Blue

(4.5 out of 5 stars)

My time with this book started out interesting. I was first introduced to this book in a speculative fiction class I took in college, where we had to read it quickly, so I carved out large chunks of time to power through this book in a few days. My initial thoughts on the book were not super great, overall a “meh” experience. The setting was very interesting, but I didn't find any of the characters or conflicts compelling when I first read it. To me, it seemed more like Stephenson had simply made a glittery playground for his named creations to play around with.

It wasn't until later in the year, when we began re-reading sections and discussing it more thoroughly that I started to form an interest in it. After the class, instead of returning it, I kept it so I could re-read it again. It's amazing how different of an opinion you can have after re-reading a book. It makes me wonder what happened before that made my brain click different this time.

The world-building is definitely unique and makes for a very compelling setting. It takes place in a future where nanotechnology has become integrated into all aspects of life. Limitless resources are now available to the general public. You would think that this would cause the Earth to become a utopia, with everyone finally having free access to everything that they could ever need. The truth, in reality, is that there is still poverty and also rampant pollution. Society has stratified itself into “claves” based on different things (communism, religion, etc.), and those without claves are known as “thetes” are the most vulnerable of citizens.

It's not only in the technology that the world has changed. Different cultures and territories have since been created too. Neo-Victorian culture has since become popular and widespread, and China has multiple new territories, some of them still parts of China and others becoming more independent from the mainland culture.

The world-building is very fulfilled, and exotic while still being grounded, and easy to make comparisons to our current society and how it might progress to this point. The conflict of this story is compelling and rich; Stephenson dives into many questions that he explores through this new near-future Earth. It's not just about technology, but also the question of a stratified society, classism, and western values vs. eastern values. All of these conflicts make the world-building even richer. Citizens in the world do not deal with just one issue that eclipses the entire story (“the big bad empire is coming to conquer us”, “war is bad and we should feel bad”).

The characters are equally diverse and intriguing. There are many of them that get focused on in this novel. Usually, I'm wary of books that jump around to multiple viewpoints. I find myself either really liking it or really hating it. I'm happy to say this book falls in the former category. Most of the characters are legitimately interesting to read about, and they're all used to further the world-building and major conflicts that are explored in this story. Watching step-by-step the process that Nell develops through being taught by the Primer while simultaneously seeing Hackworth come to terms with the consequences of his actions when he illegally copied the Primer for his own daughter was exciting to read. Even the beginning chapter with Bud, a character who is only in a single chapter, set the tone for the story and still managed to be an intriguing character to read about.

Now, onto the cons...

This one, I will admit, is more subjective. I am very much the kind of person who is very hard to please with loose ends. Yes, I've heard all of the arguments supporting them. Real life is full of loose ends. You don't always get answers. You're not owed answers. I agree...but it doesn't make it any easier for me to accept. I at least like to have enough to where I feel like I can be wondering in a satisfied manner. Miranda's storyline, without any spoilers, ends so abruptly to me that I wonder what the point of the ending is when the beginning is so fascinating.

And the ending, as is the case in many books, leaves a lot to be desired for me. Every time I come up to it, I leave with the same disappointing feeling of “That's it. The book's ended, and there's nothing more.” Endings are probably the hardest thing to do in anything, whether it be in books or essays, or movies, so I try not to be too hard on them. I'm not the kind of person who believes that an ending should ruin an entire experience. After all, it's about the journey, not the destination. I think it's because I like this book so much that I wish there was a more satisfying end to me.

All in all, I really enjoy this book and it's one of my favorites. It's honestly made me more interested in Stephenson's other book and ignited a greater desire to read more science fiction books like this. Less “space travel” and more “what's happening on Earth 100 years in the future.” I've got a few more Stephenson books on my reading list now!

Note: There are some plot spoilers revealed in this review, so please read with caution if you don't want things spoiled!

I'm going to preface this review by being completely honest. When I see a book that has “James Patterson” co-writing with another author on it, I already get an expectation of what's written inside, and it may not exactly be the most flattering thing. I don't read them if I want a deeply rich and engrossing read. I don't read it if I want a compelling story or richly-written characters. None of that kind of stuff. Patterson to me has always been quick reads with entertainment as the priority.

