Some 'Real' books
Recently I have had absolutely nothing to do. No classes, work proceeds interminably slow, my closest friend is about three hundred miles away, etc., and so I have been reading. Especially since I am regularly stranded at a bookstore a couple of times a week for a few hours. Oh, my poor checkbook- In any case, what I have been doing is a lot of reading, both fanfiction and non, and here is a
short review of the published books I have just finshed/am reading.
I will indicate secific spoilers in the individual comments, but overall am trying to keep it as spoiler-free as Amazon.
Outlander series by Diana Gabaldon
I went out and bought this series when I saw all the furor it generated and the fact that it was hailed as genre-crossing, good time-travel, interesting historical fiction, a very fast read- in fact that biggest complaint was that it was either too long, or had too much sex and violence, so I eagerly went I got it. The sad truth, however is that this book was one of the most boring I have read in a long time.
The romance is completely unbelievable and very falsely done. I do not understand why we are supposed to like that our "strong" heroine is so completely clueless about herself and in love with someone she barely knows- especially when she emphatically did not want any connections to the past, and in fact spends tries very hard to get home. We are told repeatedly that the characters are 'in love' but they barely seem to know each other, are not particularly compatible, and only seem to have sex in common. Having sex in common is all very good and fine, as is passion, but saying they are like 'two halves of the same soul' (paraphrased) and always sickenly in love made me put down the book annoyed more than once.
The characters are so... two-dimensional. Hero and heroine = good. Bad kinky rapist = bad. And characters that are originally more complex are eventually avoided by the characters as they go to make their happy little lives.
When I read the comments on Amazon, I saw a lot of complaints about the seen where Jamie (the hero) beats Claire (the heroine). I do not mind the scene, but the fallout from the scene... it is unrealistic as in the reasons a woman stays with a man who hurts her, and is later largely ignored. Though later it is tossed around in conversation, it has very little impact in their views of each other or their relationship. This also annoyed me.
The time-travel... just a plot device. Claire had very little trouble adjusting to life in the past, and has no trouble convincing people that while a bit of an enigma, she is from England. First of all- languages change. The English of 200 years ago is pronounced very very differently from the English of the 1940's. It is not as if she is in a country where the natives do not speak English, or have no contact with people from England- they do! Her speech should have thrown them off immediately. Not only that, but the English believe she is English! This baffles me- foreign speakers can often here the difference in American English/British English/Australian English/Any other English, and in my experience, most people American speakers say they here a Canadian accent in Canadians. As for time change... if one listens to old movies, their speech sounds 'old-fashioned'- this is because of pronounciation change- especially in vowels- 200 years of language shift would be extremely easy to detect.
Claire has no problem fitting in as a physician, and in fact becomes a herbalist extremely quickly- not explained by the fact that she is a war nurse. Nope, not at all.
You hear that this is a wonderful historical novel, and brings 18th century Scotland to life. I found that the historical details where largely thrown at the readers, as if to say, 'look, I researched this!' They are not woven-in, are largely ignored when not being thrown at you, and never really present culture-shock to the heroine.
The characters are always in the right place at the right time. Always. Claire is loved by everyone except the evil villain (even by characters who hate everyone else), Jamie is loved by everyone (including the evil villain), and all the secrets of the people in the book are easy, guessable, and are discovered with little trouble. Were they in any fanfiction, I would say that they are both MarySues. Actually, I gave them the Mary Sue Litmus test and they failed it, so I will say that they are MarySues.
Finally, the plot is plodding, repetitive, forgettable, and slow. Hero saves heroine. Hero saves heroine. Hero saves heroine. Hero saves heroine. A big switch- heroine saves hero.
SPOILER!!!!
One specific plot point that really bugged me was the fact that Gellie is from 1967 when before it is made a big deal that Claire travels 200 years in the past, 'just like the old stories'. If 200 is an important number, as we are led to believe, then Gellie has no business being in the 1740's.
