Astrid Hawk
Recommended for all nerds, people who fancy themselves nerds, and people who want to understand fantasy without taking on GRRM or Robert Jordan. This was just a fun read, period. That said, though, I'm definitely in the first class I mentioned above, so this book was basically written for me.
I was born a bit late to really understand all the copious 80s references throughout the book, but I spent enough time on emulators and friends' old consoles to have sufficient perspective to enjoy the nuances of the story. It helps to understand what vector graphics look like, what crude haptics (e.g. “force feedback”) feel like, and how Dungeons and Dragons (or similar role-playing games) basically worked. But there were certainly enough contemporary references, like Pern, Firefly, etc to ground me.
I loved this book for so many reasons that I can't possibly list them all here. The book answers some burning questions, some you might not have known you had (but I've definitely asked them all at some point):
- In an immersive virtual reality, how do you go to school? how do you conduct business?
- Do you feel pain when someone hits you? Is a blow converted to actual physical damage?
- If your online presence is an alternate you, what are the ramifications of death?
- How do you police a virtual civilization? (Note - the author answers this question by avoiding the issue entirely. There are no laws in the OASIS. He does not get into why there is not rampant needless destruction, though there could be possible explanations.)
Don't look for anything too deep in this book - there is no mind-blowing ending (in fact it's quite predictable), and no existentialist agenda or some other philosophical analog. It's just pure fun with a happy ending that makes it even more fun. About halfway through the book, when the main character's avatar starts getting more advanced, the OASIS leaves the realm of a believable online system to a complete orgy of fantasy. At times it feels that the author makes up the system parameters as he goes along, but as wild and imaginative as he gets, he does manage to adhere to the basic parameters he establishes. Sometimes it feels like the kind of story you'd tell as a child, getting more and more hard to control, but for every grounding answer an adult asks, the child comes up with some reason the story would work. Some things are easy to imagine as a possible future of gaming, but others (like codes for producing odors, for example, and the sheer volume of data that is apparently sent instantaneously over fiber-optic connections for another) are clearly just fantasy. It doesn't really matter, though, because nerds want that stuff to exist, and we're willing to overlook the impossibilities in order to imagine this as a reality. Plus, the story moves along pretty fast, so there's no time to waste considering these things.
Normally I'd only give a book a 5 if I enjoyed it so much that I think I'd want to read it again. I'm not sure this book really has that much re-read value - it's not very complex, and the story and characters are simple but memorable. It's possible that on a re-read I'd understand more of the nostalgia references... but not much else. However, it's rare that I call up friends I haven't spoken to in awhile just to recommend a book - and I did that with this book. I think that in itself is enough to push the rating to 5 stars.
It's hard to know what to say about this book that hasn't already been said in hundreds (maybe thousands?) of reviews before me. So I'll keep it short.
I had trouble getting through the first 30-40% of the book - Salander was stuck in the hospital with no means of communicating with Blomkvist (and despite the fact that the author has kept them almost entirely apart since the end of book 1, I still like their interaction better than any other characters'), and the whole thing was feeling like a re-hash of book 2. Police faction against police faction against rogue reporters against the obvious villains, with no one really making any progress. Around the 40% mark, though, things got a lot better all at once - suddenly there's a fun little sub-plot involving Erika, Salander is once again back in the fray (even if from the hospital), and the various “good guy” factions suddenly grow some brains (and a pair) and stop cowering behind misinformation. Phew.
When the trial finally came around, I didn't want to put the book down because it was just such a relief to finally see “justice” being dealt (even if it was obviously coming). And the many snarky remarks in the trial were definitely fun to read. The end of the book was just... eh. But I wasn't really expecting any earth-shattering conclusion or twist, so I'm not complaining about it. It's always hard to conclude a story of such epic proportions in both a neat and engaging manner, and I'll settle for neat over engaging any day. At least all loose ends were tied up.
As for the mechanics - the writing style was the same as the previous 2 books (not a surprise) with very mechanical prose and terse, matter-of-fact descriptions. Dialogue scenes are numerous and much more interesting, except for the repetitive use of “he said” and “she said” (no one ever seems to exclaim, comment, mutter, etc). There are some strange grammatical pet peeves that come up throughout the series as well - for instance, “no one” is consistently spelled “no-one”. It doesn't affect the book at all, and I don't really expect it to bother the general reader, but I'm weird enough to be slightly annoyed by things like that.
