Reviews and Comments

A letdown. The premise was fascinating: the old gods of European, African and Asian myth were brought to America by their believers, but now they're in a struggle for mindshare with new gods of technology and progress. But the execution was unexciting. I would have liked to see a lot more of the new gods. I would also have liked a protagonist who was more defined.

Spectacular. Dreamlike. Entrancing. Densely linked to itself, but never hard to read. I'm sure it will bear another reading in a few months. I expect I'll discover many more layers.

Fascinating. Diamond makes a convincing case for geographic determinism: the idea that the course of human history is heavily dependent on the advantages and disadvantages of the various areas that people have inhabited.

For example, Eurasia enjoyed a very powerful advantage over the Americas simply because of its East-West orientation, which allowed crops domesticated in one area to spread easily throughout large areas of similar latitude (and climate). The predominantly North-South orientation of the Americas meant that crops suited to Mesoamerica couldn't spread very far North or South because of the rapid climate shifts. Thus, Eurasia achieved higher populations more quickly, which allowed more specialists (inventors, soldiers, bureaucrats) to develop a more complex society.

It was really interesting to read a history of early agriculture and domestication of animals. It has solidified my attitudes towards genetically modified foods and the like. We've been changing the plants and animals around us by "artificial" selection for thousands of years. Why stop now?

The book itself is somewhat repetitive. It reads as if the author expected readers to read chapters in isolation, and therefore summarized the results of previous chapters. On the other hand, the book is chock-full of interesting bits of trivia.

The argument is strong, but almost disappointingly simple. I want history to be more than a big game of Civilization, where whoever builds the Granary in each of his cities first wins.

Got this on a whim.

This was perfect for reading while I ate dinner over the course of a month or so. Short, self-contained interviews with Neil Gaiman about the Sandman series. Interesting insights. Bender asks good questions, and seems to have a good dynamic with Gaiman. It prompted me to go back and re-read some of the graphic novels, looking more closely at some of the themes. It was particularly interesting to read about the reception of the series as it was being written. I hadn't realized the extent to which The Sandman affected the Goth scene.

Oddly, I found the most interesting material in the book to be the chapter on Jungian Types. But there's plenty of good Human Interface Design material here as well. It's fairly 90's Mac-centric in the main, and many of the examples not directly applicable to the kind of thing I'm working on right now, but the basic insights are the same. This book also prompted me to finally check out Ashlar Vellum, which turns out to be the drawing program that I've been looking for for years.

Quite good. A collection of reworkings of fairy tales. It's neat to see stories like "Beauty and the Beast" get several different treatments.

Thoroughly engaging. I was surprised how much I enjoyed the detective-story aspects of it. It was neat to see the whodunnit solved in no time, but the story go on. The implications of mental powers are well thought through, just as in The Stars My Destination.

It's abundantly clear why JMS felt an obligation to name the main Psycop after Bester.

Finally got around to reading the 4th book. It's pretty good. It was refreshing to discover that Harry is more normal than I expected. The chosen child who's the only one who can save the world is hackneyed, so it's nice to find out that there are reasons why things always seem to go his way.

Evil Ted told me to re-read this one. He may be right: it may be the best of the Culture novels. It's extremely well constructed. The main character's struggles highlight everything that the Culture seems to have given up: struggle, challenge, the savor of a battle narrowly won, the bitter taste of powerlessness. And their willingness to use him to their ends highlights their hypocrisy.

It's hard to not loathe the Culture by the end of the book. The perspective of a non-Culture citizen working as a Culture agent gives us more of an insight into their base morality than that of an adversary (Consider Phlebas), or an ordinary Culture citizen (Player of Games). If the Culture is "A tiny core of Special Circumstances, a shell of Contact, and a vast chaotic ecosphere of everything else", then the core is as thoroughly ruthless as its agents.

Loaned by Jorm. I have mixed feelings about it. It's clearly a product of its time, which I can't fault it for. The world was fascinating. Quite a bit of thought about the repercussions of Jaunting — the sort of thought that separates Science Fiction from Space Fantasy, in my view. The over-plot was really neat. Enough hints were dropped early on to let you figure it out ahead of time, but not so many that it wasn't a surprise to see just how it falls out.

I didn't like the characterization much, though. There were too many places where a character underwent a transformation that changed their essence in a way that didn't seem to jibe with what had gone before. For example: Jizbella, a strong female character who doesn't take shit from any man finds in another of the characters a man who justifies the "double standard".

A meditation on an empty life, made less solitary by an odd job: writing obituaries for people who haven't yet died. As the job goes on, it seems to fill the empty life with characters in almost-normal relationships with the protagonist (Viktor). The job makes him leave town, so he acquires a "friend" so that there's someone to take care of his penguin while he's gone. A referral from the job results in another "friend", and later a "daughter" who necessitates a "wife".

But all of the relationships are tenuous. Fortune has nudged these people together, but there's no reason for them to stay together except a desire for normalcy or a strange sense of duty. Viktor never really feels more towards them than he feels towards his penguin, who is aloof and seems to mostly share Viktor's space rather than being an actual companion.

Thoughtful. Melancholy. Quick read.

The third book in the Gormenghast series turned out to be very different from the first two. It had some of the same hyper-reality that made Titus Groan and Gormenghast so appealing, but the focus on setting seemed thinner, with many more places described, but in much less detail. The world beyond Gormenghast has some striking and beguiling places, but they don't feel as real as the castle did.

The characterization was also less striking, though this was in part because Peake wasn't dealing monomaniacal characters this time around. This set seemed multifaceted in a way that was never apparent in the first two books. It was hard to understand even the major characters (with the possible exception of Muzzlehatch) in the same way that it was possible to understand Flay or Steerpike, and there were several important characters (The Helmets, Anchor), who seemed to appear from nowhere and disappear without any real explanation of their presence.

Reading the critical commentary included in the omnibus edition sheds some light on the difference. Titus Alone was published from manuscript fragments after Peake had been essentially incapacitated by Parkinson's disease. I wonder how much more density the world beyond Gormenghast might have had if Peake himself had finished it.

I was looking for something light, and what's better for that than a little story about the end of the world? A fun re-read. I love all of the little digs at Americans.