[/spoiler]
I am currently trying to make my way through the second book (I bought them, damn it, and I will read them (at least until I have something to do) and am finding it sharing the same faults as the first. The romance annoys me a bit less, since this is an established relationship by now, but the rest is just as unbelievable. All I can say is I really wish the evil villain would win- he is much more interesting, and anyone who wants to hurt the main characters is likeable, in my opinion.
Much better character in the past book: Household Gods by Judith Tarr and Harry Turledove
Much better time travel: End of Eternity by Isaac Asimov
My favorite time travel story: "All You Zombies" by Robert Heinlein (short story, found in a number of anthologies)
Two other books that I have just read are The Game-Players of Titan and Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, both by Philip K. Dick.
I felt a sudden craving to read PKD (inspired by my conversation with electricandroid) and so I went out and bought these two. Ah, good SF.
Dick has a very unique style of writing. His heros are often ordinary, struggling, depressed, and despairing, with no particularly happy endings. He goes all over the place with his writing, leading the reader down sidetrails, leaving the main plot a bit of a mystery, and then finishing in a satisfying way. His ideas are wild, an extremely different way of seeing things. And it all fits, somehow, by the end.
These particular two books are radically different from one-another. Game-Players is remarkably focused and upbeat (for all that the main-character is suicidal)- you can tell that this is one of his earlier books. There is a powerful climax (at the end, unlike many of his stories). The world he presents, with a card game being the most powerful agent in the world is appealing, and the problems faced in the world are not treated lightly.
DADoES was written about six years later and is much more polished. The main character is depressed in a much more insidious fashion, and the reader is lead with him throug his self-discoveries. The idea of a man trying to do the right thing, and being disillusioned as to what it is fits in perfectly to the coldness of the world painted, one of a disentegrating Earth peopled by those who do not want to go to another dead planet and androids that one does not know whether to see as escaped slaves or cold killer machines.
Empathy is probably the most important element of the book (if one can be called most important- they are all so interlaced so deeply in the story), and it is easy to see that by this point PKD was obsessed with the idea of a system of life. The animals, the voigt-kamff scale, Mercerism.... Probably the most chilling scene in the book SPOILER!!!! is when the androids play with the spider, plucking off its legs, much to the horror of Isidore, a chickenhead who loves and emphasizes freely, including with the androids whom he knows are androids. [/spoiler]
The disillusionment that is also a major theme of the book, from the information that the androids wish to show the humans, to that of animals being discovered as fakes, to Deckard loosing his faith in his job- are heartbreaking. I almost cried when SPOILER!!!! Rachael cruely states that the owls are all extinct, when she kills the sheep in a pique, and at the end (in fact, I did cry at the end). [/spoiler]
I liked the Voigt-Kamff scale making its appearance in the book (especially since I am almost certain that it did exist). Dick really was very paranoid about schizophrenia (probably since he suffered from it), and it takes such a deeper meaning the book. Not, are androids like schizophrenzics, but rather, are schizophrenics treated as androids? Both in reality (mental hospitals at this time are not nice places), in in the wider picture- are they human? The flattening effect is often referred to, and it does exist- is it a stripping of humanity?
In the end this book left me with many many questions, and you are left so empty- but it is good. PKD is in a class by himself, and his books are highly original and thought-provoking.
I finally got around to reading Fool's Fate by Robin Hobb, a book that I had been waiting to read since I bought, in fact since the first trilogy in the series. It was... okay, I suppose....
Robin Hobb has in the past couple of years been one of my favorite fantasy writers. She writes in a first person POV that drags you into the story and manages to fit so much angst that would make one normally gag without making it seem gratuitous. It flows.
She began the Tawny Man trilogy very strongly, and the first two books are simply excellent (mostly, at least). It seemed as if she would tie in the first two trilogies (which are simply spectacular), which do not particularly need to be tied in, but I was looking forward to it anyway. This final book was to be the capstone, the magnificent conclusion... and it fell short.
