[Book Reviews] Fiction post: starships and unlikely friendships
Mae is a Zelazny fan, and has been slowly exposing me to non-Amber works. I read "A Night in the Lonesome October" slowly over the course of the month of October at her recommendation. It's written in diary format, one entry a day, so it lends itself to that method of reading, and that really informed my experience of the book. You can tell that you've gotten sucked in to the narrative when you get a short day's entry and are so frustrated because nothing much happened and you want to know more! Heh. While I'm not a horror fan, I've read enough of the genre to get at least most of the references. (I think. Unknown unknowns!) I did appreciate the slow building of the plot, the carefully dropped revelations, and the way that the metastructure of the book echoed the internal plot developments of the great game. That's deft craftsmanship there. Scruff was a personable canine narrator, and his crosswise friendships made for a nice note of suspense without ever getting grimdark. I'd read this book to my niece around Halloween next year; four and a half carefully laid plots out of five.
After October, she next lent me "Lord of Light", an entirely different flavor of great fun. The space overlay of the mythical story wasn't too heavy-handed; it still retained the rogueish flavor of our scoundrel-saint protagonist rather than a deep delve into how the science of the world worked. I can't even imagine how much research Zelazny had to do on Hinduism and Buddhism both to write it; I have a nontrivial background there and I still did a lot of Googling. The tone of a lot of his Buddha lectures was pretty good; Zen-ish without being overly preachy, and it served the character's purposes well while also being true to the Sam he'd drawn. Four liars and role hoppers out of five; the novel deserves the Hugo it won.
Exactly the opposite tone rules in "The Martian"... this is 85% a deep delve into the science of how the world works. I thought it great fun... I am one of those people who wished all of Apollo 13 was the engineering scene, and it delivers on that. I'm not space enthusiast enough to comment on the veracity of the Mars mission planning behind it, but I enjoyed reading and Googling to figure out some of the systems that were new to me. Watney is astonishingly upbeat for someone in his fictitious position; I think his morbid sense of humor was my favorite part of the book. There are some moments where I wish things were a little less sexist (choice of imprecations, etc.), but I wish that about the actual world a good bit, so it was disappointing but not enough to wreck the squee for me. I saw the movie before I read the book and wish I'd done it the other way around; I appreciated the better ending of the novel and it seemed less suspension-of-disbelief stretching. Four cheerful brushes with death out of five.
I found "Stung" through Book View Cafe and had it on my to-eyeball list for months before I actually picked it up. It's a mystery whose main joy is that of its detective-protagonist, an unlikely television psychic. The grandmotherly mystery-solver isn't a new figure for the genre, but "Stung" defies expectations there, pairing determined grandmother Darnda with her slightly rebellious granddaughter-apprentice. The generational dynamics in here really worked for me, and I appreciated that Darnda's ethical positions seemed mature and well thought out, but she was still willing to consider and revise them as she found herself in new situations that demanded that she make hard choices. Strong characterization, gentle wisdom, unfortunately believable dysfunctional family interactions, and several older-and-wiser characters whose voices I appreciated... Annabelle was particularly excellent. Four and a half wandering bees out of five; I will look for more from this author.
Also on my to-read list for quite some time before I got around to reading it was Francesca Forrest's "Pen Pal". Magical demirealism at its finest, this story is a delight to the animistically inclined. Having grown up on the Gulf Coast, I have a particular wistfulness towards Mermaid's Hands... I would have loved for there to be such a place near my coast. (So much more magical than what we did have! But I still appreciated the nod to local traditions that were there.) As a child, I too tried the message-in-a-bottle thing, and I did get a reply, but with less spectacular results. But I think my favorite thing about this story was the connection between both protagonists. It's a story about the dawning of political consciousness and the nuances that can come about through people who just wanted to live their lives having to learn more about how the larger world sees them and wants to interact with them, but though those threads are there, the aspect of the story that presented itself most to me was about how our desire for connection can be transformative. Five outflung hopes out of five, and my favorite of this batch.
