Tag: books

Review – Lock In

Posted February 4, 2015 by in Reviews / 6 Comments

Cover of Lock In by John ScalziLock In,Ā John Scalzi

I generally find Scalzi’s work fun, very readable, but maybe not too thought provoking, not too serious. This managed to combine that sci-fiĀ fun feel with serious issues of disability politics, racial politics, gender — well, all kinds of identity politics, really. It helps to readĀ Unlocked if you’re not very good at picking up context quickly, though I don’t think it’s necessary; it gives you a lot of background, and even a starting point for imagining the characters.

I would actually be interested in listening to the audiobook for this, because Scalzi avoided stating a gender for Chris Shane. Thus, there are alternate readers — Will Wheaton and Amber Benson. The existence of the two versions meaning that I don’t really consider this a spoiler! Particularly as it’s not germane to the plot: it’s a thing outside the plot that will affect your reading, because you’re almost inevitably going to choose which gender you assign to the narrator in your head unless you’re used to queer communities. Personally, I chose to read Chris Shane as female if I could. I ended up reading them as something more nebulous: if you grow up spending most of your time outside your physical body (in the Agora or in a threep, it doesn’t matter which), are you going to think of gender in the same way as embodied people do? I don’t think we can answer that with modern technology, but I think the answer might be no, and that’s how I read Chris.

In a way, this fits right into a tradition with Isaac Asimov’sĀ The Caves of Steel,Ā which is a mystery as much as it’s a sci-fi story, and which relies intimately on both elements to make the full story (rather than being a mystery story that happens to be in a science fiction world, or vice versa). And because one character is walking around in an artificial body and the other isn’t, and with some of the political issues. (Ask me another day how I react when Hawking says a robot uprising might destroy humanity, everyone reports it as news, and nobody wants to listen to the sci-fi fan in the corner yelling “Isaac Asimov got there first!”)

Ahem. Anyway, Scalzi keeps his lightness of touch here, despite all the issues that he explores; it remains intensely readable, a page turner, and something that can suck you in enough that you forget about your surroundings. And I love that it’s based on all sorts of real situations: some people are ‘locked in’, we are finding solutions like the ones here for them (myĀ New Scientist this week has a cover story: “Out of the Twilight Zone: Portable mind-reader gives voice to the locked in”), there were epidemics like this before (the closest analogue being the flu epidemic closely followed by the sleeping sickness epidemic)… These are not concerns only relevant in a hypothetical science fictional world.

Rating: 4/5

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Review – Ghost King

Posted February 3, 2015 by in Reviews / 0 Comments

Cover of Ghost King by David GemmellGhost King,Ā David Gemmell

Okay, generally I find Gemmell’s books to be fairly fun; standard fantasy, with enough interesting characters, twists or references to keep me interested. And you’d think this one would be especially so, since it’s basically about King Arthur (albeit as a young boy). Maybe it’s the fact that this was one of the earliest of Gemmell’s books (as far as I can tell from publication dates), but it really, really didn’t work for me. There was that same moreishness about it in some ways, but I kept getting distracted by the tone, which bounced all over the place. Serious teenage crushes to slightly ridiculed slave/master relationships in a single bound… It’s great that there’s a disabled protagonist. It’s great that in that sex scene between him and the slave, she feels that she has control over the situation.

It’s less great that one encounter with the maimed comic relief hero is enough to cure her of her fears and trauma about rape, but that’s a personal bugbear of mine. One good experience doesn’t cancel out one bad experience, people! It’s something like a one-to-five ratio, more like!

Anyway, maybe it was that irreverent tone that got to me. The liberal mixing of mythologies (a guy was a proto-Arthur figure, he was also Ares, there might be a link intended withĀ CĆŗ Chulainn, throw in some Babylonian mythology too, and a dollop of Gemmell’s own mythology as well…) really didn’t work: it’s not that I’m fundamentally opposed to it (hell, if you dig into it, that’s exactly what J.R.R. Tolkien did), but it didn’tĀ work. ItĀ felt thrown together.

I’m not gonna read the sequel; it’s due back at the library anyway, and may the next borrower have more joy of it.

Rating: 1/5

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Top Ten Tuesday

Posted February 3, 2015 by in General / 8 Comments

This week’s theme is ‘Top Ten Books I Can’t Believe I Haven’t Read From X Genre’. I’m going to go for a bit of a twist and give you the top ten books my mother can’t believe I haven’t read from the classics, particularly because I’ve got English lit degrees… It’s also my mother’s birthday today! (She does read this blog, so stick your head in and say hi.)

