Lock In by John Scalzi
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
I really enjoyed Lock In, and I think it would appeal to a wide range of readers. Scalzi has a talent for writing sci-fi in a way that is warm and relatable. A good comparison for this book is [b:The Peripheral|20821159|The Peripheral|William Gibson|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1402651292s/20821159.jpg|40167043] by William Gibson. Both deal with similar motifs: imagine a world where people can project their consciousness into a machine and interact in the word via the machine. Both involve a murder mystery. Gibson writes in a style that evokes the cool and the mystique of these future advances, as well as the sub-cultures that evolve around them. He writes in a way that requires you to give his words your absolute focus, and usually a re-reading is required before the entire story resolves itself for you. Gibson's writing keeps you constantly off balance, fully aware that the world you are reading about is alien to yours. Scalzi, on the other hand, writes in a matter of fact fashion that feels comfortable and familiar. You quickly forget that the people interacting in a conversation might all be machines acting as avatars for the people behind them. Both styles appeal to me, but I think Scalzi's work is something that I can more easily recommend to a variety of readers. If I had any complaint about this story it might be that everything ties together just a little too neatly at the end. Crimes are messy affairs, and to see everything wrap up with a pretty little bow that you could see coming well in advance is a bit of a let down. Still, the story was engaging and turned into quite the quick read. I'd recommend Lock In to just about anyone.
View all my reviews
Review: Lock In
Review: Alif the Unseen
Alif the Unseen by G. Willow Wilson
My rating: 2 of 5 stars
This book has a lot going for it, but never finds a way to pull it together in a cogent way. There are so many elements that interest me: technology, programming, mysticism, hidden worlds, magic, dystopia, rebellion. Even so, I can't recommend this book.
The first two hundred pages do a decent job of setting the stage. Alif is a teenager who manages a social darknet where dissidents against the state can freely discuss their political views without threat of retribution. Alif is not a participant in these discussions, merely a facilitator, but he doesn't harbor any love for the State. The State has developed a powerful weapon for sussing out the source of these darknets and exposing their contributors referred to as the Hand.
Alif is a petty, unlikable boy. He is disrespectful and brash. When he is rebuffed by his girlfriend who has been betrothed to another man, he flies into a rage. He directs his rage into writing a virus that can detect the online behavior of his ex and prevent her from accessing his systems. He isn't quite sure how it works, but it works.
Let's stop here for a moment, as this was my first whiff of danger that the story was going to be a real turn off for me at times. I am a programmer. I've been doing this for decades. The descriptions of programming and how computers work in this story are more than just nonsense; they are ridiculous. Writing code does not work anything like what is described in these pages. If you are a coder you will likely find yourself at a point in this book where you must put your hand over your eyes to keep them from completely rolling out of your skull. It only gets worse from here. At one point Alif is in a fit of code writing where he goes into a daze and pictures himself riding a "column of data into the sky as he looks down at a crumbling base". Good grief. When Alif awakens from his stupor he finds that the PC he was coding on his literally melted to slag (conjure to mind that awful Sandra Bullock movie The Net). It was here that I nearly put the book down and decided not to finish, but the allure of the mystical jinn in the story enticed me to move on. Without beating this horse too much, suffice it to say that the writing on technology was poorly researched at best.
Alif's struggles change him as a person. By the end of the book he is humbled by his experiences as he sees the start of the Arab Spring (a bit of prescience on the author's part here, as the book pre-dates the rebellions throughout the middle east). Even so, there is still a lot to dislike. The story finishes a total mess. Hundreds of rioters rush up a staircase into an apartment for no particular reason. Alif has a final confrontation with the big bad of the story where they get into semantic discussion of their opposing views (keeping in mind there is a riot going around them, within this apartment).
Do not read this book if you know anything about programming. You will hate it. Do not read this book if you are a feminist. The women in the story are set dressing at best, and targets of derision throughout. Honestly, I'm at a loss at who I would recommend this to. It is a YA book dressed to belie that categorization. Its failings far outweigh its merits.
View all my reviews
Review: The Peripheral
The Peripheral by William Gibson
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
William Gibson isn't for everyone. His books don't hold your hand or spoon feed you the world he has crafted. Instead, you are thrust into am ongoing conversation as if you had been there all along. This can be disorienting and confusing, and for a lot of readers will be a turn off. I love it, though, and I think it gives his novels a lot of re-read value.
