Book Review – Legacy

I give up! I can’t do it. I’m 30% through Legacy on my Kindle and I just cannot force myself to continue! I tried, dear reader, oh, I tried. I put forth an almighty effort reminiscent of my efforts at finishing the infamous Eragon (a Herculean effort that by comparison makes cleaning Augean stables look like a simple sweep job), but it wasn’t enough. I give up!

I am baffled as to how this book got published, much less why Amazon should choose it as the first book they published. Some people are impressed that the author is a teenager, rather like Paolini had been when he started writing Eragon. I’m impressed anyone would buy into that as a reason to publish or purchase a book.

The plot is missing, presumed dead. I’m 30% into the book and I STILL don’t know what it’s really about. We have a boring, uninteresting heroine living in a truly fantastic fantasy world. I half expected the peasants to break into a choreographed song about how much they love tending their fields in this magical land. It makes Disney fantasy look like it’s built on a solid foundation of reality and shows a real lack of knowledge in how medieval kingdoms actually functioned.

For example: there’s a part in the book where a boy is arrested as a possible traitor. He’s supposed to be about sixteen or seventeen. It’s explained that, due to his age, he won’t be tossed into the dungeon. Right. At that age in this sort of time period, he would likely already be married and certainly would be treated as an adult by whatever passes for a legal system in such a time period. True, this is a fantasy world, and not actual medieval Europe, but since it, like 99% of other fantasy worlds, is based on medieval Europe, a certain level of verisimilitude is to be expected and found lacking in this story.

Also annoying are the many cliches, including the Heroine Being Forced Into a Loveless Marriage, which was probably old during the time of the Sumerians and hasn’t gotten any fresher since. Add to this some very clumsy, forced writing that shows just how experienced the author is (like many inexperienced authors, she goes out of her way to avoid using the word “said”), and you end up with a truly unpleasant read.

For readers who want a good set of books about a young girl living in a fantasy world, check out the Tiffany Aching subseries of Discworld books by Terry Pratchett. They’re called The Wee Free Men, A Hat Full of Sky and Wintersmith, with I Shall Wear Midnight coming out in 2010. They present a girl who is strong, intelligent and interesting. But then, I guess that’s what you get when you have a truly professional author writing as opposed to a lucky amateur

Like Paolini, Kluver may get better as she gets older (though he hasn’t. From all accounts his stories are getting progressively worse). At present she has no business being a published author. Points to her for having the wherewithal to actually FINISH writing a book (as someone who has started several, but never finished one, I can appreciate that), but beyond that? Legacy proves, as did Eragon that having a good story behind the book (sixteen-year-old female author!), does not, sadly, guarantee a good story within the book.

Book Review – Unseen Academicals

Ignore the 'look inside' thing.

To say Terry Pratchett is a literary genius is, if I may quote from Neil Gaiman, like saying Jupiter is larger than a duck. It’s true, but it’s so much more than that. Unseen Academicals is further proof of this.

Football (soccer to us heathen Americans), has been banned in Ankh-Morpork and now, for several reasons, the Patrician is lifting the ban, but insisting that the game should be played within rules. That alone has potential for a good book, but when you add in an insecure goblin with issues, two Archchancellors, a refined vampire, and a pack of football hooligans, you get something unique and fascinating.

The book has all the fast humor and intelligence that you’ve come to expect with Discworld novels. There’s quite a bit more musing on religion than one usually sees, but that’s prefectly fine with me.

I have the feeling this is one of those books that’s going to become a favorite of mine. It’s certainly one I’m going to have to read through more than once to make sure I get all the nuance. But you know what? I’ll take reading any Pratchett book more than once over reading most fantasy even one time!

Book Review – The Lost Symbol

“That Dan Brown,” I thought to myself several times as I read this book. “What an imagination.”

Credit where it is due. Dan Brown has a singular ability to take a great many likely very unrelated things and use them to authoritatively build a construct where none should exist. He managed to create a cute little Path of Illumination in Angels and Demons and a Grail conspiracy in The da Vinci Code (where he somehow never got around to mentioning that Grail stories don’t appear until the 12th century).

