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Oct. 23rd, 2010
The Good, the Bad, the Reviewed
Oct. 23rd, 2010 03:08 pmHey,
Went through a couple more books and here's what I thought of them.
Normally Gollancz, a British publisher puts out some really great stuff. I was very jazzed about the blurb to Hannu Rajaniemi's Quantum Thief. It seemed just like the kind of transhuman sci-fi stuff I like reading so I snapped it up when it finally came out at the end of September.
And the blurb is promising:
"Jean le Flambeur is a post-human criminal, mind burglar, confidence artist and trickster. His origins are shrouded in mystery, but his exploits are known throughout the Heterarchy - from breaking into the vast Zeusbrains of the Inner System to steal their thoughts, to stealing rare Earth antiques from the aristocrats of the Moving Cities of Mars. Except that Jean made one mistake. Now he is condemned to play endless variations of a game-theoretic riddle in the vast virtual jail of the Axelrod Archons - the Dilemma Prison - against countless copies of himself. Jean's routine of death, defection and cooperation is upset by the arrival of Mieli and her spidership, Perhonen. She offers him a chance to win back his freedom and the powers of his old self - in exchange for finishing the one heist he never quite managed . . ."
But it never really goes anywhere. The Dilemma Prison sounds interesting but never gets fully fleshed out. Fine, it's a throwaway, so instead we'll get to the clever heist right? No. First, Jean has to recover his memories. His criminal mind was too valuable to lose to the authorities so he had it split up, broken down into a high-tech Palace of Memory and before he can go do whatever it is he's been recruited to do (and we never actually find out what that is), he has to recover those memories. So that's what this book is about. Jean goes to the walking city of Mars and thanks to his super high-tech partners, he pretty much does as he pleases. With his memories back -- the book just sort of ends and you're left waiting for the next book...if you think you really want the next book, which I don't.
There are some interesting ideas in here, but nothing is ever deeply explored or executed in a vivid way. The plot moves along and I was never at a point where I just wanted to stop reading, but the book kept making me think of other books I'd like to read. Never a good sign. So yeah, off to the SFS library for this one.
On the other hand, I was very pleasantly surprised by Gwyneth Jones's Bold as Love. I suppose a winner of the Aurthur C. Clarke award has a better than average chance of being good though.
What's it about? The easiest explanation is that it's a rock-n-roll retelling of the King Aurthur story. In the near future, economic and cultural and climactic collapse have pulled Britain apart. Ireland, Scotland and Wales have all gone their separate ways leaving England to stand alone. A raging but fragmented counter culture is pulling in a variety of directions for their agendas. The government officials have no idea what to do, but the new Prime Minister has a plan to enlist the radicals to help rebuild the country.
As all good government officials do, he holds a series of meetings and into these meetings come Ax Preston, indie-rock master of guitar and crusader for social justice, Sage, techno wizard in both the musical and mechanical sense cloaked in his digital skull mask, and Fiorinda, teen-age punk princess with a legacy of magic and tragedy. As England lurches from crisis to crisis, these three find themselves pushed forward as the troika of the counter culture and the only people with the prestige and the power to push against the looming problems.
It's not an easy process. Throughout the book, the rockers mostly manage to keep bad situations from getting a whole lot worse. Actually resolving problems and making England a better place is something that's going to have to wait for later books in the series. And yes, I was irked by the lack of completeness, but it does find a halfway decent place to stop. The only problem know is that the rest of the series has never been published in the US as far as I know.
There's a little bit of sci-fi and a little bit of fantasy, but it's very, very low key. It's mostly about real people trying to deal with larger-than-life problems as well as their own personal relationships. I'm not entirely sure why I enjoyed this book so much but I did.
I now, of course, have an itch to play some sort of rock-n-roll Pendragon game.
later
Tom
Went through a couple more books and here's what I thought of them.
Normally Gollancz, a British publisher puts out some really great stuff. I was very jazzed about the blurb to Hannu Rajaniemi's Quantum Thief. It seemed just like the kind of transhuman sci-fi stuff I like reading so I snapped it up when it finally came out at the end of September.
And the blurb is promising:
"Jean le Flambeur is a post-human criminal, mind burglar, confidence artist and trickster. His origins are shrouded in mystery, but his exploits are known throughout the Heterarchy - from breaking into the vast Zeusbrains of the Inner System to steal their thoughts, to stealing rare Earth antiques from the aristocrats of the Moving Cities of Mars. Except that Jean made one mistake. Now he is condemned to play endless variations of a game-theoretic riddle in the vast virtual jail of the Axelrod Archons - the Dilemma Prison - against countless copies of himself. Jean's routine of death, defection and cooperation is upset by the arrival of Mieli and her spidership, Perhonen. She offers him a chance to win back his freedom and the powers of his old self - in exchange for finishing the one heist he never quite managed . . ."
