First Substantive Post of 2014!
Not much has been happening to me, in the middle of the winter blahs, made even blah-ier because of the Olympics. I'm doing my usual competitive "watch as little as possible of Olympic footage" (I'm still holding strong at 0 seconds, at least of actual footage... coverage I'm doing less well at!), and a lot of other shows are taking time off. I've also finished up watching Leverage, which I'd been getting into over the last several months. But now it's gone. Oh, Leverage, I'll miss you, Parker with your adorable awkwardness, Hardison with your age-of-the-geek, and Eliot with your improbably recognition of organizations (it's a very distinctive reference!). Plus random Doctor Who references (and other geek stuff).
Speaking of Doctor Who, I now apparently own a TARDIS hoodie. My stepmother went to the states and that was her gift for me. Which is nice of her, since I probably wouldn't have bought one myself.
Otherwise, TV's rather sucked with the exception of the return of the Walking Dead, and GoT is coming soon. So that's something to look forward to.
In movies, I watched Catching Fire, which I enjoyed, and it mostly kept to then novel, Ender's Game (don't worry, I got it through magic, rather than paying anything for it!), which aside from having a few all-too short scenes in the Battle Room really seemed to miss the point in a lot of ways. I was expecting some changes to make it a movie, but most of them were awful. It was okay, but if they're going to make a movie of that in the first place the least they could have done is a better one! Anyway, there are other books by better and less-problematic authors to ruin with a movie adaptation! Also watched Thor 2, which was decently enjoyable. Guardians of the Galaxy also looks pretty good from the trailer recently released (though I'll have Hooked on a Feeling running through my head for a while), and it gives me a bit of a Farscape vibe, in a good way.
And upcoming movies also includes the Veronica Mars movie, which will be released worldwide not just in select theatres but in various on demand services to everyone, not just backers, on March 14th. That's pretty unusual. I'll be getting a free copy because of my Kickstarter contribution and won't be going to theatres due to my hermit tendencies and not liking to be around people.
We'll end up with Book Foo. I read the whole Newsflesh series by Mira Grant, spoilers for the first book should really be avoided, so, what I'll do is review the first book in order and then save the other two, which contain spoilers for the first, at the end (even though I've read a couple books since), so anyone who may be reading these that doesn't want those spoilers can just skip that. As usual all book reviews will only contain very minor spoilers, usually on the level of back of the book descriptions, and sometimes the feel of a book/ending which might be indirectly spoilery, but unless stated otherwise, that's it. And mostly the reviews are copy-and-pasted from Goodreads. (As to comments, I can't speak to the level of spoilers that may come there...)
Finished: Briarpatch, by Tim Pratt
Darrin's life's been going downhill since his girlfriend Bridget left him for no reason. Six month later, he sees her again... right as she jumps to her death off a bridge. Trying to make sense of this tragedy, Darrin begins to discover there's more gong on... not just in his life, but in his relationship and the whole world. There are pathways people can learn to see that lead to other worlds, fantastic, improbable, and occasionally dangerous. Some people call it the Briarpatch. And what happened to Bridget is wrapped up in it... as is, potentially, a chance to find her again.
I'm generally more of a science fiction guy than a fantasy, but when I do like fantasy, this is one of the types I like. A mysterious other world just adjacent to our own, unseen by most, full of pathways that lead to improbable places or doorways that open on impossible vistas. It's the same sort of thing that attracted me to Stephen King's Dark Tower series, and Neil Gaiman's Neverwhere. Now, it's not quite in that calibre... there's nothing wrong with the prose, but it doesn't quite have the same power to carry you along as these other books, it's more simple, utilitarian. But the author does a really good job with the fantasy element that attracted me, hitting that particular pleasure button well and repeatedly. The fantastic elements are, largely, compelling and, though somewhat a random hodgepodge (as these books tend towards), there are some really imaginative vistas here as they dip into some of the improbable worlds. For sheer sense of wonder, I probably liked the Briarpatch worlds better even than the fantastic elements of the previously mentioned Neverwhere (though, in Gaiman's defense, he originally conceived the story for a television miniseries, and was probably writing with a TV budget in mind).
The characters are interesting, quirky enough to make you want to learn more about them, but not so weird that it's hard to relate, at least to the ones we're meant to relate to. The plot and pacing are pretty good, with some qualms. There's sort of a tone shift as you go through the book... as you can read from the description, it obviously starts out in a pretty dark place, and there's something of a bitter tone to the early half, like the author's trying to depress the reader about even fairly ordinary lives. A tendency towards deliberate emotional cruelty or callousness in some of the characters that can also make one bleak about human nature. In fact, there's a part early on that, for people in certain depressive situations, it might not be entirely wise for them to read because while the book itself doesn't exactly counsel suicide, there are characters who do, in a rather persuasive way. As the story goes on, the bitter tone fades, but by the end... it's almost too upbeat. There's a point in the book where are lot of people are heading to the same place at once, primed for a confrontation... and after that confrontation, the book meanders, like it's lost it's way, and then quickly tries to wrap everything up, and to get there, they have to skip over some important emotional beats for many characters, they simply change in a few pages, if not entirely off panel. It makes the end somewhat disconnected from the rest of the plot, both in pace and feel.
