The Book I Read

You thought I was dead, but now I have returned to rule the world! - Soon I Will Be Invincible by Austin Grossman

2007-09-25T10:29:28Z

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.

Inspector Vampire - The Golden by Lucius Shepard

2007-03-06T10:45:15Z

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.

And So Does Everyone Else - Heroes Die by Matthew Woodring Stover

2007-02-23T16:19:23Z

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.

My One Personality Liked it Very Much - Set This House in Order by Matt Ruff

2007-01-24T01:37:34Z

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.

Religion Bad - The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins

2007-01-22T22:08:10Z

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!

Blog in Book, So Meta! - Learning the World by Ken Macleod

2007-01-22T22:02:12Z

The title of this book refers to a biolog (aka blog) written by one of the main characters. And here I am reviewing it on my blog. Like, woah, meta!

Anyway, this one was good, and there's lots of interesting stuff in here. Basically, it's a first contact novel, except the aliens are far future humans, and the contactees are bat-like aliens. This sort of reversed first contact thing has been done before, but there was something about the way this one was done that I really liked.

One nice touch is that the aliens, while similar to humans in some ways, react to the first contact differently than I suspect humans would, which made them a bit more alien.

I also really liked the voices of the different characters. Macleod did a particularly good job with his blog author, who's a teenage girl, and there's just a touch of LiveJournal-style writing in it, but not enough to undermine the story with too much "our world" reference.

Words Fail Me - Shriek: an Afterword by Jeff Vandermeer

2006-09-26T11:10:56Z

I'm having a hard time expressing how amazing this novel is. It has so many different levels and types of goodness, it's kind of hard to break it down, but I'll try.

This is Jeff Vandermeer's first novel, after several short story/novella collections. It is basically a "sequel" to a novella in City of Saints and Madmen. That novella is a tourist's guide to the history of Ambergris, the setting of the story collection and the novel. It is written by historian Duncan Shriek and is filled with all sorts of footnotes, attacks on other scholars, and paranoid references to the "gray caps".

Shriek is written by Duncan's sister Janice, and purports to be his biography. It is really a biography of both Duncan Janice, and goes into much more detail about Duncan's research into the gray caps. The gray caps are basically the central mystery of the Ambergris setting, and this book gives us a bit more information on what they are and what they want, though it's still in the form of tantalizing hints.

The story is gripping just from the curiosity that keeps you wanting to find out more about the gray caps. But that's just one small part of the overall novel. It's also the story of the great love affair of Duncan's life, the story of Shriek family, mostly Janice and Duncan, and also the story of the recent history of Ambergris.

The novel interweaves these different elements so seamlessly it's simply awe-inspiring. I'm getting chills down my back just thinking about how well done this is.

But wait, there's more! This book also features one of my favorite devices, an unreliable narrator. The book is mostly in first-person from Janice Shriek's viewpoint, and it's clear that at the time of writing she is not in the best of mental health. There are strange jumps backwards and forwards in time, bizarre digressions, and things that we often find out are outright untruths.

But wait, there's still more! The novel also introduces Duncan's voice. The conceipt is that Janice wrote the "afterword", then disappeared. Soon after, it was found by Duncan, who adds his own annotations. For extra fun, Janice has also included excerpts from Duncan's own journals. So we get two Duncan voices, one the voice of the past in the form of the journal entries, and the other the present Duncan in the form of annotations.

Duncan not only fills in details or corrects outright mistakes in the narrative, he also takes it on himself to criticize his sister's writing style, and it often reads like notes from an editor.

The book also has a great variety of tones, from deeply dark and serious emotionally gripping passages, to horror and mystery, to moments of great humor, the latter most often found in Duncan's annotations.

Shriek is really an amazing achievement. I knew Vandermeer was talented when I read his earlier works, but this novel brings him to a whole new level. I'd put him up there with some of my other true favorites, like Gene Wolfe and Ursula K. LeGuin. This novel is the work of someone who has mastered both art and craft. He combines great inventiveness with real emotion and depth of characterization.

If you haven't read City of Saints and Madmen I'd recommend you read that first, as it gives a lot of background on various characters in this novel, as well as background on the city of Ambergris and the world in which it lives.

I'm looking forward to re-reading that collection, since I this novel really illuminates so much of what is just hinted at in the earlier stories.

This novel took Vandermeer eight years to write, let's hope the next one doesn't take quite as long.

Also excellent - The Virtu by Sarah Monette

2006-09-11T11:14:47Z

The cover of this book is somewhat of an improvement over the last one. The writing remains excellent.

This story picks up right after Melusine. We learn a lot more about the world the characters live in, particularly some of its history, which is quite interesting. The format is the same, alternating between the two main characters.

After I finished Melusine, I liked it so much I had to run out and buy this one in hardcover. It was worth it. There's not much to say other than that book is as good as Melusine.

No, it's not a gay romance novel - Melusine by Sarah Monette

2006-09-11T11:11:51Z

You could be forgiven for thinking that when looking at the cover. This may rank as one of the worst covers I've ever seen. If the book were a gay romance novel, it'd be the perfect cover, of course, but it's not.

I am absolutely stunned that this is the author's first novel. It's too good to be a first novel. I just liked everything about this book. The characters are very believable and well-written, the dialogue has a great feel. The world the story is set in is interesting, and it really feels like a world, not just a story setting. Rather, you get the sense that the story of the novel is just one small part of a larger place.

The book alternates between two characters in first person, which is unusual, but works quite well. One of the characters spends most of the book in varying degress of insanity, and this comes across very intensely in the sections written from his perspective.

There is a sequel, but this novel stands alone reasonably well. I'm always excited when I find a new author who's really great, not just good, and Sarah Monette is great. I'm eagerly awaiting future work.

Prodigal Blogger Returns - The Prodigal Troll by Charles Coleman Finlay

2006-09-04T14:07:35Z

It's been a while since I wrote anything here. I think I kind of gave up trying to make entries for every book I read, so from now on I'll just try to pick and choose. Something being better than nothing and all that.

On to the book. Despite the somewhat silly title, this is a well-worth-reading novel, with an interesting story I haven't really soon before. We've seen humans raised by animals, and by elves, and so on, but never by trolls.

Looking at the author's website, it looks like some of the material in the book was previously published as short stories, but it all comes together quite nicely, unlike some books that started as short stories.

The best parts of the book are when Maggot starts learning about human society after leaving the trolls. There are also some interesting bits at the end. Finlay happily avoids any obvious moralizing about trolls and humans, though the fact that the troll population is dwindling because of humans is clear.

Maggot dislikes much of what he sees in human society, but the human characters are varied, and have good reasons for much of what they do.

This is Finlay's first novel, though he seems to have written many short stories. This novel ends with sequel potential, and I'll be interested to see what does next.