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Books I have read in the last few months and my thoughts on them. Please add yours on any of these you've read or any you think you might like to read! This time I'm ordering the books in terms of how much I liked them, because you might just be interested in the ones you like. (I get almost no responses on these posts, and I can't tell if that's because people haven't read the books yet but find my comments helpful, or don't read the posts, or agree with everything I say but don't have anything to add. I'm not really delusional enough to believe the latter much.)
The Children of the Sky by Vernor Vinge: Yes, read this book, but read it after A Fire upon the Deep, or you'll probably be lost. I could not get enough of this book. I stayed up a few nights later than I ought to have done just to finish a chapter or a section. Then I wanted to keep reading. Then I finished the book.
Vinge better not make us wait decades for the next one. I hope it's not too much of a spoiler, but not all the plot threads are wrapped up here.
I can't say much here because to do so could spoil A Fire Upon the Deep, which was also gripping, and I don't want to do that. I love some of these characters. I want to see them again. I want to see how everything turns out for them—in fact, how their lives go.
Vinge again gives us a highly absorbing alien culture: the six-legged intelligent wolf- or dog- or seal-like animal that exists not as individuals but in groups of three to eight. Different people can't get too close to each other without mind-noise interference among their own species—but they can get close to humans. The interaction of the cultures, and the many happenings in each of the cultures, are brilliantly imagined. I have one complaint about the plot that I'll put below, but the novel is amazing. And too short. It needs at least another book, I figure.
SPOILER ALERT: I'm going to discuss details now. GET OUT IF YOU DO NOT WANT TO BE SPOILED FOR BOTH A FIRE UPON THE DEEP AND THE CHILDREN OF THE SKY. I have one bloophole complaint, but it's a big one. One of the biggest conflicts in the novel is that Jefri and many of the other children don't believe Ravna's account of what happened before she reached the planet. They think the Blight might be a good thing and not a Blight at all, etc. When she finds Blue Stalk and Jefri is with her, why on earth does she not do something to secure all their futures and ask Blue Stalk to tell Jefri what happened to her and Green Shell? Blue Stalk's account of losing her own will and attacking her friends would surely sway Jefri, who at this point wants evidence to believe Ravna. Not everyone would believe Jefri if he came over to Ravna's side, but I bet a lot of them would, making Neville much less of a threat and giving Ravna support as she tries to deal with the coming threat. We know it's still coming, and we know what Ravna doesn't: that it has made some leaps and will arrive before she expects.
OKAY, END OF SPOILERS. JUST DON'T READ THE PARAGRAPH ABOVE THIS LINE IF YOU'RE AVOIDING SPOILERS.
Pat Cadigan's Synners came out in 1991, which is almost unfathomable to me. I remember 1991. I had email! Lots of people didn't. I think in 1991, you could download the IMDb. You couldn't browse it on the web, because nobody had web browsers. You got maps for a trip; you didn't use Google Maps, and you sure as heck didn't use GPS. If you were lucky, you could get traffic on the radio, but that somehow almost never covered the areas you wanted.
Pat Cadigan imagined the Internet as it didn't exist in 1991, and she's frighteningly close—frightening, because if she got so much right, what if the bits that haven't happened in our world just haven't happened yet?
Gina just wants to find Visual Mark, with whom she has lived for years. He keeps falling; she keeps picking him up. But now he keeps slipping away from her. Meanwhile, Sam wants mostly to escape her parents, and to do some hacking on the side. Gabe, her father, wants to escape reality. He has a way to do that, but he can't get caught. They're all in California, in a world where the cars pretty much drive themselves on GPS, people escape into virtual reality (but some aren't satisfied and want to go further into the computer world)—oh, and the Big One has already hit, except that maybe there's something bigger out there still waiting for them.
I found this novel very absorbing too. I cared deeply about the characters, even when I thought they were making big mistakes. Cadigan really got into their heads, exploring themes of memory and identity, desire, and connection. I found the book very satisfying.