The richness of emotion was almost completely stripped in this final tale, and characters often changed their personalities on a whim, almost. SPOILER!!!! Fitz, a character who was previously manipulated (and we loved seeing him so) suddenly becomes a power in his own right, and it detracts from the story. [/spoiler]
The ending seemed as if Hobb decided that she had to wrap up every loose thread, and it fits, all very neat, but it detracts from the messiness of the world that made it seem more real. So of the wrapping up was false since it was so quickly done, and it felt as if she thought that every since thread must go full circle so that to be complete, without allowing for the character growth that occured in the meantime.
HUGE SPOILER!!!! The Molly-Burrich-Fitz triangle was probably the wrap-up that annoyed me the most by far. She killed off Burrich, but then hooked up Molly and Fitz in the space of four pages, making his death seem conveninet and trivial, when it should have meant a lot more, being as he was Fitz's father (for all intents and purposes) and Molly's husband for the past 15 years. The tragedy of loosing him just as he and Fitz reunite is cut by the convenience of resolving the love triangle. Especially as it is unbelievable that Fitz and Molly would still be in love after 15 years, 7 seven children (and 1 foster one), changing so much from their original selves as to be almost unidentifiable, especially since they were each other's first love when they were teenagers. People change- this was one of the book's strengths until this ending. Had the characters had a brief affair, I could have believed it. Had the characters become embroiled in an unhappy romance where each expects the other to be people, I could have believed it. Maybe I would have even accepted them reuniting after a long courtship- with highlights and downfalls- but the way it was is cheapening and bothersome. [/spoiler]
Oh, and the Nettle issue was resolved much too easily.
The Dutiful/Elliania was nice, though.
I was happier with the series before reading this book, though it was unfinished.
I have also been reading the Anita Blake books by Laurell K. Hamilton, the first two so far, at least.
I do not like or dislike the books so far. I am not interested in them, or even disinterested. Really, mostly I felt no connection whatsoever with the books at all.
We are supposed to like Anita, I got that, think she is cool and interesting, but mostly I thought she was a Mary Sue. Again, I struggle with the issue of a Mary Sue in original fiction, but she is- she completely disbalances the books. She is too powerful, knows too many people, can do too many things- she is the toughest of them all, feared by vampires, respected by the cops, one of the strongest in her field. She is supposed to be cool. She has all these abilities and still keeps a level head, she has a supposed misunderstood sense of humor, etc., etc., etc. All in all, I find her to be... too superpowers ordinary.
A lot of gruesomeness in the plots- again, it becomes boring. Soon enough the reader is saying, eh, another body part, yeah, whatever.
I bought the frist three, and will probably read the third when I just want to lie brain-dead. Too boring to comment any more, really.
Finally, the last book that I have read in the past week is Passage by Connie Willis
Picked this book up randomly, thinking that the idea sounded interesting, and knowing that Willis has won both the Nebula and the Hugo awards in the past. It had its good points and bad-
Willis is very good at dragging the reader through the story. It wanted to know what was going to happen next. I spent too much time not sleeping since I had to know what was going to happen. It is written in the style of a thriller, and it does keep one's adrenaline up- at times I felt frightened to know what was going to happen next.
I liked the gradual coming together of the mystery- I am not one for reading mysteries, but it felt right, though I felt at times that the clues were too easily obtained.
The characters were individuals, and Joanna is very likeable. Richard makes a wonderful work-obsessed doctor, and Vielle is a great harried nurse (though we rarely see her in her role). Maisie was beyond annoying. Kit came out of nowhere and for some reason everyone liked her. (Though I thought she was well-crafted; I just could not see her appeal). Mr.Briarly was very sad. The patients were amusing, and the subjects well done.
The pace of the story is a bit slow and lags a bit in the middle, esecially when Joanna is finding clues about her visions. However, the tension is augmented by the slowness.
One fault with the book is that every character is attractive. Just not real in an otherwise realistic book.
