Metaphorosis Reviews

Summary

In the cold, dusty confines of Grey Tower, where few remain, the last Guardian has died, and with her last breath charged her young apprentice with a message: "Tell Black it's coming." As unexpected winter sets in on the Grey district, the newly-named Mother has also set out to ask a question of the Black Lady who leads the palace. Can either of them reach their goal before the fabled Beast emerges?

Review

I’ve read a number of books that follow in the footsteps of Mervyn Peake’s Gormenghast books. Few do so successfully. Alex Pheby’s Mordew made a good effort, but got a little carried away with itself. This book does much better. As with Mordew, it carves out a home in the Gormenghast neighbourhood without actually trying to be Gormenghast.

Pechaček’s decaying, overgrown palace is confusing, filled with obscure ritual, and shows us the misery of the underlings (and sometimes the leaders) of the realm, ground down by obeisance to tradition. It goes a step further in inserting a cast seemingly drawn from a Bosch painting, but treated as absolutely normal (and, in fact, charming). The result is excellent – a rich, hyper-gothic tableau of slow, epic adventure undertaken by confused but noble actors, all against a carefully revealed ancient tragedy, with dryly humorous asides. I loved it.

Where I think Pechaček goes wrong is in focusing so much on the enticing visual imagery – one clever oddity after another – rather than story. The characters spend most of the book trying to get one place or another, and it often began to feel more like a travelogue than a narrative – look at this! And this! And now this! Aren’t they intriguing and grotesque? They are, but to my mind scenery is in aid of story, not in place of it. It’s almost immediately clear that the author has a broad, slant-wise imagination; we don’t need to see proof after proof after proof. The imagery doesn’t fit or work as well, for example, as the vocabulary, which is rich and varied, but generally doesn’t feel like the author is putting it on display (as opposed to choosing just the right and fitting word for the occasion).

The interior art, by the author, is not to my usual taste, but is excellent for the purpose, and genuinely adds another dimension. I’m not sure why Tor felt the need for a different cover artist.

To be fair, Pechaček does land the story pretty well. Early on, I had concerns, but as the book progressed, I grew more and more confident that he would treat the reader well, and he does. There could have been a touch more clarity on one of the two endings, but overall, it reads well, left me satisfied, and left me a definite Pechaček fan. Here’s hoping that for his next book, he does something equally interesting, but very, very different.

One more caveat, I suppose – as with Gormenghast, I found the geography of the palace impossible to unravel, and not a match for either of the maps that is provided.

I received this book for free in exchange for an honest review.

After the disappointing [b:Echo 8400986 Echo (Alex Benedict, #5) Jack McDevitt http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1348990987s/8400986.jpg 13260795], I'm happy to say that McDevitt is back on track with Firebird. It's not the best of the series, but it's a lot better than Echo. This book was enjoyably put together, and the mystery, while not quite as deep as anticipated, was still fulfilling. McDevitt, as usual, keeps the world reasonably fully-fleshed as he goes along, including at least a superficial look at some of the social issues that such a world would face.At the same time, I fear the series is running out of steam. McDevitt uses essentially the same set up every time, including Chase's concern for Alex, public criticism of Alex, Alex going on talk shows, etc. It was good the first time, but by now we've seen this same sequence too many times for it to engage us. The story is still well worth reading, but it's an unusual case of a series book being less interesting for the cognoscenti than for newcomers.For reasons that are unclear, McDevitt throws in the occasional sexist line and attitude. He's careful not to attribute them to core characters, but they're not important for the story, and I wasn't sure why they were there at all. They seem anachronistic. Similarly, for no visible reason, a key character is called Christopher Robin. There is no connection with [b:Winnie-the-Pooh 99107 Winnie-the-Pooh A.A. Milne http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1298440130s/99107.jpg 1225592] that I could come up with.There's also a deus ex machina element in which Alex comes up with missing secondary information (what really happened on the night Christopher was said to disappear) from no clear source. One gets the impression McDevitt just couldn't be bother to come up with a reasonable source.I enjoyed this, and will pick up the next one, but I do think it might be wise for the next book to be the last in the series. McDevitt has set up a way for that to happen, and I hope it does.

reviews.metaphorosis.com

3.5 stars

Having finally completed the painful ordeal of Lawrence Durrell's endless Alexandria Quartet, I looked for something more predictably good. I found that I had unaccountably let a Hobb book linger, and I turned to it with enthusiasm - something reliably comfortable and good!

Unfortunately, while generally speaking I got the ease and comfort I was looking for, I continued to be disappointed by this series. It's eminently readable, fun, and easy, with likeable characters and a sound plot. But it's simply not up to Hobb's usual standards, and that's been true of the series as a whole.

It seems clear that this is intended to be the end of the Rain Wilds sequence. Key plot lines are tied off, but there are broad hints at more to be explored. I'm not sure whether that's a good thing. I love this world, but this latest series is a substantial under-achiever, and I'm not sure I'd want more of that.

We learn more here about the Elderlings, and dragons, and the source of magic. But it's all underplayed in favor of the human relationships. Frankly, I was disappointed. Since first encountering the Elderlings (was it in the second Six Duchies trilogy?), I've been excited to learn about them. Here, they turn out to be less than expected, but not in a particularly emotional and interesting way. Their magic also turns on a particular source of power which is rediscovered in a somewhat offhand way. This power is based on memory, which we know to be important to dragons, but the definition and use of ‘memory' is so contorted that it becomes clear it's simply not a strong enough foundation. I wish Hobb had simply made clear that memory was merely one application of the power.