I thought I had written up Storm Front but haven't been able to find it. Forgive me if I'm redoing it.
I watched The Dresden Files in its short-lived television run and loved Bob and the dynamic between Harry and Bob more than anything else about the show. I also really liked Connie Murphy, and I liked that the show offered a world that wasn't mostly white; only Harry and Bob appeared to be white, in fact.
When I found out that book Bob was nothing like tv Bob, and that Connie Murphy was a composite of two characters in the books, I avoided them for years. Friends who enjoyed them made me rethink that. I still wasn't quite prepared for a Morgan who was white, fairly stupid, and really, really just wanted Harry gone.
I also wasn't quite prepared for the level of violence in Storm Front–seeing a theme here? I think I need to be better prepared for the books I read. I enjoyed it enough to want to try another one, especially since friends said the books get stronger and stronger as the series goes on. I didn't really like Harry all that much, and Bob isn't even someone to like or not like; he's a spirit with a very one-dimensional personality. I liked Murphy, though she wasn't at all what I expected.
I was prepared for Fool Moon—okay, nearly prepared. There were scenes that utterly surprised me. What I really liked is that Harry clearly if slowly rethinks his mistakes from the previous book, and when he makes some of the same ones he's kicking himself, but he's learning. I have hope that in the next book he'll do better. I really like Murphy, too. And Susan Rodriguez made more of an impression on me here. (She needs a better job.)
I will read more Dresden Files books.
Girl with a Pearl Earring by Tracy Chevalier. I finally got around to reading this book almost a decade and a half after it came out. I think I recall it getting rave reviews. I wasn't quite so enamored of it. Chevalier did a lot of research, but I sometimes felt more interested in the paintings than the protagonist. I felt as if I never fully understood the main character, Griet. After her father's accident, her parents hire her out as a maid to Johannes Vermeer and his wife, Catherina. Griet works hard for little money and less respect, but she begins to see Vermeer's work, which she then describes to her father on the one day a week she can go home. The more Vermeer asks her to do for him, the more complicated life becomes due to his jealous wife and malicious young daughter.
The novel is meticulously researched, and I did enjoy the feel for the period. I felt for Griet, who has quite a hard life, but I did not understand some of her decisions or even a few of her emotional reactions. I'm very ambivalent about the ending. It's not that I think it should have ended differently, because by the end, things seem almost inevitable. I just felt more removed from the character than I wanted to feel.
The Anubis Gates by Tim Powers is a very well-plotted book and probably well-researched as well. I could very nearly love this book, but the violence and horror overwhelmed me a bit, which is a problem I consistently have with books by Powers, and why I don't read more of them. If you enjoy horror and aren't bothered by violence, don't let me dissuade you.
Brendan Doyle is the top scholar studying Romantic poet William Ashbless. When a wealthy man offers him a lucrative chance to lead a tour back into the past to meet Samuel Coleridge, he doesn't hesitate. Obviously, he should have. What follows includes loads of action, magic, and potential time-travel paradoxes. I did not find Doyle sympathetic at the start, but he grew on me, and there was another character I liked all the way through. That's all I will say, because Powers has a mastery of unexpected plot twists, and I don't want to spoil anyone.
I have rarely felt so much that I didn't get a book. I sometimes get to the end and wish I hadn't read a book. I sometimes get to the end and feel that I missed something. I almost never get to the end and feel that I've missed something crucial, or the whole point.
Michael Moorcock's War Lord of the Air is set in 1903, where the grandfather of Michael Moorcock, residing on an island in the Indian Ocean, meets an opium addict who tells him his story. Bastable was a British Army officer in India when an earthquake at a temple transports him to 1973, a land of the future with enormous airships and electric cars, where everyone is happy because the great powers rule them so well. So why are these anarchists and rebels trying to overturn peaceful, ordered societies? (Note that the book was originally published in 1971.)