  1. As I Walked Out One Midsummer Morning,Ā Laurie Lee.Ā 
  2. Lord Jim,Ā Joseph Conrad.
  3. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn,Ā Mark Twain.
  4. A Tale of Two Cities,Ā Charles Dickens.
  5. Tess of the D’Ubervilles,Ā Thomas Hardy.
  6. The Importance of Being Earnest,Ā Oscar Wilde.
  7. The History of the Decline Fall of the Roman Empire,Ā Edward Gibbon.
  8. A History of the English-Speaking Peoples,Ā Winston Churchill.
  9. Gulliver’s Travels,Ā Jonathan Swift.
  10. Ulysses,Ā James Joyce.

So if you’re feeling bad about not reading the classics, neither have I… (I’m also missing out onĀ The Count of Monte Cristo and other such classics!)

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Review – When Life Nearly Died

Posted February 2, 2015 by in Reviews / 2 Comments

Cover of When Life Nearly Died by Michael J. BentonWhen Life Nearly Died,Ā Michael J. Benton

For all that this purports to be about the end-Permian extinction — the greatest of the extinction events, where maybe 90% of living organisms were wiped out — this actually contains a lot more information about the end-Cretaceous. This makes some sense, because we have a much better understanding of what caused the end-Cretaceous extinction, and it helps that it’s also the most widely known and understood. People don’t really want to hear about the extinctions in the Permian, however much more disastrous, because the image of the extinction of the dinosaurs is so entrenched in our minds.

But I kind of did want to know about the end-Permian extinction, and I wasn’t so interested in chapters and chapters of set up, particularly when it came to the history of catastrophism. It’s enough that I grasp the concepts, and that they haven’t always been agreed upon or understood the way they are now — I don’t really want to know the personal details of loads of scientists’ lives. (Some are interesting characters in themselves. Some are not. Either way, I’m actually here for the end-Permian, not upheavals in Earth sciences.)

I was a bit staggered by a couple of assertions — “all organisms have DNA”, for example, including “the simplest virus”. But no: a virus containsĀ RNA. It’s quite an important distinction, and shouldn’t have slipped past editors, particularly when the book does touch on heredity and descent. And then there was the rather bizarre idea that the Marie Celeste’sĀ crew were struck by a burp of gas which killed them, made their bodies disappear, and left the ship itself untouched. Hm.

Mostly it seems reasonably solid, but bits like that made me raise my eyebrows a bit.

Rating: 2/5

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Review – Soulless

Posted February 1, 2015 by in Reviews / 0 Comments

Cover of Soulless by Gail CarrigerSoulless,Ā Gail Carriger

I originally readĀ Soulless a while ago, and I didn’t know much about it — just that people found it a lot of fun. And I think I was still being snobby about overt romance in fiction, before embracing my love of Georgette Heyer and Mary Stewart (not that this is solely romantic fiction in that way, though it does share some of the features, like a plucky single heroine who is a spinster, etc, etc). Anyway, I thought it was kind of fun, but I wasn’t really prepared to enjoy it for what it was.

This time, I knew it was often ridiculous, would make me laugh, included a rather shocking amount of bodice ripping detail, etc. And I was prepared to enjoy it for that — and somehow that made it easier to focus on the bits of world-building around that: hive politics, pack politics,Ā human politics, the changes Carriger’s made to history to fit in vampires and other supernatural creatures. I guess in a way it stays disturbingly imperialistic and so on — Victoria is queen, it’s a golden age, silly America is kind of backwards, etc. But really we don’t see much of the rest of the empire; it stays pretty parochial. Maybe the word should be territorial?

The mystery is terribly easy, though, especially the second time around. That’s not so much any actual clues as the fact that the author slaps a certain element into every couple of scenes. It’s not exactly subtle as a Chekhov’s gun.

Still, I’m happy to read this as light fun; as a friend said before, it’s a cream puff of a book. And that’sĀ fine. And hey, the positivity of the sexuality between Conall and Alexia is actually pretty positive, and it’s nice that Carriger doesn’t milk angst out of it with too much obsessing over Alexia’s reputation, etc.

