Angela Ambroz
Pretty standard YA Cory Doctorow. Which is to say, I was inspired to do everything in this book: build a frankenlaptop running Linux, visit cyberpunk hackerspaces on the weekend, fight for digital civil liberties, read Aaron Swartz (RIP) and Larry Lessig, go to Burning Man with a 3D solar-powerered laser printer, and drink tons and tons of cold brew. Cory, man. He always GETS ME GOIN. I'm just like, LEAD ON, LEADER, THAT ALL SOUNDS GREAT.
His books are always wonderfully imbued with anarchic resourcefulness, programming, art, civic engagement, and hackering. And an abiding adoration of the pre-venture capital, pre-capitalist distortion San Francisco scene. It's great. So good.
That said: book-wise, it's not as well-put together as the prequel, Little Brother. Cory can be kinda hit and miss: some of his books hit the mark SO WELL (Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom, that one short story about future advertising, Little Brother, In Real Life), and others are just meh fine (For the Win, Pirate Cinema, Rapture of the Nerds). That said, the meh ones are never terrible, they're just kinda clunky in their pedantry. But fine! I still like to learn. Now that I think of it, he's like a young person's Neal Stephenson. Sort of. I like Cory more. Cory is just so much more ENGAGED.
Anyway. Yeah. I mean, Cory Doctorow has deeply influenced my life for the past ~10 years - much of my computer-related opinions are derived from his books, talks, BoingBoing (pre that awful store). This book felt - meh - fine. The narrative arc felt super contrived. Everyone also felt a little one-dimensional. And Marcus Yallow AKA M1k3y is a Mary Sue/Marty Stu. Fine. I can't stay mad achoo. I'm so pumped for Walkaway (his first non-YA book in a loong while).
Written by the current Ghanaian President, My First Coup d'Etat is a far-reaching and interesting memoir of life in post-colonial Ghana. It follows Mahama from the day he learns his father, a Member of Parliament, has been ousted following the 1966 coup, which removed Ghana's first President, Kwame Nkrumah, from government.
The book then follows a meandering, indirect path through Mahama's life and musings: we learn both of his political maturation, his family history in the north of the country, and the life and culture of a fast-developing, fast-Westernizing Ghana. Mahama's attitudes towards this change, and this tension between tradition and modernity, are somewhat nebulous: he implies a healthy skepticism regarding religion and its uses; he describes his affair with socialism in relatively muted terms; and, while describing the later coups in Ghana's history, he refrains from pointing fingers. This makes sense, given his current position. And, honestly, the book doesn't suffer much from this lack of big opinions, it's still a pretty good read.
Nothing new here; which is unfortunate. I loved Michael Pollan's The Omnivore's Dilemma, one of the first books to really open my eyes and inspire me on the issue of the American food industry (which, if you don't already know, IS BAD). Mark Bittman's another well-known soldier in this fight, and so I'm immediately interested in whatever he has to say about Big Food. This slim volume was a bit of a let-down though: he mostly lists well-known truths such as “eating in saves money and is good for your health”. Well... duh. The best bit is probably the handful of recipes in the back; I love Bittman recipes, devoid as they are of measurement, timing, or any scientific detail. It's all an art! these recipes seem to imply. Ah, he has such faith in us as cooks/would-be-food-ruiners!
Brilliant, brilliantly written. At times infuriating, always fascinating, a page-turner.
Like the author, I felt myself wanting to get mad first at one side, then at the other: the Hmong parents who couldn't or wouldn't (and anyway didn't!) give their daughter the US doctors-prescribed meds, the arrogant US doctors with their inability to think outside the box. Oh man.
Very recommended.
Rushdie is dense; and, I discovered, if you don't know enough about South Indian culture (traditional and pop), he can be impossibly obtuse.
Thankfully, I read Satanic Verses after binging on Amitabh Bachchan movies; so Gibreel Farishta, apparently modeled on early 80s Bachchan, was immediately familiar. The Hindi puns; the digs at Indira Gandhi; etc. - all became clear(er, at least).
Anyway: this is one of those Big Famous magic(al) realist novels, and rightly so. Vast, richly imagined and, best of all, funny. My favorite Rushdie.
How disappoint!!
