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Sep. 24th, 2010
Aurorareview
Sep. 24th, 2010 02:53 pmHi,
So I've turned my LJ into a YouTube channel. So how about doing the stuff I'm famous for -- book reviews!
First up we have Aurorarama by Jean-Christophe Valat. The cover is gorgeous and the story lives up to it.
In an alternate, steampunk-y universe the city of New Venice has been established far above the arctic circle, an art-deco triumph of Will over Nature. Giant flame blasts ringing the city keep the place barely habitable in the winter (a system known as Air Architecture one of the many fun neologisms coined for the book) but s wide range of pharmaceuticals help the citizens maintain a semblance of physical and mental equilibrium in the brutal arctic conditions.
The Council of Seven exists to maintain the New Venice envisioned by the founders while the Arctic Administration is responsible for dealing with pragmatic concerns but those role are slowly shifting and local "poletics" is getting dicey indeed. The Council maintains control via the Gentlemen of the Night, a very well-dressed secret police and they've started cracking down hard on subversives and the native Inuit of the region.
Into all of this comes "Duke" Brentford Orsini, a member of the former "Articocrcy" who's now in charge of the city's greenhouses and his friend the "Earl" Gabriel d'Allier, artist, addict and reluctant professor of literature. The book splits its chapters between the two parallel stories of these men. The former is trying to ease tensions between the Inuit and the Army and in the process receives mysterious, prophetic dreams. The latter gets hauled in by the Gentlemen of the Night in connection with a seditious book that the Council is eager to quash.
And all of this is just a start. There are the Inuit themselves, the Scavengers who keep the city clean, a mysterious black airship hovering above the city, mysterious arctic lands, and the myth and lore of the North Pole itself.
For people who liked Perdito Street Station or City of Flowers and other "city-punk" stories, this should be right up their alley. The city has a history and the characters refer to defining moments in the city's past without huge flashbacks or detailed explanation, but this only serves to make the setting more compelling rather than seem like something important that you're missing.
The setting is novel and the story itself is pretty good. I liked it a great deal and I think it's worth a look.
Next up we have Act of Will by A. J. Hartley. While not as inventive as Aurorarama, it's certainly a breezy, fun adventure novel.
Will Hawthorne is an actor in a Renaissance-era fantasy world (sans gunpowder and with some much-derided magic based off of gemstones). He's just turning 18 and hoping to get a permanent position (and more male roles) with his acting company when he's accused of treason by the Empire and needs to exit in a hurry.
Will falls in with a band of adventurers and despite his cynical nature, he's out of options and accompanies them to investigate a mysterious band of red-cloaked raiders that have been terrorizing three small kingdoms. Will's mostly out to save his own hide, get a good meal, and maybe bed down with one of his hot co-workers, but stumbling from one near disaster to another, he learns some important lessons and changes his priorities.
Sure, it's an ending you can see coming from page one, but the fun is in the journey and Will makes for a pretty good narrator. He's a young know-it-all with a big mouth and that makes his antics fun to watch. So nothing too deep, but a fun read.
Finally, I plowed through King Aroo Vol. 1 by Jack Kent. This is a collection of King Aroo comic strips from 1950-1952. This is really something of a nostalgia trip for me. I'd never read King Aroo in the newspapers (it only lasted until the mid-60's), but I did have a copy of the (apparently rather rare) only collection of King Aroo strips published before this collection by the Library of American Comics (they do the Peanuts collections among many others). So I kinda had to pick this up.
What to say? King Aroo is the monarch of Myopia, a kingdom about an acre square. He and his Royal-High-Everything Yupyop are the only two human inhabitants of the place. There's the forgetful Mr. Elephant, the kangaroo postman, the (species indeterminate) witch Wanda among others. So they go around and have silly little adventures with their friends, there are gentle jokes and weak puns and it's just a mild bit of fluff. Perhaps my nostalgia glasses were a little thick. I can't recommend this to anyone unless they're super interested in comic strip history. But my inner-kid enjoyed the trip.
