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Soon I Will Be Invincible

2014-05-14 00:00

Cover for Soon I Will Be Invincible

Review:

If you read the re­views, you'll no­tice this is a po­lar­iz­ing book, hon­our usu­al­ly re­served for first-per­son nar­ra­tives ex­plain­ing Je­sus ac­tu­al­ly was a whore­mong­ing alien, or some­thing. OTO­H, I am giv­ing it 4 stars, most­ly for two rea­son­s.

One, is, I re­al­ly did like it. It's fun­ni­ly writ­ten, and it shows love for genre. It at least *tries* to make the uni­verse make some sense, which is some­thing su­per­hero sto­ries hard­ly ev­er do.

And two, be­cause there's a pedan­tic re­view that bash­es the book for ac­cu­rate­ly quot­ing Archimedes, be­cause the re­view writ­er ap­par­ent­ly has not read as much as he thinks, and I love con­tra­dict­ing such peo­ple.

The Nelson Touch (Ark Royal, #2)

2014-05-08 00:00

Cover for The Nelson Touch (Ark Royal, #2)

Review:

While "Ark Roy­al" was a some­what pre­dictable, old fash­ioned navies-in-s­pace book with some bad vibes from the au­thor leak­ing out, this book is sort of dis­gust­ing.

Let me give you the short ver­sion:

Ev­ery wom­an is a shrew. Ex­cept those who are sexy and/or sub­mis­sive. Jour­nal­ists are the low­est of the low. Mil­i­tary men are awe­some. Ex­po­si­tion is a must. Aliens are a mis­tery. Di­a­log is clunky. Aliens will mag­i­cal­ly de­vel­op or not de­vel­op what­ev­er abil­i­ty or tac­tic the au­thor needs at any giv­en point in the sto­ry. Char­ac­ter de­vel­op­ment con­sists on as­sign­ing a char­ac­ter­is­tic to a name. This one is a for­mer drunk. This one fuck­s. This one is a pi­lot. That one is a wom­an. This one nags. That oth­er one is an­oth­er wom­an, and what do you mean you can't tell her apart from the pre­vi­ous one? She has a name!

De­press­ing­ly bad, and ug­ly.

Will not read the rest of the se­ries, which the au­thor is threat­en­ing to split in­to an­oth­er book hap­pen­ing at the same time as this one.

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.
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