Ryan
I need to break myself of the habit of guessing the ending of mystery novels, because when I can do so early on it leaves me with a possibly unfair feeling of dissatisfaction regarding a book. I think that's what happened with this one - I guess the ending with a wild “Wow, imagine if...” kind of air by around chapter two, and ended up with the actual ending. Which isn't to say that it's telegraphed, just that I was reading a mystery with little mystery to it.
I was a little confused by the behaviour of the characters at times as well - people seemed at times to go back and forth between not trusting each other and then telling each other stuff that struck me as fairly private. Overall, though, this was a fun, quick read.
Another one of those classics of the genre that I've never read - I'd heard the name John Carter before, but going in that was around all that I knew.
This was a fun read! Carter appears at times to be a bit superhuman, and as a result there doesn't seem to be in serious danger at any time, and the story as a result feels like a swashbuckling travelogue as much as anything else. Perhaps that shouldn't be too surprising, given the era that the novel came out of, and it makes for a refreshing read.
It's not really a science fiction novel, though, at least not in the way that I usually think of the term. Aside from the extraterrestrial setting of the novel, any science in the novel is incidental - how Carter gets to Mars isn't really explained, and there are no real difficulties raised regarding living on Mars - it has atmosphere, and plants and animals that provide food, and aliens that are very similar to humans, aside from their ubiquitous telepathic ability (which don't work on Carter, so are a bit of a moot point). A Princess of Mars has more in common with stories like those of Gulliver or Sinbad than those written by the likes of Wells, Clarke, or Asimov. And yet, reading about it it's incredibly influential, not only to science fiction authors but to actual scientists instead. Anything that could inspire a range of people as wise as Carl Sagan and George Lucas must have something special to it.
One of the things about A Princess of Mars that I found interesting, but which a lot of people might find off-putting, is that it's a novel dripping in Manifest Destiny. Before going to Mars, Carter was a soldier in the Confederate army and is in conflict with a group of Apaches, who are portrayed as ‘savages'; after he goes to Mars, he quickly learns their language and rises to a leadership position among both the green and red Martians as a result of his inherent superiority as a Southern Gentleman. It's a little grating at times, but if you're able to keep perspective of when and where the novel was published, it shouldn't hamper one's enjoyment of the story too much.
Three Day Road is three intertwined stories: The framing story of a Cree woman who has traveled to the city to collect her nephew, Xavier, who has returned home from the battlefields of the first world war missing a leg and with a new addiction to morphine. As they paddle their canoe home, Niska (the aunt) relates the story of her life to Xavier, and he narrates the story of his experience as a sniper in the trenches of France* to the reader as he slips in and out of morphine-fueled dreams. The three stories being told together help strengthen one another, providing insight into each other and deepening the emotional links between them.
This was a very powerful, although dense, read. It takes a perspective on war that isn't entirely unique (“War is tragedy not only for what soldiers do to their enemy, but also because of the type of person it changes them into”), but it's a perspective that's told very strongly and, because of the Native background of the protagonists, it does have something of a unique spin on it.
*Apparently there's a factual basis to this part of the story: due to their experience as hunters, Native soldiers made for some of the top snipers in the Canadian and British forces during WWI.
Convent of the Pure's elevator pitch (or at least what I assume it's elevator pitch would be) seems like little more than a bunch of popular genre elements all tossed into the same pot: “In a steampunk world, a half-angel demon hunter and her ghostly lover must fight against corruption and betrayal.”
The story itself is a lot more than that, though. All those elements are present, but the story is written well enough that it feels fresh and original in its telling.
My only issue with the book is that it could stand to be longer - because it's a novella and not a full novel, it felt like once it got started, it never slowed down to catch its breath and really explore the ideas that were both in the text and implied by them. It's the first part in a trilogy, though, so I'll have to see if the later parts deal with that before passing judgment.
I mentioned in my review of the first volume of The Unwritten that it was too light on actual story; this volume corrects that by moving the story along nicely, while at the same time continuing to develop the themes implied by the premise.
Tom Taylor continues the journey he started in the first volume, encountering a variety of fictional characters who are starting to seep into the ‘real' world. What's really interesting here, though, is the subtle argument for the divine nature of story - Frankenstein's monster meets up with Tom at one point, and refers to them both as being “made, not born”, a distinction that's usually reserved for separating angels from humanity. Stories are magic - I think that's something I've been forgetful of, and as someone who dabbles in storytelling of his own, that's something I should be more mindful of.
One of the things Star Wars often ignores is the political side of war, which is understandable - it's more exciting to watch or read about a lightsaber battle than it is to see ambassadors negotiating treaties. And while this book still had some of the former, it focused more on the latter, which is a welcome change.