I started this book pretty into it, but things rapidly declined and it was a SLOG for me by the end. This is a kinda magical realist, kinda very very light sci-fi, but mostly mainstream fiction novel about a gen X woman, Adina, who is:
- From Philadelphia
- Weird
- Italian-American (WAHEEYYY BADABING - I can say this because I am also italo-americanaaaa)
- probably asexual
- probably autistic
And, importantly/centrally:
- AN ALIEN, who faxes her observations of humanity's foibles to “her superiors” on some distant planet
So this sounds like it'd be up my alley, but UGH I just found it so horribly TWEE and PRECIOUS and so painfully on-the-nose allllll the time. Like, yes, we all feel alienated sometimes, especially if we were the bottom of the totem pole in middle school high society. And yes, humans are quite silly, and this can be amusing and provoke affection. But! If we're going to be faxing aliens, can we PLEASE not be so incredibly basic in our observations?!! Namely, everything in this book felt like it perpetuated just a very specific, narrow, (American) pov that was completely unsurprising and not-new! For example:
- Rich people are mean
- Blond rich girls in school are mean
- NYC is the best city in the world
- Full of bagels and personality
- Gardening is wholesome
- Dogs are wholesome
- Watching fine cinema is weird but wholesome
- Italians tan!!
Like. All of it was just like, OK, this was what teenage-me thought, but I'm now a bit over it?? Why not challenge my preconceptions a bit! Why NOT, INSTEAD:
- Rich people are nice?!
- The blond mean rich girl has a rich, interior life full of her own suffering?
- NYC is provincial and, how about, PHILLY is the best city in the world?!
- NYC has bagels AND MAYBE BIRYANI? Shall we focus on the biryani!?! What about fufu?!
- Gardening = boring and you get toxoplasmosis from it!
- Fine cinema = boring AND snobby
- Some Italians don't tan! Many Sicilians are redheads! For example!
I'm not saying I even believe in all of the above counter-points, I just WANTED SOMETHING A BIT MORE REFRESHING. A bit more contrary! A bit less on-the-nose and basic! Can we expand our horizons JUST A TINY LITTLE BIT?
What an inventive, illuminating spec fic book! This book really exhibited all that I love of well-made speculative fiction: by twisting only one aspect of our reality, it managed to provoke thought and delight. More often than not, I found myself smiling and shaking my head. “Oh my God, this is AMAZING,” I kept thinking.
The twist (and it is pretty gimmicky, but what a payoff!): on November 11, 2001 (that is, 11/9), Christian fundamentalists (“Crusaders”) crash two planes into the twin towers of Baghdad. Baghdad is one of the big cities of the “United Arab States” (UAS), the historical global superpower.
Everything falls from that. While our protagonist is Mustafa, a Homeland Security cop, we cross paths with everyone from Rumsfeld to Osama bin Laden. And, as the story eventually says, “A dark prince in one world is a dark prince in all worlds.” Indeed, everyone's Bizarro!roles are at once familiar and strange: often illuminating on some aspect of their real world character or circumstances. And the whole upside-down world is an amazing mental exercise: I, at least, was constantly confronted with my Orientalist and War on Terror prejudices. Why does a broken-out Washington DC, where children throw rocks at (UAS) Marine tanks, strike me as so unbelievable? Why did the (no doubt intentional) over-familiarizing of the Homeland Security cops' stories constantly pull me back to “how American it sounded”. And the way Christianity was treated; with the same post-colonial hegemonic condescension as the way the West treats Islam... Really a great book! It reminded me in style and inventiveness of Lydia Millet's equally strange and superb “Oh Pure and Radiant Heart” (a story of atomic bomb scientists, Oppenheimer among them, waking up in 2003 New Mexico).
And what made me flip out, and give this the illustrious fifth star, is how - within this parallel worlds itself - our “real” world begins to push its way in. When the author introduced this, I was even more delighted - it was really exciting to see how he developed this.
Another thing this book did well (and a characteristic of my all-time favorite spec fic book, Gateway, by Fred Pohl) is the periodic primary document intervals: in this case, each chapter is prologued by a parallel-world Wikipedia article - here called the Library of Alexandria - on topics from women's rights to Saddam Hussein (here a mob boss) to 11/9 itself.
