Books

[Sierra]

The majority of Neil Gaiman's books are Alice in Wonderland repackaged, but he's usually pretty entertaining. Would recommend American Gods over the others, personally.

[Grefter]

Sandman, do it.

You don't need to be an Anthropologist or a Psychologist to enjoy human interactions.  You could also just be really creepy.

[Anthony Edward Stark]

Reading the complete Hitchhiker series again. I'm still skipping over most of "So Long and Thanks for All the Fish," because for fuck's sake I don't really care for the adventures of Arthur Dent trying to get his dick wet.  But at least the author tips me off to skip ahead. Nice of him.

[superaielman]

The majority of Neil Gaiman's books are Alice in Wonderland repackaged, but he's usually pretty entertaining. Would recommend American Gods over the others, personally.

*Nods* The book made me a little uncomfortable at points. Sewer people? Really? Yuck. Thankfully the violence was kept to a minimum, but the entire book felt like it was set in a dumpster.

[metroid composite]

The Body Thief

...wait, apparently I forgot to comment on Queen of the Damned.

Queen of the Damned

Summary:

Lestat is sexy, and everyone wants to hear his concert.

OVER SIX THOUSAAAAAND: Man, my husband is in a catatonic state, but in no danger of dying.  Let's kill him!
OVER SIX THOUSAAAAAND: I'm going to kill all the vampires that aren't plot-relevant now.  (Don't worry dear reader: you didn't care about any of them anyway.  Except the ones I'm introducing right as I'm killing them.  And maybe that fat guy).
Talamasca: we're humans neutral to everyone.  We keep tabs on all things spiritual.
Talamasca: GHOST CLAUDIA!!!

Maharet: I've tracked my family tree for six thousand years.  I only track the girls though; sucks to be a boy because you can't tell if a kid is your own!
Maharet: Cannibalism is icky unless you're eating your own parents.
Maharet: So...vampirism all comes from this one spirit that's bonded to the body of OVER SIX THOUSAAAAAND.  That's why hurting her hurts all the other vampires simultaneously.
Khamayan: Also, I raped Maharet and her sister, but I was always secretly on their side...and it's a good thing anyway because if I hadn't raped her then Maharet wouldn't have a family to creepily track through the years.

OVER SIX THOUSAAAAAND: Okay, now that I've killed most of the vampires, it's time to KILL ALL THE MEN.
Lestat: WTF?
OVER SIX THOUSAAAAAND: Think about it, without men there won't be any war or rape!
Lestat: That's a dumb argument; you could kill all the humans and there wouldn't be any war or rape.
OVER SIX THOUSAAAAAND: But you have to admit, my solution is simple and elegant!
Marius: Simple and elegant solutions tend to be the most evil, actually.  Just ask Hitler about his "kill all the jews" plan.

OVER SIX THOUSAAAAAND: I don't get it.  WHY DOES NOBODY WANT TO HELP ME WITH MY BRILLIANT PLAN??
Mekare: *rips your head off* *eats your heart and brain*
Maharet: Seeing as OVER SIX THOUSAAAAAND is "the mother" of vampires, we're in the realm where cannibalism is A-OK.
Armand: Thank god that's over.  I'm going to buy an awesome island now.  With blackjack.  And hookers.  We're going to make the best coven ever!
Lestat: I totally have not learned my lesson and am writing a book about all of this!


So...this book has the problem that some multiple perspective books sometimes have, which is that some of the perspectives are pretty thin on relevance--especially when they first introduce the perspective and the author wants you to know the character before that character gets connected to everything else.

I will give it credit for actually giving a logical explanation for why hurting "The Mother" hurts all vampires because they carry her blood, but when a "parent" vampire gets horribly burned, nothing happens to the new vampire (despite carrying the parent's blood).

