the summary of either, based on some fleeting hunch or logic I can no longer remember despite it having happened less than 48 hours prior to my originally writing this review.
48 hours? Alas... I would have finished it *sooner* had I not been otherwise engaged hauling several thousand pounds of seed at work during what is normally the slow end of my shift. Which is to say... nothing other than my boss or my spouse (...my other boss ;) ) could have convinced me to put this book down. If I'd had the option, I would have simply let the thing take control of my life for an entire night, from the first page to the last.
It's THAT kind of book.
And as for what I meant about this being the book I WANTED to read? More than being true simply as a turn of phrase suggesting that this was a story I wanted to be told but didn't realize that desire until it was fulfilled (which is true as well), there's a coincidental, more literal element: I'd just finished reading "The Terror" by Dan Simmons, which was a satisfactorily engaging novel that might be better described as a compilation of all known facts about the lost Franklin Expedition seeking the Northwest Passage in the mid-1800's with occasional dialogue thrown in oh and P.S. there's a monster or something. While I liked the book, I was a bit disappointed, since I'd gotten it hoping it would be more like "Hyperion," another book by Simmons whose central monster was the first I've read about since I was 8 or 9 years old that LITERALLY gave me chills and actually scared me. Sadly, the titular Terror (which refers to the monster as well as one of the ships) appears only a handful of times in the near-1000 pages of story, never for long, and its explanation felt anticlimactic after so long being built up. However, that book seemed to find its strength in the last 5%, which focused on a surviving member of the expedition as he fell in love with an Inuit woman and became a member of her society and a sort of shaman, having had to set aside his lifelong devotion to his Christian God to do so.
I wanted to read more about THAT. It seemed to me that the book had ended just as it was finally getting to the good part.
"The Cloud Atlas" is that missing "good part." Engaging, haunting, beautifully tragic, with characters who are magnificently-described and astonishingly alive, this book masterfully weaves together themes of propaganda, religion, and shamanic magic during a time of war in a place where survival is so much its own war there may be no way to tell the two apart... or to decide which one is real.
BOTTOM LINE: An easy 5 stars, which is a rating I give out sparingly.
5. Cloud Atlas: A Novel by David Mitchell
This is the one they made into a movie.
This is a VERY VERY different book.
For anyone not acquainted with the premise, this is 5 stories sandwiched within one another like some kind of Oreo Cookie of Time, weaving all 5 tales together and demonstrating an interesting range of writing styles and points of view. Similar to Hyperion but without the super scary monster or space opera thing, this book is effective, fascinating, different…
BOTTOM LINE: A wonderful study of writing technique and an overall pretty good bunch of stories, I give this one 3.5 stars plus points for creativity, netting 4 stars total. Worth a read. (Alas, I STILL haven't seen the movie!)
6. Phases of Gravity by Dan Simmons
This short novel describes the life of an aging astronaut as he fights to get past the loss of his wife and son, the longing to walk on the moon once again that will never be fulfilled, and the need to find love in a world that feels increasingly hostile and lonely.
This is a beautiful book, but it is a character study more than anything. There's not what you could call a ton of plot or a gripping tagline… this isn't about adventure and grand shit. This is about a man who once set his feet on a world that isn't Earth, and he grows older, and he lives his life.
BOTTOM LINE: A very real study of human condition. Give it a read, it's a short one.
7. Drood by Dan Simmons
This novel is about the creation and relationship of Charles Dickens with his final character -- Edwin Drood. It is narrated by Dickens' friend Wilkie Collins, another writer.
This book is told in the language of its time, so it's not what you'd call light reading. It's… DARK. Very INTERESTINGLY dark, at that. Wilkie is an incredibly fucked-up character, a man with good intentions who slips slowly further and further into the madness of addiction and physical infirmity of old age throughout the course of the book… I might designate him as an Unreliable Narrator. Dickens is also both lovable and detestable in turn throughout the story. Drood is an enigma that is never truly solved, just as Dickens' novel was never finished.
I… loved this. I loved Dickens as a child, and while I am not exactly intimately familiar with ALL of his works, and had never heard of Wilkie Collins at all before now, reading this book… kind of makes me feel bad that I hadn't. Wilkie, despite being a really despicable person ultimately, is also strangely sympathetic, especially if you're a writer or an artist, or have ever struggled with addiction. Also, don't feel as if having read Dickens or Collins is a prerequisite to reading this book -- in keeping with the authorial techniques of the age this book's writing emulates, neither the author nor the narrator expects the reader to understand any references made to any of the characters' lives or works, and all are explained sufficiently for the novel to flow well and be emotionally impactful without getting bogged down and feeling like reading a history book or Wikipedia page.
BOTTOM LINE: Victorians Behaving Badly… (Or was Dickens an Edwardian? I forget…) This is a fantastically bizarre and twisted tale perfect for anyone who appreciates the mid-1800's as a literary device and culture.
8 & 9. Ilium and Olympos by Dan Simmons
I'm covering these two books as one because there really is no significant break in the story or change in style between them.