The resolution was a let down, not just in how it came about but in how complete it was... sure, it's not like everybody's story is over, or at least, many are moving on to completely new stories, but there's a strong sense of everything being tied up nicely so that there are no loose ends. And in most fiction, you want that... but it just feels wrong, in a briarpatch, to have it end that way. There should be loose ends, and tangled messes that don't ever get undone, and maybe a few thorns.
I guess another way to put it is that, without realizing it, I was hoping it would be the first book in a series. Which, in a way, is a decent endorsement of the book itself. And while it doesn't seem to be a series, there is room for more stories, and if they came, I might like to see them.
Finished: Feed, by Mira Grant (Newsflesh, Book 1)
It's been over 25 years since the zombies rose, and humanity has survived. So have the zombies. Large areas of the country are written off as unreclaimable due to zombie infestation. But the threat isn't just still out there... it's in every living person. When they die, they will rise, hungry for flesh and kick off a whole new apocalypse. But people can get used to almost anything, and, with stringent precautions and regular small-scale outbreaks, life goes on. Georgia and Shaun Mason, two orphans of the original Rising, were raised as adoptive brother and sister, and now medium-sized players in the new, post-Rising news media, largely dominated by independent bloggers. They, along with their technical expert nicknamed 'Buffy', have just been chosen for a great honor... to be the only bloggers on the campaign trail of leading young candidate Peter Ryman. But as they follow the campaign, tragedy begins to strike, and the group uncovers a conspiracy.
I'd heard good things about this series from others, and judging by this first book, I can see why. It's practically a textbook example of how to take a well-used (some would argue overused) premise and breathe new life into it.
In some ways, you could almost view this as a continuation of another book that attempted this method, World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War... of course, it's not, the mechanics of the virus are very different, but there's a connection in theme, the idea that the zombie apocalypse isn't going to be the end, it's just a change. World War Z shows us how we may win, Feed shows us the change in the decades after.
That requires a lot more worldbuilding than your typical zombie novel, but Grant manages it fantastically, imagining a world of people terrified to be out in large groups, where blood tests are frequent and mandatory, and where people seriously propose destroying every large mammal on Earth. The virus behind the zombie outbreak is also compellingly thought out, and in many ways far more scary and dangerous than your usual one. I got involved in the characters immediately, and the plot had a good mix of action and quieter moments.
Most importantly, it made me feel. It's at turns exciting and sweet and sad, and there's an emotional gut punch that rivals anything in Walking Dead or any other zombie-media I've encountered.
It's not a perfect book... there are a few points where it drags a little (maybe I wasn't all that into the presidential campaign stuff), and I think parts of the climax, including the conspiracy itself, read a bit too much like characters confronting a conspiracy on a mediocre TV or movie, but that aside, it's very, very good. Both for novelty and quality, I think this will one day be looked back on as one of the pillars of zombie tales, mandatory reading for fans of the genre, right up there with I Am Legend and World War Z.
I don't give out five stars very often. I don't have to just enjoy a book, but I have to really love it and know I'm going to be reading it several times. For much of the book, I thought this was probably going to turn out to be a three or four... but the gut-punch got me, and stuck with me, and right now, I think this is one of those five-star books. Maybe I'll revise it downward after a few rereads, though.
Because of what I'd heard, and because it was cheaper, when I bought this, I bought the whole trilogy in one set. Now, I'm glad I made that decision, because if I hadn't, I'd be itching to track down the second book anyway. Highly recommended for zombie fans, and maybe even if you're not.
Finished: vN: The First Machine Dynasty, by Madeline Ashby
Amy Peterson is a vN, an intelligent robotic life form that looks human, but isn't. They can't eat the same food, they are much stronger and faster, and, when they consume enough, they automatically reproduce. vN might be a terrifying plague, if not for one fact... they suffer extreme pain and even die if they even witness a human being hurt. It's a failsafe. Except, when Amy's grandmother appears, she's violent enough to kill a human child without remorse, and Amy has to eat her to save her mother. And then Amy realizes that she doesn't have a failsafe either, which means humanity wants to study or destroy her. And her evil grandmother is now living inside her head.
I instantly liked the book as I began. I'm a sucker for good novels about AI, especially ones that offer different views of how they think and interact with the world, more than simply being "just like humans" or "compliant slaves." Here, the twist is that they're almost genuinely a life-form, capable of unrestricted reproduction. They have some type of limited recognition of rights, they participate in the economy, and they're breeding. But there's the failsafe, which keeps them safe and compliant. And the treatment of the failsafe in the novel starts out relatively innocuously, non-judgmental, and it's possible to think it's a good thing, or at least a reasonable precaution. But as the book goes on, seeing through the eyes of vN as you believe they are 'people', maybe with different mindsets, but people all the same, it's slowly revealed what an absolute horror a failsafe can be. It's not a new idea in SF, that a "don't hurt humans" failsafe is slavery (when there's no corresponding restriction on humans), but it's handled very well here, and allows the author to explore issues of imbalance in power in relationships and society.
In fact, the same trick is pulled a few more times, when something that you think is good, or at least innocently neutral, is at some point revealed to be something altogether more disturbing when you scratch the surface, and some of these provide emotional gut punches that are always good reading, especially when you can cause it in sympathy with a non-human intelligence.
