Rule 34 by Charles Stross

Set in the same near-future world as Halting State, Stross takes us through another crime mystery filled with perfectly plausible future events. The story, and its humor, is a bit darker than his first foray into this world – something which gets a thumbs-up from me – but maintains the quality and style that one would expect from Stross. A fun read.

4.1/5 gogs.

Legacy of Kings by C.S. Friedman

The final entry in Friedman’s Magister Trilogy, we’re presented with a fairly standard save-the-world quest complete with epic battle at the end. While Friedman manages to maintain her high standards of quality in her writing, the book suffers from a lack of moral dilemmas and a rather linear plot. It kind of felt like this book was rushed or that she ran out of ideas in the middle of it. A bit disappointing.

3.2/5 gogs.

I spent my time in the 80′s as a PFY. Fingers stained orange by whatever tasty bagged snack was around, poring over D&D manuals, playing games on the Apple // and generally staying under the radar of anyone who could kick my ass at school. When I first heard mention of Ready Player One, a sci-fi adventure that incorporated 80′s geek nostalgia into its plot, I was pretty eager to get my hands on a copy, especially after seeing all the hype on the interweb. I may have even let out a (manly, dignified) squeal when the book finally arrived.

The first chapter was pretty well done and had my literary salivary glands in high gear. Sadly, things went rapidly downhill in the second chapter and only got worse from there. I was originally going to defend this view by listing all the plot holes, technical mistakes and good ol’ annoyances that I ran across when reading RPO, but I quickly realized that by following that route, I’d end up with a review that was of equal length to the book itself.

In short, Mr. Cline’s writing suffers from two major problems. First off, technology is clearly a marvel to him, yet he writes as if he does not understand how it actually works. At all. There were so many instances, from both end-user and higher-level technical points-of-view, where I found myself slack-jawed in wonder at his ignorance of current (and even 30 year old) technology, let alone how things may actually work in the future. And this is in a book where technology plays a main role in the story. Secondly, just as he is blinded by his love of the idea of technology, so too goes his love affair with the 80′s and especially the “geek” culture that evolved during that decade. He desperately loves his past and wants to describe it in all its nerdy glory to anyone who will listen. Unfortunately for anyone who actually lived through that time, his endless pining quickly becomes mind numbing as reference upon reference (complete with details like publisher and publication dates) pile up. Slipping the occasional 80′s reference into your prose is clever. Inundating the reader with 80′s references every other sentence is obnoxious.

As if these two flaws weren’t fatal enough, the story itself isn’t even entertaining. The book is written for a YA audience but is clearly marketed for the adult crowd. Socially inept wunderkind of goodness who has flawless knowledge of a decade 60 years in the past and is an expert at everything he does squares off against the evil corporation and its minions in a battle to save the world. Really? That story had already been done to death by the end of 80′s, but maybe this meta-ness is all a part of his schtick. Or maybe the book just sucks.

Game over, man. Game over.

1/5 gogs.

Something like five years have passed since Martin’s last contribution to the Song of Ice and Fire series. Eagerness changed to annoyance which morphed to anger which faded to apathy. But finally, finally, book five was completed and released for public consumption. “You can’t rush quality”, we were reminded. “It’s all part of the creative process”, we were told. OK, OK. Maybe you’re right. Good things come to those who wait, and all that.

So here we are. I finished up ADwD a few weeks ago and I’ve been mulling over my feelings of it since then. In a nutshell? It fell pretty flat.

To be fair, this book had at least two things against it from the beginning. First, high expectations – the first three books of ASoIaF were outstanding and this book (which is actually the continuation of book 4) featured many of the enjoyable characters (in my opinion) that book 4 was lacking. Secondly, as GRRM points out in the introduction, this book parallels the timeline from book 4. So at the end of it all, we’re still going to be pretty close to where we left off in book 4.

