Yet more books
May. 14th, 2016 08:37 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ladyofastolatYet more book reviews:
Leviathan Wakes by James SA Corey
The crew of a courier ship has been captured. One crew member, Julie Mao, resisted and was crammed into a locker to await her fate. When she finally dares to emerge, she finds everyone, prisoners and captors alike, mysteriously and very hideously dead. Later, while investigating a distress call from Julie's original ship, a civilian ice-hauler is ambushed and destroyed, leaving only a few survivors in the ship's boat, led by Jim Holden. Out in the asteroid belt, Joe Miller is a cynical, ageing detective who is given the task of tracking down rebellious rich girl Julie and forcibly returning her home. Holden's naive and very public attempts to bring his ship's destroyers to justice leads to a rapid escalation of the ill-feeling between the inner planets and the "Belters," threatening to become open war. But as Holden and Miller pursue their searches, it gradually becomes clear that the war is only a side-show to the true danger that threatens the Solar System.
This is the first book in an ongoing series called The Expanse, but works well enough as a stand-alone. The authors – James SA Corey is the pen-name for two authors working together – have obviously put a lot of time and effort into creating the setting - apparently it was initially created as an RPG setting - and the characterisation is also pretty good. I particularly liked the fact that the two narrators – Julie is used only in the prologue – have very different outlooks. Once they meet half way through the book, this suddenly gives us a different take on the events we have previously seen from only one viewpoint. Miller thinks Holden’s a naive, righteous fool, and Holden thinks Miller is a cycnical killer. Neither views are entirely without justice, but neither are entirely true, either. The reader has to navigate between the different opinions and make up their own mind.
I found it all perfectly readable, but it never hugely gripped or grabbed me. I was interested enough that I would possibly have read on if it was just a trilogy, but it doesn’t interest me enough for a long series. I’ve heard good things about the TV series, though…
Warchild by Karin Lowachee
The humans of Earth Hub have been waging a long war against the alien "Striv" and their treacherous human sympathisers. Jos Musey is 8 when his merchant ship is taken by (human) pirates. His parents are killed, but Jos takes the fancy of the pirate leader, Falcone, who keeps him for a year. When Jos grabs a chance to escape, he is shot, and wakes up to find himself in the hands of notorious alien sympathisers. Has he been rescued or captured anew? He is initially very wary, but comes to learn that the "Striv" are not the monsters of the PR broadcasts, and the Hub is far from innocent in the war. Over the next few years, he learns many skills, and comes to look upon the alien world as home. But then, at 14, he is orderd back into Hub space, to enlist as a soldier on a battleship and spy on his fellow humans. With conflicting loyalties, who will he side with?
I bought this a few years ago, after someone recommended it on LJ, and forgot all about it until I found it by chance on my shelves. I am really not sure what I think about it. I found the first section very off-putting. It’s written in the second person, for one thing – something that would have stopped me instantly had I not glanced ahead and seen that it didn't last. (The rest is first person – mostly in the past tense, although the final part is in the present tense.) Additionally, the subject matter made me very uncomfortable. It’s clear that the pirate's interest in Jos, aged 8, is sexual. By the writing itself, you can reach the end of this section believing that very little has actually happened, but Jos’s characterisation for the whole of the book is as a survivor of abuse. It's all very tactfully done. There's never anything explicit, and there's never any hint that the author is revelling in misery. It's integral to the plot and to the characterisation; emotionally and plot-wise, the entire book deals with the consquences of that year with the pirates. It’s meant to make us uncomfortable, but for me, that makes it a book hard to love.
As for the book as a whole, I found it just okay, really. I could have coped better with the uncomfortable subject matter had I found myself gripped by the plot or emotionally involved with the characters, but it never quite happened. There are loads of rave reviews online from people who got very emotionally caught up in it, but it didn’t happen for me. There are two sequels – different main characters but same overall story – but I won’t bother with them.
The Diamond Age by Neal Stephenson
The setting is a late 21st century transformed by nanotechnology. Traditional geographic-based nation states have dissolved. Instead, most people are members of "phyles" – communities of people linked by shared cultures and beliefs, which have enclaves in many places across the world. Most of the novel takes place in several "claves" in Shanghai, particularly Atlantis/Shanghai, Atlantis being the clave of the neo-Victorians. One of their lords, a self-made millionaire, is concerned that the younger generations are settling into a life of quiet conformity. He commissions a present for his grand-daughter - a Young Lady’s Illustrated Primer, outwardly a leather-bound book, but actually a highly sophisticated piece of interactive technology – in the hope that it teach her to become a creative-thinking leader. The engineer who designs it takes an illegal copy for his own daughter, and when he is mugged, a copy also ends up in the hands of four year old Nell, a neglected child from the lowest class of society. Although there are other strands and other characters, much of the novel follows Nell's growth over the next 12 years, as her life is transformed by what she learns in the primer. Can one book change the world?
I enjoyed the first half of this book, but I find my attention wandering in the second half. It’s a strange book, hard to summarise. The world-building is interesting, and there are loads of ideas at play here: ideas about the nature of intelligence and AI, about information sharing, East vs. West and so on. And I think that that was my problem. Towards the end, I felt that the ideas had become more prominent than the plot or the characters. The last few dozen pages are packed full of action and big events, but they rattle past at a rate of knots. The ending felt particularly rushed – racing along breathlessly, bewilderingly, and then just stopping.
There are loads of five star reviews online, so clearly loads of people love this, but despite a promising start, in the end this didn’t really work for me.
