An interesting version of Middle Eastern futurism, but a familiar story
3 stars
Interesting and kept me engaged. The originality came through the language and cultural detail, not from the plot or ideas explored.
Reviews and Comments
Researcher and educator from Sydney, Australia. You’ll usually find me on the forgotten parts of the web.
My ratings ★ Not recommended ★★ Not for me, but may be okay for you? ★★★ Good ★★★★ Very good, recommended ★★★★★ Exceptional, couldn't put it down
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Ben Harris-Roxas finished reading End Times Fascism: by Naomi Klein
Don't do it.
Don't do it.
Ben Harris-Roxas reviewed End Times Fascism: by Naomi Klein
Aliens and coma patients
2 stars
I'll be dead in thirty years. I might have a couple of hundred books left in me, at best, and this was one of them. I feel bitter about that.
That's quite an achievement for a book whose politics I basically share. Taylor and Klein write for a reader who has just arrived from another planet, or who has spent the last twenty years in a coma. Each chapter is a series of loosely linked stories and cases, and anyone who has been paying attention, or who has just been online, will know almost all of them already. The people who will pick up a book with this title are the people who already know all of this. I don't know who they're imagining they're explaining it all to.
There's no analysis, no argument and no synthesis. By the final chapter I still felt it wasn't building to …
I'll be dead in thirty years. I might have a couple of hundred books left in me, at best, and this was one of them. I feel bitter about that.
That's quite an achievement for a book whose politics I basically share. Taylor and Klein write for a reader who has just arrived from another planet, or who has spent the last twenty years in a coma. Each chapter is a series of loosely linked stories and cases, and anyone who has been paying attention, or who has just been online, will know almost all of them already. The people who will pick up a book with this title are the people who already know all of this. I don't know who they're imagining they're explaining it all to.
There's no analysis, no argument and no synthesis. By the final chapter I still felt it wasn't building to anything. It's a polemic, and a frankly stupid one. It's my fault for breaking my own rule to never read another book by a journalist or columnist.
Ben Harris-Roxas reviewed Slow Gods by Claire North
My name is Mawukana na-Vdnaze, and I am a very poor copy of myself.
…
Meandering, meditative, brutal
5 stars
North gives you a detailed vocab but not really glossary. The Shine, arcspace, the Slow. You end up working it out, but it’s more disorienting than usual and it helps with world building.
The technology gets the same treatment and I think that’s where many readers will give up on this. What the Slow actually is, what happened to the narrator at the moments that determined the course his life, etc.; none of it is really ever explained. The narrator never really understands it either. He’s telling you what he remembers, which is less than I'd expected.
The revenge takes centuries and comes to nothing much. He lives long enough that the vengeance accounting stops making sense. There’s just nobody left it all means anything to.
I enjoyed this quite a lot. It’s more literary than genre in its aspirations.
North gives you a detailed vocab but not really glossary. The Shine, arcspace, the Slow. You end up working it out, but it’s more disorienting than usual and it helps with world building.
The technology gets the same treatment and I think that’s where many readers will give up on this. What the Slow actually is, what happened to the narrator at the moments that determined the course his life, etc.; none of it is really ever explained. The narrator never really understands it either. He’s telling you what he remembers, which is less than I'd expected.
The revenge takes centuries and comes to nothing much. He lives long enough that the vengeance accounting stops making sense. There’s just nobody left it all means anything to.
I enjoyed this quite a lot. It’s more literary than genre in its aspirations.
Ben Harris-Roxas started reading Ulm Design by Herbert Lindinger
Inspired by recent interest in the Ulm School of Design, I went and borrowed this print book from the university library.
Ben Harris-Roxas finished reading The Care of Things by Jerome Denis
What does a coffee machine, a car, road signs, a smartphone, a cathedral, a work …
Worthwhile and brimming with ideas that speak to our current moment. I’ll have to sit with it for a while before writing a review.
Ben Harris-Roxas finished reading Minority Rule by Ash Sarkar
More of a polemical slog than I’d expected.
