Category: Book Review (Page 4 of 4)

Book Review: Feed by Mira Grant

March 25, 2014 / Ryan / 0 Comments

The post-apocalyptic genre usually seems to take an all-or-nothing stance on civilization. Most post-apocalyptic stories either start with the world as it is and progress toward complete breakdown of society, or they skip the first step and begin after the apocalypse is in full swing.

Feed, by Mira Grant (the open pen-name of Seanan McGuire) takes a different approach. It is set in 2040, decades after an unfortunate reaction between virus-based cures for the common cold and cancer created the Kellis-Amberlee virus, which re-animates any mammal greater than 40 lbs as a zombie upon death. But unlike so many other post-apocalyptic stories, society has not completely broken down in Feed. Yes, it has changed drastically, but there are still countries, still governments, and electricity, and technology. There just also happen to be zombies.

I suspect one reason this middle-ground approach is not often taken is that it’s much harder to explore the many ways, large and small, our existing society would change, than it is to burn everything to the ground and start over. Luckily, Feed handles this challenge extremely well. Everything is thought out in great detail, and from a writing perspective, the book is a marvel of making info-dumps palatable. It’s just so interesting to learn how things have changed after the zombie outbreak that I found I didn’t mind the main character taking frequent breaks from the narrative to explain everything from why people don’t eat much meat anymore (large mammals carry the active virus, which will turn you into a zombie), to the landmark court cases related to the outbreak (using zombies or the virus as a weapon is legally considered terrorism), to a thousand other details large and small.

Feed is as much a near-future science fiction story about journalism as it is a post-apocalyptic zombie story. The main characters, Georgia and Shaun Mason, and their friend Buffy, are professional bloggers who are chosen to follow a presidential campaign as part of the press corps. Their reporting is made possible not only by traditional interviews and fact-checking, but a complex web of hidden cameras and microphones and wireless transmitters and encryption. It’s a fascinating speculative look at the future of the internet and reporting. Despite being set in a world that could come across as just a campy horror story, Feed has some important things to say about journalistic integrity, the culture of fear that is such a part of modern cable news, the role of technology and the internet in the near future, and the evolving ideas of privacy and sharing information. The latter is particularly relevant right now given how much the NSA has been in the news lately.

Another thing that I enjoyed was that, unlike many zombie apocalypses, the world of Feed is a world where there were bad zombie movies long before the real zombies arrived on the scene. In fact, the star of bad zombie movies in the Feed universe is revered as a national hero for educating people about how to deal with zombies. Also, Buffy takes her name from “some pre-rising TV show character”.

I listened to Feed as an audiobook, and the main narrator does an excellent job, capturing Georgia’s attitude and voice very well, and doing surprisingly good and distinct voices for the other main characters as well. The narrative voice in the book is full of wit and sarcasm, and it was nice to see it captured so well by the reader. The secondary reader was pretty good too, though not as consistent with his accents and voices.

I don’t have much to criticize about Feed. I guess I would say that it can be a bit verbose at times, and despite the skill with which the info-dumping was done it did sometimes get to be a bit much. And although I understand the narrative purpose behind it, the tedious repetition of security systems and blood-testing that the characters go through got a bit tiresome. My only other criticism was that the bad guy was a caricature and too obviously bad from the start. All in all though, pretty minor stuff, and I really enjoyed the book.

Bottom line: Feed is a great zombie story and a great near-future sci-fi story. It is, unusually, set in a post apocalyptic world where there is still some semblance of the world we all know, and the deviations caused by advances in tech and the zombie outbreak are very well-thought out. It’s an exciting read with an emotional and satisfying ending, and the audiobook was very good thanks to a great reader.

Book Review: Year of Wonders

March 16, 2014 / Ryan / 1 Comment

It’s not as if I didn’t know what I was getting into. The subtitle for “Year of Wonders” by Geraldine Brooks is “A Novel of the Plague”, and I read some reviews before plunging in, so I was ready for lots of death. I think what threw me off was the title, which seems to promise good things amid the horrors of the plague. I don’t think it gives too much away to say that this novel is lacking in “wonders” and rich in terrible things, above and beyond even the plague.

