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book Read Every Day reading reviews

RED Book 23: Wool – Hugh Howey

I don’t want to bore you with apologies about how long it’s been since the last RED update (or blog post of any kind), however I will say, to be fair to Wool, that the long delay has been to do with events in my personal life making me not feel like reading very much. I stalled in the middle of this book but not because of the book itself.

Wool is set in a post-apocalyptic world where what’s left of humanity lives in an underground silo and the worst crimes are punishable by being sent outside for ‘cleaning’ which involves spending your last few minutes, while the poisonous atmosphere eats through your suit, wiping down the cameras so that the silo-dwellers can temporarily get a clear view of the outside. But, as ever, all is not what it seems. Is the silo really all there is?, is the outside really a poisonous uninhabitable wasteland?

First thing to say about Wool is that it was originally published in 5 parts and it shows. The first part – the original short story – is complete in itself. However it gives away some information as part of its climax that I think you’d want to keep back if writing the novel from scratch. Parts 2-5 are more connected but suffer from having being written individually and so characters and plot elements that seem central in part 3 may not be by the end of 5. Particularly with the characters it was harder to care when you realised they may not be around that much longer.

That said it was an intriguing world. (I was going to say “well-built” but you could pick holes in it all day long if you’d a mind to. I don’t usually.) And he certainly knows how to create tension. I can see exactly why Ridley Scott bought the film rights. The best bits read like set pieces from a good SciFi thriller movie. That said there were bits that felt like padding.

He’s written a prequel which I hear good things about and which was at least written as a complete novel from the word go. I will probably check it out eventually but it’s not next on my list.

6/10 – good plot, interesting world, characters and coherence needs work.




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book Read Every Day reading reviews

RED Book 22: Tigana – Guy Gavriel Kay

Oh dear. Been a long time hasn’t it? Still the increasingly inaccurately named Read-Every-Day project continues.

Tigana was the Sword and Laser Book Club book for June. And I did actually read it in June but given the current date it’s a poor show that I haven’t written it up until now. Anyway…

Tigana is a fantasy novel set in the world of the Nine Provinces of the Peninsula of the Palm. The Peninsula is split with half the provinces controlled by one foreign tyrant and the other half by the other with a single province remaining neutral. The story follows the journey of a young musician who becomes involved in a quest to unite and free the peoples of the Palm.

With a couple of strong caveats I really enjoyed this book. Caveat number 1 is that it takes a while to get going. If you’re tempted to give up try to keep going until chapter 5 or the scene in the hunting lodge. If you’re not gripped after that fair enough. Same logic applies if you feel confused. There’s a lot of geo-politics early on that does eventually become clear.

Second caveat is that the language takes its time. On S&L it was described as ‘flowery’. I think I’d call it ‘literary’ in any event it can be very descriptive at just the times when you want the story to move forward more quickly. But if that doesn’t bother you or you actively enjoy it then it will be a good read.

Although it’s a fantasy book and there is some mention of magic, mystical creatures and other realms this is really a story about people. It’s about war and the consequences of living with an invading power. There’s some interesting questions about morality in the book and you may find you come to be more sympathetic to more than one character who at first seems irredeemable.

It is quite a long book – 678 pages – and I had to “power through” to make sure I finished it on time. This had consequences for subsequent reading in that I didn’t feel like reading for long stretches after that. But I don’t really hold that against it.

7/10 – could have been more concise but a powerful read nonetheless.




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RED Book 21: The Fifth Elephant – Terry Pratchett

So we’re up to Discworld #24 – only 15 books behind now!

Fifth Elephant is a City Watch novel. Or actually it’s a Vimes book with some appearances by other Watch characters, notably Carrot and Angua.

Vimes is sent as Ankh-Morpork’s ambassador to Uberwald for the coronation of the Dwarves new Low King. However when he gets there he becomes involved in solving a crime, the theft of a precious cultural artefact. This in turns leads to him being embroiled in political machinations and a power struggle between the Dwarves, Vampires and Werewolves who are the various ruling factions of Uberwald. As the plot unfolds Vimes finds himself fighting just to stay alive.

