Derek
Didn't live up to its billing. I'd heard a lot of hype about this book, and would have been happy to read “a thrilling re-examination of myth”, but far from thrilling it's a rather repetitive walk down memory lane of a monastic-page turned outlaw turned monastic, Much the Miller's son. In Thorpe's vision, the narrator spends a huge amount of time discussing theological issues that would be of no interest even to the most devout modern Christian (Thorpe then elides much of that, but it's still so boring...). Skip it.
It's actually years since I read this book, and I had to read the reviews to be sure I had the right one - I've forgotten pretty well all the details in the blurb - but the fact that the actual plot sticks with me, and comes to the front of my memory at the strangest of times is testimony to the strength of its effect.
Decent SF mystery, with the usual strange anachronisms found in so much near-future SF.
Detective Vernon Moody must investigate the death of an art collector, and the trail leads to the Navaho reservation in Arizona. Along the way, he learns more than he wants to know of Navaho religious practice in general, and sandpaintings specifically. I have no idea if this treads on any cultural toes, but I imagine there must have been cries of “cultural appropriation”. I think Foster treats it respectfully, and I don't have a problem with it, but then I'm not Navaho.
The one anachronism that was particularly hard to understand was that a book written in 1990 (when we already had car-phones, massive though they were) couldn't envision hand-held mobile phones. The police are equipped with hand-held computers, but whenever they want to connect to the Web, they have to find a phone! It's not a show-stopper, but it keeps pulling you out of the novel. Another one was almost ignorable, but simple enough to extrapolate that a careful author could have avoided it: the police bring in a consultant, and her hand-held computer is much more capable than theirs. She tells them that it has ten gigabytes of memory! A simple application of Moore's law would have told him that it would take until about now to get 10GB of memory into a handheld device (we're actually a little ahead of the Moore's Law prediction, but not far), but we haven't arrived at his future yet. It's (smartly) never stated exactly when this is set, but I think he really should have gone at least into the Terabyte range!
Having re-read the book(s) some 30 years after my first reading, they hold up really well (this version of [b:1888744] is actually an omnibus edition of the first two volumes of the series, [b:1888744] and [b:Galactic Derelict 1183835 Galactic Derelict (Time Traders, #2) Andre Norton http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1223774976s/1183835.jpg 648358]).It holds up fairly well - there are few anachronisms introduced by the advance of technology since Norton wrote the stories, but there are a few strange quirks of technology. Why is a refueling station still operative (barely) thousands of years after its abandonment, but the components that store the memory of spaceship navigation are so fragile that they have to worry about even new ones? If your ship's navigation is broken, you're doomed. If the refueler breaks, you call out a repair crew: it doesn't need to be nearly so durable.That said, the characters are enjoyable and mostly believable; the technology is not inconceivable; and the plot works. The stories are still, after 50 or 60 years enjoyable enough that now I'll have to read the sequels - which I haven't read before.
From the woman who gave us Cowboys* on Hippos, “Queer librarian spies”.
How can I not want to read this?
[* cowpeople?]
Ugh! How is this more acceptable than a title like “The Nigger Girl”?
Come and join us in the Miévillans group for a group discussion of this fabulous first novel by [a:China Miéville 33918 China Miéville https://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/authors/1243988363p2/33918.jpg]. [In honor of His Chinaness, the pun on fabulous is entirely intended.]While this shows some of the roughness of a first novel, it's got many of the hallmarks of his later work. London features strongly as not just the setting, but a character in its own right. The opening of chapter one feels very much like [b:Perdido Street Station 2197587 Perdido Street Station 1 (Perdido Street Station, #1) China Miéville https://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/books/1327271589s/2197587.jpg 23853494], and the rats-eye view of London reflects a theme, to be revisited most clearly in [b:The City & the City 4703581 The City and the City China Miéville https://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/books/1320475957s/4703581.jpg 4767909], but also in [b:Un Lun Dun 68496 Un Lun Dun China Miéville https://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/books/1170692699s/68496.jpg 2959401] and to a lesser extent in most of his tales: if he isn't superimposing topographies, he's investigating the interfaces between them.Miéville's love of Drum and Bass music is almost contagious. He hasn't converted me, but at least he makes it obvious how somebody could love that music.For more details, until we finish our group read, see the link above :-)
I haven't read this and I'm not sure I'll ever be able to.
Just reading the blurb, just remembering the blurb, makes me cry.
With a gender switch, this could be my grandfather's story. His only escape from slavery on a Canadian farm was to run away to join the army at 17. The possibility of dying in WWI was a better choice than staying on that farm.
I read this many years ago. Reread it this week. I didn't like it much then, but now that I understand the subtext a whole lot better... I can't say I like it much.
I finally begin to understand Tolkien, who famously said that he abhorred allegory. That's what this is: an allegory of European colonialism, and ongoing cultural imperialism. The West gives developing countries aid, and thinks it's doing good. Butler's Oankali protect the human survivors of WW III, and think they're doing good. Are they? Maybe we'll find out in book 2 or 3, but I doubt it. What's the value of an allegory, saying that “A is like B”, if you can't offer options to say “but it doesn't have to end the same way!”
Recently, I've read quite a few comments about this as, essentially, cultural appropriation.