There are also plenty of intriguing ideas spread out through the book, both connected to the main theme and separate from it.
Unfortunately, one of the flaws is that those ideas are a bit scattershot, and, as a result, the world itself suffers some from believability problems. Too much aside from the existence of the vN themselves and a few cool doo-dads feels too... 'present day.' Or even old-fashioned. Robots seem to interact with the internet through a system that projects it on the walls, rather than just being able to do it internally, to use one example that never quite fit, and they talk about 'storage limits' for rather conventional data as though it's something that should be a concern in a world some 50 years hence. Today I can carry more data on my keychain than I could in a dozen computers 20 years ago, I'd think by the point in the novel, people could store more data in a wall than any being could conceivably use. But it's a minor gripe, and the plot doesn't usually hinge on it.
More significantly, I also think some of her thinking about humanity's treatment of vN is either not entirely believable, or lacks enough details to really be clear on what's going on. And some of her judgments on humanity itself and the motivations of them are a little harsher than I'd personally endorse, even if I agree with some of the core premises.
The ending falters somewhat, which isn't a huge problem in a book that is largely a great ride... I just found myself really enjoying the book up to a certain point, and then... it trails off and becomes okay, but I didn't feel as much connection to the plot and characters. In parts of it, and throughout the book I also found myself occasionally unclear on exactly what was happening, or had just happened, despite a couple attempts at rereading, but that may have been my pitiful human brain being a little more distracted than usual at the time, and it'll clear up on the reread.
Flaws aside, I did really like it... it's probably on the low end of 4 stars, but it qualifies nonetheless, and I do want to see more, so I definitely plan to check out the sequel, iD.
Finished: Nexus, by Ramez Naam
It's 2040, and there's a new club drug making the rounds... it allows those who take it to share short-range telepathic experiences with other Nexus users. But it's not a chemical, it's nanotechnological. And technology can be hacked, improved on. That's what Kade Lane has been doing with some colleagues... he's found a way to make the Nexus effect permanently, and extend it, providing an interface to the human brain.
To the US government, such tinkering is highly illegal, because they're afraid of where the technology can go. But when they bust Lane, they offer him a deal... the charges against him and his friends can be reduced, if he helps them take down a Chinese scientist working in similar areas... with potentially much more catastrophic results. But things aren't so simple, and Kade must find his own path through a dangerous situation that could affect billions of lives.
This book really succeeds on a technological level, providing exciting glimpses of where technology may lead us in the future, worlds where our own brains have 'apps' like our phones, and the multitude of wonderful and terrifying uses people might find for that. It's all pretty convincing, too, and that's no doubt because of the author's own scientific credentials.
It also succeeds in showing us a world full of deep moral questions, ones that don't really have easy answers. The book does seem to advocate a particular point of view (pro-transhumanism), one everyone may not agree with (although, largely, I do), but he doesn't shy away from showing some of the severe risks and downsides, and giving a few questions to ponder that don't have easy answers.
Where it's a little less successful is as a story. It's not bad, by any means, it's still fun, something of a near-future action-spy thriller, and there are plenty of twists and turns. It's exciting, but I have to admit, when the plot was coming to the climax I was missing the earlier high concept exploration of ideas. And the characters could perhaps use a little depth... there are a lot of them, and I'm afraid that there were plenty of times I couldn't remember who was who outside of a few key names. Part of the problem there was shifting viewpoints, showing, say, in the midst of a situation involving the main characters, switching to a US command center where they're monitoring the situation, then people on another faction doing what they do in response, a soldier on the ground who's not one of the main characters, etc. Some of these could probably have been cut out or revealed in other ways and kept the number of characters down and, thus, allowed us more time to get to know the ones left. But the strongest part isn't the plot, it's the ideas the plot is built on. I'll be rereading the book for the ideas, over the story or characters... but I'm sure I WILL be rereading it, because I really enjoyed it. I'll also be checking out the sequel, Crux.
Finished: Deception Well, by Linda Nagata
The city of Silk hangs in the sky 200 miles above the planet Deception Well, a planet full of biological complexity believed to be fatal to anybody who descends the space elevator. And yet the citizens of Silk can't got anywhere else, stranded there for generations.
Lot is the son of a charismatic prophet who went down to Deception Well, hoping to find communion there rather than death, and many of his followers still believe he's down there and will return. Lot doesn't know what he believes... but he does know that he has the same ability to influence minds and that something needs to be done.
This is set in the same universe as The Bohr Maker, although a significant amount of time later, and you can read it alone if you wish to, although it may help to understand a few of the concepts, and the ending has a little more resonance having read the earlier book. I also didn't like this as much as The Bohr Maker, so maybe it'd be a good idea to start there for that reason alone.
That's not to say this is a bad book. I liked it, and there's a dizzying array of ideas and concepts here, some which again seem ahead of their time, with more recent books dealing with a few of the same themes and getting more recognition for it. It's a dense and complex book. Unfortunately, I think that complexity does come at the expense of plot, it's just not as entertaining as it might be... in fact, for much of the book there wasn't anybody or group I was rooting for, they all seemed to be in the wrong. Which isn't a flaw itself, good books can exist with no characters you want to win, but it needs to be that much better to pull it off, and here, it doesn't quite reach that level, the characters are a little too flat and their ethically troubling decisions never seem adequately addressed, nor does the story build to any kind of particularly satisfying conclusion. It reads like a book where the author got so caught up in the ideas the story was based on that they lost sight of the story itself in trying to explore them.
