Laith

I really enjoyed this book, the main reason this isn't rated a perfect 5 is because the first 15-20% of the novel is an infodump and a half. I had to read the opening chapters twice just to get a grasp of all the different character threads and plotlines. Did I mention plotlines? This is a story with a lot of moving pieces; there is an entire world that needs establishing and a context that needs to be delivered in detail, thanks to this breadth the story trips up at its start.

Ken Liu catches his stride fairly quickly with our introduction to Kuni Garu, the central protagonist of the story. Kuni Garu is an incredibly likable and entertaining main character, and I found the entire cast of the story to be bright and alive on the page. This is all rendered in excellent prose, Ken Liu's voice and style has always been clear and descriptive, and he isn't afraid to reference and interpret Chinese literature. It is refreshing to experience a different set of tropes and reference, but I think at its heart this is a classic fantasy story about a hero and a wise king.

I had to take a break from Iain Banks after I finished Excession and this book was a wonderful palate cleanser. It was incredibly refreshing to see female characters who were well written and had agency. I absolutely loved the character of Princess Kikomi and her story arc was a big positive of the book: The female characters in this book are awesome despite the feudal setting. The women in this story are shackled by the time and setting but they are not robbed of their agency. Where another author might have exposited their tragic ends or romantic inclinations (alongside philosophic platitude and social commentary), Ken Liu breathes life into his women. The girls in this book make choices that impact the plot, and their perspective is represented in notable depth. The character of Lady Mira was very well done and I thought her story and monologue in chapter 45 were some of the best written passages in the novel.

I did have one small gripe and that was that the story felt limited by its genre and there were elements of the plot that seemed to bend in favor of trope and contrivance. This is a story that threatens the boundaries of a traditional fantasy story. Despite the rise and fall theme, it so wants to write the world in the image of its characters but can't because its world is the way it is (Because it's the dark ages bro, life sucks dude, the gods are vindictive friend, this is grounded my guy). I sensed an element of metanarrative in the way that the story rubs against the reins of its premise, and the way that the will and agency of the characters rub against the prophetic whims of the gods who oversee the plot from their perch.

Excited to see more of Kuni Garu, excited to see if the next book will shake up what has been a fairly predictable plot.

This book took me two months to finish and it would have dragged on for much longer if not for the folks behind the audio.worm project, I regret only finding it after reading volume 30 (90% through). Before I get into this book I want to thank that group of likely insane fans for the hundreds of hours they took to read and record this behemoth. To any potential reader, I highly recommend finding the fan-made audiobook on Apple podcasts because simply finding the time to READ this whole thing was driving me insane.

This has been a constant in my life for the last two months so I'm sorry if this review runs a little long. I think for a book like this I need to change up my review format, so I will frame this as a Q&A for potential readers.

Q: What is Worm?
A: Worm was/is a superhero web serial novel published between Jan 2011 and Nov 2013, It has 30 Volumes/arcs and was published bi-weekly at a pace of around 80 pages a week. If that doesn't drop your jaw consider it like this: Wildbow was basically publishing a complete novel a month, every month, for nearly THREE YEARS. Reading this in 2023 means reading the presumably edited epub edition (though you can read this chapter by chapter for free online) with minor changes to the original story.

Q: Okay maybe I should have been more specific smartass, What is Worm about?
A: Worm is set in a world where people start getting superpowers, usually this process occurs after some type of deeply traumatic incident. The story follows Taylor Hebert, a high school student who has recently lost her mother in a car accident and is facing a targeted campaign of bullying at school. As a result of the bullying Taylor awakens a power to control all of the bugs in her vicinity and her priorities change. With the purest of intentions, Taylor dons the tights of justice only to find out that the distinction between hero and villain isn't as clear cut as she thought.

If this sounds like every other cut-and-dried superhero premise that's because it is. But Worm is something a little more, It's not obvious from the premise or the early chapters but this is the sort of superhero story cut from the same cloth as Watchmen and The Boys. Taylor's early attempts to fit herself into the mold of a hero run into a series of setbacks that erode her faith in the establishment. She opts to cross the line, adopting the monicker “Skitter”, Taylor joins a group of up-and-coming villains called the Undersiders.

But that's just the premise and early plot, what Worm is really about is escalation. This is a story about someone making all the right decisions at the moment, only to have that decision trigger an even larger crisis, rinse, and repeat until the stakes are beyond global.

Q: What makes this special, why should I read something like this?
A: A concise answer would be the intricate world-building, well-defined characters, and intricate power system. The author delves deep into the psychological and emotional aspects of being a superhero, as well as the consequences of their actions on society and themselves. The narrative is both engaging and unpredictable, filled with twists and turns that keep readers hooked.

Worm has a lot in common with traditional superhero stories, but where it excels is where it subverts the trope and convention of the genre. Characters face realistic consequences for their actions, and there is a constant sense of danger and stakes. The story also delves into themes of identity, morality, and the blurry line between good and evil. The author's willingness to explore these themes in a thought-provoking manner sets “Worm” apart from more conventional superhero stories.

There's something to be said for the medium as well, your standard superhero story has almost always existed within the pages and the conventions of comic books. Worm trades the convenience and artistry of illustrated chapters for the depth and nuance that comes with an all-text story. Every character has a backstory that gets explored, details about the world are plainly stated, and as a reader you are made aware of all of those small things that would have traditionally been hidden in panel art.

Q: Okay you've talked pros, give me some cons, what's wrong with it?
A: I want to say clearly before I dive deep and nerdy into this that If I didn't like this series I wouldn't have stuck with it to the conclusion, I wouldn't be masocistically contemplating reading the sequel either. That said there were a number of things that bothered me enough that I almost DID put the book down, and I am not sure how much of me powering through was due to Worm's overall quality and how much it was me trying to complete a challenge I'd taken on.

The early chapters suck and I knew that going in, I am under the impression that Wildbow went back while editing the epub and strengthened some of these early chapters but that doesn't really impact how good/interesting it is at the outset. Every hero and villain needs their origin story, and at this point in the novel, the story reads like most other fan fiction. It takes a while for the narrative engine of escalation to take hold in the universe; I would wager that it's not until the introduction of Coil and Dinah (nearly 4 or 5 Volumes into the series) that the story finds the beats that will continue to run throughout.

This story was published and planned piecemeal. Wildbow has stated that he would often write himself into deadends and then force himself to write back out just to keep the tension of the narrative going; after all, if even the author doesn't know where this is going how can the reader know? I'm sure that this piecemeal approach allowed the story to benefit from reader feedback in real-time, and to his credit, there is a significant amount of tension surrounding key moments in the story so it's a partial success. But not having a planned story really fucks with the flow of this book, the pacing is all over the place, there are time skips and the additions of whole hosts of never before seen heroes, and the backstory has been delivered in donation-driven interludes that breakup this already gasping story even further.

Another consequence of working from a rough or non-existent outline is that your story runs the risk of losing the reader even at the best of times. There are whole volumes in Worm that I cannot riddle the meaning or significance of, some revelations are buried in detail-rich text and leave you scratching your head for hours of storytime. We never get a consistent villain and the world continues to evolve and confound with each twist. When Wildbow is on the ball this is the most exhilarating part of reading the book, but the quality is not consistent chapter by chapter.

Q: Anything else I need to know?
A: Worm is exciting, varied, and endlessly complex. Just reading the wiki could entertain you for hours and hours. The peaks are high and the valleys are low. I thought that reading the edited epub compilation would mean that I would skip over some of those valleys but I was wrong. Do not go into this book expecting to read something that's been run through with a fine tooth comb, expect some ends to remain loose, and for developments to be nonsensical or even cartoonish. All things told though this is a superhero book at its heart and it's okay to be all of those things.

I really wish that Wildbow had sat down and read this whole series over and just went to town with the red pen. I see no reason why the retail publication had to be the same as the web publication, warts, and all. This could have been a 3,000-page, 4 or 5 Volume box set, and I am positive that all of these arcs could have been condensed into 6-800 page books. Portions of the plot could have been reworked, interludes brought into the primary narrative, and foreshadowing could have been added retroactively. There is so much potential in here and this is not the publishing release I would have hoped for.

I want to talk about fanfic for just a second as well. There is such a City of Heroes RP vibe coming off of this book and I don't know if it's intentional or just a consequence of writing a scenario like this to begin with. I don't say that to put anyone off, but if you're thinking of picking this up you should know that there is a whole fanfic universe that surrounds Worm, lots of readers who write in this universe. Obviously, I am not a contemporary reader but some of the unexplained gaps and surprise characters seemed to be Wildbow folding in some of those fanfic stories and heroes. I could be wrong on that point so don't quote me.

I wouldn't pick this up unless you have some time to kill, all the reviews that say this is nectar from the gods are from serious nerds that have probably already read more comics than everyone you know put together and have been dying for more content. Worm is good, even great at times but there are so many better ways to spend your time. If Wildbow ever comes back to this volume I hope he really considers a partial rewrite and some serious consolidation. I enjoyed this book a lot but I would not recommend something like this to 99% of the people that I know, it just isn't in a state that invites someone to read it.

