82 reviews found
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So this appears to be the last book, at least for now, of Elizabeth Bear’s Promethean Age series. The series is actually two loose duologies: Blood and Iron and Whiskey and Water are set in the modern day; Ink and Steel and this book are part of the Stratford Man duology, set in a Faerie-infested Elizabethan England. As my previous reviews of books in this series make clear, I am incredibly ambivalent. Bear’s commitment to…
I have never before read anything by Ian R. MacLeod. I have a terrible and impoverishing addiction to purchasing titles from specialty publisher Subterranean Press, and during an all-too-common binge (this time it was Charles Stross titles), I saw this on offer, shrugged, said, "What the hell?" and added it to my cart.
I don't recall hearing much about Ian R. MacLeod either. His name is almost criminally similar to Ian McDonald, however, whose …
Did you read Neuromancer and say, "This was good, but it could have used more steampunk?" That's kind of how one might describe The Difference Engine: Neuromancer meets steampunk. It's not a comprehensive, completely accurate description, but if that's sufficient for you, you can stop reading now and go read the book.
Still here? Cool.
William Gibson is on my "I must read everything by him!" shelf, and his influence on literature, particularly science…
It's very rare that I wish I had started a series with the second book instead of the first, but that's what I wish about Jay Lake's Clockworth Earth trilogy. I had some serious reservations about Mainspring. Its sequel, Escapement, might be an interesting example of how to avoid the dreaded "middle book syndrome" that afflicts so many trilogies. Categorically superior, Escapement is the maturation of the fantastic premise Lake began in Mainspring…
Why hello, alternate universe with airships; we meet again.
This was not the way I intended to start reading Jay Lake. I heard about him when Green came out and added that to my to-read list, but when I was at a used book store, Mainspring and Escapement were there, so I bought them. I always regret when my first experience with a new author I'm anticipating reading is a sour one. Sadly, Mainspring…
I don't read many vampire stories. And no, it's not because The Vampire Series soured me on them. I've just never seen the appeal of vampires in general. The one exception would be Buffy the Vampire Slayer and its spin-off, Angel, because Joss Whedon’s use of vampires within his series is awesome. Those series aside, I tend to approach vampire stories with some reservation. The last vampire book—straight-up vampire book, not a book with…
Jane Austen and I have had a rocky relationship. I respect her as a writer and believe she deserves a place in the canon of great English authors, but I sometimes wonder if she is overhyped. When it comes to Sense and Sensibility, it has a lot of Austen's trademark wit, but as a first novel it also has the immaturity and inexperience of a writer learning the craft. So with Sense and Sensibility…
Cherie Priest comes highly recommended to me from many people whom I respect; Boneshaker has been lauded most of all of her books. I couldn't fathom Fathom, and that made me apprehensive about my next Priest experience. Boneshaker had two difficult tasks: it had to live up to the expectations heaped upon it by so many others, and it had to be better than Fathom. In both respects, it succeeded, and I have…
In writing this review, I'm faced with the fact that this is the 991st review of Anathem on Goodreads. It isn't the 991st detailed review, nor is it the 991st long review, but somewhere in those 990 other reviews, I'm sure other people have said anything I'm going to say, and probably better. (How Lorite of me.) Yes, the book is long, and yes, it's a dense philosophical exploration of our universe disguised as a…
Didn't we just do this? I need to take a break from Robert J. Sawyer for a while now, since I just read Hominids, Humans, and now Hybrids. The complete trilogy! Do I get a set of steak knives?
If you're really interested in a critique, I advise you to read my reviews, neither of which are very spoilerific, of the first two books. All my criticism (and praise) of those books…
When something momentous, like a Neanderthal physicist from an alternate universe visiting our universe, happens once, it's a fluke. When it happens a second time—and when the portal that connects the two universes shows every sign of lasting indefinitely—it's a paradigm shift. Society will have to adjust to having Neanderthal neighbours like Ponter Boddit, who is not only redefining what we consider "human"; he's also holding up a mirror to "human" society, forcing us to…
Few things are probably scarier than suddenly being utterly and totally alone. Robert J. Sawyer reminds us of that fact by transposing Ponter Boddit, a Neanderthal physicist, from the parallel universe in which he resides to our universe, where Neanderthals have been extinct for tens of thousands of years. Aside from having instant celebrity status—including the paparazzi that come with it—Ponter must face the fact that he might never return to his own universe. And…
I dug into The Years of Rice and Salt with much gusto, for its premise was an intriguing example of why alternate history can be so seductive. Yet almost immediately, my expectations were completely torn apart and shoved in my face. Sometimes this can be good; other times it ruins a book completely. In this case, while I quite enjoyed some of the philosophical aspects of the book, it failed to sustain my interest for…
I read Soon I Will Be Invincible in a single sitting (although the two-hour rain delay before the ball game began helped). It has an easygoing, tongue-in-cheek style that makes it a pleasure to read. Sometimes it feels like a comic book, other times it feels like a parody of the superhero/supervillain genre in general. In making an effort not to be too serious, Austin Grossman has created a literary mélange of Douglas Coupland–style humour,…
When I first started reading this book after borrowing it from the library, I did a double-take. I had this book down as being recommended by one of my favourite science fiction blogs, yet the book's description mentioned nothing that made it sound like science fiction! So I had to go back and read the article that mentions this book before I realized what was going on (the Library of Congress cataloguing information also…
Books with adjectives like "fast-paced adventure-filled thrill-ride" are usually overhyped. Usually. In this case, The Walls of the Universe deserves such tags. It is fast-paced, adventure-filled, and thrilling. I finished it in a day--and it's a fair sized book--because I had trouble putting it down.
All of the main characters, with the possible exception of the villains, are complex. Melko sets up the story so we at first believe it will be John Rayburn versus…
Few books have managed to disappoint me as much as this one has. The captivating premise of History Play—that Marlowe faked his death and wrote all the plays attributed to Shakespeare—belies its overly-pedantic treatment of Marlovian theory (an actual literary theory supported by several leading Elizabethan scholars).
The most interesting part of the book is its foreword, which wasn't even written by Bolt, but instead by Mark Twain! It lists the facts we know…
Why, why did Blood and Iron and Whiskey and Water precede this book?! Ink and Steel possesses the best qualities of its predecessors and few of their flaws. Elizabeth Bear's skill flourishes in an alternate Elizabethan England where Christopher Marlowe and William Shakespeare are agents for the Queen and have dealings with Fae.
By far, my reviews of the previous books singled out an overly-complicated mythology as the Promethean Age's major flaw. Ink and Steel…
Significantly better than the first book in this series, Whiskey and Water picks up the loose ends from Blood and Iron and sustains them through half the book, building to a much more satisfying climax consisting of multiple battles and tense magical standoffs. My gripe: why did I have to wait for book 2 for all that heavy worldbuilding to pay off?!
As with its predecessor, Whiskey and Water suffers from a surfeit of mythology…
It's been several years since I first read Watchmen, so I decided to read it again in preparation for eventually seeing the film. Lauded on the cover as "One of TIME magazine's 100 best novels" and a "Winner of the Hugo Award" it's easy to get swept up in the love-fest that is Watchmen. While it's true I loved this book (as shown by the five star rating), I'm going to try to…
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