On the other hand..."kill all the men to bring world peace"?  Really?  I mean, I'll admit I was enjoying the sheer quantity of female superiority attitudes that characters in this book professed.  However, this book contains a lot of rather blatant social commentary on what is moral and what is immoral.  Discussions of morality and solutions and how this world does not need spirituality and would be led away from the positive direction it is achieving with enforced spirituality fill large sections of this book.  And with all that discussion, what's the #1 question that gets debated about in this book?  Whether "kill all the men" is moral.  It strikes me that if this book really wanted to make interesting social commentary, it could have picked a less...obvious moral question as its central point of debate.

After the power level escalation that happens in The Vampire Lestat, QotD isn't left many places to go but sideways.  Maharet feels...off to me somehow; like...personality-wise she comes across as more like 60 rather than 6000.  Acts quite modern, and also kinda dumb making silly mistakes like inviting people she cares about into houses of vampires to look at secret history records that would interest almost anyone (how had she not learned her lesson about that a long time ago)?  Akasha...I suppose she's the right level of batshit insane given what's happened to her; yeah, she works fairly well.  Khamayan is...kinda dull.  Mekare...actually I rather liked what I saw with Mekare; not that she got much screen time.

In the mean time we have updates to the mythology.  The spirit-binding to the flesh explanation is...weird, but actually manages to explain some of the mechanically odd parts of the mythology (although...now that I think about it...book 4 has spirits swapping bodies between a vampire and a human which...how the hell does that work?  The whole process of becoming a vampire requires your spirit to be re-bonded to your body by the blood-drinking spirit).  The rest of the new mechanics...WTF--so apparently turning you into a vampire can cure horrible greivous wounds sewing them back together and regrowing breasts...but not cure things like eyes gouged out or cutting your tongue out (even though both of the pieces of flesh were still inside their respective bodies, having been swallowed).

The mechanical update that's really bugging me, though, is the whole "actually, our powers are just magic."  They fly by...willing themselves to fly.  They move so fast that nobody can see by...willing themselves to teleport.  I guess I'm kind-of used to thinking of Vampires like I think of Androids.  Cold as metal.  Strong as hell.  Very hard to destroy.  Incredible visual senses.  Incredible hearing.  Even some of the rarely seen mechanics can be explained in this way; turning into mist?  Sure, maybe vampires are billions of nanomachines that voltron into a human.  Mind-reading?  Sure, we can get some idea of what people are thinking with CAT scans/PET scans--maybe vampires just have amazing electromagnetic sensors.  And yet...here we have two mechanics explicitly introduced as "these are 100% magic."  And...they don't even need to be.  Moving so fast you appear to teleport?  All you need to pull that off is to be fast; it could have been explained in that way, and...it wasn't >_>

Overall...the book is slow at the start, but very fun towards the end (so...kinda like Book 2, except had me thinking "Really? That's the best you could come up with?" a few times...which Book 2 did not).

Book 4 coming up.

[metroid composite]

The Body Thief

Lestat: "So...despite what I said at the end of the last book about everyone staying on Armand's island?  Yeah nevermind: everybody left Armand's island."

Lestat: "Hey David, wanna become a vampire?"
David Talbot: "For the thousandth time, no."
Lestat: "I'm going to kill myself now."
David Talbot: "NNNnnnnooooooooooooooooooo!"
Lestat: "I failed, but check out this bitchin' tan."

Body Thief: "Hey, Lestat, we can switch bodies."
Lestat: "I can be human???"
David Talbot: "Don't do it.  Do you really want an evil psycho who forced some poor man out of his body to have that much power?"
Lestat: "I'm totally going to do it anyway.  Because I'm the James Bond of vampires!  I break rules!"

Body Thief: "I steal everything.  I engage in petty thievery at every opportunity.  Oh but don't worry--you can get me to switch back with you by baiting me with money.  I think I've demonstrated that I'm shallow by this point, so 10 million dollars will totally get me to switch back!"
Lestat: "Sounds good to me.  OMG A DOG.  SO CUTE!  Anyway, we switching?"
Body Thief: "Yep."