I will be continuing to the next book in the series, Vast, eventually, which I've heard is much better.
Finished: Deadline, by Mira Grant (Newsflesh, Book 2)
Cut entirely for spoilers of previous book. Short version: Liked it a lot but not as much as the first.
Deadline returns us to the post-zombie apocalypse world introduced in Feed, in which humanity has more-or-less adjusted to the fact that every time somebody dies, they turn into a ravenous monster and could easily spark another outbreak of such monsters. After the events of the last novel, we follow the perspective of Shaun Mason, who is still reeling from the conspiracy they partly uncovered during the Presidential campaign, and attempting to run the After the End Times news blog site. It's stressful, and he isn't doing the best job of it, and the stress goes into overdrive when somebody shows up with more information about those being the conspiracy, the ones who got away clean, the ones Shaun has sworn revenge on. That puts Shaun and his friends in danger... but at least he still has his sister to talk to.
The second part in a trilogy usually suffers a little drip in quality, in my experience. You don't get either the thrill of excitement from the story unfolding in the first book, discovering everything for the first time, nor a complete resolution. It's just advancing things. Still, there's plenty to love from the first book that gets continued here, oodles of zombie action, some dramatic revelations (some I'm not too sure about), and the feel of exploring a world that's had a lot of thought put into it. It doesn't pack the same punch as the original, but it's solidly enjoyable all the way through.
In terms of flaws, well, the conspiracy plot itself still seems to be where the biggest ones lie. Characters suddenly acting like bad movie villains, or being stupidly careless... not to mention the idea of not being able to disseminate information about a conspiracy as huge as that never really rings true. But none of these are crippling, they may inspire an eyeroll here or there, but the book is a page-turner despite that. And even some of the revelations that I'm not sure I like, I look forward to going back to the first book and seeing how, if at all, they were set up, because I totally missed them. There's a couple revelations that I'll have to wait for the next book to evaluate fairly, too.
One major element of the book, Shaun's conversations with his sister George, I kind of went back and forth on. Occasionally, it felt like a gimmicky way to try to keep the best character of the first book still in play, despite everything that happened, and it didn't really feel authentic. At other times, I was eager to see how it would play out and get George's reaction to an event. And it certainly allowed for a more unusual character than I'm used to. In the end, I think I'm generally positive on it, but with reservations.
As for my rating, for most of the book, I was thinking I'd give it three stars, because I liked it, I just wasn't passionate. The last 50-100 pages kicked it up to four stars, because it really started taking things to a new level. The last couple pages? Almost brought it back to three. And it might even color my feelings on the first book's score, too. Right now, I don't like it, but I'm willing to give it the benefit of the doubt until I see how they handle it, and leave it as four until then. And if nothing else it made me want to dig into the next book right now.
Finished: Blackout, by Mira Grant (Newsflesh, Book 3)
Cut entirely for spoilers of previous two books. Short version: Not as good as the previous two, but still worth reading.
This is the third book in the series set roughly twenty-five years after The Rising, a zombie apocalypse that turned out to not be an apocalypse. Humanity survived, but changed, because the virus that caused the dead to rise was still inside everybody, threatening a new outbreak anytime somebody died or was exposed to a live zombie. The series follows internet bloggers Georgia (George) and Shaun Mason, who uncover a huge conspiracy involving the Infection.
I loved the first book. The second book wasn't as good, but I liked it a lot, up until the reveal in the last few pages. But I was willing to give it a try, largely on the positive feelings built up so far.
At least it wasn't as bad as I feared. Now, don't get me wrong, I still wish it hadn't happened... I think it's a bit of a cheap way to undo one of the most emotional deaths in recent memory, in the first book, in order to build to something like a happy ending. I would have rather the author left the character dead and have read a story that followed the survivors as they tried to unravel and expose the conspiracy, and they got an ending that was far more bittersweet. But, if they had to pull the card they did, the (last chance to avoid spoilers!) clone card, the author at least handled it reasonably well, papering over it with a plausible (by the standards of SF at least) explanation for how it worked, and not having some of the blind-spots that are usually involved in plots like these. I wish the story hadn't gone in this direction, but I don't dislike it enough that I think I might not reread the series.
One of the recurring problems in the series is the conspiracy elements don't really ring true, it verges on the cartoony super-villain territory, and, unfortunately, that continues here, although they give lip-service to a few good reasons for some of the policies they've enacted, I'm never in any serious doubt that they're both completely evil and mind-bogglingly stupid. The number of times 'random zombie outbreak' is employed alone as a means to handle problems is almost comic. But, it leads to some good scenes of zombie-action, and I can look past it. It's not the worst example of incompetent conspiracies in fiction, after all. It just makes the ending a little weaker, which is a shame for such a fun ride.
It's not just the weak conspiracy, or the cheap twist at the end of book two to get a happy outcome that left me a little dissatisfied with the ending, the ending itself just seemed to come a little too abruptly with little closure on a character level. Or rather, there was closure, but too much happened off-the-page and we merely heard about it, when I wanted to see them deal with a few of the issues.