I still wonder how much I really learned about Swedish culture. If I were to take everything at face value, I'd assume that I can expect that on a visit to Sweden I'll get coffee with every meal and every time I meet someone (so basically every waking minute), sandwiches for every meal except dinner (and even sometimes then), crime at pretty much every small town, warehouse, woods, and subway tunnel, and casual sex with many and various partners. It seems that half of Sweden is single and happy to be so. Aside from the parts that deal with prostitution and rape, the portrayal of sex in these books is unique among other books I've read. Sex is not erotic, disgusting, or in fact earth-shattering in any way, though it features quite prominently in various ways throughout the series. On the other hand, sex is portrayed as a recreational activity akin to going to see a movie in the theater (but obviously with a bit more physical stimulation than mental). Relationships are given the same straightforward treatment most of the time - characters simply walk up to each other and tell each other how they feel and what they think they want. Incredible. If only sex and relationships were so easy in the real world. But maybe they are in Sweden? On the other hand, it made Blomkvist falling in love seem about as believable as Bond falling in love. No. Please just leave him as a player. It made my world feel much more secure that way.
I wasn't thrilled with this book, but I didn't hate it either. Every now and again I'd find myself getting drawn in... only to be suddenly and rudely shut out by a shift in narrative perspective, or by the author's seeming unwillingness to maintain interest in any one plotline long enough to finish it with the respect it deserved.
I read several other reviews that called out the choppy pacing as the main detriment to their enjoyment. To be perfect honest, I'm not really sure that I understand what choppy pacing is if this book is supposed to exemplify it. I actually thought the pacing was consistent enough to be predictable - action scenes went quickly, and they were interspersed with chapters of “set up” - mostly private meetings between characters in which the next phase of the plot was revealed piece by piece through each character's eyes. I thought that part was fine - there's no reason that a book, even a fantasy novel, needs to start off slow and uniformly accelerate to the final climax. In fact, having the brief periods of action throughout the book actually gave me something to look forward to each time I got bored. I found the pacing too predictable to be “choppy”.
But a lot of the book didn't work for me. As I began thinking about how to write this review, I thought about how I'd summarize the book. And that was where I realized the major flaw: there's no way to summarize the book concretely without giving away the entire story. The book tackles too many aspects of the fantasy world - magic of all types, political intrigue, feudal war, class war, abuse, poverty, excess, religion, legend, etc - without giving any one aspect its proper due. The end result is that the world feels incomplete; the reader is left with very little sense of the history that seems like it should be important, and the political structure is very muddled so that when the big upheaval does come, it's hard to remember who is siding with who and what various factions' motivations are supposed to be. Similarly, little information is given about what magic can do, so each new trick that shows up is a surprise to the reader and seems like the author made it up on the fly to get a character out of a particular jam. A little more information up front about common magical items and capabilities would add more credibility to the magic users in the story - it's far more interesting to see characters use tools like magic in creative ways rather than just see new tools invented on the spot.
The back of the book says just about everything it can say - it begins with the somewhat trite “A good killer has no friends” and then goes on to explain that Azoth has no choice but to abandon his old life and become the apprentice to the greatest assassin in the world. The book does start out centered around Azoth/Kylar, but as it evolves, most of the action and the weighty themes have little to do with him and his little coming-of-age tribulations. It feels as if he's thrust into the middle of major events in a completely unbelievable fashion, as if the author is grasping at straws to make sure the hero of the book is somehow involved in all the major events. To me, that made everything seem ill-thought-out - like the author had some master plan for the boy and the plot (and in fact he clearly did), but didn't know how to make it remarkable or dramatic enough without big exaggerated battles.
Many other minor things bothered me as well, though it took me awhile to understand what they were as I read. One was the constant shifting perspective. While I recognize that this was necessary to make the plot come together, since there was no way Azoth/Kylar could see everything, I've seen it executed much better (GRRM's technique of separating chapters comes to mind). In this book, perspective, setting, and plot thread can switch mid-chapter with no more warning than an extra line break between perspectives. What was more infuriating, though, was the seemingly random injection of new perspectives by minor characters - people who had never even been named in the book before and wouldn't take much part again. This is a technique often used in movies when introducing a villain - the crime the villain is committing is seen through the eyes of someone (usually a security guard of some kind) who is about to become a victim. It bothers me in movies, but I can see the use there. In books, it doesn't work at all, particularly if the character is not about to become a victim at all, but is just loaning his eyes and thoughts temporarily for the author to fill some pages.
Finally (and this is a minor point to be sure), the language of the book fell short for me. The style frequently slipped between neutral prose to contemporary slang, which seemed very jarringly juxtaposed with the medieval setting.
I feel a bit hypocritical writing what is without a doubt my most scathing review to date, for I'm sure I wouldn't have done any better trying to write a fantasy novel (or any kind of novel for that matter). It's so easy to find flaws in others' work that is by virtue of being on paper infinitely better than any work I've never written. But still, this book really disappointed me, and I felt the need to quantify and justify that feeling.