The Peripheral is probably the strongest example of this as it has two worlds for you to come to grips with. The first world is that of Burton and Flynne; a near future with rampant corruption, a drug driven Maker Bot economy, and a massive power gap between the wealthy and the poor. The second world is seventy years further into the future of the first. An event referred to as the Jackpot has the left the world in a technologically advanced state, but also...antiseptic? The world is clean and tidy to the point of being without soul.
The core of this story is a murder mystery. Flynne has witnessed a murder and must survive long enough to identify the murderer, who is bending his incredible resources in am attempt to eliminate Flynne before she has that opportunity. That would be interesting enough, but now compound that with the concept that the witness and murderer are living in two disparate timelines, where the future has access to life-like full body avatars and absolutely no qualms about destroying Flynne's alternate timeline. The concepts are fascinating, and I feel the effort of grokking the two worlds definitely pays off.
I highly recommend The Peripheral to any Gibson or SciFi fan.
View all my reviews
Review: What If?: Serious Scientific Answers to Absurd Hypothetical Questions
What If?: Serious Scientific Answers to Absurd Hypothetical Questions by Randall Munroe
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
This is your next read. I don't care what sorts of books you typically like, this is what you should read next. Not necessarily cover to cover, but get a copy, put it in your bathroom, and let your family / pets wonder why you are in there for so long...and giggling.
Randall Munroe (of XKCD web comic fame) maintains a blog titled "What If?" wherein he attempts to apply rigorous scientific methods to answer completely ridiculous questions. The book contains many entries from that blog (so go there and read some for a taste) as well as even more (51%) that are making their first appearance in the book. Munroe's sense of wit and insatiable curiosity shine throughout. Each question is answered in anywhere from 2 to 6 pages, and the reasoning provided is accessible to the layman. If you are curious to know more, Munroe provides a helpful list of sources at the end.
As I've traveled for the holidays I've had this book with me and it never fails to find a reader. I loved it, and I think you will too.
View all my reviews
Review: Robopocalypse
Robopocalypse by Daniel H. Wilson
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
If you read the top reviews of Robopocalypse on Goodreads you are going to see some pretty low scores and some scathing criticism. Those criticisms are all spot on. Fortunately, they didn't deter me from enjoying this book. Sure, it is one bad cliche after another. The characters are flat cutouts that you never feel any true empathy for. This is the book of an action movie, but before the action movie is released. It tries to adopt the World War Z style of small set pieces as told by those who experienced it first hand....but it doesn't do it very well.
Archos, an experimental artificial intelligence, manages to usurp its creators and launch into full scale genocide mode. The overriding goal of the machine is to turn the world into a sort of zoo, with all life achieving what Archos believes is a natural balance. This includes humans, but only a very limited way. Thus, Archos goes about utilizing all automata available to end the overabundance of human life. The survivors of the initial outbreak of war band together to fight back.
This is not great literature. This is the book form of a SyFy channel original. Take that for what it is worth.
View all my reviews
Review: Bird Box
Bird Box by Josh Malerman
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
I think folks are going to run hot and cold on this one. I enjoyed it, but as I gave my wife the synopsis she just chuckled and rolled her eyes. Bird Box asks the reader to accept that there is something that can be seen that will drive a person mad. Mad to the point that they do harm to others and themselves. That's a pretty big leap to make, but if you can hang on to that reality (and not get too curious) you will probably enjoy this book. On the other hand, if you are at all the curious or inquisitive type, this book is going to drive you bonkers. The characters can't see anything (or else they would go mad) so you don't get a visual picture of the environment...or of the characters for that matter. You would think the author would compensate for this by describing how the other senses come to describe the places and people of the story. Not so. What you are left with are blank slates that you can fill in with your own imagination. Characters are barely discernible (if you've read the story, try describing the differences between Jules and Felix...tough right?). Where the author excels is in tempting you into reading the next chapter. Present day and flashback are braided together through each chapter, and each chapter finishes with some sort of cliffhanger. That makes for a quick read, but not necessarily great story telling. Ultimately, I think this is a fine beach read, but easily forgotten.