Lestat: "Hey, where's the money I stored?"
Body Thief: "Yoink!  Told you I was petty."
Lestat: "Hey, aren't we supposed to switch back now?"
Body Thief: "Yoink!  Told you I was petty."

Lestat: "Give me food please."
Waitress: "Get out bum!  Wait...is that your dog?"
Lestat: "Yes."
Waitress: "Oh, well in that case, have some wine and veal.  And sex later."

Lestat: "Is it later yet?"
Waitress: "Wait, put on a Condo--"
Lestat: "LEEEROYYY JEEEENNNKIIINS"
Waitress: "Stop!  Stop!  Rapist!"

Lestat: "So...I hate this constant eating, shitting, peeing, coldness, and aches and pains.  But the sun is awesome.  I'm going to stand outside and bask in the sun."
Stranger: "Dude, you're going to freeze to death."
Lestat: "It doesn't matter today.  I..." *falls over*

Lestat: "I'm talking with Claudia."
Claudia: "You're totally going to have sex with that nun."

Gretchen: "You know, you could atone for this past life by spending your current human life saving lives like I am.  I imagine you could save just as many lives as you've previously taken."
Lestat: "Tempting offer, but I'm too much of an attention whore.  I don't think I could live in a life where I wasn't center stage."
Gretchen: "OK whatever, let's have sex."
Lestat: "Done."

Lestat: "Louis!  I know you're going to help me.  Make me a vampire again!"
Louis: "You have...exactly what I wanted, and a perfect chance at redemption by living with Gretchen.  No, Lestat, I can't take that away from you; you'll thank me later."
Lestat: "WHAT?  When have I ever denied anything to you?" *burns down house*
(Incidentally, he denied a lot to Louis in Interview, like...refusing all information about other vampires.  So uhh >_>)

Lestat: "David, you have to help me!"
David Talbot: "Well, despite being a prim and proper 75 year old British gentleman...I want to have sex with you."
Lestat: "Oh, cool, my bed or yours?"
David Talbot: "Wait!  We don't have time just yet.  We may need to act fast to get your body back."

David Talbot: "And this is how you get back into your body."
Lestat: "OK, got it.  Can we have sex now?"
David Talbot: "I really, really want to, but I'm just too British."

Lestat: "Got my body back!  I wonder what happened in the fight between David Talbot and the Body Thief.  Ah whatever, I'm going to go visit Gretchen."
Lestat: "Hi Gretchen.  Everything I said was true, and you said you wanted to know."
Gretchen: *MENTAL BREAKDOWN*
Lestat: "Weird.  Earlier in the book I had concluded this was an amazingly strong character who wouldn't be driven insane.  That sucks."

Lestat: "Hey David Talbot, so how did the fight go."
David Talbot?: "My shots missed, he got away.  Hey make me a vampire."
Lestat: "ok"
David Talbot?: *is really the Body Thief in a different stolen body.*
Lestat: *kills*
Body Theif Talbot: "What?  You weren't supposed to kill me!  I didn't think you'd kill David Talbot's body."

Real David Talbot: "Actually, I'm cool with being in the body of a 26-year-old with a huge penis."
Lestat: "Oh, glad that worked out.  We can't be together, though."
David Talbot: "What, why?"
Lestat: "Because I want to make you a vampire and you keep telling me no ."


This book...doesn't really take many risks with the setting; which is fine.  But it actually manages to have a few setting holes (it calls Maharet and Mekare "the oldest of us all", when in actuality Khamayan would be the oldest--seeing as how he's the one who transformed Mekare).  And...I already commented on how becoming a vampire involves the blood-drinker spirit to chain your soul to your body, so...soul swapping between a human and a vampire is...rather weird.

