book review: The Riddle-Master of Hed

by: Patricia A. McKillip

There must be something in the water in the Pacific NW that creates/gestates classic F/SF authors.  McKillip is from Oregon, Frank Herbert was inspired to write Dune while working in Oregon (and is from Washington), Ursula K. LeGuin lives out here… more I’m sure.  Obviously there’s the newer writers like Jay Lake too.  And maybe me (someday! Although who knows if I’ll still be here, certainly a huge part of my formative writing will have been done here).

Yep, I said “classic F”.  While nothing in this book really jumped out at me as “crazy cool” and, indeed, much of it felt a bit muddled and like very important things were left out, it still had a great classic fantasy feel and I enjoyed it in spite of all the plot weirdness (of which there was a great deal – the MC goes to great extremes not to do things, only to suddenly be convinced to do them, then decide not to again… that whole back and forth was quite annoying in the way it was presented).

I *was* quite disappointed to find that there weren’t really any riddles in the sense that I was used to them (None of that “What walks on four legs in the morning, two at midday and three in the evening?” stuff).  Instead “riddle” in the context of this book seems to me “A question about some historical event that a moral can be drawn from.”    Nothing a reader can actually solve.  I mean, literally, one of them is something like “Who is the one with three stars and what will he bring?”  That’s not a riddle so much as a question about the future or a prophecy.  Others are things like “What did the king of so and so do?”   Yeh… so, disappointing “riddles” aside, the world was interesting enough and the intrigues curiosity arousing enough that I’ll follow along.  The ending was kind of odd and abrupt.

THREE AND A HALF STARS

Fun, classic fantasy.  Maybe quality-of-plotting-wise it’s only a three, but there’s a good sense of the fantastic here, and I like the world.

book review: Steelheart

by: Brandon Sanderson

Finally!  The Sanderson book I’ve been dreading.  You know, the one that’s not quite as good as the others?  Yup, this is that book.

It’s not terrible or even bad or mediocre or really even average – but I still found it the weakest thing of his that I’ve read (I haven’t read the Rithmatist stuff).  In part, this is because it feels “too simple” to me.  At first glance (up until the final quarter of the book or so), it lacks Sanderson’s traditional (habitual?) sense of depth and worldbuilding.  There just isn’t much here. I mean, it’s a fucked-up, metal Chicago, dig?  We do get more later with some of the big twists towards the end (all properly foreshadowed) – one of them kept the book a “Sanderson book” – if that makes any sense.  Without it it would have just been a decent book.  Oh, but with it (and a few other bits along the way)… with it you have Sanderson’s wacky magic worldbuilding that take things up a notch and bring the interest home.

Also, was this a YA book? I found it with his stuff in SF/F, but that’s to be expected for a big name author (is he a big name now? I think so…?).  I’m thinking it might be YA.  Maybe that would explain the simplicity?

So yeah.  Superpowers.  With a catch.  What’s the catch…?  It should be obvious. I mean, it’s RIGHT THERE – but, it was one of the twists I didn’t see coming.  The fact that each power has a weakness seems a bit overwrought but I’m willing to hold my breath for now because, given XXXXXXX, he really could take it so many places that I’ll just sit back and see where it winds up.

Don’t get me wrong – I did like the book, and I’m looking forward to the next one.  But I can confidently say that, to me, it was his weakest work.

THREE AND A HALF STARS

A good, solid read.  A little weak around the beginning and some spots in the middle but the payoff (note that I’m not even talking about how they defeated the bad guy -I had that figured out quite early – although I wouldn’t have put it past Sanderson to turn that on its head as well) was worth it.

Oh, and I hate the cover.  True, I hate most photorealistic covers, so it’s not really a stretch.  But.  Yeah.

book review: The Pastel City

by: M. John Harrison

I wound up rating this one higher than I was expecting.  It climbed up a quarter point and then another quarter point as I spent more time thinking.

