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I have read more fiction than usual this summer! The first one is one I forgot from the last entry, but the others are all since then.
David Brin, Existence
I have mixed feelings about this novel. It's well worth reading, but it's simply too long and complicated. Brin's novel shows not-too-distant future earth: there are long-term explorations within the solar system but none without; zeppelins are in use again; and global warming has affected politics and governments greatly, but they seem to be largely the governments we have now, with a lot of behind-the-scenes actors with wealth and power (much as we have now). Aliens are unknown—until an artifact is discovered near earth that changes everything.
The world-building is excellent, as I'd expect from Brin. Many of the characters are quite engaging. I found it annoying to have so many characters, however, with the cutting from one storyline to the next as we'd expect in an epic novel or a long medieval romance (particularly the French ones). I'd be involved in a character's story and then might have to wait fifty or even a hundred pages to return to that character, by which time I'd have become involved enough in another that I didn't want to leave that one. Some seemed superfluous. One appeared to be there primarily so that Brin could hint at a series of novels he wrote set in the far future. I enjoyed the wink, but I was frustrated that it seemed to be there only to point to his own work.
He's grappling with Big Ideas, and the grappling is often fascinating. I think it might have worked better as a pair or trilogy of complementary novels.
Kathryn Immonen and Rich Ellis, Operation SIN: a four-part Agent Carter comic
I very much wanted to like and recommend this set of comics, but it didn't work very well for me. Peggy Carter stars! They're written by a woman!
They weren't well written, however. I was frequently confused, and not in a good way; plot elements seemed thrown in as if someone were playing a fanfic bingo card but didn't realize that you should write a different story for each trope. I think the ending did not even make sense.
Worst of all, I felt that Peggy was not quite right. She had some snappy dialogue, but it never really got deeper than that. She mouthed off at Howard Stark, who deserved it. She hit him too. It was all the superficial things I like about Peggy, but none of the deeper things. In the tv show, she's a complex character with flaws as well as strengths—and she knows how to use her strengths and generally minimize her flaws. Here, she's mostly a mouthy fighter who keeps asking Howard questions that he mostly ducks.
Ann Leckie, Ancillary Sword
If I rated books out of five as![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
astrogirl2 does, this would be a 5. This is a must read—though do note that one must read Ancillary Justice first.
I didn't know if Leckie could keep the brilliance going, but she did. I don't want to say too much about plot for those who haven't read the first book in the trilogy, but it picks up exactly where the first book left off. Many new characters are added and a few core ones remain, and the characters and situation are satisfyingly complex. In the first book, it takes virtually the whole novel for readers to understand who Breq is and how she got to the start of the novel, let alone what she's doing now. Here, we and Breq start with largely the same knowledge and have new problems and mysteries to solve.
I eagerly await Ancillary Mercy, listed by theEvil Empire Amazon for October 6!
Michael Chabon, The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Klay
This novel is excellent, but I found it very painful and hard to read. It's in an epic style that I found less appealing than that of The Yiddish Policemen's Union: extremely detailed descriptions and long lists wore on me. (As a medievalist, I feel like a hypocrite writing so, but I'm happier reading this sort of thing in other languages, apparently.) The pain was not the style, though. It was in the setting and narrative. Sam Klayman is an awkward teenager when his cousin Josef Kavalier arrives from Eastern Europe—in the late 1930s, after his family has given all they can spare to get him out before the Nazis. Joe needs a job to earn as much money as possible as quickly as possible to get the rest of his family to safety. It's not a spoiler to say that I knew from the start that he would not be entirely successful.
Meanwhile, Sam has big dreams, and Joe's artistic talents can help him realize those dreams. The two of them become a comic-book writing powerhouse, with Sam writing scripts and Joe illustrating. Chabon really immerses us in the comic book world, mixing his fictional characters with some real people. (Is it a spoiler to say that Stan Lee makes a cameo?)
It's a brilliant book, and perhaps I would have liked it better if my father had not died earlier this year. There's a lot of fathers and father figures and loss, and I was not entirely prepared to read this novel. I kept putting it aside but then not picking up anything else because I still had this book to read, so it's amazing I read anything this summer.
