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#45: Rule 34 by Charles Stross. 4. The meme squad of a near-future police force tries to deal with a baffling killer simultaneously striking around the world. The machinations are enjoyably complex, (most of) the characters are a lot of fun, and Stross is fantastic at extrapolating from current social trends. I really liked his vision of the police force of tomorrow. (Not necessarily that I wish for them, but I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of his predictions come true.) On the other hand, one of the antagonists goes so far off the deep end that it barely makes sense. (The suitcase is foreshadowed from the start, and yet still feels unnecessary to the character.) And the whole thing is in second person. While the ending makes clear what he's trying to do, I'm still not sure he needed to do it.
#46:Sister Light, Sister Dark by Jane Yolen. 3.5. The first in a mythic cycle, this book plays off a fictional set of myths, legends, songs, analysis by historians of events that must have happened centuries before, and a narrative of what "really happened". Clearly part of the flowering of the feminist fantasy movement in the 80s, it's about a girl in a matriarchal society who becomes the linchpin of the collapse/rebirth of their social system. It's reasonably compelling, and the contrasts between what "happened" and what people remember are fun, but I imagine the story structure would get old fast as the series goes on.
#47: Seveneves by Neal Stephenson. 3. I have such mixed feelings about this book, I'm not even sure where to begin.
Spoilers!
Ok, my dirty lens--a character who turns into a major antagonist reminded me of an old coworker whose machinations among other things caused enough stress to give me multiple health problems. So I lost a night to insomnia over old baggage. This should not be a factor for most normal people. However, I don't think that's really my problem with this book.
This is not one book. It's the first two-thirds of one book, and then the first third of a different, only tangentially related book. Note the lack of actual ending for either book.
We start with the moon blowing up. The next half a book is about the immediate aftermath, as Earth scrambles to put together some kind of mission to allow the human race to survive the catastrophe. This part is fascinating. It's Stephenson, so it's at least 50% exposition about orbital mechanics. But I like orbital mechanics. I also like that there are multiple interesting female characters who are all substantially different from each other. It turns out there's a reason for this, and it's irritating.
The death of the Earth is surprisingly beautiful. I mean, awful, but poignant and respectfully done and genuinely moving.
Then suddenly we're in a tense political thriller. Which, my own personal issues aside, is pretty compelling. A charismatic leader rips the relatively small (a couple thousand) community in orbit apart, mostly for personal gain. It's building to a tense battle...and then abruptly Stephenson loses interest. We kind of skim through the next several years in which all but a handful of people left in the universe die. Then we have a big climatic battle that kills off most of the rest of them...in which the viewpoint character is basically unconscious. It's some of the worst telling instead of showing ever.
So he put all this effort into getting thousands and thousands of people into space, plus an entire library of genetic material...to end with only 8 people (and no library). All of them women. One in menopause. Seven Eves. (Get it?) Somehow this isn't a problem.
Why bother? Like seriously, why bother with the entire part of the book about the other people? Why not just say they were only able to get say, 20 people up there before everything went to shit, and then kill off a few more for dramatic tension? Honestly, we only care about 20 or so of them anyway. And given how the book ends, those extras are only important to then set up the society 5000 years later.
...which is what we skip to. And then spend at least half of the remaining third of the book describing exactly how that society came out from the genetic decisions of the seven women, and how each faction was determined by its progenitor. (Never mind that one of them appears at the last possible second and gets almost no development.) And then after meticulously setting it all up... we ignore it entirely to go back down to the surface and get far too much detail and far too little plot or character development. It would be great if there were another 2/3 of a book to go with this, but basically he ratchets up the tension and then completely drops it and starts over. Structurally, where there should be climax, there's just 50 pages or so of exposition which he never does anything with.
Really, in retrospect, the last half of the book was like reading a roleplaying guide's incredibly detailed world set up. But not bothering with the campaign that's supposed to be played there.
#46:Sister Light, Sister Dark by Jane Yolen. 3.5. The first in a mythic cycle, this book plays off a fictional set of myths, legends, songs, analysis by historians of events that must have happened centuries before, and a narrative of what "really happened". Clearly part of the flowering of the feminist fantasy movement in the 80s, it's about a girl in a matriarchal society who becomes the linchpin of the collapse/rebirth of their social system. It's reasonably compelling, and the contrasts between what "happened" and what people remember are fun, but I imagine the story structure would get old fast as the series goes on.
#47: Seveneves by Neal Stephenson. 3. I have such mixed feelings about this book, I'm not even sure where to begin.
Spoilers!
Ok, my dirty lens--a character who turns into a major antagonist reminded me of an old coworker whose machinations among other things caused enough stress to give me multiple health problems. So I lost a night to insomnia over old baggage. This should not be a factor for most normal people. However, I don't think that's really my problem with this book.
This is not one book. It's the first two-thirds of one book, and then the first third of a different, only tangentially related book. Note the lack of actual ending for either book.
We start with the moon blowing up. The next half a book is about the immediate aftermath, as Earth scrambles to put together some kind of mission to allow the human race to survive the catastrophe. This part is fascinating. It's Stephenson, so it's at least 50% exposition about orbital mechanics. But I like orbital mechanics. I also like that there are multiple interesting female characters who are all substantially different from each other. It turns out there's a reason for this, and it's irritating.
The death of the Earth is surprisingly beautiful. I mean, awful, but poignant and respectfully done and genuinely moving.
Then suddenly we're in a tense political thriller. Which, my own personal issues aside, is pretty compelling. A charismatic leader rips the relatively small (a couple thousand) community in orbit apart, mostly for personal gain. It's building to a tense battle...and then abruptly Stephenson loses interest. We kind of skim through the next several years in which all but a handful of people left in the universe die. Then we have a big climatic battle that kills off most of the rest of them...in which the viewpoint character is basically unconscious. It's some of the worst telling instead of showing ever.
So he put all this effort into getting thousands and thousands of people into space, plus an entire library of genetic material...to end with only 8 people (and no library). All of them women. One in menopause. Seven Eves. (Get it?) Somehow this isn't a problem.
Why bother? Like seriously, why bother with the entire part of the book about the other people? Why not just say they were only able to get say, 20 people up there before everything went to shit, and then kill off a few more for dramatic tension? Honestly, we only care about 20 or so of them anyway. And given how the book ends, those extras are only important to then set up the society 5000 years later.
...which is what we skip to. And then spend at least half of the remaining third of the book describing exactly how that society came out from the genetic decisions of the seven women, and how each faction was determined by its progenitor. (Never mind that one of them appears at the last possible second and gets almost no development.) And then after meticulously setting it all up... we ignore it entirely to go back down to the surface and get far too much detail and far too little plot or character development. It would be great if there were another 2/3 of a book to go with this, but basically he ratchets up the tension and then completely drops it and starts over. Structurally, where there should be climax, there's just 50 pages or so of exposition which he never does anything with.
Really, in retrospect, the last half of the book was like reading a roleplaying guide's incredibly detailed world set up. But not bothering with the campaign that's supposed to be played there.
