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Luminous Review
Dec. 3rd, 2013 07:14 pmHey,
So I tried to work my way through A Call to Arms by Maury Klein the story of how America mobilized for WWII. But I just couldn't get through it. I feel like it tried to cover all the ground at once. Worse, while the book was divided into sections based on time (39-40, 40-41, etc.) it jumped around a great deal within each section so it'd forecast an agency's efforts and then jump back to pick up another thread. So I dumped it.
And turned instead to Luminous Chaos by Jean-Christophe Valtat. This is a sequel to his novel Aurorarama that came out a few years ago. I really enjoyed that book and was looking forward to this installment.
Aurorarama is a steampunk-y tale about people living in New Venice, a city built in the far north near the Pole. It was a good read and this book picks up with the protagonists of the last books and sends them off to Paris. To get there, they travel by Psychomotive (which runs on the quack science that powers a lot of New Venice). There's a bit of a snag and the team gets sent to Paris 20 years prior to the founding of New Venice. So the team has to put a plan together to try and find their way home. In the process, they spread out through the city, meeting personages historical, fictional and foundational.
It was a fun book and a good read, but I really wanted more of New Venice and less of a quasi-historical snapshot of 1890's Paris. There's clearly a lot more story to get out of New Venice and there seems to be a good chance of getting a new volume someday, but this is sort of a side-loop that doesn't really push any larger stories. I suppose that means it stands pretty well on it's own, but it doesn't have that same arctic snap the first book did.
later
Tom
So I tried to work my way through A Call to Arms by Maury Klein the story of how America mobilized for WWII. But I just couldn't get through it. I feel like it tried to cover all the ground at once. Worse, while the book was divided into sections based on time (39-40, 40-41, etc.) it jumped around a great deal within each section so it'd forecast an agency's efforts and then jump back to pick up another thread. So I dumped it.
And turned instead to Luminous Chaos by Jean-Christophe Valtat. This is a sequel to his novel Aurorarama that came out a few years ago. I really enjoyed that book and was looking forward to this installment.
Aurorarama is a steampunk-y tale about people living in New Venice, a city built in the far north near the Pole. It was a good read and this book picks up with the protagonists of the last books and sends them off to Paris. To get there, they travel by Psychomotive (which runs on the quack science that powers a lot of New Venice). There's a bit of a snag and the team gets sent to Paris 20 years prior to the founding of New Venice. So the team has to put a plan together to try and find their way home. In the process, they spread out through the city, meeting personages historical, fictional and foundational.
It was a fun book and a good read, but I really wanted more of New Venice and less of a quasi-historical snapshot of 1890's Paris. There's clearly a lot more story to get out of New Venice and there seems to be a good chance of getting a new volume someday, but this is sort of a side-loop that doesn't really push any larger stories. I suppose that means it stands pretty well on it's own, but it doesn't have that same arctic snap the first book did.
later
Tom
