The Royal Library of Alexandria (SP Book Discussion)

[OhBollox]

The Killing Hills was a solid meh. So-so plot and a protagonist a bit better than bog standard. Awkward viewpoint hopping in the same scenes. An attempt at showing lots of background knowledge that came off as if the author had once read a couple of books about the place.

The Fated Sky is The Calculating Stars sequel and is likewise respectable. I do feel it’s well into cozy catastrophe territory now though, a Mars mission in the 1960s would have meant loss of life, and in this universe the space program does not appear to have suffered the same scale of losses the real NASA has, despite less advanced technology and more ambitious flights. Still quite well written, but also skips over some of the more interesting aspects and events of such endeavours.

City of Dr. Moreau is an odd one. I can never quite decide if works like this, that take a concept and up the scale, are too derivative to ever surpass the original. It strikes me as a Hollywood film pitch in book form, despite the fact it’s several orders of magnitude more sensible. The faux Victorian prose likewise is either an attempt at making the book fit unobtrusively into its role as a sequel, or an awkward forced versimilitude that stands out as a sore contrivance. Jury’s out until I finish it.

Zero Bomb is the best of the bunch and the most challenging to read and talk about. A man abandons his life when his daughter dies, and is then roped in to a conspiracy years later with the promise of seeing her alive again. The recognisable near future of a high tech London that has become a panopticon for an authoritarian government is no great leap, and the unusual resistance movement that is a result, complete with low tech solutions to its problems, is a very nice approach. Has a kind of Gibson style to it, but Gibson always feels precise and neat, and Hill is all about the mess.

[OhBollox]

Seven Deaths of an Empire is…okay? Probably the best case of ‘good enough’ I’ve had in a book for a while, where two threads of a tale are slowly coming together, both literally and figuratively, but neither the characters nor the prose nor the plot nor the action is particularly compelling. It’s the Roman empire with magic, dead emperor on his way home, imperial family under threat, and our two viewpoint characters, the general in overall charge in the imperial capital, and a junior wizard with the force returning with the emperor’s body, offer what should be two very different perspectives, but aren’t. Two hundred pages in and I set it aside and am thinking seriously of quitting, which I still don’t like, but am doing more often. Life is too short for mediocre books. I am disappointed, but the book doesn’t do a long list of things it should: it doesn’t give us enough detail on the military side of things for either story thread, you get very vague strategic noises or almost no tactical detail. There’s an ongoing murder plot in close quarters, with so little detail you can’t tell what’s happening except in the most general sense. That could easily be a compelling murder mystery. It isn’t. It doesn’t give any real detail of imperial life. It doesn’t give any depth to many characters. It doesn’t really cover how the empire works. In one battle a force loses some 300+ of its 500 troops and the commander decides to soldier on. Either Matthews didn’t properly research the Roman empire, or he just isn’t interested in communicating anything about how his version of it works.

A Song for a New Day was a pleasant surprise. Former musician goes around a USA in the grip of a permanent plague and terror threat, searching for talent. Normally I don’t get on with award winners, but this deservedly won the Nebula. Vivid prose, well written characters, a believable world. Best book of this week so far.

The Dragon’s Path. Thought I’d give one half of James Sturm Abteilung Corey a go. Only just started it, but it is promising.

[js619]

@OhBollox

A Song for a New Day was a pleasant surprise. Former musician goes around a USA in the grip of a permanent plague and terror threat, searching for talent. Normally I don’t get on with award winners, but this deservedly won the Nebula. Vivid prose, well written characters, a believable world. Best book of this week so far.

Similar to Station Eleven setting?

[OhBollox]

Station Eleven has a full-on apocalyptic plague IIRC, here it’s been averted by a kind of permanent lockdown, and society is weirdly atomised as a result. No live gigs, no festivals, no crowds etc. It does have some commonalities with Station Eleven though, hadn’t considered the parallels!

[SpiceTheCat]

Shards of Earth, Adrian Tchaikovsky. Picked it up because I was in the mood for a bit of space opera and it delivered perfectly fine. Ragtag crew in a battered ship under a charismatic captain, roaming a galaxy threatened by big dumb objects. Moderately interesting societal notes about what the effect of a horrendous space kablooie would be on the fleeing and traumatised survivors, but this is all a bit told-not-shown. Yes, I am damning with faint praise. It actually reminded me of Consider Phlebas, with 100% more pages and 50% less verve. Perfectly adequate.

Risen, Benedict Jacka, 12 and final book of the Alex Verus series. The series sagged a bit but this is a nice wrap-up. Our agreeably cynical but moral hero has levelled up from mild shopkeeper to one-man magical army over the books and the ending is earned. Better than fine.

Now reading,Agrippina: Empress, Exile, Hustler, Whore by Emma Southon. Had to buy it on dead tree because it’s not available on iBooks, and also the audio version to get me through the work death march towards the holidays.

Eta: tangentially to @Natus, I didn’t realise Emma Southon had a Patreon. Also backed and archive-binged the backer rewards.