So that's what's come down the reading stack recently. There's a bunch of interesting stuff coming out in the UK in the next two weeks so I'm looking forward to that.
later
Tom
So I've turned my LJ into a YouTube channel. So how about doing the stuff I'm famous for -- book reviews!
First up we have Aurorarama by Jean-Christophe Valat. The cover is gorgeous and the story lives up to it.
In an alternate, steampunk-y universe the city of New Venice has been established far above the arctic circle, an art-deco triumph of Will over Nature. Giant flame blasts ringing the city keep the place barely habitable in the winter (a system known as Air Architecture one of the many fun neologisms coined for the book) but s wide range of pharmaceuticals help the citizens maintain a semblance of physical and mental equilibrium in the brutal arctic conditions.
The Council of Seven exists to maintain the New Venice envisioned by the founders while the Arctic Administration is responsible for dealing with pragmatic concerns but those role are slowly shifting and local "poletics" is getting dicey indeed. The Council maintains control via the Gentlemen of the Night, a very well-dressed secret police and they've started cracking down hard on subversives and the native Inuit of the region.
Into all of this comes "Duke" Brentford Orsini, a member of the former "Articocrcy" who's now in charge of the city's greenhouses and his friend the "Earl" Gabriel d'Allier, artist, addict and reluctant professor of literature. The book splits its chapters between the two parallel stories of these men. The former is trying to ease tensions between the Inuit and the Army and in the process receives mysterious, prophetic dreams. The latter gets hauled in by the Gentlemen of the Night in connection with a seditious book that the Council is eager to quash.
And all of this is just a start. There are the Inuit themselves, the Scavengers who keep the city clean, a mysterious black airship hovering above the city, mysterious arctic lands, and the myth and lore of the North Pole itself.
For people who liked Perdito Street Station or City of Flowers and other "city-punk" stories, this should be right up their alley. The city has a history and the characters refer to defining moments in the city's past without huge flashbacks or detailed explanation, but this only serves to make the setting more compelling rather than seem like something important that you're missing.
The setting is novel and the story itself is pretty good. I liked it a great deal and I think it's worth a look.
Next up we have Act of Will by A. J. Hartley. While not as inventive as Aurorarama, it's certainly a breezy, fun adventure novel.
Will Hawthorne is an actor in a Renaissance-era fantasy world (sans gunpowder and with some much-derided magic based off of gemstones). He's just turning 18 and hoping to get a permanent position (and more male roles) with his acting company when he's accused of treason by the Empire and needs to exit in a hurry.
Will falls in with a band of adventurers and despite his cynical nature, he's out of options and accompanies them to investigate a mysterious band of red-cloaked raiders that have been terrorizing three small kingdoms. Will's mostly out to save his own hide, get a good meal, and maybe bed down with one of his hot co-workers, but stumbling from one near disaster to another, he learns some important lessons and changes his priorities.
Sure, it's an ending you can see coming from page one, but the fun is in the journey and Will makes for a pretty good narrator. He's a young know-it-all with a big mouth and that makes his antics fun to watch. So nothing too deep, but a fun read.
Finally, I plowed through King Aroo Vol. 1 by Jack Kent. This is a collection of King Aroo comic strips from 1950-1952. This is really something of a nostalgia trip for me. I'd never read King Aroo in the newspapers (it only lasted until the mid-60's), but I did have a copy of the (apparently rather rare) only collection of King Aroo strips published before this collection by the Library of American Comics (they do the Peanuts collections among many others). So I kinda had to pick this up.
What to say? King Aroo is the monarch of Myopia, a kingdom about an acre square. He and his Royal-High-Everything Yupyop are the only two human inhabitants of the place. There's the forgetful Mr. Elephant, the kangaroo postman, the (species indeterminate) witch Wanda among others. So they go around and have silly little adventures with their friends, there are gentle jokes and weak puns and it's just a mild bit of fluff. Perhaps my nostalgia glasses were a little thick. I can't recommend this to anyone unless they're super interested in comic strip history. But my inner-kid enjoyed the trip.