Now in his latest book, he creates a bizarre Masonic conspiracy that involves a McGuffin so great it could Change The Whole World. The CIA is also involved, for some reason. Also, a man gets his hand cut off, and Robert Langdon runs around staring, at various times, in wonder, in awe, in stunned silence and bewilderment.

The book carries Langdon on a chase around Washington, DC, on one rather memorable Sunday night during the football playoffs. A mysterious call, apparently on behalf of a friend of his, sends him on his mission to apparently uncover some great Masonic secret or, depending on what’s happening at any given moment in the story, not uncover some great Masonic secret.

This book was pretty insufferable, really. I rather liked Angels and Demons and The da Vinci Code had it’s moments, but this book didn’t really. From the moment the concept of “noetic sciences” was introduced (you ever hear of “The Secret”? It’s that), my eyes began rolling and didn’t stop until the end, and then that was only because I think whatever muscle controls the rolling had gotten tired.

There’s so much of this book that just doesn’t make sense. Take the involvement of the CIA. What appears to be their internal affairs office spends much time running around DC, sending black ops people to do things and generally pushing around folks from other departments (hilariously the director of this office tells someone else, employed by an entirely different branch of the government, that she outranks him. This is like the Chicago PD’s internal affairs department saying they outrank an NYC police officer). Of course the CIA isn’t allowed to operate on American soil, but since we all “know” they do anyhow, Brown has them do so in this book. There’s no real reason for them to. He could’ve had it be the FBI, and that would’ve made a lot more sense and not strained credibility, but whatever.

And then there’s the noetic sciences nonsense. Did you know thoughts have mass? I didn’t, and I’m willing to bet this is news to most physicists, too. Brown likes to spout off a bunch of “scientific” theories in the book as though they are fact, which gets really irritating after a bit.

Also laughable is someone sustaining a very, very serious injury for which they have had no medical treatment, as well as dealing with the after affects of torture, and a serious psychological jolt… and a couple hours later this same person is traipsing about Washington without a care in the world or any real medical attention. Right.

There’s one line towards the very end of the book where someone says, “I have witnessed human minds affecting the physical world in myriad ways.” You know what? I have, too. Those minds power hands, for example. I suggest you use your hands to not pick up this book…

… ok, that’s a little strained, but you get the idea.

The book gets two stars because it held my attention (when my eyes weren’t a spinnin’), but it gets one star for everything else. Not worth buying.

Book Review – Sprout

There is too often a theme in gay fiction. That theme is tragedy. I know this comes from the fact that so many gay people have lead rather effed up lives, but I can’t help but wonder what sort of message it sends young gay people growing up today. If you see something like Torchsong Trilogy, do you then believe all you have to look forward to is being gay-based? What about some of the AIDS sagas of the 1980’s and `90’s? Gay fiction tends to be tragic because the lives of so many gay people have been tragic.

But please note the use of the phrase “have been”. It’s a new world now. 2009, and being gay is pretty ok, unless you have the misfortune to live in some of the less-enlightened parts of our great nation. The titular character of this novel, Sprout, has that misfortune, living in Kansas, a place which contains the infamous Westboro Baptist Church.

Sprout, the title character of this book, is someone that I didn’t see often in gay fiction when I was growing up back in the late 1980’s. He’s not especially conflicted about being gay. He doesn’t go out of his way to hide it from people, but he doesn’t rub their faces in it, either. Rather he just goes about his life like any overly-intellectual teenage boy in a place where intellect is not prized (you know, high school).

Sprout’s story is one that’s a bit different from standard gay fiction, and thank goodness for that. Sprout doesn’t catch AIDS and doesn’t kill himself, which are two major pluses. Nor does he get gay-bashed. His boyfriend doesn’t commit suicide. All in all, this is a far more positive depiction of gay life than most of what gay teens get exposed to. That it’s well-written, entertaining and damn funny all help. It’s the kind of book I’d like to write some day (actually, the kind that I’m about 25% finished with writting).