Characters I actually liked...Gretchen is awesome; although I don't like her reaction to the final reveal (the book spends so much time portraying her as amazingly mentally stable for a human, and totally ready for such information).  Mojo (the dog) is awesome.  The body thief...his entire personality is "I'm the ultimate kleptomaniac", which despite its one-dimensionality can be highly entertaining when taken to such extremes.  Everyone else...

Lestat comes across as such a whiner in this book.  Whines about wanting to be human...and then once he is whines about everything to do with being human.  (And gets copious amounts of sex in situations where he's not even looking for it, which is just weird).  David Talbot is...why does he hang out with Lestat?  The reason given in the book seems to be the danger-factor and Lestat's sex appeal.  These are shallow reasons to start with, but he also refuses sex from Lestat, and has dangerous things he's always wanted to do in South America, so...zuh?  I'm wondering if I actually don't have a good read on him.  Louis is...quite consistent with his earlier books; still unlikeable!  Claudia...somehow she left basically no impression on me; she was taunting Lestat and uhh...past that I don't remember much of what she did, or why she was there; half of it was re-playing book 1 scenes; most of the rest was just a peanut gallery commenting on stuff that was actually happening.

Overall...enjoyed this a fair bit less than 2 and 3.  (2 > 3 >> 4 >> 1 for my current opinion?)  The new stuff of value introduced into the setting was...honestly more to do with "here's how being human comes across to a Vampire", which is somewhat novel--the other way around (fledgling vampires describing their new experiences) has been done frequently by more than one author, so it was a nice twist.  But...the general not really liking the characters was an issue.  Yes, there's Gretchen (who...may well manage to be my favourite character in the series) and...a couple of one dimensional characters who make momentary appearances.  But those are small parts of the book.

[Grefter]

Told you to stop after book 2 for a reason >_>  I highly reccomend stopping now, it only goes downhill (You read book 1 not because it is good but because it sets up 1 and is a good insight into the genre in general).

(Incidentally, he denied a lot to Louis in Interview, like...refusing all information about other vampires.  So uhh >_>)

While there is the untrustworthy narrator of the first book, Lestat is just totally that vain.

There is a lot of sex in the book because A) this is a book about vampires and I think I have covered pretty well about how this is a series that is all about sexual predators (which is on full display here) and B) this stuff is from Anne Rice' straight up porn era stuff.  Like for serious the other stuff she wrote (normally with Pseudonym) was straight up porn. 

If you feel the need to do more Anne Rice then check out Exit From Eden, but that is mostly just for interesting introspection into BDSM culture (which you get pretty throughly exposed to in these books with everyone other than lestat really).

[Lady Door]

Am reading Anathem. First Neal Stephenson book I've taken on, and I'm sorry I missed the previous ones. I shall have to go back and read.

[metroid composite]

Told you to stop after book 2 for a reason >_>  I highly reccomend stopping now, it only goes downhill (You read book 1 not because it is good but because it sets up 1 and is a good insight into the genre in general).

Oh.  Well.  In that case....

The Short Second Life of Bree Tanner, an Eclipse Novella

...

...a.k.a. Stephenie Meyer writes some Twilight fanfiction and posts it on the internet.

That turned out...a lot better than I expected.  Good enough that I actually don't want to spoil anything.  I will say that the copious amounts of manipulation was actually pretty fun to read about.  Also...I really, really hope the line "the cheeseburger of pain" makes it into the movie.

[Cotigo]

Also...I really, really hope the line "the cheeseburger of pain" makes it into the movie.

Sigh.

[Grefter]

You want other kinds of dialogue in the movie?  Honestly I think everyone being all serious face and spouting out complete and total nonsense might make the movies appealing.  I would love to see a movie where everyone is deadly serious and suffers from Wernicke's aphasia.

[metroid composite]

Yeah, Twilight is supposed to be funny.  The movies had the perfect genre at their disposal to pull that off--a genre that encompasses like...40% of all hollywood movies (romantic comedy).  Instead the movies try to be srs drama...with really bad actors...and terrible special effects...and rewritten dialogue that is neither funny nor dramatic.