So that's what's come down the reading stack recently. There's a bunch of interesting stuff coming out in the UK in the next two weeks so I'm looking forward to that.
later
Tom
Aurorareview
Sep. 24th, 2010 02:53 pmHi,
So I've turned my LJ into a YouTube channel. So how about doing the stuff I'm famous for -- book reviews!
First up we have Aurorarama by Jean-Christophe Valat. The cover is gorgeous and the story lives up to it.
In an alternate, steampunk-y universe the city of New Venice has been established far above the arctic circle, an art-deco triumph of Will over Nature. Giant flame blasts ringing the city keep the place barely habitable in the winter (a system known as Air Architecture one of the many fun neologisms coined for the book) but s wide range of pharmaceuticals help the citizens maintain a semblance of physical and mental equilibrium in the brutal arctic conditions.
The Council of Seven exists to maintain the New Venice envisioned by the founders while the Arctic Administration is responsible for dealing with pragmatic concerns but those role are slowly shifting and local "poletics" is getting dicey indeed. The Council maintains control via the Gentlemen of the Night, a very well-dressed secret police and they've started cracking down hard on subversives and the native Inuit of the region.
Into all of this comes "Duke" Brentford Orsini, a member of the former "Articocrcy" who's now in charge of the city's greenhouses and his friend the "Earl" Gabriel d'Allier, artist, addict and reluctant professor of literature. The book splits its chapters between the two parallel stories of these men. The former is trying to ease tensions between the Inuit and the Army and in the process receives mysterious, prophetic dreams. The latter gets hauled in by the Gentlemen of the Night in connection with a seditious book that the Council is eager to quash.
And all of this is just a start. There are the Inuit themselves, the Scavengers who keep the city clean, a mysterious black airship hovering above the city, mysterious arctic lands, and the myth and lore of the North Pole itself.
For people who liked Perdito Street Station or City of Flowers and other "city-punk" stories, this should be right up their alley. The city has a history and the characters refer to defining moments in the city's past without huge flashbacks or detailed explanation, but this only serves to make the setting more compelling rather than seem like something important that you're missing.
The setting is novel and the story itself is pretty good. I liked it a great deal and I think it's worth a look.
Next up we have Act of Will by A. J. Hartley. While not as inventive as Aurorarama, it's certainly a breezy, fun adventure novel.
Will Hawthorne is an actor in a Renaissance-era fantasy world (sans gunpowder and with some much-derided magic based off of gemstones). He's just turning 18 and hoping to get a permanent position (and more male roles) with his acting company when he's accused of treason by the Empire and needs to exit in a hurry.
Will falls in with a band of adventurers and despite his cynical nature, he's out of options and accompanies them to investigate a mysterious band of red-cloaked raiders that have been terrorizing three small kingdoms. Will's mostly out to save his own hide, get a good meal, and maybe bed down with one of his hot co-workers, but stumbling from one near disaster to another, he learns some important lessons and changes his priorities.
Sure, it's an ending you can see coming from page one, but the fun is in the journey and Will makes for a pretty good narrator. He's a young know-it-all with a big mouth and that makes his antics fun to watch. So nothing too deep, but a fun read.
Finally, I plowed through King Aroo Vol. 1 by Jack Kent. This is a collection of King Aroo comic strips from 1950-1952. This is really something of a nostalgia trip for me. I'd never read King Aroo in the newspapers (it only lasted until the mid-60's), but I did have a copy of the (apparently rather rare) only collection of King Aroo strips published before this collection by the Library of American Comics (they do the Peanuts collections among many others). So I kinda had to pick this up.
What to say? King Aroo is the monarch of Myopia, a kingdom about an acre square. He and his Royal-High-Everything Yupyop are the only two human inhabitants of the place. There's the forgetful Mr. Elephant, the kangaroo postman, the (species indeterminate) witch Wanda among others. So they go around and have silly little adventures with their friends, there are gentle jokes and weak puns and it's just a mild bit of fluff. Perhaps my nostalgia glasses were a little thick. I can't recommend this to anyone unless they're super interested in comic strip history. But my inner-kid enjoyed the trip.