The early part of the story, is centred on this theft which functions both as a pleasing “locked door” mystery, and a gentle fun-poking at the idea of “locked door” mysteries. I enjoyed both elements.

I also liked the character interactions especially between Vimes and Lady Sybil, but also between Carrot and Angua – whose family is from Uberwald (remember she’s a werewolf). As ever Vimes is a character I enjoy, though he is a little too competent at times. However there were at least a couple of how’s-he-going-to-get-out-of-this? situations where it was luck or someone else that effected his escape/rescue rather him just being super-cop.

It’s an interesting problem, perhaps unique to a series like the Discworld books, because if I read this book as a stand-alone I wouldn’t have an issue with Vimes coming out on top – he’s the hero. So despite not having the raw strength of a werewolf, the powers of a vampire, the fighting skills of an assassin or sheer numbers of the dwarves, he wins through, mostly on his wits. As I say this shouldn’t be a problem, and it wouldn’t be…

…except there’s this niggling thing because I know there are other Discworld books where the protagonist is a Wizard or a vampire or an assassin and the story is from their point of view and it seems like magic or the dexterity and skills of a trained killer, or supernatural ability or whatever becomes the final word in competency. And maybe that’s all ok. Maybe it can be any of those things in different stories and really it is just about pov, but somehow I feel like I back in my days of Buffy fan discussion arguing who’s stronger than who, or what[1]. Anyway that’s all probably just me.

This was one of Pratchett’s “many endings” books, which I’ve mentioned before as being a weakness for me. I think I mind it less here but there are several plot strands that get set up and when what I think is the big climatic scene, which ties up say 2 or 3 of them, there are still a few left to wrap – which is does but in a relative sedate fashion. I think at a certain point[2] you have to accept that’s his style and at least live with it.

Overall it’s an enjoyable book. Not my favourite Discworld, not even my favourite Watch book[3] but definitely worth the read.

7/10 – Discworld delivers another solid fun read.

[1] Classic case would be the ‘cage’ in the Library which at various stages contained various monsters, at least one of which managed to escape by forcing his way out and was then bested by another who was never able to get out of that particular cage.
[2]book 24 perhaps?
[3]Guards Guards![4]
[4]at least so far. I’m told Night Watch is excellent.




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RED Book 20: Charlotte Street – Danny Wallace

Charlotte Street is a book for which I again broke my TBR rule[1] Why? Well, I knew who Danny Wallace was from his association with Dave Gorman, from various bits of TV, from a non-fiction book Join Me, which I read about 2/3rds of[2] several years ago. And then I saw that he was releasing a novel and read the blurb and thought, “OK, this sounds like it could be my kind of thing”.

Is it? We’ll see.

Charlotte Street concerns a man, Jason Priestley[3], who’s lost his way a little. He doesn’t have a firm grasp on his career, his long term girlfriend dumped him and he’s living above (and sporadically in) a used video games shop in a slightly dingy flat.

One day he meets a girl – on Charlotte Street – with an amazing smile who’s struggling with various bags and packages, and trying to get into a taxi. After this brief meeting he discovers she’s left behind something, a disposable camera. Of course he gets the film developed and is intrigued by pictures. Not knowing who the girl is or anything about her, Jason decides to try to use the contents of the photos as clues to to try to find her.

The rest of the book follows loosely this structure, but it also interweaves the ongoing story of his life – his attempts to get his career on track, to get over, or possibly back with his ex- and so on. At times I think it would have been better if it were a little more rigid with the structure, perhaps having a chapter for each photo.

The book is basically a rom-com concept and as such it’s perhaps inevitable that there will be some question about whether he ends up with “the Girl” or not, and if not whether it’s one of the other possibilities. I won’t give away the ending but let’s just say that I thought it was going to end up with a particular pairing, then that became obviously not the case, then I briefly hoped that was a double-bluff and then – I was disappointed.[4]  I hate when that happens. Oh well.

Charlotte Street is another one of those books about men in their mid-twenties to early-thirties who are trying to figure out what life is all about and where they fit in and with whom. I seem to have read a few like this. This isn’t one of the better ones but it’s hard to find it offensive. It’s a light read and goes down ok but it’s forgettable and a little meandering.

