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Ark Royal (Ark Royal, #1)

2014-05-05 00:00

Cover for Ark Royal (Ark Royal, #1)

Review:

Old fash­ioned to the ex­treme. The book shows glimpses of mis­oginy and gen­er­al mil­i­taris­tic fetichism in the au­thor that get even more ex­treme in the sec­ond book of the se­ries. The alien race is nev­er de­vel­oped in any mean­ing­ful way, and their ac­tions are con­trived so that the plot will forced­ly march where the au­thor wants it to go.

Among Others

2014-05-01 00:00

Cover for Among Others

Review:

Jo Wal­ton is the mas­ter (mistress?) of tone. She writes in tongues. This is an amaz­ing book.

The Lathe of Heaven

2014-04-23 00:00

Cover for The Lathe of Heaven

Review:

I thought I had read ev­ery­thing by LeGuin. I some­how missed this one.

It gets four stars be­cause... come on, clas­sic LeGuin.

The sto­ry is con­cep­tu­al­ly good, and the de­liv­ery is up to her usu­al stan­dard­s. One thing that bugged me a lit­tle was the malthu­sian pes­simism was a bit over the top.

The au­thor imag­ines a world with sev­en bil­lion peo­ple in it (like we have now!) so here's a ran­dom list of what that world is like:

* Ram­pant green­house ef­fect

* Grain is so ex­pen­sive and scarce there's no whiskey any­more

* No cars be­cause no oil

* Port­land, Ore­gon is an over­pop­u­lat­ed hell­hole where lawyers work out of con­vert­ed park­ing build­ings.

* Mas­sive famines (92% of world pop­u­la­tion!)

* Rick­ets and scurvy are ram­pant in the US

* Over­pop­u­la­tion makes ev­ery­one feel cramped all the time

And so on and so forth

The Waking Engine

2014-04-15 00:00

Cover for The Waking Engine

Review:

I re­al­ly want­ed to read this book, but some­thing just did­n't click for me. I sus­pect I now un­der­stand how those who dis­like Chi­na Miéville feel.

Al­so, some­times the au­thor us­es words strange­ly. He spent a chap­ter writ­ing "cate­nary chain­s". Cate­nary means ei­ther "chain-­like" or some­thing in a spe­cif­ic curve. Since these chains are just ly­ing on the ground he's say­ing "chain-­like chain­s" over and over again, and it just both­ered me way more than it should.

The con­cept of the uni­verse where the book takes place is cool. The pace picks up a lot in the sec­ond half, al­though some char­ac­ters seem to just dis­ap­pear.
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