This is the follow up to Consider Phlebas, the second book in The Culture. The story revolves around a Culture master gamer; Juneau Gurgah. He is invited to play the game of Azad, an ultra complex board game by which the Empire of Azad determines its Emperor and much of its social hierarchy. This book touches on more than games, it's an exploration of the culture and mores of the “Culture”, it's a commentary on late stage capitalism, and it also takes its shots at gender equality and transhumanism.

Sometimes contrast is the best way to illustrate a point, and the Empire in this novel encapsulates the unsavory and evil nature of ownership as a concept. Throughout the novel we see the differences between the Culture and the Empire; here we see capitalism and ownership equated to barbarism. I saw an extremist version of the US in the Empire, a place where you can gamble with your life and limbs as a stake, a place where slavery is commonplace and the ruling class revels in owning another person, a place where the genders are rigid and hierarchical, a place where value is not inherent but defined by the suffering undergone to achieve ownership. There is a moment in the book where the band that is playing in the background, is revealed to be playing treasured instruments of human bone, drums bound in human skin, violins whose every string has strangled the life of someone. This novel peeks under the hood of a capitalist homogenous society, and it is stark and uncompromising in what it chooses to show the reader.

The Main Character undergoes a change as he adapts to the culture and language of the Empire, as he plays their game and understands their worldview. I will say this second entry in the series does itself a lot of favors by stripping down the cast, and mainly focusing on the culture clash and its effects on the MC. It isn't a perfect book but it explores some very interesting concepts, and that's really why many of us read Sci-Fi. Again I found myself wishing for better character development, we rarely ever get a peek into the mind of Gurgah; this is excused by the narrative device of a third party telling the story after the fact.

You do not need to read Consider Phlebas to enjoy or understand this book, as a standalone sci-fi novel this entry is about as good as it gets. By virtue of its setting it kind of spoils some of CP; but in my reading of CP knowing those spoilers will not detract from the point of that story.

Thanks to little bro Adam for the copy, I thoroughly enjoyed this book. I think maybe I have a small hang up with a book being so overtly religious while also simultaneously being aimed at children, but in this case I think I can overlook it since the ultimate message of the book is some good old agnostic wisdom (at least by my reckoning).

We follow Santiago, a young and educated Shepard boy who tends his flock all over Andalusia in the south of Spain. After successive dreams that hint at treasure in far off Egypt, Santiago is whisked along by the machinations of fate on a journey to fulfill his personal legend. I think some people may have read this book in class, so I can understand if there's a small cloud of scholastic taint around this book. Likewise, I would encourage people to look past that and revisit the title if it's been awhile because Santiago's journey is fantastic.

I think that Paulo Coelho himself is an interesting guy, I would suggest looking him up because the story of his life is one of overcoming adversity and some serious spiritual awakening. I was wondering why this book was so religious, and let me save you the time and tell you that this was among a spate of books Coelho published after making his own pilgrimage. Like I said before, I'm going to give the religion in this book a general pass, you don't need to be religious to get what this book is trying to say about the nature of life and the metaphysics of pursuing your goals. It's easy enough to ignore or to treat the religious allusions and tropes as fantasy elements. The brand of religion in this book is also fairly innocuous and seems to encompass the entire Abrahamic tradition without any zealotry shown towards any particular faith, so points for inclusivity as well.

I won't say much else, this is basically a classic hero's journey with some generally palatable philosophy and modern religious themes (Say goodbye Zeus, say hello Melchizedek). Honestly, I'm surprised it took me this long to read it; I really liked what the book has to say, and I think that this would be a perfect book for a younger reader.

I first read this while traveling in the summer of 2014. I'd seen the movie, so I thought I knew what I was getting into, but this book blew my socks off. Not only that, but I couldn't believe how different the book was, where was Denise Richards? The troopers wear mobile suits? Neodogs? Why did the military government have such an American ring to it? I wish I had sat down and took some notes from that first read, but I didn't. It feels weird to review on a re-read and this book already has like a million reviews anyway, so I guess this will be more like a blog entry than an actual review. If you haven't read this book, but you like SF then do yourself a favor and read it, the same goes for fans of the movie and more generally for people with pulses who like good books.

I recently read Lucky Jim by Kingsley Amis, it's a completely opposite end of the spectrum type of book compared to Starship Troopers. But I want to note that Troopers came out just 5 years after Lucky Jim. They couldn't be more different books, but they're both classics as far as I am concerned. Somewhere in the time between them, one era ended and another began. I see the impact of the times in both of these books: In Jim we see the angst of the post-war educated and a rejection of the old ordering of society. Troopers takes that post-war influence and extrapolates it onto a galaxy-spanning human empire, the concept of a technocratic authoritarian future looming large in the aftermath of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

I would call this one of the modern classics.

Modern? This book is 60 years old! You say.

This book is old. You'd be forgiven for seeing the publishing date and thinking that fact would reflect in the writing. Let's get one thing straight, minus the Neodogs and small traces of the Leave it to Beaver Era vocab, I thought this could have been published last week. The secret sauce here is that unlike something relatively contemporary to Troopers, something like Lucky Jim, this is genre writing. At this point in time, I get the sense that the modern tropes for the SF genre were being unveiled. The SF stories of the Golden Age started taking on a more realistic tone. The concept of a technologically advanced future was legitimized as we gained the ability to vaporize whole cities. The period in which this was published is the transition between the Golden Age and the New Wave of SF. We're talking Bradbury to Dick, books like 1984 and I, Robot, ad infinitum; these classics went on to define the genre's unique embrace of hard edged science and political philosophy.

That's the best thing about Troopers (and SF larger still), even if you find the philosophy contained therein to be a little dusty or unsound, there is a philosophy to engage with, and it's a philosophy that modern readers are more than capable of engaging with. A lot of early SF that made a mark were books that delivered this engaging blend of interstellar scenario and secret philosophy essay. But those titles which predate this period never really got the story mechanics as polished as they were by this point, compare Huxley and Burroughs to Bradbury or Asimov. To me, Troopers embodies this personal definition of modern SF, it's a philosophy dissertation masquerading (quite well) as a pulpy SF Man vs Alien story.

The philosophy is a double-edged sword here. I think the main thing that holds Troopers back for a lot of people is that the philosophy of the book is absolute blue bleeding conservative fascism. I think that it is perfectly acceptable to read this book and think that it's disgusting and perverse; this window into the possible future is heartbreaking and pessimistic. Furthermore, I think the modern worldview is in part defined by the active prevention of a Kipling tinted future. To learn the right lesson from the tragedies of both World Wars is to stand in opposition to endless war and military rule. In blowing the whistle and calling Nazi, you would in-fact be echoing the critical reception this book received from its contemporaries and from scholars in the following decades.

I say all that, so I don't sound an apologist for this next part. This book is a product of its time to its core. This is the postwar era, the president has been General Ike for the last two terms, and here comes another veteran in JFK. The America of this time is the post Korea-post McCarthy-baby boom-domino theory American Empire we're talking about. To read Starship Troopers and not see it belie the course of American politics in the 1950s is to put one's own head in the sand. Consider that Heinlein is painting with the colors of the time, and you will see that this work is not entirely self-consistent. Given a purity test, there are some elements that read as liberal, elitist, or even libertarian alongside the more apparent Fascist overtones; there's a dual-handedness to a lot of the ideas as they are presented. Women in this book are a perfect example of what I'm talking about: on one hand it's a progressive concept to have women serve alongside men, on the other hand how much of this book is antiquated machismo and paternalism directed in the female direction (a lot). There is some nuance here is my point, and I choose to take it as Heinlein inviting the reader to grapple with the philosophy rather than espousing those beliefs as right and true.

I think that invitation to grapple is the ethos that inspired the satirical nature of the movie (Of course, I have to mention the movie, name a more iconic pairing). I think that in nerddom it's rare to see a movie that strays so far from the source material wind up being the most appropriate adaptation. I don't think I would be such a fan of the movie if I wasn't also a fan of the book. Even without reading Troopers, you can see the satire in the film-it's dripping off of the poster. Once I gave this book a read I found myself appreciating the movie differently, a straight adaptation may as well just be an extended recruitment advertisement and even that remark makes its way into the film. As a satire the film manages to highlight the aspect of Troopers that dares you to disagree, it has its own magic and message and without that aspect to it, I doubt Troopers would be a definitive cult classic in either medium.

TL;DR: It's classic for a reason, and it isn't a tough or boring read either.

"I don't deserve this." he breathed.
"No one gets what they deserve."

I don't think there was a moment when I was reading this and didn't wish that HBO had chosen to adapt this series and not GoT for TV. I think that's enough of a recommendation honestly. It's constantly said that this is a landmark series and I can't agree more. I loved every single second and once I burn through a little more of my backlog, I will pick up The Age of Madness Trilogy.

This is the third and final book in The First Law Trilogy, it is the culmination of two books worth of setup and plotting. The pacing is relentless, and the narrative never slows down. While this keeps the reader engaged, it also leaves little room for reflection or breathing space between intense moments. Some may find this approach exhausting, as the story moves from one harrowing event to another. In this reader's opinion, we've had two books to stew and this is the pot boiling over as it ought to. Given the pace, Abercrombie's ability to maintain tension and keep readers on the edge of their seats became a standout feature of the book.