While human relationships are the core of the story, I found them disappointing. Hobb matches up pairs too neatly, and tries to tie things off with a pretty bow. I'd have preferred something a little more realistic, and didn't find these pairings entirely credible. In addition, she fits in some set pieces on gender relations. While I agree with her point, they read as if they were written by a progressive author for an '80s audience, not for today. Of course, it's true that part of the audience may still have an '80s mindset, the pieces felt dated and a little embarrassing (“Yes, Grandma. Of course they should have equal rights. These days, they do.”) At the same time, Hobb undercuts herself by sticking with some dated views of her own - the ‘boys' are excited by war, and the ‘girls' like to dress up.

There is some subtext hinted at but not explored - principally that dragons, arrogant as they are, are substantially changed by interaction with humans. While this has been touched on throughout, I felt there was much more Hobb could do with it, and have some hope that she will in a future series. It would be a nice return to the higher level of sophistication in the Apprentice and Tawny Man trilogies.

As with some of the other books in this series, the editing was below par. While there were few typos, there were some word errors I wouldn't expect from Hobb. For example, “All the dragons seemed to know whence they were bound, whether from ancient memories or shared thoughts”. Since they've just left Kelsingra, I'll bet it's from recent memory. Hobb obviously means “where” rather than “whence”, but I was surprised to see this slip through, and there were a few similar cases.

All in all, a good read, but a bit simplistic, and below average for Hobb. Perhaps she's aimed this series at the Young Adult audience. If so, I'm afraid she's gone a bit too far. Here's hoping the next series returns to a more sophisticated style.

3 stars, Metaphorosis Reviews

Summary
Kylar and crew settled the risk of several wars by awakening old, powerful magic and building a new city to boot. However, it looks like that magic has had several dangerous, and unexpected consequences.

Review
The key against overwhelming odds, Kylar tells us several times, is to attack is to attack viciously, aggressively, and quickly, so that foes are afraid, uncertain, and overwhelmed. That's pretty much the approach Weeks takes with this book – it's constant action and drama, so that we're always running to catch up, and often unsure of what's happening, and who's supposed to be betraying whom this time. It's a very self-aware book, so I don't doubt this was a conscious choice by Weeks, just as it's a (long) story of a heist – which Weeks carefully defines for us as requiring a witness who misunderstands what's happening – whose witness is us.

I very much liked the original trilogy, despite a weaker-than-hoped ending, and was happy to see more of the world coming our way. Unfortunately, this wasn't what I hoped for. In fact, there were any number of places where I think Weeks went wrong.

1. - It's a near-immediate continuation of the first series. Despite having just reread all of that thick trilogy in preparation, this wasn't what I wanted. I wanted more discovery about the backstory, the ka'kari, the magic, etc. Instead, it's a direct follow-on at exactly the same scale – day-to-day, not great epic.



2. - Weeks doubles down on nearly everything:
   
   
   
   
   1. – length – where each previous book was 600 pages, this was 900. It didn't need to be, and would have been better at half the size (or less)
   
   
   
   2. – drama – where Kylar was put through the wringer several times in the first trilogy, now it happens every several chapters, and there are 108 chapters. Weeks knows exactly what he's doing – there are constant asides about whether it's too much, too over the top. Yes, it is.
   
   
   
   3. – breasts – we saw a lot of breasts in the last books. Well, Kylar was adolescent, inexperienced. It was a debut series. Now, both Kylar and Weeks are older. But they still haven't lost their prurient fascinations with breasts; Kylar even talks about it directly. It got old in the last series. Now, it's old and tired.



3. - The framing for the story didn't really work for me. It's all in the form of a not very credible journal Kylar records, using magic that suddenly exists for the purpose. There's quite a bit of other magic that is new, very convenient, and not very credible, including a key quest object.



4. - The villain of the piece is not only highly powerful, but appears from nowhere. This appears to be a feature, not a bug, but it's a pretty large stumbling block that the book stubs its toe on repeatedly.



5. - The climax of the book is a highly non-credible decision by our hero.



6. - Mostly, though, there's too much going on, too much too fast, and too many turnarounds, even in a book this size.

very

someone

I received this book for free in exchange for an honest review.

Der Schwarm war anstrengend zu lesen, aber auch gut. Es ist nicht nur riesig, aber intensiv recherchiert und detailliert, mit einer Besetzung von Charakteren die über den Atlantik verbreitet sind. Doch, so groß wie es ist, erledigt Schatzing eine ausgezeichnete Arbeit alle Teile in die Luft zu halten. Es ist immer klar was passiert, und wer alle in diese große Besetzung sind. Es hilft, dass das Buch in relativ handhabbare Einheiten dargestellt ist.

Mir gefiel, dass obwohl wir eine ziemlich große Gruppe von Menschen gut kennen lernen, Schätzing hatte keine Angst sie zu töten, wenn die Geschichte das verlangte. Insgesamt, die Geschichte war gut durchdacht und glaubwürdig, und hielt mein Interesse.

Das Ende fällt ein wenig flach. Schätzing reicht weit zurück in die Vorgeschichte, ohne ersichtlichen Grund, und es verlangsamt, was eine angespannte Szene sein sollte. Er verbringt auch eine Zeit Religion debattieren, obwohl es kein wesentlicher Bestandteil der Geschichte bis zu diesem Punkt war. Die Diskussion war interessant, aber eher eine Ablenkung als ein Element der Geschichte.

Insgesamt, eine gute Geschichte, und sehr lesenswert, wenn Sie eine gut geschriebene nahen-Zukunft SF-Geschichte suchen (und ein bisschen Zeit haben).