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More book reviews
Oct. 8th, 2016 09:54 pm#66: The Apocalypse Codex by Charles Stross. 4. Love the Laundry Files in general. The combination of dry bureaucratic humor and terrors from beyond just really works for me. This one's structure is somewhat odd, as he shifts away from first person here and there, not always to great effect. But overall, it works, and I'm enjoying Bob's increasing reluctant responsibility.
#67: The Doge's Palace in Venice by Michela Knezevich. 4. Great at what it is, which is a series of maps and explanations of the art in all the rooms of the Doge's palace. Perfect for either a tourist guide or a reference. Not really something you just read for fun.
#68: Snow White and Rose Red by Patricia C. Wrede. 3. Straightforward retelling of the classic fairy tale. Enjoyable, not particularly memorable.
#69: A Deepness in the Sky by Vernor Vinge. 3.5. I had mixed feelings on this one. At times, I was really into it; other times, I was kind of racing through to finish (not in a good way). Wildly uneven in how engaging I found it, and I'm not sure whether that's him or me. The Spiders are an interesting alien race in a number of respects, but the dual structure of the Spiders pushing towards spaceflight and the humans hiding out waiting for them to get there that things felt simultaneously underwritten and overly stretched out. The villainous Emergents are so moustache-twirlingly bad that I just didn't want to deal with them most of the time; meanwhile on the Spider side, Honored Perdure had the same issue. No particular depth, just unmitigated evil. But at the same time, this stretches agonizingly over decades. There are bursts of really engaging characters doing interesting things, though. The end is very clever, and yet deeply frustrating because while he's laid hints about the twist, it's such a big twist (and then the implications are barely dealt with) that it doesn't really feel quite fair.
#70: Agatha H and the Airship City by Phil and Kaja Foglio. 3. I adore Girl Genius. I'd been hoping the novelization of the first book would shed some additional light on the world. Unfortunately, really, it turns out that it takes a novel to describe what the Foglios manage to convey in drawings--there's not really any new material here. And what works amazingly well as a serialized comic doesn't work nearly as well in book form--the rhythm that leaves a joke at the bottom of nearly every page results in a weirdly bouncy prose. Mostly, it just makes me want to go read the graphic novels again.
#71: The Three Musketeers by Alexandre Dumas. 3? Wow, am I of two minds about this one. On one hand, this is chock full of delightfully over the top, preposterous swashbuckling. I particularly love the part where they decide to defend a turret ostensibly as a bet and really to have a conversation that won't be overheard, and so evenly split their time between plotting, fighting, and eating a picnic. And Milady is just so very dastardly that I really can't help but love her. But on the other hand--holy toxic masculinity, Batman. I realize that this is written almost two centuries ago, and that it was a (probably not very accurate) historical novel even then. At least some of the stuff is supposed to be barbaric. But I can't help but think that this is the kind of garbage that leads to MRAs baying about Alpha males and crap. D'Artagnan repeatedly and celebratedly murders people all over the place for no reason. I'm particularly looking at the part where he tries to kill someone he's never met before in his life because the man had the audacity to walk with a woman that D'Artagnan has decided that he's in love with--who he's spoken to for all of five minutes, who has given no indication that she even likes him, and who's married to a third person entirely. Later, he sleeps with a girl to get to her mistress. The girl actually does like him. She's worthless, though, and really he's still in love with the first one (but also still trying to screw the mistress). If that's not pretty much the textbook example of treating all women as if they exist only to service you, I don't really know what is. Gah. Yes, I realize standards are different. But when we hold this up as "classic literature" and "fun!" without questioning, it says some really nasty things.
#67: The Doge's Palace in Venice by Michela Knezevich. 4. Great at what it is, which is a series of maps and explanations of the art in all the rooms of the Doge's palace. Perfect for either a tourist guide or a reference. Not really something you just read for fun.
#68: Snow White and Rose Red by Patricia C. Wrede. 3. Straightforward retelling of the classic fairy tale. Enjoyable, not particularly memorable.
#69: A Deepness in the Sky by Vernor Vinge. 3.5. I had mixed feelings on this one. At times, I was really into it; other times, I was kind of racing through to finish (not in a good way). Wildly uneven in how engaging I found it, and I'm not sure whether that's him or me. The Spiders are an interesting alien race in a number of respects, but the dual structure of the Spiders pushing towards spaceflight and the humans hiding out waiting for them to get there that things felt simultaneously underwritten and overly stretched out. The villainous Emergents are so moustache-twirlingly bad that I just didn't want to deal with them most of the time; meanwhile on the Spider side, Honored Perdure had the same issue. No particular depth, just unmitigated evil. But at the same time, this stretches agonizingly over decades. There are bursts of really engaging characters doing interesting things, though. The end is very clever, and yet deeply frustrating because while he's laid hints about the twist, it's such a big twist (and then the implications are barely dealt with) that it doesn't really feel quite fair.
#70: Agatha H and the Airship City by Phil and Kaja Foglio. 3. I adore Girl Genius. I'd been hoping the novelization of the first book would shed some additional light on the world. Unfortunately, really, it turns out that it takes a novel to describe what the Foglios manage to convey in drawings--there's not really any new material here. And what works amazingly well as a serialized comic doesn't work nearly as well in book form--the rhythm that leaves a joke at the bottom of nearly every page results in a weirdly bouncy prose. Mostly, it just makes me want to go read the graphic novels again.
#71: The Three Musketeers by Alexandre Dumas. 3? Wow, am I of two minds about this one. On one hand, this is chock full of delightfully over the top, preposterous swashbuckling. I particularly love the part where they decide to defend a turret ostensibly as a bet and really to have a conversation that won't be overheard, and so evenly split their time between plotting, fighting, and eating a picnic. And Milady is just so very dastardly that I really can't help but love her. But on the other hand--holy toxic masculinity, Batman. I realize that this is written almost two centuries ago, and that it was a (probably not very accurate) historical novel even then. At least some of the stuff is supposed to be barbaric. But I can't help but think that this is the kind of garbage that leads to MRAs baying about Alpha males and crap. D'Artagnan repeatedly and celebratedly murders people all over the place for no reason. I'm particularly looking at the part where he tries to kill someone he's never met before in his life because the man had the audacity to walk with a woman that D'Artagnan has decided that he's in love with--who he's spoken to for all of five minutes, who has given no indication that she even likes him, and who's married to a third person entirely. Later, he sleeps with a girl to get to her mistress. The girl actually does like him. She's worthless, though, and really he's still in love with the first one (but also still trying to screw the mistress). If that's not pretty much the textbook example of treating all women as if they exist only to service you, I don't really know what is. Gah. Yes, I realize standards are different. But when we hold this up as "classic literature" and "fun!" without questioning, it says some really nasty things.