I mean, there's nothing wrong with that. There's absolutely nothing wrong with wanting nothing more than an exciting and/or entertaining story. Sometimes, that's all you need for a book to be good. I respect that and understand that. But, I will say, that as a result, these Patterson collaboration books can come off as rather shallow to me. I don't know how much of it can contributed to Michael Ledwidge and how much is attributed to Patterson. I don't really read Ledwidge, so I can't personally anything on his behalf. I've heard from rumors that books like these, Patterson only writes a small chunk or more or less “produces” the book. Who knows? I don't, so I won't really be focusing on who might've done what. That being said, I went into this with sort of low but understanding expectations, and Zoo doesn't really do anything to change that for me. Without spoilers and without rambling on, Zoo has an interesting premise that's filled with areas of mediocrity in execution in character, plot, and prose, but is entertaining enough if you don't ask for much out of this book.

Open discussion of plot past this point, including spoilers.

The premise is intriguing enough, and one that sounds like it could really lend itself to be a cool science thriller of some kind. Animals are seemingly attacking human around the world on a widespread scale, almost in a coordinated way. The main character, nicknamed Oz, is trying to prove that this phenomena exists to the skeptics who refuse to believe and find its cause as everything descends into chaos and humans are subject to an onslaught of attacks from the animal population.

So, first things first: About the writing, I know Patterson books has a sort of style of writing where they focus on shorter chapters and sentences. It quickens up the pace and keeps things moving, which I appreciate. I can't Zoo being twice its length and having denser writing, I probably wouldn't have the resolve to finish it. And it really helps with a book like this in its job, which is to be an engaging page thriller. I will admit though, it does have the effect of making the writing feel choppy. Chapters will end quickly, scenes will come and go. It doesn't help that there's a five year time skip in the middle of the story which comes out of absolute nowhere. It's the most jarring effect. Its placement doesn't make any sense to me. Oz finds out his girlfriend has been killed by his pet chimpanzee (a bit more on that later), and he just makes some little quip about it to his new and very obviously written love interest (also more on that later) and then...time skip? No reaction to anything else? No retrospect on the firsthand data he's collected? No little narrative transition of “And Oz realized the journey had only just begun.”? It's like there was a chunk of the story that was lost in the fire, and the authors really didn't want to try to rewrite it or make smooth transitions, so they just put a time skip in there and called it good. I'm not saying that they had to write 100 extra pages of story to link together the two parts of the book (though I think it maybe would've been better, more on that later as well), but...I don't know. It's a move that utterly confuses me as a reader.

Second, something that personally stood out to me as being weak: the characters and how they're written. Oz himself doesn't really stand out to me in any way, or at least in a way that I think is good. I guess I do appreciate that he's more of an outcast in the scientific community instead of established and respected scientists, it's different and a source of interesting conflict. Or actually, it should be a source of interesting conflict, but it's only that way for about 30% of the story and then it's disregarded after the time skip (when he's now the head authority and being consulted by the President of the United States). It's like he was trying to be written as an antithesis to a stereotypical scientist protagonist, which I respect, but it comes off as Oz trying to be too cool. Cracking one-liners, being witty, listening to AC/DC and Metallica, giving thongs to his girlfriend and making hot jungle love with her. It comes off as trying too hard, but I understand that might be more a personal thing than anything else.

Any other characters besides Oz are thoroughly uninteresting and don't stick out in any other way. I can say right now that it's an absolute struggle to remember any of their names. I can remember Claire's, but only because she's the only other character in this story who gets any sort of meaningful focus, even if it doesn't fall out of the range of “obvious love interest later turned obvious family baggage for main character.” I get that the book is written from Oz's perspective, but when I can tell exactly what kind of shallow role a character is going to play just from Oz's shallow and blunt narration, it makes it harder to remember or care about them. I can say right now that Natalie's death registered very little reaction from me, something I share in common with Oz (yeah, Oz. Just a witty quote and then barely think about her afterwards. But I guess that's good, now that your Modern Ware 2 playing, high-libido, beer-drinking, one-of-the-guys neuroscience-studying girlfriend is dead, it lets you quickly move onto your second girlfriend). I guess I remember the chimpanzee. Maybe for not the right reasons. But hey, I understand that in this kind of book, it's not meant to slow down and give any kind of focus on any of the characters. Still, it would've been nice to see other written characters that weren't just walking cardboard cutouts for the story or obvious tropes that are only meant to be baggage.