Still, all in all, a fun series, and recommended to fans of the zombie genre... it just doesn't quite live up to a great first book.
Started: Coyote, by Allen Steele
Started: Limit of Vision, by Linda Nagata
And that's all!
Speaking of Doctor Who, I now apparently own a TARDIS hoodie. My stepmother went to the states and that was her gift for me. Which is nice of her, since I probably wouldn't have bought one myself.
Otherwise, TV's rather sucked with the exception of the return of the Walking Dead, and GoT is coming soon. So that's something to look forward to.
In movies, I watched Catching Fire, which I enjoyed, and it mostly kept to then novel, Ender's Game (don't worry, I got it through magic, rather than paying anything for it!), which aside from having a few all-too short scenes in the Battle Room really seemed to miss the point in a lot of ways. I was expecting some changes to make it a movie, but most of them were awful. It was okay, but if they're going to make a movie of that in the first place the least they could have done is a better one! Anyway, there are other books by better and less-problematic authors to ruin with a movie adaptation! Also watched Thor 2, which was decently enjoyable. Guardians of the Galaxy also looks pretty good from the trailer recently released (though I'll have Hooked on a Feeling running through my head for a while), and it gives me a bit of a Farscape vibe, in a good way.
And upcoming movies also includes the Veronica Mars movie, which will be released worldwide not just in select theatres but in various on demand services to everyone, not just backers, on March 14th. That's pretty unusual. I'll be getting a free copy because of my Kickstarter contribution and won't be going to theatres due to my hermit tendencies and not liking to be around people.
We'll end up with Book Foo. I read the whole Newsflesh series by Mira Grant, spoilers for the first book should really be avoided, so, what I'll do is review the first book in order and then save the other two, which contain spoilers for the first, at the end (even though I've read a couple books since), so anyone who may be reading these that doesn't want those spoilers can just skip that. As usual all book reviews will only contain very minor spoilers, usually on the level of back of the book descriptions, and sometimes the feel of a book/ending which might be indirectly spoilery, but unless stated otherwise, that's it. And mostly the reviews are copy-and-pasted from Goodreads. (As to comments, I can't speak to the level of spoilers that may come there...)
Finished: Briarpatch, by Tim Pratt
Darrin's life's been going downhill since his girlfriend Bridget left him for no reason. Six month later, he sees her again... right as she jumps to her death off a bridge. Trying to make sense of this tragedy, Darrin begins to discover there's more gong on... not just in his life, but in his relationship and the whole world. There are pathways people can learn to see that lead to other worlds, fantastic, improbable, and occasionally dangerous. Some people call it the Briarpatch. And what happened to Bridget is wrapped up in it... as is, potentially, a chance to find her again.
I'm generally more of a science fiction guy than a fantasy, but when I do like fantasy, this is one of the types I like. A mysterious other world just adjacent to our own, unseen by most, full of pathways that lead to improbable places or doorways that open on impossible vistas. It's the same sort of thing that attracted me to Stephen King's Dark Tower series, and Neil Gaiman's Neverwhere. Now, it's not quite in that calibre... there's nothing wrong with the prose, but it doesn't quite have the same power to carry you along as these other books, it's more simple, utilitarian. But the author does a really good job with the fantasy element that attracted me, hitting that particular pleasure button well and repeatedly. The fantastic elements are, largely, compelling and, though somewhat a random hodgepodge (as these books tend towards), there are some really imaginative vistas here as they dip into some of the improbable worlds. For sheer sense of wonder, I probably liked the Briarpatch worlds better even than the fantastic elements of the previously mentioned Neverwhere (though, in Gaiman's defense, he originally conceived the story for a television miniseries, and was probably writing with a TV budget in mind).
The characters are interesting, quirky enough to make you want to learn more about them, but not so weird that it's hard to relate, at least to the ones we're meant to relate to. The plot and pacing are pretty good, with some qualms. There's sort of a tone shift as you go through the book... as you can read from the description, it obviously starts out in a pretty dark place, and there's something of a bitter tone to the early half, like the author's trying to depress the reader about even fairly ordinary lives. A tendency towards deliberate emotional cruelty or callousness in some of the characters that can also make one bleak about human nature. In fact, there's a part early on that, for people in certain depressive situations, it might not be entirely wise for them to read because while the book itself doesn't exactly counsel suicide, there are characters who do, in a rather persuasive way. As the story goes on, the bitter tone fades, but by the end... it's almost too upbeat. There's a point in the book where are lot of people are heading to the same place at once, primed for a confrontation... and after that confrontation, the book meanders, like it's lost it's way, and then quickly tries to wrap everything up, and to get there, they have to skip over some important emotional beats for many characters, they simply change in a few pages, if not entirely off panel. It makes the end somewhat disconnected from the rest of the plot, both in pace and feel.
The resolution was a let down, not just in how it came about but in how complete it was... sure, it's not like everybody's story is over, or at least, many are moving on to completely new stories, but there's a strong sense of everything being tied up nicely so that there are no loose ends. And in most fiction, you want that... but it just feels wrong, in a briarpatch, to have it end that way. There should be loose ends, and tangled messes that don't ever get undone, and maybe a few thorns.
