I read Samuel Daleny's Babel-17 this week and, well, I didn't particularly enjoy it. I had a lot of trouble getting into the story. The premise was interesting, but the way it was written had lots of ups and downs - sometimes I'd be into it, and sometimes I'd find myself quickly skimming. I found some parts to be rather confusing written and many parts felt strangely abrupt. There were quite a few parts where I felt they were just written to get from A to B to C, which needless to say, didn't make them enjoyable, convincing, or engaging to read.
Many of the characters I felt were rather...bland. Or I should say, your typical sci-fi heroes. Your leader with a skill she doesn't quite understand and she's a genius, the tight-knit/family crew situation, the rambunctious loudmouths...they all felt very familiar. Even Butcher, who of the crew was the one I liked the most, was kind of the typical dark crew mate with an unknown past. I supposed I liked Ryda's doctor too; he was alright, though like the others, not really remarkable in any memorable way.
Actually, the character I liked the most was Danil D. Appleby. Yes. The customs officer who gets referred to by his name a whole four times in the book. You would think after his being inspired by Ryda and her crew he'd be referenced to by name more frequently to give him more of his new identity...but no. He still remains as 'the customs officer'. I was kind of bummed reading the beginning scenes with him simply because I knew he was not important and would soon go away to be not seen again. I figured this based on his lack of a name identity and that he didn't have the same sci-fi hero personalities as the others. He was a quieter, shier character, which I think is what made him more interesting to me - there don't seem to be many of them in the sci-fi I've seen, at least not as main characters. And I think when they get thrown into dangerous situations, they can be just as interesting, so its a shame.
Ryda's telepathic moments of extremely long paragraphs were sudden and confusing, the end was not that surprising or interesting...so overall, I wasn't impressed. But I admit bias as I'm not a fan of most sci-fi.
Tuesday, October 26, 2010
Wednesday, October 20, 2010
Tryst in Time
I was interested in reading The Stars My Destination, but I didn't get around to it...I just didn't really feel like reading this week either. I did manage to read the short story Tryst in Time, however.
I admit I was not very enthralled with it at all. But in general I tend to find many sci-fi stories a bit boring, especially when they feel they have to explain to me how some new technology works, which usually isn't at all relevant to the story and is above my understanding anyway. I suppose I read too much fantasy where you just roll with the accepted fact there is magic and I want this mentality in sci-fi too - don't explain to me how it works, I'll just take your word for it that it does what you say somehow.
That said, I feel my experiences with sci-fi short stories tend to all be the same and this one didn't feel any different. I can't help but get this vibe that its trying to tell me something deep and meaningful or somehow symbolic, but I honestly just don't get it at all. The set-up seems simple enough, things happen, and the end is strangely and mysteriously cryptic. I didn't really understand why he kept encountering the same girl through time, and I didn't understand where they were in the end - the end of time? the beginning? All I know is I'm once again thinking, "I think I there was some kind of metaphor here, but I have no idea what I was supposed to get." There really isn't anything else I think I can say.
I admit I was not very enthralled with it at all. But in general I tend to find many sci-fi stories a bit boring, especially when they feel they have to explain to me how some new technology works, which usually isn't at all relevant to the story and is above my understanding anyway. I suppose I read too much fantasy where you just roll with the accepted fact there is magic and I want this mentality in sci-fi too - don't explain to me how it works, I'll just take your word for it that it does what you say somehow.
That said, I feel my experiences with sci-fi short stories tend to all be the same and this one didn't feel any different. I can't help but get this vibe that its trying to tell me something deep and meaningful or somehow symbolic, but I honestly just don't get it at all. The set-up seems simple enough, things happen, and the end is strangely and mysteriously cryptic. I didn't really understand why he kept encountering the same girl through time, and I didn't understand where they were in the end - the end of time? the beginning? All I know is I'm once again thinking, "I think I there was some kind of metaphor here, but I have no idea what I was supposed to get." There really isn't anything else I think I can say.
Monday, October 11, 2010
Warbreaker
This week we were assigned to read Brandon Sanderson's Warbreaker. Let me start off by saying, and pardon my language, that I FUCKING LOVED THIS BOOK.
When I first opened the pdf and saw it was over eight hundred pages, I thought, "My god, this is going to take forever to read. There's no way I'll be able to read the whole thing." So I didn't even plan to. But the book turned out to be incredibly captivating and I found myself sucked in almost right away. I was reading at night and as I started to get tired, I kept thinking, "Well, I'll read one more chapter..." Yes, one more chapter indeed, but the next thing I know it had been several chapters, I was almost halfway through the book, and it was four in the morning! No place seemed a good place to stop and I didn't just want to know what was going to happen next, I needed to know.
