Review: Babylon's Ashes

Babylon's Ashes by James S.A. Corey
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Somehow, I feel the further along the Expanse universe gets, the more backwards it seems to fall. The first introduction showed us a dazzling, living solar system populated with factions, personalities, nations and technology, coexisting, fighting, exploiting, and most of all, alive. The interstellar distances were too huge and too immense for a convenient plot device to navigate; Epstein drives were a necessary evil but one that made sense. The introduction of a protomolecule to Julie Mao was an instance of first contact so strange and frightening, it felt truly alien.
Then the books progressed, the Gate opened, and all of mankind's struggles seemed tiny and pointless in the face of something far greater, a whole new universe, a chance to discover and explore something on a far greater scale.
Then the Gate closed.
That's what it feels like now - there's still stuff happening, but by focusing on the struggle between humans, still caught in the same system, might be an ode to humanity's, ah, humanity, but compared to what was opened up earlier - feels small, pointless, and petty.
In the face of what could be happening, it feels very precious.
And I hated the deux ex machina added on to complete the story - it was stupid, improperly and incompletely explained, and just felt like a cheap cop-out compared to everything else that had happened before. It's still a fascinating universe, just the storyline sucked.

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Review: The Shadow of What Was Lost

The Shadow of What Was Lost by James Islington
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

It's interesting, and pretty good in terms of being a coming-of-age story on it's own with plenty of twists and surprising revelations, but somehow the whole hero's journey aspect of fantasy is beginning to wear a little thin - mostly with me, I've just read too many of those types of stories, I guess.
That said, it has a very interesting presense in terms of dynamics of time; unlike most others where events happened in faraway, mythological past followed by a frozen, unchanging present, this world feels more dynamic, with causes and effects creating the society, politics, and economy of the place.
The band of companions also is an interesting mix, brought together in ways that are fairly unlike - and better - than most other standard novels, though it does use one of the most-abused cliches of the magic school - but I'll forgive that in the light of not just the world, but a magic system that almost approaches a Brandon Sanderson level of complex simplicity.
I'm not sure why I felt it didn't grip; all the ingredients are there, it's just not baked right. Some parts feel raw and meandering, others repetitive and unnecessary.
Anyway, the stage is set; look forward to the next one, hoping it improves.

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Review: The Player of Games

The Player of Games by Iain M. Banks
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

It sucks you in. The start was slightly slow and contrived, but as it progresses, you can feel yourself empathizing, understanding, even appreciating Gurgeh's priorities, background, motivations - and even a sense of the massively high stakes and the posthuman and AI intelligence's perspectives - a very difficult thing to do, making you think like someone a lot smarter than you yourself are.
The setting as well - strong social commentary there, is that what we would look like to outsiders?
The most fascinating thing though was the gradual creeping understanding of exactly how big a threat Azad really was - from a primitive, laughably easily conquerable empire to a cohesive, structurally sound entity with potential for equating the technological disparity while retaining it's barbarity - that was terrifying.
Surprisingly fast-paced, too.

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Review: The Trade of Queens

The Trade of Queens by Charles Stross
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

So finally done - it was a pretty decent series. Got a bit depressing and hard to get through / follow towards the end, and I missed the simplicity of the earlier ones - as you add more people, more characters, more worlds, and more problems, it just gets harder and harder, more and more sluggish - but ACRONYMS aside, it still stayed pretty good all the way till the end.
It was a tragic ending - one group instigates a war, the other group responds with madness, and the simple general population of the world - who never asked for the war, the world-walkers, the games they played - pays the price in a nuclear winter while the guilty parties escape scot-free.

It's left the door open for sequels, but I'm not sure where it can go from here without a whole new series. The best part of the whole concept - applying economics, engineering and political science to magic - was the single most unique, impressive, and stand-out part of this series.

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Review: The Revolution Business

The Revolution Business by Charles Stross
My rating: 0 of 5 stars



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Review: The Merchants' War

The Merchants' War by Charles Stross
My rating: 3 of 5 stars



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Review: The Clan Corporate

The Clan Corporate by Charles Stross
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Slowing down. Interesting cliffhanger end. Realism continues as ever. Refreshing breath of fresh air storywise, though a bit stodgy in character and dialogue.