That being said, the book was decent. Martin is still a skilled writer. Yet after 1,000 pages, something like 400,000 words, we ended up pretty much where we started. Plots were hardly advanced. Conspiracies were barely revealed. Hell, no one of note even died until the very end, and even those deaths are now suspect due to Martin’s proclivity for dead/not-dead characters. Fortunately for us, Jon, Arya, Daenerys and Tyrion all made major appearances in ADwD which may have been its saving grace (although, sadly, I felt the latter two suffered at GRRM’s hand this time around).

Only two more books to go. See you in ten years.

3/5 gogs.

Chasm City by Alastair Reynolds

A mystery-themed adventure in the classic interstellar post-diaspora time frame, Reynolds serves up a decent story that is unfortunately hindered by too much usage of deus ex machina. So as not to spoil things, let’s just say that trust is given far too easily and far too often when highly sensitive secrets are involved. I wouldn’t go out of my way to track this one down, but it were easily available, I’d probably give it a go.

3/5 gogs.

Leviathan Wakes by James S.A. Corey

The pen name used by Daniel Abraham when writing science fiction (along with tag-team partner, Ty Franck). Not to be confused with the pen name M.L.N. Hanover that Abraham uses to write trashy vampire, sorry, urban fantasy novels. I really shouldn’t say that – I have no idea if any trashy vampires make appearances in his Black Sun’s Daughter series – but the phrase “urban fantasy” makes me weep for humanity every time I see it.

Anyway, Abraham and Franck crank out some high-grade space opera with plenty of action, mystery and plot twists. Good stuff. Paraphrasing one of the cover blurbs, it really has been too long since we’ve seen space opera this good and I’m eagerly awaiting the next installment (although the 2nd book in The Dragon’s Path would be acceptable as well =P ).

4.2/5 gogs.

OK, I read a little of Daniel Abraham’s work in the past and I didn’t much like it. Not because I felt he was a poor writer, but because the story he was telling just wasn’t my cup of tea. Well, Abraham is back with the first book in a new series and, I’m happy to say, this one’s a winner. Interesting, believable characters and a good blend of humor and intrigue combine to form a really well written story. I rather enjoyed this one and I’m looking forward to the next installment.

4/5 gogs.

The Wise Man’s Fear by Patrick Rothfuss

I’m a bit late to the party on this one, but it’s a fashionable sort of lateness. Everyone’s favorite red-headed, hyper-capable protagonist, Kvothe, is back, continuing the tale of his youth. The story gets a bit darker in this release as Kvothe is confronted with the realities of life outside of the University. I felt this was a welcome change as it began shedding light on how Kvothe came to his current worldview. Rothfuss’ writing style remains as readable and enjoyable as ever. Despite being over 1,000 pages in length, I still breezed through the novel in less than a week. Very much recommended.

4.8/5 gogs

Tome of the Undergates by Sam Sykes

I’m not sure what to make of this book. The first third or so is a bit over the top. Full-blown action sequences filled with repartee, my first response was not to take this book seriously. At all. And, you know, that worked out for a while. Unfortunately, this didn’t last. The story tried to take a more serious turn (and failed) and the characters remained shallow and uninteresting for the most part. The plot itself seemed long and drawn out – the book probably would have benefitted from some aggressive editing and would have been decent at half its length. There were a handful of bright spots but ultimately the story fell as flat as the characters.

2.2/5 gogs

The Unremembered by Peter Orullian

A couple of chapters into this book, I found myself thinking that I’ve been here before. Not only that, but the first visit was much better than this one. We start out with three young men and a woman who live in a small village, somewhat on the edge of civilization. They are soon recruited by a mysterious and powerful man and woman who have traveled far to find them. You probably won’t be surprised at this point to learn that the “old ways” are still practiced in this village and that creatures from a long-forgotten evil have been seen recently in the surrounding wilds. Also unsurprising is the realization that these creatures are hunting these four young folk for reasons known only to the mysterious and powerful man and woman. Yeah. Now would be a good time to close the book and re-read The Eye of the World.

Unfortunately, the book doesn’t get much better as it progresses. Tedious is a word I find slipping into my consciousness far too often. The characters are flat and I have no emotions for them, good or bad. The author executes clumsy point-of-view changes far too often. The story is as unoriginal as a reality show plot. I could go on, but I think you get my point.