The story is divided into several interconnected plotlines, each following different characters and factions as they maneuver for power and survival. Abercrombie masterfully handles the multiple story arcs, providing a balanced blend of action, intrigue, and character development. In many ways, this book is the inverse of the first, with our parties breaking apart and the individual stories of our characters reaching their culmination.

“Say one thing for Logen Ninefingers, say he's a cunt”

“This is how most of us go, isn't it? No final charge. No moment of glory. We just ... fall slowly apart.”

Last Argument of Kings

“I have my answers already.” Then why do I do this? Why? Glokta leaned slowly forwards across the table. “We are here for our amusement.”

Book Club for Jan,I'm just going to admit right off the top that this one lost me. I feel stupid for not getting it. Maybe this was too smart for me, too deconstructed. But it isn't deconstructed, and maybe I am wrong and simply doubling down in my ignorance, but this isn't all that smart either. The Shining Girls seemed extremely promising at the outset, here's this very well researched glimpse into 1930s Chicago that leads into a time travel murder-thriller-mystery. This is a book about Harper, a psycho vagrant from the 1930s who stumbles upon a magic time traveling house. After murdering its owner, he explores the house only to feels like he's been in there before. He discovers a trademark psycho-killer room upstairs, there he finds photos of young women and shining pieces of memorabilia connected by lines carved, drawn, and stained into the walls. The house is his vehicle, his mission is to murder all the shining girls across time while sprinkling collectibles at the crime scene. It all goes pretty good at first, he taunts the young version of the women, giving them each a gift he'll come back for. But he messes up, he doesn't kill Kirby. She survives his attack and begins investigating him at her Chicago Sun internship. I can tell that Lauren Beukes is a talented author, I can't write this entire book off. This seems to be pretty well researched from the Chicago perspective, Mayor Donovan (Read Klayton) was a nice touch to the Randolph street Hooverville. There's actually a surprising amount of visual detail in here, particularly where it concerns the descriptions of the shining girls as Harper sees them. But that's about all the praise I can muster; there is a breakdown in the story the closer we approach the core of the narrative. I wish that I knew how every detail connected up, the fact that I can't even try has me questioning myself. Maybe it's in here, an explanation? A satisfying conclusion? Something that can justify an ending that reeks of toast. I couldn't tell you what happens at the end of this story. I mean, I can, Kirby gets tipped off that some menacing guy is asking after her. Showcasing some uncharacteristic wile, she stalks Harper back to the time travel house and sneaks in with enabler/mentor/admirer Dan after the police search and find nothing but crack house. Dan fights Harper in 1929 while Kirby burns all the shining memorabilia and splatters Harpers brains on the carpet when he returns to the house to stop her.. But the ending explains nothing. Why do the girls shine? Why is house magic? Who is Harper? Nothing. This book ends like oh-s0-many thrillers, with the protagonist defeating the villain, just without any of the catharsis or satisfaction of unraveling the mystery. Most time travel books really work their asses off to explain the function of time travel in their universe, or at least they try to get the reader to understand the role that time travel will play in the larger narrative beyond simply existing. We have time travel here, and for the first third it's just a big whatever! So much of the early parts of this book are just like “here's a thing” or “here's a brutal murder” and then the page turns, and it means nothing because now we're in 1989 and following a completely different character and narrative thread. I'm all for a puzzling read, but it has to unravel eventually!I read this right after [b:Recursion 42046112 Recursion Blake Crouch https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1543687940l/42046112.SY75.jpg 64277987] so it's very apparent to me that there is some genre confusion going on here. The balance in the SF-Thriller formula is not being respected, this is a thriller that just glosses over its SF elements and not a complete melding of concepts. I'm not saying that the formula is fixed and that you can't alter the ratio, movies the like the Lake house prove that you can designate your non-SF elements as the focus and still tell a compelling story. The problem in The Shining Girls is that there is just too much of the story wrapped up in the non-mystery/thriller aspects. To end the book without resolving those threads is to present us with a book that is undercooked.I know that I said I can't write the whole book off, but I am close. Those Chicago history moments? They read like they came out of a history book, honestly, for as accurate as the portrayal of Chicago was, it rang inauthentic and scripted (As the acknowledgements illuminate: the setting comes from some haunted city tours). I haven't even touched on the characters: Dan, her journalist mentor with a big time crush that just robs him of agency (Please Dan, can I investigate these 80-year-old murders on company time? I know we're supposed to cover the cubs, but they'll be irrelevant until 2016 fluttering lashes). Kirby herself is mostly an impression in my mind, a collection of scars and crazy ideas that the story describes as charming; she's an extremely jaded individual. The problem is that all of her life experience is being backfilled as a way to excuse or explain her poor social skills. I am not a fan, the formula seems to be: Kirby talks to someone, Kirby feels awkward, or the conversation sucks, Kirby does or says something out of pocket or awkward, and then we get a page or two about how much it sucked to have her throat slit. I'm sure that experience scars you (in more ways than one) but we're with her after a multi-year time skip and there's not enough context for the reader to excuse these quirks of her character. That applies to everyone in this book; It felt like a lot of the initial development/establishing of the cast was covered with a coat of gloss. Avery, our limping time travelling psycho, is just that, a collection of keywords and phrases. He does stuff all book long without any rhyme or reason, he has major character moments only for them to read like filler because of how little we know about his inner machinations. I did not like this book, and I feel a little short-changed. The entire book is saying, “Read me! I'm smart and complex and mysterious! It'll all pay off, just keep going!” only to not pay off and not be anything but complicated for the sake of complication. This was extremely well received in 2013, and those media rights went straight to DiCaprio. Did other people get this? Am I wrong here? They made a show out of this! Where is the appeal!

I bumped this to the top of my list based on the premise alone, and hey Brandon Sanderson loves this series so why not? I wasn't in love with it immediately but I have to say that the last third of this book is a whirlwind that excites and delights. For something that seemed to be tailored to my tastes, I wound up liking it less than I'd hoped but it is competing with much heavier hitters and this is a Debut novel. This was a competent story, an excellent opening to a series, and one of the best author debuts I've read, I will definitely be picking up the sequel, [b:The Crimson Campaign 17608111 The Crimson Campaign (Powder Mage, #2) Brian McClellan https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1659901305l/17608111.SY75.jpg 24566794].Promise of Blood kicks off the Powder Mage series with a bang (get it?). This is a gunpowder fantasy book with a strong emphasis on world-building, its magic system, and the politics of its universe. This is a fairly unique blend of fantasy and the Second Industrial Revolution, and the plot hinges on a populist/military coup in the country of Adro. The story follows the perspective of three characters, Field Marshal Tamas, his son Taniel, and the investigator Adamat in the immediate aftermath of Tamas taking power in Adro. The focus shifts from politics to magic and back as more of the world and its structure are revealed. This is a fast-paced book with tons of twists and turns. The pacing works for me, but in addition to the pace we have to contend with a sizable cast and it can be a little disorienting to keep track of everyone.I found the writing to be clear and concise, I would consider this one of the more accessible mil-fic style books I've ever read. McClellan has a talent for writing dialogue as well as action scenes, and with such an imaginative premise and complicated plot, he really gets to flex those skills. I found the dialogue to be charming, humorous, and alive. A lot of the character development is done in the dialogue and you get a very clear sense of everyone's personalities and quirks. My eyes usually glaze over when it comes to poorly written action, and while not every action scene in this book is gripping or interesting he's done it well where it counts, the last 10% has one of the most engaging action scenes I've read in a long time (the battle at the manor). I think the real draw here is the magic system and the world-building. I've never read anything that had this unique blend of gunpowder and magic, Fantasy typically grounds gunpowder in science/tech so it was really interesting to read about the powder mages. I would also like to shout out the world-building here, the universe is interesting, and the politics are complicated the whole package evokes a “real” feel. The world felt alive and complex, and the further you get in the novel the more mystery gets added into the package. This is a Debut so there are a few issues/quirks that the book has. I think first and foremost the themes we've got kicking around are pretty tired and uninteresting. Questions of loyalty and the burden of authority are nothing new, and whatever exploration of those themes there is in this book is trite and uninspired. This is a fairly big oversight since it robs the story of any additional depth, and it's not like there wasn't room for a little political discourse or the introduction of a powder mage named Joeseph Stallin or Lyon Trutski or something. This is a book set in a facsimile of 1860's Europe and there is no mention/reference to the revolutions of 1848 or the labor movement, it's borderline unforgivable. I can understand if this stuff got cut out in editing since this is a pretty complex story already, but the book is worse off without its inclusion. There is a workers union in this book, the Warriors of Labor, but they do not feature outside of a handful of paragraphs. This is indicative of the second major weakness of this book, and the issue that kept it from earning an otherwise well-deserved 5 stars. There is a serious lack of secondary character development. There are enormously interesting side characters and factions in this book that operate with little to no backstory whatsoever. I would have preferred turning the pace down just a touch so characters like Ka-Poel, Bo, and the Prime Lector could have had more to them in addition to being a bigger influence on the story. This book and series seem tailored to my interests but it might not be for everyone. The book is definitely leaning hard on tropes found in Mil-Fic, the emphasis on action and battle is obvious and there's an imbalance when it comes to action v. exposition. Strong female characters are few and far between, and of the two that feature most prominently one is mute. I guess I'm trying to say that this might be “boy-fic” as opposed to “chick-lit”. TL;DR: This is a strong Debut, a fast-paced action-packed romp with both magic and gunpowder. It's a little weak when it comes to anything not action or magic-related, but it's good enough to get me to read the sequel.

