Target: Max Barry’s Lexicon Profile: Speculative Fiction, Thriller As I have written before, I find book recommendations to be more annoying than useful (which raises some interesting questions about why I write book reviews). There are so many variables involved in what makes any given book appealing to a given person that, without a history of literary compatibility, it is almost impossible guarantee that any two people will like the same book. Still, every so often I’ll follow up on a recommendation or a particularly good […]
Caught between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea…
Target: Paolo Bacigalupi’s Ship Breaker (Ship Breaker #1) Profile: Speculative Fiction, Young Adult There is a gritty reality to Paolo Bacigalupi’s work. A grim straightforwardness that crushes the optimism older SF styles. On its own, this same honesty produces brilliantly brutal speculative fiction, like Windup Girl. But there is a necessary optimism to Young Adult literature that is at odds with Bacigalupi’s tone. Ship Breaker lives in artificial space between two styles, carving out its own literary niche, but at the same time feeling discordant and incomplete. And yet, it […]
Somewhat Spotty Storytelling
Target: Steven Brust and Skyler White’s The Incrementalists Profile: Speculative Fiction As a concept, The Incrementalists is a pretty impressive pitch. A secret society of quasi-immortal do-gooders dedicated to the slow improvement of mankind suddenly threatened by one of their own sounds like a great, high concept blockbuster. But The Incrementalists can’t seem to decide if it’s supposed to be more like ‘The Adjustment Bureau’ or ‘Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind,’ and flounders unpleasantly somewhere between the two. There are a lot of good ideas here, but the novel […]
All in one, one in all. New convenient packaging!
First of all, if you like science fiction at all, this is THE BOOK you should be reading right now. Just stop what you’re doing and go buy it, or reserve it at the library. It’s important you get in on this now before everybody loves it and then the inevitable contrarians pop up to tell everyone how much they dislike it and how everyone who likes it is probably dumb and/or reading it wrong and really it means THIS and HOW DARE YOU. And if […]
You got some zombie in my superhero novel…
Target: Peter Clines’ EX-Heroes (EX-Heroes #1) Profile: Superhero Fiction, Speculative Fiction, Zombie Apocalypse EX-Heroes falls very clearly in my reading category of ‘book candy.’ It’s light, entertaining, but lacking many qualities of actual literary goodness. Well, actually the concept is executed rather well and Clines manages to tell a pretty compelling story within his somewhat limited framework, so maybe the novel isn’t all that lacking. But at the end of the day, there’s very little here that hasn’t been explored before. Points for novelty notwithstanding. The book bills […]
Could the world end like this?
The Year of the Flood takes place some time in the future, some would argue not very long into the future, and humans are in deep trouble. Sea levels have risen, humans are just holding on and genetically spliced Frankenstein species roam the earth. The story is connected to Atwood’s 1993 book Oryx and Crake, coming to the same place in time, through different characters. The books’ primary character group are the Gardeners, a vegetarian green cult of sorts. Parts of the book begin with a reference […]