The book essentially took me two days to read. The second night was another one of staying up until past three in the morning. I had stopped at some point for the night, thinking I had more to read than I did, but then finished it the next day [today] within a half hour.
I don't know what exactly got me so enthralled in this book, but I suspect it was probably the multitude of everything that I liked about it. Really, where do I start?
I love color, and having it be such a central part of the story and the culture of their world really had my attention. The city T'Telir just sounded really amazing to me and I wish it was a real place I could visit. The whole system of their magic, which involves both color and breaths, I found just incredibly fascinating.
And the characters! I was especially involved with them; there was not a single character I did not like. They were all very real and well written. Even Vivenna, who was my least favorite, was still not a character I didn't like. I felt truly involved in their plights. I felt just as betrayed as Vivenna did by the mercenaries, and I never came to dislike or hate Denth, even at the end. I felt bad that Parlin die, even though he was hardly a presence in the book. Blushweaver's death was upsetting, and Lightsong seeing her die and learning who he was before he died, was all the more upsetting. I really cared for the characters.
My favorites were easily Lightsong, Llarimar, Siri, and Susebron. Though again, that doesn't mean I didn't like the others...but when these four were involved, I found it especially hard to stop reading. Lightsongs's dialog was great, and I especially loved his interactions with Llarimar. That it turned out they were brothers seemed very fitting - and explained why Llarimar seemed the only one with the patience to put up with him! I even liked Nightblood - poor little sword doesn't know any better. It tries very hard to do as it was told.
I don't really know what to talk about other than how much I loved this book, so I suppose I'll end this post here. And now to catch up on all that sleep I missed reading it.
When I first opened the pdf and saw it was over eight hundred pages, I thought, "My god, this is going to take forever to read. There's no way I'll be able to read the whole thing." So I didn't even plan to. But the book turned out to be incredibly captivating and I found myself sucked in almost right away. I was reading at night and as I started to get tired, I kept thinking, "Well, I'll read one more chapter..." Yes, one more chapter indeed, but the next thing I know it had been several chapters, I was almost halfway through the book, and it was four in the morning! No place seemed a good place to stop and I didn't just want to know what was going to happen next, I needed to know.
The book essentially took me two days to read. The second night was another one of staying up until past three in the morning. I had stopped at some point for the night, thinking I had more to read than I did, but then finished it the next day [today] within a half hour.
I don't know what exactly got me so enthralled in this book, but I suspect it was probably the multitude of everything that I liked about it. Really, where do I start?
I love color, and having it be such a central part of the story and the culture of their world really had my attention. The city T'Telir just sounded really amazing to me and I wish it was a real place I could visit. The whole system of their magic, which involves both color and breaths, I found just incredibly fascinating.
And the characters! I was especially involved with them; there was not a single character I did not like. They were all very real and well written. Even Vivenna, who was my least favorite, was still not a character I didn't like. I felt truly involved in their plights. I felt just as betrayed as Vivenna did by the mercenaries, and I never came to dislike or hate Denth, even at the end. I felt bad that Parlin die, even though he was hardly a presence in the book. Blushweaver's death was upsetting, and Lightsong seeing her die and learning who he was before he died, was all the more upsetting. I really cared for the characters.
My favorites were easily Lightsong, Llarimar, Siri, and Susebron. Though again, that doesn't mean I didn't like the others...but when these four were involved, I found it especially hard to stop reading. Lightsongs's dialog was great, and I especially loved his interactions with Llarimar. That it turned out they were brothers seemed very fitting - and explained why Llarimar seemed the only one with the patience to put up with him! I even liked Nightblood - poor little sword doesn't know any better. It tries very hard to do as it was told.
I don't really know what to talk about other than how much I loved this book, so I suppose I'll end this post here. And now to catch up on all that sleep I missed reading it.
Tuesday, October 5, 2010
Anansi Boys
I read Neil Geiman's Anansi Boys this week. This is the third Geiman book I've read and I enjoyed it much more than the other two (Stardust and American Gods). I enjoyed his writing and found it a pretty funny read; it reminded me a bit of Obert Skye's writing in Leven Thumps which I loved.