Rating: 3/5

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Review – The Broken Sword

Posted January 30, 2015 by in Reviews / 1 Comment

Cover of The Broken Sword by Poul AndersonThe Broken Sword,Ā Poul Anderson
Review from 18th June, 2011

I was really excited about reading The Broken Sword, because when I first toyed with the idea of buying a book by Poul Anderson — this was actually the first I bought, it’s just took me longer to read — I realised how closely it was based on the style of the Norse sagas I’ve studied. It draws on the mythology, of course, and the path of curses and thwarted love and raiding echoes that of the sagas, but it also echoes their form: the narration, especially to begin with, is very much like a saga, and the verses all comply with the Old Norse metres. In many ways, The Broken Sword is a (relatively) modern example of one of the SkĆ”ldasƶgur — a saga about a skald, or poet, like KormĆ”ks saga. The tale of lost love, and the verses of first love and desire and then lament fit that pattern, albeit not like a glove.

The verses really, really impressed me. They’re written in drĆ³ttkvƦtt metre, which is extremely difficult. A verse is made up of eight lines, divided into equal halves (‘helmingr’). There are six syllables per line, and two syllables in each even line must alliterate with one in the following odd numbered line. Even lines must have a full rhyme within the line with the penultimate syllable; odd lines must have half-rhyme within the line with the penultimate syllable. Each line must end with a trochee.

Add to that the poetic words that would only be used in verse, heiti and kennings, which Anderson imitates to some degree, and… Well, I’m very impressed. It might seem less compelling to someone who hasn’t read verses in Icelandic — translations tend to make it a bit more flowery.

The story itself is perhaps less fresh to me, but I still enjoyed it: basically, it melds British/Irish and Norse mythology, with both the Sidhe and Ɔsir present, along with the coming of Christianity. Skafloc is stolen by the elves and replaced by a doppelganger, Valgard; the two eventually, and inevitably, come into conflict. In the course of this, Skafloc and his sister Freda, not knowing their relationship, fall in love…

It’s fun — adventure and love and doom and a tragic end, quite fitting for a skald.

Rating: 4/5

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Tough Travels – Law Enforcement

Posted January 29, 2015 by in General / 8 Comments

The prompt this week for Tough Travels is this:

Seems odd to think that in fantasy cities in which entire economies revolve around crime there is room for the men in blue (or crimson, or whatever). But the law does the best it can, even when faced with magic, mystical creatures, or rogue deities.

So I thought about this and for some reason my mind was totally blank. I mean, there’s various forces of law and order in fantasy, of course, but I couldn’tĀ think of specific ones. In a lot of what I read, they’re just in the background — the king’s guardsmen, the city watch, whatever. Anyway, I’ve done my best to think of some of the forces of law and order that weĀ don’t normally associate with the men in blue, as such. Like…

  • The Avengers (Marvel comics).Ā You’ve never met a more law-abiding, law-enforcing person than Steve Rogers! And, admittedly, he does wear a mostly blue uniform.
  • The wizards on Roke (A Wizard of Earthsea).Ā They’re pretty insular a lot of the time, granted, but if there’s a problem out there in the world, they’reĀ probably the only ones who can solve it. And Ged is very aware of that fact. There’s the short story inĀ Tales from Earthsea where he goes after a disgraced wizard, and then there’s the whole plot ofĀ The Furthest Shore…
  • Valek (Poison Study).Ā The Commander might be the centre of power, but he wouldn’t be that way without Valek keeping people in line.

And for a guy who does represent the boys in blue, though this is not strictly fantasy (it’s alternate history)…

  • Peter Carmichael (Small ChangeĀ trilogy).Ā Because he tries to do his job even when it’s hard. Because despite all the risks to himself and those he loves, he subverts the regime he’s in, and supports real justice.

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Review – Prickle Moon

Posted January 29, 2015 by in Reviews / 0 Comments

Cover of Prickle Moon by Juliet MarillierPrickle Moon, Juliet Marillier

Prickle Moon is a collection of short stories, most of them previously published but five of them new, and I knew I’d have to pick the book up someday because of that hedgehog on the cover. I love hedgehogs; just yesterday we rescued one from our garden which seemed too small to be out, and sent her off to a carer to spend the winter. Last winter we did that with a couple of hedgehogs; one of them died, but the second lived and was even strong enough to make a break for it. He tunnelled out with some friends and is now living under someone’s decking!

So mostly I got this for the title story,Ā Prickle Moon, because I love my hedgehogs. Like most of the stories in this collection, it’s bittersweet; woven with loss and hope, awful tasks and finding your way through them. Some of the stories are fairytale retellings — Rapunzel, Baba Yaga — and some are new stories very much styled as fairytales, with very familiar motifs. Some of the stories are oddly modern, which jars against the more traditional and more fantastical ones. Marillier’s good at putting her characters into awful situations which require compromise with their morality, and then making it work out so that it isn’t so bad after all. She’s good at grief, and especiallyĀ healed grief — the kind of grief you learn to live with and live in.