If I have one critique, it's that the story sometimes reads a bit too much like being TOLD (rather than shown) this amazing, strange place - especially when the author is establishing each cop's backstory (interesting as they all are). But that's a pretty small quibble, given how great the whole set-up and execution is.
SO. GOOD.
(Let it be known that my beloved Cory Doctorow first alerted me to this book via this Boing Boing post: http://boingboing.net/2012/02/07/matt-ruffs-the-mirage.html)
Like Barbara Demick's Nothing to Envy (about North Korea's famine from the 1990s), this was a book that confronted me with my embarrassing ignorance about recent world events. In this case, the scale of the Liberian civil war, and the fact that an incredible women's protest movement came out of it. I knew very little about the former, and zero about the latter. So: wow. And a must read, on this account.
Also a must-read since it was gut-wrenching, inspiring, and told with so much clarity and heart. This book managed to pull me out of my not-into-reading-any-more post-holiday funk, because it was absolutely compelling, and Leymah Gbowee's voice was so open and straight.
Definitely recommended.
It's a textbook. A good one. I didn't finish it. Wiping the slate clean! I saw Allen Downey give a talk on Bayesian stats, and it was fun and informative. I think he's great.
One annoyance. I think I'm maybe the perfect audience for this book: someone who took stats long ago, has worked with data ever since in some capacity, but has moved further and further away from the first principles/fundamentals. Someone who speaks Python and wants to port all of her Stata skillz onto pandas (the Python library, not the Chinese bear - okay, also the Chinese bear). So, in a way, this book was perfect for that. MY ONE COMPLAINT is that Allen provides many helper functions and .py files pre-written for you to play around with. I would have preferred less hand-holding, and more: Now build a function that will give you the cumulative distribution function! But then: who am I to complain. I didn't finish it (for now). And it can be hard, sometimes, to find the perfect puzzle piece for your current skillset/desires/time constraint on the Great Learning Journey that is life. images of pandas feverishly computing z-scores, while I cackle above them, “Work harder!!! Why are you so slow!!!” images of furry paws clutching pens and notebooks, scribbling
I had been meaning to read something by Sam Delany for a looooong time. First, the book covers are awesome (yo, don't judge, design is important). Second, he's one of the few old school establishment sci-fi writers who isn't white and isn't straight. Third, apparently his writing was so psychedelically visionary that he inspired a lot of my sci-fi heroes in the New Wave generation of the 60s and 70s. Fourth, I thought his office looked awesome.
But, alas, the books would circle in and out of my life, unread. UNTIL NOW. I still don't know which Delany is the best (Dhalgren?), but I picked up Babel-17 and was thrilled. My thrill-feelings diminished somewhat towards the end, as I felt the conclusion was a bit thin, but I am so behind the ideas in this book, that that don't even matter.
The story follows ace superstar linguist/poet/spaceship-captain, Rydra Wong. We're dropped into a Far (?) Future universe where the Alliance (Earth + others?) is in an awful eternal war with the Invaders (aliens? not aliens? possibly human? I think human). Rydra Wong is called in by General Forrester (obviously Harrison Ford, or maybe Chris Cooper) to help decode this fancy code the Invaders are using. (Yay, allusions to Alan Turing and the Enigma machine! (Just me?)) Rydra's like, “No prob - but it's a language!”
And thus begins a rollicking space opera ride akin to Firefly, as Rydra becomes the captain of a spaceship full of misfits and, as BoingBoing would say, happy mutants. And off they go, in order to decode/translate the hyper-efficient and eerily-unknowable language of Babel-17, and prevent the next Invader sneak attack.
What I liked most about the story was that Delany discards with all your assumptions and substitutes them with his own, especially on the social sphere. I've been meaning to write some really mind-boggling social spec fic that presents radically different ways of organizing things like living and working arrangements. I guess it's speculative anthro? Or speculative econ? Anyway, Delany does just that, and I often found myself a little jarred - in a good way. There's also a very 1960s therapeutic vibe going on (foreshadowing some of Pohl's stuff).
Overall, I wish I had read this 10-15 years ago. The book is all about the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, which says that we can only know as much as we can say - so different languages = different mental filters through which to interpret reality. Dude, that was my JAM back in 2004. Also my jam are any stories driven by a misfit genius girl protagonist.
