I was surprised by how much I didn't care about this book. It's similar to Wool in some ways -- strong plot, lots of flying around and jumping up and down and running from bad guys in a tight resource constrained environment... but everyone (bar the Viridians) are so HUMAN. So American, even. You could almost believe they're in a small town in the midwest, what with "Joe Spud" and the hard scrabble life.
This is what lets down the story -- these guys have nanotech. They have nanocameras watching their every move for the sake of a reality TV show. They have a reputation based management system. And yet... it's still not even half as good at reality shear as Bruce Sterling on his worst day. It reads like a soap opera. And the intrepid group of 17 year olds who always find themselves in the middle of the …
Reviews and Comments
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Will Sargent rated Mirror, Window (An Artbabe Collection): 4 stars
Will Sargent rated ReMIND: 5 stars
Jason Brubaker: ReMIND (2013, Coffee Table Books)
ReMIND by Jason Brubaker
"All Sonia wanted was to find her missing cat, Victuals. But when he washes up on the shore of her …
Will Sargent reviewed Up against it by M. J. Locke
Geoff and his friends live in Phocaea, a distant asteroid colony on the Solar System's …
Review of 'Up against it' on 'Storygraph'
2 stars
I was surprised by how much I didn't care about this book. It's similar to Wool in some ways -- strong plot, lots of flying around and jumping up and down and running from bad guys in a tight resource constrained environment... but everyone (bar the Viridians) are so HUMAN. So American, even. You could almost believe they're in a small town in the midwest, what with "Joe Spud" and the hard scrabble life.
This is what lets down the story -- these guys have nanotech. They have nanocameras watching their every move for the sake of a reality TV show. They have a reputation based management system. And yet... it's still not even half as good at reality shear as Bruce Sterling on his worst day. It reads like a soap opera. And the intrepid group of 17 year olds who always find themselves in the middle of the action for no good reason doesn't help.
Will Sargent reviewed Their Master's War by Mick Farren
Review of "Their Master's War" on 'Storygraph'
1 star
Utter drek. I've read Armor, I've read Heinlein... this isn't even good 1970s military science fiction. The first section of the novel -- the bit where Hark is picked up from his primitive hunter gatherer life and deposited into an intergalactic war -- has nothing to do with the rest of the book. The characters are mostly indistinguishable. There's no humor, and a good deal of just plain bad writing.
Note that most of the reviews come from people who read the book when they were 12. If this book came out now, it wouldn't even rate two stars to most people.
Will Sargent reviewed Invisible Armies by Jon Evans
Danielle Leaf thinks she?s helping out a friend?until she is abducted and imprisoned in remote …
Review of 'Invisible Armies' on 'Storygraph'
5 stars
Awesomeness.
Will Sargent reviewed One human minute by Stanisław Lem
Contains three essays; One Human Minute, The Upside-Down Revolution, and The World as …
Review of 'One human minute' on 'Storygraph'
3 stars
I remember being really impressed when I first read this. Now I don't think it's aged well.
It's difficult to read again, because the nature of the Internet and of modern education is that everything he says about the simultaneity of time and the limited conditions of naturally occurring life (Life as Cataclysm) are things that you could read on a blog post these days. They are not unique thoughts, and the only difference seems to be one of scope -- having to list out everything that is happening or mark out the various areas and events that are needed for a life bearing planet is interesting, but not difficult now, per se.
Still, it's Lem.
Will Sargent reviewed Ancillary Justice by Ann Leckie (Imperial Radch, #1)
On a remote, icy planet, the soldier known as Breq is drawing closer to completing …
Review of 'Ancillary Justice' on 'Storygraph'
4 stars
It's nice to read a story which involves a believable AI. I am surprised that there isn't a broader breakdown of personality -- something along the lines of Altered Carbon. Also, I'm surprised that the AI loyalty to the Radch Empire is so strong, given how intelligent and wily they are.
Will Sargent reviewed Carnival by Elizabeth Bear
In Old Earth's clandestine world of ambassador-spies, Michelangelo Kusanagi-Jones and Vincent Katherinessen were once a …
Review of 'Carnival' on 'Storygraph'
3 stars
It's alright. The story of "two men travelling to a world where women rule" has been done in several different novels, but by making the two men a gay couple it blessedly takes the innuendo out and leaves the blunt reality of sexism and discrimination in place.
There are several concepts in here that aren't really developed. The Governers, the AI that exists to keep a lid on the human population, for example: even if they're a great idea, a society under that kind of pressure would be absolutely terrified right up until the age of majority. Vincent and Michelangelo are far too normal for people who would grow up expecting to die.
Likewise, the rebels and revolutions on New Amazonia don't seem to have real force and personality. They exist, and they're ready to kill... but the sense of anger isn't there, even among people who have justifiable complaints. …
It's alright. The story of "two men travelling to a world where women rule" has been done in several different novels, but by making the two men a gay couple it blessedly takes the innuendo out and leaves the blunt reality of sexism and discrimination in place.
There are several concepts in here that aren't really developed. The Governers, the AI that exists to keep a lid on the human population, for example: even if they're a great idea, a society under that kind of pressure would be absolutely terrified right up until the age of majority. Vincent and Michelangelo are far too normal for people who would grow up expecting to die.
Likewise, the rebels and revolutions on New Amazonia don't seem to have real force and personality. They exist, and they're ready to kill... but the sense of anger isn't there, even among people who have justifiable complaints. And I don't believe Lesa, the head of the Security Directorate, can be quite so friendly and open when she and her team are responsible for combatting them.