Now, the last thing, and the thing where it all falls apart for me. The execution of the plot and characters, or I suppose the writing itself. Okay, I get it. This is no Jurassic Park. This is no Relic. This isn't supposed to be some deeply researched, deeply thought-provoking, multi-layered story. And I like I said before, that's 100% okay and there's nothing wrong with that. But at the same time, I like for things to still be cohesive and logical, for things to still make sense to the reader. Things that characters do and say can be utterly confusing from a reader's perspective with little to no explanation, and you just have to connect the dots yourself. And I think this is greatly illustrated in Attila, the book's chimpanzee character. So, we know Oz. He's a fringe scientist who's desperately researching the phenomena of animals attacking humans, trying his best to convince people of the danger they're finding themselves facing. He's obviously very committed to this, spending all of his money traveling to different countries to research it, risking his romantic relationship, dropping out of school to pursue it...

...so why the hell would a guy like this have a pet chimpanzee in his apartment???

Why? That literally makes no sense whatsoever. And there's no explanation for it at all. There's never a “this chimpanzee will save the humans from animals,” “this chimpanzee is different from the animals,” or even “i'm keeping it as an experiment to study animal attacks, let me sic him on the entire apartment complex.” I don't need to go into details of how chimpanzees are extremely dangerous without an apocalyptic animal attack scenario going on, especially a male chimpanzee cooped up in an apartment complex in an unfamiliar setting. And Oz is shocked and surprised when this chimpanzee goes ballistic and kills and eats his girlfriend? How is the reader supposed to take any of that seriously? I do recall that Oz briefly thinks something to the effect of “Oh damn, maybe that wasn't such a good idea. I messed up on that call.” Uh, yeah. You think, buddy? You need to use all two of your brain cells to figure that out? For being the only scientist in the world who can figure out the animal attack phenomena, he sure doesn't seem all that intelligent. I get this is a book that is meant to stretch your suspension of disbelief, and I accept that, but things should still make at least a tiny bit of sense.

There's more examples, but this review is getting way too long and I think I need to stop. All in all, Zoo's nothing more than one of those shallow thrillers that get you through a long airplane ride. And if that's all you're looking for, great. That's all this books really is. But think about anything past a shallow level, and it falls apart and becomes that much more flawed.

If Oz is the kind of hero who will save our world, maybe our world deserves to be doomed.

(Interesting little side note, I just want to say that my friend who is majoring in biology looked at the explanations for why the animals are becoming more aggressive, and laughed at it a bit. I don't understand biology at all, so the scientific explanations were okay to me, but she saw the explanations given about hydrocarbons and animal pheromones and thought it was funny. I'm not holding it against the book at all, since it's obviously just a fictional book and not meant to be taken super seriously or be super realistic. Just thought I'd point it out as a little P.S. to my review.)

Hovering around 3.75-4 stars.

This was a book where my star rating went up the more as I read the book. It started as a pretty “meh” 3 out of 5, but the score had risen by the time I reached the end.

It had an intriguing premise: a mysterious, giant hand is uncovered by a young girl in her backyard. As the years go on, the journey to find the other parts of whatever enormous robotic body it belonged to unfolds, along with the mission to find out what exactly it is and what it does. But it wasn't just the premise that caught my interest: the format did as well. Instead of traditional narrative prose, the book is told in epistolary format. It uses the form of documents and transcripts, but mostly interviews between characters to tell the story. For me, the epistolary format is a bit of a mixed bag. It can be a very intriguing way to tell a story and give it a certain kind of tone/atmosphere...but it's a common shortcoming that due to their nature, epistolary novels often suffer from a very bad case of “telling, not showing.” I've read books in this format that were just exposition dump after exposition dump, and it gets to be a drag to read.

This one was a pretty engaging read. I was pretty invested in the plot. I wanted to read on as the characters worked to untangle the mystery of the giant robotic hand and see what would happen. Also, with the interview format, I found the characters decently captivating, and the author did a good job giving the main characters their voices and showcasing their personality through their words only, which I consider pretty hard to do since you can't use described action to show what these characters are like. Certain developments in the plot got me hooked enough to want to keep going and events happening to characters took me for a surprise.

I have some complaints with the book: it does sort of fall into the exposition dump from time to time, but it is by no means bad, in my viewpoint. It also suffers from a common epistolary problem in that sometimes, characters say things in supposed “interviews” that don't sound natural, since you're supposed to believe that the characters are saying this out loud in a conversation (I cannot imagine anyone saying with any kind of natural tone a sentence like “he had leathery-esque skin” out loud to someone else). A big plot complaint is, without any spoilers, how we get the “explanation” for the giant robot body parts. It seemed to come absolutely out of nowhere with no build-up, no foreshadowing, just dump a random exposition character in there.