So that's what's come down the reading stack recently. There's a bunch of interesting stuff coming out in the UK in the next two weeks so I'm looking forward to that.
later
Tom
So I've turned my LJ into a YouTube channel. So how about doing the stuff I'm famous for -- book reviews!
First up we have Aurorarama by Jean-Christophe Valat. The cover is gorgeous and the story lives up to it.
In an alternate, steampunk-y universe the city of New Venice has been established far above the arctic circle, an art-deco triumph of Will over Nature. Giant flame blasts ringing the city keep the place barely habitable in the winter (a system known as Air Architecture one of the many fun neologisms coined for the book) but s wide range of pharmaceuticals help the citizens maintain a semblance of physical and mental equilibrium in the brutal arctic conditions.
The Council of Seven exists to maintain the New Venice envisioned by the founders while the Arctic Administration is responsible for dealing with pragmatic concerns but those role are slowly shifting and local "poletics" is getting dicey indeed. The Council maintains control via the Gentlemen of the Night, a very well-dressed secret police and they've started cracking down hard on subversives and the native Inuit of the region.
Into all of this comes "Duke" Brentford Orsini, a member of the former "Articocrcy" who's now in charge of the city's greenhouses and his friend the "Earl" Gabriel d'Allier, artist, addict and reluctant professor of literature. The book splits its chapters between the two parallel stories of these men. The former is trying to ease tensions between the Inuit and the Army and in the process receives mysterious, prophetic dreams. The latter gets hauled in by the Gentlemen of the Night in connection with a seditious book that the Council is eager to quash.
And all of this is just a start. There are the Inuit themselves, the Scavengers who keep the city clean, a mysterious black airship hovering above the city, mysterious arctic lands, and the myth and lore of the North Pole itself.
For people who liked Perdito Street Station or City of Flowers and other "city-punk" stories, this should be right up their alley. The city has a history and the characters refer to defining moments in the city's past without huge flashbacks or detailed explanation, but this only serves to make the setting more compelling rather than seem like something important that you're missing.
The setting is novel and the story itself is pretty good. I liked it a great deal and I think it's worth a look.
Next up we have Act of Will by A. J. Hartley. While not as inventive as Aurorarama, it's certainly a breezy, fun adventure novel.
Will Hawthorne is an actor in a Renaissance-era fantasy world (sans gunpowder and with some much-derided magic based off of gemstones). He's just turning 18 and hoping to get a permanent position (and more male roles) with his acting company when he's accused of treason by the Empire and needs to exit in a hurry.
Will falls in with a band of adventurers and despite his cynical nature, he's out of options and accompanies them to investigate a mysterious band of red-cloaked raiders that have been terrorizing three small kingdoms. Will's mostly out to save his own hide, get a good meal, and maybe bed down with one of his hot co-workers, but stumbling from one near disaster to another, he learns some important lessons and changes his priorities.
Sure, it's an ending you can see coming from page one, but the fun is in the journey and Will makes for a pretty good narrator. He's a young know-it-all with a big mouth and that makes his antics fun to watch. So nothing too deep, but a fun read.
Finally, I plowed through King Aroo Vol. 1 by Jack Kent. This is a collection of King Aroo comic strips from 1950-1952. This is really something of a nostalgia trip for me. I'd never read King Aroo in the newspapers (it only lasted until the mid-60's), but I did have a copy of the (apparently rather rare) only collection of King Aroo strips published before this collection by the Library of American Comics (they do the Peanuts collections among many others). So I kinda had to pick this up.
What to say? King Aroo is the monarch of Myopia, a kingdom about an acre square. He and his Royal-High-Everything Yupyop are the only two human inhabitants of the place. There's the forgetful Mr. Elephant, the kangaroo postman, the (species indeterminate) witch Wanda among others. So they go around and have silly little adventures with their friends, there are gentle jokes and weak puns and it's just a mild bit of fluff. Perhaps my nostalgia glasses were a little thick. I can't recommend this to anyone unless they're super interested in comic strip history. But my inner-kid enjoyed the trip.
So that's what's come down the reading stack recently. There's a bunch of interesting stuff coming out in the UK in the next two weeks so I'm looking forward to that.
later
Tom