But it never really goes anywhere. The Dilemma Prison sounds interesting but never gets fully fleshed out. Fine, it's a throwaway, so instead we'll get to the clever heist right? No. First, Jean has to recover his memories. His criminal mind was too valuable to lose to the authorities so he had it split up, broken down into a high-tech Palace of Memory and before he can go do whatever it is he's been recruited to do (and we never actually find out what that is), he has to recover those memories. So that's what this book is about. Jean goes to the walking city of Mars and thanks to his super high-tech partners, he pretty much does as he pleases. With his memories back -- the book just sort of ends and you're left waiting for the next book...if you think you really want the next book, which I don't.
There are some interesting ideas in here, but nothing is ever deeply explored or executed in a vivid way. The plot moves along and I was never at a point where I just wanted to stop reading, but the book kept making me think of other books I'd like to read. Never a good sign. So yeah, off to the SFS library for this one.
On the other hand, I was very pleasantly surprised by Gwyneth Jones's Bold as Love. I suppose a winner of the Aurthur C. Clarke award has a better than average chance of being good though.
What's it about? The easiest explanation is that it's a rock-n-roll retelling of the King Aurthur story. In the near future, economic and cultural and climactic collapse have pulled Britain apart. Ireland, Scotland and Wales have all gone their separate ways leaving England to stand alone. A raging but fragmented counter culture is pulling in a variety of directions for their agendas. The government officials have no idea what to do, but the new Prime Minister has a plan to enlist the radicals to help rebuild the country.
As all good government officials do, he holds a series of meetings and into these meetings come Ax Preston, indie-rock master of guitar and crusader for social justice, Sage, techno wizard in both the musical and mechanical sense cloaked in his digital skull mask, and Fiorinda, teen-age punk princess with a legacy of magic and tragedy. As England lurches from crisis to crisis, these three find themselves pushed forward as the troika of the counter culture and the only people with the prestige and the power to push against the looming problems.
It's not an easy process. Throughout the book, the rockers mostly manage to keep bad situations from getting a whole lot worse. Actually resolving problems and making England a better place is something that's going to have to wait for later books in the series. And yes, I was irked by the lack of completeness, but it does find a halfway decent place to stop. The only problem know is that the rest of the series has never been published in the US as far as I know.
There's a little bit of sci-fi and a little bit of fantasy, but it's very, very low key. It's mostly about real people trying to deal with larger-than-life problems as well as their own personal relationships. I'm not entirely sure why I enjoyed this book so much but I did.
I now, of course, have an itch to play some sort of rock-n-roll Pendragon game.
later
Tom
The Good, the Bad, the Reviewed
Oct. 23rd, 2010 03:08 pmHey,
Went through a couple more books and here's what I thought of them.
Normally Gollancz, a British publisher puts out some really great stuff. I was very jazzed about the blurb to Hannu Rajaniemi's Quantum Thief. It seemed just like the kind of transhuman sci-fi stuff I like reading so I snapped it up when it finally came out at the end of September.
And the blurb is promising:
"Jean le Flambeur is a post-human criminal, mind burglar, confidence artist and trickster. His origins are shrouded in mystery, but his exploits are known throughout the Heterarchy - from breaking into the vast Zeusbrains of the Inner System to steal their thoughts, to stealing rare Earth antiques from the aristocrats of the Moving Cities of Mars. Except that Jean made one mistake. Now he is condemned to play endless variations of a game-theoretic riddle in the vast virtual jail of the Axelrod Archons - the Dilemma Prison - against countless copies of himself. Jean's routine of death, defection and cooperation is upset by the arrival of Mieli and her spidership, Perhonen. She offers him a chance to win back his freedom and the powers of his old self - in exchange for finishing the one heist he never quite managed . . ."
But it never really goes anywhere. The Dilemma Prison sounds interesting but never gets fully fleshed out. Fine, it's a throwaway, so instead we'll get to the clever heist right? No. First, Jean has to recover his memories. His criminal mind was too valuable to lose to the authorities so he had it split up, broken down into a high-tech Palace of Memory and before he can go do whatever it is he's been recruited to do (and we never actually find out what that is), he has to recover those memories. So that's what this book is about. Jean goes to the walking city of Mars and thanks to his super high-tech partners, he pretty much does as he pleases. With his memories back -- the book just sort of ends and you're left waiting for the next book...if you think you really want the next book, which I don't.
There are some interesting ideas in here, but nothing is ever deeply explored or executed in a vivid way. The plot moves along and I was never at a point where I just wanted to stop reading, but the book kept making me think of other books I'd like to read. Never a good sign. So yeah, off to the SFS library for this one.
On the other hand, I was very pleasantly surprised by Gwyneth Jones's Bold as Love. I suppose a winner of the Aurthur C. Clarke award has a better than average chance of being good though.
What's it about? The easiest explanation is that it's a rock-n-roll retelling of the King Aurthur story. In the near future, economic and cultural and climactic collapse have pulled Britain apart. Ireland, Scotland and Wales have all gone their separate ways leaving England to stand alone. A raging but fragmented counter culture is pulling in a variety of directions for their agendas. The government officials have no idea what to do, but the new Prime Minister has a plan to enlist the radicals to help rebuild the country.