Denning also tried to provide more explanation for Jacen's Sith turn, which I'm still not happy about, on a character, story, or thematic level. But I did appreciated that he knows it's a decision they're stuck with, so one might as well make it as believable as possible.
There once was an author named Wilson Taylor, who wrote a series of fantasy novels based around a fictionalized version of his son, Tom. The Tommy Taylor books were in the vein of Tim Hunter or Harry Potter, but even more popular than the latter. Then, right after the penultimate volume in the series is released, with Tommy on death's door - Wilson disappears.
That's the backstory for The Unwritten, which begins with the real Tom Taylor making convention appearances and otherwise cashing in on his father's legacy. Until a woman confronts him at the San Diego TommyCon, claiming that he isn't Tom Taylor, and that in fact there is no such person as Tom Taylor. The fallout of that is rumour and scandal enough to drive Tom into hiding, and we start to get some hints as to who Tom “really” is, and what his relationship is to his father's work.
It's a Vertigo comic from a pair of Vertigo veterans, doing the type of book that Vertigo does best (literary urban fantasy). Anyone who is a fan of Sandman or Fables would feel really at home with this story, for example.
The one thing that did bug me about it, though, was that the book itself seems more like an introduction of premise or proof of concept than an actual story; there's little actually there, beyond introducing characters and laying hints for future volumes. I know that it's an ongoing series, so they couldn't have wrapped up everything, but a little more meat on the bones would have been appreciated.
Maybe not your ideal holiday reading, but I got an ereader for Christmas and this was preloaded on it :o)
It's a fantastic read. Our main character, Prendick, comes upon an island where a doctor (Moreau) has been using vivisection to create animal/human chimerae. I've been a fan of Wells for a long time, but had never read this one, favouring his better-known works (War of the Worlds, The Time Machine, etc). It's an interesting look and critique at Victorian social mores (specifically the idea that civilization exists as a tool for us to subsume and control our “animal” instincts, and the difficulties therein), while also being a statement on religion as a tool for control of social classes, and a political statement against the then-popular practice of vivisection. That's a lot of content for a short novel, but the result is crafted well enough that it never feels dense. A must-read for those with an interest in science fiction.
Certain characters work better in certain media. I'm sure there's some complex, deep McLuhanesque reason for that, but for me it's just a feeling I get - adapt the character into the wrong media and they end up looking like they're wearing someone else's shoes. Spider-Man, for example, works best in comic books; Batman in film.
Sherlock Holmes is a creature of the short story.
The stories here are perfect examples of what makes Holmes a classic character; problems come to his door, and no matter how bizarre or complex they seem, he manages to squirrel out a solution, sometimes within minutes, through the simple application of logic and reasoning. They're beautiful stories, in a way, with a clarity like crystal.
I'm really not sure who the intended audience for this book was - the style of it would be impenetrable for someone who's never read Tolkien before, and if you're already a fan, you most likely already know this story through its earlier appearances in the Unfinished Tales or the Silmarillion.
So, here we have the complete, tragic tale of Turin Turambor and his sister Nienor. Told in a style that mixes Grecian myth, biblical tale, and Shakespearean pomp. A good enough story, although there are times when you can tell it was unfinished prior to Tolkien's death.
The last book of the Millennium trilogy, this one ends the series with both a bang and with a whimper. It's a very slowly paced book (even compared to the first two in the series), and while there is a lot of interesting delving into conspiracy and crime throughout it, a lot of that delving is done through remotely accessing hard drives and setting up private Yahoo groups to share data without being observed, which aren't exactly thrilling ways to advance the plots.
If you enjoyed the first two, you'll definitely want to read this one, but it does have many of the same thematic elements - crusading journalists bringing the truth to light, strong, independent women overcoming the misogyny of those around them, and delving into the dirty secrets that a modern nation can be built upon. Fun reads if you're so inclined (and I am), although each of them could probably stand to be a couple of hundred pages shorter.
One should never hitchhike, because one never knows - the driver might be some kind of murderer or something. And one should never pick up a hitchhiker, because one never knows - the hitchhiker might be some kind of murderer or something.
This story is what happens when case #1 meets case #2. The resulting story is a dark, fun tale that reminded me a little of the Owen/Giamatti/Bellucci film “Shoot Em Up” in terms of its manic, violent-to-the-point-of-slapstick approach. In a longer story it wouldn't have worked at all, but at this length it was great at what it was attempting to do.
Bonus points for the tongue-in-cheek interview at the end where Kilborn and Crouch discuss the creative process that brought the story about (I'm always a sucker for that kind of thing).
