Street Without Joy: The French Debacle in Indochina (Bernard Fall)
I'm not sure if "enjoyed" is the right word to use with this book, given the sheer human misery it covers, but "entertained" sounds even worse, so let's go with enjoyed. From what I understand, this is a definitive work on, well, the French debacle in Indochina, and it's not hard to see why - Fall's clear, crisp writing and interspersal of his own diary from Indochina masterfully combines both a macro and micro view of the conflict, and really the only bad thing I can say about it is that it's amazing and depressing that America's political and military leadership didn't seem to learn any of the lessons presented in this book before our own debacle. I did skip the chapter on Dien Bien Phu, having read a 600+ page book on it already (and Fall has his own book about it as well), but that's just about the only even slightly negative thing I can think to bring up.
Grade: A
Sunday, June 30, 2013
Tuesday, June 25, 2013
"Titanicus"
Titanicus (Dan Abnett)
The last time I read a Dan Abnett book, I was, uh, not exactly enthralled, so I admit I was a little scared going into this one. Luckily, this book is much improved and very entertaining, albeit marred with some pacing issues. Actually, that may be a little too kind; this book is entertaining but bloated, weighing in at 600 pages, and containing three absolutely pointless story threads (a old crazy guy watering his garden, a toymaker who, um, makes toys and nothing interesting happens to, and a dockworker who happens to be the husband of another, slightly less pointless character). There's also one story thread that really has nothing to do with anything else in the book that could probably be dropped, all the more so as it's one of two threads about desperate PDF troopers behind enemy lines. (Also, the star of this story thread is the "slightly less pointless character" alluded to above - so if you cut this thread you might as well cut his as a bonus).
So the book's too big and has too many characters, half of whom nothing interesting happens to, but it's also the really only bad thing I have to say about the book, and I guess a novel titled Titanicus being too big at least makes some kind of sense. There are other little issues - the book wraps up way too quickly, which I chalk up as a symptom of having too many characters. Considering some of the terrible endings I've seen for W40k novels, this could be much worse, as it does at least wrap up the big plot threads competently Also, this is not a book for 40k beginners; I recommend reading Mechanicum first, or you'll be lost trying to keep straight if a Warlord or a Reaver class Titan is larger. (Spoiler: It goes Imperator, Warlord, Reaver, Warhound. I can tell you're impressed!)
To sum up, if you skip the needless storylines and you've got a great book; as it is, it's entertaining but flawed, which is still good enough to earn a solid
Grade: B
The last time I read a Dan Abnett book, I was, uh, not exactly enthralled, so I admit I was a little scared going into this one. Luckily, this book is much improved and very entertaining, albeit marred with some pacing issues. Actually, that may be a little too kind; this book is entertaining but bloated, weighing in at 600 pages, and containing three absolutely pointless story threads (a old crazy guy watering his garden, a toymaker who, um, makes toys and nothing interesting happens to, and a dockworker who happens to be the husband of another, slightly less pointless character). There's also one story thread that really has nothing to do with anything else in the book that could probably be dropped, all the more so as it's one of two threads about desperate PDF troopers behind enemy lines. (Also, the star of this story thread is the "slightly less pointless character" alluded to above - so if you cut this thread you might as well cut his as a bonus).
So the book's too big and has too many characters, half of whom nothing interesting happens to, but it's also the really only bad thing I have to say about the book, and I guess a novel titled Titanicus being too big at least makes some kind of sense. There are other little issues - the book wraps up way too quickly, which I chalk up as a symptom of having too many characters. Considering some of the terrible endings I've seen for W40k novels, this could be much worse, as it does at least wrap up the big plot threads competently Also, this is not a book for 40k beginners; I recommend reading Mechanicum first, or you'll be lost trying to keep straight if a Warlord or a Reaver class Titan is larger. (Spoiler: It goes Imperator, Warlord, Reaver, Warhound. I can tell you're impressed!)