The language here is really beautiful – lots of bits of sceneric (yep, just made that up) poetry.  Vistas of depression scattered across an Earth truly on its last legs.  We don’t know how much time has passed, beyond a shitload.  Enough time for starfaring civilizations to rise and fall multiple times (I wonder if Gene Wolfe was inspired by this book?  Certainly I like this one better.) and all the minerals to be drained from the planet.   Recycling is now the only option.  Still, there’s some pretty deadly tech floating around…

It’s very much a fantasy story in feel, but the setting is clearly sci-fi in the post-apocalyptic sense.  There’s a sense of feudal honor/morality and knights and all that, right up against decaying power armor and jury rigged light sabres (sans the bright colors).  The dwarf’s power armor actually “feels” like it belongs in a fantasy, if that makes any sense.

Parts of the narrative could definitely have slipped into slog (especially in the modern style), but Harrison kept things moving along at enough of a clip for me to never quite catch bored.

Truthfully, I’m still not quite sure what to make of it.  Midway through I wasn’t expecting to continue reading the series but now… now I’m not so sure.   It ended on an interesting enough note that I’m curious to see where Harrison will go with it, especially given that he didn’t follow a traditional path in getting there.

THREE AND A HALF STARS

A strange little gem of a classic that veers off the beaten path.

Note: Do you think the 2 “adapted” races mentioned by the old man in the tower were the sloths and the lizards?  That’s my current guess.

book review: The Golden Transcendence

by: John C. Wright

AKA “The Philosophy War”.  Sorry, had to get that out of the way.   Sure, there are physical things happening – stuff blows up, crazy technologies baffle, loves are found and found again, secrets are revealed – you know, stuff that happens in books.  BUT, the core conflict or, rather, the conflict at the (super-dense) core of the climactic central scene, is one of philosophy and self-doubt.  Man vs. Machine-as-Man converted to Man vs. Self by a clever enemy.  Also, not unheard of.  But the depths that Wright goes to here…

Sadly, I lack the background or the attention span to evaluate the quality or depth of the philosophy expressed here but I will say that, for the sake of the story, it was fine.  I don’t quite understand a couple of the potential rationales for some of it (was the argument that a setting with illogical physics would produce illogical philosophy?)

All-in-all though, I found it much more engaging than book two – at least as engaging as the first book, IIRC – and a worthwhile read.  Lots of fanciful, fantastic bits of technology and projection in there, like much of the sci-fi that I love.  And many twists… not cheesy twists either but generally interesting and thought provoking twists.

THREE AND THREE QUARTER STARS

Good stuff.

book review: The Courts of Chaos

by: Roger Zelazny

And so my brief sojourn in (the first part of) Amber comes to an end.  Not with a whimper or a belch, but with a flurry of color and creation and Corwin passing out while someone else Took Care of Business.  Not that that’s a bad thing- again, I like how the universe doesn’t revolve around the main character (although teeeeechnically there is now a universe that does so!) , but it’s definitely a little jarring after all the mc-focused books I read (pretty much everything, right?).

As far as the quality level of this individual book… pretty strong.  I think books 3 & 4 were possibly the strongest, book 1 the weakest and this one and book 2 falling somewhere in between.  Definitely on the ‘good’ side of things, but just maybe not the best in the series.  So many things unanswered!  I’d be frustrated if I didn’t know there as a second Amber series to read.  Of course, Corwin is AWOL in those books (from what I remember) and they follow his son… who I’m not interested in in the least, but hopefully they’ll involve the rest of the Amber cast, each of which I find pretty fascinating.

I would have liked to actually see what happened to Oberon.  I would have liked to understand why Dara made the decision she did (seriously, if the only reason is that he killed that one dude, I’m going to have to put that down as the weakest bit of writing in the entire series and, somewhat weak in general but I figured I’m just missing something).  I wish there was a prequel book about Oberon’s flight from Chaos and whatever weird tryst Dworkin had with the Unicorn (seriously… if nothing else I want to know wtf the unicorn is to be as powerful as it is)…

So much more mileage remains.  I wonder if Zelazny intended to continue the series after this (as he did), or if that was a publisher/fan pressure kind of thing?

Annnnnnnnyway:

THREE AND A HALF STARS

A classic ending to a classic tale.  Leaves you (or me, at least) with more questions than answers.