No time for a full review, though I had many thoughts along the way that I'd love to be able to put into words. The bad - the story drags quite a bit in the middle while minor characters are squabbling and being established for seemingly no good reason and Salander is entirely absent for over 100 pages. The book could also have been significantly shorter if Larsson did not repeatedly beat the reader over the head with certain details - I actually threw the book down in anger at one point after being told AGAIN that there was a discrepancy between Salander's reputation among her friends and her official psychological record. And of course the book suffers a bit from the same dry, robotic writing style that is used in the first book in the series - it reads almost like one long police report, which may be intentional, or may be a side effect of the translation. But clearly, the good must outweigh the bad, as evidenced by the fact that I finished it in 3 days, 2 of which were full work days. I just kept turning pages, eager to see Salander's next reappearance and to find out what mess she was going to dig herself into or out of next.
Read this in English as a child and somehow never read the original version even in French class. Looking forward to experiencing it in the author's original prose. (Goodreads does a terrible job with managing multiple-language editions of the same book... hope I can make this work.)
I made it! Once I plowed through the first 600-700 pages, it was really quite good - although as others have said in prior reviews, it takes about 900 pages to actually get the disconnected story threads to start coalescing - and that, in my opinion, is too long for this particular world and story, which costs the book a star. Although I was happy with Sanderson's treatment of the characters at the conclusion (not the frustrating sensationalism of GRRM's style, for example), I did not enjoy being bludgeoned with their motives for so long. There are only so many repetitions of their internal struggles with concepts and morals that a reader needs to grasp the point, and this book far exceeded that number for every character. That said, the long walk did make the climax that much more emotional.
Some readers would probably not enjoy the jumbled perspective in this narrative. For some characters, their stories are told bidirectionally - their present-day thoughts and actions are recorded while their pasts are gradually explored, mostly chronologically, intermingled with the present. For most characters, though, we just get hints of character-shaping events in their pasts to describe their present-day actions, and the narrative switches between characters nearly every chapter. The frequent changing or perspectives in the narrative perhaps helped keep the timeline more clear across a vast world, but also served to string the reader along in a frustrating manner, always leaving the reader with the sense that there was something else they were supposed to know about each character to understand them, but knowing we would have to wait several chapters, and in some cases hundreds of pages, to have a chance to find out more. I believe it was that lack of focus on a given storyline, coupled with repetitive descriptions of internal struggles and uninteresting action scenes, that made me stop reading the book entirely on my first attempt.
All that said, though, I do think the book has convinced me to continue with the series. I was on the fence until the last 150 pages or so, which is a very long time to have uncertain enjoyment of a 1250-page book. The plot twists toward the end were handled well - enough foreshadowing to give the reader an idea that things weren't adding up, but not so much to ruin the surprises completely. There was very little that could be construed as completely out of character for a given actor, so the reader doesn't feel misled. In the end, I guess that yes, it does leave me wanting to find out more about what happens to these people, to the world, to their society. Do they get answers to their unanswered questions? Are they doomed to repeat past mistakes and suffer death and destruction because of their previous failures to pass down ethical codes or accurate history? And most importantly of all, do I trust Sanderson to treat his readers well and handle those questions in the sequels? I don't know - but I guess he's earned my trust for another round.
As a commentary on socialism, this is a fantastic thought-provoking essay. As a novel - the book would be better as a short story given its lack of development and repetitive descriptions. The majority of the story happens in the final quarter of the book, almost feeling as if Orwell has given up on both the story and his characters having already made the bulk of his points in essay form earlier on. Still, I'm tempted to give it 4 stars because I can't resist a dystopian book.
I decided to go to Paris 30 minutes before the plane departed, and this was the only Paris guidebook in the airport bookstore. I figured something was better than nothing (and I was right).
The good:
- Quick synopses of most must-see attractions including open hours
- Organization by neighborhood to help itinerary planning
- Outlined walking tours for various interests
The bad:
- Lots of wasted space listing hotels and shopping malls. They didn't want to list all hotels in an area, and they wanted to get a good price cross-section, with the result that you're left with meager and incomplete information just taking up space. I just skipped every hotel section and opted to pay for an hour of internet usage at the CDG airport instead to find a hotel online.
- Too many pictures for the sake of having pictures. I know it's a color, high-res book... but it would have been better if all the pictures had been quality photos of the various places I was considering. Some were... but others were just poor-quality images of standard, generic tour-guide fare.
- The tear-out map. Way too small. It would have been better to have separate maps for the metro and streets, since both ended up being inadequate trying to share space.