Andrew
At 3/4 of the way through I have only briefly cared about anyone or anything the author has presented. The stakes are clearly supposed to be massive and yet are massively unclear. Every now and then a beautiful idea appears, and then we run way from it. I have loved some past Ian McDonald books, but this one put him on the “buy only at a discount” list. DNF.
Reads like Neal Stephenson read his older books and decided to write a parody of that type of fiction. Or a rip-off. Or an homage? It wanders between all three but what it definitely is not is original in any way. The premise is somewhat interesting but the moment to moment text may have been written by an neural network based on his previous works.
This is an amazingly bad book (one star) that I'm not sorry to have read (so another star for that).
It barely advances its central thesis, that Zen/Ch'an are more Taoism that Buddhism, I was hoping for a good exploration of that. Each plausible bit of evidence is surrounded by mountains and rivers of twaddle, so even the things not obviously false would have to be confirmed somewhere else before you should believe them. Nothing is supported with any references, and many things are presented as “it is obvious that (ridiculous thing)”. Did you know that because Chinese is not phonetic, but originally vaguely pictographic, that its words are more connected to the thing they represent than a phonetic alphabet? My wife - who is both a philosophy major and Chinese - made a snorting noise when presented with that gem.
It combines a few intriguing translations with willfully difficult translations - for example every teacher's name is rendered completely into English, rather than the Japanese you might be familiar with or the Chinese that is more accurate. Yes, their names were taken to mean something, that could be laid out the first time you see each master and then left in the Chinese so you could cross reference them with other readings. Similarly some terms are rendered into English so tortured (“existence-tissue”) that the original would be much less pretentious.
Buried in this compost heap are a few notions worth the dig, so I'm not sorry to have bought this book and spent time with it. But I can't really recommend it to anyone else.
Another book where the major voice is the main character psychoanalyzing herself. There's slightly more excuse for it here that in many books but still it means whenever you're in danger of empathizing with her she steps in and does it for you. Combine that with merely ok worldbuilding that throws too much ultratech around for you to care about any of it and at 80% I check out because I have stuff I could reread that is much better.
The main character almost exclusively tells you what is going on in her head instead of you seeing it, which is unsatisfying, like eating a picture of a cookie. Add to that what seems like a cast of thousands - there are probably twice as many named characters as the action warrants. And then the final reason to give up about 70% through is that the setting is the first half of the 20th century and the dialogue both external and in her extensive internal monologue, is entirely 2017.
This story seems to be an almost perfect expression of zen despite not having anything to do with zen.
Many short stories struggle with their length, not knowing how to pack in what they want to do or not having enough despite being short. This is the length it needs to be and no more. And the writing is extremely considered, every sentence is on purpose in a way that is unusual even for professional writers.
You can find it legitimately for free off SF magazine websites so don't wait, just go read it.
Earthsea all in one place is very nice to have, and it's a nice edition. Included are some interesting notes from the author on how she came to write various things and what she thought about them at the time as well as what she thinks about them years later. The very short stories done specifically for this volume (at the end) aren't that strong but they're still Le Guin. Also included are a couple of essays on Earthsea.
Strangely the illustrations by Vess aren't that great - he's done better quality work in comics - and don't add much.
Hard to believe this is by the same person who wrote the various City Of books. Got about a third of a way in before having to give up due to extreme annoyance at the complete lack of a feeling of place. And also the fact that the talking magic item sounds like any internet commenter 2018. And the main character about the same. And we were starting a quest for the lost ancient magics just stop. Reread any “City Of” book instead.
All the Book of Five Rings translations get lumped together but are not at all equal, this is five stars specifically for Kenji Tokitsu's translation. Many others are one-star translations.
This is the only translation of this book I've ever read that understands that Musashi was writing a martial arts manual, not a book of generally applicable philosophy. Most translations of Five Rings try to turn it into a mystic festival of woo woo feelings. That's not what it is, the philosophy that is in here is an outgrowth of his cultural background and attempts to put his style of martial arts into words.
If you're looking for Musashi the martial artist, this is your edition.