This is a very, very good book and one that anyone trying to come to grips with their sexuality ought to read. I’d say that straight teen boys and girls could benefit by reading it, too, but though this is 2009, our world is what it is, and I’m not naive enough to think anyone but the gay boys will read it.

Still, what a read those fortunate few will have.

Book Review – Txtng: The Gr8 Db8

So how much influence did Txtng: The Gr8 Db8 have over me? Well, it made me go out and finally activate the text messaging feature on my phone. Now I can annoy my soon-to-be-former friends 24/7. I’m sure they’ll love me to no end.

This is an interesting little book examining the text messaging phenomenon from a linguistic angle. The writer points out that language often changes, that we’ve always used abbreviations and contractions, and that, basically, people need to get off their high horses and stop whining about how text messaging is ruining our culture and destroying the minds of a generation.

The book is reasonably short and entertainingly written. The appendices take up about 1/3 of the book and will tell you how to text people in eleven different languages. Always handy, one feels. The writing is intelligent and compelling and makes its points clear.

Ultimately I must say the book changed my views on texting. I always viewed it as conversations poor second cousin, and nothing worth spending time on. Now? I don’t think it’s the second coming of anything, but I have more respect, more tolerance and more interest, by far, than I had before reading the book.

In summation, and since I can’t resist, plz buy this book u will really njoy it cuz its really gr8 k?

Posting on Pratchett – Sourcery

I haven’t done one of thse in a while. Not since the one on Mort back in early March, but I’m feeling like doing one now. So here we go!

Sourcery is the fifth book in the wildly popular Discworld series, and for anyone who wants to know why there isn’t a lot of magic in the books, read this one.

The plot centers around the eighth son of an eighth son of an eighth son (guess what number is important in Discworld magic?), a boy named Coin, who gets his hands on a wizard’s staff. The staff gets its somewhat more metaphorical hands around Coin, and starts trying to bring about a world where magic rules above all else.

But before that, we have to get certain introductions out of the way, including the introduction of the world itself, and the Great Turtle upon which it rides.

There was no anology for the way in which Great A’Tuin, the world turtle, moved against the galactic night. When you are ten thousand miles long, your shell pocked with meteor craters and frosted with comet ice, there is aboslutely nothing you can realistically be like except yourself.
So Great A’Tuin swam slowly through the interstellar depths like the largest turtle there has ever been, carrying on its carapace the four huge elephants that bore on their backs the vast, glittering waterfall-fringed circle of the Discworld, which exists either because of some impossible blip on the curve of probability or possibly because the gods enjoy a joke as much as anyone.

Now the eye’s camera pans down onto the Disc itself and there, sulking beside the Circle Sea, we see Ankh-Morpork, glittering gem of cities!

Spring had come to Ank-Morpork. It wasn’t immediately apparent, but there were signs that were obvious to the cognoscenti. For example, the scum on the River Ankh, that great wide slow waterway that served the double city as reservoir, sewer and frequent morgue, had turned a particularly iridescent green. The city’s drunken rooftops sprouted mattresses and bolsters as the winter bedding was put out to air in the weak sunshine, and in the depths of musty cellars the beams twisted and groaned when their dry sap responded to the ancient call of root and forest. Birds nestled among the gutters and eaves of Unseen University, although it was noticable that however great the pressure was on the nesting sites, they nevber, ever made nests in the invitingly open mouths of the gargoyles that lined the rooftops, much to the gargoyles disapointment.

Of course Ankh-Morpork is home to the great Unseen University (motto: Nunc id vides, nunc ne vides). The University is where the biggest library in the world is located, and overseen by the Librarian (currently a large orangutang, due to a weird magical accident). The Library has a few books that are beyond what’s typical.

Books of magic have a life of their own. Some have altogether too much; for example, the first edition of the Necrotelecomnicon has to kept between iron plates, the True Arte of Levitatione has spent the last one hundred and fifty years up in the rafters and Ge Fordge’s Compenydyum of Sex Majick is kept in a vat of ice in a room by itself, and there’s a strict rule that it can only be read by wizards who are over eighty and, if possible, dead.

In most old libraries the books are chained to the shelves to prevent their being damaged by people. In the Library of the Unseen University, of course, it’s more or less the other way about.

