Deborah Pickett finished reading Lessons From Lucy by Dave Barry
I regret to inform you that Dave Barry has became That Old Guy Who Used To Be A Humour Columnist.
Reviews and Comments
Technical nonfiction and spec fiction. She/her. Melbourne, Australia. Generation X. Admin of Outside of a Dog. BDFL of Hometown (Mastodon) instance Old Mermaid Town (@futzle@old.mermaid.town). Avatar image is of a book that my dog tried to put on their inside.
My rating scale: ★ = I didn't care for it and probably didn't finish it; ★★ = It didn't inspire but I might have finished it anyway; ★★★ = It was fine; ★★★★ = I enjoyed it; ★★★★★ = I couldn't put it down.
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Deborah Pickett reviewed Existence by David Brin
In a future world dominated by a neural-link web where people can tune into live …
Overlong and indulgent, a short story in 880 pages
2 stars
Two stars for me means "I pushed through and finished it."
I haven't read any David Brin before, so all I knew was that he existed and that he had a series of books in his Uplift universe, which this wasn't part of.
This feels like a book in two parts: the first three quarters, full of detailed worldbuilding and a great deal of prose that turned out to be irrelevant, and the last quarter, featuring main characters that were only part of the ensemble cast in the first part, and a nemesis which was only mentioned in the barest of ways until then. I estimate that of that first three quarters, two thirds of it could have been safely edited out to make a lean 440-page novel with a coherent message.
Stylistically, Brin is pretty mediocre at writing women, so it's fortunate that there aren't many in this book. …
Two stars for me means "I pushed through and finished it."
I haven't read any David Brin before, so all I knew was that he existed and that he had a series of books in his Uplift universe, which this wasn't part of.
This feels like a book in two parts: the first three quarters, full of detailed worldbuilding and a great deal of prose that turned out to be irrelevant, and the last quarter, featuring main characters that were only part of the ensemble cast in the first part, and a nemesis which was only mentioned in the barest of ways until then. I estimate that of that first three quarters, two thirds of it could have been safely edited out to make a lean 440-page novel with a coherent message.
Stylistically, Brin is pretty mediocre at writing women, so it's fortunate that there aren't many in this book. His writing of autistic characters is similarly stereotyped and awkward.
Based on Existence, I'm not rushing out to read the Uplift series.
Deborah Pickett finished reading Existence by David Brin
In a future world dominated by a neural-link web where people can tune into live …
Thank goodness that's done. A bit turned off Brin as a result of this. Review to follow.
Deborah Pickett commented on Existence by David Brin
In a future world dominated by a neural-link web where people can tune into live …
Content warning Plot element major spoilers
Still slogging through it! Haven't seen all the threads tie together yet but I'm sure they will. It wouldn't be like Brin to sneak one of his other novel's themes into this standalone book, would it?
I figured out the twist about 50 pages ago: the races represented in the worldstones are long dead, and only live on as uploads in these stones. But I didn't twig that the "you" the worldstone species were using was singular. Wouldn't the Chinese-speaking stone that Bin is talking to have given this away?
Deborah Pickett commented on Existence by David Brin
In a future world dominated by a neural-link web where people can tune into live …
I’m still reading this. I think I hit the 25% mark!
Deborah Pickett commented on Existence by David Brin
In a future world dominated by a neural-link web where people can tune into live …
I have no fucking idea yet what is going on in this book.
This edition has unexplained dotted underlines randomly under some words. I can explain them away as faux hyperlinks in the Helvetica sections but they are in the Times New Roman sections too. Is there some clever spy code revealed later in the novel, or did the typesetter forget to turn off spellcheck in their word processor? It’s quite offputting.
Deborah Pickett started reading Existence by David Brin
In a future world dominated by a neural-link web where people can tune into live …
880 pages! Could take a while.
Deborah Pickett reviewed Consorts Of Heaven by Jaine Fenn
A bridge from fantasy to sf
3 stars
The blurb on the back of this book says that it’s a standalone story in the same universe as Fenn’s first book, Principles of Angels, which I haven’t read. That claim is probably a bit of a stretch because I feel like I’ve been dealt plot spoilers on the first book now.
This novel begins as a straight fantasy in a village in a land that draws heavily on Middle-Ages Celtic culture. As world-building, it’s fine and detailed, but not my cup of tea, and it felt slow and drawn out. Fortunately the trope gets subverted about halfway through the book as it pivots—quite suddenly—to a science fiction adventure.
The reliance on Celtic legend, not something I’m very familiar with, left me confused at times, and it might have led to my feeling that the climax had an element of deus ex machina. A bit of earlier application of …
The blurb on the back of this book says that it’s a standalone story in the same universe as Fenn’s first book, Principles of Angels, which I haven’t read. That claim is probably a bit of a stretch because I feel like I’ve been dealt plot spoilers on the first book now.
This novel begins as a straight fantasy in a village in a land that draws heavily on Middle-Ages Celtic culture. As world-building, it’s fine and detailed, but not my cup of tea, and it felt slow and drawn out. Fortunately the trope gets subverted about halfway through the book as it pivots—quite suddenly—to a science fiction adventure.
The reliance on Celtic legend, not something I’m very familiar with, left me confused at times, and it might have led to my feeling that the climax had an element of deus ex machina. A bit of earlier application of Chekhov’s Gun might have prevented that.
Apparently there are five books in the series. Will I hunt down the others? Probably not.
Deborah Pickett commented on Consorts Of Heaven by Jaine Fenn
Ah ha, almost exactly halfway through this book and it flips from fantasy to science fiction. It’ll be interesting to see where it goes from here.
Deborah Pickett commented on Rubyfruit jungle by Rita Mae Brown
Rubyfruit Jungle is the first novel by Rita Mae Brown. Published in 1973, it was …
This was mentioned on the episode of Jeopardy! I watched tonight as an early example of queer literature. I know Rita Mae Brown from her whodunit mysteries co-authored with her cat Sneaky Pie Brown.
Deborah Pickett started reading Lessons From Lucy by Dave Barry
Please ignore the chuckling. I promise I’ll try to keep it down.
Deborah Pickett stopped reading Inside UFO 54-40 by Edward Packard
You are abducted by aliens known as the U-Ty Masters to be placed in their …
Content warning An old joke about a Choose Your Own Adventure book
I've read 95% of this book but I'm not sure I can finish it.
Deborah Pickett reviewed To Be Taught, If Fortunate by Becky Chambers
At the turn of the twenty-second century, scientists make a breakthrough in human spaceflight. Through …
A human adventure in space, in four acts
4 stars
I finished this book a couple of weeks ago. Like all of Chambers's books, it feels as though nothing much is going on in them at any given moment, but in a good way. There are interpersonal relationships continuously developing and evolving, there's the discoveries about the planets that the explorers land on, and then there is the revelation about events back on Earth which the explorers, 17 light years away, can do nothing about.
For such a simple and shortish story, I found the revelation at the end to be suitably profound, as well as the way Chambers left unanswered, but in a satisfying way, some of the questions about what had happened back on Earth.
Deborah Pickett commented on Consorts Of Heaven by Jaine Fenn
I have read some more of this book. It comes across as fantasy but it will probably veer into sf territory, given that's what the author's typical fare is. I wish there was less gender essentialism in it, but that's sadly common in this genre.
Deborah Pickett commented on Lessons From Lucy by Dave Barry
Received this as a birthday present recently. I hope Dave Barry is as funny as I found him 25 years ago.