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Review: The Hidden Family

The Hidden Family by Charles Stross
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Charles Stross is a pretty good fantasy writer, it turns out - but an even better steampunk one. The worldwalking plot device is an awesome mechanic for crossover novels - he did the modern day corporate crime and drug trade, he did the medieval royal court intrigue and swords, serfs and secrets... and now he's got a hardcore bona fide alt history steampunk world complete with consumptive revolutionaries, airships, bobbies and literally steam-powered cars.
Can it get more awesome?
Yes it can, with the death of a major character! Discovery of a shocking long-forgotten secret! A twist in the tale and a sudden reappearance of a previously long-lost other character! Patents! Business! Robber barons! Real barons! Courtroom drama!
It's a very unclassifiable but extremely enjoyable story, the way it's turning out.

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Review: The Family Trade

The Family Trade by Charles Stross
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

After a long time - maybe the first time - there's a book with a protagonist who gets shown magic and then proceeds to test it starting with a control, observations, recordings, and a map. Then finds out how it works. Then figures out how people make money off it, in the most logical way. Then uses her real-world education and knowledge to figure out how to make even more money off it... it was hilariously awesome. And sharp, snappy, and edge-of-the-seat gripping.
Would I read the next one? I already did!

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Review: The Skull Throne

The Skull Throne by Peter V. Brett
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Pretty decent - I think the Demon Cycle is beginning to suffer from the classic problem of overpowered protagonists - In the fist few books they barely survive, then get better, then thrive... and now the night holds no more terrors, and their worst enemies are each other - but this is a Demon Cycle book, not a human history - so you have to keep coming up with stronger and stronger foes to keep it interesting.
The ending was pretty good, though. Jayan and Asome have an interesting Rabban / Feyd-Rautha dynamic going on and develops pretty well - the last book and hal of this one went slow but it seems to be building up towards something pretty interesting.

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Review: The Skull Throne

The Skull Throne by Peter V. Brett
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Pretty decent - I think the Demon Cycle is beginning to suffer from the classic problem of overpowered protagonists - In the fist few books they barely survive, then get better, then thrive... and now the night holds no more terrors, and their worst enemies are each other - but this is a Demon Cycle book, not a human history - so you have to keep coming up with stronger and stronger foes to keep it interesting.
The ending was pretty good, though. Jayan and Asome have an interesting Rabban / Feyd-Rautha dynamic going on and develops pretty well - the last book and hal of this one went slow but it seems to be building up towards something pretty interesting.

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Review: Cinder

Cinder by Marissa Meyer
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Cinder was an interesting mix - the scifi doesn;t clash with the fantasy, there's enough post-apocalyptic scenarios where technology survives but social structures change - but the juxtaposition of the fairytale feels sometimes very skilful, sometimes very forced, but definitely surreal.
Otherwise it's a standard Hero's Journey plot with some fairly interesting characters and a very predictable revelation, and a very good ending - just enough to keep you thinking (though based on the story so far you can imagine how it would end) and open enough to be unique.
Would i read the next? I do believe so.

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Review: Cibola Burn

Cibola Burn by James S.A. Corey
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This one was ok, but only as a standalone - it somehow just didn't have the same sense of scale and horror that the earlier ones had. Now it just felt like everyone's tired, overwhelmed... not really sure of what to do. Makes for a decent marooned-on-a-desert-island kind of story where otherwise minor bit characters assume larger proportions than they deserve because there's literally no others around, and sufficiently advanced technology becomes indistinguishable from magic.
Relatively decent otherwise for the science and space bits, poor on drama and ground ops. Felt too... tied down.