The premise is this: in 1665 a small town of ~350 people in England is infected by the black plague, and the town rector convinces the people that instead of fleeing to relatives in other towns, they should protect the neighboring villages by quarantining themselves, cutting off all contact with the outside world and dealing with the plague as best they can. The main character is Anna Frith, servant to the rector and his wife, and as the book progresses she becomes close friends with them and learns a great deal about caring for the ill. She grows more confident and skilled even as she is surrounded by loss and grief.

The writing in this book is very good, and the historical details are excellent, touching on everything from herb lore to religion to lead mining. Brooks does an especially good job of introducing the reader to the various characters of the town, which makes it awful to read of their gruesome deaths when they are stuck by the plague. I read plenty of fiction rife with death, but it is rarely delivered in such unflinching detail and it is easy to become numb to it. That is never the case with this book. The writing is so skillful and detailed in its description of burst plague sores and maggoty bodies and entire families wiped out in days that it is difficult to read at times.

With such a dark topic, I had hoped that the “wonders” in the title might allude to moments of joy or comic relief even during the darkest times. But other than a healthy birth here or there, and the friendship between the main characters, scenes not dealing directly with plague victims often dealt with all the other madness that comes when uneducated superstitious people are subjected to something like plague. Witch hunts leading to unjust murder, Anna’s drunken and abusive father charging exorbitant prices to dig graves for families before the sick person is even dead, death by self-flagellation, men trying to steal a little girl’s rights to her father’s lead mine after her entire family has died, the wealthiest family in town fleeing the plague and leaving their servants homeless and penniless, the book is unrelentingly depressing. Even the backstories of the main characters, from long before the plague strikes, are awful to hear.

I’m conflicted because all of these depressing things are told very skillfully. As I said, the writing is very good, and normally I would enjoy a book more for that reason. My main complaint about the writing is the ending. I won’t give it away, but there is a twist at the end that seemed very strange and spoiled what seemed to be the hint of something positive at the end of a long dark tunnel.

So, the bottom line for this book is: it is full of great historical detail and skillful writing, but it is relentlessly depressing. This is not something you read on the beach for a fun bit of escapism. It was even darker than I thought it would be, going in well aware of its subject matter. Still, it’s a vivid and memorable story about the black plague and how it affects the people of a small town, and I will not forget it anytime soon. Despite the depressing nature and strange ending, I would say that it is worth reading. Just go in aware of what you’re getting into, and have something lighthearted at hand to read or watch when you need a break. And be thankful you live in a time with antibiotics.

PS – I should also note that I listened to the audiobook, which was read by the author. Sometimes authors reading their own book can be bad, but she was actually a pretty good reader. For just plain narration she sounds a little boring, but she did the emotional inflection of dialogue quite well. Her voice is very similar to that of Anna from Downton Abbey (Joanne Froggatt), and with the main character named Anna, I was constantly picturing the Downton Abbey character.

Book Review: World War Z

March 8, 2014 / Ryan / 0 Comments

I love me some post-apocalyptic sci-fi, so I was excited to see this book as an audiobook option at the library, especially when I learned that it was not just a single reader, but a full cast of voice actors. Unfortunately, I had a hard time getting into this. Part of that may be that the version I listened to was abridged, but it may also have something to do with how the story is told.

The idea behind this book is that it is a collection of stories told by survivors of a zombie apocalypse. On its face, this is a pretty cool idea. You get to see the events from many different perspectives, each illuminating how events unfolded in their part of the world. The downside of this is that you already know the ending. People survived and are writing up government reports on the events of the war, so that immediately takes away some of the tension from the stories. Also, there is no main character to follow and root for. So the impetus to keep reading ends up being just “how did they all survive?” and that only goes so far.

Another side effect of this storytelling format is that the stories are supposedly in people’s own words, but the way people talk is quite different from the way a novel is written. I found that a lot of times the stories would feel unnatural because what was supposedly an eyewitness account would end up full of detailed description more suited to novel narration. This might be a case where the audiobook format worked against the story: hearing someone actually speak the words out loud might have sounded more jarring than reading them on the page.

The abridgment was also a problem. It was clear that the story was missing pieces, and I did not realize that I was only minutes away from the ending when it finally came. I’m always puzzled by abridgment. If there were pieces of the story that could be cut, presumably that would happen before publication, and whatever was published is there for a reason.

