2/23/14

2/23/14

prelude

pizza.
adam: ender's game. orson scott card.
1. verdict: totally and definitively meh
2. review:
  
  he thinks marko probably really liked this book. but we don't
  know. lots of military strategy. "it's almost just so... boring, you
  know?" he read this on the recommendation of a coworker who said it
  was the best book ever regardless of genre. well, you know. "the other
  thing that made it edgy was just how misogynistic and homophobic, you
  know, the whole thing was." so yeah, you know. "the entire book just
  kinda put me off the entire way."
adam: speaker for the dead. orson scott card.
1. verdict: ++
2. review:
  
  shocked that it was even written by the same auther. he really liked
  it. he'd heard it's a totally different book and it really is. it's
  4000 years later and you know blah blah some stuff happens. ender had
  sort of apparently recognized that the whole ender's game thing was
  pretty fucked [which is, in editor's view at least, very legit]. so
  yeah, stuff happens. it's a better book by a lot, but not by enough to
  read more. (and paul says the next ones just get more problematic,
  so... yeah.)
eli: catwings 1-4. ursula k le guin.
1. verdict: ++
2. review:
  
  you know, 4-year-olds can't really explain anything. this is a
  mess. he's all over the shop. it just keeps starting "they
  goooooo...." and you know, basically he finally ran away. he just
  wants people to read the books to him. they're pretty solid
  though. pretty far out and definitely recommended for the early
  readers in your life.
jen on behalf of eli: the magic treehouse. mary pope osborne.
1. verdict: +
2. review:
  
  who am i kidding, eli's gone, this is mom talking all the way. (adam
  doesn't even know time travel when he sees it. "is this sci-fi? oh
  it's historical fiction?" give me a break it's LOOOOOOORE.) so yeah,
  eli likes these too. they're pretty solid. time travel, all kinds of
  stuff, it's good. not catwings, but recommended.
chris e: annihilation. jeff vandermeer.
1. verdict: ++
2. review:
  
  there's a lot of vague stuff in this book. there's an area x and some
  expeditions in there, you know, they all end up kinda weird. so this
  is a journal of a member of the 12th expedition. there's a lot of
  strange requirements apparently, on expeditions into area x. "so is
  there a call of cthulhu thing going on?" "yes. it feels a lot like
  lost if it was written by hp lovecraft." really liked it, would
  recommend it, and would read more.
megan: of beast and beauty. stacey jay.
1. verdict: +
2. review:
  
  there's a planet and some people show up and they're not super well
  adapted and, you know, the planet turns out to be sentient or
  something more or less, and it kindly begins mutating the people in
  order to increase their fitness [ed: just like natural selection,
  right? namsayin?] but yeah, the people aren't necessarily so into that
  [just like reality namsayin?]. so there's some weird queen sacrifice
  business and the planet is kinda good cop/bad cop. i can't follow
  it. she liked it though.
megan: juliet immortal and romeo redeemed. stacey jay.
1. verdict: --
2. review:
  
  juliet immortal was bad. romeo redeemed was intolerable. teenage
  badness at its most bad.
jeff: malice. john gwynne.
1. verdict: +
2. review:
  
  really enjoyed it. definitely influenced by game of thrones and so
  on. there's some banished lands. people who live there are
  banished. yep. but there were also giants there so you know, there
  were some issues. there's a book of prophecy that some warlock dude
  finds and so you know there's gotta be a big war. it's like that. they
  found a new fighting technique, which is unstoppable. [ed: does nobody
  get this joke? fuck. what have we come to?] anyway it's supposed to be
  really a trilogy and if he can stick to that, it sounds pretty good.
chris e: angelmaker. nick harkaway.
1. verdict: meh
2. review:
  
  clockmaker dude, his dad was a gangster. the dude's last name is
  spork, so clearly right away he's kinda cozying up to vonnegut or
  pynchon or somebody, and while that worked in the other book [ed: the
  gone-away world], it doesn't work so well here. some synopsis follows
  but to be honest the kids are kinda making this tough on your loyal
  scribe here and i'm dropping some packets. but anyway, now it's being
  compared to the central conceit of infinite jest, which doesn't really
  surprise chris. there's a cult of john ruskin [ed: which is legit],
  but yeah, they build handmade trains or whatever, so yeah. "it was
  ok."
chris b: alloy of law. brandon sanderson.
1. verdict: +
2. review:
  
  this is number four in the mistborn series. he got into this through a
  podcast talking about the mistborn rpg. you know, allomancers and
  shit. magic system. three hundred years between the last book and
  this, so it's no longer high fantasy, it's more like steampunk at this
  point, big cities and sort of skyscrapers and stuff. recommended.
chris b: exiles in arms: moving targets. c l werner.
1. verdict: +
2. review:
  
  "talk about penny dreadfuls." a promising start. on a digital-only
  imprint called skull island expeditions. so this is the whole thing,
  cheese and pulp novella. it's great though. he's working on "night of
  the necrotech" now, which is a full novel, so hopefully we'll hear
  about that soon enough.
that's all, folks!