The guilt of continuing to include this site in my email signature has prompted me to return to writing, at least once. The problem, of course, is that I'd rather read another book than write another review, but we'll see if I can write at least once or month or so going forward.

Anyway, this novel is basically a novel of superheroes and villains. It's told in alternating chapters from the point of view of a supervillain and superhero.

The great thing about it is that it is basically the mirror image of everything you see in most comics. Rather than focusing on the action and "gee whiz" cool stuff, it's mostly the internal thoughts of the two characters. The action is mostly glossed over very quickly.

This makes for some very funny writing, as we find out that supervillains and superheroes are a lot like us, with their own "normal person" problems. There are also about a million references to various plotlines from many different comics, and many homages to different Marvel and DC characters.

If you read comics as a kid, you really need to read this. If you didn't, you'll enjoy the book anyway.

I picked this book up more or less at random, because I'd seen the author's name, and it was published by Golden Gryphon, which tends to publish artier books.

Summarizing the plot doesn't tell you much about the book. A police inspector turned vampire investigates the murder of a human by a vampire, amidst a web of vampire family intrigues.

That makes it sound like a sort of genre politico-thriller/mystery, but it's really not. The murder investigation is more or less a means to move the main character into various bizarre scenes with other vampires. It also provides an excuse for describing the setting of the story, an unimaginably immense and strange castle where the vampires have come together.

There's really not a lot of plot, and the mystery is in a way the least satisfying part of the book. There's not a lot of plot overall, so the mystery investigation is pretty thin. The book is instead filled with long descriptive passages of both the setting, people, and the narrator's inner thoughts.

It was a bit of a tough read, because there are just so many long, detailed descriptions of really bizarre things. Because the plot is so thin, it's easy to get lost in these descriptions and come out the other end having forgotten why the characters are doing what they're doing. The book is only 200 pages, but if it were longer I think I would've given up.

As it is, I appreciate the skill of the writing and the strength of the author's voice, but I didn't really love the book. It didn't help that I kept trying to read it when I was tired, but the novel wasn't compelling enough to keep me awake and alert.

Overall, I'd recommend this to people looking for something different and artistic.

I'd kind of been toying with the idea of buying this book for a while. It was on the recommended shelf at my favorite local book store, but there was something about the cover that turned me off. However, recently I read an essay about (the new) Battlestar Galactica by Matthew Stover, and that intrigued me enough to pick up the book.

It's pretty good, but there's a couple of things that didn't work for me. First of all, it gets off to a pretty slow start. There's a lot of setup material to plow through, and it doesn't help that the main character starts off as grossly unlikeable. The other thing that irked me was its future Earth's sociopolitical system, which came off as a caricature designed solely to provoke outrage.

However, once you get past that, there's a lot of really good stuff in the novel. The bulk of the book takes place in "Overworld", a fantasy setting that reminded me quite a bit of China Mieville's work. It's a very gritty world, where things like elves and dwarves exist, but are nothing like the typical Tolkien-ish portrayal.

Another thing I liked about the story was the main character's moral ambiguity. We eventually root for him to succeed, but he does a lot of unpleasant things along the way. That was a nice change from the typical heroic fantasy good guy.

I found that about halfway through I had gotten pretty hooked on the story, and was reading it pretty intently, and ultimately the novel succeeds despite its slow start.

There's a sequel which I'm going to read soon, and I'm hoping that it smooths away some of the rough edges found in this novel.

Matt Ruff is one of those slow writers. His first book came out in 1988, and this one, his third, came out in 2003, though someone I didn't notice it until recently.

I've read his first two books, and was quite impressed, but this one is definitely his best work yet. The books alternates between two characters, Andrew and Penny, though the author of the work is Andrew. They both suffer from multiple personality disorder. Andrew knows of his MPD, and has it fairly under control, with a sort of order between his different personalities, which he calls souls.

Penny, however, doesn't know what her problem is, just that she loses time and has trouble organizing her life. The story revolves around Andrew trying to help Penny, and then coming to terms with unfinished business in his own life.

I really, really loved the depiction of MPD in this book. In particular, the way Andrew has gained control of his is to construct a sort of mental geography and house, inhabited by his various personalities. Use of "the body" is mostly controlled by Andrew, but he lets others as long as they behave properly.

Matt's previous work were fantasy and a sci-fi-ish satire. This novel is more of a "straight" novel, though it's almost sci-fi in it's rather wishful depiction of the company where Andrew works, which is a software company building VR hardware and software. But that's really not central to the plot.

The book is quite dark, since both Andrew's and Penny's MPD were caused by very severe child abuse. There's nothing too graphic in the book, but there was enough to make me squirm and feel disgusted. Ultimately, however, the novel's tone is pretty positive, since it's really about recovering from past trauma and moving on, not about suffering.

The writing style and story reminded me a little bit of Sean Stewarts's Perfect Circle, another book about dealing with past trauma. Both books are really about people as much as plot, and the characterization in this book is what really shines.

I've been an atheist for as long as I can remember really thinking about religion. The earliest memory I have of me really thinking about this stuff was probably around eleven or twelve, and I remember concluding that the whole idea of God made no sense, since it raised more questions than it solved.

So reading The God Delusion was a bit like the choir listening to a recording of the preacher, but it was still worthwhile. Some of the points Dawkins' brings up were new to me. In particular, I liked his point that calling a child a "Christian child" or a "Muslim child" is really bizarre, since kids are too young to really make their own decisions about religion.

It also sort of stirred some fire in me that besides animal rights activism, I should somehow be working at "destroy all religion" activism (except Buddhism, which is cool and peaceful).

I actually spent some time discussing this with a friend of mine, and we came to the conclusion that to do this, we'd basically have to attempt to un-brainwash people pretty young, since people start brainwashing children with religion at a tender age. Of course, activists attempting to target children is pretty much asking for huge trouble. But it seems like once people are adults, they're so indoctrinated that simply presenting a logical argument against religion wouldn't do it any more.

Ideas for effective religion-destroying activism are welcome!