Ben Harris-Roxas reviewed Authority by Jeff VanderMeer (Southern Reach, #2)
"In the second volume of the Southern Reach Trilogy, questions are answered, stakes are raised, …
Grounding
4 stars
A re-read, and one that brings home how important this book is in grounding the series in some sense of reality, bureaucracy and the mundane. It’s a necessary second work, handled well.
Ben Harris-Roxas reviewed Glorious Exploits by Ferdia Lennon
On the island of Sicily amid the Peloponnesian War, the Syracusans have figured out what …
Charming
4 stars
Charming and original. I want to see more fiction like this!
Ben Harris-Roxas reviewed Annihilation by Jeff VanderMeer (Southern Reach, #1)
Area X has been cut off from the rest of the world for decades. Nature …
Masterful, visceral, ethereal
5 stars
Hard to describe without spoiling. It has a propulsive style that belies the almost physical senses the words and the text evokes. Wholly original.
Ben Harris-Roxas started reading Annihilation by Jeff VanderMeer (Southern Reach, #1)
Area X has been cut off from the rest of the world for decades. Nature …
A re-read. The first time I read this I was in a deep depression so I recall almost nothing. As a result everything I’ve read so far is familiar and unfamiliar, and deepens the unnerving nature of the text.
Ben Harris-Roxas reviewed Matter by Iain M. Banks
In a world renowned even within a galaxy full of wonders, a crime within a …
Long, hard to get into
2 stars
My failure to connect with this on rereading may be more about changes to me, and perhaps changes to reading itself in the intervening years. It seemed unnecessarily drawn out and kind of… dull? I hasten to reiterate that I think this reflects on on me than the author or the work. I struggle with books that resemble shaggy dog stories or don’t seem to really be about anything other than the plot. That means there are many narrative forms that are artful that I now feel… alienated from perhaps?
If I have a chance to revisit this again in my life I think my view will change.
Ben Harris-Roxas reviewed Look to Windward by Iain M. Banks (Culture, #7)
It was one of the less glorious incidents of a long-ago war.
It led …
Huge themes, muddled
4 stars
This should clearly be understood as a companion to Consider Phlebas. That book devotes so much time to world-building, it doesn’t fully explore the characters’ motivations. In contrast Look to Windward is all about the characters.
It’s a novel about regret, trauma, and revenge, and it does it well. I didn’t care for the revelations at the end of the book. It’s a crutch that Banks relies on in almost all Culture novels – the Minds knew all and manipulated everyone all along! That’s not quite what was going on here, but it is in part.
Banks’ concern for the impact of war on those who fight it is clear. This is a compassionate book. This coda was hidden and only revealed at the end, which, to me, is a sign of an author who doesn’t fully trust or respect their readers. We need “the prestige”, to borrow …
This should clearly be understood as a companion to Consider Phlebas. That book devotes so much time to world-building, it doesn’t fully explore the characters’ motivations. In contrast Look to Windward is all about the characters.
It’s a novel about regret, trauma, and revenge, and it does it well. I didn’t care for the revelations at the end of the book. It’s a crutch that Banks relies on in almost all Culture novels – the Minds knew all and manipulated everyone all along! That’s not quite what was going on here, but it is in part.
Banks’ concern for the impact of war on those who fight it is clear. This is a compassionate book. This coda was hidden and only revealed at the end, which, to me, is a sign of an author who doesn’t fully trust or respect their readers. We need “the prestige”, to borrow that magician’s phrase.
This project of re-reading the Culture novels has been interesting. It makes me realise that Banks was a good writer but not a great one. I wonder how long his works will endure and be read.
Ben Harris-Roxas reviewed Excession by Iain M. Banks
Two and a half millennia ago, the artifact appeared in a remote corner of space, …
Surprisingly thin
3 stars
Rereading books is an interesting exercise. Books are unchanging. They remind us of their original qualities; what drew us to them. They can never change with us.
Excession is the first Culture novel where Banks gives us much insight into the Minds and the Culture itself. I remember loving this book in the ‘90s, it felt so fresh and original.
Now it seems more like a shaggy dog story. It never gets to the point, if there is a point, and the characters are single-note vehicles for plot alone. I was really disappointed.