View all my reviews
Review: The Slow Regard of Silent Things
The Slow Regard of Silent Things by Patrick Rothfuss
My rating: 2 of 5 stars
Rothfuss gives ample warning that this story is different. This story breaks reader expectations of what a book is supposed to be, and that may not sit well with everyone. He's right. I am intrigued by the character of Auri, so I was kind of excited to read a novella that dives a bit more into the essence of her character. I have been under the impression that Auri might be a Fae spirit. Would I find the answer here to Auri's mystery?
In a word: no. Unfortunately, I didn't particularly like this novella. There were times it seemed that Rothfuss were simply throwing a thesaurus at inanimate objects in order to compose a scene. This is a short story for folks who love words. There is no arc, no tension, no closure. We see Auri as she lives a week, preparing for a visit, presumably Kvothe. I did enjoy the illustrations, but would encourage those who are looking for more on Kvothe's work to simply bide their time to the next full novel. Perhaps the completion. Of the series will add some weight to the content of Slow Regard.
View all my reviews
Review: Energized
Energized by Edward M. Lerner
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
I am interested in sources of alternative, and clean, energy. A friend of mine rightfully picked up on that interest and gave me this book as a gift. I like the premise: the world has experienced an upheaval in energy production and prices due to a catastrophe that has ruined the middle east's oil supply. Alternative energy resources (solar, wind, gas, tidal, etc.) are being actively capitalized on. In addition, the US is working towards a new orbital power platform that will beam power from space to the areas that need it most.
There is a lot of interesting science here, and a nice action story to frame it in. I wasn't entirely impressed with the character interactions in the book, but the legs of this story are the action and science. Given what it is, I was very entertained, and would easily recommend this story to anyone with interests similar to my own.
View all my reviews
Review: Lightspeed: Year One
Lightspeed: Year One by John Joseph Adams
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
I enjoy science fiction, and I am definitely on the laser side of the sword and laser spectrum. I enjoy reading about interesting new ideas and conjecture about how future developments might shape our lives. I really enjoy dystopian novels, but I am actually quite the optimist at heart. For all of these reasons, Light Speed seemed like a perfect match to my interests.
Overall this collection is very, very dark. Many of the short stories paint extremely bleak pictures of a possible future. Loneliness, separation, abandonement...these are all central themes. A few of the stories here stood out. I enjoyed the Stephen King story, as well as the story from Le Guinn. Altogether, though, I have to say that this collection was too bleak for my taste. I like my dystopia with a dash of good, and you won't find any here.
View all my reviews
Review: Guitar For Absolute Beginners
Guitar For Absolute Beginners by Daniel Emery
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
This year I have been trying to teach myself guitar. I picked up Rocksmith and had some fun with that, and tried my hand at playing from tablature found online. Unfortunately, I never felt like I was "getting it". On the advice of another self taught player, I picked up Guitar for the Absolute Beginner. It has a nice, conversational format, and takes you from the very basics of how to hold the guitar and how to use a pick, to your first chords. The book is intended to follow a class by a school in New York, but it works just as well for solo play. By the end of the book you are to be comfortable withe the CAGED chords, and have a few songs to play to practice each.
I am not sure that I would recommend this book. It isn't that the book is bad. Instead, I think you can get just as much use out of the Justin Guitar series of videos on YouTube.
So, can I play guitar? No, but not for any lack in the material. I can scratch out the chords, and sometimes even switch between chords in rhythm, but it will take a lot more practice before I feel comfortable.
View all my reviews
Review: Bossypants
Bossypants by Tina Fey
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Tina Fey is funny and smart, so it is no surprise that her book is also funny and smart. Bossypants is mostly a biography of the highlights of Fey's career. She briefly discusses her childhood, and then moves on to her career starting with Chicago's Second City, Saturday Night Live, and 30 Rock. There is humor throughout, as well as a health dose of feminism. I particularly enjoyed the audio book as it is narrated by Tina herself. The only downside of this medium is that, due to checking it out from the library, I missed out on the PDF she references for the visual aids. I would recommend this to anyone.
View all my reviews
Review: The Fall of Hyperion
The Fall of Hyperion by Dan Simmons
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Hyperion had a cliffhanger ending and for a while, I thought Simmons might just be stalling throughout The Fall of Hyperion. He created the captive audience with the first book. What happens to the pilgrims? Will they defeat the Shrike or not? Let me warn you that you are not going to get a quick nor easy answer.