[doublebullout]

I tried the Kindle sample, but I found the author’s style extremely grating and juvenile. I wasn’t expecting a dry, scholarly read, but I also wasn’t expecting a National Lampoon -esque treatment. I do understand that she’s trying to de-Romanize the Romans. Still a hard pass for me as I just couldn’t enjoy reading it. The subject material is fascinating and important, though.

[OhBollox]

Hellstrom’s Hive. Like every other book of Herbert’s that isn’t Dune, it’s overshadowed by Dune, but it’s pretty good stuff, and it’s as claustrophobic as Dune is expansive. A human ‘hive’ comes up against a secretive government organisation and there begins a war of wits as the two sides struggle to identify and combat the other. One of those books that is really vicariously enjoyable because both sides are reprehensible in different ways.

Rendezvous with Rama, Clarke. The kind of book you don’t really get much of any more, because the style has changed considerably. Rather thin on characterisation, it relies entirely upon a series of mindblowers to carry the book, and perhaps the first is an uninterrupted dedicated skywatch program that goes on for fifty years. You can enjoy as much of my bitter laughter here as you care to imagine. The book relies entirely on science and the kind of awe it generates through its discoveries. Perhaps it doesn’t hold up so well against modern books that do that and have decent characters, but there’s a purity to it.

[biffpow]

@OhBollox

Perhaps it doesn’t hold up so well against modern books that do that and have decent characters, but there’s a purity to it.

This is Clarke exactly. He was all concept, all science all the time. I sometimes felt, reading him, that the humans and their stupid need for each having a personality just got in the way. But you’re right–that’s pure scifi in the truest old-school sense.

[Private_Prinny]

@OhBollox

Perhaps it doesn’t hold up so well against modern books that do that and have decent characters, but there’s a purity to it.

And I am all here for it. As I like some of the more mainstream space-opera stuff, it gets too often ruined by too much drama in it.

Nothing like a good old classic hard-fiction nerdgasm where the author doesn’t hit you with his fictional character sexual prowess over the head but hits you with his own intellectual science prowess instead. Who needs inter-crew drama when you can gush on a dozen of pages or so over mankind’s endeavors in cold fusion instead?

[OhBollox]

Cold Iron, Cameron. I’m in awe of the depth of the setting and the worldbuilding, which is a Byzantine Empire analogue, and the technology, arms, armour, and society, are all spot-on. The book’s worth it for that alone, and the added fantasy elements, principally in the form of a magical revolution, are a good addition. The detail is impressive, and people who read it will hopefully be informed as to the realities of the medieval western world. Unfortunately, and the more I read of Cameron, the more this shows, the protagonist is a complete and utter Mary Sue. Facing racism as a minority in the empire, he is nevertheless tall, good looking, masters languages with ease, and can cast magic and fight with equal skill. The opportunities that simply fall his way grow from the unusual to the incredible to the unbelievable, and it mars the whole book. The asides about how busy he is and how little time he has are short and impotent in the face of a man composed of irrepressible energy and motivation, a man who juggles three or four jobs with ease, and whose limitations are apparently purely theoretical.

There is a more interesting story to be had, I feel, in a man who exists in such a rich multi-ethnic empire, and feels at least a little sidelined by prejudice, who struggles to learn new languages, who is not adept at everything he does, who even bears ill-will to someone occasionally, even if they’re not openly trying to kill him. The whole book is cushioned by a man whose stumbles are really very small, and who, if he even falls, lands squarely upon more good fortune. I love everything about this book except the fucking protagonist, who I would happily stab to death in an alley, except I would fall over and die on my own knife if I tried.

[doublebullout]

Well, you see, I would postulate that most readers don’t want to read a book with a less competent version of themselves as the “hero”.

[OhBollox]

Yes, but statistically, most people are of below-average intelligence. I’m not responsible for what they choose to read, I prefer to read books where the characters, and especially the protagonist, are not poorly written. Life’s too short and I have better things to do. Cold Iron is the first in a trilogy. I won’t be buying the others because of this. And in a way, it undermines the entire book, since Cameron’s central idea is of a Renaissance man, a polyglot, autodidact, and polymath, but the character arrives at that state effortlessly, never suffers a serious setback, and his struggles are minimal. That’s not most peoples’ experience of learning, never mind learning multiple different trades, skills, and languages simultaneously. On the other hand, I’ve met plenty of people who pretended to be those things. If my frame of reference for a writer’s protagonist is every bullshitter I have ever met, I’m going to bet their intention has misfired badly.

A character winning over adversity, and genuinely struggling not just because of external factors but their own flaws, is an interesting character, and will make that problem fascinating. I’ll be captivated. If they’re a flawless paragon, that’s not interesting, in any respect, regardless of what adverse things they encounter, because you know they’re going to be victorious. The writer has failed at the first step, suspension of disbelief.

[OhBollox]

Second Shooter by Mamatas is a good 'un. Coming from one of those writers who doesn’t seem to write enough to suit me, it details a journalist’s attempt to document recurring cases of second shooters in killing sprees where, officially, there is no second shooter. The prose is excellent, the story well-grounded in detail and yet strange enough to be compelling.

