Adam
At least some is this is probably just 2020 talking, but this is a deeply weird book that I really really dug. 4.5 in a more granular system.
I really dug this. The first half or so is enjoyable, but not amazing, historical fiction, then there's a wtf moment and it turns into something else entirely. The whole thing is steeped in humanism and decency and I just realized it's basically The Good Place as a historical novel set in Renaissance Italy. Holy motherforking shirtballs.
Cannot recommend highly enough. Only complaint is that there's a bit of bothsidesism in the section on the 21st century.
Is there a term similar to “secondary world fantasy” for stories with no fantastic elements, but set in a non-Earth world? Secondary world historical fiction maybe? Anyway, this is that. Quick, clever, and enjoyable. Gets a bit of side eye for making the aristocratic ruling class (Romans or Byzantines, basically) black and the subjugated lower classes white. Different world, different history, different arbitrary hierarchy, yeah, but uncomfortable, and I don't think a good way.
Huge fan of Loomis' work at http://www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/ and love his writing. I wish it wasn't so damn depressing, but that's not his fault, it's ours. Excellent history of the fate of labor in the United States, using the titular strikes as a framing device.
I don't know why this took me so long to read. I found the book sort of slow to get going, got like a third of the way through, and then got distracted by the idea of re-reading Chris Claremont's entire Uncanny X-Men run. Then I picked this book back up and burned through the remaining two thirds in a day and a half.
Anyway, with more granular ratings, I'd give it three and a half. I do think it starts off sort of slow, but it picks up very quickly. I dig the slow motion apocalypse taking place just outside the boundaries of the story, and the way it mirrors Jane's personal situation.
Initially, I had this rated more highly, but upon further reflection, I'm downgrading it a bit. I think I'm landing it on being a book that, despite my enjoying it very much while I was reading it, isn't really very good. Spoilers ahead.
It's fun while it's going on. The story is told in three different decades, the 1930's, 50's, and 70's, as historian Rossi, then his student Paul and daughter Helen, and finally their daughter pursue Dracula. There's a search for the tomb of Vlad Tepes, menacing vampiric visitations, multiple interesting European settings, an adventure that feels half vampire novel and half cold war spy story, a heretical order of medieval monks, an Ottoman secret society devoted to killing Dracula, and lots of mysteries. The problem is, none of it ever really hangs together.
As a prime example, the book spends a lot of time extremely concerned with a series of maps that purportedly show the location of Dracula's tomb. Our protagonists are constantly worried that they might be lost, worried that they might fall into the wrong hands, intrigued by the warnings inscribed around their borders and by the mysterious legend “Reader, awaken him with a word” written on the most detailed one. They spend a ton of time chasing after them, protecting them, copying them, wondering where they came from. Their ultimate significance? Zero. The protagonists arrive at the valley where the tomb is located, not by using the maps, but by following an unrelated lead (someone tells them that they learned the lyrics to a folk song that appears to reference Dracula in a particular valley). As they arrive, one observes that the valley sort of resembles the one on the map, and then never brings it up again. They discover the location of the tomb not by checking where within the valley the maps show it to be located but, again, by following an entirely different lead (they coincidentally arrive just in time for a peasant festival during which a religious icon that appears to reference Dracula is displayed, then break into the basement of the church where it is stored). When you hang a gun over the mantle in the first act, and then your characters spend the majority of the second act talking about that gun, taking it down to polish it, verifying that ammo for it is close at hand, etc., then, inevitably, in the third act, someone will get smacked over the head with the fireplace poker, I guess.
Similarly, Dracula's secret plot turns out to be...lame? Also, incoherent? As far as I can piece it together, it goes:
1) Entice promising academics by giving them, under mysterious circumstances, an old book, blank except for a ‘DRAKULYA' woodcarving.
2) When these academics begin researching any topic related to Dracula, intimidate them, using means up to and including deadly violence against people close to them, until they stop. I suppose we can infer that this is meant as a test to see which among them are really serious about the research, but that's never explicitly stated, or even strongly implied, and, further, it makes no sense, given who is actually chosen.
3) Eventually, one of these academics will demonstrate their worth. That one will then be spirited away to be converted to vampirism and spend eternity...uhhh...cataloging Dracula's library? That's seriously the endgame. Dracula has an extensive collection of antique books and needs help organizing them.
So...what? And why? In the earliest timeline, Rossi receives one of these little books, gets pretty close to finding the tomb, has his mind partially wiped by Dracula for some reason, and gives up. In the middle timeline, Paul is given his book, tells his academic advisor Rossi about it, Rossi admits that he once pursued this quest as well, and then Rossi is more or less immediately abducted and taken away to organize Dracula's card catalog. What the hell, Dracula? Did you forget about Rossi in the intervening twenty years? Did you change your mind about him? Was saying, “Oh, yeah, I used to research Dracula too” the final test?