I like these two books, and for very different reasons. Hyperion was almost a series of short stories giving us a rich background on each of the characters. Strangely, Fall turns them into pawns in part of a much larger plot. I enjoyed the second book for it's density, and it is _dense_. There is a lot going on, and while I originally thought that weaving of Severn's wakefulness as a way to provide political overview might be stalling, by the end I'm thinking that if there was any stalling it was his dreaming.
I have no appreciation for poetry. For that reason, I think there may be a lot of nuance or subtlety here that is lost on me. Both books have prose that, for me, did nothing. It was totally opaque. That is probably a fault with me, but it is the one area that I felt could have been trimmed and not reduced the story. I get the sense that Simmons is an enormous fan of Keats and this was his love letter.
Theology plays an even greater role in this second book than it did in the first. I had speculated that each of the pilgrims represented one of the 7 deadly sins in my earlier review. I'm not so sure, now, that each character was intended to play that role, at least not entirely. There are whiffs of The Inferno here, as Severn plays both Virgil and Dante. The Shrike metes out punishment paired to the sin of each character.
Hoyt: Pride - Dies at the hands of the shrike and is resurrected as Paul Dure. Dure later refers directly to his pride bringing about his fall.
Kassad: Lust - Dies in ultimate battle with the Shrike(s).
Silenus: Gluttony - He was a glutton for his poetry. His punishment is to endure constant pain, potentially for eternity, finding only small relief in reciting poetry that the Shrike may be feeding him.
Weintraub: Sloth - Refused to act on the command given him, and is left with nothing he can do after the Shrike takes Rachel from him.
Masteen: Envy? - Still not sure what to make of this character's story, although we do learn a great deal about the Templars and their motives.
Lamia: Greed? - the 7 sins metaphor really starts to fall apart here. Not to fear, Lamia still gets to participate in the biblical references, taking on the role of Divine Mother.
Consul: Wrath? - Yeah, the 7 sins metaphor is completely out the window here.
So...an homage to Dante, perhaps, or maybe I'm just not familiar enough with Keats. In any case, I would definitely recommend these first two books of the Hyperion series to my fellow sci-fi fans.
View all my reviews
Review: Hyperion
Hyperion by Dan Simmons
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
I really enjoy the way this story (or stories, as it were) are told. Seven pilgrims are on a journey to meet the Shrike, a mythical, murderous creature that can control time. Each member of the group must relate their story to the rest during the pilgrimage. Each of these stories is told in a different way, giving each character a distinct voice. Each story is also told during a particular leg of the voyage. I think each of the characters are intended to represent one of the "7 deadly sins".
Father Hoyt tells a story of pride while the pilgrims travel on a tree-ship through space. He bears the weight of his contemporary who was not satisfied to remain in ignorance but demanded that he learn the true nature of a small tribe on Hyperion.
Colonel Kassad tells a story of lust while they enter the atmosphere of Hyperion and land. He is enamored with a specter that only appears to him when he is surrounded by violence.
The poet Silenus tells a story of gluttony as they travel upriver. Gluttony here, not in the sense of consumption of food, but in the sense of selfishness. All other concerns are trivial compared to his quest to create the perfect poetry.
The scholar Weintraub tells a story of sloth as they sail the sea of grass. He dreams of the shrike, the Lord of Pain, and disobeys the shrike's order to render his daughter as an offering.
The templar Masteen is lost before he tells his tale. I'm left to assume that his is the tale of envy.
The detective Lamia tells a story of greed while they travel by cable car over a frozen mountain range. On the surface she is telling the tale of her client, Johnny. Johnny is an AI created as an experiment by the techno core, a collective of artificial intelligences. Really, though, this is the story of the fractured core, and their greed for ultimate intelligence. I really enjoyed the pulpy noir style used in telling this story.
The consul tells a story of wrath as the group retires in castle of the dead. He seeks retribution against the powers that led to death of his grandmother.
Unfortunately, we don't get closure as we're left with a cliffhanger leading into the next book. I'll definitely be reading it to see what happens next.