ALL THAT SAID, the book feels short and even thin at times - especially towards the end. The big reveal just felt meh to me, and, while I liked the urgency, I also felt like something denser and slower (a stately Le Guin-type pace) might have been more satisfying.
This book has one of the weirdest rating distributions I've ever seen on Amazon. Seriously, check it out. It's FLAT. An equal number of people for each star. How did that happen?
As I read this book, I can sort of see how it happened. It is, simultaneously, a 1-star book, a 2-star book... etc. Also a 5-star book.
I can't even put the 1-star and 5-star stuff into bins, because I just felt so gosh darn ambiguous about so much of it.
The plot: The solar system has been colonized by people. Earth is an eco-disaster, full of poverty and despair. “Spacers” are sometimes seen to be speciating because now, thanks to gravity and technology and the gender revolution, we have very very big people and very very small people and people who live to 200 and everyone is basically an indeterminate gender (both/neither/etc). Digital divide, writ large.
The protagonist is Swan, a sprightly 137-year old lady from Mercury whose grandma just died. Note 1: Note that I said “lady”. Despite the book proclaiming, about halfway through, that spacers are all genderless, our three main characters all have pretty clear genders. And, as another reviewer noted, things end in a very disappointing “lady loves rock monster” hetero romance. A WEDDING, FOR THE LOVE OF GOD. Seriously?! Let it be said, I loved Kim Stanley Robinson's Red Mars, but found myself similarly disappointed with the whole Maya/Frank/John love triangle nonsense. It just feels so weirdly regressive amidst all this progressive craziness.
Aaaaanyway. So Song's an artist, her grandma died, she's from Mercury. Her grandma, Alex, was this badass planet-hopping political lady, so I guess she was actually Paula Mendoza from Floating Worlds. There is much mysterious Machiavellian machinations behind the scenes, and now Song is pulled into the politics biz. This includes meeting Wahram, an ambassador and “large” from Saturn (rock monster man!), and Jean Genette, an Interpol-type inspector and “small” from Mars.
Note 2: While Wahram and Jean are pretty cool folks, Song is brutally unlikeable. This is semi-intentional on KSR's part (Song knows it, other characters know it), but I just had trouble not getting angry and annoyed at this obnoxious, tantrum-throwing lady. It certainly made the read much harder.
So: stuff happens. There is some stuff about re-wilding (cool) that is basically imposed on Earthpeople by enlightened-feeling spacers (not cool, way to give liberals a bad name, KSR!). There is some stuff reminiscent of Blade Runner (fine). There are some primary document-esque interludes, which I always enjoy.
I have to admire KSR, cuz he basically does what I wish I could do: he writes really dense, technically impressive (science things!) future fic that also touches on politics and international development and anthropology. It is fun. There's lots of capitalism critiquing and alternative economic systems, also fun. There's LOTS of fancy and wonderful-sounding tech stuff.
But I guess I found it - starting strong but losing steam? A bit disappointing? The last 200 pages or so really knocked off a couple stars; as the resolution felt inorganic and quick and don't get me started on the last chapter. Despite the disappointment, though, there were moments of great sci fi: like the “terrariums” (spinning, hollowed out asteroid cylinders peopled with animals and humans and ecosystems and fun!), and, oh wow, that scene where they decide to turn the big ship around super-fast and crush everyone against relentless 3 g? Cool. I also semi-admired the incredibly huge-scale scope of everyone's plans (“Let's just spin Venus faster, why not!”), though - as one reviewer noted - dude, it does feel totalitarian at times. Makes ya miss the good ol' Enterprise, and their whole hands-off Prime Directive.
Also, I am le tired of Beethoven refs, especially as signifiers of Big Thoughts. Wouldn't Charles Mingus do just as well? Or Kanye? (I appreciated the Philip Glass refs - but everyone knows they listen to him up there.) Just sayin'.
Solid and sweet, I read this in about an afternoon and got appropriately choked up. But I was a bit disappointed, as I expected a Visionary Teen Book akin to The Perks of Being A Wallflower (which felt more wise), or Feed (which exhibited much more existential despair). This wasn't so much visionary as pedestrian and OK.