If you like Nick Hornby or John O’Farrell or Tony Parsons then… maybe you should stick with them 😉 If you’ve run out of their stuff right now, then this is not bad.

6/10 -a rom-com that wasn’t quite up my street.

[1]Which is now, not so much broken as lying in shattered pieces on the floor.
[2]On the one hand I didn’t finish it, but on the other I read most of it in a day, which says that I was into – on that day at least.
[3] No – as the running gag goes – not that one.
[4]I think I’d wanted him to end up with a particular woman because I thought she was the female character I liked most. However thinking about it now, I didn’t like him quite as much so in that sense she’s better off without him.
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book Read Every Day reading reviews

RED Book 19: News From Gardenia – Robert Llewellyn

Now, you know how for the last few months, particularly in relation to TBR,  I’ve occasionally mentioned how “there’s a book coming” which I’d already “ordered”? Well this is that book.

What happened was that toward the end of last year I’d heard about Unbound and I was interested (it’s like “Kickstarter for Books” if that means anything). Mostly because I would like to see a model of publishing that is able to adapt to the new world of ebooks, but without being a free-for-all with no concept of gatekeepers. When I saw Robert’s Llewellyn’s pitch for this book, and that was not long after having read and enjoyed Punchbag, I knew I wanted to support both this book and the site.

There were a couple of minor annoyances with the Unbound experience. There was less in the way of updates than I’d hoped (the Unbound website has an “author’s shed” area which you gain access to by supporting the book.) Also the release date slipped a couple of times and at least once we only heard after failing to receive the book. But overall given this is a very new venture they can be forgiven these hiccups.

Anyway onto the book itself.

News From Gardenia is the story of a man from the 21st century who gets inexplicably transported into the world of a couple of centuries in the future. What he finds there is a world very unlike our own. A world where people don’t use energy like it’s an inexhaustible resource. Or any other resource for that matter. Gardenia is the future name for Britain where people have taken to supplying their food needs via gardening. However the hero of this book also visits a number of other societies of the future, some which have adapted very differently, and all different to our own.

OK so this is a Utopian novel and as the author himself acknowledges it’s actually very difficult to write such a book and make it interesting. You can’t fall back on alien invasion, zombie apocalypse or environmental catastrophe to create drama for you. (Though as you’ll recall at least one of those doesn’t automatically make for a gripping story.) And I knew this from the pitch. I guess I had some confidence based on the fact that Punchbag managed to be both an “issue” book and a “proper story”.

News From Gardenia doesn’t. Not quite. It’s reasonably interesting, especially when you know that there’s no technology in the book that fundamentally new. It’s a future that could happen if we collectively chose it. However the problem is that the story of our hero and his attempts to adapt to his new life are always subservient to descriptions of how things work. So it becomes a kind of travelogue of the future.

This is not helped by a rather abrupt and ambiguous ending. I had to double-check that there wasn’t a chapter missing in my ebook copy.

However it was a short, easy read and fairly interesting on its main topic.

6/10 – an intriguing look at energy conservation and use, not so much an actual story though.

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RED Book 18: Equations of Life – Simon Morden

Another long gap. Naughty me. Oh well.

Equations of Life was the May book for the Ship of Fools book group. Its author is an SoF regular and I had actually gotten the book a while ago with the intent of reading it at some point, partly because it sounded interesting in its own right, but also because I was curious what he was like as an author[*].

This book is set in an expanded London (“the Metrozone”) of the future, about 20 years after a series of terrorist attacks where nuclear weapons were used.  It follows Samuil Petrovich, a young Russian physics genius with a somewhat dubious past who’s now living and studying in the Metrozone. One day he helps foil a kidnapping attempt and the fallout from this incident sets in chain the events of the rest of the book. And it’s a wild ride, there’s gun-toting nuns, rival urban gangs, virtual reality, AI-controlled giant machines, a zombie-like army of street people and just for good measure, the equations that may well be the basis of a Theory of Everything – and which do, of course, give the book its title.