View all my reviews
Review: Let's Explore Diabetes with Owls
Let's Explore Diabetes with Owls by David Sedaris
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
This is a departure from my usual reading. I've heard a number of David Sedaris's essays on This American Life, and I've enjoyed them, so I thought I would try one of his audio books. This is a broad collection without any particular theme that I took away. There are a few gems here that gave me a chuckle, such David's experience waiting in line at an airline and the idle chit-chat with other folks there. Some of the essays were taped in front of a live audience, and I found that I preferred those. Overall I'm not sure that I would go out of my way to recommend this book, but it did help to pass the time during my commute.
View all my reviews
Review: Neverwhere
Neverwhere by Neil Gaiman
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
I really enjoyed this tale. Each of the characters has a distinct voice that I can hear as I'm reading them. I can see twitchy Mr. Croup fancying himself eloquent as Mr. Vandermar ambles along with him, at once bemused and bored. The environment of London below is visceral. It may be the heat of August right now, but I can feel the cold and damp as Richard and Door weave their way throughout London Below.
I've recommended Stardust to many folks, and I would recommend Neverwhere just as highly.
View all my reviews
Review: A Killing Frost
A Killing Frost by John Marsden
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
The first book in the series was excellent because it introduced us to the characters as well as the invasion that changed these kids' lives forever. The second book was ok, but I this third installment was so much better. The group from Hell has taken on a much bigger target as they investigate Cobbler's bay, but the risks are also much higher as well.
If I had one criticism of this series it is that all of the character emotions are a bit shallow. That's not to say the characters are shallow. These teenagers are in an awful situation, and I would expect there to be some extremes to their highs and lows. Instead, everything seems to move along with only modest ups and downs. I was especially aware of this in the last few pages which involves a very dramatic turn but it seems to elicit little if any response from the characters.
I'm enjoying this series, and eager to see what the next installment will have the troop from Wirrawee doing.
View all my reviews
Review: Brave New World
Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
Brave New World appealed to me so much more than 1984 did. They both deal with similar concepts: a controlling government that imposes its own will on society. The government of 1984 does so by oppression. The government of Brave New World controls through kindness. Humans are conditioned even before birth to be consumers. They are conditioned to lack a fear of death. Each child is born predestined for a particular role in society, and through careful conditioning, developed to love playing that role.
Brave New World is going to stick in my mind for a long time, and may be one of those few books that I go back to re-read in the future. If we don't see the cage, are we free?
View all my reviews
Review: 1984
1984 by George Orwell
My rating: 2 of 5 stars
Lots of people are exposed to 1984 in high school as required reading. I wasn't one of those people, but I still was aware of many of the concepts of the story because they are part of our common discourse with regard to politics and government. I decided it was time to get the full story and checked this out from my library.
First, an explanation of my 2-star rating. I didn't enjoy this book. I didn't care about Winston, or Julia, or any of the other characters. I felt that it wasn't even really so much as a story as it was a loose framework upon which Orwell's thoughts on communism could be hung.
That aside, Orwell's thoughts on communism and power are really interesting. While I wouldn't recommend reading the entire book, I would highly recommend reading the book within the book (Goldstein's manifesto). It is a very frank essay covering how a body in power might abuse that power to remain in power forever, and purely for power's sake. It's terrifying. The behavior of the party and Big Brother is taken to an extreme, so I don't think it is fair to say that any current government has taken the tenets of that essay to heart. However, it is easy to identify various elements in place all over the world. Whether it is falsification of the past (holocaust denial), falsification of production (North Korea), or continuous involvement in warfare.
View all my reviews
Review: The Light Fantastic
The Light Fantastic by Terry Pratchett
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
The same whimsical humor from the first discworld book is present here. We get introduced to a handful of new characters that I hope we see more of. I thought this book was entertaining, but not something I would recommend. This style of humor is great in small samples, but I grew tired of it after the first hundred pages. Still, I will probably continue reading the series.
View all my reviews
Review: Brain Jack
Brain Jack by Brian Falkner
My rating: 2 of 5 stars
Have you seen the movie "The Net"? The one with Sandra Bullock? If you watched that and thought, "Wow, hacking is really cool" then this book is for you. If, on the other hand, you laughed yourself out of your chair at the ridiculous way hacking was portrayed, you may want to give Brain Jack a pass. The story builds momentum well, and there is plenty of action, but there were times when I thought my eyes were going to roll right on out of my head.
View all my reviews