To sum up, if you skip the needless storylines and you've got a great book; as it is, it's entertaining but flawed, which is still good enough to earn a solid
Grade: B
Thursday, June 20, 2013
"Dragon Keeper"
Dragon Keeper (Robin Hobb)
I tried with this book, I really did. This is another free Kindle e-book, a genre which I have not exactly enjoyed in the past. In this case, I tried to make it 50 pages (this is not easy to measure with the Kindle's "location" system), and after three and a half chapters I just couldn't stand it anymore. Reading this book is like wading through hip-deep mud: It's slow, heavy, turgid, and your mind constantly wanders to something more interesting. The book opens badly, starting with a bunch of dragons cocooning themselves, but they're all weak and dazed and half of them die, and it's so ham-handedly GUYS THIS IS SAD that it becomes silly; I couldn't help but imagine these dragons drunkenly bumbling around to comical music.
Then we switch to focus on a deformed harpy girl and her dad, and nothing happens, and while reading this part I was missing the dragons stumbling around. After a bunch of pages of nothing of interest happening we switch to focus on Alise, our mary sue who LOVES DRAGONS GUYS, and while reading this I was somehow missing the earlier parts about nothing happening to a deformed harpy girl. At this point (I was reading the book in the bathroom) I would have rather just listened to the various gross sounds coming from the next stall than continue reading this book, which I guess is very mean to say, but there you have it.
Grade: F
I tried with this book, I really did. This is another free Kindle e-book, a genre which I have not exactly enjoyed in the past. In this case, I tried to make it 50 pages (this is not easy to measure with the Kindle's "location" system), and after three and a half chapters I just couldn't stand it anymore. Reading this book is like wading through hip-deep mud: It's slow, heavy, turgid, and your mind constantly wanders to something more interesting. The book opens badly, starting with a bunch of dragons cocooning themselves, but they're all weak and dazed and half of them die, and it's so ham-handedly GUYS THIS IS SAD that it becomes silly; I couldn't help but imagine these dragons drunkenly bumbling around to comical music.
Then we switch to focus on a deformed harpy girl and her dad, and nothing happens, and while reading this part I was missing the dragons stumbling around. After a bunch of pages of nothing of interest happening we switch to focus on Alise, our mary sue who LOVES DRAGONS GUYS, and while reading this I was somehow missing the earlier parts about nothing happening to a deformed harpy girl. At this point (I was reading the book in the bathroom) I would have rather just listened to the various gross sounds coming from the next stall than continue reading this book, which I guess is very mean to say, but there you have it.
Grade: F
Saturday, June 15, 2013
"The Riddle of the Sands"
The Riddle of the Sands (Erskine Childers)
I have to give this book credit: It takes real confidence to apologize, around page 70 of your 250 pages, for the book being boring up to that point. This is not a good sign, and yet I still finished this book. I'm not sure if you can chalk this up to me being a glutton or punishment, or (more likely) the fact that this is a weird, interesting little historical curio. This is an "invasion" novel (and I guess a well-known one as it's mentioned on the wiki page about them), a book written in 1903 about a imaginary German plan to invade England. This genre is usually mentioned offhand in history books, and I have to admit I've always wondered about reading one. The problem with this one is that it's full of a lot of yachting stuff. This is a book either for big history nerds (cough), or yachting fans, and I don't know that either group is going to be entirely happy with it.
As for how I liked it - well, I finished it; I can't really recommend it unless you belong to one of the above groups, as it just moves too slowly and has too much sailing in it. The most entertaining parts, I dare say, are in seeing some of the ways that language and society has changed since the book was written; The subtext between our hero and his friend with the yacht, I'm sure, was meant to be two bronzed Anglos sailing around doing ultra manly stuff, but comes off as a bit, umm, hmm. Let's just say that towards the end of the book when the narrator is re-united with his pal and is felt up in the dark with his big knobby hands, it certainly adds some subtext to the earlier scene where our hero sees his friend's "wistful face on the quay" and then "heard his grim ejaculation". To be fair, this is very juvenile, but the author isn't helping with his steady stream of what I'm sure is meant as perfectly harmless patter ( "'Mud-holes!' he replied, with a contemptuous laugh." "'Pull it out,' said Davies"). All I'm saying is these guys really love sailing.