We have an edition with four extra stories. Two were cut from the novel; Chabon leaves us to figure out which is the one he's glad he cut and which is the one he regrets. I know I like one a whole lot better than the other. I enjoyed three of the four extras, especially because I read them some time later. It was nice to revisit the characters.
Tom Harper, Zodiac Station
I didn't mean to read this book. It's a thriller that my daughter wanted, so I bought it for her before a trip. Then I finished Kavalier and Clay (above), and I thought I'd had too much left to finish it, so I read this book instead.
It's good airplane reading. The characters aren't deep. In the frame narrative, a Coast Guard cutter finds a man out on the ice in the Arctic where there shouldn't be anyone, and the story is mostly told to the commander. The commander appears to have little or no personality, a wasted opportunity, it seems to me. It soon emerges that the survivor has come quite a long distance from a disaster that killed a number of people at a research station under unusual circumstances. The mystery is told mostly from the perspective of that survivor, but problems emerge from his story early in the novel.
I have a few things I would like to say about the ending, but they're spoilers. If you've read it, please let me know!
Andy Weil, The Martian
Zodiac Station went a little too fast, so we got The Martian at an airport. It's a lot of fun. The characters are even less deep than in the mystery, but Weil seems to have researched and thought about the situation from every angle. You probably know the premise: a sudden dust storm drives a team of astronauts off Mars, but they lose a man, Mark Watney. The hitch is that Mark isn't dead, just in a damaged suit. He can't reach the others, now on a one-way trip back to earth. He has to figure out how to survive alone on Mars and communicate with earth.
If you're looking for depth of characterization, move along. It's essentially a puzzle novel: how to solve this problem, then this problem, then this problem. I found it a fast and entertaining read, and I look forward to the movie–I'm hoping a great cast can add some depth (and it looks like a GREAT cast).
David Brin, Existence
I have mixed feelings about this novel. It's well worth reading, but it's simply too long and complicated. Brin's novel shows not-too-distant future earth: there are long-term explorations within the solar system but none without; zeppelins are in use again; and global warming has affected politics and governments greatly, but they seem to be largely the governments we have now, with a lot of behind-the-scenes actors with wealth and power (much as we have now). Aliens are unknown—until an artifact is discovered near earth that changes everything.
The world-building is excellent, as I'd expect from Brin. Many of the characters are quite engaging. I found it annoying to have so many characters, however, with the cutting from one storyline to the next as we'd expect in an epic novel or a long medieval romance (particularly the French ones). I'd be involved in a character's story and then might have to wait fifty or even a hundred pages to return to that character, by which time I'd have become involved enough in another that I didn't want to leave that one. Some seemed superfluous. One appeared to be there primarily so that Brin could hint at a series of novels he wrote set in the far future. I enjoyed the wink, but I was frustrated that it seemed to be there only to point to his own work.
He's grappling with Big Ideas, and the grappling is often fascinating. I think it might have worked better as a pair or trilogy of complementary novels.
Kathryn Immonen and Rich Ellis, Operation SIN: a four-part Agent Carter comic
I very much wanted to like and recommend this set of comics, but it didn't work very well for me. Peggy Carter stars! They're written by a woman!
They weren't well written, however. I was frequently confused, and not in a good way; plot elements seemed thrown in as if someone were playing a fanfic bingo card but didn't realize that you should write a different story for each trope. I think the ending did not even make sense.
Worst of all, I felt that Peggy was not quite right. She had some snappy dialogue, but it never really got deeper than that. She mouthed off at Howard Stark, who deserved it. She hit him too. It was all the superficial things I like about Peggy, but none of the deeper things. In the tv show, she's a complex character with flaws as well as strengths—and she knows how to use her strengths and generally minimize her flaws. Here, she's mostly a mouthy fighter who keeps asking Howard questions that he mostly ducks.