I especially liked Spider throughout the whole thing despite the fact that in the beginning he was a complete jerk. Though he lies and is a storyteller like Lyra from Golden Compass, I guess the reason I like Spider but didn't like Lyra is that Spider lies with purpose. He usually has something he wants to get out of it and does it to enjoy the lie (even if its a jerkish reason, its still a reason), where as Lyra did so simply because she could and really for no reason at all. Plus unlike Lyra, Spider does not always lie - he realizes he doesn't want to lie to Rosie for instance, and with her he learns to be honest. He learns to be more considerate of others a bit where as Lyra never changed.
Anyway, Spider was my favorite and his interactions with Charlie were especially great. Charlie was a bit dull in the beginning, but after Spider comes into the picture, he becomes and acts a lot more interesting [which is appropriate, all things considered]. Rosie and Daisy's roles in the story felt a lot more subtler, but I don't want to say that they were any less important.
Geiman always has a way of writing about gods in creative ways and his characters are always fantastic and unique. Really my only complaint with the book at all is that I always feel the climax of his stories are, well, anticlimactic. I don't remember well enough of Stardust to recall if I felt the same with that one, but with American Gods this summer I most certainly did. I was hoping it wouldn't be the same with Anasi Boys, but it ended up being so.
In both Anansi Boys and American Gods, there is time spent with the tension and interest building and I come to expect some kind of grand resolution. But in American Gods, Shadow pretty much just tells everyone "You were tricked! Go home!" and that's the end of that. It felt especially terrible there when most of that book had been spent building towards a great war between gods that was supposed to occur, but didn't, not even really a little. In Anansi Boys Charlie sings and changes' Tiger's fate - trapping into the story in his song - and that's that. It's over in two pages. It didn't feel as much of a letdown as the other, but still a bit disappointing nonetheless. The resolutions between the characters was good and an adequate conclusion, but still...its called the climax for a reason. It's supposed to be the highest point of tension in the story. Yet in both of those books the tension felt much lower than it should have. Again, anticlimatic.
Well, the good news is that its restored my faith in Gaimen. After being unimpressed with Stardust and let down by American Gods, I almost didn't want to read another of his books. But I really did enjoy Anansi Boys so perhaps I'll read more of his books in the future [in hopes they are just as enjoyable with not so let downing climaxes].
I especially liked Spider throughout the whole thing despite the fact that in the beginning he was a complete jerk. Though he lies and is a storyteller like Lyra from Golden Compass, I guess the reason I like Spider but didn't like Lyra is that Spider lies with purpose. He usually has something he wants to get out of it and does it to enjoy the lie (even if its a jerkish reason, its still a reason), where as Lyra did so simply because she could and really for no reason at all. Plus unlike Lyra, Spider does not always lie - he realizes he doesn't want to lie to Rosie for instance, and with her he learns to be honest. He learns to be more considerate of others a bit where as Lyra never changed.
Anyway, Spider was my favorite and his interactions with Charlie were especially great. Charlie was a bit dull in the beginning, but after Spider comes into the picture, he becomes and acts a lot more interesting [which is appropriate, all things considered]. Rosie and Daisy's roles in the story felt a lot more subtler, but I don't want to say that they were any less important.
Geiman always has a way of writing about gods in creative ways and his characters are always fantastic and unique. Really my only complaint with the book at all is that I always feel the climax of his stories are, well, anticlimactic. I don't remember well enough of Stardust to recall if I felt the same with that one, but with American Gods this summer I most certainly did. I was hoping it wouldn't be the same with Anasi Boys, but it ended up being so.
In both Anansi Boys and American Gods, there is time spent with the tension and interest building and I come to expect some kind of grand resolution. But in American Gods, Shadow pretty much just tells everyone "You were tricked! Go home!" and that's the end of that. It felt especially terrible there when most of that book had been spent building towards a great war between gods that was supposed to occur, but didn't, not even really a little. In Anansi Boys Charlie sings and changes' Tiger's fate - trapping into the story in his song - and that's that. It's over in two pages. It didn't feel as much of a letdown as the other, but still a bit disappointing nonetheless. The resolutions between the characters was good and an adequate conclusion, but still...its called the climax for a reason. It's supposed to be the highest point of tension in the story. Yet in both of those books the tension felt much lower than it should have. Again, anticlimatic.
Well, the good news is that its restored my faith in Gaimen. After being unimpressed with Stardust and let down by American Gods, I almost didn't want to read another of his books. But I really did enjoy Anansi Boys so perhaps I'll read more of his books in the future [in hopes they are just as enjoyable with not so let downing climaxes].
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)