Grade: C-
I have to give this book credit: It takes real confidence to apologize, around page 70 of your 250 pages, for the book being boring up to that point. This is not a good sign, and yet I still finished this book. I'm not sure if you can chalk this up to me being a glutton or punishment, or (more likely) the fact that this is a weird, interesting little historical curio. This is an "invasion" novel (and I guess a well-known one as it's mentioned on the wiki page about them), a book written in 1903 about a imaginary German plan to invade England. This genre is usually mentioned offhand in history books, and I have to admit I've always wondered about reading one. The problem with this one is that it's full of a lot of yachting stuff. This is a book either for big history nerds (cough), or yachting fans, and I don't know that either group is going to be entirely happy with it.
As for how I liked it - well, I finished it; I can't really recommend it unless you belong to one of the above groups, as it just moves too slowly and has too much sailing in it. The most entertaining parts, I dare say, are in seeing some of the ways that language and society has changed since the book was written; The subtext between our hero and his friend with the yacht, I'm sure, was meant to be two bronzed Anglos sailing around doing ultra manly stuff, but comes off as a bit, umm, hmm. Let's just say that towards the end of the book when the narrator is re-united with his pal and is felt up in the dark with his big knobby hands, it certainly adds some subtext to the earlier scene where our hero sees his friend's "wistful face on the quay" and then "heard his grim ejaculation". To be fair, this is very juvenile, but the author isn't helping with his steady stream of what I'm sure is meant as perfectly harmless patter ( "'Mud-holes!' he replied, with a contemptuous laugh." "'Pull it out,' said Davies"). All I'm saying is these guys really love sailing.
Grade: C-
Monday, June 10, 2013
"Angel Exterminatus"
Angel Exterminatus (Graham McNeill)
I'm a little worried when starting a Graham McNeill book now; His books can be great (A Thousand Sons), mediocre and pointless (The Outcast Dead), or infuriatingly terrible (Priests of Mars). The knocks on McNeill are that he introduces too many groups of characters and that he doesn't know how to write an ending, and I admit that as I got closer and closer to the back cover of this book, I was becoming increasingly worried about how McNeill was going to wrap everything up.
Happily, McNeill pulls it off in style. There is one small cliffhanger at the ending, and one pointless group of side-characters (an insane doctor making twisted Space Marine mutants), but these are minor nitpicks in a quite enjoyable novel. The plot centers around Peturabo, from the Iron Warriors (and yes, there's a cute tie-in with the Iron Warriors Omnibus), who is taken along on a quest with Fulgrim, from the Emperor's Children. Fulgrim here is a very pleasant surprise, emerging as the book's most fleshed-out and entertaining character and also being rehabilitated from the terrible treatment he was given in the novel named after him. (All the more puzzling since McNeill himself also wrote that book!)
As well as Fulgrim is written, Peturabo is no slouch either, and it's quite enjoyable to watch the two bounce off each other in the novel's first half. The second half is quite a lot of action, ably assisted by the first half's stage setting, and as a whole the result is one of the better Horus Heresy novels, falling in the good-but-not-quite great tier, and quite easy to recommend to W40K fans. (Non-fans will be even more lost than usual, unfortunately.) I hope this is a return to form for McNeill, and if not, at least it's another bright spot in his body of work.
Grade: A-
I'm a little worried when starting a Graham McNeill book now; His books can be great (A Thousand Sons), mediocre and pointless (The Outcast Dead), or infuriatingly terrible (Priests of Mars). The knocks on McNeill are that he introduces too many groups of characters and that he doesn't know how to write an ending, and I admit that as I got closer and closer to the back cover of this book, I was becoming increasingly worried about how McNeill was going to wrap everything up.
Happily, McNeill pulls it off in style. There is one small cliffhanger at the ending, and one pointless group of side-characters (an insane doctor making twisted Space Marine mutants), but these are minor nitpicks in a quite enjoyable novel. The plot centers around Peturabo, from the Iron Warriors (and yes, there's a cute tie-in with the Iron Warriors Omnibus), who is taken along on a quest with Fulgrim, from the Emperor's Children. Fulgrim here is a very pleasant surprise, emerging as the book's most fleshed-out and entertaining character and also being rehabilitated from the terrible treatment he was given in the novel named after him. (All the more puzzling since McNeill himself also wrote that book!)