First in Jim Butcher's new fantasy series, "The Aeronaut's Windlass" is not as good as the Dresden Files but is far, far better than his Codex Alera series. It has the potential to become as good as the Dresden Files, though... give his characters some time to develop and have transformative experiences, heh. His new fantasy world is well crafted and has lots of details which can be built on in future volumes. There's no shortage of action, the sky battle scenes are grippingly described if you're an Age of Sail person (despite my initial skepticism about steampunkish sky ships, the three-dimensional dogfighting sold it for me), and there are several characters I liked well enough to root for. I'm impatient for more of the series to come out now, heh. Three and a half solid captains with honor out of five.
This entry was originally posted at http://ivy.dreamwidth.org/507691.html and has
comments there. Please feel free to comment on either site; comments rock.
After October, she next lent me "Lord of Light", an entirely different flavor of great fun. The space overlay of the mythical story wasn't too heavy-handed; it still retained the rogueish flavor of our scoundrel-saint protagonist rather than a deep delve into how the science of the world worked. I can't even imagine how much research Zelazny had to do on Hinduism and Buddhism both to write it; I have a nontrivial background there and I still did a lot of Googling. The tone of a lot of his Buddha lectures was pretty good; Zen-ish without being overly preachy, and it served the character's purposes well while also being true to the Sam he'd drawn. Four liars and role hoppers out of five; the novel deserves the Hugo it won.
Exactly the opposite tone rules in "The Martian"... this is 85% a deep delve into the science of how the world works. I thought it great fun... I am one of those people who wished all of Apollo 13 was the engineering scene, and it delivers on that. I'm not space enthusiast enough to comment on the veracity of the Mars mission planning behind it, but I enjoyed reading and Googling to figure out some of the systems that were new to me. Watney is astonishingly upbeat for someone in his fictitious position; I think his morbid sense of humor was my favorite part of the book. There are some moments where I wish things were a little less sexist (choice of imprecations, etc.), but I wish that about the actual world a good bit, so it was disappointing but not enough to wreck the squee for me. I saw the movie before I read the book and wish I'd done it the other way around; I appreciated the better ending of the novel and it seemed less suspension-of-disbelief stretching. Four cheerful brushes with death out of five.
I found "Stung" through Book View Cafe and had it on my to-eyeball list for months before I actually picked it up. It's a mystery whose main joy is that of its detective-protagonist, an unlikely television psychic. The grandmotherly mystery-solver isn't a new figure for the genre, but "Stung" defies expectations there, pairing determined grandmother Darnda with her slightly rebellious granddaughter-apprentice. The generational dynamics in here really worked for me, and I appreciated that Darnda's ethical positions seemed mature and well thought out, but she was still willing to consider and revise them as she found herself in new situations that demanded that she make hard choices. Strong characterization, gentle wisdom, unfortunately believable dysfunctional family interactions, and several older-and-wiser characters whose voices I appreciated... Annabelle was particularly excellent. Four and a half wandering bees out of five; I will look for more from this author.
Also on my to-read list for quite some time before I got around to reading it was Francesca Forrest's "Pen Pal". Magical demirealism at its finest, this story is a delight to the animistically inclined. Having grown up on the Gulf Coast, I have a particular wistfulness towards Mermaid's Hands... I would have loved for there to be such a place near my coast. (So much more magical than what we did have! But I still appreciated the nod to local traditions that were there.) As a child, I too tried the message-in-a-bottle thing, and I did get a reply, but with less spectacular results. But I think my favorite thing about this story was the connection between both protagonists. It's a story about the dawning of political consciousness and the nuances that can come about through people who just wanted to live their lives having to learn more about how the larger world sees them and wants to interact with them, but though those threads are there, the aspect of the story that presented itself most to me was about how our desire for connection can be transformative. Five outflung hopes out of five, and my favorite of this batch.
First in Jim Butcher's new fantasy series, "The Aeronaut's Windlass" is not as good as the Dresden Files but is far, far better than his Codex Alera series. It has the potential to become as good as the Dresden Files, though... give his characters some time to develop and have transformative experiences, heh. His new fantasy world is well crafted and has lots of details which can be built on in future volumes. There's no shortage of action, the sky battle scenes are grippingly described if you're an Age of Sail person (despite my initial skepticism about steampunkish sky ships, the three-dimensional dogfighting sold it for me), and there are several characters I liked well enough to root for. I'm impatient for more of the series to come out now, heh. Three and a half solid captains with honor out of five.
This entry was originally posted at http://ivy.dreamwidth.org/507691.html and has
comments there. Please feel free to comment on either site; comments rock.