A little humor would at least give the movies something they didn't completely fail at >_>

[Lady Door]

Anathem feels like bits and pieces of a lot of other books. (NOTE: I can't be arsed to figure out if any of the vague things I'm about to say are spoilery, so... they may or may not be. You've been warned.)

The one that immediately comes to mind is The Giver, simply because this represents a society in which (some) people have been separated out from society and given a filtered world. It has touches of Brave New World in it for similar reasons. It is appropriate that it should feel like some post-apocalyptic dystopian universes since, well, the world is ending as far as the characters can tell. It also has little touches of basic sci fi -- SPOILER alien ships arrive that may or may not be alien and may or may not be aiming lasers at our nuclear caches because they may or may not be wanting to blow us up! we must figure it out! END SPOILER -- which is intriguing.

The part that got me excited about the book was the play on the manipulation and advancement of language. The elision and contraction Stephenson turns into functional words and new usage is very basic, but just a little clever all the same. The bits of language quirkiness and the experience of the main character, who is an "outsider," makes for an interesting character sketch.

Only about half-way through, so we'll see how this all ends up.

--

Re: the Stephanie Meyer novella, which I read thanks to MC's link. It was interesting in the same way the Twilight books were interesting -- that is to say, I can't figure out why such mind-numbingly dumb shit makes me want to read to the end, but it does. I highly recommend reading the Twilight Snark and then reading the novella; those two dovetail so well it's hilarious, though in a sad kind of way.

[Lady Door]

Finished Anathem. Intriguing concept, decent characters, interesting world -- totally, totally destroyed by his overwrought prose. My god is he capable of killing a line of logic dead. I suspect fully 1/3 of that novel could simply have disappeared without there being any discernible difference.

Bought Warbreaker so I could have a fiction book to read at lunch for $5 and some change. We'll see how this goes.

(The book I brought to read, Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable, is non-fiction and my ability to tolerate non-fiction writing is directly proportionate to my attention span. Right now, attention span is hovering near 0.)

[Cmdr_King]

Nation- Read with a day of picking it up.  Engaging stuff.  While you can see flashes of Pratchett here and there elsewhere, usually it's subdued... except the parts from Daphne's point of view.  They could be placed into any Tiffany Aching novel and blend in.  This is a good thing, because there's a reason I went to the store to pick up more of those books and was disappointed I couldn't find any.

Funny... er, unusual funny, not laughing funny.  Anyway, funny book in its way.  It's really a book about faith, which comes to the unusual conclusion that faith is just something most people have and NEED to attach to something, not some mystical tool of perseverance.  Also takes the premise that the gods are just the wisdom people have forgotten, except Death which is very really and always there, whispering to those who ask questions.  Or maybe I'm reading too much into it.

Anyway, enjoyable, etc.

[Hunter Sopko]

Would you recommend Anathem if you haven't read the rest of the Baroque Cycle? (I read Quicksilver, but thats about it)

[Lady Door]

Would you recommend Anathem if you haven't read the rest of the Baroque Cycle? (I read Quicksilver, but thats about it)

I haven't read anything else by Neal Stephenson, including Snow Crash (because I am a horrible SF/F fan). With that in mind, I would recommend it only if you have high tolerance for tortured logic and extended discourse. The first two or three sections are setting up the world and it takes a tortuously long time to even introduce the point. There is a point to those sections, of course, but it's mainly that the characters are built and the system set up. It really, really did not need to take that long.

Like I said: I liked the concept and the characters, and even the world. Just not the insistence on drawing everything out in full detail.

[Hunter Sopko]

Tortured logic and extended discourse are welcomed in place of Stephenson's usual problem, utterly irrelevant, extended mythology/history lessons. It was worst in Snow Crash, because it COMPLETELY ruins the flow of the narrative.