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Review: The Grace of Kings

The Grace of Kings by Ken Liu
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This was an awesome book. It's not so much a novel as an epic saga rooted in oral tradition - a series of small stories all interlinked to a grand tale spanning time and space, each with enough fun to be memorable and subtle philosophical concepts to emerge on every telling, a curved mirror forcing you to look deep into yourself.
It's really, really long - covering a fairly eventful chunk of the lifetime of the protagonists - but it doesn't feel log, just eventful. You do see them grow.
The language is simple, almost childlike at times - adding to the easy readability and sense of verbally transmitted stories.
The cast is HUGE. hundreds, easily, and all of them unique, different, stereotypes and archetypes. One thing this did really well was the shades of grey in people. There are no absolutes, no good an bad - bad people did good things sometimes, and good ones did bad, and they switched it around, over and over. They felt more human than a lot of people I'd seen elsewhere. Also found a lot of people being casually killed off very GoT-style.
Also liked how the gods and men are on such familiar terms with each other and interacting while staying separate - that was an interesting dynamic. Not much magic here, except the very subtle magic of misdirection and illusion - even the gods interfere a lot less directly than you think.
An excellent read. Unputdownable, beginning to end.

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Review: Biggles of 266

Biggles of 266 by W.E. Johns
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I have to admit I have a soft spot for this series. Before the war movies, before the Commando Comics, before Blue Max, before even the history books, there were the summer afternoons with words on a page that would take me across the planet, seventy years in the past, and fifteen thousand feet up. I'd feel the cold, the wind, the vibration, be deafened by the roaring engines, squint into the blue for telltale twinkles of color, smell the oil and the cordite, sway with the gforces... it started a lifelong interest, and opened up a whole new way of looking at history as something so much more alive than dates and things that happened. It was a world now.
It was all words, and the only images I'd ever seen to show what it looked like was on faded, tattered covers - but the world behind the words was crystalline, gloriously detailed, and fun.
Could any ten-year-old ask for more in a story?

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Review: The Martian

The Martian by Andy Weir
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This was pretty good, actually. Brilliant exercise in setting a situation with a fixed set of variables, and then throw situation after situation and making those variables fit together in the perfect way to solve those situations. And in the end, getting to the end result.
And more than that, it's an awesome exercise in watching an object lesson in not giving up - however hilariously impossible things look.

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Review: Prince of Thorns

Prince of Thorns by Mark Lawrence
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This is a fascinatingly dysfunctional book - it sets up a character who completely breaks every expectation of what a hero should be, yet you still somewhere grudgingly have to hand it to him for sheer bloody-mindedness - and yes, entertainment.
There's some slightly confusing bits - the whole thing reads likely something coming from a mind not exactly firing on all cylinders - but the sensation of the story holds up pretty well.
It's gory, vicious, ultraviolent... but also a fascinating read, especially once you start putting some of the pieces together.

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Review: Stormdancer

Stormdancer by Jay Kristoff
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

It's interesting how some world-building ideas have become fantasy canon. Cities are always filthy, crawling with rats, disease, thieves, and a robust, thriving underworld. Farms are always simple and clean, as are the hearts and minds of their peoples. Desert cities have a bazaar and siestas, elaborate conversations, and classes. The icy north is full of warriors. And now, anything resembling oriental culture must have at it's head a god-like absolute despot ruling with an iron fist over not just the hearts but the minds of his subjects as well, rigid and widely separated classes, intrigue and conspiracy, layered meanings and subtlety - and always, somewhere in a far-off forest, a resistance awakens to fight back.

Stormdancer sports the fairly standard coming-of-age dragonrider story, but by placing it in this world adds an interesting variation. It's complex, nuanced, thoughtful, edge-of-the-seat pacy, and does not get sappy or shy away from the gory details.
And it's a ton of fun. Looking forward to the next.

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Review: Heartless

Heartless by Gail Carriger
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Not bad, but running out of stuff now. Alexia's becoming the kind of person you'd want to avoid at all cost - whiny, irritating, meddling, always getting herself into trouble rashly and then needing to be rescued, and with absolutely no regard for anyone 'common' - maybe it's meant to be immersive, but there's a thing as going too far. It just comes out as really classist.
The Lefoux storyline was decent, but the ending and the apparently 'neat resolution' with all loose ends tied up kinda felt... forced. Not right. I liked Lefoux. Now she's been turned into a weird caricature of herself to fit the storyline, to make the reader more comfortable with the storyline, where literally everyone gets displaced except Alexia, who gets exactly what she wants.

So... guess the title is truer than I expected.

Reminds me of an ex.

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