I should say that despite all these complaints, I did enjoy some parts of the book. Odd as it sounds, I found the higher-level stories that talked about the geopolitics of the war or the logistics of re-starting industry in the wake of the apocalypse more interesting than some of the “small-scale” stories of single characters trying to survive. Brooks does a good job of depicting a truly global apocalypse, something that is often overlooked in the genre in favor of following a small group of survivors. This is a case where the format of World War Z works in its favor. Being able to view the apocalypse from South Africa, and China, and Japan, and Cuba, and the US, etc. was refreshing.

Another thing that I liked was that spread of the disease responsible for the zombies was depicted realistically. It’s not as if one day everyone wakes up and there are zombies. The cases of infection gradually grow more and more common, and by the time it is recognized for the true threat that it is, it is already too widespread to stop it. This struck me as pretty realistic (ignoring the part about the zombies of course).

So, bottom line: it didn’t really work for me, and I’m surprised it has become so popular. The format worked against it in places, and I’m sure the abridgment didn’t help, but there were certain stories that were still pretty interesting, especially when they showed the big picture which is so often lost in post-apocalyptic fiction.

Book Reviews: Before They Are Hanged and Warrior’s Apprentice

March 1, 2014 / Ryan / 0 Comments

I’ve been consuming a lot of fiction recently, but have fallen behind on my reviews. So, let’s get caught back up with some two-for-one reviews, shall we?

Before They Are Hanged by Joe Abercrombie

This is the second book in the “First Law” series, and I thought it was a bit better than the first book. The first book ended after introducing a bunch of interesting characters but leaving them on the cusp of doing more interesting things. In book two, we see them set off on their respective quests: Colonel West and Dogman and his crew are in the North fighting against Bethod’s invasion, Logan, Luthar, and Ferro are off on a quest led by the mage Bayaz, and Glotka is stuck defending a besieged city in the south. Having multiple POV characters in the same place worked well, allowing them to play off of each other, and I found myself looking forward to the chapters dealing with those characters, and inwardly groaning a bit when I ran into a Glotka chapter. Don’t get me wrong, Abercrombie does an admirable job of making a crippled torturer a viable main character, but Glotka’s chapters always seemed more static, while the other characters are off having adventures and also growing and changing in response to those adventures and each other.

There is again lots of blood and gore, which is to be expected, especially with a main character who is a torturer. There are also some instances where traditional fantasy tropes are subverted, but I think overall despite its reputation as being a dark and gritty contrast to traditional fantasy, this series really celebrates the fantasy genre. Especially with the two plot lines following parties of adventurers, I was reminded strongly of Dungeons and Dragons (in the best possible way).

Warrior’s Apprentice by Lois McMaster Bujold

This one is also the second book in a series, but I’m afraid I didn’t like it nearly as much as Before They Are Hanged. I really want to like the Vorkosigan saga, which I have heard is such a great space opera series, but so far the first two books (Shards of Honor and The Worrior’s Apprentice) have both failed to impress me. They’re both very readable, but I would say they’re mediocre at best.

I complained in my review of Shard of Honor that the main character was too passive and that things just seemed to happen to her. I think The Warrior’s Apprentice suffers from the opposite problem. The main character is Miles Vorkosigan, a 17 year old son of a noble family who is brilliant but is born with a birth defect which makes him wash out of military training. So he ends up travelling to his mother’s home planet, where he buys a ship to help a guy he doesn’t know, then accepts a deserter as his servant to save him from being reported. To pay for the debt taken on in purchasing the ship, Miles smuggles weapons to a distant planet that is in the throes of civil war. When they arrive at the planet, they are stopped by merceneries, and somehow Miles manages to fight back, capture the merceneries, and within a week has them convinced he is a mercenery and that they now work for him. From there things escalate until Miles is in control of a fleet of ships, a mining colony, hundreds of people, and is negotiating with high ranking military and political officials.

It’s all very exciting and very readable, and Miles is certainly not a passive character, but my problem with the whole book is that I did not buy into the premise: Miles is a stunted 17 year old rich kid. Just because he is clever and wealthy and a good liar, I am supposed to believe that literally every adult he comes into contact with is going to blindly follow him? Even when it makes no sense to do so (for example, the captured merceneries who almost immediately begin working for him against their former employers)?