I definitely enjoyed this book but as usual with me, it’s easier to articulate what I didn’t like. I kept feeling that Samuil was written older than he actually is. He’s also annoying as he’s pretty much universally competent, whether it’s squaring up to gang bosses or solving intractable physics problems. His only real flaw appears to be a physical one, a heart condition, which itself is always conveniently dangerous whilst never actually stopping him from doing anything the plot requires.

Another minor irritation – and this may just be me – was that he swears in Russian. Frequently and in many different ways. At least I think most of it was swearing. I wasn’t going to stop to look it up every time. I know it’s authentic, but it felt like the author constantly reminding me that this character was Russian.

I did like the fact that plot whizzes along and quite a lot of stuff happens, like a good thriller, and a lot of it is inventive and interesting (though be warned some of it is dark and icky). The pictures conjured up in my head of some of the scenes toward the end in particular were very effective.

I also like the romantic sub-plot, mostly because I’m a sucker for that kind of thing.

There’s another two books in the series, soon to be three I understand, and whilst I’m not raring to read them, maybe when my TBR is low enough, or I’m just in the mood for a rompy-scifi-thriller.

7/10 – an inventive, wild ride of book.

[*]Let’s face it – with the availability of so much fiction these days, there has to be something beyond simply “sounds interesting”. It has to be “sounds interesting” and “I like the author”, or “sounds interesting” and “comes recommended from trusted source”

 

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RED Book 16: The Shining – Stephen King

So I’ve been a bad boy – in two ways, but I’ll just name the first here – that I read this book 3 weeks ago and haven’t written it up yet. Which is a problem because my memory is terrible and any details I recall have since merged into an overall impression. So I might approach this review slightly differently.

Normally at this point I’d do a little synopsis of the start of the plot so you’d know what kind of story it is and then make my comments on how I enjoyed it (or not). But do I really need to do that?

OK so a writer takes a job as a housekeeper-handyman for an isolated hotel that’s closed for the winter. As he and his family become more cut off by the weather strange things begin to happen.

But you probably knew that because of the film. Even if like me you’ve never really seen the film all the way through it’s one of those things that has so seeped into the culture that you’ll have seen a few clips, or even parodies of famous moments – “Here’s Johnny“? “All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy“? (neither of those moments are in the book by the way)

The thing is – and I can’t stress this enough – the book is not the film. The film as powerful as it is – and since reading the book I have watched the film from start to finish – is a different story. It has the same elements but the film is really about the descent of a man into a kind of madness, a cabin fever brought on by boredom and isolation in which some spooky things happen but they may just be in his mind. The book is the story of a place, a place where powerful and malevolent forces have infiltrated the fabric of the hotel that’s built there and manifest themselves in increasingly disturbing ways.

I can see why fans of the book might dislike the film.

I wasn’t gripped straight away. It took maybe 50-100 pages. But during the early part of the book I identified – too much for comfort – with the character of Jack Torrance and that kept me interested. Once we get to the hotel, the tension ratchets up increasingly as the chapters go by and by the end it’s a really suspenseful page-turning thrill of a ride.

Funny anecdote – whilst I was still about halfway through for a little light relief I decided to break from reading and watch that episode of Friends where Joey’s reading the Shining and has to put it in the freezer. Of course what I’d forgotten about that episode, kinda the point of that strand of it, is that Joey spoils the book for Rachel. So even though I knew I knew the ending of the film, I also knew that the ending of the book was slightly different and didn’t know exactly what it was – until I spoilt myself by watching Friends.

Except not really. One way I can tell this is really a great book is that even though I knew a lot of the bare bones of the story (from the film) including the ending (from Friends) I still enjoyed this read.

8/10 – A master story-teller on his game.

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RED April – TBR Update

Quick update concerning TBR.

You’ll recall my TBR had to go below 189 to allow me to buy/acquire new books in April. Well since completing A Princess of Mars I was at 189. I was trying to decide whether that counted when I realised that one of the books on my To-Read list I don’t actually own (Fifth Elephant, the next Discworld book) so that brought me down to 188 which definitely did count.