The novel is simply bizarre. I didn't dislike it, though I'm not sure I liked it. I was curious rather than compelled to keep reading. The frame seemed excessively elaborate: why not have someone who got to 1973 in the usual way realize that he was not living in the utopia he thought? Bastable does move from racial stereotypes that one would expect from a British Army officer in India in 1902 to a more complex view of humanity, but then he has to go back to 1902 to tell the tale. Did I miss some very important element of plot or theme?
There is a hint at the end that Bastable hopes the future will not come to be as he experienced it. Brilliant Husband, who had me read this, tells me that there are more books in this universe.
If you've read any of these, please help! What am I missing?
Consider Phlebas by Iain M. Banks probably suffered from how I read it: I packed it for travel and then got through it in a day, give or take. I might have liked it more had I spent more time with it. Then again, I might have been irked that I'd sunk weeks into it if I had.
The prologue sets up the story of a ship mind that comes into consciousness and escapes from a war. We soon find out that the war is between The Culture and the Idirans, but it takes a while to find out who each side is and what each side wants. Bora Horza Gobuchul is from the Change—he's a shapeshifter and mercenary. After the prologue, the novel begins with his execution taking place after he has been uncovered impersonating an official.
I found the universe engaging and enjoyed parts of the book. The novel seemed to be aiming for epic status, and I thought it tried too hard at times.
Worse, this book too offered horror and violence that got under my skin. The cover says "A Culture novel": apparently there is a sequel. I have no interest in the sequel. What follows will at least spoil you for the tone and characterization of the novel, so if you don't want that, skip the rest of this entry.
I continued reading the novel after horrible scenes because I wanted to feel that the violence and suffering had been worth something, within the universe of the novel, and that my time had been worth something, within my own world. When I reached the end, I was shocked, partly because there were several pages of extras and then some blank pages and ads that made me think I had a good twenty pages left to go. Mostly, I was shocked that I'd trudged through all this to get what to my mind amounted to "war is never good for anybody." I didn't feel as though the characters gained anything worthwhile, and I didn't feel as though I had, either. I think part of the problem is that I still like books where I can tell the good guys from the bad guys, and where I think the good guys have lines they won't cross. Here, I reached the end of the book and thought that maybe I was being told that dividing the world into "good guys" and "bad guys" was too simplistic. Often, it is, but I don't want to invest many hours of time in novels where I find no character sympathetic and no side to support.
The Children of the Sky by Vernor Vinge: Yes, read this book, but read it after A Fire upon the Deep, or you'll probably be lost. I could not get enough of this book. I stayed up a few nights later than I ought to have done just to finish a chapter or a section. Then I wanted to keep reading. Then I finished the book.
Vinge better not make us wait decades for the next one. I hope it's not too much of a spoiler, but not all the plot threads are wrapped up here.
I can't say much here because to do so could spoil A Fire Upon the Deep, which was also gripping, and I don't want to do that. I love some of these characters. I want to see them again. I want to see how everything turns out for them—in fact, how their lives go.
Vinge again gives us a highly absorbing alien culture: the six-legged intelligent wolf- or dog- or seal-like animal that exists not as individuals but in groups of three to eight. Different people can't get too close to each other without mind-noise interference among their own species—but they can get close to humans. The interaction of the cultures, and the many happenings in each of the cultures, are brilliantly imagined. I have one complaint about the plot that I'll put below, but the novel is amazing. And too short. It needs at least another book, I figure.
SPOILER ALERT: I'm going to discuss details now. GET OUT IF YOU DO NOT WANT TO BE SPOILED FOR BOTH A FIRE UPON THE DEEP AND THE CHILDREN OF THE SKY. I have one bloophole complaint, but it's a big one. One of the biggest conflicts in the novel is that Jefri and many of the other children don't believe Ravna's account of what happened before she reached the planet. They think the Blight might be a good thing and not a Blight at all, etc. When she finds Blue Stalk and Jefri is with her, why on earth does she not do something to secure all their futures and ask Blue Stalk to tell Jefri what happened to her and Green Shell? Blue Stalk's account of losing her own will and attacking her friends would surely sway Jefri, who at this point wants evidence to believe Ravna. Not everyone would believe Jefri if he came over to Ravna's side, but I bet a lot of them would, making Neville much less of a threat and giving Ravna support as she tries to deal with the coming threat. We know it's still coming, and we know what Ravna doesn't: that it has made some leaps and will arrive before she expects.
