Books of the Week!

Oh, god…we’re off to a bad start. I’ve already lied to you. You came here all innocently expecting the Books of the Week, but what you’re actually getting are the Books of the Last Two Weeks. I know, I’m sorry. You’re getting way more than you bargained for.

What can I say? We had some cat related drama (aka: the cat temporarily forgot he isn’t a bird and tried to fly) this week and so I haven’t been able to compile some really great thoughtful words for ya’ll recently.

So instead I’m gonna share the books I’ve read so far in 2015 and give you some brief impressions of each.

1. Accelerando – Charles Stross (I recommend this if you’re into high minded sci-fi)

Without a doubt I have never read a book that made me feel dumber than Accelerando. The Quantum Thief is a close second, but even in that book I spent most of the time justifying my stupidity by claiming the author didn’t know what he was saying either.

Unfortunately I can’t make that same claim with Accelerando for I fear that Charles Stross truly is smarter than me (atleast where economics, quantum technology, and computer lingo are concerned. I probably got his number if we were to change the topic to Little Debbie’s or rock climbing).

Accelerando follows a three generation family as they progress from the near future pre-singularity human existence to a far-flung post-humanistic experience. Overall this was a cool story that I enjoyed, though I warn you this is not for the light hearted science fiction reader. You got to dig deep and really want to understand what’s happening in this book.

One of the main critiques I’ve seen of Accelerando is precisely that: it’s not very accessible, and the majority of the time is inexplicably obtuse. My vocabulary quadrupled just by reading this book, so that was cool, but again…this book made me feel really stupid.

You’ve been warned.

Quick side-note: It his erudite highbrow snobbery to throw out big words and concepts simply to make your audience feel stupid. I’m not saying that’s what Stross did here, but I would point out that a number of his concepts, though pretty, flowerly, and utterly confusing, are often..wrong. There’s a passage about a Menger Sponge which simply put is incorrectly explained, not that it makes the actual explanation any easier, but there you have it.

Don’t know what a Menger Sponge is? That’s okay, I didn’t either. I looked it up, drew some diagrams, and then determined that what Stross defined was unfortunately not accurate. I wonder how many other niggling issues such as this the book suffers from.

Overall, I really liked the story. The writing was good, if not dense.

There ya go. Next!

2. The Eighth Day – Donovan Gray (Uh… easy, fun fantasy. Fairly short.)

I admit, I was drawn to this one off the cover and initial paragraph. The cover was eye-catching, the concept was compelling, and the writing at the beginning seemed interesting. The book was also cheap, so I thought what the heck, I’ll help a fellow indie author out.

Unfortunately this book didn’t really do it for me in the end. I liked the concept and the writing was decent, but far too often I struggled to keep up with the action. Meaning more often than not I had no clue who was talking or where they were in relation to the other people in the room. This wouldn’t be a huge problem if you had two people in a room chatting at each other and they weren’t moving around, but often there were scenes with three or more people swapping dialogue that I simply couldn’t keep up.

Compounding that problem was the fact that I couldn’t keep track of people because the point of view kept head swapping mid-scene with no point of reference. Overall I was really hoping to like this book, but I think the take-away is an important one for all aspiring writers: ground us in a POV and for the love of god don’t switch without ample warning such as a blinking neon sign saying “Switching POV character in 3…2..1… Poof, now you’re Auntie May. Proceed.”

3. Zero Echo Shadow Prime – Peter Samet (For those of you who like awesome accessible science fiction with even awesomer female leads)

I reviewed this in an earlier blog post. Go read that for my thoughts on the subject.

4. The Dark Knight Returns – Frank Miller (The quintessential superhero graphic novel)

About as classic as they come, though I do have a few complaints. One, the art is great, but damn they squeezed a ton of words onto each page. Reading this thing with anything less than a magnifying glass is a chore.

There are a couple different story lines throughout, some of which I like more than others, but the huge overarching plot thread (Batman’s insatiable hunger for vengeance against the Gotham criminal element) came off as sort of sociopathic. Don’t get me wrong, Batman is definitely a bit crazed even on a good day, but the Dark Knight Returns has him doing somethings that simply don’t make sense within a greater context.

Oh well, who am I to argue with a classic. Fantastic regardless.

6. Leviathan Wakes – James Corey (For those who love Space Opera with a gritty noir detective feel)

Admittedly I don’t read a ton of what you would call traditional space opera. It’s nothing against the genre, my interests typically just point elsewhere. I have a series, The Gods and Children trilogy (the concluding trilogy to the Firstborn Saga) however, that is pure unadulterated space opera fun. To me, if you want to write in a particular genre, you better damn well know the tropes and be familiar with it. Leviathan Wakes, in that light, can be viewed as research.

Overall, I think this is a great example of accessible sci-fi. There are some great ideas thrown out there relating to how human culture will develop as the human species spreads out into the solar system. There’s plenty of action, some good old fashioned detective mysteries thrown in for good measure, and a bunch of awesome space ships. What more could you ask for?

There are 3? more novels in the Expanse Series, so if you’re looking to pick up a series with a fair number of words already on the page, this might be a good option seeing as how each book pushes close to the six hundred page mark.

6. Lock In – John Scalzi (Like easy concept sci-fi with personable characterization? of course you do, get Lock In)

Eh, I’ve gushed about Scalzi enough in a previous review of Redshirts so I’m not gonna say much. I liked this story which was a fun little sci-fi detective mystery. You get all the trademark Scalzi writing which is easy to consume, funny, with great characterizations.

My main complaints? Scalzi overuses speech tags. Every sentence is he said, she said. Always. It grates after awhile. Second, Scalzi skims over really big details only to toss them in your lap later and make you go…wait, wait, wait.

Case in point, you don’t find out until 3/4 of the way through the book that the main character is black. Which is awesome, I’m all for that, but when people read a story, if the author doesn’t explicitly point out character traits, the reader will fill it in for themselves. Typically they do this by imagining the main characters as similar to themselves. When you wait until the end of the book to drop a huge detail (and not in a surprise twist ending sort of way) then you undermine the readers mental image of the world they created. Simply put this is frustrating.

Though, like I said with Zero Echo Shadow Prime, I think new wave sci-fi is doing a great job of incorporating the types of characters who have historically been relegated to sidekicks and window-dressing. I think we need more of this, but for crying out loud, point it out earlier in the story!

Uh… Okay, end rant/review. Stop back next week where, unless my eyeballs fall out, we’ll be reviewing Annihilation, Authority, Acceptance (The Southern Reach trilogy), vN, Saturn’s Children, and The Androids Dream.

Have you read any of the aforementioned books? What did you think of them? Love ’em or hate ’em, what are your thoughts? Leave a comment, I’d love to hear from you.

Anthony