Overall, in as much as I like the book, I'm not really wowed by it.
Review of 'Unclean Jobs for Women and Girls' on 'Storygraph'
4 stars
Have you ever been on a dating site? Have you ever received messages from people so completely insane you wondered if they were for real? These stories are about them.
There's usually very little plot involved in each story. Sometimes they're only a few pages. Most of the stories about women, but they're not pretty, or sociable, or well adjusted, and some of them aren't even particularly nice. Whether they're being boiled alive, hosting a colony of ants in their bones, being an assistant to a rorschach image of a model, or illegally defrosting a criminally insane mother in a spaceship, you can't begin guess to at their mental state, only gasp in amazement as they happily consider themselves sane and balanced.
There's a couple of writers I know of who pull this off -- Kelly Link, Kathe Koja. I don't recommend them to everyone, but if you like something …
Have you ever been on a dating site? Have you ever received messages from people so completely insane you wondered if they were for real? These stories are about them.
There's usually very little plot involved in each story. Sometimes they're only a few pages. Most of the stories about women, but they're not pretty, or sociable, or well adjusted, and some of them aren't even particularly nice. Whether they're being boiled alive, hosting a colony of ants in their bones, being an assistant to a rorschach image of a model, or illegally defrosting a criminally insane mother in a spaceship, you can't begin guess to at their mental state, only gasp in amazement as they happily consider themselves sane and balanced.
There's a couple of writers I know of who pull this off -- Kelly Link, Kathe Koja. I don't recommend them to everyone, but if you like something bitter and sour tasting, you'll like this.
Will Sargent reviewed Fantoma Aniei by Vera Brosgol
Anya, embarrassed by her family and lacking confidence in her body and her social skills, …
Review of 'Fantoma Aniei' on 'Storygraph'
5 stars
This is billed as a young adult graphic novel, but it's about maturity and growing up -- something that applies to teenagers and adults alike. Anya doesn't like being overweight, doesn't like being Russian, has a crush on a popular boy... and picks up the ghost of a young girl on the way, who can help her out.
But the interesting thing about Anya's ghost is that she's a romantic. She's happy to help Anya any way she can, but she also wants to idealize Anya's life. And that's where it gets complicated.
In some ways, Anya's Ghost is very much like American Born Chinese (also a foreign born teenager haunted by ghosts), but it's not trying to be clever, just truthful. It's a stronger story for that.
Will Sargent reviewed Black Juice by Margo Lanagan
10 outstanding stories that delight, shock, intrigue, amuse and move the reader to tears with …
Review of 'Black Juice' on 'Storygraph'
3 stars
It has taken me over a year to finish this book. I think that's a record.
The issue I have with the book is that although the writing is inventive, it's well and truly a young adult book. You can tell by the plots. In most of them, there's a young adult who is on the verge of discovering that his parents, or his community, are assholes. Then, one or more of them of them dies. Then, the child is brought to an awareness that the world is larger than the world he has previously known with his parents and/or community.
There is one story, which is odd and catchy, about an old man who has been a servant of the castle for years. The lord has married a "young and wilful" wife who comes from the gypsies, and is utterly in love with her. The old man, try as …
It has taken me over a year to finish this book. I think that's a record.
The issue I have with the book is that although the writing is inventive, it's well and truly a young adult book. You can tell by the plots. In most of them, there's a young adult who is on the verge of discovering that his parents, or his community, are assholes. Then, one or more of them of them dies. Then, the child is brought to an awareness that the world is larger than the world he has previously known with his parents and/or community.
There is one story, which is odd and catchy, about an old man who has been a servant of the castle for years. The lord has married a "young and wilful" wife who comes from the gypsies, and is utterly in love with her. The old man, try as he might, cannot bring himself to love her, and cannot see what his lord sees. To him, she is simply and obviously Bad News.
And that's the issue I have with so many of the stories in this book. The world may be different, but the families are the same, and even when they're not bad news, it doesn't make any difference -- to an adolescent, families are, by definition, familiar. And that shows up in the stories... as soon as the tale turned to what his parents did or how annoying this particular habit was, my eyes would glaze over. It's not even that they're bad news... they're filler.
So. I'd give this book to a kid, and it would blow their minds. But I don't think I'll ever read it again.
Will Sargent reviewed The Eternal Smile by Gene Yang
This book presents three short stories in graphic novel format involving the blurred line between …
Review of 'The Eternal Smile' on 'Storygraph'
4 stars
Three stories, all about leaving one world for another. Sometimes the world is imagined -- sometimes the world is just a game, or a lie. There's no direct connection between the stories, although if you look carefully you can see artifacts from one appear in another.
Yang is very good at contrasting ugly truth with beautiful lie. The artwork in the imagined worlds is gorgeous, full of golds and straight, clear lines. In the real worlds, things are grey, muddy, from the wrong angle.
This isn't on the same level as American Born Chinese or Level Up, but it shows some of the same themes -- the idea of duty tying you down (and how that can be a good thing), and how the imagination can run away in its own directions, away from the person supposedly in control of it.
Will Sargent reviewed Demo: The Twelve Original Scripts by Brian Wood
Review of 'Demo' on 'Storygraph'
3 stars
Maybe I am not young, but I found these "coming of age only with superpowers" to be... well, I thought so many of these people are idiots. Not "oh, they're children, they're so young and so fresh" -- they're just idiots.
Then again, I didn't think much of Romeo and Juliet either.