I guess another way to put it is that, without realizing it, I was hoping it would be the first book in a series. Which, in a way, is a decent endorsement of the book itself. And while it doesn't seem to be a series, there is room for more stories, and if they came, I might like to see them.
Finished: Feed, by Mira Grant (Newsflesh, Book 1)
It's been over 25 years since the zombies rose, and humanity has survived. So have the zombies. Large areas of the country are written off as unreclaimable due to zombie infestation. But the threat isn't just still out there... it's in every living person. When they die, they will rise, hungry for flesh and kick off a whole new apocalypse. But people can get used to almost anything, and, with stringent precautions and regular small-scale outbreaks, life goes on. Georgia and Shaun Mason, two orphans of the original Rising, were raised as adoptive brother and sister, and now medium-sized players in the new, post-Rising news media, largely dominated by independent bloggers. They, along with their technical expert nicknamed 'Buffy', have just been chosen for a great honor... to be the only bloggers on the campaign trail of leading young candidate Peter Ryman. But as they follow the campaign, tragedy begins to strike, and the group uncovers a conspiracy.
I'd heard good things about this series from others, and judging by this first book, I can see why. It's practically a textbook example of how to take a well-used (some would argue overused) premise and breathe new life into it.
In some ways, you could almost view this as a continuation of another book that attempted this method, World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War... of course, it's not, the mechanics of the virus are very different, but there's a connection in theme, the idea that the zombie apocalypse isn't going to be the end, it's just a change. World War Z shows us how we may win, Feed shows us the change in the decades after.
That requires a lot more worldbuilding than your typical zombie novel, but Grant manages it fantastically, imagining a world of people terrified to be out in large groups, where blood tests are frequent and mandatory, and where people seriously propose destroying every large mammal on Earth. The virus behind the zombie outbreak is also compellingly thought out, and in many ways far more scary and dangerous than your usual one. I got involved in the characters immediately, and the plot had a good mix of action and quieter moments.
Most importantly, it made me feel. It's at turns exciting and sweet and sad, and there's an emotional gut punch that rivals anything in Walking Dead or any other zombie-media I've encountered.
It's not a perfect book... there are a few points where it drags a little (maybe I wasn't all that into the presidential campaign stuff), and I think parts of the climax, including the conspiracy itself, read a bit too much like characters confronting a conspiracy on a mediocre TV or movie, but that aside, it's very, very good. Both for novelty and quality, I think this will one day be looked back on as one of the pillars of zombie tales, mandatory reading for fans of the genre, right up there with I Am Legend and World War Z.
I don't give out five stars very often. I don't have to just enjoy a book, but I have to really love it and know I'm going to be reading it several times. For much of the book, I thought this was probably going to turn out to be a three or four... but the gut-punch got me, and stuck with me, and right now, I think this is one of those five-star books. Maybe I'll revise it downward after a few rereads, though.
Because of what I'd heard, and because it was cheaper, when I bought this, I bought the whole trilogy in one set. Now, I'm glad I made that decision, because if I hadn't, I'd be itching to track down the second book anyway. Highly recommended for zombie fans, and maybe even if you're not.
Finished: vN: The First Machine Dynasty, by Madeline Ashby
Amy Peterson is a vN, an intelligent robotic life form that looks human, but isn't. They can't eat the same food, they are much stronger and faster, and, when they consume enough, they automatically reproduce. vN might be a terrifying plague, if not for one fact... they suffer extreme pain and even die if they even witness a human being hurt. It's a failsafe. Except, when Amy's grandmother appears, she's violent enough to kill a human child without remorse, and Amy has to eat her to save her mother. And then Amy realizes that she doesn't have a failsafe either, which means humanity wants to study or destroy her. And her evil grandmother is now living inside her head.
I instantly liked the book as I began. I'm a sucker for good novels about AI, especially ones that offer different views of how they think and interact with the world, more than simply being "just like humans" or "compliant slaves." Here, the twist is that they're almost genuinely a life-form, capable of unrestricted reproduction. They have some type of limited recognition of rights, they participate in the economy, and they're breeding. But there's the failsafe, which keeps them safe and compliant. And the treatment of the failsafe in the novel starts out relatively innocuously, non-judgmental, and it's possible to think it's a good thing, or at least a reasonable precaution. But as the book goes on, seeing through the eyes of vN as you believe they are 'people', maybe with different mindsets, but people all the same, it's slowly revealed what an absolute horror a failsafe can be. It's not a new idea in SF, that a "don't hurt humans" failsafe is slavery (when there's no corresponding restriction on humans), but it's handled very well here, and allows the author to explore issues of imbalance in power in relationships and society.
In fact, the same trick is pulled a few more times, when something that you think is good, or at least innocently neutral, is at some point revealed to be something altogether more disturbing when you scratch the surface, and some of these provide emotional gut punches that are always good reading, especially when you can cause it in sympathy with a non-human intelligence.
There are also plenty of intriguing ideas spread out through the book, both connected to the main theme and separate from it.