And now we come the “hero” of the story, one Rincewind, a wizard, of a sort, about whom a teacher once said…

… to call his understanding of magic abysmal is to leave no suitable word to describe his grasp of its practics.

Lasty we get to meet, properly for the first time, Lord Havelock Vetinari, the Patrician and ruler of Ankh-Morpork.

The current Patrician, head of hte extremely rich and powerful Vetinari family, was thin, tall and apparently as cold-blooded as a dead penguin. Just by looking at him you could tell he was the sort of man you’d expect to keep a white cat, and caress it idly while sentencing people to death in a pirahna tank; and you’d hzard for good measure that he probably collected race thin procelain, turning it over and over in his blue-white fingers while disant screams echoed from the depths of the dungeons. You wouldn’t put it past him to use the word “exquisite” and have thin lips. He was the kind of person who, when they blink, you mark it off on the calendar.
Pratically none of this was in fact the case, although he did have a small and exceedingly elderly wire-haired terrier called Wuffles that smelled badly and wheezed at people. It was said to be the only thing in the entire world he truly cared about. He did of course sometimes have people horribly tortured to death, but this was considered to be perfectly acceptable behavior for a civic ruler and generally approved of by the overwhelming majority of citizens. The people of Ankh are of a practical persausion, and felt the Patrician’s edict forbidding all street theatre and mime artists made up for a lot of things. He didn’t administer a reign of terror, just the occasional light shower.

Coin, the young boy-wizard/sourcerer (someone who has direct access to the source of magic), turns up at the University. He quickly takes over by using the staff, and soon the wizards are all squaring off against one another, building huge towers and firing off blasts of magic that scar the land. This happens because the wizards tend to be very… well, I’ll let the book explain it.

The higher levels of wizardry are a perilous place. Every wizard is trying to dislodge the wizards above him while stamping on the fingers of those below; to say wizards are healthily competitive by nature is like saying piranhas are naturally a little peckish.

One of his other books makes the observation that, once upon a time, the plural of “wizard” was “war”, which this book showcases nicely.

Well, eventually Rincewind, with the help of a woman named Conina and a would-be barbarian hero named Nijel, wind up saving the day, more or less. They get to visit the Discworld version of Arabia (Klatch), and are present for the Aprocralypse (like an apocalypse, but, as it turned out, not).

This is a decent book, though nothing great by Discworld standards. There isn’t as much good commentary and satire as one would get later. It’s still a good and fun read, but not anything especially great.

On the other hand, the next book in the series, Wyrd Sisters, is one of the best of the entire Discworld series!

Book Review – Waiter Rant – The Waiter

I’ve never actually worked as a server/waiter. I’ve been very close. I used to work as a host, which is about as close as you can get to serving without actually doing so.

I was pretty good at it, too. I never oversat my tables, at least not without a valid reason. I always took care of the customers when they needed it. I handled the other hosts with great skill. I was darn good at what I did.

Then came the day I said, “F— you, sir!” to a customer.

Read Waiter Rant: Thanks for the Tip–Confessions of a Cynical Waiter, and you might begin to understand why.

This is a very entertaining book, especially for folk like me who’ve worked in the restaurant business at various levels. I’t well-written and very funny. If nothing else, it reminds me why I need to tip better.

For people who are currently working in the business, it can be a nice reminder that they aren’t alone. There’s others out there suffering as they do; putting up with the same nonsense and difficulties, all in the name of waiting on people who generally view you as nothing but an object between them and their food.

Of particular interest to those who haven’t worked in restaurants is a helpful guide at the back about how to be a good customer. You don’t want to be one of those that makes a mild-mannered fellow like me tell you what to go do with yourself.

It isn’t a perfect book, but it’s a good read and, if nothing else, gives hopes to bloggers like me who long to someday sample the sweet nectar of success… though after its brought to us, we’d have to tip at least 20%.

Book Review – Nation by Terry Pratchett

Terry Pratchett takes a step back from the Discworld for his first major non-Discworld book in quite some time.

