Darwin's Radio (Greg Bear)
This book bored the shit out of me. According to the back
cover, the book is about a guy named Christopher Dicken (yes, really) who's on
the hunt for a disease hiding inside human DNA. That sounds interesting. The
first fifty pages of the book are about a guy poking around an ice cave with
two frozen Neanderthals in it and a lady from the UN being asked to look at a
recently dug up mass grave. This is not interesting. In fact, our man - who,
again, is seriously named Christopher Dicken - doesn't show up until page 40.
And it's not like these previous 40 pages were exactly burning up with action;
they could be cut down to about six pages max without losing anything except
word count. In reading Amazon reviews, I was horrified to see the sentence
"After page 40 or so, there is nothing more to be learned"; I can
only imagine the endless tracts of lifeless text following the point where I
gave up. I feel like the guy at the beginning of the horror movie where the
viewer's yelling "Get out of the house!" who gets out of the house
and drives out of the movie alive. That being said, if you're intensely
interested in reading about fictional frozen Neanderthals, mass graves robbed
of all drama by having pages of sparse details and boring dialogue, or if you
just need a good book to put you to sleep, I highly recommend it; otherwise, stay away.
Grade: D-
Monday, March 25, 2013
Wednesday, March 20, 2013
"Sheepfarmer's Daughter"
Sheepfarmer's Daughter (Elizabeth Moon)
This book is not what I expected. After looking at the cover (yeah, don't judge it, I know) and reading the back cover, I thought I had a enjoyable slice of 80's fantasy cheese here. And at first, that's what it is - Moon kicks the story off admirably quickly, as our heroine flees her arranged marriage and joins the military in like three no-bs pages. Then follows our heroine's military training, which is more interesting than it has any right to be, and then we get a fifty page medieval fantasy rape trial. (This is where you should drop in the record-scratching sound effect that was mandatory in movie trailers for several years.). I counted, and the rape trial and assorted drama starts on page 33, and was not over when I hit page 83, at which point I gave up. Fifty pages of this was far too much to hold my attention. I found myself wondering who this material was meant to appeal to, and discovered that whoever it is, it isn't me.
Grade: D+
This book is not what I expected. After looking at the cover (yeah, don't judge it, I know) and reading the back cover, I thought I had a enjoyable slice of 80's fantasy cheese here. And at first, that's what it is - Moon kicks the story off admirably quickly, as our heroine flees her arranged marriage and joins the military in like three no-bs pages. Then follows our heroine's military training, which is more interesting than it has any right to be, and then we get a fifty page medieval fantasy rape trial. (This is where you should drop in the record-scratching sound effect that was mandatory in movie trailers for several years.). I counted, and the rape trial and assorted drama starts on page 33, and was not over when I hit page 83, at which point I gave up. Fifty pages of this was far too much to hold my attention. I found myself wondering who this material was meant to appeal to, and discovered that whoever it is, it isn't me.
Grade: D+
Friday, March 15, 2013
"The First Thousand Years"
The First Thousand Years: A Global History of Christianity (Robert Wilken)
Exactly What It Says on the Tin. This is a great book for bible/history nerds (cough), starting with Jesus evangelizing and ending, well, you can probably guess from the title. This is one of those books I enjoyed but find hard to recommend; Telling people "Wait until you get to the chapter about early Christianity spreading to Armenia!" usually does not have the intended effect of conveying enjoyment. That being said, I did really enjoy this book, and found the author's contention that the church's history in the middle of the first millennium should be viewed not as a traditional western Latin / eastern embryonic Orthodox duality, but instead as a triad adding the forgotten far eastern church, to be quite interesting and persuasive. That sentence right there should also tell you all you need to know about whether or not this book is for you.
Grade: A
Exactly What It Says on the Tin. This is a great book for bible/history nerds (cough), starting with Jesus evangelizing and ending, well, you can probably guess from the title. This is one of those books I enjoyed but find hard to recommend; Telling people "Wait until you get to the chapter about early Christianity spreading to Armenia!" usually does not have the intended effect of conveying enjoyment. That being said, I did really enjoy this book, and found the author's contention that the church's history in the middle of the first millennium should be viewed not as a traditional western Latin / eastern embryonic Orthodox duality, but instead as a triad adding the forgotten far eastern church, to be quite interesting and persuasive. That sentence right there should also tell you all you need to know about whether or not this book is for you.
Grade: A
Thursday, March 14, 2013
The Left Hand of Darkness
by Ursula K. Le Guin
Envoy Genly has come to the planet Winter to passively convince its inhabitants to join the interplantary union, the Ecumen. The inhabitants of Winter are genderless and that's where the book gets very interesting. The people of Winter have the physical traits and characteristics of both men and women, making them only identifiable as human rather than as a man or woman. When a native Winterite enters their kemmer cycle, they can become either male or female. A person who is father to two children may be mother to three others.