Gah! This was so interesting! Personally, I love to read alternative creation myths. If Prometheus (2012) was interesting to you I think you would like this piece of speculative fiction from the James S.A. Corey writing team.

The Novella follows Roy, he's a member of a planet colonization team. Well that's not entirely accurate. It's actually a copy of Roy that's a member of this team, all the members of this team are copies that are “beamed” out and “unfolded” on their target planets. His mission is to start the colonization process, and once they are able- to beam out a new copy to a new planet. Rinse and repeat.

What really makes this book cool is the non-traditional narrative. It quickly becomes unclear which Roy the narrative is following, with each new passage written from the perspective of a different Roy who made different choices in his life. I'm a fan of stories like this, and it's to the credit of Novellas as a medium, I don't think this would be a fun full-length book to read, but at just 37 attention-grabbing pages, this was short and sweet.

I mainly chose to read this because I wanted to check out a sample of James S.A. Corey's writing, so I was surprised to learn that this is part of the new The Far Reaches collection of novellas. These are a ton of cool stories by some of the best SF authors doing it right now, and they're in nice little non-intimidating chunks. I will definitely be checking out the other entries!

Having not yet read Skyward, all this is to me is a pretty dang good Novella. Typically, for short works like this, my metric for quality is “If this were a first chapter, would I continue reading?” In the case of this novella, the answer is a resounding yes. It's actually so much of a yes that I am a little less excited to read Skyward; I'd much rather read a direct sequel to this.

Novellas are tricky, you need to tell a self-contained story in such few words. In 42 pages we get some quality character development, a solid and engaging plot, and (this is what kind of blew me away) Brando's writing is still excellent even in this proto form. I know this isn't the first thing he had published-I think this came after the first Mistborn trilogy-but still, this is remarkably tight for something so different from his typical fantasy fare. What carries over best from his long-form writing is his grasp on pacing; this kept me engaged the whole way through but never once felt rushed or compressed. I'm also happy to note that there is a satisfying but open-ended conclusion.

What's really impressive about this work to me is that it goes beyond the basic marks of quality. There's a thematic undercurrent that swirls in the details, all the SF staples are here: Questions of Human Nature, scientific responsibility, and good old empathy. 42 pages, and it still has all this stuff in here, wow. That said, there isn't really anything “new” in here; the themes are present but ubiquitous in SF (oh, the aliens aren't all that trustworthy, huh?). The only points for originality that I can give to this is from the outset of the premise-The phone company is responsible for first contact? They aren't exactly the most helpful guys around? It's conceptually hilarious, but the story doesn't do much with the idea, the PC may as well have been the Red Cross or Cyberdyne or the Nakatomi Corporation.

All told, this is a good little SF story, it definitely works to set up a larger world but does so without compromising its own story beats. I would recommend this to anyone in the mood for something short and good, this is not just for fans of Skyward/Brando.

PS: This also has an Audiobook release! It's free to listen to here, the narration is by Nick Camm, it has no right being as good as it is and as free as it is.

“So basically you're sticking around to watch us all fuck up ?”
“Yes. It's one of life's few guaranteed constants.”

I feel like I've summited Everest, one of my reading goals for the year was to finish the Culture series and it feels bittersweet. The Hydrogen Sonata is the last book in the series and it's quite fitting despite not being the planned conclusion for the series. Reading through this book I got the sense that this was something Banks wrote on or near his death bed, but that is not the case. It was after the publication of this book in 2012 that Iain Banks was diagnosed with gall bladder cancer, his condition rapidly deteriorated and he died in June 2013. It's fitting then (almost serendipitous) that this book is about the end of a civilization.

The story is centered around the Gzilt, one of the oldest civilizations in the galaxy, who are on the verge of performing the Sublimation, a mysterious process that would elevate them to a higher level of existence beyond the physical world. However, just before they can undergo the Sublimation, a question arises about the authenticity of their sacred text, the “Book of Truth,” and a Gzilt citizen, Vyr Cossant, is forced by circumstance to set out to uncover the truth. The “truth” just so happens to rest in the hands of the Culture's oldest citizen, the man who lives forever, Ngaroe QiRia.

Banks is revisiting and expanding on Sublimation, the transference of an entire civilization from the physical realm to a high-energy quantum state bordering on non-existence. Other authors may have struggled to describe just what exactly is going on but as usual Banks' writing style is engaging and immersive, and his world-building is unparalleled.

This story was a little different to read given the real life context around the book, I was reading this as the end of the series as opposed to contemporary readers treating it as just another entry. The themes on offer, the nature of existence, the value of tradition, and the limits of knowledge served to enhance the fatalist tone of the book for me. It was a real shock to learn that this was not in fact written on his death bed, I though for sure that the time-to (The Gzilt timekeeping devices that have replaced conventional watches, they instead tell the time-to sublimation day) concept was meant to parallel a cancer diagnosis-three months left to live.

I am happy to be at the end of the series, but I am sad that there will never be more. This was not my favorite culture novel but The Hydrogen Sonata is a must-read for fans of science fiction and the Culture series. It is a thoughtful and entertaining novel that showcases Banks' skill as a writer and his ability to create a rich and fascinating universe. That it serves as an appropriate capstone to the series is just one of life's small but appropriate coincidences.

A nice little break from the mainline stories. This was a quick and light read, I thought that each short story was interesting and worth the time it took to finish. My favorite three:

1. The State of the Art- The titular novella, it's a neat little easter egg of a story. I can understand the urge to pull the Earth into the Culture Universe but at the same not wanting to impact the tone/canon in a Novel sized tale. I can see a desire for a little more Culture/Contact action, but I really felt gratified by how much Earth is featured, illustrated, and reflected upon. This is a tight story with a thoughtful take on determinism and cultural relativity. I think it's worth it to read the collection just for this story. Nice to get more Sma and Skaffen Amiskaw (Iain Banks really knows what the readers want).

2. Descendant - This is how you write a horror story in 6 pages or less. The prose reminded me of Cormack McCarthy. This is one of the shorter stories in the novel, but I thought it was a head above the rest.

3. Cleaning Up - The most meta story of the bunch, there's even a nod to the Satanic Verses. A foreshadowed ending buried within the agnst and commentary. I thought this the most direct and touching story, at least for me.

I first watched Cosmos when I was no older than 5, PBS has always had a love affair with Carl Sagan and the Cosmos program became the most widely watched piece of public media in the world. I, among countless others, can credit Cosmos with turning my attention to the stars. It is a piece of media so finely produced that even now, almost 45 years later, it's a staple of Middle and High School science classes the world around. I can gush for hours about the television program, but this is my first time reading Cosmos, and to my ignominy my first time reading Carl Sagan.

This is yet another foundational text that I am very happy to have finally sat down to read. I didn't realize how much of the message of Cosmos I had internalized through a childhood of rewatches; reading Cosmos was rediscovering the seeds of a lifetime of shower thoughts. There is a surfeit of information contained within 439 pages, containing the history of scientific advancement by the human race and a thorough accounting of our understanding of the universe as it stood in 1980. Sagan trudges across the centuries, takes us on a jaunt through the solar system, and points the way forward- toward the ever-expanding sky.

Reading Cosmos was just as moving as the first time I watched it; I know now why I always find myself tearing up when observing the stars on a clear night. Contained within these pages are cautious optimism, an unshakable belief in the spirit of discovery, and a humanist esprit de corps through scientific advancement. If science had a holy book I think it would be Cosmos; there is more to Cosmos than scientific information, there is a dream of a world saved by science, a crowded universe waiting for us to make our debut would we not just get our collective shit together.

Cosmos is a sober accounting of all of our achievements, and all of our missteps on the road to a world collective. For every triumphal step humanity took forward, we took several bloody and ignorant steps back, and Sagan rightly condemns the diseases of the human condition. Cosmos is steadfast in its condemnation of war and religion, the tales of Copernicus, of Hypatia; literal parables of the dangers of ignorance and blind faith. Where he condemns and tears down the old and new orders of fear and control, he replaces that expired world view with faith in the observable universe and our chosen tool of observation, the scientific method. Sagan preaches, and while I typically roll my eyes when any sermon is directed my way, I have to say that this message is the only one that would serve to improve the human condition. There is a philosophy contained in Cosmos, one that hopes to go beyond the understanding facade of our current enlightened age and achieve the dreams of those first few who looked to the stars and wondered. We should all embrace a philosophy that would put down our differences and guide us to the next step, are we not all the same when considered from a Cosmic perspective? Afterall:

The nitrogen in our DNA, the calcium in our teeth, the iron in our blood, the carbon in our apple pies were made in the interiors of collapsing stars. We are made of starstuff.