I found myself contrasting this novel with Ender’s game. In Ender’s game, the main character is also a physically unassuming, very smart boy. But Ender’s Game succeeds where The Warrior’s Apprentice fails in that Ender’s leadership makes sense: it ramps up slower, his genius is much more evident, he doesn’t rely on money, status, or an inexplicably cooperative bodyguard to help him, the people he is leading are for the most part other kids like himself, and his motives are much more clear. On the face of it the premise for Ender’s Game is just as preposterous as The Warrior’s Apprentice (most sci- fi sounds silly when distilled down to a one-line summary) but the execution is just so drastically better that it works while The Warrior’s Apprentice really failed to get me to suspend my disbelief.

I might try another book in the Vorkosigan saga someday. I know that Bujold can write good fiction because The Curse of Chalion was quite good. But I will be taking a break from this series for a while. Two underwhelming books in a row doesn’t make me want to rush to read the rest.

Book Review: Shards of Honor

January 12, 2014 / Ryan / 1 Comment

I picked up Shards of Honor by Lois McMaster Bujold because (a) I had heard great things about her Vorkosigan saga, and this is the first book in the series, and (b) I really enjoyed her fantasy novel The Curse of Chalion.

Shards of Honor starts off with the main character, Cordelia Naismith, leading a scientific scouting party on an unsettled planet. They are ambushed by enemies, her crew is killed, and she finds herself the captive of Aral Vorkosigan, an officer of the Bararryan military. The twist is, he didn’t order the attack, it was a plot from political enemies to get rid of him by making it look like her people killed him.

Cordelia and Aral have to work together to get back to safety, and in the process they almost immediately fall in love.Eventually they make it back to Vorkosigan’s ship, but then Cordelia is “rescued” by her own people and the star-crossed lovers end up separated.

I won’t detail the rest of the plot, but in broad strokes, they find themselves back together when Cordelia is once again captured by the Bararryans, just before war breaks out between their people. Lots of political intrigue ensues.

Shards of Honor is good old fashioned space opera, with fleets of ships and planetary invasions, and political maneuverings that hold the fate of many planets in the balance. It had been a while since I read something like this, and it was very readable.

Unfortunately, the main character is pretty passive. Most of the time things are done to her and she reacts, rather than having her own actions move the plot forward. It’s almost as if the real main character is Aral Vorkosigan, and Cordelia exists primarily as a proxy for the reader: an outsider who is present for the major plot points but doesn’t know much so needs things explained.

Also, I was just not convinced by the romance which is at the heart of the story. We’re supposed to just believe that after having all of her friends killed by Vorkosigan’s people, Cordelia still falls almost immediately for Aral because he is handsome and tough and helps her bury her dead friend.

The plot was also somewhat disjointed and some subplots don’t really resolve in a very satisfying way. Apparently this novel was originally longer and was split into multiple pieces, and I think that left some rough edges.

After finishing the book, I read a bit about the “proper” order in which to read the Vorkosigan saga, and it turns out Shard of Honor is Bujold’s first novel, ever. Given that, the flaws in Shards of Honor make more sense. Having read Curse of Chalion, I know that Bujold gets much better, and I have heard that the entries in the Vorkosigan saga improve as they go. Despite its flaws, Shards of Honor was quite readable, and with the promise of better things to come, I still plan on returning to the Vorkosigan series.

2013 in Review: Books I Read

January 1, 2014 / Ryan / 1 Comment

It’s the end of the year, and you know what that means: lists! I read a total of 13 books this year, and I thought I’d do a quick run-down here. I’ve fallen behind on my reviews, so this will also serve as a good way to get caught up. Without further ado, here are the books I read in 2013, roughly in order of when I finished them:

1493: Uncovering the New World Columbus Created – Charles C. Mann (Nonfiction – History)

This book is the successor to 1491, which I listened to on the drive to and from Pasadena during MSL primary operations and really enjoyed. 1493 looks at the ramifications of globalization begun by Columbus arriving in the new world and continuing over the next few centuries. I really enjoyed this book too, though it got to be a bit long winded. The most interesting part to me was the discussion of how Spanish control over the extremely productive silver mines in South America had ripple effects all the way around the world, changing the course of history in Japan and China as well as triggering wars in Europe. These two books, 1491 and 1493 have rekindled my interest in history, and are full of interesting historical anecdotes. I liked the books well enough that I went out and bought paper copies to have as references, and as inspiration for future fiction writing.