OKAY, END OF SPOILERS. JUST DON'T READ THE PARAGRAPH ABOVE THIS LINE IF YOU'RE AVOIDING SPOILERS.
Pat Cadigan's Synners came out in 1991, which is almost unfathomable to me. I remember 1991. I had email! Lots of people didn't. I think in 1991, you could download the IMDb. You couldn't browse it on the web, because nobody had web browsers. You got maps for a trip; you didn't use Google Maps, and you sure as heck didn't use GPS. If you were lucky, you could get traffic on the radio, but that somehow almost never covered the areas you wanted.
Pat Cadigan imagined the Internet as it didn't exist in 1991, and she's frighteningly close—frightening, because if she got so much right, what if the bits that haven't happened in our world just haven't happened yet?
Gina just wants to find Visual Mark, with whom she has lived for years. He keeps falling; she keeps picking him up. But now he keeps slipping away from her. Meanwhile, Sam wants mostly to escape her parents, and to do some hacking on the side. Gabe, her father, wants to escape reality. He has a way to do that, but he can't get caught. They're all in California, in a world where the cars pretty much drive themselves on GPS, people escape into virtual reality (but some aren't satisfied and want to go further into the computer world)—oh, and the Big One has already hit, except that maybe there's something bigger out there still waiting for them.
I found this novel very absorbing too. I cared deeply about the characters, even when I thought they were making big mistakes. Cadigan really got into their heads, exploring themes of memory and identity, desire, and connection. I found the book very satisfying.
I thought I had written up Storm Front but haven't been able to find it. Forgive me if I'm redoing it.
I watched The Dresden Files in its short-lived television run and loved Bob and the dynamic between Harry and Bob more than anything else about the show. I also really liked Connie Murphy, and I liked that the show offered a world that wasn't mostly white; only Harry and Bob appeared to be white, in fact.
When I found out that book Bob was nothing like tv Bob, and that Connie Murphy was a composite of two characters in the books, I avoided them for years. Friends who enjoyed them made me rethink that. I still wasn't quite prepared for a Morgan who was white, fairly stupid, and really, really just wanted Harry gone.
I also wasn't quite prepared for the level of violence in Storm Front–seeing a theme here? I think I need to be better prepared for the books I read. I enjoyed it enough to want to try another one, especially since friends said the books get stronger and stronger as the series goes on. I didn't really like Harry all that much, and Bob isn't even someone to like or not like; he's a spirit with a very one-dimensional personality. I liked Murphy, though she wasn't at all what I expected.
I was prepared for Fool Moon—okay, nearly prepared. There were scenes that utterly surprised me. What I really liked is that Harry clearly if slowly rethinks his mistakes from the previous book, and when he makes some of the same ones he's kicking himself, but he's learning. I have hope that in the next book he'll do better. I really like Murphy, too. And Susan Rodriguez made more of an impression on me here. (She needs a better job.)
I will read more Dresden Files books.
Girl with a Pearl Earring by Tracy Chevalier. I finally got around to reading this book almost a decade and a half after it came out. I think I recall it getting rave reviews. I wasn't quite so enamored of it. Chevalier did a lot of research, but I sometimes felt more interested in the paintings than the protagonist. I felt as if I never fully understood the main character, Griet. After her father's accident, her parents hire her out as a maid to Johannes Vermeer and his wife, Catherina. Griet works hard for little money and less respect, but she begins to see Vermeer's work, which she then describes to her father on the one day a week she can go home. The more Vermeer asks her to do for him, the more complicated life becomes due to his jealous wife and malicious young daughter.
The novel is meticulously researched, and I did enjoy the feel for the period. I felt for Griet, who has quite a hard life, but I did not understand some of her decisions or even a few of her emotional reactions. I'm very ambivalent about the ending. It's not that I think it should have ended differently, because by the end, things seem almost inevitable. I just felt more removed from the character than I wanted to feel.