The ending was both satisfying and not. I loved Joanna's end- not cheesy or depressing, it fits- but the rest- too much came together, I think. SPOILER!!!! The treatment was too quickly devised, and applications from research just do not come together like that. [/spoiler]
All in all, I recommend it, but with reservations.
short review of the published books I have just finshed/am reading.
I will indicate secific spoilers in the individual comments, but overall am trying to keep it as spoiler-free as Amazon.
Outlander series by Diana Gabaldon
I went out and bought this series when I saw all the furor it generated and the fact that it was hailed as genre-crossing, good time-travel, interesting historical fiction, a very fast read- in fact that biggest complaint was that it was either too long, or had too much sex and violence, so I eagerly went I got it. The sad truth, however is that this book was one of the most boring I have read in a long time.
The romance is completely unbelievable and very falsely done. I do not understand why we are supposed to like that our "strong" heroine is so completely clueless about herself and in love with someone she barely knows- especially when she emphatically did not want any connections to the past, and in fact spends tries very hard to get home. We are told repeatedly that the characters are 'in love' but they barely seem to know each other, are not particularly compatible, and only seem to have sex in common. Having sex in common is all very good and fine, as is passion, but saying they are like 'two halves of the same soul' (paraphrased) and always sickenly in love made me put down the book annoyed more than once.
The characters are so... two-dimensional. Hero and heroine = good. Bad kinky rapist = bad. And characters that are originally more complex are eventually avoided by the characters as they go to make their happy little lives.
When I read the comments on Amazon, I saw a lot of complaints about the seen where Jamie (the hero) beats Claire (the heroine). I do not mind the scene, but the fallout from the scene... it is unrealistic as in the reasons a woman stays with a man who hurts her, and is later largely ignored. Though later it is tossed around in conversation, it has very little impact in their views of each other or their relationship. This also annoyed me.
The time-travel... just a plot device. Claire had very little trouble adjusting to life in the past, and has no trouble convincing people that while a bit of an enigma, she is from England. First of all- languages change. The English of 200 years ago is pronounced very very differently from the English of the 1940's. It is not as if she is in a country where the natives do not speak English, or have no contact with people from England- they do! Her speech should have thrown them off immediately. Not only that, but the English believe she is English! This baffles me- foreign speakers can often here the difference in American English/British English/Australian English/Any other English, and in my experience, most people American speakers say they here a Canadian accent in Canadians. As for time change... if one listens to old movies, their speech sounds 'old-fashioned'- this is because of pronounciation change- especially in vowels- 200 years of language shift would be extremely easy to detect.
Claire has no problem fitting in as a physician, and in fact becomes a herbalist extremely quickly- not explained by the fact that she is a war nurse. Nope, not at all.
You hear that this is a wonderful historical novel, and brings 18th century Scotland to life. I found that the historical details where largely thrown at the readers, as if to say, 'look, I researched this!' They are not woven-in, are largely ignored when not being thrown at you, and never really present culture-shock to the heroine.
The characters are always in the right place at the right time. Always. Claire is loved by everyone except the evil villain (even by characters who hate everyone else), Jamie is loved by everyone (including the evil villain), and all the secrets of the people in the book are easy, guessable, and are discovered with little trouble. Were they in any fanfiction, I would say that they are both MarySues. Actually, I gave them the Mary Sue Litmus test and they failed it, so I will say that they are MarySues.
Finally, the plot is plodding, repetitive, forgettable, and slow. Hero saves heroine. Hero saves heroine. Hero saves heroine. Hero saves heroine. A big switch- heroine saves hero.
SPOILER!!!!
One specific plot point that really bugged me was the fact that Gellie is from 1967 when before it is made a big deal that Claire travels 200 years in the past, 'just like the old stories'. If 200 is an important number, as we are led to believe, then Gellie has no business being in the 1740's.
[/spoiler]
I am currently trying to make my way through the second book (I bought them, damn it, and I will read them (at least until I have something to do) and am finding it sharing the same faults as the first. The romance annoys me a bit less, since this is an established relationship by now, but the rest is just as unbelievable. All I can say is I really wish the evil villain would win- he is much more interesting, and anyone who wants to hurt the main characters is likeable, in my opinion.