On that last note...to be fair, this is the first in a trilogy of books, and it may be meant to be explored in the later books. The book ends on a cliffhanger, and a pretty intriguing one...

All in all, a pretty good book that's held back by some flaws, but an enjoyable read with a unique format!

"Worlds. The whole damn sky full of worlds. Places no one will ever see. Except me."

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Discworld is perhaps one of the most highly acclaimed fantasy series ever written. All I've ever read about this book from other readers has been the highest praise. People constantly rank the books among their all-time favorites. As a longtime lover of fantasy, this of course meant I had to put it on my own list.

But for the longest time, I was so horribly intimidated to actually start reading Discworld.

I am always wary when I gain an interest in consuming any piece of media that is critically acclaimed on the level that Discworld is at because then your standards are set so infinitely high that it's almost an unfair advantage against it. There have been too many times in my life where I've ended up ultimately disappointed in something highly reviewed because reviews for it were glowing and it ended up falling short of my expectations. I mean, when people say something is "incredible," "amazing," or "perfect," it's hard not to go in expecting something to blow your mind. And to be fair, I know with certain pieces of my favorite media, I think of them in the same above-and-beyond terms that I'm sure would turn others off if they were to read it themselves. It's just a part of being passionate about something, but it does dull the experience of some things for someone like me who comes into it at a much later date.

Along with that consideration, Discworld is one of those series that people like to tell you not to start with the actual first book, and everybody has different recommendations on where to start. Full disclosure, this is one of my biggest pet peeves when it comes to any piece of media. I hate the idea of starting in the middle of something. I like going in order. It just feels good and right to me. Not to mention, nothing frustrates me more than when I feel like I'm missing out on some piece of exposition because I skipped a couple of entries. Even if that isn't an issue, the idea that I could be missing out on the satisfaction of watching how things developed and seeing the natural progression of how both the story and even the authors themselves have changed throughout the series also bums me out. Not to mention...nine out of ten times when someone says "Don't worry, you don't need to see the other ones to understand what's going on," it's a flat-out lie. Experience is a merciless teacher, and this has been one of her lessons to me.

But, I still felt like I was missing out on something by not reading Discworld. It just sounds so...fun and filled with whimsy. Those tend to be my favorite stories. I carefully tempered my expectations; I've heard before that Color of Magic should be considered more of a prologue to the saga of Discworld. I was also intrigued by the fact that Color of Magic looked to be a shorter story with a more fun and casual experience meant for the reader. I feel like those kinds of fantasy stories aren't very popular nowadays.

I'm happy to say it was a very pleasant experience throughout, even with my expectations purposefully lowered!

Color of Magic introduces us to the world of Discworld: a very unique setting where the world is a flat disc balanced atop four giant elephants who are in turn balanced atop a giant turtle swimming throughout the vastness of the cosmos. Like I said, very unique. Within Discworld exists extraordinary locales with equally extraordinary people and their cultures, great and powerful magic of all sorts that is a part of the very fabric of reality itself, and zany characters. The basic premise as introduced in the beginning pages of the book is that a group of scholars want to find a way to lower themselves past the edge of the rim of the world to see what sex the giant turtle is.

...But the focus of the story is on a wizard named Rincewind. What does Rincewind desire in life? He just wants to live a safe, comfortable, normal existence with a respectable amount of coin. Very relatable, but Fate has other plans in store for the wizard. Rincewind runs afoul of a strange man named Twoflower. He likes to travel to different places and capture scenes straight from light with his odd camera box that dangles from his neck. An odd chest filled with odds and ends such as clothes follows him around on many pairs of legs, and he calls himself a word that is unfamiliar to those in Discworld...something called a tourist.

And thus begins their adventure in the magical, whimsical world.

This was a fun book to read. Quite a delightful experience! I loved the mix of flowery, poetic prose grounded with lots of humanistic humor throughout. The premise, as described above, is just so much fun. It almost reads like a Dungeons and Dragon campaign with a group of quirky, fun-to-read-about protagonists going through different encounters and meeting all sorts of zany characters. The humor is written so well into the story and characters. How the situations are described and how the characters react to them is hilariously done. The fact that you have this high fantasy setting but the main characters, Rincewind and Twoflower, react to them in completely different but equally hilarious ways was so fun to read about. In fact, I'd say that Color of Magic is borderline absurdist with how wacky the setting could get but so many of its inhabitants are just so blasé about the whole thing.