The genderless and sexual urge-less (aside from kemmer) society is very interesting. Wars do not happen, but there are land disputes. There is not the traditional labor divide one would find on Earth where we still have jobs thought of as more manly or feminine occupations (think construction workers and hairdressers). On Winter, no such presupposition exists. Any Winterite can do any task or job as well as any other, the only determining factor is individual ability.
I highly recommend this book for sci-fi fans. I put it right up there with And Having Writ and The Moon is a Harsh Mistress.
by Ursula K. Le Guin
Envoy Genly has come to the planet Winter to passively convince its inhabitants to join the interplantary union, the Ecumen. The inhabitants of Winter are genderless and that's where the book gets very interesting. The people of Winter have the physical traits and characteristics of both men and women, making them only identifiable as human rather than as a man or woman. When a native Winterite enters their kemmer cycle, they can become either male or female. A person who is father to two children may be mother to three others.
The genderless and sexual urge-less (aside from kemmer) society is very interesting. Wars do not happen, but there are land disputes. There is not the traditional labor divide one would find on Earth where we still have jobs thought of as more manly or feminine occupations (think construction workers and hairdressers). On Winter, no such presupposition exists. Any Winterite can do any task or job as well as any other, the only determining factor is individual ability.
I highly recommend this book for sci-fi fans. I put it right up there with And Having Writ and The Moon is a Harsh Mistress.
Tuesday, March 12, 2013
The Reapers are the Angels
The Reapers are the Angels
by Alden Bell
Temple is a teenager with excellent survival skills and provides for herself in the zombie wasteland (think Katniss, but with zombies). The book is written in third person, but is exclusively from Temple's point of view and in her own English patois. I really liked this book until the end. I would have gladly paid for a series of books about Temple and her journey through the zombie wasteland. How would Temple deal with Moses Todd (he chases her throughout the book) over time? Would she start her own enclave of survivors or keep moving with her charge, Maury?
Then, the end happened. I don't want to give it away because I'm still going to recommend you read this book. But. It's almost as if Temple changed into a different, weaker character. I get that it's supposed to be redemption of another character in their grief over her but I feel that character does not deserve to be redeemed, not that way. Perhaps that's the point. In a zombie wasteland, good people get deaths they don't deserve while people with shady, ridiculous motives survive because the good people are too honorable to kill them when they should've.
Grade: C+
by Alden Bell
Temple is a teenager with excellent survival skills and provides for herself in the zombie wasteland (think Katniss, but with zombies). The book is written in third person, but is exclusively from Temple's point of view and in her own English patois. I really liked this book until the end. I would have gladly paid for a series of books about Temple and her journey through the zombie wasteland. How would Temple deal with Moses Todd (he chases her throughout the book) over time? Would she start her own enclave of survivors or keep moving with her charge, Maury?
Then, the end happened. I don't want to give it away because I'm still going to recommend you read this book. But. It's almost as if Temple changed into a different, weaker character. I get that it's supposed to be redemption of another character in their grief over her but I feel that character does not deserve to be redeemed, not that way. Perhaps that's the point. In a zombie wasteland, good people get deaths they don't deserve while people with shady, ridiculous motives survive because the good people are too honorable to kill them when they should've.
Grade: C+
Sunday, March 10, 2013
"The Secret Life of Houdini"
The Secret Life of Houdini: The Making of America's First Superhero (William Kalush & Larry Sloman)
There's two issues I have with this book, one small one and one big one. Let's tackle the small one first: The authors put forth the argument that Houdini worked for MI5 and to a much lesser extent the Secret Service; The evidence here is pretty thin - he wrote letters to the heads of both services, but he also seems to have written a ton of letters period as they're quoted at length. The authors waste a little bit of time on this, and unfortunately it's not very interesting stuff.
But that pales to the second issue, which runs through the whole book and eventually becomes quite annoying. The authors seem to be paranoid that the reader may become bored or distracted, and so every two or three pages there is a paragraph break and the action picks up in a different place. Most of these read like the opening of a book where the author is desperately trying to get you to keep reading, so you may flip a page and read something like "The evil naughty gunman guy advanced on the tied-up detective, clutching his evil naughty gun in his big meaty fist that he used to commit acts of evil naughtiness." Read on a few sentences and it turns out the detective is Houdini and he's just filming a silent movie!!!!!!111!!!!!!!1!1
At first this is annoying, then amusing, then annoying again, and as the book goes on - and it's quite long - it eventually makes it hard to figure out what year we're in; events start blurring together and the book's narrative thread becomes difficult to follow. This is not a desirable trait in a 500+ page book. Most of all, it seems pointless; Didn't Houdini, of all people, have an interesting enough life so that we don't need to bother with annoying gimmickry like this? In the end, this is a frustrating book, and one I'll freely admit I didn't finish. It's easy to recommend getting it out of the library, but given the annoying structure and the sheer length it has to work on you, I can't really say it deserves a permanent spot on your shelf.