Russian Revolution by McMeekin is something I thought I’d try because his July 1914 is the best book about the beginning of the First World War, a tight, detailed chronology where all the events are layered just-so for your perusal, like a watch with its clockwork taken out. I’m not sure where I stand with McMeekin’s revisionism; his stance on external factors is new, and they have been ignored in the past, the revolution was not an unstoppable machine, after all, but like his recent volume Stalin’s War, I feel part of it is merely a contrarian motive.

The Prophet by Deutscher is a hefty brick but in fairness, it’s a collected volume of three books on my friend and yours, Trotsky. I realised I didn’t actually know a lot about him, especially compared to Lenin and Stalin, and so here I am, up to my balls in 1600 pages. It is fascinating however to see the machinations and events from another perspective, and all the more so when you consider Trotsky’s reputation as more of a nerd than anything else, even if it was a nerdery for communism. He was, however much a man of letters, never worried about speaking to people or facing crowds of deserters, and he had a kind of ironclad belief in the revolution which saw him face down people, including Stalin, who would gladly have seen him dead. They eventually did, of course, and tried to obliterate his name into the bargain. What shines through is not a belief in power, or force, both of which he openly disparages, but his steadfast belief that people can be awakened to the possibility of change, even in the face of control and repression.

[Mirefox]

I finished Book 9 of the Expanse. I’m not going to into the book but I did want to simply say that I thought it stuck the landing and when you’ve invested 9 books’ worth or reading into a series, can you ask for anything more?

[Natus]

Do you prefer the novels or the series?

[Mirefox]

The novels. I like the series and think it is some of the better sci fi out there right now, though.

[OhBollox]

The Arisen, by James and Fuchs. I’m not surprised by incompetence any more, but I am always disappointed by it. Thus follows this first omnibus, collecting three volumes (out of fourteen) of this series. Now, the books are a collaboration between James, a Brit, and Fuchs, a Yank, and it seems Fuchs is on board to give some accurate detail for the military side of things, as the books follow a special ops team doing tactical nonsense in the zombie post-apocalypse. Perhaps I’m being cruel, but Fuchs doesn’t do that very well. At all. Each section of the book, which hops between heads with what would be jarring frequency if they were distinctive characters, is just vague action-hyperspecific weapon/kit/vehicle reference-vague action. The characters are blazing paragons of stereotyping. There are numerous sentences of pure cringe (see exhibit A below), every page.

I don’t know who these books are for. If you’re into the zombie apocalypse, there isn’t much detail. If you’re into mil fic, there isn’t much here, either in terms of the action or weapon/kit/tactics geekery. It’s odd how the action is so vague, when it makes up big chunks of the book. It’s almost like neither writer has any idea of what’s going on beyond model numbers. So few writers know how to write solid action scenes, and even fewer have any clue about how a military unit works. This book shows how not to do it, at length. It has a really good central idea, and everything else is bad. Even the prose is desperately amateurish, as characters smile out loud, lament their tragic backstories (a character without a tragic backstory sacrifices himself for little to no reason, presumably to make up for not having a tragic backstory), and do their jobs to the utmost 110% every day because the only easy day was yesterday. I rarely do this, but I got a refund. Dire.

The Chosen Twelve, Breakwell. A bunch of disposable humans on board a failing space station are trained for invasion by malfunctioning robots. This reminds me of Red Dwarf, in a good way, whereby the mixture of clueless humans and outright malicious AIs trapped in space together, and working at cross purposes, makes for some scenes which are probably much funnier than I give them credit for.

[OhBollox]

As a part-time fat bastard, I’m interested in occasionally losing some weight, and generally not being any unhealthier than my circumstances force me to be. Now, I’ve had success with keto before, in terms of rapid weight loss caused by nothing more than changing what I ate, and I have no problem understanding the science behind it. It turns out that’s perfectly okay, because this book is fucking stupid.

Citing membership numbers of Facebook groups isn’t the way to prove anything beyond fringe lunacy, I’m afraid, and the author has no hesitation in doing so.

This is probably the least disappointing part of the book, because it’s largely an extended excuse for why everyone is wrong about keto, and The Establishment Will Rue The Day They Crossed Me, Gary Pubes. The author regularly dismisses clinical trials completely, they’re simply not important (and so expensive, he emphasises, as if he is paying for them). Even better, my primary concern around keto is the large increase in saturated fat intake, which stimulates the growth of atherosclerosis, which is terrible for your overall health. Don’t worry, Gary’s got it covered. It turns out, even if saturated fat is terrible for you, no-one can prove it, and it probably doesn’t shorten your life appreciably, and if it does, no-one can prove it.

I am not making this up. I wish I was.

The book is nothing more than an extended evangelical forum post about the benefits of keto. There are no drawbacks, and if there are, you’re lying, because science doesn’t matter.

[geigerm]

@OhBollox

Citing membership numbers of Facebook groups isn’t the way to prove anything beyond fringe lunacy, I’m afraid, and the author has no hesitation in doing so.

Reminds me of the people I know who insisted Biden couldn’t have won the US election because he had far fewer Facebook followers than Trump. Perhaps coincidentally, one of those people is a huge keto enthusiast.

[OhBollox]