The titular “fault” refers to the characters' unfortunate cancer diagnoses, and it is cancer - especially the existential senselessness of suffering and disease - that is an important third wheel to the main love story. And, indeed, it's an occasionally bare bones, relatively honest (I think) look at living with a terminal illness. But I also found it - gimmicky? A little too self-aware? The two main teens, Augustus and Hazel, are cute, sarcastic and literary - to the point of preciousness. Their Amsterdam trip, while pretty glorious, also felt a little cliché. (And, if anyone can do the whole “meeting with your dream author only to find he's a drunken douchebag” scene, it is the highly wonderful graphic novel, Saga.)
B? Maybe a B-.
Curse you, Darksaber. You managed to wrench me out of the Star Wars fandom for years by being so bad.
Devastating and brilliant. At times, it felt like Yet Another Slum Story, and I was flashbacking to the 1980s films of Shyam Benegal (“Chakra” and “Mandi” sprang immediately to mind). But that never diminishes its impact, which - if your morality is still intact - is huge. If your morality is NOT intact, then this is one of those books that will shame you back into trying to Do Good. I work in a Good profession (I like to think so), but this book made me consider quitting everything and going to run an NGO in Annawadi itself. Of course, if I learned anything, it was also that corruption is endemic. Yet even with the pervasive cynicism, I finished this book feeling enriched and - well, not hopeful, but not completely hopeless either. Written with empathy and a great eye for detail, even with a bit of humor. Yes, it also reads like a novel.
A slim, spare novel about a struggling, Keillor-esque Minnesotan writer who stumbles onto fame and glory in big, bustling New York City. His marriage falters. The big life kinda sucks.
Generally, nice and sweet, if a bit trivial-feeling. Wives and Minnesota are purer than Manhattan and mistresses; we know.
I discovered Rudy Rucker in 2007, when he Creative Commons-released Postsingular. Reading his interview from this book actually blew me away: it slotted into my sci fi journey, a journey whose origins I had forgotten. But OH YES it all began with cellular automata! That must have been how I found Rudy Rucker -> CC books -> Cory Doctorow -> SCIENCE FICTION!?
Anyway, this book contains 2 short fiction pieces, 1 non-fiction essay, and 1 interview. The 2 stories are outlandish and wild in the usual Rucker way; I liked the first one (a horror comedy nightmare about a Virginia town being torn apart by fundamentalist/apocalyptic Christians versus scary corporo-zombie golf aliens?!) a bit more. I forgot how incredibly imaginative and zany and out there Rucker is! SO GOOD! The non-fiction essay was pretty interesting, especially his taxonomy of “gnarly” science fiction (and his in-depth, semi-mathematical explanation of what the “gnarl” is; approachable and hypnotic complexity, sorta). It reminded me I should read Charles Stross.
The interview, though, funnily, kinda turned me off - he sounded so self-satisfied and kinda full of himself?! Which was a bummer. I mean, Kim Stanley Robinson (who I've done a better job of reading more of) sounded curmudgeony and grumpy as hell in his interview; but he also sounded... I dunno, like an authentic Zen master? Who hits you with a stick when you meditate badly? But also teaches you the ways of the Force? Rudy Rucker's interview, instead, made me roll my eyes a bit.
But bah, whatever, this series is fun fun.
Brief, straightforward, and powerful memoir of a young South Sudanese boy, as he flees the war and ends up in various refugee camps in Ethiopia and Kenya. I appreciated very much how narrowly focused the storytelling was during his escape: it really is day by day. I finished this book in tears.
Ah, thank you, S.F. Masterworks series! Another literary spec fic book that I would have never found otherwise.
Like the Clarke book, this one opens with an impassioned intro from another author (William Gibson), explaining why this is such a secret, cult favorite. I'm liable to agree! It's original, explosive, exaggerated, tragicomic, and did I mention original? It's double-original. It's n-original. It was fun and dark and demented. I loved it!
The titular random act of senseless violence occurs late in the book, contextualized, as it is, in an already hyper-violent, Near Future (or even alternative reality), Frank Miller-ish, very 1990s, pre-Giuliani New York City. Think riots, homeless people screaming in the street, AIDS panic, burned out buildings, trash on fire, and so on. Also think Prozac, alienatingly plastic authority figures, and a post-therapy culture (“You have to let your feelings out! Don't keep it all bottled up!”).
