I hold with those who favor fire
This is the way the world ends: not with a bang but a Double Shyamalan.
Somehow I ended up reading two books about the end of the world in a row. These were Ron Currie Jr.'s Everything Matters! and Greg Bear's City at the End of Time, and the similarities between them basically end at their shared theme. Their stark difference in quality, though, is something I feel compelled to comment on enough to dust off this LJ account (since when are there mandatory video ads?) and write reviews after I've been up too late reading a book.
There will be some very slight spoilers, mostly for the book I didn't like. I have a feeling that spoilers don't actually matter much for apocalyptic novels. YOU KNOW THE WORLD ENDS. IT'S ON THE DUST JACKET AND ONE OF THEM MENTIONS IT IN THE TITLE. It's the journey that matters.
The protagonist of Everything Matters is a prophetic boy who knows for his whole life, correctly, that the world will be destroyed by a comet impact when he is 36. You can see the moment you open the book that it's written like a holy book in reverse, with verse numbers counting backward, and largely in the second person. And -- as I've seen before from reading some of his short stories -- Ron Currie Jr. has such an excellent writing style that gimmicks like this don't feel gimmicky, they feel right.
You get the feeling that every single character has an interesting and poignant life story, even if you don't get to find out what it is. And thanks to the writing style, in many cases you do get to find out what it is. Also, you get to think about the interesting question of morality in a world where you know what the outcome of some of your actions will be. The morality's not too heavy-handed and the book does not pretend that there are always right answers. I highly recommend it.
On the other hand, there's City at the End of Time. I was compelled to buy it by its ostensible premise, which is that the distant descendants of humanity, 100 trillion years in the future, preserve a Universe that has shrunk to the size of a city long past its natural end. I was also compelled to buy it by its deeply discounted price, which I suppose could have been a red flag, but I've found some great books on the discount rack before.
The genre of the book turns from sci-fi to fantasy to badly-written JRPG without so much as an apology. Toward the middle of it, I held out some hope that some of the weird, almost nonsensical plot devices would converge on a brilliant conclusion that would explain everything. And that hope let me down in much the same way that the Matrix trilogy did.
I don't mean to imply there's something wrong with fantasy, but in this context it's disappointing when the sci-fi part of the book lays down some rules that you try to understand the implications of, and then some goddesses and anthropomorphic personifications step in and break them. And there's certainly nothing wrong with JRPGs -- I am quite a fan of them, but I certainly don't play them for the writing quality.
I think I am allowed to make a JRPG comparison when the fate of the universe is so banal that it takes three motley people from the present day (apparently named after the contents of Greg Bear's liquor cabinet) to determine whether the universe gets a Good End or a Bad End. And when they do this largely by walking around and collecting plot coupons.
The book introduces a lot of weird-ass terminology to describe its world, kind of like Anathem, but unlike Anathem it doesn't do its readers the favor of actually explaining this terminology. (Also unlike Anathem, at the risk of some reiteration, it sucks.) Also, after the point where I conclude Greg Bear wrote himself into a corner and gave up, it becomes full of typoes (like "You're name is...", and oh god you don't want me to finish the sentence and name what was being named), and extremely overdramatic sentences. The kind where the sentences stop being complete. For multiple sentences. In a row.
Sometimes even in their own paragraph.
For extra drama.
Wait seriously stop skimming, this is dramatic.
Perhaps the most satisfying thing about having read the book, however, is playing Bingo with it and Dresden Codak's 42 Essential 3rd Act Twists. I count six of them that basically happened in the book, including a good candidate for a Double Shyamalan. And yet they hardly count as twists, given my typical reaction: "Huh. Is that so. I never would have expected that, mostly because I never would have cared."
And really, it's hard to expect anything when anthropomorphic personifications are constantly changing the rules.
Somehow I ended up reading two books about the end of the world in a row. These were Ron Currie Jr.'s Everything Matters! and Greg Bear's City at the End of Time, and the similarities between them basically end at their shared theme. Their stark difference in quality, though, is something I feel compelled to comment on enough to dust off this LJ account (since when are there mandatory video ads?) and write reviews after I've been up too late reading a book.
There will be some very slight spoilers, mostly for the book I didn't like. I have a feeling that spoilers don't actually matter much for apocalyptic novels. YOU KNOW THE WORLD ENDS. IT'S ON THE DUST JACKET AND ONE OF THEM MENTIONS IT IN THE TITLE. It's the journey that matters.
The protagonist of Everything Matters is a prophetic boy who knows for his whole life, correctly, that the world will be destroyed by a comet impact when he is 36. You can see the moment you open the book that it's written like a holy book in reverse, with verse numbers counting backward, and largely in the second person. And -- as I've seen before from reading some of his short stories -- Ron Currie Jr. has such an excellent writing style that gimmicks like this don't feel gimmicky, they feel right.
You get the feeling that every single character has an interesting and poignant life story, even if you don't get to find out what it is. And thanks to the writing style, in many cases you do get to find out what it is. Also, you get to think about the interesting question of morality in a world where you know what the outcome of some of your actions will be. The morality's not too heavy-handed and the book does not pretend that there are always right answers. I highly recommend it.
On the other hand, there's City at the End of Time. I was compelled to buy it by its ostensible premise, which is that the distant descendants of humanity, 100 trillion years in the future, preserve a Universe that has shrunk to the size of a city long past its natural end. I was also compelled to buy it by its deeply discounted price, which I suppose could have been a red flag, but I've found some great books on the discount rack before.
The genre of the book turns from sci-fi to fantasy to badly-written JRPG without so much as an apology. Toward the middle of it, I held out some hope that some of the weird, almost nonsensical plot devices would converge on a brilliant conclusion that would explain everything. And that hope let me down in much the same way that the Matrix trilogy did.
I don't mean to imply there's something wrong with fantasy, but in this context it's disappointing when the sci-fi part of the book lays down some rules that you try to understand the implications of, and then some goddesses and anthropomorphic personifications step in and break them. And there's certainly nothing wrong with JRPGs -- I am quite a fan of them, but I certainly don't play them for the writing quality.
I think I am allowed to make a JRPG comparison when the fate of the universe is so banal that it takes three motley people from the present day (apparently named after the contents of Greg Bear's liquor cabinet) to determine whether the universe gets a Good End or a Bad End. And when they do this largely by walking around and collecting plot coupons.
The book introduces a lot of weird-ass terminology to describe its world, kind of like Anathem, but unlike Anathem it doesn't do its readers the favor of actually explaining this terminology. (Also unlike Anathem, at the risk of some reiteration, it sucks.) Also, after the point where I conclude Greg Bear wrote himself into a corner and gave up, it becomes full of typoes (like "You're name is...", and oh god you don't want me to finish the sentence and name what was being named), and extremely overdramatic sentences. The kind where the sentences stop being complete. For multiple sentences. In a row.
Sometimes even in their own paragraph.
For extra drama.
Wait seriously stop skimming, this is dramatic.
Perhaps the most satisfying thing about having read the book, however, is playing Bingo with it and Dresden Codak's 42 Essential 3rd Act Twists. I count six of them that basically happened in the book, including a good candidate for a Double Shyamalan. And yet they hardly count as twists, given my typical reaction: "Huh. Is that so. I never would have expected that, mostly because I never would have cared."
And really, it's hard to expect anything when anthropomorphic personifications are constantly changing the rules.