More Books and an Aplogy to Alastair Reynolds
So, as I said earlier, I was reading Redemption Ark, seemingly against my will as I had so many other books I wanted to read instead. But I found myself liking it more and more. Reynolds tied all the various plot lines together very well and built to a very interesting point...and then let it stop so he could write the sequel. But the thing is that I found myself getting more and more interested in each story line-each story of each character who wants to get their hands on the hell-class weapons is really good-that means I didn't have a hard time remembering who was who and what happened to them each time Reynolds cut back to them-and he does it regularly as it's the basis of the structure of the book. It was very well-written and more engaging than I thought it would be-and the characters were far more interesting than the cast of Revelation Space-and each written so well and so specifically that seemed as if you knew them-although some you really don't want to know.
So, I'm sorry, Reynolds. This turned out to be far better than I thought it would-and yes, I've ordered the third book of the trilogy.
The Demolished Man did not turn out as well as I had expected. having liked The Stars My Destination so much, I had high hopes for The Demolished Man. Maybe if I had read this first, instead of The Stars, I would have liked it more. It's a story of a future where no one has thought of murder in centuries-and everyone is policed by espers, people with mind-reading capabilities. They help keep people in line, so no one does anything really awful-and if they do, they're pretty easy to find. Unfortunately, Ben Reich has murder on his mind. He is determined to do it and just as determined not to get caught. He commits the murder-and is mistaken in his reason for it, he did not need to do it to attain what he wanted-but I thought he really wanted to do it anyway and that his reason was really an excuse. And do he is pursued by an esper determined to capture him. Much of the book after the murder is a cat and mouse game-will Ben outwit the smart esper? Will the esper see through the game? How smart is he? Ben has a worthy adversary in the esper, Lincoln Powell so the outcome is in doubt and the reader is never sure who will win the game until the end. And as for the love story-I'm still slightly offended by it. Powell has to help the murdered man's daughter, who has regressed to childhood after seeing his death. He watches and oversees her as she ages (only in the mind because her body is still that of a grown woman but he can read her mind) and then falls in love with her. It's just weird and very close to incest, uncomfortably so.
Next up was Starfish by Peter Watts. I read this on the recommendation of my friend Y, who loves the author and I can see why. Starfish is about a group of people sent to watch over and do regular maintenance on a geothermal plant, which in one the deepest spots of the Pacific Ocean, the Juan de Fuca Rift, off Canada's Northwest corner. This group of people are maimed-both Psychologically and physically. In order to survive at the depth, they have physically altered-and they are already damaged mentally. A child molester, a victim of rape and incest, an assassin and a felon are the ones chosen to go below to monitor the plant. Some go by choice but others go because it's a better choice than prison. There are many things I liked about this book and just one thing I didn't. The characters a very good-it's interesting to see how a group of damaged people all get along (the answer is that they don't, really and all keep to themselves) and how they change under the pressure of their circumstances, both physical and psychological. Some deal with it too well and end up living outside their living quarters while others break under the strain and have to go home. There are monsters both inside and outside and even more monsters than the inhabitants of the Beebe (as they call their living quarters) can even guess-the worst one is one they can't even see. The transformations in this book are very interesting-it's fascinating to watch the characters to go from human (sort of) to fish (sort of) and to see how they behave under pressure from both the ocean and their job-some don't deal well at all with having to face huge sea monsters every day. But there is something even worse lurking on the ocean floor-and it's something that the company who owns the plant are willing to set off a nuclear bomb to destroy. There are are three books that follow this one, so that may give hint as to what follows but I'm still not sure I'll read them, even though I liked this boo and I'm not sure why I don't care about reading them. Do I not want to read about the destruction of life? I don't know, sometimes I enjoy that. Do I not like the characters? (by the end there's only one left). Something put me off and I'm not sure what it was-I only know that when I finished it, I didn't run to order the sequels like I did with Redemption Ark.
I also read Blindsight, also by Peter Watts. Watts is very good at depicting damaged people-how they act and how their behavior affects other people (usually damaged in some way as well) and how a pressure-filled mission affects all of them. The main character here (I hesitate to use the word hero) is a man who had half his temporal lobe cut out as a child, in order to stop his seizures. Unfortunately it also had the effect of making him semi-autistic. He's a man who doesn't really enjoy life and doesn't seem to have real emotions. When is ex-girlfriend is dying of an awful disease, he never returns her calls or responds to her and it's not because he doesn't know what to say in the usual sense-he really has no idea what to say. He doesn't know how to say he's sorry or anything else-he needs an algorithm to tell him and he just can't find the right one. There's a reason she gave him a nickname that referred to a black hole.
But he is very good at observing. He can read what a person is thinking a mile away because he sees everything on the surface-and because of this he gets chosen for a mission for first contact with aliens. The mission is lead by a vampire who can out-think any of his crew mates, a soldier (just in case), a scientist/doctor and a female linguist with four different personalities. The whole mission is bust from the moment they meet the aliens-and the story is far more about the crew than what happens when they meet the aliens. Who stands up and does their job and who cracks under pressure? In a book where I can honestly say I didn't like anyone in it, I still liked the book itself. It was interesting when the linguist can't do her job because just contacting the aliens is viewed as hostile-and she cracks under it. The soldier has to sacrifice herself so others may live and the end result is that everyone except the man who can only observe is the only one left and unfortunately for him (and unfortunate is word used a lot in describing Watts's books) he now seems to have emotions. He has changed for the better, for all the good it does him.