Further, how is Dracula managing all this book distribution, grad student intimidation, and abduction? Is he zipping back and forth across the Atlantic himself to do it in person? Does he have a network of minions? We only ever meet one minion, referred to as the Evil Librarian by our protagonists, and this guy constantly shows up no matter what continent we're on. And what's his deal anyway? He's explicitly not a vampire, since he walks around in broad daylight, yet he bites Helen, to apparent supernatural effect. He sometimes seems to be working for Dracula, sometimes at cross purposes with Dracula, as he's angry that Rossi was chosen instead of him. Why does Dracula even need Rossi when this dude is ready and willing to be his librarian of the night?
Finally, less a complaint and more just something that amused me, is the fact that the entire story is told as a series of conversations Paul is having with and, later, letters he has written to, his daughter. Incredibly long, exhaustively detailed conversations and letters. I assume we're just sort of supposed to imagine that she starts reading a letter, then our mental image gets blurry and fades to Paul's first person perspective, and that everything we see there isn't explicitly in the letter, but I prefer to imagine Paul laying out in excruciating detail for his daughter the exact content of every meal he ate on a trip he took twenty years ago, along with every horny thought he ever had about her mother.
Was expecting further adventures of the Wayfarer crew, and was at first sort of bummed to be reading a mostly unrelated story featuring a minor character from the first book and a character that was literally born in the last few pages of that book, but got over that pretty quickly. You can't really call this a sequel, as it shares almost nothing with the first book other than being set in the same universe and sharing the original's fascination with characters who have non-human psychologies while still being fully realized persons.
I read this a couple years ago, but did a reread after picking up the rest of the series for cheap. I remembered it being sort of a lighthearted space adventure, and it primarily is that, but I'd forgotten how much work and detail Chambers puts into building characters with distinctly alien psychologies who are still recognizably people. Definitely worth a read just for that.
Another 372 pages read. 12 chapters of unhinged weirdness, 1960's British humor, whooshing dogs, and nothing resembling a plot. Every non-dog creature n the world falls into a coma, while the dogs wake up with magic powers. An alien shows up and offers the dogs the chance to get out of Dodge before humanity possibly nukes itself to death. The dogs briefly discuss it, decide not to leave, and everything goes back to normal. I mean briefly. It's like three pages.
The best part is the bit where the dogs wonder if Cruella Deville might somehow be responsible for the coma slash magic powers thing, discover she's also unconscious and can't be behind it, then debate whether they should just murder her in her sleep, since they're there anyway.
I originally read this in high school, but I'd forgotten most of the details, so I decided to do a reread after finishing one of Gibson's newer novels (Pattern Recognition). Like Tolkien, it's one of those classics that's been copied so much that the original has begun to seem clichéd. It probably doesn't help that a good portion of The Matrix was lifted directly from this book. It also suffers a bit from an dating; in 1984, it was generally assumed that the Cold War and Japanese economic dominance were here to stay.
Having said, that, it's still an entertaining read, with an unpredictable plot and interesting views on personality and identity. It probably wouldn't make much of a splash if it were published today, but the genre today would be very different if Neuromancer had never been published.
Ehrman doesn't include anything that a person interested in the history of Christianity wouldn't discover on the internet in short order, but this book does provide a convenient and entertainingly written package for some of the more well known contradictions found in the New Testament, as well as an interesting inside perspective on the gap between what scholars, including the clergy, believe and what is taught to the average churchgoer by those same clergy.
I'm very divided on this one. I'm rating it a three, as the average of maybe a four for ideas and a two for execution. The core concept of the book is solid, I dug the framing device of making a documentary, the use of a sixties slash seventies cult gave me oddly nostalgic vibes, the old friends are awesomely creepy, and the bits where the characters encounter them are satisfyingly scary. Unfortunately, though, actually reading it is a bit of a slog. I think there are just too many repeated beats. Kyle and Dan travel to a new location, interview an ex-cultist, learn essentially the same information, encounter disturbing signs that they aren't alone, argue about whether to continue working on the documentary, then Kyle gets attacked at night, over and over. There's very little forward momentum until maybe three quarters of the way through the book.
Also, at one point, an American character refers to a flashlight as a torch. Unforgivable.
I originally read this when it was new, but decided to reread in advance of reading some of Piketty's other books, as I remembered very little of it beyond r>g. It's a slow read, thanks to the mountain of data presented in it, but well worth the time to read. Easily one of the most important books of the last decade.
I dug this. Short, creepy, and to the point. I could see this becoming part of the regular October rotation.
Merged review:
I dug this. Short, creepy, and to the point. I could see this becoming part of the regular October rotation.
I think I would have liked this much better had I read it when it was published in 1997. As it is, I think it's two thirds of an amazing, thoughtful book, dragged down by hurried, pat ending.
What Copeland is really writing about here, I think, although the term wasn't in widespread use yet, is the neoliberal revolution, the period when the concept of the public good fell into disuse, to be replaced by a series of individual consumer choices. Watching his characters sleepwalk through the dissatisfying lives created by the lack of any purpose other than becoming more efficient workers who are then able to be more prolific consumers, while confronted with the sometimes literal ghosts of their teenage aspirations is an interesting read. I was disappointed, though, that the proposed solution to this state of affairs, delivered via worldwide apocalypse and spiritual intervention, is a lame “Question everything!”. Like, no, man, that's just another individual choice. Meh.