In this relatively common dystopian premise, we follow an uncommon protagonist (not a bureaucratic worker drone!): Lola Hart, a 12-year-old girl, oldest daughter to two intellectual, Upper East Side Jewish parents. Her father is a failed screenwriter, and her mother's an unemployed English professor. She has a younger sister - the adorable, pudgy princess Cheryl (affectionately called “Boob” by the family), who struts around wearing her My L'il Fetus toy (a pack that you strap onto your stomach; press the button and the baby kicks). Lola is quite a bit more sensible than that, and spends most of her early diary entries managing the usual stuff a 12-year-old manages: friends, puberty, school, family.
The book is written in diary format, and it follows Lola as she comes of age in this crazy, terrible setting. I don't think it's a spoiler to say that her protected, bobo, midtown personality, er, erodes quite a bit. Though the transformation is believable (even if the series of unfortunate events is sometimes not), and emotionally affecting. In fact, there are two (nay, three!) genius aspects to this book:
1. The writing. THE WRITING. Throughout the book, especially its first half, I kept thinking, “How did this adult man capture me so well?!” Because I am Lola's generation, and my diary entries from this period sound exactly like hers. Her style, her slang (oh my Lord, the long-forgotten “crapola”! “going postal”!), the way she names her diary, or wishes it good night. Her concerns and conscientiousness and MY GOD, IT WAS A MIRROR. I mean, apart from the violent, dystopian setting. Maybe my parents should have given this to me every time I threatened to run away. Not only does the writing capture 1990s (female!?) childhood, but it captures the culture and mood of the early 90s as well. When Lola meets her new Harlem friends, and describes their outfits, Lord, I remember that style well. Does the author have kids? Two daughters? HOW DID HE DO THAT!?
2. The insane juxtaposition. I would have loved to see this guy's pitch. “I want to write about a Frank Miller-style New York City in flames, as told through the viewpoint of a little girl.” You'd never think it would work, but, oh, HOW IT DOES. And I want to stress that Lola's narration isn't undermined, it's not about her being cute and idiotic: “Daddy, what's the man saying on TV?” Rather, Lola seems to be one of the few people in her circle who does see the writing on the wall. She's a fully realized character; a force of personality, even. She's definitely not a cypher, and I thank the author for that. It's difficult to write respectfully about kids, without infantilizing or trivializing them.
3. The LGBT and gender themes. Obviously, this passes the Bechdel Test. And the LGBT angle was unexpected and very real (and, in a way, also very 90s).
Very recommended, though it probably won't be everyone's cup of tea. Or, if I may be inspired by 1990s icon, Hulk Hogan, CUP OF PAIN. People compare it to Anthony Burgess, but I actually felt that it resembled more George Saunders, if Saunders was pessimistic.
Nooo. No, no. Life is too short for mediocre post-apocalypse pap. If you want to read an ambiguously Christian take on the very Christian idea of an end times (i.e. people floating up to Heaven), read either:
- Therefore, Repent!, the Canadian indie graphic novel, OR
- Hell is the Absence of God, Ted Chiang's masterful spec fic novelette.
Doooooo noooot waste time here. I tortured myself with a few chapters before calling it quits.
I think this was the book that made me hate Star Wars during those brief Dark Years of 1998-2004. But then again, I'm not sure; I read so many terrible Star Wars tie-in novels before 1998 that it's hard to pinpoint which one did it.
Bah, okay, no, that was just SOOOOO long and so ridiculous. It won't make sense if you haven't read the previous three Hyperion books, and it's only because of all the hand wavey space magical CLIFFHANGER MYSTERIES of the previous books that I even read this to the end. To the last, bitter, endlessly delayed end. Good Lord. My advice: just read books 1-3. Skip 4. Who cares!
