Perspective is a funny thing. After reading a book that was 90% spot on to the show (or vice versa), I didn’t find the endings between both to be too drastically different. I remember thinking “oh, finally the show departed from the book a bit” but still knowing more or less where it was going.
Not a bad thing at all. I’ve actually been praising the show to friends for fidelity to the books this far, and both are quality products.
Overall, I think I hated this book. It does a lot of things very well: its use of not-exactly-Italian is fresh and fun, and it’s got that Guy Gavriel Kay-style alternate history with a bit of fantasy. In Kay’s work, this serves to help you see stories more the way the people at the time would have experienced the world, defusing the modern expectation that things work according to knowable, integratable laws. But where Kay writes mostly self-contained books which may share a broader world built on meticulous research of a historical period and a keen understanding of humanity tempered by gentleness.
Navola doesn’t really do any of that. It’s clearly the first chunk of a longer series, ending with very little resolution of much of anything. There’s a few moments of action, but very little happens in the first 2/3 of the book, and when you think you’ve finally hit the payoff for all that setup, it very quickly turns to making characters suffer in such extreme and extended ways that it becomes tedious rather than impactful. Character depth is largely provided by making those who behave mostly to suggest X characterized as truly the opposite of X, in ways which are generally told rather than shown and rarely feel earned enough to enjoy verisimilitude or insight. And the world-building is similar; it’s enough like renaissance Italy to make you think it must all hang together, but Bacigalupi changes enough to make you question that (and I suspect has been sloppy with details—at one point, there’s mention of a fishing trireme. As I understand it, that would be fucking stupid, because a trireme has lots of oars, and thus huge labor costs, which would destroy profits).
And all of this is in service to a story about how a decent situation went to shit, and the people in the story started doing shitty things. The world does not leave me feeling a lack of such stories.
I thought I had written this up already, but I went back and checked, and apparently I did not. Which is weird, because I read it a while ago and the premise is ideal for this crowd: mysterious recluse designs limited edition and possibly cursed board games that people play in secret and weird stuff happens.
That’s the backstory. The plot is that a company somehow acquires the rights to this presumed-dead designer’s stuff and creates a contest where seven people will get to be interns for this company focused on solving a mystery related to the emergence of a new game created by the mysterious designer. We follow one of these interns as she is thrown into the deep end of some decidedly weird stuff. She doesn’t trust any of the other interns, she questions whether she is somehow being played in a game within a game, and the sense of mystery/weirdness is nicely developed.
I’ll skip the character development (which is pretty good, actually) and pacing (also good) and whatnot, and get right to the board game stuff. It would ruin aspects of the book to tell you too much about the games (other than that they are mysterious, dangerous, and surreal, which should be enough), but I will remark that the author seems to be trying to make everything as real-world as possible. This is good in one way, because it makes the stakes feel high. But I kept waiting for this to steer into fantasy, but it never quite gets there exactly. And, in another way, that’s too bad because even when things go upside down for the protagonist, you know a demon isn’t going to turn up and devour anyone’s soul, for example. Good and bad there.
It’s clear that the author (who I like and have read before; “Night Film” is her best prior book, which predates and has a lot in common with “Silver Nitrate” by Silvia Moreno-Garcia) did a little research into board games, but it’s also clear she is not truly into them in the way that we are. There are several difficult-to-ignore incongruities in some aspects of what she presents. For example, we are told that one of the designer’s games sold out hundreds of thousands of copies on the day it was released. There are two issues with this—1) no board game sells like that, and 2) we have been told that her games are all hand-made and very rare. So that doesn’t make sense.
The author seems to want to have it both ways in a larger sense: the book is set in the present day, and the designer of these games is a mysterious figure that no one knows much about who may or may not be dead. That’s fun certainly, but hard to swallow. Harder still is watching the author balance the sense that the players of these games are fringe, as though they belong to a “secret underground club,” with the fact that the designer and her games are quite famous. This doesn’t sync, and it does not match with what gaming is IRL. The closest thing I could imagine was if the games had been sold in Hot Topic at after-hours parties or something.
These conflicts are not deal-breakers, though, and I think they irked me (and maybe you) more than they would most readers. I enjoyed most of the characters and I really enjoyed the scenes of characters actually playing the games—there should have been more of those. The ending is mostly well-done (and I’m hyper-critical of endings), and it does leave open potential for a sequel, which I would read without hesitating. A strong B+ overall.
I am really behind on reviewing books here. This review is for the first three in this series, actually, which are bestsellers and very popular. They focus on a klatch of older British folks living in a retirement facility who meet every week to look at old files related to unsolved murder cases and try to solve them.
I really enjoy mysteries, and these had gotten such positive reviews, I decided to give the first one a try. That I’m reviewing the first three should tell you I enjoyed them enough to have continued with the series, though the books are each a little different in ways that are kind of unexpected (not in a bad way). The fourth is on my To-Read shelf, and the fifth comes out I think in September (which seems weird timing, given summer beach reading and whatnot). Of particular note, there is a Netflix series coming out in August based on these, and the cast is absurd: Jonathan Pryce, David Tennant, Richard E. Grant, Naomi Ackie, and that’s not even the principal four, which includes Pierce Brosnan, Helen Mirren, and Ben fucking Kingsley.
The first book begins with the introduction of a new member to their murder solving club because one of the previous members has been moved to serious care because she suddenly started declining. So that’s a cheery way to get things started. But then the foursome start interacting and we get to know their characters, and they’re all charming in their own way, and their dynamic is sharp at times, and then sweet at other times. They proceed to get started on solving the murder of the owner of their retirement facility, who was a cad and may have been associated with the son of one of the foursome.