The worldbuilding is legitimately very unique and fascinating to read about. There's not another world out there like the one Sir Pratchett has crafted here. And while some of the setting does feel like a tool to highlight the humor of the writing in the contrast it has to its relatively grounded character reactions, it never felt like it crossed that line too much. It never got so ridiculous and the reactions to the settings never got so downplayed that the whole of Discworld feels like a joke. While the initial setup is ludicrous--I mean, it is a flat disc on top of a bunch of elephants on top of a giant turtle--the writing never loses the sense of awe and wonder in the world. There's still some weight to the setting and describing it. With humor, I find it's very easy to go too far in one direction and make everything silly and thus feel kind of pointless, but Discworld has the right amount of balanced seriousness to make things still significant. I loved reading about the reality-warping aspects of magic, the weirdness inherent in it, and the quirks it causes to the world. Discworld has some cool rainbows (or Rimbows, I suppose).

Rincewind and Twoflower have become some of my favorite fictional characters after reading this. Rincewind, despite being a literal wizard, is by far one of the most relatable protagonists I've ever read about. He's down-to-earth. He's got a pessimistic streak. He wants to get through another day without having a near-death experience. The dude is tired of adventuring. Twoflower is his opposite, the epitome of an ignorant tourist. But instead of taking photos with his flash on in Paris, he's doing it in a place where there are literal dragons, trolls, and dryads. He's optimism incarnate, never bothered by anything in life, and always eager to see the next dangerous thing because it's something he needs to take a photo of. The "pessimist versus optimist" dynamic is one of the most common in fiction, but here, it's entertaining and written well and without enough of its own unique quirks to make it stand out with its own identity. They're the perfect kinds of characters you want to put through all sorts of crazy scenarios just to see how they'll react and get out of it.

One thing that gets me about Color of Magic is that it's perfectly balanced in how it executes the premise. It's humorous without being too lighthearted and thus losing any actual weight the story has. The prose switches from beautifully poetic to quipped in a very natural way that doesn't feel jarring. So many times, I see where an author has gone too much on one side and the book loses its effectiveness.

But now that I've done its praises, it's time to go onto what I didn't quite like about the book...Rincewind and Twoflower are the only characters that are really of any significance. Others get introduced that I kept thinking would have some kind of relevance to the story since they take a bit of the spotlight during portions of the book, but then it turns out to not be the case. I guess it is like a Dungeons and Dragons campaign in that way. You'll have temporary party members who look like they're gearing up to be of some value before the DM decides that it's time to move on and whisks the players away.

I don't consider this a spoiler since it happens at the beginning of the book: a meta-feature that occurs within the first few chapters is that there's a random footnote that acts as an add-on to the narrative going on. This happens once in the book to my recollection and just seemed...odd? Where everything else is so well-balanced and crafted, this one felt like a strange outlier to me. Perhaps it's supposed to be some kind of foreshadowing in future books, but I am one of those readers who really does not like it when books feel too much like extensions of each other. Each book in a series should feel self-contained enough that it's a solid piece of work when standing on its own merits. Some narrative tangents also felt too much like they meandered from the story and it left me a bit confused, but I guess it was an excuse to read more of Pratchett's excellent prose.

And then my usual complaint of "abrupt cliffhanger ending." I get it, it's part of a series and it is supposed to drive me to want to purchase the next book in the series (which honestly, I do want to). It's a case of me not liking books that feel like they end in the middle of something or very suddenly of out nowhere. I like books with a more natural-feeling ending. I guess that's just me, though.

If you are looking for a sprawling fantasy epic with story arcs and deep, involved character development, you've come to the wrong place. This is a short and sweet fun adventure in a unique setting with whimsy and wonder weaved into it. It was very refreshing to me for that reason...but also a very expertly crafted story and a fun adventure. I had a good time reading this book, and I do want to continue the series. I don't regret starting here instead of jumping ahead like a lot of people suggest. All-in-all, lots of fun to be had and I look forward to diving deeper into Discworld!

Final note: Rincewind is a bloke who'd I love to have a pint with.