Former Dungeons and Dragons geek turned travel writer finds himself getting pulled back into ‘the life' after the Lord of the Rings films are released, and decided to chronicle the state of modern geekdom.
It's interesting, from an anthropological perspective - Gilsdorf has a bit of an insider's perspective, but it's one that he fights against. He spends half the book trying to convince himself he's above the people who play MMOs, or who LARP, or attend conventions, but eventually he realizes that he is those people, to an extent, and that those people are actually pretty cool in their own ways. He's writing for a muggle audience, so he doesn't go into those subjects in too much detail, but it's a nice overview of disparate yet connected communities.
While doing this Gilsdorf also relates his chronicle/investigation to his personal life - how he first started getting interested in D&D when his mom got sick, and how he started getting back into ‘the life' as he started approaching his 40th birthday.
One of the things I found appealing about this story was that I went through a similar personal history as Gilsdorf - I experienced nowhere near the same amount of personal tragedy, and was more a comic reader and CCG player than a D&D person, but I did grow up feeling like an outsider, and turned to sci-fi and fantasy as a result, only to drift away from it in my teen years before being pulled back in after the Lord of the Rings films were released. So I felt a connection to the author and his ‘quest' as a result.
I'm usually a little skeptical of anthologies that have fairly narrow themes, as the contents of them tend to get a little repetitive. So I was a little surprised at how much I enjoyed this one (a collection of urban legends being retold as first encounter with alien stories). As with any anthology, there were a few stories I didn't care for, but most of them were really well done and had more variety than I had expected. Bonus points for short sections at the end of each story where the authors explained the urban legend they were working from (a lot of which I'd never heard before, ironically), and how they came about the story, as well as a bit in the introduction where the editor discussed trying to construct a meta-narrative through the order the stories were placed in, which was something I never would have noticed if it weren't pointed out to me but which is a nice touch.
A retired superhero (The Great Machine, due to his ability to control machinery) decides to run for public office, and becomes mayor of New York. The superhero thing is mostly window dressing for West Wing-style political theatre; one of the major conflicts in this volume, for example, deals with an artist that received a grant from the city creating some ... let's call it “racially explosive” artwork, and the fallout from that. It's an interesting premise, although this volume doesn't go much beyond setting that premise up; given how much I love Vaughan's other work (Y, Runaways, Pride of Baghdad), though, I'll definitely be back for more.
It takes a certain amount of gumption to end your comic series with the apocalypse.
There are two schools of thought, traditionally, on apocalyptic literature. The first is that apocalyptic stories are a metaphor for an evolution in human consciousness - old ways of thinking are abandoned in favour of new ways of understanding the world and our place in it; the second is that they're used as political statements, saying that current conditions are so bad that the end of the world must be around the corner. Promethea manages to respect both of those traditions, while at the same time paying off foreshadowing and subplots from as far back as the first issue and telling an enjoyable action story. It would be absolutely incomprehensible if you haven't been reading since the start, but if you have it's a satisfying end.
One last thing: I know I've been talking a lot, through this series, about how amazed I've been at the thoughfulness and experimentation of JH Williams' art duties. He really out-does himself here, though, especially in the final issue, which in its original format was readable as either a regular 32-page comic, or a giant, double-sided, sixteen-panels-per-side poster, with a different interpretation of the ending depending on how you read it. Incredible stuff.
I was fairly pleasantly surprised with this book - at first glance, it seemed like there was a lot of standard, cliche sort of mystery/thriller things going on with this, but Konrath's ability to mix together mystery, terror, and comedy really make it rise above a lot of other books in the genre. The main character, Jack, also has a lot of depth to her - while the novel's still a fairly plot-driven hunt for a serial killer, she's a fascinating, driven woman - the kind you'd really like to have a drink with. Will be checking out the rest of this series for sure!
This book, a cross-cultural look at the place of women in societies from the Neolithic period to the end of the first millennium AD, was quite possibly the most depressing book I've ever read.
Which is kind of surprising, because I was already familiar with a lot of the individual subject areas being discussed, but hadn't really considered them in the aggregate. The view you get when you do that is that regardless of how a society is organized, regardless of whether or not it's religious, regardless of its economic organization ... men treat women like garbage. You'd think that, as a group, we'd learn that this is not only immoral, it also slows the pace of societal advancement, but apparently we NEVER DO.
I went into this thinking it was a book about the Beatles, and that's not really true - it's more a book about Jerry Levitan that discusses the role the Beatles played in his life, and how one experience can become the defining moment of a person's childhood. True to that, the book's presented as a multi-media scrapbook, with the text being supplemented by photos from the time and a DVD, as well as some funky drawings and font choices. It's a very well put together book.
