Reviews and Comments

Amazingly un-PC. Fun adventure.

I found this pretty disappointing. The world didn't make much sense to me, which I think is a pretty bad failure for SF. Why are these people squabbling over petty change when they have energy surpluses large enough to quickly terraform ice planets? Why do the AIs let humans make the important choices? If linking human and AI minds leads to such amazing advances, why has it only been done once? If the main character's antique weapon is so powerful, why doesn't everyone use things like that?

Overlooking the SF shortcomings, the book was pretty flat. The characterizations weren't interesting. The plot seemed contrived.

Very good. The theme of becoming someone else to be able to tell a story is compelling. Lots of very interesting material about the history of Istanbul and Turkey.

A graphic novel exploring some of the ideas of Bertrand Russell. It covers some interesting territory, particularly the attempt to systematize mathematics and the relationship between logic and madness. But it doesn't delve very deeply. I didn't feel that the graphic novel presentation added very much, and I felt like there were a lot of extra levels of framing that were ultimately clumsy attempts to pull threads together.

Fun. Gives some insights into the mentality of supervillains. The hero thread was a bit too mid-90s for my taste.

Makes the end of The Once and Future King even more depressing. Interesting look into White's anti-war, pro-capitalist views.

The first book of this (The Sword in the Stone) is a really nice read. The rest of it gives a lot of insights into the various important characters, but I felt like it became more and more depressing.

Weird. A relatively normal guy gets his head sewn back on after being decapitated and comes back to life. He ends up being taken out into the desert, where he meets caricatures of various American types.

During the siege of Leningrad, a young boy and an accidental Red Army deserter are sent off to bring back a dozen eggs to an NKVD colonel. Charming. Bleak.

The structure of this was very interesting: part diary, part collections of interviews. It jumps backwards and forwards in time, and almost demands a second reading after you know what happens in the pivotal section (which is, of course, at the end).

The actual content was less interesting to me than the structure. It focuses on a poetic movement in Mexico, and on a few characters involved in its creation.

It was interesting to be reading about Mexico while I was there. I learned at least one piece of slang from it that was actually being used around me.

There are some interesting spins on traditional motifs here: the eternal struggle between Light and Darkness, vampires, shape shifters, magicians. Unfortunately, after the first section, the main characters spends too much of his time moping around philosophizing.

Sabatini has a problem with making his heroes too good. But an entertaining adventure.

This book did a good job of making me want to visit Venice, and a great job of making me want to never be involved in Venetian business or politics.

Sonic loaned me a copy of this and it was sitting in my to-read pile for a while. I recommended it for bookclub without even flipping through it. It turned out to be quite good. It's deceptively short, pithy, and quite funny.

Tinny predicts I'll hate every character! She's right! More entertaining than I expected.