Grade: C-
There's two issues I have with this book, one small one and one big one. Let's tackle the small one first: The authors put forth the argument that Houdini worked for MI5 and to a much lesser extent the Secret Service; The evidence here is pretty thin - he wrote letters to the heads of both services, but he also seems to have written a ton of letters period as they're quoted at length. The authors waste a little bit of time on this, and unfortunately it's not very interesting stuff.
But that pales to the second issue, which runs through the whole book and eventually becomes quite annoying. The authors seem to be paranoid that the reader may become bored or distracted, and so every two or three pages there is a paragraph break and the action picks up in a different place. Most of these read like the opening of a book where the author is desperately trying to get you to keep reading, so you may flip a page and read something like "The evil naughty gunman guy advanced on the tied-up detective, clutching his evil naughty gun in his big meaty fist that he used to commit acts of evil naughtiness." Read on a few sentences and it turns out the detective is Houdini and he's just filming a silent movie!!!!!!111!!!!!!!1!1
At first this is annoying, then amusing, then annoying again, and as the book goes on - and it's quite long - it eventually makes it hard to figure out what year we're in; events start blurring together and the book's narrative thread becomes difficult to follow. This is not a desirable trait in a 500+ page book. Most of all, it seems pointless; Didn't Houdini, of all people, have an interesting enough life so that we don't need to bother with annoying gimmickry like this? In the end, this is a frustrating book, and one I'll freely admit I didn't finish. It's easy to recommend getting it out of the library, but given the annoying structure and the sheer length it has to work on you, I can't really say it deserves a permanent spot on your shelf.
Grade: C-
Tuesday, March 5, 2013
"Hammer and Anvil"
Hammer and Anvil (James Swallow)
I promise this is the last 40k book for a while. Actually, I don't really have a lot to say about this book besides recommending it; I don't think I've read a bad James Swallow book yet, and I liked this one even more than the previous book in this series (Faith & Fire). You don't need to have read the previous book, but it does feature the same characters, this time headed to a dusty rock called Sanctuary 101 to re-consecrate a shrine that was overrun by Necrons, basically evil space robots. The Word Bearers omnibus used the Necrons as well, but I like them a little better here - Swallow is great at making villains who are both plausibly justified in what they're trying to do while also being hateable scumbags, no small feat when some of them are also ancient evil space robots. More than that I can't really say without ruining Swallow's excellent pacing and character work. Recommended.
Grade: B
I promise this is the last 40k book for a while. Actually, I don't really have a lot to say about this book besides recommending it; I don't think I've read a bad James Swallow book yet, and I liked this one even more than the previous book in this series (Faith & Fire). You don't need to have read the previous book, but it does feature the same characters, this time headed to a dusty rock called Sanctuary 101 to re-consecrate a shrine that was overrun by Necrons, basically evil space robots. The Word Bearers omnibus used the Necrons as well, but I like them a little better here - Swallow is great at making villains who are both plausibly justified in what they're trying to do while also being hateable scumbags, no small feat when some of them are also ancient evil space robots. More than that I can't really say without ruining Swallow's excellent pacing and character work. Recommended.
Grade: B
Friday, March 1, 2013
"I Am Better Than Your Kids"
I Am Better Than Your Kids (Maddox)
This is probably the meanest book I've ever read - it's a treasury of children's art getting mercilessly critiqued, and really, if you read that sentence and thought it sounds funny, you can just stop reading here and go out and buy it. For those of you recoiling in horror, let me just say that the book is so mean that it circles around to being hilarious, with my absolute favorite parts being the author highlighting drawings (for example, by making a hideous crayon drawing of a superhero into a mocked-up comic cover for "I will catch you in my web man"). I could not stop laughing while reading this book. Highly recommended.
Grade: A+
This is probably the meanest book I've ever read - it's a treasury of children's art getting mercilessly critiqued, and really, if you read that sentence and thought it sounds funny, you can just stop reading here and go out and buy it. For those of you recoiling in horror, let me just say that the book is so mean that it circles around to being hilarious, with my absolute favorite parts being the author highlighting drawings (for example, by making a hideous crayon drawing of a superhero into a mocked-up comic cover for "I will catch you in my web man"). I could not stop laughing while reading this book. Highly recommended.
Grade: A+
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