The Winds of War – Herman Wouk (Fiction – History)

Speaking of history, this year I started reading more historical fiction as well. Winds of War is a massive book following the members of a family as they are strewn around the world in the early years of World War 2. Wouk strategically positions his characters in interesting places so the reader gets multiple perspectives on the war. I probably learned more about World War 2 here than I did in school. Although some of the characters’ travels are improbable and at times it gets a bit soap-operatic, I really enjoyed this book and am looking forward to reading its successor.

Wildwood – Colin Meloy (Fiction – YA Fantasy)

We picked up this book mostly because it is written by the lead singer of the Decemberists, which is one of our favorite bands. It’s a simple young adult fantasy tale set in a realm of talking animals whose factions are at war in the woods outside Portland, OR. I liked it well enough, but it didn’t really grip me in a must-turn-the-page sort of way. It is well-edited and structured, following the principle of Chekov’s Gun well and wrapping up neatly. I wouldn’t hesitate to recommend it to a younger audience, though some of the animals actually die in the war, so it’s not for very young kids.

The Last Days of the Incas – Kim MacQuarrie (Nonfiction – History)

This book was great. I read it before and during a trip to Peru, and it does a great job of making the history of the conquest of the Incas come alive (though actually having visited the key locations also helps!). MacQuarrie scours the historical records, but then takes enough liberties and indulges in enough scene-setting and description that the book reads more like a novel than nonfiction. Although I had the general idea for a novel based on the Incas in mind for years before reading this, this book introduced me to the historical figure of Felipillo, the young Inca boy who served as translator between the Spanish and the Incas. He became the inspiration for one of the main characters in my novel. I highly recommend this book for a readable and fascinating account of the conquest of the Incas.

Wool – Hugh Howey (Fiction – Sci-fi/post-apocalypse)

This book was probably the best surprise read of the year. I picked it up on a whim after reading some glowing reviews, not really knowing what to expect, and got completely swept away. I wrote a long review of it here on the blog, so I won’t rehash all of that here. Suffice it to say, I really enjoyed this book, and rank it among my favorites of the year.

Shogun – James Clavell (Fiction – History)

This was my only re-read of the year, but I really enjoyed it the second time around as well. I also wrote a more detailed review on the blog, so take a look. This book is another example of how fiction can do so much more than classroom lectures to make history come alive. I highly recommend this book to anyone with a passing interest in feudal Japan or any fans of fantasy like the Game of Thrones series with large casts and lots of political intrigue.

The Summer Tree – Guy Gavriel Kay (Fiction – Fantasy)

I wish I had more good things to say about this one. I read Kay’s book “Under Heaven” a few years ago and enjoyed it pretty well, especially as an example of historical fantasy set it a fictional world that closely mimics our own, so I thought I would try his earlier, more “pure-fantasy” work. Kay was involved in editing Tolkien’s “The Silmarillion”, so when I saw reviews of “The Summer Tree” saying that it borrowed a lot from Tolkien, I figured I would still give it a chance. The story in the Summer Tree is sort of like The Lion, The With, and The Wardrobe with college kids, mashed up with Lord of the Rings, but it fails to live up to either. At its best, this book has some passages of really lovely prose, but more often it feels very much like an imitation of better books. I can’t recommend this one. If you want a good take on “college kids in a magical setting” check out Lev Grossman’s The Magicians. If you want epic fantasy, either read Tolkien himself, or go with more modern classics like Game of Thrones .

The Last Kingdom – Bernard Cornwell (Fiction – History)

After enjoying Winds of War and re-reading Shogun, I was in the mood for more historical fiction, and Bernard Cornwell’s name kept coming up, so I tried this one. The story is set in the mid 9th century and follows Uhtred, the son of a Northumbrian lord who is adopted by Danes (vikings) after they invade and kill his father. There is lots of gruesome and gritty action, interesting characters, and conflicted loyalties as Uhtred grows up and comes to sympathize with the people who killed his family. This book is the perfect gateway book for fans of fantasy who want to get into historical fiction. It reads very much like epic fantasy, except it’s based on real historical events. It’s also refreshing to read something set in the depths of the middle ages rather than toward the end. In this book great castles are houses on mounds of dirt with wooden walls, and a shirt of chainmail is the best armor available. No knights in shining armor and towering fairytale castles here. One of the other things I really enjoyed about this book is learning what places used to be called. London = Lundene, Nottingham = Snotingaham, York = Jorvick. Anyway, I really enjoyed this one, and am planning on starting the second book in the series soon.

