Fiction reviews
Richard K. Morgan, Broken Angels: Morgan's second Takeshi Kovacs novel, following the events of Altered Carbon. Hundreds of years from now, humanity is scattered across a number of worlds, worlds discovered by reading the star charts of the ancient and vanished "Martians" - though no one knows if that's actually where they came from. Kovacs is recuperating from yet another battle on a world torn apart by an ideologically based war when someone offers him a chance to control an amazing Martian artifact. There's fighting, death, pain and betrayal, much like in the first book, but the larger scale tended to overwhelm the impact for me; I liked Kovacs better when he was investigating a single murder, because Morgan is good at interpersonal dynamics and I was less compelled by his descriptions of the ineffable Martian technology. I'm still enthusiastic about Morgan, but Altered Carbon remains my favorite.
George R. R. Martin & Lisa Tuttle, Windhaven: On a far-distant planet, a technologically limited island-based society depends for communication on flyers, a group of people equipped with gliders made from the remnants of the spaceships that brought them to the planet. This book covers several episodes in the history of the flyers, focusing on a woman whose desperate desire to fly leads her to challenge the hereditary caste system of the flyers, with sometimes painful results. It's an engaging story, chopped into several novellas, and its reminders that conflicts between people with very different interests rarely end with one decisive battle are useful.
Octavia Butler, Clay's Ark: I think this is the last Butler I have to read (before the new one comes out, at least) -she's trying out the themes that will guide her writing - the pressures of necessity on people, often people with dark skin and limited money, who sometimes try to do the right thing and sometimes just try to help themselves. In a fragile near-future, a doctor and his two daughters are kidnapped from their armored vehicle on the road - but the reasons are far more disturbing than they think, and much more vital to the world's future, since a new infection that makes people something other than human is rising in an isolated commune. The question becomes what the doctor is willing to do to keep it from spreading - if he even can. The book is too short to explore the issues Butler raises, but it's clear even in this early work that she's got an eye for moral dilemmas restated in sf terms.
David Ambrose, The Man Who Turned Into Himself: Neat little novel about a man who lives two very different lives - literally. Sudden tragedy in one seemingly propels him into another, where he's made other choices in his personal and professional life; his insistence on the reality of the first version lands him in a mental institution, and he has to work his way out. Eventually, he convinces himself that he knows how to switch between the two existences, but whether the reader will agree is another matter. Clever, though not deep.
George R.R. Martin, A Game of Thrones: A friend gave this to me, insisting I'd like it, and she was absolutely right. It's a long fantasy novel, only the first in a not-yet-complete series (the fourth is about to be published), so it's not the kind of thing to start if you're not in for the long haul. But: the setting, a kingdom several decades after a serious regime change, is fascinating, with hints of elder gods and demons chewing at the borders, not to mention the heirs of the deposed rulers trying to make alliances that will sweep them back into power. Meanwhile, there's plenty of palace intrigue among the leading families of the ruling regime. What's really notable is that there are actively likeable characters in at least three of the factions, whose motivations, strengths and weaknesses are clear - the kind of characters you want to root for, except you can't, not at the same time. And there are troubling and sometimes repugnant characters in all the factions, too (though one gets off a little better than the others in this regard). I am thinking of taking the next book in the series with me to the hospital, since I expect it to be engrossing.
Robin Hobb, The Farseer Trilogy: Assassin's Apprentice, Royal Assassin, Assassin's Quest: The same friend gave me the first book in this trilogy - another good call. I understand Hobb has some uncongenial opinions of fan fiction, but she can write a cracking good story. This is another variant of "palace intrigue": Fitz, a young bastard son of the ruling family, gets taken in by that family, to be educated to help out the regime with talents of assassination and, later, a certain kind of magic. Enemies foreign and domestic threaten him; there is angst aplenty (not to mention a very slashy relationship); and if he finds friends and solutions in the nick of time, it's only a prelude to further sacrifice. Hobb's not as heavy-handed as Mercedes Lackey, not by a long shot, and she doesn't let Fitz have everything he wants or everything he needs. I wanted to say that the black hats are nonetheless a little too uncomplicated for my taste, but then I remembered that the blackest of them turn out to have an interesting backstory - it comes too late in the narrative to make them seem nuanced, but she gets credit for having thought it out. Hobb has written several other fantasy trilogies that I expect to pick up.