Nation takes place in an alternate universe that is similar in many ways to ours (though sadly I don’t think we have any tree-dwelling octopi).

The book takes place sometime in the 19th century. It centers around two thirteen-year-olds, Mau and Daphne. He’s a young islander and she’s a Society girl from England. They meet after a giant wave devastates his island and causes her ship to crash there. The two form a bond and start building their own little nation together as other people begin to arrive.

This is very different from the usual Pratchett works. Normally he writes laugh-out-loud, thought-provoking comedy, and while there is quite a bit of that in this book, it’s certainly less pronounced than in the Discworld novels.

What’s very fascinating for someone like me is watching Mau’s deconversion from his people’s faith to someone more rational and scientificly based. He still admires his people’s customs and society, but by the end of the story, doesn’t seem to have their beliefs in the supernatural.

I found this a very satisfying read, and I’m looking forward to buying a copy once it comes out, which since I already own an advance reading copy, is saying something.

Very highly recommended, pre-order today!

Book Review – The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society

I’ve had an interest in the Channel Islands for the last couple years now. I was probably one of the few people in North America to notice when, earlier this year, Sark strode boldly into the 16th century and abolished the feudal system.

That interest is the only reason I wound up getting this book, and what a treat it turned out to be!

The plot centers around an author who lives in post-World War II England. The war has been over for less than a year when she gets an odd letter from a man living on Guernsey. He lived there through the German Occupation of the islands, and tells her all about the Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, a group formed on the spur-of-the-moment in order to explain to a German patrol why a group of people were wandering around after curfew. Eventually in order to keep up the charade, the group had to become an actual society, and things went from there.

This was a very sweet, entertaining little book. A quick read, as it’s entirely in the format of letters and telegrams, and therefore has lots of empty space. But it packs a lot into the space it uses. I felt like I really got to know the characters and wanted to spend more time with them.

It was also a sobbering look at a part of World War II history I’d previously been ignorant of. I had known the Germans occupied the Channel Islands, but I didn’t really know any of the details of the occupation. If it is anything like how it was shown in the book, it was a messy affair indeed.

I’ve not read anything else by these two authors, but I’m happy that I stumbled upon this book and I’ll certainly look into reading other books by them. I see on the Product Page that one of the authors died earlier this year. That adds perhaps an extra bittersweet touch to this story. Well, if she wrote anything else before that sad event, I’ll see about seeking it out and reading it, and that’s about the best compliment I can think of to give a writer.

Book Review – Ambidextrous by Felice Picano

Well, if graphic depictions of underage preteen intercourse, glue-sniffing and incestual voyerism are your cup of tea, then this is the book for you!

Ambidextrous bills itself as being about the secret lives of children. Not really so much of a secret, as just forgotten by people once they get to be adults. Most of what happens in this book will seem familiar to many readers, especially those are other than straight.

The book is apparently semi-autobiographical, and tells the story of a young boy’s early sex and social life. It details how the main character loses his virginity at the age of eleven, and starts having sex with other boys not long after.

Recently I re-read the book for the first time in a long while. It’s a bit more than I remember it being. Yes, the sex scenes are what stuck in my mind, but now I’ve also began to see it as the story of a young writer first starting to learn what he wanted to do with his life.

My life is quite similar to the main character’s, despite the 30+ years that seperate us. I, too, was sexually active at a fairly young age (though not quite as early and not quite as far as he got). Like him, I also took an interest in Greek mythology (though I didn’t read Homer until much later and I never have read The Illiad despite having a copy at home). And, like him, I’ve gone on to be a writer (though not as good, not as well-published and I don’t write borderline porn. There’s nothing borderline about what I write [but don't post on this site]). I can understand the protaganist’s annoyance and frustration at having a story rejected because I’ve been through that myself.

This book also offers a much more detailed slice of 1950’s life than I recall from my first reading, though again, it was about twelve years ago. Even though my childhood happened 30 years after his, there’s still a lot that I recognize, and I’m assuming the same is true for kids who are eleven or twelve now.

Ultimately I liked this book much better on my more recent reading and even more highly recommend it than before (even if I’m not sure about the grammar in that sentence).