Cosmos

Cosmos: A Personal Voyage

Inversions is probably my second favorite culture novel after Use of Weapons; this book was subtle, atmospheric, and was so different from everything that came before that I almost can't believe it's in the same series. I took a detour from The Culture after the disappointment I got from Excession and I am delighted to say that this novel is the “inversion” of that book; every gripe I had with Excession, every missed mark or narrative flaw, is thankfully absent from this work.

Banks' continues to demonstrate his love of complex narrative vehicles, this time (mercifully) it's only a dual-narrative. Rather than a space/Culture setting this story is set on a backward (read: feudal/enlightenment era) planet and follows the King's doctor Vosill and the Protector's bodyguard DeWar. You would be excused for not even considering the book to be Sci-Fi or culture related as any connection this book has to the rest of the series is fairly subdued, mainly in the form of fairytales and casual conversation. I am tempted to say that this story can be read standalone because it definitely could be; but-for the ending, which does involve Culture/SC/Contact/Sci-Fi elements but does not explain them.

It was fulfilling to finally read a story set in the Culture that wasn't bouncing all over the place trying to cram as much (admittedly very cool and interesting) Sci-Fi-AI-overlord-black-hole galactic-war-warp-speed-ness down the reader's throat as is physically possible. Instead this a human story and is a work of character writing, love, court politics and intrigue. As always there is Banks' sardonic humor and dry wit. While the story is told from a third person perspective and is partially detached as is typical of many of the Culture novels thus far, unlike those prior stories we get a lot in the way of characterization and emotion because thankfully this time the speaker is a person and not a drone.

This book really takes a magnifying glass to the society of a world potentially subject to Contact, the arm of the culture that “contacts” and eventually incorporates existing civilizations into Culture space. Thematically this book is still 100% Culture; we are tackling the same questions of morality and intervention, this time from the bottom of the pyramid rather than the top down approach used in the other books. We see the underbelly of the world of the Culture, and this book doesn't shy away from darker subjects, particularly issues surrounding the treatment of women in war and the subject of rape.

I'm not sure what happened in the two year gap between Inversions and Excession but this time around Banks' stepped up his game; one of our characters is a woman! In fact the strongest characters in this book were Vosill and Perrund, the Protector's concubine. Perrund delivers a chilling monologue concerning her treatment at the hands of a conquering force that I thought was the most alive/true-to-life these novels have ever gotten. In fact the strength of these characters does a lot to highlight the moral questions posed concerning contact: if in fact a foreign but guiding hand would prevent the kind of horrors visited on Perrund and others like her, would that good outweigh the bad that comes with forced change or the elimination of a planet's right to self-determination and rule?

I can see why fans of the series might rank this entry towards the bottom; it all but forgoes the “sci” part of sci-fi in favor of telling a grounded and compelling story, and some fans might really just be here for the big ships and the snarky drones. Personally I think I overdosed on that stuff after reading Excession. Had I known that the aptly titled Inversions, really was an inversion of the genre I don't think I would have been so keen to take a break from the series.

TL;DR: This book is really good, the sci-fi meter is set on low simmer.

“... Yes, fuck off through the crowd, you cretin.”

Dedicated to the gulf war veterans, Look to Windward is all about war, PTSD, trauma and the wonders of symphonic music. The Culture for the unacquainted is a far in the future anarcho-utopian space faring civilization run by altruistic and smarmy sentient AI Minds. In their quest to do good, the Culture makes contact with space-faring but comparatively primitive civilizations and does its best to break down existing hierarchies and build up democracies. While it sounds a lot like American hegemony and imperialist meddling, the Culture promises it isn't, and they can statistically prove it.

Sometimes in their quest for galactic peace and love the Culture make mistakes, and this book concerns itself with one such example. In this case, the Culture works to break down the caste system of the Chelgrians. Things don't go according to plan when the new president of Chel, a member of the lowest caste and installed by the Culture, decides that what he really wants is pay back and kicks off bloody civil war.

I found this book to have incredibly strong prose and dialogue. This is head and shoulders above the rest of the series. I thought Inversions was peak Banks but I was wrong, this book is peak. Whether it's enchanting landscapes, witty wordplay, or clearly drawn characters there's really nothing but nice things to say about the book. Some of the dialogue made me laugh out loud, and there's ton of self-referential humor (at a certain point the characters converse by quoting the trademark silly ship names). There is an enjoyable balance between wit and poetic sentiment, some of these passages are hauntingly beautiful.

Unfortunately as enjoyable as this was to read, the plot and message were very frustrating to grapple with. This is a book with a lot to say, but it doesn't really ever get to the point. For all the pretty words and witty jokes there is a failure to explore the questions it poses. Most of the story is spent building up complex questions only for the resolution to be: Culture good, war bad, we're sorry.

Note: I also wanted to shout out Peter Kenny's incredible delivery in the audiobook recording, his take on the dialogue superseded my own inner narration whenever I settled in to read a few chapters.

PLOT:

The story follows two Chelgrians. Ziller is a famous Chelgrian composer so disgusted by his society and their caste system, that he renounces Chel and chooses to live amongst the Culture. Ziller is easily the best character in the book, and probably my favorite in the series; he's blunt, irascible, and hilariously vulgar. Quilan, a Chelgrian soldier whose body is rebuilt after the end of the war, wakes up to find his wife dead and the Culture to blame. Empty and grief-stricken Quilan is chosen for a mission; on the surface he will try to convince Ziller to return to Chel but hidden in his memories is a plot for revenge against the Culture.

Playing out on two levels the plot concerns itself with the conspiracy of Quil and the Chelgrians on one hand, and the larger questions of intervention and the nature of death on the other. At this point in the series I can safely say that the tension of the A plot is largely non-existent, the Minds of the Culture are clever and you can count on them to always find the solution in time. The B plot is what I found the most entertaining by far.

For a book that's about the experience of war there's a tremendous gap between the experience of the Chelgrians, gruesome and self destructive, and the Culture. Sure they're really sorry about the whole affair, but the war doesn't impact their society in the slightest. The contrast evokes Iraq war sentiment to me, given that this was written pre 9/11, I get the feeling that this is Bank's discourse concerning the gulf war. Hub, the mind of the orbital platform where the story takes place, is the only Culture character to have experienced war directly. Unfortunately the character of Hub cannot bridge the divide, and the interventionist issue is really never explored to any satisfaction. There were already a ton of characters but this book would have really benefited from the perspective of a Culture agent.

Death, its permanence, and its escape feature heavily in this book. Are you the same person after your revive from death? The Culture provides handy backups of its citizens personalities should they suffer meat death. The question of whether or not you are still you is presented only to never be answered. The premise of death and the value of life is a little thin, with the only question of substance being the value of life in a post-death society. If I had to describe the overall philosophy on display I think “a little thin” could apply to the whole thing.

TL;DR: Wonderful prose and a tight plot would usually make a great book, but when you ask big questions and offer small answers the reader is left frustrated. This is somewhere between 2 and 3 stars, I gave it 3 based on the quality of the prose alone.

What a disappointment. This entry in the Culture series was billed as the main book to look forward to, a pay off for the diligent reader/ true fan. I can't see the appeal. There is a lot of stuff contained in 500 pages; too much stuff, this book is bloated and unfocused.

A short summary: The Culture encounters and “Outside Context Problem”, the discovery of an “Excession” an artifact of a civilization so advanced as to be beyond their understanding. (Conquistadors to Aztecs/Incans). In the midst of this alarming discovery a war is precipitated as part of a long running conspiracy, with the discovery of the Excession serving as a catalyst.

Before this becomes a list of everything wrong with the book I will say that I enjoyed getting a story that dealt in the perspective of the Minds. Given that they feature so prominently in the premise of the series it is kind of surprising that they haven't featured as main characters until this novel. There are certain snippets and interactions between the varying ships that were extremely entertaining. As ever, I enjoyed the sheer variety of interesting and novel ideas the Culture throws at you, of which, this novel has no shortage; really this is a conceptual feast of a novel.

Unfortunately that same glut of interesting ideas is, in my opinion, the downfall of this book. There are so many subplots, characters, and concepts to keep track of. Some of the chapters are non-linear to boot, so you have a really hard time pinning down exactly what is going on until maybe half way through the book. Along the way Banks gets a little lost in the sauce and spends an in-ordinate amount of time expounding on non-relevant but interesting tidbits about the world we're visiting. This would be fine but we have the main plot concerning the excession, we have a conspiracy that cuts in every other chapter, there's a war on in the background, there's a love story, and much much much more. It's all plot, so when Banks takes two or three pages to explain something ancillary it really just makes the book drag.

I want to briefly mention the Genar-Dajeil-Ulver subplot. Genar is tasked by SC (on secret orders from the Sleeper Service) to retrieve a mind backup of some ship captain, Ulver is tasked to distract him by the conspirators, and Dajeil has been pregnant for 40 years with Genar's child. At the very end we're told that Genar only features in the plot because his presence was the payment the Sleeper Service had requested. This entire subplot is contrived, all it served to do was distract from the truly interesting bits.