Plot number 1: A resurrected 20th-century scholar who once taught Homer is tasked with observing what seems to be the real life Trojan War, complete with gods and other immortals, for the purpose of reporting all deviations to a Muse while not interfering with events directly. Guess how well that goes.
Plot number 2: Some humans on a distantly future Earth, "post-literate" people living in a tightly controlled environment with their every need taken care of by mysterious robot servants and guardians who allow the humans to maintain a Gatsby-like lifestyle while not usually getting eaten by dinosaurs, learn that death is death and their lives are being controlled by Shakespeare characters. Yes, really.
Plot number 3: Some robotic literary nerds are sent to go check out WTF is causing weird quantum fluxes on Mars (spoiler: it's the Trojan War… weird that it's on Mars now, huh?)… they are fucking adorable.
These three plots eventually link up in an epic battle in which some robotic lit nerds and a resurrected Homeric scholar save and repopulate the human race while some illiterate Gatsby characters battle Calaban, Prospero, and Ariel. In space.
BOTTOM LINE: I love these books almost as much as I love the Hyperion Cantos. If you want an intro to Simmons writing amazing sci-fi but don't want to dive into a 4-book epic, start here. Everyone I am aware of who might be reading this review is almost guaranteed to fall in love with the two robot characters, Mahnmut and Orphu.
10. Life of Pi by Yann Martel
I've heard people say it's something most would have thought would be "impossible to adapt into a movie." It's not nearly intelligent enough to be difficult to adapt into a movie. It's trying to be, but it fails on every level. The only element of the story with so much as the POTENTIAL to be interesting is the bit about Pi faithfully devoting himself to three different religions... an aspect of his character that is never revisited after the first quarter of the book. The kid-in-a-boat-with-a-tiger bit is nothing but an abridged version of Poe's "Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym" with a tiger for no reason and an inexplicable... carnivorous meerkat island-creature... thing.
Honestly it seems like the author read Arthur Gordon Pym while watching The Lion King and decided to write his own Guy In A Boat story, doing the rest of his research by watching "Big Cat Diary" and visiting a zoo once or twice. Also he happened to have a cookbook of Indian food in the house, apparently.
I remember seeing this book many times in the bookstore and finding the cover intriguing but always inevitably deciding it wasn't worth reading. I finally read it as a challenge after being told by several friends how disappointing it was, and by another that it was really good. Challenge accepted -- I had to decide for myself.
I have decided that it is a weak, disjointed disaster of an untidy narrative that flirts with some ideas and situations that COULD have been interesting if they had been explored in any particular depth, but there are too many themes and too many situations that fail to become a single cohesive story in the end, and are frankly annoying in how overly simplified they are.
BOTTOM LINE: This book reads like cliff notes of better books all tossed into a grade schooler's attempt to make Calvin and Hobbes into an epic adventure story... an attempt that succeeds only in missing its own point every time. Read it for a laugh at the hilarious awfulness, but don't wast time you don't have on this piece of rank-ass shit.
Also, the movie is absolute crap.
11. The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
I won't bore you all with a plot summary. This was a REALLY quick read -- took me about 4 hours, while at work.
Most of the characters are intriguingly deplorable people. The descriptions of Daisy's voice are STUNNING. I like Gatsby, though I doubt he'll look/feel the way he does in my head when played onscreen. The narrator is interesting in his blandness... it'll be fascinating to see how he's played, ultimately. I was surprised at how graphic it got at the very end, compared to the rest of the book... I expect it must have been fairly shocking in its time.
BOTTOM LINE: Glad I read it. Intriguing look at 1920's culture. Anyone who hasn't read it really should. Fitzgerald's descriptive writing is an absolute treat -- the descriptions of Daisy's voice and the smell of flowers and the colors of things are just… delicious.
----------
THAT'S ALL FOLKS!
14 books in 5 months. Wow.
You may have noticed I have a sort of a… thing… for Dan Simmons.
I have realized that he is easily by this point my favourite author. I cannot get enough of his writing. I have, now, read over 6,000 pages of it, and I still want more. I've almost read more of his writing than all of my other favourite authors COMBINED.
I actually managed to hunt down his mailing address and sent him actual fan mail. That is massively dorky but for me, it's quite a novelty to have a favourite author who didn't die 100+ years before I was born. And who is still alive. Yeah.
Anyway, here are the coming attractions:
Currently Reading:
1. American Gods by Neil Gaiman
2. Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse
3. Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert M. Pirsig
COMING SOON: (In no particular order)
1. American Psycho by Bret Easton Ellis
2. Long Time Passing by Thomas Watson
3. The First Four Notes: Beethoven's Fifth and the Human Imagination by Matthew Guerrieri
4. Special Topics in Calamity Physics by Marisha Pessl
5. Songmaster by Orson Scott Card
6. Mirror, Mirror by Gregory Maguire
7. The Fault in Our Stars by John Green
This entry was crossposted from http://gethenian.dreamwidth.org/17176.html by means of a complex system of gears and levers run by a squirrel-powered perpetual motion machine and operated by volunteer Buddhist robots. The establishment thanks you for leaving all lolcat-themed items with the attendant dressed as a mince pie in the lobby before commenting. Ovaltine. Burma-Shave.