nicanical

Originally titled The Prefect and first of the Prefect Dreyfus series set within Alastair Reynolds's Revelation Space universe, Aurora Rising gives readers a glimpse into the Belle Epoque talked about in other books in the series.

Pacing is good. Good cycles of tension and relief entice readers along. Character development is shallow but the magic here is in Reynolds's worldbuilding. The characters only need depth enough to push buttons and pull levers to show the world as a living, interactive thing. There may even be too many characters. Thalia, for example, is locked up in a polling core and languishes for awhile perhaps because Reynolds didn't know what to do with her. Sparver, too. He's present early on, disappears, then conveniently rematerializes just as Dreyfus embarks on a suicide mission.

Some conversations are thinly-veiled replacements for exposition. These read artificially, like an interview where all the questions are softballs. It's a minor thing. I mention it only because it's not a problem I recall with other books in Revelation Space.

Another war novel by Ernest Hemingway, For Whom the Bell Tolls is set during the Spanish Civil War, and shortly before the Second World War. The story follows American demolitions expert Robert Jordan, a volunteer with the anti-fascist Republicans. Robert goes behind enemy lines to destroy a bridge in support of a forthcoming offensive.

The story has good pacing that is sometimes disrupted by drawn out introspection with characters' thoughts written in stream of consciousness. Robert has these, and Anselmo, and Pablo. These moments slow down the book and I was not fond of them.

I love how the story starts with levity, as if the jokes and nervous laughter were forming a bulwark against the coming struggle. Like A Farewell to Arms, Hemingway squeezes in a star-crossed love into the story. The love does not become the whole story here though. It is merely a thing to thwart Robert's single-minded fatalism.

The dialogue style is different. Hemingway translates Spanish into English literally, preserving word order even where the resulting English is stiff or unnatural. Archaisms are used, e.g., 'Hast thou seen what thou needest?' Occasionally, actual Spanish is used too. The style didn't bother me. It adds to the atmosphere of being embedded with guerrillas in the hills, but it is a divisive feature.

Originally titled The Prefect and first of the Prefect Dreyfus series set within Alastair Reynolds's Revelation Space universe, Aurora Rising gives readers a glimpse at the Belle Epoque talked about in other books in the series.

Pacing is good. Good cycles of tension and relief entice readers along. Character development is shallow but the magic here is in Reynolds's worldbuilding. The characters only need depth enough to push buttons and pull levers to show the world as a living, interactive thing. There may even be too many characters. Thalia, for example, is locked up in a polling core and languishes for awhile perhaps because Reynolds didn't know what to do with her. Sparver, too. He's present early on, disappears, then conveniently rematerializes just as Dreyfus embarks on a suicide mission.

Some conversations are thinly-veiled replacements for exposition. These read artificially, like an interview where all the questions are softballs. It's a minor thing. I mention it only because it's not a problem I recall with other books in Revelation Space.

David Weber's On Basilisk Station is a nice piece of military sci-fi pulled down by too much exposition.

A lot of exposition isn't immediately a story's death knell for me. I like Robert A. Heinlein's Starship Troopers and it has plenty of exposition. Working through Weber's exposition though is like spooning mouthfuls of cement dust. Get ready to wade through swathes of gobbledygook.

Maybe Weber put extensive effort into crafting the setting and he included the dense expository passages out of excitement for his worldbuilding. Who knows? But have the courtesy to move that stuff into an appendix man. That's what Dune did. Follow Frank Herbert's example, not Neal Stephenson's.

Otherwise, the rest of story is well-paced and enjoyable. I like Honor, the main character. I like how the Fearless's crew comes together. I like how Honor exploits all the resources of her ship—the marines, the pinnaces, the weather probes (down to reconfiguring them into proximity sensors). The occasional views into the background political intrigue was a nice touch. I could have used more of it if Weber clearly telegraphed perspective shifts.

The characters here are gifted with convincing psychological motivations that accrete to form the plot, as you go along, until the ending finally reveals the gnarled shape of the thing.

This psychological dimension gives the story's ending a weight that alone makes The Wycherly Woman a worthwhile read. The problem is the ending is the only payoff. There's no satisfaction for the reader on the way. Not from accompanying Archer chasing clues, and not from the scenes or style of the prose either—Ross Macdonald is a skilled weaver of plots and psychology but his prose is perfunctory. The writing only shows signs of a pulse in the last two chapters with the timely lucidity of a victim, and the confession of a dying man.

The characters here are gifted with convincing psychological motivations that accrete to form the plot, as you go along, until the ending finally reveals the gnarled shape of the thing.

This psychological dimension gives the story's ending a weight that alone makes The Wycherly Woman a worthwhile read. The problem is the ending is the only payoff. There's no satisfaction for the reader on the way. Not from accompanying Archer chasing clues, and not from the scenes or style of the prose either—Ross Macdonald is a skilled weaver of plots and psychology but his prose is perfunctory. The writing only shows signs of a pulse in the last two chapters with the timely lucidity of a victim, and the confession of a dying man.

In Larry Niven's A World Out of Time, Jerome Corbell is thawed from cryo sleep by the State, Earth's totalitarian government in the far future. The State transfers him into another body and ships him off to drop probes on distant planets. Corbell takes a detour instead, eventually returning to Earth in the even further future thanks to time dilation.

The space travel and the Earth parts read distinctly from each other. Like one story and a loose sequel rather than a single story. The space travel portion is passable. Corbell's interaction with Peerssa is amusing. The Earth part is more fun. Corbell explores an Earth wildly transformed. Post-apocalyptic but in a retrofuturistic way. This part of the story is full of mystery and anxiety and tension and the whole time I read it I was thinking it was what Ringworld should have been.

A World Out of Time was published in the 70s and it's apparent—sex is brought up several times: promiscuity in the State and orgies on the parched Earth. The book even closes out with sex because of course it does!

In Larry Niven's A World Out of Time, Jerome Corbell is thawed from cryo sleep by the State, Earth's totalitarian government in the far future. The State transfers him into another body and ships him off to drop probes on distant planets. Corbell takes a detour instead, eventually returning to Earth in the even further future thanks to time dilation.

The space travel and the Earth parts read distinctly from each other. Like one story and a loose sequel rather than a single story. The space travel portion is passable. Corbell's interaction with Peerssa is amusing. The Earth part is fun. Corbell explores an Earth wildly transformed. Post-apocalyptic but in a retrofuturistic way. This part of the story is full of mystery and anxiety and tension and the whole time I read it I was thinking it was what Ringworld should have been.

A World Out of Time was published in the 70s and it's apparent—sex is brought up several times: promiscuity in the State and orgies on the parched Earth. The book even closes out with sex because of course it does!