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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.

Even more bizarre than Titus Groan. It flows along, seeming to make sense in its own odd way and suddenly reverses itself. Everything changes in an abrupt sentence, leaving me to re-read the relevant part over and over to assure myself that it actually said what it seemed to. Very rich. Full of haunting imagery.

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.

Good. Less lushly described, and definitely more grounded than Perdido Street Station.

Surreal and chilling. Less thought provoking for me than some of Lem's other works.

Excellent. Dense, engrossing detail. Very slow going at the outset, but full of characters with almost palpable presence: so strange and abstract that they hook the imagination, yet realistic in their obsessions.

Neat world. I really like big-picture fantasy cosmologies, and this one was very cool.

Surprisingly fast read. Finished most of it on a plane flight. Some interesting ideas relating to the structure of the Business itself, but not a lot of meat to the book. The Couffable plot-line seemed entirely tacked on to provide forward motion. I'm still of the opinion that Iain M. Banks books are vastly superior to Iain Banks books.

Fairly disappointing. I'm not very impressed by the translation. Drier than it seemed like it needed to be. Really didn't give much insight into characters and motivations. Rama came across as an arrogant jerk who did the wrong things for the right reasons. At least we're told that they're the right reasons. It's never really made clear why his word is more important than his responsibilities to his subjects. Nor why it's okay for him to torment a demoness who's fallen in love with him. Nor why other people's opinions of his wife are more important than his own. This translation actually gave less detail and less insight than the Indian comic books I read as a kid. Perhaps it would be better to read another translation.

Quite good for the first hundred pages, then abandons its focus on interactions between characters and switches over into Big Picture mode. The book starts rapidly switching between characters and destroys their verisimilitude. Characters swap allegiances and opinions for the sole purpose of making the giant Tech plot work out, and everything starts feeling heavily scripted. Interesting ideas, but, in the final analysis, an unsatisfying read.

Still charming. A little more thinly written than I'd recalled.

This took me quite a while to get through, and after reading the literary criticism at the back of the Norton Critical Edition I still feel like I read it very shallowly. I liked the translation. I got the feeling that a lot of the wordplay and jokes were rendered into English well. Much of the material struck chords with me. The image of a man out of his time, doing things in a certain way because that's how he's read that they're done resonates particularly well.

Very entertaining. A well-told fable. Delightful use of language, entertaining (if mostly simple) characters, and amusing flights of fancy.