One of the foursome is an ex-MI-6 agent, and Book 2 shifts focus more to her, as someone from her past shows up and gets the foursome entangled in a twisty murder that is really very satisfying. I think that was one of the things that it took me a while to reconcile with these books—because they feature people in their 70s doesn’t mean they were written for people in their 70s. The plots are complex, and the dialogue is knowing and snappy.
Book 3 shifts again, this time adding kind of a lot of new characters, several which are poised to be recurring it would seem. Again, twisty plot, satisfying resolution. Although I will say that I think adding all these new characters was too much for me. Not that I couldn’t track them (I’m old, but not that old) but that I felt they detracted a little from the dynamic of the central four.
The writing is honestly impressive. Osman’s plots, as I’ve noted, are well executed, and his grasp of the characters and their dynamics is very solid. Because these characters are old, there can be some philosophizing, but it’s not usually cloying or unwelcome—Book 2 is especially strong in terms of delivering this well. There is a real sense of danger throughout all three too, which most classic mysteries never touched at this level.
The one aspect I hold against them is that there is some focus on dementia and the harsher aspects of aging. Which makes sense. I can’t really fault Osman for including it. But it’s depressing, especially to me (I am older than you lot). If I start losing it, I invite one of you to come out here with one of your fancy knives or guns and finish me off, please.
If you like this genre, Book 1: B+, Book 2: A-, Book 3 B.
Good to hear; I’ve been wanting to try these. Formatting in Kindle is terrible, though.
I’m curious about everyone’s impression of Goodreads, if you ever browse it. I tend to go on and look at the “best of the year” style lists, more often than not looking for something for my wife to read.
I know I tread dangerous ground here, but I feel like the site is way overly-skewed towards women readers, and therefore women authors, and therefore rarely aligns with my own likes or impressions of books. And of course, I have to clarify that I have nothing against women authors, stories about women, etc., its just that the particular site has become rather predictable in what will be praised and what will be overlooked. Or am I just that out of touch with the modern book world that I am the outlier and Goodreads has a fairly accurate finger on the pulse of the literary world?
I don’t use it. The ratings system is as bad as any other and I’m fairly sure quite a few people are regularly bullshitting about how they’re reading so many books. I can plough through a book in a few hours, and I can’t even get close to the pace some are maintaining. The same problem I have on BGG and IMDB, people are collecting and rating based on hype, the trends are not only baffling but downright antithetical (“Here’s a list of 113 books in the same genre by my three authors that I’ve just read this week”) to reading as a pursuit, to me. I can’t be arsed to rate all the books I read, and I’m not sure I want to associate with people who do read like me, because it will inevitably be used to advertise things to me that I don’t want.
I don’t use goodreads any longer either. Apart from questioning whether I am a part of the site’s target user base, it started to become very obvious that the suggestions (“if you read and liked X, you’ll love Y”) were not based on anything other than marketing. And that had been the main reason I went to the site–for book recommendations.
To answer your question, I don’t know that goodreads has its finger on the pulse of the book world, but I also am more and more aware that I don’t really know the book world at this point, and its pulse is rather thready these days anyway. So goodreads could be spot-on, and I’ve grown clueless. I look at the amazon bestseller lists in some of the niche categories, and that can be slightly telling, but ebook reading seems to have a weird influence on certain areas–fantasy and thrillers, for example, where there are often titles by authors who have never published a dead-tree book but have a following because they’re actually romance writers using the tropes of their selected category to be “dark fantasy” instead.
But what do I know? I only read physical books. And I’m currently reading “A Month in the Country” which was published in 1980 and is set during the 1920s and is so foreign to today’s world, it might as well be science fiction. I don’t think my reading habits would lend themselves to any algorithm. Though if anyone knows a genuinely good “If you read X, you’ll like Y” site, I’d be delighted to try.
I was an early adapter, back when the idea (at least it seemed this way) seemed to be more geared toward a social aspect — “share with your friends!” It felt very much like early Facebook.
In short order, I discovered: 1) I don’t really want to share what I’m reading with my friends; when I do, I just tell them; and 2) Most of my friends read dumb stuff.
Currently, I only use it for the lists. I go through phases — like an espionage phase, a non-fiction phase, a phase for a certain author, etc. — and the lists sometimes provide titles I was unaware of.
Other than that … shrug. I’ve thought about just deleting my account many, many times.
I have some attraction to the idea of goodreads, much as I have an attraction to keeping my board game collection up-to-date on BGG or keeping a record of which hikes I’ve done. In each of these cases, I’ve found I just don’t care enough to develop the habit. With goodreads now owned by Amazon, I feel like it’s probably best avoided, for me. No need to give any one company that much power over me.
Instead, I just subscribe to the RSS feed for Transfer Orbit, which calls out new and notable sci-fi and fantasy monthly, and keep an eye on what people say here. I feel like I’ve been pretty happy with what I’ve read as a result, and I have a plentiful wishlist.
As for what I’ve been reading recently, Dungeon Crawler Carl. Terrible idea for a book. Ought to be complete crap. But I don’t think it’s taken me more than two days to read any of the first five books, and I’m trying to save the sixth as an incentive to do some unpleasant task.
Truly the shittest timeline.
I use Goodreads but only to track my reading and, peripherally, see what my friends are reading.
I also use it as an easy way to track books in a series or just by an author.
I certainly don’t use it for recommendations or anything like that.
My Reading Challenge is usually around 55 books a year, but I do sprinkle some novellas in there that don’t take very long to read.
So a bit of a cheat 
But that’s offset by taking 2-4 weeks to read a dense history book