As well as Fulgrim is written, Peturabo is no slouch either, and it's quite enjoyable to watch the two bounce off each other in the novel's first half. The second half is quite a lot of action, ably assisted by the first half's stage setting, and as a whole the result is one of the better Horus Heresy novels, falling in the good-but-not-quite great tier, and quite easy to recommend to W40K fans. (Non-fans will be even more lost than usual, unfortunately.) I hope this is a return to form for McNeill, and if not, at least it's another bright spot in his body of work.
Grade: A-
Wednesday, June 5, 2013
"The Sugar Barons"
The Sugar Barons: Family, Corruption, Empire, and War in the West Indies (Matthew Parker)
This history of the West Indies is excellent, and my only issue with it is the length - it feels a little weird saying a 464 page book is too short, but here we are. Parker covers from the initial settlements down to about the fourth generation of decedents, which is where things start really falling apart (don't feel bad for them, they all had a ton of slaves). I guess this makes sense as a stopping point, both because the West Indies' time as an important player on the world stage is coming to an end and the dynasties we've been following tumble towards the dustbin of history, but I did find myself wanting more all the same. I guess that's not really much of a complaint, really, so that should tell you how interesting I found the book. I guess I should also mention that I found some humor in the author's quotes of 400 year old written English (as when a general "very nobelly rune behind a tree"), all the more so when they're using modern-sounding swear words (some sick soldiers, we're told, are "nothing but Shiting, for thay wose in a uery sad condichon..."). So uh, recommended.
Grade: A-
This history of the West Indies is excellent, and my only issue with it is the length - it feels a little weird saying a 464 page book is too short, but here we are. Parker covers from the initial settlements down to about the fourth generation of decedents, which is where things start really falling apart (don't feel bad for them, they all had a ton of slaves). I guess this makes sense as a stopping point, both because the West Indies' time as an important player on the world stage is coming to an end and the dynasties we've been following tumble towards the dustbin of history, but I did find myself wanting more all the same. I guess that's not really much of a complaint, really, so that should tell you how interesting I found the book. I guess I should also mention that I found some humor in the author's quotes of 400 year old written English (as when a general "very nobelly rune behind a tree"), all the more so when they're using modern-sounding swear words (some sick soldiers, we're told, are "nothing but Shiting, for thay wose in a uery sad condichon..."). So uh, recommended.
Grade: A-
Saturday, June 1, 2013
"Full Body Burden"
Full Body Burden: Growing Up in the Nuclear Shadow of Rocky Flats (Kristen Iversen)
You can probably tell what the book is about from the title - Iversen packs both her own autobiography and a history of the Rocky Flats nuclear facility into this book. This technique could go disastrously awry as the two aren't exactly intricately intertwined (Iversen getting a temp job at Rocky Flats near the book's end is a blase anticlimax), but it mostly works. I say mostly because at times it can be annoying when Iversen is in a groove either detailing Rocky Flats or her own life and cuts away to pick up the other narrative. Now to be fair, complaining that you're enjoying the book so much that you're annoyed that you're not immediately getting more of it isn't really much of a negative, and Iversen is wise enough to omit what must have been boring material (the stretch of her life where she goes to Germany basically boils down to "I went to Germany and came back"). In fact, I guess my only caveat is that this is another depressing book, but I suppose nobody picks up something with a title like this looking for a breezy read.
Grade: A-
You can probably tell what the book is about from the title - Iversen packs both her own autobiography and a history of the Rocky Flats nuclear facility into this book. This technique could go disastrously awry as the two aren't exactly intricately intertwined (Iversen getting a temp job at Rocky Flats near the book's end is a blase anticlimax), but it mostly works. I say mostly because at times it can be annoying when Iversen is in a groove either detailing Rocky Flats or her own life and cuts away to pick up the other narrative. Now to be fair, complaining that you're enjoying the book so much that you're annoyed that you're not immediately getting more of it isn't really much of a negative, and Iversen is wise enough to omit what must have been boring material (the stretch of her life where she goes to Germany basically boils down to "I went to Germany and came back"). In fact, I guess my only caveat is that this is another depressing book, but I suppose nobody picks up something with a title like this looking for a breezy read.
Grade: A-
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