Anyone who feels that way really isn't getting the point. I read this as a teenager, in the early 1970's, and immediately felt how this guy had risked his LIFE to find out just how hard life was for black Americans.
It's an extremely powerful example of “walk a mile in somebody else's shoes”. Sure, after the fact he got to go back to being a privileged white guy, but does anyone really imagine that if he'd been caught out in the act he wouldn't have been at risk?
Read it as it was written, an attempt (by all accounts, successful) to find out just how bad life was for black people in America. No, it was never as bad for Griffin as it would be for so many Americans, but for many it was our first inkling of just how badly our parents were treating significant numbers of our fellow citizens, and it gave us an important cause (and not incidentally, another reason to fight our parents)
Ugh. I had high hopes for this. I've read all of his other books.But I commented early on that it was [b:The Shining 11588 The Shining (The Shining, #1) Stephen King https://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/books/1353277730s/11588.jpg 849585] meets [b:The Witches of Eastwick 217518 The Witches of Eastwick (Eastwick, #1) John Updike https://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/books/1355681807s/217518.jpg 2859851], and that wasn't necessarily a bad thing. Then it went completely off [b:The Shining 11588 The Shining (The Shining, #1) Stephen King https://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/books/1353277730s/11588.jpg 849585] deep end, and I bailed.It was driving me nuts that he had this door sealed with thirty-nine carriage bolts. Carriage bolts have smooth, domed, heads. You can only unfasten a carriage bolt from the nut end. So either he couldn't know they were carriage bolts (if the nuts were exposed), or there's another access to the other side of this door, or ... whoever installed it sealed himself in! Just to ensure we know that Bohjalian didn't know what he was talking about, the protagonist's wife asks him why he didn't just unfasten the carriage bolts.Still, that's just me being OCD. The second-person narrative whenever we need to see something from the protagonist's point of view, while using third person for the rest of the book, was grating. I hate second-person narrative.Still, that's just me.But chasing his kid with an axe (OK, it was only a knife) just put it over the top and I quit.I hate dropping a book when I'm this far in.But that's just me.
Fuck you, no.
I love Cherie Dimaline, but you want me to review a PDF and then you make it pretty much impossible to download it anyway.
Not happening
These authors actually put “This book may not be re-sold or given away...” on the copyright page of their PAPER edition. Lump of coal for you two next Christmas.
I give up. I spent 45+ days on this and was getting nowhere.
It's written to look like a work of the 18th century in which it's set, so it is full of inexplicable capitalization, which I find extremely difficult to read.
I'm starting a massive re-read of Witch World novels (at least those I can get hold of - which seems to be 24 out of 30+). I read most of them over 30 years ago. I won't be writing major reviews, but let's just say I'm pleasantly surprised how well this one has held up compared to some of her SF novels.
I promised to make my wife test-drive this one. She says I won't like it...
I saw the stage play two weeks ago (Awesome!), and the film years ago, so it's really time to get to the book!
http://www.slj.com/2016/11/opinion/when-publishing-and-reviewing-diverse-books-is-expertise-overrated-opinion
‘nuff said
Trivial. Simplistic.
Might be reasonably well written, but it just holds no interest for me.
I should have been suspicious (OK, I was...) when I read the blurb: “Fans of The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings, and Eragon will enjoy this contemporary remix of the classic epic fantasy genre.”
Sorry, but I HIGHLY doubt there are many fans of [book:The Lord of the Rings] who are fans of [book:Eragon]. They're simply not in the same league. And I'm not even saying that LOTR is head and shoulders better than Eragon (though I would!) but fans of Eragon would probably argue that LOTR is pedantic, over-wordy, and boring (I know my wife, who generally has good taste—after all, she married me—would say so) . You can't be all things to all people, and you can't expect fans of LOTR to be fans of Eragon, or vice versa (though, I'm sure there are some who've enjoyed both).
This is why I read [a:China Miéville 33918 China Miéville http://d.gr-assets.com/authors/1243988363p2/33918.jpg]!I recently finished [b:The Scar 68497 The Scar (New Crobuzon, #2) China Miéville http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1320435192s/68497.jpg 731674] and was thoroughly disappointed, giving it the lowest rating I've given to one of his books. So, I felt I just had to jump into [b:Embassytown 9265453 Embassytown China Miéville http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1320470326s/9265453.jpg 14146240], and loved it from the start.SF is full of “aliens”, but for the most part they're odd-looking humans, or at least “people”. They're not really all that alien. Miéville's Ariekei are not only completely alien, he never even really clearly describes their appearance - it just isn't that important. The Ariekei have a unique form of language - so unique, it's called Language! Each of the Ariekei speaks with two voices simultaneously, and is incapable of even understanding that a single voice can actually be Language. [b:Embassytown 9265453 Embassytown China Miéville http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1320470326s/9265453.jpg 14146240] delves deeply (and at times almost opaquely) into the meaning of meaning, from semiotics into semantics, and into the difference between simile and metaphor. Along the way, we're asked to take sides on the fall from grace in the Garden of Eden - are we (or the Ariekei) better for the knowledge of Good and Evil, or worse? Miéville's position is clear, and I stand with him. It's not an easy read, especially the later chapters, but it's well worth every ounce of effort you put into it.