John Varley, The Ophiuchi Hotline: This is an interesting contrast with Morgan's Kovacs novels, since both are set in future worlds where resurrection of a personality and retransplantation into a new or cloned body is common. Death, for that reason, is fairly cheap in both worlds, but Morgan pushes a lot further than Varley does in terms of effects - positive and negative - on the human personality, while still creating a compelling POV character. Varley's plot involves a woman who's saved from true, no-back-up death by a politician who wants her special skills, but a lot of the stakes were opaque to me - I just couldn't get interested in the characters, who had ambitions but not a lot of personality.
George R. R. Martin & Lisa Tuttle, Windhaven: On a far-distant planet, a technologically limited island-based society depends for communication on flyers, a group of people equipped with gliders made from the remnants of the spaceships that brought them to the planet. This book covers several episodes in the history of the flyers, focusing on a woman whose desperate desire to fly leads her to challenge the hereditary caste system of the flyers, with sometimes painful results. It's an engaging story, chopped into several novellas, and its reminders that conflicts between people with very different interests rarely end with one decisive battle are useful.
Octavia Butler, Clay's Ark: I think this is the last Butler I have to read (before the new one comes out, at least) -she's trying out the themes that will guide her writing - the pressures of necessity on people, often people with dark skin and limited money, who sometimes try to do the right thing and sometimes just try to help themselves. In a fragile near-future, a doctor and his two daughters are kidnapped from their armored vehicle on the road - but the reasons are far more disturbing than they think, and much more vital to the world's future, since a new infection that makes people something other than human is rising in an isolated commune. The question becomes what the doctor is willing to do to keep it from spreading - if he even can. The book is too short to explore the issues Butler raises, but it's clear even in this early work that she's got an eye for moral dilemmas restated in sf terms.
David Ambrose, The Man Who Turned Into Himself: Neat little novel about a man who lives two very different lives - literally. Sudden tragedy in one seemingly propels him into another, where he's made other choices in his personal and professional life; his insistence on the reality of the first version lands him in a mental institution, and he has to work his way out. Eventually, he convinces himself that he knows how to switch between the two existences, but whether the reader will agree is another matter. Clever, though not deep.
George R.R. Martin, A Game of Thrones: A friend gave this to me, insisting I'd like it, and she was absolutely right. It's a long fantasy novel, only the first in a not-yet-complete series (the fourth is about to be published), so it's not the kind of thing to start if you're not in for the long haul. But: the setting, a kingdom several decades after a serious regime change, is fascinating, with hints of elder gods and demons chewing at the borders, not to mention the heirs of the deposed rulers trying to make alliances that will sweep them back into power. Meanwhile, there's plenty of palace intrigue among the leading families of the ruling regime. What's really notable is that there are actively likeable characters in at least three of the factions, whose motivations, strengths and weaknesses are clear - the kind of characters you want to root for, except you can't, not at the same time. And there are troubling and sometimes repugnant characters in all the factions, too (though one gets off a little better than the others in this regard). I am thinking of taking the next book in the series with me to the hospital, since I expect it to be engrossing.
Robin Hobb, The Farseer Trilogy: Assassin's Apprentice, Royal Assassin, Assassin's Quest: The same friend gave me the first book in this trilogy - another good call. I understand Hobb has some uncongenial opinions of fan fiction, but she can write a cracking good story. This is another variant of "palace intrigue": Fitz, a young bastard son of the ruling family, gets taken in by that family, to be educated to help out the regime with talents of assassination and, later, a certain kind of magic. Enemies foreign and domestic threaten him; there is angst aplenty (not to mention a very slashy relationship); and if he finds friends and solutions in the nick of time, it's only a prelude to further sacrifice. Hobb's not as heavy-handed as Mercedes Lackey, not by a long shot, and she doesn't let Fitz have everything he wants or everything he needs. I wanted to say that the black hats are nonetheless a little too uncomplicated for my taste, but then I remembered that the blackest of them turn out to have an interesting backstory - it comes too late in the narrative to make them seem nuanced, but she gets credit for having thought it out. Hobb has written several other fantasy trilogies that I expect to pick up.
John Varley, The Ophiuchi Hotline: This is an interesting contrast with Morgan's Kovacs novels, since both are set in future worlds where resurrection of a personality and retransplantation into a new or cloned body is common. Death, for that reason, is fairly cheap in both worlds, but Morgan pushes a lot further than Varley does in terms of effects - positive and negative - on the human personality, while still creating a compelling POV character. Varley's plot involves a woman who's saved from true, no-back-up death by a politician who wants her special skills, but a lot of the stakes were opaque to me - I just couldn't get interested in the characters, who had ambitions but not a lot of personality.