Comments | lproven: Meta-Matter

lproven

Meta-Matter

Mar 20, 2008 14:19

A really quite decent review of Iain M Banks' newest, Matter, from a somewhat unexpected source...

http://books.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/03/19/1344250

sf, blog

Comments 8

(The comment has been removed)

bellinghman March 20 2008, 15:02:31 UTC

Oh, didn't you know? He has decided to drop the final S off his name to
compensate for adding the middle initial?

lproven March 20 2008, 16:01:30 UTC

OMG what have I *done?* [Appalled]

iansales March 20 2008, 15:52:57 UTC

But that review tells you nothing about the book...

lproven March 20 2008, 15:59:20 UTC

It's not exactly in depth but it's good for /.!

iansales March 20 2008, 16:01:03 UTC

Ah. One of those "talking dog" things, then...

lproven March 20 2008, 16:31:42 UTC

LJ is crap this arvo.

I presume you meant that as a comment to the above?

In which case, no, not entirely. I thought it was a reasonable effort, aimed at Murricans who've never heard of Banksie.

iansales March 20 2008, 17:28:21 UTC

Sorry. I've read the occasional post on RDBMS on /., and so can't take anything on that site seriously. But I do prefer reviews of books to actually tell me a little about the book in question - even if it's wrong (such as mine own poor effort at http://justhastobeplausible.blogspot.com/2008/02/heart-of-matter.html)

lproven March 21 2008, 16:35:24 UTC

Hey, that's not half bad - altho' for my taste you do err a bit too far into the "describe the plot" territory. I think perhaps you want more exegisis in your interviews than I do. I want to know what the reviewer thought of it, comparisons with like and unlike books, and an indication of the reviewer's tastes. I don't really want to know anything about the story; a one-line summary of the setup will do. If I were reviewing KSR's /Red/Green/Blue Mars/ I'd probably give it little more than "a future history of the colonisation of Mars, its scientific, sociological and political effects". That's enough, I think. And that's for 3 fat books. For Banks: Player of Games would come out as "a games-master is sent to a remote world to learn the most complex game ever devised to avert a war", for instance. That's all it needs. No character names, no place names, no potted bios, none of that. What I want to know about is the writing, the language, the style, comparisons with others of that author's work, with other authors' works, etc ( ... )