As all good government officials do, he holds a series of meetings and into these meetings come Ax Preston, indie-rock master of guitar and crusader for social justice, Sage, techno wizard in both the musical and mechanical sense cloaked in his digital skull mask, and Fiorinda, teen-age punk princess with a legacy of magic and tragedy. As England lurches from crisis to crisis, these three find themselves pushed forward as the troika of the counter culture and the only people with the prestige and the power to push against the looming problems.
It's not an easy process. Throughout the book, the rockers mostly manage to keep bad situations from getting a whole lot worse. Actually resolving problems and making England a better place is something that's going to have to wait for later books in the series. And yes, I was irked by the lack of completeness, but it does find a halfway decent place to stop. The only problem know is that the rest of the series has never been published in the US as far as I know.
There's a little bit of sci-fi and a little bit of fantasy, but it's very, very low key. It's mostly about real people trying to deal with larger-than-life problems as well as their own personal relationships. I'm not entirely sure why I enjoyed this book so much but I did.
I now, of course, have an itch to play some sort of rock-n-roll Pendragon game.
later
Tom
Went through a couple more books and here's what I thought of them.
Normally Gollancz, a British publisher puts out some really great stuff. I was very jazzed about the blurb to Hannu Rajaniemi's Quantum Thief. It seemed just like the kind of transhuman sci-fi stuff I like reading so I snapped it up when it finally came out at the end of September.
And the blurb is promising:
"Jean le Flambeur is a post-human criminal, mind burglar, confidence artist and trickster. His origins are shrouded in mystery, but his exploits are known throughout the Heterarchy - from breaking into the vast Zeusbrains of the Inner System to steal their thoughts, to stealing rare Earth antiques from the aristocrats of the Moving Cities of Mars. Except that Jean made one mistake. Now he is condemned to play endless variations of a game-theoretic riddle in the vast virtual jail of the Axelrod Archons - the Dilemma Prison - against countless copies of himself. Jean's routine of death, defection and cooperation is upset by the arrival of Mieli and her spidership, Perhonen. She offers him a chance to win back his freedom and the powers of his old self - in exchange for finishing the one heist he never quite managed . . ."
But it never really goes anywhere. The Dilemma Prison sounds interesting but never gets fully fleshed out. Fine, it's a throwaway, so instead we'll get to the clever heist right? No. First, Jean has to recover his memories. His criminal mind was too valuable to lose to the authorities so he had it split up, broken down into a high-tech Palace of Memory and before he can go do whatever it is he's been recruited to do (and we never actually find out what that is), he has to recover those memories. So that's what this book is about. Jean goes to the walking city of Mars and thanks to his super high-tech partners, he pretty much does as he pleases. With his memories back -- the book just sort of ends and you're left waiting for the next book...if you think you really want the next book, which I don't.
There are some interesting ideas in here, but nothing is ever deeply explored or executed in a vivid way. The plot moves along and I was never at a point where I just wanted to stop reading, but the book kept making me think of other books I'd like to read. Never a good sign. So yeah, off to the SFS library for this one.
On the other hand, I was very pleasantly surprised by Gwyneth Jones's Bold as Love. I suppose a winner of the Aurthur C. Clarke award has a better than average chance of being good though.
What's it about? The easiest explanation is that it's a rock-n-roll retelling of the King Aurthur story. In the near future, economic and cultural and climactic collapse have pulled Britain apart. Ireland, Scotland and Wales have all gone their separate ways leaving England to stand alone. A raging but fragmented counter culture is pulling in a variety of directions for their agendas. The government officials have no idea what to do, but the new Prime Minister has a plan to enlist the radicals to help rebuild the country.
As all good government officials do, he holds a series of meetings and into these meetings come Ax Preston, indie-rock master of guitar and crusader for social justice, Sage, techno wizard in both the musical and mechanical sense cloaked in his digital skull mask, and Fiorinda, teen-age punk princess with a legacy of magic and tragedy. As England lurches from crisis to crisis, these three find themselves pushed forward as the troika of the counter culture and the only people with the prestige and the power to push against the looming problems.
It's not an easy process. Throughout the book, the rockers mostly manage to keep bad situations from getting a whole lot worse. Actually resolving problems and making England a better place is something that's going to have to wait for later books in the series. And yes, I was irked by the lack of completeness, but it does find a halfway decent place to stop. The only problem know is that the rest of the series has never been published in the US as far as I know.
There's a little bit of sci-fi and a little bit of fantasy, but it's very, very low key. It's mostly about real people trying to deal with larger-than-life problems as well as their own personal relationships. I'm not entirely sure why I enjoyed this book so much but I did.
I now, of course, have an itch to play some sort of rock-n-roll Pendragon game.
later
Tom