The prose in this novel is also much weaker than I've come to expect. The cryptographic notation attached to the ship communications was pretty neat the first time I saw it, but it features in EVERY ship/mind focused chapter and it seems like a crutch to lend a little credibility to the staggeringly dense paragraphs that follow. Most of the plot is delivered in these long and drawn out exposition dumps, and rarely if ever does the conversation between characters resolve any questions we might have had.

Finally, I will note as I have for the previous books, that Banks cannot write a female character to save his life. In this book it becomes truly baffling as we get a better understanding of the in-universe mores and norms surrounding sex, gender, and the family. For an older series this book has an extremely progressive tilt; I found the concept of “mutualing” where both partners become simultaneously pregnant to be fascinating and surely enough to make a nun blush. Ostensibly in the Culture where people can and do freely transition between sexes, the difference between men and women would surely amount to just aesthetic differences. Why then, are all the female characters featured so far in these books, and this book in particular, cardboard cut outs, or proxies for male characters (or the ships), or just tropey brat-type characters?

Use of Weapons is the Third book in The Culture, and so far my favorite of the series. I think it's very rare for a series to increase in quality in the way that the Culture has thus far, each novel has built on the one before it and each story has seen a marked improvement in its writing and overall story. As if Banks was peeking at my review of Player of Games decades in the past, this novel is a deep dive into the psyche of its main character, it's a web of memory that keeps unraveling and thankfully answers questions about Zakalwe's past and his motivations.

This is two stories that run in opposite courses. The main chapters (one, two, three, etc.) tell the story of Zakalwe and Sma, a Culture agent and his handler as they attempt to stop an impending war in a far off Starcluster. The sub chapters (I, II, III, VI, etc.) are a reverse-chronological telling of Zakalwe's story and are by far the most interesting part of the book to me. I also enjoyed the mysterious character of Sma and I hope she is further featured in the series.

Use of Weapons is a case study in how setting can best be used to enhance a story, it's also a case of setting being essential for the underlying plot. The scope of an entire universe is harnessed to tell a centuries long, galaxy spanning epic. I cannot imagine how convoluted and dense this book would have been if the author had needed to explain every detail of life in the culture, their scientific prowess, or the pseudo-immortality afforded to its characters.

Thanks to the structure of this book I felt free to ponder on The Culture itself; this book raises questions about the morality of intervention and war. I enjoyed the discourse the book offered up: a rock as the center of the universe, turtles all the way down, do the ends justify the means? What does that all mean for the culture? I think that the ultimate pleasure of this series will be what each reader ultimately believes the Culture is, whether it is a force for good in the universe or if it is a fresh face on old concepts of conquest and imperialism. Is it possible to be simultaneously expansionist and morally sound?

TL;DR: Extremely well written, better than Consider Phlebas and Player of Games. Less action, more character and world building. This is, at its heart, a soldier's story. Near perfect. Not sure if this one can be read standalone, this story is very rooted in the context of the Culture.

After my Culture binge I guess I didn't get enough space opera because I went straight to Reynolds. This book was sold to me as one of Reynold's best works, and a great book to decide if you want more. I think I can sign off on parts of that endorsement; this is a great story that definitely evokes Banks in the world building department and surpasses Banks when it comes to plotting and pacing. It is self contained and exquisite, and while I haven't read any of his other works I got the sense that this book really was the perfect taster for Reynolds.

That said I don't know if I am sold on Reynolds, this story was not any longer than a Culture novel but it didn't hit quite the same and felt long. I figured that a story about incestuous clones attending a galactic family reunion would be funnier, or at least bring along a little levity, but this is absolutely meat and potatoes sci-fi.

I did find the concept of shatterlings, 1000 male and female clones of one person made into immortal space faring explorers, to be iconic and wildly imaginative- if a little narcissistic and implausible. This book also gave us a little taste of Reynolds' belief in the hard limit of light speed, and his reasoning and extrapolation managed to make an entire galaxy feel stifling and small.

I still plan to read revelation space but I think I will kick that can down the road a bit.

So usually I break a book down in my reviews and comment on the style, but this is Stephen King. I think anyone who came to literacy in the last 50 years knows what they're in for. He is a master, and this story is one of his masterpieces, that's all I need to say. If you like time travel stories, or you're interested in JFK, hell even if you don't like those topics, this book is still worth the read. I had a big Stephen King phase in high school. I totally overdid it. In fact, I read so much of him in such a short time that all the books sort of blended together and I managed to get turned off of his stuff. In my experience, Stephen King is a master at getting readers to binge the first half of a story like it's crack and then letting his stories slowly fizzle out. I pretty much swore off of King by the time this novel was published, and shortly thereafter I was firmly off of the reading wagon altogether. What's that got to do with 11/22/63? Well aside from having the most engaging premise mankind's ever seen fit to imagine, 11/22/63 also happens to have an ending that wasn't entirely composed by Stephen King. It is his son, Joe Hill, to whom we have to thank for a Stephen King book with a proper ending. I can't stress this point enough because it was this little tidbit that got me to read this book to begin with, can you imagine it? A Stephen King book without the drawback of a shitty pissy little half-assed ending!There are a few things about 11/22/63 that are special, these are small touches that elevate it beyond standard SK fare in my eyes:The first is that it takes place in the same universe as many of King's other popular works, most notably [b:It 830502 It Stephen King https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1334416842l/830502.SY75.jpg 150259] and the town of Derry features prominently. This is a book aimed squarely at the fans, there are more small nods than I could try to list, and as I worked my way through the book I was constantly finding them (to my delight). The second is that this book is not a reference for reference's sake kind of story. I think it would have been all too easy to get lost in the nostalgia sauce/exploration of the late 50s/early 60s; this book does have a ton of 60's material to get lost in but it's doled out with a measured hand. This could have easily read like a 60's Highlights/SK bibliography highlight reel, but everything that Stephen King has added to the pot is in there for a reason.The final touch is one that ties it all together; the theme and tone of the book are just perfect. This is a story of echoes, and the focus is on harmonics and repeating patterns. With every little detail, the story is meant to evoke a sense of Deja Vu, and there's plenty of that to be had between the nostalgic 60's callbacks (a decade which thanks to TV and film we are all nostalgic for, even if we never lived it) and in-universe references. Everything the main character sees and does is mirrored bizarrely in another section of the book, and the story itself reads more like a collection of stories set in the lead-up to, and aftermath of, the Kennedy assassination. There's a lot of interplay is the point, and the more you pick up on it, the more it amplifies the feelings that King wants you to feel as you read the story. I am a sucker for this kind of attention to detail, it's rare and hard to pull off but like I said before, we are in the hands of a master for this one.TL;DR: Finally an SK novel with a proper ending. For my money, this is the best thing he's ever written. It's definitely aimed at SK and JFK fans, but I wouldn't consider it necessary to care about either to enjoy this book.

A slow start but I wound up really enjoying this. This series and author were recommended to me as an Eastern alternative to dominant Western-focused fantasy. This series is something along the lines of GoT or The First Law in plotting and quality but it does not retread the same Swords and Sorcery/Medieval Court story beats that are ubiquitous in the fantasy genre.

The Sarantine Mosaic is a historical fantasy set in a world that closely resembles the Byzantine Empire at the beginning of the Justinian dynasty. We follow a mosaicist named Crispin, who is summoned to Sarantium by the emperor to create a mosaic for the new sanctuary. The story unfolds against a backdrop of imperial politics, religious conflicts, and the vibrant life of the city. Contrary to the book's title the first half of the story concerns itself with Crispin's overland journey from Rhodia to Saratium, with not a boat in sight.

One of the real joys of this story is just how well G.G.K interweaves real history; it is dependent on how well you know your Roman/Byzantine history, but there is a constant barrage of small easter eggs and minor details that sell the world as authentic. Bath culture, chariot partisans, factional conflicts, landmarks, court culture, almost every detail even down to the exclusive scent of perfume that the empress wears are tied to the real historical record. I think I could safely assign this as course reading for a history class and it wouldn't stray too far from what the history books say concerning Justinian's reign. Hopefully, everyone who reads this knows enough to realize that the sanctuary Crispin is working on is actually the Hagia Sophia because that was such a cool reveal. Massive points for putting history in historical fantasy.

Considering the novel from a writing perspective it also gets full marks from me, this book is gorgeous to read. GGK is lyrical and poetic, and his prose is a delight to unpack; his style is one with tons of emotional depth and accuracy. As I noted previously this story has a slow start, one of the problems I had at the outset of the story was what I felt to be unnecessary shifts in perspective that were delaying the start of Crispin's story. I will acknowledge that it pays off in the end, but there were moments at the start where I had to put the book down since I was getting a little bored. That issue gets cleared up almost as soon as Crispin sets out for Sarantium, and honestly having a little grounding in the mythos and rules of this world serves to elevate the thrill to found in his journey.

This is a perfect premise for this author and it is such an appropriately titled series. The main conflict in this story is a political one that is complex and interconnected, a puzzle, a.... mosaic. It's more involved than that obviously, the prose is a key part in helping all of the different themes and beats layer over each other providing depth that wouldn't otherwise be there.

If you're a sword and sorcery STAN then this might be a boring read for you because it's not high octane and the magic is nebulous. This is a slower and more methodical read than I think many fantasy fans will be used to. That doesn't make it bad by any stretch, but be aware that this story is outside of the norm, this book has more in common with War and Peace than it does LOTR.