Ann Leckie, Ancillary Sword
If I rated books out of five as
astrogirl2 does, this would be a 5. This is a must read—though do note that one must read Ancillary Justice first. I didn't know if Leckie could keep the brilliance going, but she did. I don't want to say too much about plot for those who haven't read the first book in the trilogy, but it picks up exactly where the first book left off. Many new characters are added and a few core ones remain, and the characters and situation are satisfyingly complex. In the first book, it takes virtually the whole novel for readers to understand who Breq is and how she got to the start of the novel, let alone what she's doing now. Here, we and Breq start with largely the same knowledge and have new problems and mysteries to solve.
I eagerly await Ancillary Mercy, listed by the
Michael Chabon, The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Klay
This novel is excellent, but I found it very painful and hard to read. It's in an epic style that I found less appealing than that of The Yiddish Policemen's Union: extremely detailed descriptions and long lists wore on me. (As a medievalist, I feel like a hypocrite writing so, but I'm happier reading this sort of thing in other languages, apparently.) The pain was not the style, though. It was in the setting and narrative. Sam Klayman is an awkward teenager when his cousin Josef Kavalier arrives from Eastern Europe—in the late 1930s, after his family has given all they can spare to get him out before the Nazis. Joe needs a job to earn as much money as possible as quickly as possible to get the rest of his family to safety. It's not a spoiler to say that I knew from the start that he would not be entirely successful.
Meanwhile, Sam has big dreams, and Joe's artistic talents can help him realize those dreams. The two of them become a comic-book writing powerhouse, with Sam writing scripts and Joe illustrating. Chabon really immerses us in the comic book world, mixing his fictional characters with some real people. (Is it a spoiler to say that Stan Lee makes a cameo?)
It's a brilliant book, and perhaps I would have liked it better if my father had not died earlier this year. There's a lot of fathers and father figures and loss, and I was not entirely prepared to read this novel. I kept putting it aside but then not picking up anything else because I still had this book to read, so it's amazing I read anything this summer.
We have an edition with four extra stories. Two were cut from the novel; Chabon leaves us to figure out which is the one he's glad he cut and which is the one he regrets. I know I like one a whole lot better than the other. I enjoyed three of the four extras, especially because I read them some time later. It was nice to revisit the characters.
Tom Harper, Zodiac Station
I didn't mean to read this book. It's a thriller that my daughter wanted, so I bought it for her before a trip. Then I finished Kavalier and Clay (above), and I thought I'd had too much left to finish it, so I read this book instead.
It's good airplane reading. The characters aren't deep. In the frame narrative, a Coast Guard cutter finds a man out on the ice in the Arctic where there shouldn't be anyone, and the story is mostly told to the commander. The commander appears to have little or no personality, a wasted opportunity, it seems to me. It soon emerges that the survivor has come quite a long distance from a disaster that killed a number of people at a research station under unusual circumstances. The mystery is told mostly from the perspective of that survivor, but problems emerge from his story early in the novel.
I have a few things I would like to say about the ending, but they're spoilers. If you've read it, please let me know!
Andy Weil, The Martian
Zodiac Station went a little too fast, so we got The Martian at an airport. It's a lot of fun. The characters are even less deep than in the mystery, but Weil seems to have researched and thought about the situation from every angle. You probably know the premise: a sudden dust storm drives a team of astronauts off Mars, but they lose a man, Mark Watney. The hitch is that Mark isn't dead, just in a damaged suit. He can't reach the others, now on a one-way trip back to earth. He has to figure out how to survive alone on Mars and communicate with earth.
If you're looking for depth of characterization, move along. It's essentially a puzzle novel: how to solve this problem, then this problem, then this problem. I found it a fast and entertaining read, and I look forward to the movie–I'm hoping a great cast can add some depth (and it looks like a GREAT cast).
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I've heard the film goes much more into the characterization, simply from its very nature: actors on screen. But Mark Watney was always on the line for me between "I love this guy" and "I could really hate this guy."
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Yes! Bizarrely, I'm not sure that I could have articulated that that was (part of?) the problem in this case. Although, given that characterisation may well have resulted in a Mark Watney that I did. Not. Like, it's perhaps just as well that it was missing... (If I don't like my 'hero', then nothing can convince me to keep reading.) And, if nothing else, a lack of characterisation ended up in a much shorter book; this book would not have kept me to the end if it had been much longer as it wouldn't have been worth the time...