Much better character in the past book: Household Gods by Judith Tarr and Harry Turledove
Much better time travel: End of Eternity by Isaac Asimov
My favorite time travel story: "All You Zombies" by Robert Heinlein (short story, found in a number of anthologies)
Two other books that I have just read are The Game-Players of Titan and Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, both by Philip K. Dick.
I felt a sudden craving to read PKD (inspired by my conversation with electricandroid) and so I went out and bought these two. Ah, good SF.
Dick has a very unique style of writing. His heros are often ordinary, struggling, depressed, and despairing, with no particularly happy endings. He goes all over the place with his writing, leading the reader down sidetrails, leaving the main plot a bit of a mystery, and then finishing in a satisfying way. His ideas are wild, an extremely different way of seeing things. And it all fits, somehow, by the end.
These particular two books are radically different from one-another. Game-Players is remarkably focused and upbeat (for all that the main-character is suicidal)- you can tell that this is one of his earlier books. There is a powerful climax (at the end, unlike many of his stories). The world he presents, with a card game being the most powerful agent in the world is appealing, and the problems faced in the world are not treated lightly.
DADoES was written about six years later and is much more polished. The main character is depressed in a much more insidious fashion, and the reader is lead with him throug his self-discoveries. The idea of a man trying to do the right thing, and being disillusioned as to what it is fits in perfectly to the coldness of the world painted, one of a disentegrating Earth peopled by those who do not want to go to another dead planet and androids that one does not know whether to see as escaped slaves or cold killer machines.
Empathy is probably the most important element of the book (if one can be called most important- they are all so interlaced so deeply in the story), and it is easy to see that by this point PKD was obsessed with the idea of a system of life. The animals, the voigt-kamff scale, Mercerism.... Probably the most chilling scene in the book SPOILER!!!! is when the androids play with the spider, plucking off its legs, much to the horror of Isidore, a chickenhead who loves and emphasizes freely, including with the androids whom he knows are androids. [/spoiler]
The disillusionment that is also a major theme of the book, from the information that the androids wish to show the humans, to that of animals being discovered as fakes, to Deckard loosing his faith in his job- are heartbreaking. I almost cried when SPOILER!!!! Rachael cruely states that the owls are all extinct, when she kills the sheep in a pique, and at the end (in fact, I did cry at the end). [/spoiler]
I liked the Voigt-Kamff scale making its appearance in the book (especially since I am almost certain that it did exist). Dick really was very paranoid about schizophrenia (probably since he suffered from it), and it takes such a deeper meaning the book. Not, are androids like schizophrenzics, but rather, are schizophrenics treated as androids? Both in reality (mental hospitals at this time are not nice places), in in the wider picture- are they human? The flattening effect is often referred to, and it does exist- is it a stripping of humanity?
In the end this book left me with many many questions, and you are left so empty- but it is good. PKD is in a class by himself, and his books are highly original and thought-provoking.
I finally got around to reading Fool's Fate by Robin Hobb, a book that I had been waiting to read since I bought, in fact since the first trilogy in the series. It was... okay, I suppose....
Robin Hobb has in the past couple of years been one of my favorite fantasy writers. She writes in a first person POV that drags you into the story and manages to fit so much angst that would make one normally gag without making it seem gratuitous. It flows.
She began the Tawny Man trilogy very strongly, and the first two books are simply excellent (mostly, at least). It seemed as if she would tie in the first two trilogies (which are simply spectacular), which do not particularly need to be tied in, but I was looking forward to it anyway. This final book was to be the capstone, the magnificent conclusion... and it fell short.