This is an adequate sequel and conclusion to the series, GGK's prose and world-building continue to improve on what I thought was a perfect rendering of a fantastical Byzantium. I'm not even sure if I want to classify this as a sequel, it felt more like an expansion; with new characters, more depth, and a greater emphasis on city life. Unfortunately, issues that I wrote off in the first entry have returned and are even more obvious, my two main issues being the romance/portrayal of women and the ending. I will admit that I finished the last third of this book while fighting a nasty cold, but I really felt this story come apart as I approached the closing chapters.

This book picks up right after the first and details the remainder of Crispin's stay in Sarantium, the affairs of a newly introduced Bassanid (Persian) physician, and Emporer Valerius II's plan to reconquer Rhodia. The bulk of this novel is devoted to the characters and their development; Crispin in particular. I did not love the balance of plot to development in this one, it felt like none of the characters had any influence on what was going on, and their development was likewise forced and poorly articulated, which is a surprise given how amazing and lyrical the prose was.

The main problem that I kept running into was with the female characters. First of all every single female character in this book is otherworldy gorgeous, mensa-level intelligent, and witty, and fashionable, on-and-on. There are no normal women period, and GGK writes every interaction and description of these pseudo-goddesses as if he'd never spoken to or met a woman in his life. The descriptions of sex and the intermingling of sex and politics are written from such a bizarre and detached perspective. The emotions involved totally absent from the dialogue, the female characters acting more like tools than women. It's a serious issue given how prominently the female characters feature in the plot and in the development of the principal male cast. A big part of this novel is Crispin's relationship with the four most powerful women in the story, and which of them he ultimately beds/couples with. Given the way they are written, it's hard to get a sense of the characters' feelings for each other, so the fact that any one of them was interested in Crispin came off as contrived.

My knowledge of Byzantine history largely agrees with the details that GGK has included in this series, with my only real question remaining being whether Rhodias is supposed to be Greece or Italy. Where Sailing to Sarantium largely stuck to the record, this book deviates significantly. I get that this is historical fiction and that GGK was trying to tell a historically flavored story not a retelling of Justinian and Theodora, but this book breaks many of the conventions established in the first entry. It makes me question the need for such attention to the historical record when the plot never intended to respect it in the first place. I would normally be fine with deviations, but where this story deviates it turns into a very generic fairy tale with themes pulled straight from the catalog of the Brothers Grimm. It offended me to see such lyrical prose, incredible world-building, and historical detail wasted on a nonsense plot.

This brings us back to the issue with the women in this novel. It compounds with everything else to make the entire novel worse off. What I loved in the first book, the fantastical realism and attention to detail, are still there but robbed of their authenticity and diminished by the presence of what I am coining as Machiavelli-fuckdolls™. I can see some readers saying that this portrayal is by design and that women in this period of history were to some degree as this book portrays them. I'm not buying that. I could understand a lack of agency being excused by the historical record, but these women don't lack agency at all, instead, they're politically focused robots even at their most intimate moments. Real women aren't like that, and I don't care if they're part of some ruling caste and trained from birth to be pragmatic and unfeeling, it just doesn't jive. As I've noted above this entry doesn't even care to stick to the historical record all that closely, so the women are as they are by the deliberate choice of the author. It sucks.

This book gets full credit from me for the quality of the writing, and the city of Saratium is spell-binding, to say the least. The Chariot race in particular is probably my favorite moment of the entire series. All that said this is a little bit like putting lipstick on a pig because the core story mechanics just weren't there.

TL;DR: Come for the city and the chariots, Stay for the Machiavelli-fuckdolls™.

This is my second foray into “published” fan fiction and I feel short-changed. The description seemed right up my alley but I am realizing that the sort of people who write fan fiction really love getting lost in the weeds. I read the omnibus 2200 page epub not realizing that this series was broken up into smaller more digestible releases, so this is a review of the series as a whole. It hardly matters since this is basically all one story. The arcs aren't really distinct from each other, and this whole story takes place in the same timeframe as The Sorcerer's Stone.

This is a Rationalist take on Harry Potter. What that means in practice is that Harry in this series is a child prodigy raised by a muggle professor, and as such is highly educated and possesses an adult understanding of the world around him. His behavior, personality, and thought process are significantly divergent from the original work. We largely follow the plot and setup of The Sorcerer's Stone but there are minor differences in the setup alongside the largescale changes to characters.

There is a lot of the scientific method, a lot of decision theory, and a lot of ethical debate and philosophy in this book. This story is written by a self-taught but by all accounts legitimate scientist/researcher who is using Harry Potter as a medium to talk about his area of expertise. This author is not a novelist and you can tell. This book is really leaning hard on the structure and story beats of the original while at the same time actively dismantling that structure. The parts where he is making up a “brand new story” are well crafted but are lacking when it comes to prose and polish. His story beats are logical and easy to follow but lack any of the punch and drama that come with OG HP.

The draw here is seeing how a “smart” Harry would have dealt with the challenges he faced at age 11. He makes different choices with his friends, he reads into the power structure of the wizarding world early on, and he is constantly trying to introduce science and the scientific method into the magic system. Watching Harry pick apart problems and plots in two or three chapters that were sustained throughout the entire original series is pretty satisfying in its own way. There's also a Sagan-esque quality to this whole thing; Harry introduces and applies various models of logical and rationalist thought/problem-solving. Through hypotheticals and examples, there's a real effort made to explain the rationalist worldview and philosophy. What is best about this book is the logical reordering of events. Despite how bogged down this fic is, it does stick to its own rules and maintains consistency as events play out - though it does cheat a little with small details and tweaks to the setup (For example: Draco's mom is presumed dead for much of this story and it does factor into his motivations and decision making)

There are hiccups. Science and reason don't map onto the Harry Potter universe very well, a lot of Rowling's world is just silly nonsense at its core. Taking the rationalist approach means that everything needs to be logically consistent and explained, but the world of Harry Potter is intrinsically irrational. Thanks to that incongruity there is way more hypothesis and speculation in this book than there needs to be. Maybe some readers liked the conjecture and structure that was added to the magic system here (because I will admit the lack of structure did bother me in the original) but I did not and it choked the pacing something fierce.

I finished this work only to see the complete version of events. All things told I didn't like this series, and a lot of it has to do with this version of Harry (honestly I didn't like any of the altered cast, but it all flows from this Harry). He seriously lacks the charm of the original; this oddly aged-up Harry man/child thing that is the main character really put me off. He got on my nerves from the outset; the way this Harry speaks to people early on is so unnatural and condescending. What really got my goat was his multi-person inner dialogue and his “mysterious dark side” alter-personality, the whole thing reads like bad manga to me. The further the story goes the more “Eighth Grader Syndrome” gets injected into his personality and I think by the halfway point I'd totally written him off and considered dropping the novel. There is an explanation provided by the story, Harry's scar horcrux imprints a part of Voldemort's personality rather than merely establishing a psychic link like in the original. It's a plausible explanation for this whole telling of events but man is it lame. I'm not trying to be a weeb by calling this out either, there is a distinct and unwelcome anime/anime-trope slant to this whole thing and it spoiled any sort of atmosphere or tonal consistency for me.

This is HP nerdcore and if you aren't a serious head then I recommend skipping this one. If you want to know what happens do yourself a favor and read the Wikipedia summary instead.

TL;DR: “smart” Harry Potter, an 11-year-old boy genius uses the powers of science and rational thinking to speed run the plot of the original series. This is a quality rewrite but it is also nerdy, dense, and stilted.

I read this when I was still unsure about the title choice for [b:Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow 58784475 Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow Gabrielle Zevin https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1636978687l/58784475.SY75.jpg 89167797]. Having finished both, I can safely say that they are unrelated but this was a cool little story. This has got that trademark Vonnegut pessimism in spades, and it's about a world where the old folks never die and there's nothing left for the next generation to do but crash at grandpas and pay into social security. Reminded me of [b:Scythe 28954189 Scythe (Arc of a Scythe, #1) Neal Shusterman https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1456172676l/28954189.SY75.jpg 49179216].I recommend reading this in [b:Welcome to the Monkey House 4985 Welcome to the Monkey House Kurt Vonnegut Jr. https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1533340572l/4985.SY75.jpg 438581] because for whatever reason Project Guttenberg is missing the opening dialogue between Em and Lou.

