Review – David Louis Edelman, Infoquake

Interesting but ultimately disappointing.

My first impression was bad (a glossary… the next worse thing is a freaking map), but it livened up once I got used the author’s rhythmn. One character in particular kept in interested (Horvil, happy-go-lucky geek, a laugh a minute), while others where a tiny bit one-dimensional.

But, the story just fails to deliver. Plots fall over, a major plot is obviously a device left for the sequel, and the entire book reads as if the author simply ran out of space (or the editor said “enough!” and it was all bumped into another novel).

Single word review – Average.

 

Review – Ian Mcdonald, Brasyl

This was, quite simply, the most fun I’ve had reading scifi in a fair old while.

Brasyl is a tale in three parts, set in three different time periods, in… Brazil (surprise surprise).

Something I read in the Guardian awhile back was a review of a detective novel that stated, categorically, that we need a little more escapism in our reading. The idea being that we can take something of a metaphorical holiday while we take our metaphorical holiday in print. Brasyl fulfils that by immersing the reader in a fictional Sao Paulo, the deep Amazonian rainforest, and modern Rio De Janerio.

And that’s all I’m saying. This book as a few spinners bounced at you, just to keep you on your toes, but is generally straight down the line. But in mentioning the spinners, they aren’t enough to put you off the reading altogether, unlike another scifi read recently finished, 2012, the most god-awful book imaginable.

The trouble with 2012 was that it took everyday Judeo-Christian mythology, mixed it up with every freaking X-Files cliché you can imagine, threw in an alarming amount of rape-fetishism, and spewed it out, half-digested, into print. The mythology of Brasyl is plainly there to see, but it sits just to the side of your vision, a reminder.

Awesome.

 

Review: Karl Schroeder, Sun of Suns

My initial impulse after reading a few dozen pages was to put this one back on the shelf, and almost entirely because it is written in a style that can only be described as ‘juvenile’. The book feels very much like it was written for young teens, and involves pirates. What more can you say that that?

The concept of Sun of Suns is pretty interesting though. The universe is “Virga” is in effect a hollow earth, a massive balloon filled with air and elements out in space somewhere. Within this terrarium live a number of nations all competing for space and light, the latter provided by artificial “suns”.

And I found the concept pretty interesting, so stuck with it.

Virga is full of what amount to fan-propelled wooden men-of-war, operating in zero-g, and fighting it out with rockets!

I put aside my doubts, embraced the simplicity of the whole thing, and knocked if off in a couple of nights.

 

Review: Lord of Light, Roger Zelazny

Back in the 60s there was a tendancy to to look to the mythology of ‘exotic’ countries like India, or Japan, as an inspiration for storylines.

And while these days we can sneer at the banality of it all, back then something like Buddhism was largely unknown in the West, and, you know, mind-blowing.

But this doesn’t mean I’m subjecting myself to several hundred pages of “ancient wisdom” masquerading as sci-fi…

 

Review – China Mieville, Iron Council

Well, I think the romance of New Crobuzon is broken for me. I was suspicious that Mieville jumped the shark on the concept as early as The Scar, and Iron Council confirmed it for me. Perhaps, had Mieville stuck to his knitting on the wonder that was the urban fantasy of Perdido Street Station he might have kept my attention, but the last two books I’ve read have been somewhat in the conventional fantasy mould, with a little steampunk thrown in there to bring them up to date.

So, not so great.

The one redeeming feature of Iron Council is the consistent use of golems by one character, in increasingly imaginative ways. I’m used to the concept of golems, but see them as a creature made of a specific matter. For instance, earth golem, iron golem, clay golem etc. But Mieville really pushes out the imaginative boundaries of this one fantasy creature in some pretty amazing ways. I’m almost tempted to issue a few spoilers in order to mention them…

As I say, the problem with Iron Council is that Mieville loses the awesomely dark, Babylonian mood of Perdido Street Station in favour of a more conventional travel-quest-fantasy. A frankly, these are boring. While there was enough action set in New Crobuzon for me to realise the city is a fantasization of London (one set of characters called Quillers, all of whom are dressed in suits and Bowlers…), the dark underbelly that makes the best urban fantasy was laid open too wide, and undermined the dramatic tension.