Leviathan Wakes by James SA Corey
The crew of a courier ship has been captured. One crew member, Julie Mao, resisted and was crammed into a locker to await her fate. When she finally dares to emerge, she finds everyone, prisoners and captors alike, mysteriously and very hideously dead. Later, while investigating a distress call from Julie's original ship, a civilian ice-hauler is ambushed and destroyed, leaving only a few survivors in the ship's boat, led by Jim Holden. Out in the asteroid belt, Joe Miller is a cynical, ageing detective who is given the task of tracking down rebellious rich girl Julie and forcibly returning her home. Holden's naive and very public attempts to bring his ship's destroyers to justice leads to a rapid escalation of the ill-feeling between the inner planets and the "Belters," threatening to become open war. But as Holden and Miller pursue their searches, it gradually becomes clear that the war is only a side-show to the true danger that threatens the Solar System.
This is the first book in an ongoing series called The Expanse, but works well enough as a stand-alone. The authors – James SA Corey is the pen-name for two authors working together – have obviously put a lot of time and effort into creating the setting - apparently it was initially created as an RPG setting - and the characterisation is also pretty good. I particularly liked the fact that the two narrators – Julie is used only in the prologue – have very different outlooks. Once they meet half way through the book, this suddenly gives us a different take on the events we have previously seen from only one viewpoint. Miller thinks Holden’s a naive, righteous fool, and Holden thinks Miller is a cycnical killer. Neither views are entirely without justice, but neither are entirely true, either. The reader has to navigate between the different opinions and make up their own mind.
I found it all perfectly readable, but it never hugely gripped or grabbed me. I was interested enough that I would possibly have read on if it was just a trilogy, but it doesn’t interest me enough for a long series. I’ve heard good things about the TV series, though…
Warchild by Karin Lowachee
The humans of Earth Hub have been waging a long war against the alien "Striv" and their treacherous human sympathisers. Jos Musey is 8 when his merchant ship is taken by (human) pirates. His parents are killed, but Jos takes the fancy of the pirate leader, Falcone, who keeps him for a year. When Jos grabs a chance to escape, he is shot, and wakes up to find himself in the hands of notorious alien sympathisers. Has he been rescued or captured anew? He is initially very wary, but comes to learn that the "Striv" are not the monsters of the PR broadcasts, and the Hub is far from innocent in the war. Over the next few years, he learns many skills, and comes to look upon the alien world as home. But then, at 14, he is orderd back into Hub space, to enlist as a soldier on a battleship and spy on his fellow humans. With conflicting loyalties, who will he side with?
I bought this a few years ago, after someone recommended it on LJ, and forgot all about it until I found it by chance on my shelves. I am really not sure what I think about it. I found the first section very off-putting. It’s written in the second person, for one thing – something that would have stopped me instantly had I not glanced ahead and seen that it didn't last. (The rest is first person – mostly in the past tense, although the final part is in the present tense.) Additionally, the subject matter made me very uncomfortable. It’s clear that the pirate's interest in Jos, aged 8, is sexual. By the writing itself, you can reach the end of this section believing that very little has actually happened, but Jos’s characterisation for the whole of the book is as a survivor of abuse. It's all very tactfully done. There's never anything explicit, and there's never any hint that the author is revelling in misery. It's integral to the plot and to the characterisation; emotionally and plot-wise, the entire book deals with the consquences of that year with the pirates. It’s meant to make us uncomfortable, but for me, that makes it a book hard to love.
As for the book as a whole, I found it just okay, really. I could have coped better with the uncomfortable subject matter had I found myself gripped by the plot or emotionally involved with the characters, but it never quite happened. There are loads of rave reviews online from people who got very emotionally caught up in it, but it didn’t happen for me. There are two sequels – different main characters but same overall story – but I won’t bother with them.
The Diamond Age by Neal Stephenson
The setting is a late 21st century transformed by nanotechnology. Traditional geographic-based nation states have dissolved. Instead, most people are members of "phyles" – communities of people linked by shared cultures and beliefs, which have enclaves in many places across the world. Most of the novel takes place in several "claves" in Shanghai, particularly Atlantis/Shanghai, Atlantis being the clave of the neo-Victorians. One of their lords, a self-made millionaire, is concerned that the younger generations are settling into a life of quiet conformity. He commissions a present for his grand-daughter - a Young Lady’s Illustrated Primer, outwardly a leather-bound book, but actually a highly sophisticated piece of interactive technology – in the hope that it teach her to become a creative-thinking leader. The engineer who designs it takes an illegal copy for his own daughter, and when he is mugged, a copy also ends up in the hands of four year old Nell, a neglected child from the lowest class of society. Although there are other strands and other characters, much of the novel follows Nell's growth over the next 12 years, as her life is transformed by what she learns in the primer. Can one book change the world?
I enjoyed the first half of this book, but I find my attention wandering in the second half. It’s a strange book, hard to summarise. The world-building is interesting, and there are loads of ideas at play here: ideas about the nature of intelligence and AI, about information sharing, East vs. West and so on. And I think that that was my problem. Towards the end, I felt that the ideas had become more prominent than the plot or the characters. The last few dozen pages are packed full of action and big events, but they rattle past at a rate of knots. The ending felt particularly rushed – racing along breathlessly, bewilderingly, and then just stopping.
There are loads of five star reviews online, so clearly loads of people love this, but despite a promising start, in the end this didn’t really work for me.