The Well of Ascension – Brandon Sanderson (Fiction – Fantasy)

This is the second book in the Mistborn series, the first of which I read a year or so ago and enjoyed. It took me quite a while to get into this one. One of the problems I run into with the Mistborn books is that the magic system, although interesting, is pretty complicated, so action sequences have to be extremely detailed for the reader to be able to follow what’s going on. Especially at the beginning of this book, when Sanderson is trying to get new readers up to speed, the action sequences can lose their urgency and interest as they devolve into tutorials on the magic system. By the end of this book, I was finally drawn in by the several slowly building arcs and enjoyed what appeared to be the climax. Unfortunately, the book keeps going to set up a major cliffhanger for the following book. I follow the Writing Excuses podcast, which is hosted by Sanderson, and he has actually mentioned this ending and discussed a bit why it had to be done, but it still was an ending that left me dissatisfied. I’ll probably read the next book in the series eventually, but this one only worked for me some of the time.

Shift – Hugh Howey (Fiction – Sci-fi/post-apocalypse)

This is the prequel to Wool, and so I came in with high hopes. I wouldn’t say I was disappointed, Shift is a fine novel, but it didn’t have the addictive qualities of Wool. Whereas I could not put Wool down, Shift I read over a period of months, picking it up now and then but not really getting sucked in. It was very interesting to see how the world introduced in Wool came to be, but I think because I read this one spread over so much time, I lost track of some of the threads and didn’t enjoy it as much as i would have if i had read it faster. All in all, I would still recommend this, but don’t expect the same compulsive readability as Wool.

The Yiddish Policemen’s Union – Michael Chabon (Fiction – alternate history)

While I was in Pasadena for MSL operations in Fall of 2012, I listened to Chabon’s “Manhood for Amateurs”, a collection of memoir-essays, and really enjoyed them, so I had been wanting to try his fiction for a while. The premise behind this book is weird: what if instead of creating Israel after World War 2, a temporary nation for the Jews was instead created in Alaska? The story itself follows a down-on-his luck detective trying to solve a murder that he has been instructed not to pursue. The prose in this book is awesome, and it’s worth reading just for some of the wonderful descriptions that Chabon uses. You can see why he won a Pulitzer. On the other hand, the plot is not as strong. It feels like Chabon wrote a lot of scenes with weird and interesting characters in this weird and interesting setting, and then toward the end of the book had to scramble to wrap them up into a plot somehow. Still, this one is worth reading just for the prose and the unusual setting. But be prepared to learn a lot of yiddish terms. I found out only after finishing the book that there is a glossary in the back (I was reading as an e-book, so it was not obvious), and there are times it would have been useful…

The Blade Itself – Joe Abercrombie (Fiction – Fantasy)

I had been meaning to read Abercrombie’s books for quite a while. They have been heralded as the peak of “grimdark” fantasy, where the pure good vs evil conflict of stories like Lord of the Rings is replaced with morally gray characters in a nasty, gritty world. Heck, Absercrombie’s twitter handle is @lordgrimdark. The Blade Itself definitely fits this description: all three main characters are anti-heroes in one way or another. You’ve got a former swordsman turned torturer after having his own body ruined in a torture chamber, a veteran barbarian warrior who is trying to be a good person but can’t escape the massacres he committed in his past, and a rich obnoxious self-centered nobleman who is so classist and annoying that he verges on self-parody. In fact, I think this novel succeeds because it knows (and expects the reader to know) exactly what tropes it is trying to subvert and which ones it is shamelessly embracing almost to the point of absurdity. There is a dark humor that runs through the book that saves it from its own grittiness and makes characters that would otherwise be nearly impossible to root for much more likeable. My main complaint is that this book was clearly written with sequels in mind, and ends up feeling like a long introduction to the real story that will be told in future books. I’m looking forward to reading the sequels, but the ending of this one was a bit unsatisfying.