Likewise the premise of the iron council itself. The ‘iron council’ is a anarchist utopia Mieville introduces that is supposed to serve as some sort of counterpoint to the authoritarian-liberalism of New Crobuzon (and yes, the oxymoron is deliberate). And while I can see the vision, it’s a well-hashed idea leading all the way back to Le Guin’s The Dispossessed. Perhaps what Mieville is doing is exploring the increasing surveillance and control he is experiencing in a liberal demomcracy like British London.

My recommendation is: maybe as a holiday read. It is a whopping 500 pages after all.

 

Review – Counting Heads, David Marusek

I wasn’t sure about this bit of science fiction when I first started it, having read a tweet that it “was weird”, but once I was a few pages in and starting to get Marusek’s style it became a good fun read.

Counting Heads is set on a future Earth, one that is strangely – utopian, distopian, post-apocalyptic, and about to colonise space all in the same breath. And what I found interesting is that Marusek introduces all these elements breathlessly, while also writing in undertones of social hierarchy and exploitation (affluent immortals and ‘the rest’ of humanity? how will different social cultures c0-exist in a highly technology-dependent world?), a subtle treatise on the prejudice and the nature of humanity (are clones like everyone else? ), the ultimate surveillance society, and the rights of AI.

Add to this mix a ubiquitous nanotechnology, unseen but remarked upon dangers, and unseen political manipulation driving the action? A relatively rich novel. I’m already looking foward to the next book in the series.

 

Review – J.G. Ballard, Concrete Island

I’m not entirely convinced this book was worth the 5 minutes it tok me to read it.

I kept thinking, I put a scifi back on the shelf, for this?

 

Review – John R. Alden, History of the American Revolution

The history of the C17th and C18th are somewhat new to me, so this has been an interesting read. Not an exciting read mind you, so it’s been a long and slow one.

Alden writes an interesting history. Walking a fine line between intolerably pompous and authoritative, he has taken a professorial approach to the American War of Independence, and has not attempted to cast any new or dramatic information into the public sphere, rather, he writes as even-handedly as possible. So, despite this book being written in 1964 and therefore containing some highly un-PC attitudes towards races like the Native American (who are often referred to in shorthand as “the Savages”), it doesn’t fall into the trap of characterising the British as evil, and the Patriots as virtuous.

All in all, I learned a fair bit about the nature of conflict during this era, while also uncovering a reasonable degree of insight into the origins of the Revolution.

A decent read.

 

Review: The Scar, China Mieville

You know, I kind of want to categorise this as science fiction, but it’s more like fantasy? The Scar is an interesting cross-over between the two, while also being somewhat steampunk. Set in the same fictional world as Perdido Street Station, The Scar centres on a young woman who flees the persecution of the New Crubuzon and is subsequently captured by… pirates! They remove her and the crew of her ship to a floating city called Armada, where we meet the dastardly, varied, and nefarious population.

As imagination goes, this is a goodie. Mieville does cityscape novel pretty well, and while The Scar appears to merely trade one type of city for another, it does so gracefully enough that it is neither corny or a laboured point. The novel ticks over nicely, and although weighty at 600 pages it doesn’t really lose it until just about the end.

Yes, the end. Which was… weak. That said, the journey itself is interesting. More interesting than Red Mars for example.

Don’t go looking for literary genius, just get in there and enjoy and extremely well-written read.

 

Review – Harry Harrison, A Transatlantic tunnel, Hurrah!

You might recognise Harrison as the author of the famous Stainless Steel Rat series. I read them 20 years ago and have positive memories, but now very much associate him with the title “teen author”. A Transatlantic Tunnel, Hurrah! was a title I picked up in my back-reading of old steampunk novels, and… it is boring as sin.

In fact, I’m completely unconvinced that it actually is steampunk. Sure it has a babbage engine in one part. It has the British Empire as a world leader in an alternative world history. And it has some coal-powered stuff.

But… the flavour is wrong. Unless you can clearly tell me that it influenced steampunk? I’m not believing it.

Did I mention boring? I gave up about halfway through.