Umm. How to describe the plot? It's basically Dan Simmons' fanfic about the Hyperion universe, starring Raul Endymion as the Marty Stu authorial stand-in, and Aenea as a pretty ridiculous messiah figure slash sexy 20somethin. I mean. I read the previous three books. I know Dan Simmons loves his Catholicism. LOAFFFS IT. Loves the power and the glory of the Church; the good stuff (as represented in Aenea's messiah stuff or Father-Captain de Soya's (he's back! hooray!) humility or that Charlton Heston (Paul Dure?) priest man's “sad eyes” or whatever) and the bad stuff (the evil Pax Empire/corrupt Vatican). Okay, fine. But the problem with presenting a messiah character is that, unless that messiah says stuff that is convincingly profound, it just feels ohhhhh man eye-rolly. Eye-gauging! Just bad. And I was not convinced. We're TOLD - repeatedly, one bajillion times - that Aenea is so wonderfully charismatic and messiah-y and so DEEP AND SO PROFOUND, but, honestly, girl just quotes poetry a lot and says empathy is important. Yeah, derp.
It was so apparent that Aenea was just Simmons's dream babe - and, hey, ain't no shame in that, I write a lot o' dream dudes in space myself - that it was, for a person NOT interested in the way the sunlight plays on her hair (goddamn, if I hear about her hair color ONE. MORE. TIME.), it's just boring. BORINNGGGG.
So this was kinda like the last episode of Battlestar Galactica. And I say this as someone who quite liked that episode! And bought into its space mysticism! I did not buy into this space mysticism. This felt like bad romance in space.
Meanwhile, in other news, on my super favveee character (my dream dude!), the tortured Pax military priest-spaceship captain, Father-Captain Federico de Soya, well... I rate this book a 2/5 de Soyas on the de Soya scale. It's like, fine, whatever. He gets up to some hijinx. He's not in the book as much as my OWN dream-dude fanfic would have (still to come, I'm workin on it).
The first half of the book is a bit better. The second half is a SLOG. I skim-read. A LOT. There's an extended, EXTENDED sequence on a Tibet-in-space planet with a clearly obviously this-Dalai Lama as a young man and total complete transplant of pre-1953 Tibet amidst some Bespin-style cloud planet. Pretty cool. I mean, I like Tibetan history and culture. And I, too, have put it in space from time to time. And, yes, I did admire Dan Simmons's deep DEEP dive into Tibetan monasteries and history and so forth. I guess he took a trip to Lhasa? Or Leh? Or Dharamsala? I dunno. BUT! I was still like, “ugh, this feels Orientalist and why do all sci-fi writers use Buddhism as a boring stand-in for enlightened space religion?” Again, I say this as someone who does it herself. Even Kim Stanley Robinson does it (and THAT man is a genius). Maybe Buddhism will make it to space. I dunno. But it still felt, ugh, kinda dull.
Also - the descriptions - oof - too long. WAAAAY too long. Did he have no editor?
So yeah. Kinda a boring conclusion. Raul Endymion, I do not care how much you love Aenea. Dan Simmons, I do not care about the goddamn color of Aenea's goddamn hair. Federico de Soya, you're fine, you just keep doing you.
For something that started with so much promise - a McCoy-centric tale, full of an irritable McCoy's pop therapist internal monologue (SO MUCH ANGST) - I actually tired of this really, REALLY quickly. I ended up skimming the last third of the book, just to get 1 more towards the damn 2012 challenge (30 books this year!). I can't pinpoint the exact problems, except for a general lack of momentum and uninspired narrative. The big reveals in the final chapter just had no real payoff, since I didn't care from page 1 why the espers (ESP-sensitive crewmembers) were in “mysterious” comas. I also didn't care to see all the characters treated as 1-dimensional stock stereotypes of their former selves (“I dinna care!” Scotty thickly demands... while Kirk punches aliens in their “eye stalks”... and Chekov needs to be comforted while he cries...). The alien race introduced in this book - the Farrezzi - also spoke in a pretty lame attempt at “Look, how funny foreign languages can be, ho ho!” This actually can be done well in a Star Trek book, such as the Romulan Way, where McCoy is intercepted by a frantic alien - their exchange is pretty humorous. But, alas, here it just felt dry and boring.
Very fun to read. My audience enjoyed it so much they wanted an instant replay, and then went to bed repeating the lines and chuckling to themselves. I think this would be fun for older toddlers/pre-schoolers.