[edit: If you’re curious about the various literary allusions and other smartsy reading stuff and junk, you might be interested in this article.  Watch out for the HUGE SPOILER for the ending of the second Amber series though.  Yeesh.    Best read after/if you’ve read the other series.]

book review: The Hand of Oberon

by : Roger Zelazny

Apt Title.

Clever ending.

Just the right amount of foreshadowing.

Good cover for the slowly piling coincidences.

I really like the way Zelazny did his world building here.  Just the right amount of carrot and stick.  I mean, you really don’t get much at all to start with – and even by this point you’re still mostly just hanging on projections of rather solid clues – but it feels more solid at least.

This series is also great example of a consistent and thought out magic system (like Sanderson always talks about) that is then expanded and explored in an internally logical manner.  It’s kind of fascinating in the sense that often you read books where no one questions the system, they just roll with it and I, as a reader, find myself mentally yelling at them “Why didn’t you try X?  Why does Y work?  Z should as well!”   Here you have some parties (sadly, the villains) who have finally done that.  Which, hopefully triggers the MC (Corwin) to do a little of that himself.

I forget if they ever get to the actual nature of the Unicorn, but you find a huge clue here and its… a bit odd.  Then again, not particularly odd given the nature of things here.

Another interesting point: the scene of the final conflict is literally a scene that Corwin is forced to watch and not interact with.  I find this fascinating from a writer’s perspective – I wonder how often something like this happens?  I can’t think of any other examples.  I find it a bit refreshing – it’s nice to see that the world doesn’t revolve around the MC doing everything.  Even though the Amber world is ostensibly an ensemble production, the fact that the books thus far revolve around Corwin has placed him squarely in the center of things – his siblings have definitely taken actions of their own (most of them), but there was still a feeling like Corwin was/is the actor.  In the finale to Hand, we have Corwin as the audience in two separate ways (as the observer of the action and as one acted upon in a way very similar to how a skilled actor manipulates the emotions of her/his observers).  I dug it.

As usual, I can’t wait until the next book.  Gives me a reason to look forward to a bus ride…

THREE AND THREE QUARTER STARS

Because I plowed through in one day, two sittings.

And here’s the full version of my cover, just because I found it:

 

book review: Sign of the Unicorn

by: Roger Zelazny

Let’s get a couple things out of the way that have no good reason to be gotten out of the way:

I liked this book slightly better than the last one, so I’m going to give it the same rating but (on Goodreads anyway), round it up instead of down.

Second, this book ends on an actual cliffhanger.  The first two ended in ways that made sequels very clear but this one… this one leaves our MC and some friends in the middle of something kind of important.

Now that those are out of the way, let’s get on with it!  So.  The conspiracy is revealed!  Dun dun dun!  And it wasn’t anything I would have really predicted – but nor is it anything surprising, given the nature of Amberites and family ties.  I think Zelazny had a nice way here of throwing you off – especially with respect to who attempted to kill Corwin.  I’m going to have to try and distill it down for my notes so I can maybe re-use the pattern in some manner.  <.<

Oh, and [SPOILER ALERT] not much actually happens in this book.  [/END FAKE SPOILER ALERT].  There are two actual “things” (or Events of Importance maybe) that actually happen, so to say.  There’s a really fast rescue and someone gets stabbed, maybe not in that order.  In between all that there’s some talking and some movement and various pieces of information are acquired.  And none of this is bad!  I respect that not much actually happened here and yet I was still engrossed.  I’m really curious how these would read as like one or two bound volumes.

There’s also a very bit of weird fortune telling that provides some crucial (and vaguely foreshadowed) information that, in any other book, would probably have resulted in me making a pretty serious WTF face.  But, you know what they say – forget about it Jake, all roads lead to Amber – except when they don’t.  Maybe they don’t actually say that.  Maybe that’s too wordy and if they did run around saying things like that they wouldn’t get quoted nearly as much.  Then again, I’m not sister and your mother.

THREE AND A HALF STARS

Because it was lots of fun, and the plot continues to thicken in intriguing ways.

book review: The Guns of Avalon

by: Roger Zelazny

First off – another killer name for a book (Borrowed by Paul Cornell…?  I can’t hate, he had a great run on that title that was axed too soon)!