So, I'm sorry, Reynolds. This turned out to be far better than I thought it would-and yes, I've ordered the third book of the trilogy.
The Demolished Man did not turn out as well as I had expected. having liked The Stars My Destination so much, I had high hopes for The Demolished Man. Maybe if I had read this first, instead of The Stars, I would have liked it more. It's a story of a future where no one has thought of murder in centuries-and everyone is policed by espers, people with mind-reading capabilities. They help keep people in line, so no one does anything really awful-and if they do, they're pretty easy to find. Unfortunately, Ben Reich has murder on his mind. He is determined to do it and just as determined not to get caught. He commits the murder-and is mistaken in his reason for it, he did not need to do it to attain what he wanted-but I thought he really wanted to do it anyway and that his reason was really an excuse. And do he is pursued by an esper determined to capture him. Much of the book after the murder is a cat and mouse game-will Ben outwit the smart esper? Will the esper see through the game? How smart is he? Ben has a worthy adversary in the esper, Lincoln Powell so the outcome is in doubt and the reader is never sure who will win the game until the end. And as for the love story-I'm still slightly offended by it. Powell has to help the murdered man's daughter, who has regressed to childhood after seeing his death. He watches and oversees her as she ages (only in the mind because her body is still that of a grown woman but he can read her mind) and then falls in love with her. It's just weird and very close to incest, uncomfortably so.
Next up was Starfish by Peter Watts. I read this on the recommendation of my friend Y, who loves the author and I can see why. Starfish is about a group of people sent to watch over and do regular maintenance on a geothermal plant, which in one the deepest spots of the Pacific Ocean, the Juan de Fuca Rift, off Canada's Northwest corner. This group of people are maimed-both Psychologically and physically. In order to survive at the depth, they have physically altered-and they are already damaged mentally. A child molester, a victim of rape and incest, an assassin and a felon are the ones chosen to go below to monitor the plant. Some go by choice but others go because it's a better choice than prison. There are many things I liked about this book and just one thing I didn't. The characters a very good-it's interesting to see how a group of damaged people all get along (the answer is that they don't, really and all keep to themselves) and how they change under the pressure of their circumstances, both physical and psychological. Some deal with it too well and end up living outside their living quarters while others break under the strain and have to go home. There are monsters both inside and outside and even more monsters than the inhabitants of the Beebe (as they call their living quarters) can even guess-the worst one is one they can't even see. The transformations in this book are very interesting-it's fascinating to watch the characters to go from human (sort of) to fish (sort of) and to see how they behave under pressure from both the ocean and their job-some don't deal well at all with having to face huge sea monsters every day. But there is something even worse lurking on the ocean floor-and it's something that the company who owns the plant are willing to set off a nuclear bomb to destroy. There are are three books that follow this one, so that may give hint as to what follows but I'm still not sure I'll read them, even though I liked this boo and I'm not sure why I don't care about reading them. Do I not want to read about the destruction of life? I don't know, sometimes I enjoy that. Do I not like the characters? (by the end there's only one left). Something put me off and I'm not sure what it was-I only know that when I finished it, I didn't run to order the sequels like I did with Redemption Ark.
I also read Blindsight, also by Peter Watts. Watts is very good at depicting damaged people-how they act and how their behavior affects other people (usually damaged in some way as well) and how a pressure-filled mission affects all of them. The main character here (I hesitate to use the word hero) is a man who had half his temporal lobe cut out as a child, in order to stop his seizures. Unfortunately it also had the effect of making him semi-autistic. He's a man who doesn't really enjoy life and doesn't seem to have real emotions. When is ex-girlfriend is dying of an awful disease, he never returns her calls or responds to her and it's not because he doesn't know what to say in the usual sense-he really has no idea what to say. He doesn't know how to say he's sorry or anything else-he needs an algorithm to tell him and he just can't find the right one. There's a reason she gave him a nickname that referred to a black hole.
But he is very good at observing. He can read what a person is thinking a mile away because he sees everything on the surface-and because of this he gets chosen for a mission for first contact with aliens. The mission is lead by a vampire who can out-think any of his crew mates, a soldier (just in case), a scientist/doctor and a female linguist with four different personalities. The whole mission is bust from the moment they meet the aliens-and the story is far more about the crew than what happens when they meet the aliens. Who stands up and does their job and who cracks under pressure? In a book where I can honestly say I didn't like anyone in it, I still liked the book itself. It was interesting when the linguist can't do her job because just contacting the aliens is viewed as hostile-and she cracks under it. The soldier has to sacrifice herself so others may live and the end result is that everyone except the man who can only observe is the only one left and unfortunately for him (and unfortunate is word used a lot in describing Watts's books) he now seems to have emotions. He has changed for the better, for all the good it does him.
posted by SHbookworm at 6:11 AM
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