Unfortunately, one of the flaws is that those ideas are a bit scattershot, and, as a result, the world itself suffers some from believability problems. Too much aside from the existence of the vN themselves and a few cool doo-dads feels too... 'present day.' Or even old-fashioned. Robots seem to interact with the internet through a system that projects it on the walls, rather than just being able to do it internally, to use one example that never quite fit, and they talk about 'storage limits' for rather conventional data as though it's something that should be a concern in a world some 50 years hence. Today I can carry more data on my keychain than I could in a dozen computers 20 years ago, I'd think by the point in the novel, people could store more data in a wall than any being could conceivably use. But it's a minor gripe, and the plot doesn't usually hinge on it.
More significantly, I also think some of her thinking about humanity's treatment of vN is either not entirely believable, or lacks enough details to really be clear on what's going on. And some of her judgments on humanity itself and the motivations of them are a little harsher than I'd personally endorse, even if I agree with some of the core premises.
The ending falters somewhat, which isn't a huge problem in a book that is largely a great ride... I just found myself really enjoying the book up to a certain point, and then... it trails off and becomes okay, but I didn't feel as much connection to the plot and characters. In parts of it, and throughout the book I also found myself occasionally unclear on exactly what was happening, or had just happened, despite a couple attempts at rereading, but that may have been my pitiful human brain being a little more distracted than usual at the time, and it'll clear up on the reread.
Flaws aside, I did really like it... it's probably on the low end of 4 stars, but it qualifies nonetheless, and I do want to see more, so I definitely plan to check out the sequel, iD.
Finished: Nexus, by Ramez Naam
It's 2040, and there's a new club drug making the rounds... it allows those who take it to share short-range telepathic experiences with other Nexus users. But it's not a chemical, it's nanotechnological. And technology can be hacked, improved on. That's what Kade Lane has been doing with some colleagues... he's found a way to make the Nexus effect permanently, and extend it, providing an interface to the human brain.
To the US government, such tinkering is highly illegal, because they're afraid of where the technology can go. But when they bust Lane, they offer him a deal... the charges against him and his friends can be reduced, if he helps them take down a Chinese scientist working in similar areas... with potentially much more catastrophic results. But things aren't so simple, and Kade must find his own path through a dangerous situation that could affect billions of lives.
This book really succeeds on a technological level, providing exciting glimpses of where technology may lead us in the future, worlds where our own brains have 'apps' like our phones, and the multitude of wonderful and terrifying uses people might find for that. It's all pretty convincing, too, and that's no doubt because of the author's own scientific credentials.
It also succeeds in showing us a world full of deep moral questions, ones that don't really have easy answers. The book does seem to advocate a particular point of view (pro-transhumanism), one everyone may not agree with (although, largely, I do), but he doesn't shy away from showing some of the severe risks and downsides, and giving a few questions to ponder that don't have easy answers.
Where it's a little less successful is as a story. It's not bad, by any means, it's still fun, something of a near-future action-spy thriller, and there are plenty of twists and turns. It's exciting, but I have to admit, when the plot was coming to the climax I was missing the earlier high concept exploration of ideas. And the characters could perhaps use a little depth... there are a lot of them, and I'm afraid that there were plenty of times I couldn't remember who was who outside of a few key names. Part of the problem there was shifting viewpoints, showing, say, in the midst of a situation involving the main characters, switching to a US command center where they're monitoring the situation, then people on another faction doing what they do in response, a soldier on the ground who's not one of the main characters, etc. Some of these could probably have been cut out or revealed in other ways and kept the number of characters down and, thus, allowed us more time to get to know the ones left. But the strongest part isn't the plot, it's the ideas the plot is built on. I'll be rereading the book for the ideas, over the story or characters... but I'm sure I WILL be rereading it, because I really enjoyed it. I'll also be checking out the sequel, Crux.
Finished: Deception Well, by Linda Nagata
The city of Silk hangs in the sky 200 miles above the planet Deception Well, a planet full of biological complexity believed to be fatal to anybody who descends the space elevator. And yet the citizens of Silk can't got anywhere else, stranded there for generations.
Lot is the son of a charismatic prophet who went down to Deception Well, hoping to find communion there rather than death, and many of his followers still believe he's down there and will return. Lot doesn't know what he believes... but he does know that he has the same ability to influence minds and that something needs to be done.
This is set in the same universe as The Bohr Maker, although a significant amount of time later, and you can read it alone if you wish to, although it may help to understand a few of the concepts, and the ending has a little more resonance having read the earlier book. I also didn't like this as much as The Bohr Maker, so maybe it'd be a good idea to start there for that reason alone.
That's not to say this is a bad book. I liked it, and there's a dizzying array of ideas and concepts here, some which again seem ahead of their time, with more recent books dealing with a few of the same themes and getting more recognition for it. It's a dense and complex book. Unfortunately, I think that complexity does come at the expense of plot, it's just not as entertaining as it might be... in fact, for much of the book there wasn't anybody or group I was rooting for, they all seemed to be in the wrong. Which isn't a flaw itself, good books can exist with no characters you want to win, but it needs to be that much better to pull it off, and here, it doesn't quite reach that level, the characters are a little too flat and their ethically troubling decisions never seem adequately addressed, nor does the story build to any kind of particularly satisfying conclusion. It reads like a book where the author got so caught up in the ideas the story was based on that they lost sight of the story itself in trying to explore them.