The main body of the book is taken up with young Jerry's interview with John Lennon, and how as a fourteen-year-old he managed to bluff his way into Lennon's hotel room to conduct the interview. That's an amazing story in itself, before you even worry about the content of the interview, which is pure Lennon - it's naive yet jaded, hopeful and energetic yet tinged with the sadness of realism.
Also enjoyable, for me at least, was the fact that the entire thing's set in Toronto - hearing Jerry recount taking the TTC to Sam's to buy records, and things like that, give it a personal touch that I felt made it easier to connect to.
One quibble I had, though? The title. Everybody knows the walrus was Paul.
I'm noticing an alliterative theme in the menaces in the Tales of the Red Panda series - the Crime Cabal, the Mind Master, and now the Android Assassins. It's a nice touch, and just one of the ways that Taylor hearkens back to the radio serials that Red Panda is based on.
In a sense this is more of the same Red Panda adventures, but given how much I enjoy those adventures, that isn't necessarily a bad thing. I've gotten used to the third-person narration, which was never poorly done but just wasn't what I was used to in the first book. Taylor is setting the novels back in the earlier days of the Panda and Squirrel relationship, which is understandable, but I'm a big fan of the “modern” relationship that it takes away from my enjoyment a little bit.
A collection of short stories starring characters from Konrath's Jack Daniels series: Homicide Detective Jacqueline Daniels, her partner Herb Benedict, and private detectives Phineas Troutt and Harry McGlade.
Konrath uses these stories to try out a bunch of different areas of crime fiction, from classical mysteries to modern thrillers with Daniels and Benedict, to hardboiled/noir material with Troutt, and flat-out parody with McGlade. Having the collection switch sub-genres with every story helped keep things fresh and entertaining. It will be interesting to see how those characters interact with each other in one of the actual novels, however, given that I'm already associating them with those different sub-genres.
In which we are introduced to Sophie Bangs, a college student who becomes the latest host for Promethea, a demi-goddess/psychic archetype who represents the collective imagination of humanity. and the power of Story In order to learn more about her powers, Sophie begins to meet with the previous Promethea hosts (who now live in “the Immateria”, the realm of imagination), and she also does some traditional-type superheroing at the same time, fighting demons and whatnot.
Most of the ideas here are ones that Moore's used in other works: the techno-futurist present is evocative of the New York of Watchmen, for example, and the conclave of previous Prometheas is reminiscent of both the Supremacy in Supreme and the Parliament of Trees in Swamp Thing. I believe that the hilarious “Weeping Gorilla Comix” is meant to serve the same function as the pirate scenes in Watchmen (that's a bit of a tenuous connection, admittedly). These are relatively minor elements, though, so the story doesn't feel like a retread in any way.
A couple of years ago I read [b:Ender's Game 375802 Ender's Game (Ender's Saga, #1) Orson Scott Card http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1214413570s/375802.jpg 2422333], and it almost ruined the X-Men for me. I saw a lot of parallels between the way the adults in EG were training the kids and Xavier's Danger Room, and it left a bad taste in my mouth. As much as I still loved the idea of a school filled with mutants learning to use their powers, molding them into superheroes didn't hold any interest for me. Which is why I'm glad I read this. There isn't anything new in terms of the base story (“Kitty Pryde learns she has mutant powers and goes to Xavier's”), but instead of being a superhero story it recasts everything as high school drama with interpersonal conflict between the students. An interesting twist, and one that would have resulted in a much higher rating if I didn't absolutely hate the artwork. I get that they were trying to go for a more Japanese-influenced story to appeal to the kids who don't read comics but do read manga, but it was just horrible, with Henry McCoy ending up looking like a giant ball of fur and Kitty suddenly gaining giant Pikachu ears whenever she got embarrassed.
This is what happens when comic book writers learn about the many worlds theory of quantum physics: two Earths, one with DC's golden age characters and another with their silver age characters (there are others as well, but they don't factor in here). So, once a year, travel between the worlds becomes possible for some reason, and they team up to fight a menace that's too big for either group of heroes (these uber-menaces never attacked at any other point, for some reason).
I've been trying to read more silver age DC stuff, as the gang currently in charge of DC have an obvious desire to revert the company's output to the silver age in as many ways as possible, and I wanted to see what the appeal was.
I don't see it. Even comparing to what was being produced at Marvel at the time, rather than modern comics, this stuff is juvenile, simplistic, lacking in characterization, and boring. I could accept getting rid of the modern stuff if it were being replaced with something more or equally interesting, but knowing that this is what they're aiming for is just depressing.