Derek
I'm not going to read this book.
Who The Hell! thought that this was, in any way, a reasonable cover?
John Douglas Powers, grow a social conscience!
Meh.
The story's written in a very naive style. No doubt suitable for the average seventh-grader but not for me.
But it loses any believability right off the top. Machine's develop sentience. Maybe it's explained how that happens later on—I don't know because I couldn't get past the first chapter—but it's not important to the plot. So Aiden's father organizes a covert military mission to destroy them: “Once they found out what he planned, they decided to terminate him first.... Before his dad's team had a chance to strike them, the combat machines skillfully infiltrated his office and attacked them while they prepared for the mission. The firefight wasn't even close.“After his father and his elite team were killed, the government panicked. They tried to pull the plug on the machines, but it was too late.”
Never mind the subject/verb agreement, this makes zero sense. Nobody would send in a covert military force to do the job until they'd found that “pulling the plug” didn't work. That's where I gave up.
In the words of the inimitable Manny Rayner:
“I have not read the book, but we saw the movie at a local cinema, using the free gift card that I received as an unexpected bonus with [a few hundred dollars worth of groceries]”
Sandra Bullock was phenomenal, and even George Clooney was pretty good. Of course, they were both typecast.
I mentioned to my wife, as we left, that “of course, the physics was pretty much off”, and she pointed out: “but you can watch Star Trek”. She has a point. So, as an SF-Fantasy, it was pretty amazing.
( Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license.)
Author: Manny Rayner
Originally posted at: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show..., used by permission.
In the shower just now, I suddenly had a Eureka moment. The aspect of this current censorship war that's been upsetting us most is the feeling of powerlessless. Goodreads can arbitrarily change the rules on us, and they hardly even bother to respond when we complain. But we are not powerless. There are twenty million of us, and only a few dozen of them. We just need to get a little more organized, and we can easily resist.So here's one concrete way to do it, based on the legend of Hercules. You will recall that Hercules had a difficult time against the Lernean Hydra; every time he cut off one of its heads, ten more grew back. We can do the same thing if we adopt the following plan:1. Back up all your reviews, so that you have a copy of everything you have posted.2. If you think that one of your reviews has been unreasonably deleted by Goodreads, repost it with an image of the Hydra at the top.3. If you see someone else posting a Hydra review, make a copy of it and post it yourself.We can improve this basic scheme with a little thought; for example, it would be better to have a place where we keep HTML marked-up source of reviews, so that they can immediately be reposted with the same formatting, and we need a plan for duplicating deleted shelves. But we can sort that out later. Without getting too bogged down in the details, I'm sure you see what will happen. The net result of Goodreads unreasonably deleting a review will be that it immediately comes back in many different places.People who know their Greek mythology will be aware that Hercules did in fact defeat the Hydra, and Goodreads can use the same method if they dare; they can close down the account of anyone who participates in the scheme. That will work, but I am not sure that anything less drastic will be effective. I think Goodreads will be reluctant to escalate to this level. A large proportion of the most active reviewers are now part of the protest movement, and they would be losing much of the content that makes the site valuable. Even more to the point, the media have already started to get interested (maybe you saw the article in the Washington Post). They would love the story, and it would create a mountain of bad publicity for Goodreads and Amazon.I'd say the odds are heavily in our favor. Why don't we try it? I promise now to respond to any Hydra calls Today, I (derek, not Manny), received the following email from Goodreads: Hi Derek,Your review of The Hydra was recently brought to our attention. Please note that any reviews you post must contain your own original content (see our review guidelines). Any reviews that are simply copy-pasted duplicates of other reviews will be removed. Given this, the review in question has been deleted. We have attached a copy of the review below for your personal records. Please refrain from posting content of this nature going forward.Sincerely,The Goodreads Team To which I replied:
As noted, the review included only items used with permission. In what way does this differ from posting a review containing quotes or images from a book, included as “fair use”? If you delete all reviews containing any non-original content, you will need to delete almost every review on the site?Please explain.
Obviously, “The Goodreads Team” has made a mistake, so I'm reposting.
I then thought to add this addendum to our email conversation:
Oh, and by the way: why would I have ever seen your review guidelines? There's no link in the Goodreads Terms (which terms state that “This Agreement, together with any other other terms you agree to in connection with your use of the Service, shall constitute the entire agreement between you and Goodreads concerning the Service.” Since I have not agreed, anywhere, to any other terms, your “review guidelines” remain exactly that—guidelines). There's no link that appears when I'm writing a review. Goodreads has no FAQ (at least not linked from anywhere I'd be likely to find it). How is one supposed to know there are review guidelines?
Having just received an offer to purchase this book:
“The past and present collide in this thrilling fantasy with 80 five-star reviews on Amazon” it's time to take a stand.
I can't call this “spam”, as it came from a list where I specifically requested offers, but you are never going to interest me in a book by telling me how many 5-star reviews it got on Amazon: a place where 1-star reviews are practically banned.
I read this decades ago, and enjoyed it enough to read 6 volumes (maybe more—but I own the first six), but not enough to read since.But [a:Judith Tarr 41194 Judith Tarr https://d.gr-assets.com/authors/1277332209p2/41194.jpg] is doing a read for tor.com, and since I own it I figured I'd join in.Well, it's an easy read, and I don't regret doing it, but honestly it's not terribly well written. As numerous reviewers point out, the few women are stereotypes, and most of the men are cardboard cutouts. Very few of them have sensible motives, and the two major Evil (mandatory capitalization!) characters are stupid! Like Bond villains, they have to give their victims time and opportunity to evade their clutches (though the heroes do that, too). The male villain fancies himself a great swordsman, yet apparently he's never demonstrated it publicly. I'm sorry, but it's not a solitary pastime. You have to practice at it—against other people!And then the climax... wasn't.It was Kurtz' first novel, and my recollection is that she got better (and this does have many things going for it) but I suspect if this has been my first reading I would never have got around to reading the next five.The medieval almost-Wales setting and the medieval almost-Catholic church, along with the race of humans who can use magic, makes for a great setting, though in this book they're underdeveloped
Normally, I love José Latour, but this time the first 30 or so pages were "He did this... then he did that... then this". Boooring.
A whole new sense to “hard SF”. “Hard SF” usually means Science fiction that tries to take very few liberties with Science, sticking to what is known to be, or expected to become, possible. Egan takes it a quantum leap beyond - the science is HARD! If you can wrap your head around it, though, it's worth the effort.
Have just received an offer to purchase this book: “...Over 230 five-star reviews on Amazon”
I can't call this “spam”, as it came from a list where I specifically requested offers, but you are never going to interest me in a book by telling me how many 5-star reviews it got on Amazon: a place where 1-star reviews are practically banned.