The Best of the Best: 20 Years of the Year’s Best Science Fiction

I started this in 2012, put it down, and then picked it back up again at the end of 2013. I was hoping that, as a collection of the “best of the best”, this would be nothing but great short stories. Unfortunately, that’s not the case. Some of the stories in here are great, and had as much or more impact as many novels. “Story of Your Life” by Ted Chiang was a particular stand-out that was really excellent. But many of the stories in this collection are not very good. Or at least, they didn’t work for me. I’m not sure if I would recommend this or not. It’s a nice cross section showing the state of science fiction, but about two thirds of the stories are mediocre if not actively bad. I’m glad I read it because the good stories make it worthwhile, but I almost didn’t finish it because of the many stories that just didn’t connect with me.

Book Re-Read Review: Shogun

July 30, 2013 / Ryan / 2 Comments

For those of you living under a rock, Shogun is an epic historical fiction novel about an Englishman who is shipwrecked in Japan in the year 1600 and goes on to become a samurai and adviser to one of the most powerful lords in feudal Japan. I first read Shogun about 5 years ago and loved it. I don’t re-read books very often, so it has to be a very special book for me to want to read something again. (Warning, this review is slightly spoilery. If you haven’t read Shogun, go do that. It’s awesome, and it has pirates fighting ninjas. But I repeat myself. If you like giant epics that you can fully immerse yourself in, with lots of political intrigue and a large cast of characters, then you will like Shogun.)

Last time, I read the book the way most people do: silently, to myself. But this time, I convinced my wife to come along for the ride. We read aloud before bed, and have tackled books of similar epic proportions (for example, the full Lord of the Rings and Song of Ice and Fire series), so we knew what we were getting into. Years ago after I read the book, we had watched the miniseries, but it did not do the source material justice, and I wanted to experience the book again.

I’m happy to say that Shogun remains one of my favorite books, and serves as the Platonic ideal in my mind of what historical fiction should be. It is so huge and intricate and detailed that it really sweeps you away to feudal Japan. The plot is a familiar one, shared by Dances with Wolves, Pocahontas, Avatar, Fern Gully, and many others. But for all of the problematic aspects to this plot template, I still love it because, when done well, it introduces the reader to a culture that they are not familiar with, and helps them to understand and sympathize with that culture.

Of the examples of this familiar plot, I think Shogun succeeds the best. The book is long enough and detailed enough that the reader comes to understand the Japanese culture along with Blackthorne. At the beginning of the book, the Japanese people that he encounters are strange and brutal and utterly different from what Blackthorne views as “normal”. But by the end, it is almost painful to ride along in Blackthorne’s point of view as he reunites with his former crew and realizes how rude, filthy, undisciplined, and pitiful they are compared to the Japanese characters we’ve just spent 1000 pages with.

What impresses me about Shogun is that the disturbing parts of the Japanese bushido culture are not swept under the rug. They are just put into context. So the first merciless killing of a peasant by a samurai early on is horrifying to both the reader and Blackthorne, but placed into context, with the strict codes of conduct that are a part of feudal Japanese culture, such killings begin to make a sort of sense, even as they remain disturbing to western readers. This cognitive dissonance is one of the more interesting parts about reading Shogun.

Of course, Shogun is fiction, and it would be foolish to think that it is a purely accurate depiction of feudal Japan. I, sadly, don’t know enough to say which parts of Shogun are accurate and which aren’t, but as I understand it, much of it actually holds up pretty well. In writing this post, I came across the interesting site Learning from Shogun, which has a nice (free) book in PDF form written by scholars in Asian studies and history as a companion to the novel, just before the 1980 miniseries came out. In the introduction to the book they write:

“In sheer quantity, Shogun has probably conveyed more information about Japan to more people than all the combined writings of scholars, journalists, and novelists since the Pacific War.”

In fact, it is sometimes odd while reading Shogun when the author takes time to define Japanese terms which are now so commonplace that the definition is superfluous. For example, he has to spell out what samurai, katanas, and ninja are. Shogun is not solely responsible for this increased knowledge about Japan, but there’s no denying it played a big role.

I think one aspect that saves Shogun from some of the pitfalls that plague other works of fiction that follow a similar plot is that the white, western main character is very much just a pawn in the great political game that is being played. Although he does gain in power and prestige over the course of the novel, Blackthorne is still at the mercy of the daimyos he is working for, particularly Toranaga. Even having read the book twice now, some of the political intrigue was still over my head. Let’s just say that if you want to be Shogun, you need to have a deep understanding of your rivals’ family trees and how to use them to your advantage. Winning battles is the easy part.