The richness of emotion was almost completely stripped in this final tale, and characters often changed their personalities on a whim, almost. SPOILER!!!! Fitz, a character who was previously manipulated (and we loved seeing him so) suddenly becomes a power in his own right, and it detracts from the story. [/spoiler]
The ending seemed as if Hobb decided that she had to wrap up every loose thread, and it fits, all very neat, but it detracts from the messiness of the world that made it seem more real. So of the wrapping up was false since it was so quickly done, and it felt as if she thought that every since thread must go full circle so that to be complete, without allowing for the character growth that occured in the meantime.
HUGE SPOILER!!!! The Molly-Burrich-Fitz triangle was probably the wrap-up that annoyed me the most by far. She killed off Burrich, but then hooked up Molly and Fitz in the space of four pages, making his death seem conveninet and trivial, when it should have meant a lot more, being as he was Fitz's father (for all intents and purposes) and Molly's husband for the past 15 years. The tragedy of loosing him just as he and Fitz reunite is cut by the convenience of resolving the love triangle. Especially as it is unbelievable that Fitz and Molly would still be in love after 15 years, 7 seven children (and 1 foster one), changing so much from their original selves as to be almost unidentifiable, especially since they were each other's first love when they were teenagers. People change- this was one of the book's strengths until this ending. Had the characters had a brief affair, I could have believed it. Had the characters become embroiled in an unhappy romance where each expects the other to be people, I could have believed it. Maybe I would have even accepted them reuniting after a long courtship- with highlights and downfalls- but the way it was is cheapening and bothersome. [/spoiler]
Oh, and the Nettle issue was resolved much too easily.
The Dutiful/Elliania was nice, though.
I was happier with the series before reading this book, though it was unfinished.
I have also been reading the Anita Blake books by Laurell K. Hamilton, the first two so far, at least.
I do not like or dislike the books so far. I am not interested in them, or even disinterested. Really, mostly I felt no connection whatsoever with the books at all.
We are supposed to like Anita, I got that, think she is cool and interesting, but mostly I thought she was a Mary Sue. Again, I struggle with the issue of a Mary Sue in original fiction, but she is- she completely disbalances the books. She is too powerful, knows too many people, can do too many things- she is the toughest of them all, feared by vampires, respected by the cops, one of the strongest in her field. She is supposed to be cool. She has all these abilities and still keeps a level head, she has a supposed misunderstood sense of humor, etc., etc., etc. All in all, I find her to be... too superpowers ordinary.
A lot of gruesomeness in the plots- again, it becomes boring. Soon enough the reader is saying, eh, another body part, yeah, whatever.
I bought the frist three, and will probably read the third when I just want to lie brain-dead. Too boring to comment any more, really.
Finally, the last book that I have read in the past week is Passage by Connie Willis
Picked this book up randomly, thinking that the idea sounded interesting, and knowing that Willis has won both the Nebula and the Hugo awards in the past. It had its good points and bad-
Willis is very good at dragging the reader through the story. It wanted to know what was going to happen next. I spent too much time not sleeping since I had to know what was going to happen. It is written in the style of a thriller, and it does keep one's adrenaline up- at times I felt frightened to know what was going to happen next.
I liked the gradual coming together of the mystery- I am not one for reading mysteries, but it felt right, though I felt at times that the clues were too easily obtained.
The characters were individuals, and Joanna is very likeable. Richard makes a wonderful work-obsessed doctor, and Vielle is a great harried nurse (though we rarely see her in her role). Maisie was beyond annoying. Kit came out of nowhere and for some reason everyone liked her. (Though I thought she was well-crafted; I just could not see her appeal). Mr.Briarly was very sad. The patients were amusing, and the subjects well done.
The pace of the story is a bit slow and lags a bit in the middle, esecially when Joanna is finding clues about her visions. However, the tension is augmented by the slowness.
One fault with the book is that every character is attractive. Just not real in an otherwise realistic book.
The ending was both satisfying and not. I loved Joanna's end- not cheesy or depressing, it fits- but the rest- too much came together, I think. SPOILER!!!! The treatment was too quickly devised, and applications from research just do not come together like that. [/spoiler]
All in all, I recommend it, but with reservations.