The Anubis Gates by Tim Powers is a very well-plotted book and probably well-researched as well. I could very nearly love this book, but the violence and horror overwhelmed me a bit, which is a problem I consistently have with books by Powers, and why I don't read more of them. If you enjoy horror and aren't bothered by violence, don't let me dissuade you.
Brendan Doyle is the top scholar studying Romantic poet William Ashbless. When a wealthy man offers him a lucrative chance to lead a tour back into the past to meet Samuel Coleridge, he doesn't hesitate. Obviously, he should have. What follows includes loads of action, magic, and potential time-travel paradoxes. I did not find Doyle sympathetic at the start, but he grew on me, and there was another character I liked all the way through. That's all I will say, because Powers has a mastery of unexpected plot twists, and I don't want to spoil anyone.
I have rarely felt so much that I didn't get a book. I sometimes get to the end and wish I hadn't read a book. I sometimes get to the end and feel that I missed something. I almost never get to the end and feel that I've missed something crucial, or the whole point.
Michael Moorcock's War Lord of the Air is set in 1903, where the grandfather of Michael Moorcock, residing on an island in the Indian Ocean, meets an opium addict who tells him his story. Bastable was a British Army officer in India when an earthquake at a temple transports him to 1973, a land of the future with enormous airships and electric cars, where everyone is happy because the great powers rule them so well. So why are these anarchists and rebels trying to overturn peaceful, ordered societies? (Note that the book was originally published in 1971.)
The novel is simply bizarre. I didn't dislike it, though I'm not sure I liked it. I was curious rather than compelled to keep reading. The frame seemed excessively elaborate: why not have someone who got to 1973 in the usual way realize that he was not living in the utopia he thought? Bastable does move from racial stereotypes that one would expect from a British Army officer in India in 1902 to a more complex view of humanity, but then he has to go back to 1902 to tell the tale. Did I miss some very important element of plot or theme?
There is a hint at the end that Bastable hopes the future will not come to be as he experienced it. Brilliant Husband, who had me read this, tells me that there are more books in this universe.
If you've read any of these, please help! What am I missing?
Consider Phlebas by Iain M. Banks probably suffered from how I read it: I packed it for travel and then got through it in a day, give or take. I might have liked it more had I spent more time with it. Then again, I might have been irked that I'd sunk weeks into it if I had.
The prologue sets up the story of a ship mind that comes into consciousness and escapes from a war. We soon find out that the war is between The Culture and the Idirans, but it takes a while to find out who each side is and what each side wants. Bora Horza Gobuchul is from the Change—he's a shapeshifter and mercenary. After the prologue, the novel begins with his execution taking place after he has been uncovered impersonating an official.
I found the universe engaging and enjoyed parts of the book. The novel seemed to be aiming for epic status, and I thought it tried too hard at times.
Worse, this book too offered horror and violence that got under my skin. The cover says "A Culture novel": apparently there is a sequel. I have no interest in the sequel. What follows will at least spoil you for the tone and characterization of the novel, so if you don't want that, skip the rest of this entry.
I continued reading the novel after horrible scenes because I wanted to feel that the violence and suffering had been worth something, within the universe of the novel, and that my time had been worth something, within my own world. When I reached the end, I was shocked, partly because there were several pages of extras and then some blank pages and ads that made me think I had a good twenty pages left to go. Mostly, I was shocked that I'd trudged through all this to get what to my mind amounted to "war is never good for anybody." I didn't feel as though the characters gained anything worthwhile, and I didn't feel as though I had, either. I think part of the problem is that I still like books where I can tell the good guys from the bad guys, and where I think the good guys have lines they won't cross. Here, I reached the end of the book and thought that maybe I was being told that dividing the world into "good guys" and "bad guys" was too simplistic. Often, it is, but I don't want to invest many hours of time in novels where I find no character sympathetic and no side to support.
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