The collection also includes aĀ Sevenwaters story. I haven’t read that series, so it took me a little while to get into it and pick up everything that was going on, but the joy in the ending, the hope, is not something you need to have readĀ Daughter of the Forest and the other books to understand. Though, right now, I’m definitely in the mood to read more of Marillier’s work.

Rating: 4/5

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Get To Know Me

Posted January 28, 2015 by in General / 13 Comments

Since Paper Fury posted 21 things you probably don’t know about her, I ended up doing a response. With 25 items because I’m 25.

  1. Iā€™m Welsh. It actively pains me when people go ā€œoh cool, youā€™re English!ā€ when they find out I live in the UK. No.
  2. I have a sister. Sheā€™s a brat.
  3. I have five library cards. Two from the same library. Iā€™m sneaky, me.
  4. Iā€™m on a library committee. Iā€™m in charge of book acquisitions!
  5. I havenā€™t read all the Harry Potter books. Sorry?
  6. My favourite animals are hedgehogs, hippos and giraffes. Donā€™t make me choose.
  7. I barely speak any of my partnerā€™s native language. I can say thank you in a shop. Thatā€™s about it.
  8. I didnā€™t learn to read until I was nearly seven. Everyone assumes otherwise, but nope. I just wasnā€™t interested.
  9. I love King Arthur. See also #1. I wrote three of four of my MA essays on Arthurian texts, plus my dissertation.
  10. I have a BA and MA in English Literatureā€¦Ā And I did very well in them, thank you.
  11. …But now Iā€™m doing a course in Natural Sciences to prepare for medschool. Neurology, maybe? Genetics?
  12. I can sleep on a motorbike. Not as the rider, obviously; as the pillion passenger. I have a rally medal, and all I did was hold onto my dad and snooze for 36 hours.
  13. Iā€™m a transcriptionist and copy writer. Neither of these things pay very well.
  14. Iā€™m a volunteer at an eye clinic, a library, a forum, Lightspeedā€™s slush pile, and an occasional volunteer for Cancer Research UK and Tenovus. None of these things pay at all.
  15. I like chicken on my pizza. My partner thinks this makes me practically heathen.
  16. I like cold pizza the next morning. My sister is positive this makes me a heathen.
  17. I read in the bath. And Iā€™ve only ever dropped one book in.
  18. I donā€™t get the ereaders vs. dead tree books debate. Both! Why not both?
  19. I know the stock at my local bookshops better than they do. And yet they wonā€™t employ me. Sigh.
  20. When I really love a character, it sometimes means I can never consume more of their canon because I get too anxious. Castiel, bb. Why. And I worry this is going to happen with Steve Rogers/Captain America, because his next film is Civil War. Gaaah.
  21. I have no gallbladder. Had it out two years ago because it was full of stones.
  22. I once read The Lord of the Rings in 24 hours. That included sleep.
  23. I averaged buying more than a book a day in 2013. And I wasnā€™t far off in 2014. Oops.
  24. I had to pry open the back of my ereader to swap in a bigger SD card. I wrote a guide about it. Then they promptly stopped selling that type of ereader. Huff.
  25. I canā€™t back down from a dare. Like, my dad dared me to read War and Peace in a week. So I did it in five days. Or my sister said I wouldnā€™t dare suck spilt vodka out of the carpet. So I did. But I blame that on the previously imbibed vodka, too. Regardless, no one ever lets me forget it, so Iā€™m trying to be proud of it. Or something.

You probably know most of these things about me, actually.

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Review – Pieces of Light

Posted January 27, 2015 by in Reviews / 0 Comments

Cover of Pieces of Light by Charles FernyhoughPieces of Light,Ā Charles Fernyhough

This is rather more anecdotal than I’d hoped, often exploring memories through Fernyhough’s relationship with his own memories: memories of his father, teaching his children about his father, comparing his memories of a place to re-experiencing the place later on, etc, etc. Some of this is fascinating — especially his interviews with his grandmother, recording all the stories she had to tell. It’s a very personal thing, not scientific, but it’s interesting all the same; I sometimes get the same urge with my grandmother, just to capture the weird things she says sometimes that she trots out like proverbs and yet no one has ever heard before!

There are some discussions of more scientific stuff, and most of it seemed perfectly solid from what I know from other authors; it’s just, under the sea of anecdotal data, I don’t feel like I learned much. There’s nothing wrong with the writing style or the content, but it’s moreĀ H is for Hawk than scientific.

Rating: 3/5

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