Though, if you AT ALL like Isaac Newton, I'd recommend Quicksilver. The parts with him are pretty awesome.

[Cotigo]

Tortured logic and extended discourse are welcomed in place of Stephenson's usual problem, utterly irrelevant, extended mythology/history lessons. It was worst in Snow Crash, because it COMPLETELY ruins the flow of the narrative.

Hey.  I LIKED that irrelevant, extended mythology lesson.

[Anthony Edward Stark]

Fallen Angels, by Niven. The message I gathered from it is that the masses will be reactionary fuckheads no matter what their platform is.

Basically, shit gets bad enough that the masses get behind environmentalism and manage to ruin it completely by deciding that rather than using science to try and solve problems, that they should all become Luddites, let society break down, and people in Canada have to eat each other to survive.

Maybe you were supposed to take away a different message, but I gathered the message was "most people will always be dumb."

[Grefter]

Niven's Laws

Larry Niven is also known in science fiction fandom for "Niven's Law": There is no cause so right that one cannot find a fool following it. Over the course of his career Niven has added to this first law a list of Niven's Laws which he describes as "how the Universe works" as far as he can tell.

Money on your interpretation being pretty right is not a bad bet.

[OblivionKnight]

A few things...

My Immortal - Read it before, but it is still as hilarious as ever to read again.  Best fanfic ever.

Sonichu - Read through all 11 or so of these.  Also hilariously bad.

The Guns of the South - Is awesome.  I think this is the first Turtledove standalone book I've read.  Anyway, as always, he does his homework - he knows the Civil War era perfectly, and writes everything so wonderfully that the immersion is perfect.  So perfect, that I also didn't realize one of the oddities of this book - there are only 2 point-of-view characters, which is way less than in any of his other books.  And despite that, the reader still gets a great handle on all the characters in the story.  Very good, and definitely deserving of the praise it gets. 

Next up is to start the Darkness series by Turtledove.  Should kick ass.

[Cotigo]

I tried to get through Guns of the South, but I just couldn't.  I'm not sure what it is.  I love history/historical fiction/etc, but Turtledove just bored me.  His writing style, maybe?  From what I recall the plot and setting were pretty good, and the character work had promise... maybe I should give it another try. 

[Lady Door]

Warbreaker was kind of like writing Elantris with a magic system a la Mistborn. The characters were almost direct re-maps of previous Sanderson characters. That said, it wasn't a terrible book. Again, the magic system was intriguing. The characters, even if they were the same, were generally interesting. There was something that just never really clicked with all of it, though, and I HATE THE FREAKING ENDING. It wasn't a bad ending, per se, it just suffered from the same avalanche that his previous books did.

Makes me worry a tad for Wheel of Time, honestly. I just hope that someone else having written the skeleton makes a positive difference.

Back to reading a bit of non-fiction. When I figure out where I put The City & The City I'll probably try and finish that, too. Time to sell some books to the used book store and buy some new ones!

[Cmdr_King]

The Host- So I thought to myself "what the hell, this has a premise that could damn well be written specifically for me, let's see if her writing is any good when you set aside the vampire romance".
So.  nice quick pace, engaging, moves in a logical way.  The mechanical writing and editing and so on is quality.  The subject matter... well.  It holds your attention and there's really only one aspect that's really eye-rolling, the utopian viewpoints of Soul society.  There's a number of places in the first half with extended commentary on how awesome and peaceful and dedicated to improving worlds the Souls are, and how innately savage humans are, and it's done too often to just be unreliable narrator.  Well, feels that way anyway.  That said, the bits about how Souls reproduce answered to my satisfaction why they were so utterly devoted to peace and tree hugging and harmony, and the misanthropy that comes through after that isn't enough to offset the book being otherwise enjoyable.

In all, doesn't maximize the potential of "basically a concept written specifically for CK" but doesn't utterly waste it either, better than I expected.