I will be continuing to the next book in the series, Vast, eventually, which I've heard is much better.
Finished: Deadline, by Mira Grant (Newsflesh, Book 2)
Cut entirely for spoilers of previous book. Short version: Liked it a lot but not as much as the first.
Deadline returns us to the post-zombie apocalypse world introduced in Feed, in which humanity has more-or-less adjusted to the fact that every time somebody dies, they turn into a ravenous monster and could easily spark another outbreak of such monsters. After the events of the last novel, we follow the perspective of Shaun Mason, who is still reeling from the conspiracy they partly uncovered during the Presidential campaign, and attempting to run the After the End Times news blog site. It's stressful, and he isn't doing the best job of it, and the stress goes into overdrive when somebody shows up with more information about those being the conspiracy, the ones who got away clean, the ones Shaun has sworn revenge on. That puts Shaun and his friends in danger... but at least he still has his sister to talk to.
The second part in a trilogy usually suffers a little drip in quality, in my experience. You don't get either the thrill of excitement from the story unfolding in the first book, discovering everything for the first time, nor a complete resolution. It's just advancing things. Still, there's plenty to love from the first book that gets continued here, oodles of zombie action, some dramatic revelations (some I'm not too sure about), and the feel of exploring a world that's had a lot of thought put into it. It doesn't pack the same punch as the original, but it's solidly enjoyable all the way through.
In terms of flaws, well, the conspiracy plot itself still seems to be where the biggest ones lie. Characters suddenly acting like bad movie villains, or being stupidly careless... not to mention the idea of not being able to disseminate information about a conspiracy as huge as that never really rings true. But none of these are crippling, they may inspire an eyeroll here or there, but the book is a page-turner despite that. And even some of the revelations that I'm not sure I like, I look forward to going back to the first book and seeing how, if at all, they were set up, because I totally missed them. There's a couple revelations that I'll have to wait for the next book to evaluate fairly, too.
One major element of the book, Shaun's conversations with his sister George, I kind of went back and forth on. Occasionally, it felt like a gimmicky way to try to keep the best character of the first book still in play, despite everything that happened, and it didn't really feel authentic. At other times, I was eager to see how it would play out and get George's reaction to an event. And it certainly allowed for a more unusual character than I'm used to. In the end, I think I'm generally positive on it, but with reservations.
As for my rating, for most of the book, I was thinking I'd give it three stars, because I liked it, I just wasn't passionate. The last 50-100 pages kicked it up to four stars, because it really started taking things to a new level. The last couple pages? Almost brought it back to three. And it might even color my feelings on the first book's score, too. Right now, I don't like it, but I'm willing to give it the benefit of the doubt until I see how they handle it, and leave it as four until then. And if nothing else it made me want to dig into the next book right now.
Finished: Blackout, by Mira Grant (Newsflesh, Book 3)
Cut entirely for spoilers of previous two books. Short version: Not as good as the previous two, but still worth reading.
This is the third book in the series set roughly twenty-five years after The Rising, a zombie apocalypse that turned out to not be an apocalypse. Humanity survived, but changed, because the virus that caused the dead to rise was still inside everybody, threatening a new outbreak anytime somebody died or was exposed to a live zombie. The series follows internet bloggers Georgia (George) and Shaun Mason, who uncover a huge conspiracy involving the Infection.
I loved the first book. The second book wasn't as good, but I liked it a lot, up until the reveal in the last few pages. But I was willing to give it a try, largely on the positive feelings built up so far.
At least it wasn't as bad as I feared. Now, don't get me wrong, I still wish it hadn't happened... I think it's a bit of a cheap way to undo one of the most emotional deaths in recent memory, in the first book, in order to build to something like a happy ending. I would have rather the author left the character dead and have read a story that followed the survivors as they tried to unravel and expose the conspiracy, and they got an ending that was far more bittersweet. But, if they had to pull the card they did, the (last chance to avoid spoilers!) clone card, the author at least handled it reasonably well, papering over it with a plausible (by the standards of SF at least) explanation for how it worked, and not having some of the blind-spots that are usually involved in plots like these. I wish the story hadn't gone in this direction, but I don't dislike it enough that I think I might not reread the series.
One of the recurring problems in the series is the conspiracy elements don't really ring true, it verges on the cartoony super-villain territory, and, unfortunately, that continues here, although they give lip-service to a few good reasons for some of the policies they've enacted, I'm never in any serious doubt that they're both completely evil and mind-bogglingly stupid. The number of times 'random zombie outbreak' is employed alone as a means to handle problems is almost comic. But, it leads to some good scenes of zombie-action, and I can look past it. It's not the worst example of incompetent conspiracies in fiction, after all. It just makes the ending a little weaker, which is a shame for such a fun ride.
It's not just the weak conspiracy, or the cheap twist at the end of book two to get a happy outcome that left me a little dissatisfied with the ending, the ending itself just seemed to come a little too abruptly with little closure on a character level. Or rather, there was closure, but too much happened off-the-page and we merely heard about it, when I wanted to see them deal with a few of the issues.
Still, all in all, a fun series, and recommended to fans of the zombie genre... it just doesn't quite live up to a great first book.
Started: Coyote, by Allen Steele
Started: Limit of Vision, by Linda Nagata
And that's all!