So I immediately bought two new books, one of which was Fifth Elephant.

So TBR target for May 1st is 187 or less. Remember I can get as many new books as I like in April but unless I end the month below 188 I can’t do so in May.

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Read Every Day reading reviews

RED Book 15: A Princess of Mars – Edgar Rice Burroughs

So yes this is the first of the John Carter of Mars books, and yes I did read it now because of the movie coming out. But I’ll have you know that it (along with the other 10 books in the series) was amongst my first wave of downloads when I got a Kindle and started looking at Project Gutenberg in earnest.

A Princess of Mars concerns John Carter, a man from 19th century Virginia, Earth, mysteriously travelling to Mars and the adventures he has there. He meets the six-limbed green martians first of all, then later the more human-looking red martians, one of whom is the beautiful princess Dejah Thoris.

It’s worth pointing out that this book is  hundred years old. So when I say that it’s an old-fashioned adventure yarn with an old-fashioned hero then I mean really old-fashioned. John Carter is an American Civil War veteran, a fighting man with a sword. He’s never anything less than brave and he always wins the day. He’s also, to a modern reader (or even a child of the 1970s/80s like me) a bit too ready to pull out his sword. I found it strange that Burroughs happily uses “man” and even “human” to describe all the different races – which in more modern fiction I’d see as a signifier of granting them equal status – and yet Carter is happy to start fights that will inevitably lead to the deaths of several of them, often because an alternate plan is simply more inconvenient.

But then maybe it’s not just martian life that’s cheap, maybe he’s just used to a more precarious and dangerous world.

His relationship with the Princess is probably what you’d expect given the time it was written. She’s not a weak character but her strength is in her emotional reserve initially and her willingness to follow him into danger later on. There’s also a strong theme of love thwarted by convention, a contrived barrier that is eventually overcome.

I also found some of the SciFi names (Barsoom, Thark, Tars Tarkas) and the descriptions of weird and wonderful martian “stuff” (the landscape, the animals, the way martian society is organised, the mating habits and life-cycle of the martians)  a bit annoying. It felt to my probably jaded eyes like exotica for exotica’s sake – not essential to the plot and just there for colour. Probably unfair since in 1912 this was probably cutting edge stuff and not at all cringe-worthy.

If you’re getting the feeling I didn’t enjoy it then you’re almost right. It had its moments. I actually did become interested in whether and how Carter and the Princess would get it together (UST strikes again). But other than that…

I probably read it too late. It’s a (very) old-fashioned SciFi romp. I should have read it at 12/13 and probably would have thought a) it was great and b) I was very grown-up and sophisticated for seeing past the slightly archaic language and attitudes.

At 45 it still seems like an ok read but a bit creaky.

6/10 – dated but not completely without merit.




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RED Book 13: Remix – Lexi Revellian

Remix is another “indie”. I bought it for I think 99p when it was in the top 10 kindle books.

Caz Tallis makes and repairs rocking horses in her London flat. She’s somewhat surprised one morning to discover what looks like a vagrant and his dog on her roof-top patio since he must have climbed up there somehow. She’s even more surprised when she realises this is Ric Kealey, lead singer of the band The Voices, not least because he supposed to have been dead for the last three years.

After this intriguing opening what follows is a crime thriller that focuses on Caz trying to help Ric sort out some issues from his past and discover exactly who is responsible for some of the things he was accused of.

Remix is not a bad book. It’s certainly very readable and the plot has enough questions and diversions to keep you interested and guessing. I’d say the pace is a little sedate at first but the nearer the end you get the more things pick up. There’s quite a bit more violence toward the end of the book than the tone of the writing before that point might lead you to suppose.

I also felt like some of the characterisation was lifted from a chick-lit novel and placed in a crime story. It may be that was deliberate and the target audience was people who enjoy both those genres but for me the setting up of the two rivals for Caz’s affections and their relative character qualities felt a bit too cliched. Having said that it didn’t dominate the story and it wasn’t wrapped up as neatly as I’d expect in a pure romantic novel (I did wonder if that was to make space for a sequel).

7/10 – a fun easy read.