1.5/5 gogs

The Heroes by Joe Abercrombie

Perhaps having learned from some of the, at least in my opinion, shortfalls in his previous book Best Served Cold, Abercrombie is back with another stand-alone novel set in the same world as the First Law trilogy and BSC. Predictably, as this story tells the tale of three days of a battle between the Union and the Northmen, the gritty fight scenes are still there, yet aren’t as epic as in First Law. Present as well is the bleak and almost nihilistic view of society, yet this is tempered with some surprisingly human characters and all their fears and desires. In all, I felt this was his most realistic novel to date, but was still missing a little something to push it from good into great.

3.8/5 gogs

The Crippled God by Steven Erikson

Erikson’s 10,000 page epic comes to a close in this final volume. As followers of his know, Erikson has introduced a boatload of characters over the years, each with his or her own story that needs to be wrapped up in the end. So does he manage this, and more importantly, does he do so in an elegant manner? Mostly, yes. As the ending of book nine promised, there was a lot of death contained within and the book as a whole was a bit of an emotional rollercoaster. Sadness, joy, loss, fear, hope and laughter. Pretty much the entire spectrum was represented as he tied up the majority of loose ends. The finale itself was a bit too spread out for my liking, presumably due to the sheer complexity of it all, but it was a reasonable ending to an excellent tale.

3.3/5 gogs

Erikson fans may be interested to know that this isn’t the last we’ve heard of the Malazan Empire, he has a couple more trilogies slated – one a prequel of sorts and the other centered around everyone’s favorite giant, Karsa Orlong.

Not satisfied with blasting out 800,000 words to wrap up Jordan’s Wheel of Time saga, Sanderson has written the first book of a 10 volume epic of his own. Titled The Way of Kings, it clocks in at a massive 1000 pages and makes me feel very sad indeed when I can hardly summon enough creativity to crank out a post or two every month. Seriously, where does this guy get the time and energy?

From the start, we’re greeted with a fairly standard, multi-threaded fantasy tale which rapidly bogs down with page after page of slow progress, flashbacks and (for now, at least) environmental filler (sprens and crem). After slogging through several hundred pages, I found myself somewhat hopeful that the rest of the book would be bad enough that I could just drop the series now instead of suffering through nine more volumes of mediocrity. But then, around the last quarter of the book, something maddening happens. Sanderson stops dicking around and whips out some seriously engrossing prose that made the book quite difficult to put down, even despite its 3+ pound weight. Damn him.

As previously noted, brevity is not something this author suffers from which sadly keeps the book from really shining. Were the book a few hundred pages shorter, I’d be slapping the ol’ EPIC label all over it and proclaiming its name from the highest of rooftops. As such, the overall rating for the book takes a bit of a hit but man, that ending. Those hooks are firmly set and I’m eagerly looking forward to the next volume.

4/5 gogs.

Squirrel Seeks Chipmunk: A Modest Bestiary by David Sedaris

So, Mr. Sedaris has released his first fictional book for the masses and, being a fan, I was eager to dive into this one. Noticeably more cynical than his non-fiction work, this collection of fable-like short stories is full of both hits and misses as it holds up a critical mirror to today’s society. It is also illustrated by the guy who writes and illustrates the Olivia series for children; a fact I find terribly amusing due to the graphic nature of the illustrations within. So is it worth getting? From a library, absolutely. For the 22USD list price? Hell no. The book is too short and contains too many misses to be dropping that sort of cash on it.

3/5 gogs.

The Broken Kingdoms by N. K. Jemisin

The middle entry in N. K. Jemisin’s Inheritance Trilogy takes place several years after the first novel with a mostly different cast of characters. While I still breezed through this novel, I felt that this time around, even though the characters were still fairly complex and believable, the writing and plot just weren’t as strong as in The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms. Still, this wouldn’t be the worst way to spend a frigid winter weekend indoors.

3.5/5 gogs