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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.

Off to Be the Wizard (Magic 2.0, #1)

2014-03-27 00:00

Cover for Off to Be the Wizard (Magic 2.0, #1)

Review:

It's geek ful­fill­ment fan­ta­sy. But like with ev­ery­thing there's good geek ful­fill­ment fan­ta­sy and bad. This one is rather good!

It does have some­thing I love: the at­ti­tude. So, we are all sub­rou­tines in a pro­gram? Ok, so let's have fun with that, no need to get all glum­my and down­beat!

Al­so, good se­quel set­up at the end.

One bad thing: it de­scribes C64 text as white on blue. WTF Scott Mey­er???? That's CYAN on blue!!!!! ;-)

Three Princes

2014-03-19 00:00

Cover for Three Princes

Review:

Can a book have too much world build­ing? It's not that it's ex­pos­i­to­ry or any­thing, but the ac­tu­al plot seemed some­what su­per­fi­cial com­pared to ob­vi­ous love and care ap­plied in the char­ac­ters and the de­scrip­tion of the al­ter­nate his­to­ry.

Liked it any­way, I'd love to read a se­quel that was a bit more plot-­driv­en.
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