Please buckle in and brew a cup of coffee because this is a long one. I rarely finish a book and think to myself, “I should probably read this again,” but that's the first thing I thought once I got to the back cover. I don't think that my experience is unique to A Scanner Darkly (ASD) either. I think it's going to be the case for every Philip K. Dick (PKD) novel I wind up reading, [b:Ubik 22590 Ubik Philip K. Dick https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1327995569l/22590.SY75.jpg 62929] was also a trip and a half. This book is really similar to Ubik with its trippy prose and dreamy atmosphere, and it is just as good here if not better. PKD is a polarizing author, his stuff is a little dense and surreal; but if it works for you as it does for me, I think you'll find ASD is an achievement. This is haunting and brilliant, with an empathy for its characters that is as rare as it is gut-twisting and thought-provoking. These were my comrades whom I had; there are no better. They remain in my mind, and the enemy will never be forgiven. The “enemy” was their mistake in playing. Let them all play again, in some other way, and let them be happy.Before we go any further, I think it's important to give a few tidbits of context to the genesis of this story. PKD is someone whose stature borders on the mythical, he is about as close to a folk hero as we got in the 20th century. ASD is in part autobiographical; PKD was a heavy user of amphetamines in the earlier years of his career and this story relates much of his experience in the “drug scene” of the late 60s and early 70's, particularly of his life in 1970. This story was written and edited after he got clean, between ‘73 and ‘77. ASD is further influenced by his experiences during that time, most notably his experiences of hallucinations and a parallel life which happened in 1974 (See “2-3-74” for more; Dick claimed he began to live two parallel lives—one as himself, “Philip K. Dick”, and one as “Thomas”, a Christian persecuted by Romans in the first century AD.). If you know all of these details this story reads in part like a post-mortem (or therapy) concerning those events in his life, and it explains the stylistic and narrative choices contained within.ASD is about Fred/Bob Arctor, an undercover police officer tasked with infiltrating society's underbelly and uncovering the source of a dangerously addictive and powerful psychoactive drug called Substance D. Fred goes about as deep undercover as one can go, regularly taking substance D and opening his house to other addicts. Much of this book concerns itself with all of the addicts who live with Bob, their stories, and their connection to Bob. Bob Arctor eventually comes onto the radar of the police, and Fred is assigned to surveil him. Caused in part by his consumption of the drug, his identity as Fred is subsumed by that of Bob Arctor and his personalities split, he becomes two different men who share the same body and mind.In wretched little lives like that, someone must intervene. Or at least mark their sad comings and going. Mark and if possible permanently record, so they'll be remembered. For a better day, later on, when people will understand.I think the magic of ASD is that you can watch the movie, and read the plot summaries and the reviews but still have no idea what you are in for until you read the novel. If you ask me that's because this book is less about the plot and rather about the experience of reading it- and I can't say that about most of the books I've read. The experience of reading ASD is to step into the shattered and burnt-out mind of an addict, to see and feel in a way that I cannot adequately describe, the rhythm of that life. The characters that inhabit this world are pulled right from his time on the streets in 1970, each one an echo of someone or some experience from that time. Through these lived-in memories, each character is used to explore identity, paranoia, and the human cost of societal decay. This book is a portrait of a time, of a place, of a person and his associates whose existence was scrubbed from the record, of a mode of existence that is alien while simultaneously commonplace. “I, unfortunate Atlas! A whole world,A monstrous world of sorrows I must carry.I bear a weight unbearable; a burdenThat breaks the heart within me”The prose is probably going to be the dividing line on whether or not you like this book. This is a first-person narrative that delves into the inner thoughts and struggles of Fred/Bob Arctor. In so doing the prose mirrors Bob's ever-worsening state; much of Bob's thoughts and so the narrative structure are fractured and disorienting. Dick masterfully blends the mundane and the surreal, creating a narrative that blurs the line between reality and hallucination- marked by a sense of paranoia and confusion. In plain English, it's confusing and weird to read. Characters just keep going down insane thought experiment rabbit holes, there are large pauses between developments while Bob and his friends go about performing one scam or another, and there's a distinct change in perspective depending on whether Bob or Frank are the subjects of a chapter. At its worst, it is literally throwing German at you (excerpts from Faust, the Fidelio libretto, and Heine). I can't blame anyone who gets lost in this book because it is trying its best to throw you. All of those negative things said it's still incredible; this is immersive to a fault! It invites us to navigate the intricate web of deception and self-destruction woven throughout the narrative. Yes, even the German eventually ties in (and once you pull up the translations, they are incredibly appropriate selections). It's a stylistic choice that adds depth to the exploration of identity, addiction, and the consequences of a society under constant surveillance. Chefs kiss “I prayed a long time ago, a lot, but not any more. We wouldn't have to do this, what we're doing, if prayer worked. It's another shuck.”“Most things are.”Reading this in 2023 means that a lot of the opinions and discussions surrounding drug culture have shifted somewhat. I think that I read this with a much more sympathetic eye than its contemporaries, but I'm not sure if we are the generation of people who embody the sentiment of “a better day, later on, when people will understand.” As I type this review the drug war continues to rage on, and the mechanism of the state is still set against drug producers and dealers and users almost exactly as it was in the 1970s. We may declare the drug war a failure in left-wing circles but the war on drugs has cemented itself as something more than an effort of the state, it has become an industry in and of itself. PKD's portrayal of that industry rings true nearly 50 years later, burgeoning and lucrative. If anything his “dystopia” has been outdone by reality; we've built a mechanism of suffering on the backs of those piteous souls who made the error of drug use. Closing Notes. I liked this more than Ubik and the themes and ideas in this book are probably going to be bouncing around in here for a long time to come. I would also be completely remiss if I didn't plug the FANTASTIC audiobook that's available for this, it's read by Paul Giamatti and he absolutely kills it. I read along with him whenever the narrative got confusing and hard to follow and that did the trick.

We've all read books that we couldn't put down, this is one of those books. Well, it might be. It's only 133 pages, so I didn't really have a chance to put it down. Days later, I'm still not sure what to make of this book, it's been very hard to tell what it was trying to say. It's alien, non-conforming, and obtuse. I would normally say, “I loved it,” at this point, but I didn't; this might just be me failing to digest the book, but it seemed to be confusing on purpose. I'll give a bit more of the context that helped to explain some of the artistic choices in this book, but I should make it clear that I definitely see this book primarily as art as opposed to entertainment (my thinking being, all entertainment is art but, not all art is entertainment).

I classify The Employees as an experimental SF art novel. This book is framed as a series of non-linear interview statements with the crew of the Six-Thousand Ship. The ship is corporate owned and orbits around the planet of “New Discovery”; its crew are a mix of humans and humanoid robot/AI constructs. In advance of the story, the ship's crew discover a series of Objects on New Discovery, which they collect and place aboard the ship for study and care. The Objects are truly bizarre and possibly alive, they emit aromas or some type of aura that begin to affect both the human and humanoid crew alike. We are reading their statements to the corporate representatives onboard the ship.

Before I go further, I think it's important to note that this book was conceived as a companion piece to a contemporary art installation. The objects in the story are meant to correspond to the objects in the installation. The installation itself, Consumed Future Spewed Up As Present, is a commentary on form, presence, and the body. That tracks with me. The Employees struck me in part as an exploration of the difference between a human being and a thing; the objects fill the role of metaphors for the variety in the human form. In both works, the objects, their presentation and accessories serve to define different facets of the human form as well as the ways in which visual/sociological context can at times alter the perception of those facets. The statement ultimately amounting to: Humans come in all shapes and sizes and modes of dress and modifications- the definition is not fixed to body or form.

Beyond those themes, The Employees is also a workplace satire. If the title didn't give it away this is a workplace novel, and like the narration at the start points out, the testimonials we are reading have been collected in the interest of, “reduction or enhancement of performance, task-related understanding, and the acquisition of new knowledge and skills.” There's a hierarchy between the humans and humanoids that exists but is not defined, and there is tension and envy that builds between them as the novel goes on. But there's a third group, faceless and cold, and that's the representative(s) that are taking these statements: Management. The satire is in the form, as the employees make increasingly more emotional statements, the focus and presentation does not shift at all, nothing changes regardless of what the employees say (This clicked immediately as a corpo drone myself). The employees are secondary to the stated corporate interest, and the more you read, the clearer this aspect becomes as more and more of the story is cut out of the statements.

So yeah, this book is mad artsy, and sometimes you sacrifice for your art. I think that's the case here because the narrative forms around the Objects; what the book gains in the context and grounding of the installation, it loses in out on in its standalone form. I imagine it's quite rare for a book like this to break out on its own, and it's a testament to how well written this piece is that it manages to escape the orbit of its artistic roots despite not being a traditional novel. Divorced from the art, this book has its own anxious and looming energy, we don't often know who is speaking or what the text is speaking on. Ravn is stingy with the delivery of the plot details: there are stirrings of a revolt, the absence of (what I surmise to be) the chief scientist, and some type of corporate tribunal is occurring far in the background. Working within the testimonial format, it's actually very impressive that we get so much characterization and plot and imagery without any heavy lifting from the narration/narrator/thematic framework.

What this book amounted to was a series of eerie visuals that give the distinct sense that something has been obscured or censored from the reader. This is the magic of the book, it appears hollow on first inspection, but the further you go, the more obvious it becomes that something is excising anything not related to the Objects and worker efficiency. What are the add-ons that some humans wear? What about the child holograms, what on earth are those? What became of the chief scientist? There's something stifling about how precise this novel is with its visual focus, and how purposeful it is with obscuring the rest. So yes, this novel works, and it's kind of incredible exactly how it works, it's so cool to me that you can tell a story by not telling a story. But it's not really all that fun of a read because of how much is obscured from the reader, I'm all for a puzzle, but I'm not going to solve the Riemann Hypothesis just for fun.

TL;DR: This is one artsy book.