Re-reading the book, and particularly in reading it out loud, I was struck by one aspect of the writing that I did not even register the first time I read it. Clavell is constantly jumping around with the point of view. Not many books (at least not many that I read) do this successfully, but in Shogun it feels very natural. It’s a clever trick to allow to reader to get to know many of the dozens of characters much better than if the point of view had been stuck inside Blackthorne’s head.

My main complaint after re-reading it, is that the book is really extremely long and could probably lose 200 pages and still be great. The length was fine when reading it to myself, because when doing that I could go much faster and so I never felt like the book was slow. But reading out loud, and particularly because our out-loud reading was disrupted for a few weeks, it started to feel like a drag toward the end until we got to the final climax. I strongly recommend reading this book silently to yourself rather than listening to it as an audiobook or reading it out loud, just because that way you it won’t seem to drag as much.

Interesting side note: As we were nearing the end of the book, we decided to get a bottle of sake to sip as we read the final chapters. I had only had sake once years ago so I wanted to try it again. Turns out I really like it a lot! Erin doesn’t, but that just means more for me!

Bottom line: Shogun is awesome, if a bit long. The plot is a familiar one, but it tells a great story and you will learn a lot about Japan in the 1600s even if the book is not 100% factual. Also, there are scenes where pirates and ninjas fight. If you have not read this book, you should probably go do something about that.

Book Review: Wool

June 30, 2013 / Ryan / 3 Comments

One of my favorite things is coming across a new book that I know nothing about and then proceeding to be completely consumed once I start reading, emerging days later blinking and disoriented as I am forced to reintegrate with the real world.

That’s more or less what happened with Wool. My wife and I were on a two week vacation in Peru (which was awesome) and before we left she asked friends for book recommendations. One of them suggested Wool, so we downloaded it on our Kindle and set off on our adventure.

Toward the end of the trip we started reading it in our hotel room (we read books out loud because we are unbearably adorable like that). By that point in the trip we had hit most of the main attractions in Cusco and were quite tired after almost two weeks of being adventurous. I feel a bit guilty admitting this but on our last couple of days we ended up spending hours just sitting in our room reading Wool instead of doing last-minute exploring.

Wool is a collection of five related stories set in a post-apocalyptic world where everyone is forced to live underground in giant “silos”. It is the story of one silo starting to realize that, lurking beneath the life that they take for granted, there are some sinister forces working to maintain the status quo. As the tagline on the cover says, “If the lies don’t kill you, the truth will.”

The first story is really quite sad and dark. At one point in the first story when we took a break from reading, my wife commented on how incredibly sad the story was. But then immediately demanded that I keep reading. Because despite the dark tone, Wool is a masterful example of how to use building dread and suspense to keep readers turning the page.

The premise for the story is nothing particularly new. I was reminded very strongly of the video game Fallout 3, which begins in an underground facility where people have lived for generations to avoid the dangers of a surface world rendered nearly uninhabitable by nuclear war. However, Fallout 3 is a video game and its main concern is with setting up the appropriate ambiance for the world and then getting the player out into the unknown world beyond the door of the Vault. It is a testament to how good Fallout 3 is that a brief encounter with the Vault leaves such a strong impression, but there’s not actually much there.

Wool on the other hand is a wonderful example of science fiction worldbuilding. The action takes place (almost) entirely in the silos and details of the civilization that lives in them are doled out perfectly, making the reader constantly want to know more, but at the same time providing exactly as much information as the reader needs. No awkward info dumps in sight, just a vivid world perfectly revealed.

Of course, the stories are really about the characters and again Wool does a great job. The stories are not sweeping epics, but instead focus closely on a handful of well-drawn characters. I was especially impressed by the careful, skillful, and realistic way in which characters falling in love is dealt with.

The limited scope, both in terms of number of characters and the enclosed, sometimes claustrophobic world in which they live, is a real strength of the stories. There are no wasted words here. The writing is really tight: everything that is mentioned is mentioned for a reason. It all hangs together incredibly well and makes for a really compelling read.

My only nitpick is that the end of the final story comes a bit abruptly. Still, it’s a small nitpick in what is otherwise one of the best books I’ve read in a long time. Check it out, especially if you are a fan of post-apocalyptic sci-fi. you won’t be disappointed.