Second, it took me quite a while to figure out the significance of the cover above.  In fact…. just now.  Yep.  It’s a little clearer when the whole thing is open like that (that’s front and back above, I haven’t spread my book out flat on its face, so I never noticed… or something).

Third, this book is pretty good, as these things go.  Now that the first book got much of the necessary groundwork out of the way Zelazny is free to dig a little deeper.  Corwin is, for lack of a better word, kind of an entitled jerk (which I imagine one would be after thousands of years of life as one of the most powerful beings in existence) – but in a redeemable sort of way.  The family drama is very Greek Pantheon-esque – without feeling derivative or lazy.

Characters get fleshed out a little more – still not nearly what one would expect from modern fantasy – after all, the book is only like 170 (!!) pages.

DIGRESSION: It’s great to get a full story in 170 pages!  I guess now they would call that a ‘novella’ or something.  Whatever.

Corwin gets what he wants – in a way – although not really in the most predictable way (which is good), and in a way that isn’t as personally satisfying to him as it might have been.  I like that.  And we’re left with something of a cliffhanger – even more than the end of the last book.  The enemy stands revealed!  DUN DUN DUN.  But not really.  More books, duh!

THREE AND A HALF STARS

A fun, light-weight classic fantasy.

book review: Nine Princes in Amber

by: Roger Zelazny

Another ancient bit of text from the recesses of my literary past.  I can’t even remember when I read these books, nor any plot specifics in the slightest – but I remembered that I liked them, and the general gist of Amber itself AND I was all out of new books to read.   SO.  There was that.

First off – the title is something of a red herring.  I mean, technically I guess we learn the names of all nine princes, but only 8 are featured – and one only for a brief, confusing interlude.  A more apt title may have been Seven and a Half Princes in Amber.  I point this out only because I was expecting a little more about the individual princes (there are also four or six princesses not mentioned in the title, but I guess in Amber only a male can rule.  Or something…).

Oh, and while we’re talking about things that are first (we weren’t, really, but now we are – sort of) – this book is written in first person!  First person which I usually can’t stand… thankfully it’s first person past (the tale is being told to an unknown audience, but you get the sense that if the series progresses enough you’ll find out who) and *not* first person present.  Ugh.  LOATHE.  I mean.  You know.  Impersonally.  Or something.

So yeah – it’s simple and direct and short and sweet and quick to the punch and doesn’t spend too much time on any one point – pretty much what you’d expect from 60-70s fantasy.  Where it differs from some (many?) others is that I found it entertaining and engaging.

THREE AND A HALF STARS

A classic fast moving fantasy.  Reminds me (and is contemporary to/with, I think) of Fred Saberhagen’s Empire of the East series.

[I know, I know, I use italics inconsistently.  Such is life!]

 

book review: Ringworld Throne

by: Larry Niven

This wasn’t quite as hard to read as the last book – at least the parts without the standard cast actually felt like a book that was going somewhere… until they stopped going somewhere.

I don’t get it.  This is not a good book, by any standards I can apply to judge it.  So much shit just happens with only half-assed explanations afterwards that, I mean… ABULAOELAE.  What?  That’s how my brain feels.

I had hoped that, after a couple decades, his writing skills would become more palatable to my reading tastes.  They have not.  His plotting is interesting, as are some of the characters but it’s like everything connecting them never quite reaches the other hand.  I’m done.

I mean, it’s not terrible… it’s just not good (to me!).  The first one was forgivable given the time period, and because the ideas were big enough to make the book memorable with a unimpressive writing.  But the second… and then the third… this feels like pulp sci-fi in the derogatory sense: loose plot, shit happening and lots of (off camera, although some of it is on-in-book-camera yet off-camera, if that makes sense) sex.  Don’t get me wrong – I find it fascinating the way sex is a part of Ringworld culture – the ideas behind it are … believable in context.  Sure, why not.  And, like I’ve said before, I really like the Pak Protector as ancestor idea and how it works for (sub) species diversification but, again – good ideas, mostly sub-par execution.

TWO STARS

Not terrible, but not for me.   I know some people love this but I just don’t get it.  I guess it’s like the Elric of sci-fi for me…

The weird thing is, I actually felt like I enjoyed parts of this book much more than the previous book but, taken as a whole, it just fizzleflops.