Tuesday, May 22, 2012

Review: Eastern Standard Tribe


Eastern Standard Tribe
Eastern Standard Tribe by Cory Doctorow

My rating: 3 of 5 stars



As I've said before, and will surely say again, I think Cory Doctorow is an amazing human being and I am glad he has sufficient influence to force his vision of the future onto reality, at least a little bit. I mean, seriously, if there are any other modern, (relevant*) authors whose entire literary catelogue I can download without guilt or financial expenditure, someone needs to point me to them immediately.

And for a few dozen pages each, Cory Doctorow's books really sing. I mean, really, who else looks at the corporate emphasis** (or lack thereof***) on usability engineering, and takes it to the logical extreme of business entities sabotaging each other by sending in rogue usability engineers to give the companies bad advice and produce products that are non functioning and overly cumbersome to use. . . .....OR IS IT HAPPENING ALREADY!****

Moreover, the plot thread that gives the story structure--Our hero, Art, trapped on the roof of a towering monolithic sanitarium, a pencil up his nose, poised, ready to lobotomize himself--is wonderfully evocative and compelling.

But actualy, the central plot kind of sucks. Art's friends Fede and Linda are obviously crazy from the get go**** and it's not really ever plausibly explained why Art would hang out with losers like them. Nor is the main conceit ever really explained. Art is a brilliant usability engineer. Why on earth would he be more useful as a saboteur...I mean there is no motivation even for the antogonism between tribes, really.

And while we're on the subject, the tribes themselves don't even make sense. Yes, I get it, you start being friends with people in a particular geographic area and you want to chat with them online, this neccessitates a bit of sleep deprivation. But I don't buy for a second, that the only people you're going to want to hang out with live in one time zone, even if you allow for a very generous amount of homophily based movement.

So yeah, ultimately, this book feels like a poorly rehashed****** Catch 22. But you know what, I had fun reading it, I had fun writing the review, and I have no qualms about saying, Go Download All of Cory Doctorow's Books Now. And better still, they're free.*******

* there are hundreds of self-published "authors" for whom this might true, but I don't have time to read them...that's what editors are for.

** Apple, early Google.

*** Microsoft, late Google.

**** See ***.

***** Not that there isn't a delightful irony in the fact that Art's crazy friends are the ones who
try to have him committed, but a small amount of delightful irony does not make up for a large about of crappy plot.

****** Actually, drop the 're', and I hated Catch 22, anyway.

******* Footnote not realated to the text of the review, but I didn't have any good place for it above. One part of the book that I really enjoyed was Art's early foray onto the Eastern Standard Tribe chatrooms. It's a perfect logical enpoint to IRC chat rooms, complete with finding useful services via cryptographically secure means *and* dealing with obnoxious trolls. It's too bad social networking has all but killed off IRC (at least in my tribes, that is...)



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Friday, May 11, 2012

Review: The Ranger


The Ranger
The Ranger by Ace Atkins

My rating: 3 of 5 stars



This was an interesting read and one that I haven't quite figured out.

Despite lavish blurbs from Michael Connely and John Sandford this is not much of a mystery. What reveals there are are barely foreshadowed and exist to drive the action forward, not to demonstrate the heroes powers of detection.

The writing is sparse, descriptions are mostly eschewed in favor of dialogue and action. Fortunately, Atkins has a rare gift to clearly define characters and their relationship in a lines of a conversation

The action is serviceable. The best part, when the Ranger and his buddy Boom (a fine addition to the rank of Hawk-like sidekicks, and all the more appropriate since apparently Atkins has been tapped to continue the Spenser series...) decide on a whim to wreck the local meth labs.

The plot moves along at a rapid-enough pace. Atkins does a nice job of keeping Quinn tied to the plot even once we stop caring about the initial mystery. (Note, though, that the fact that we stop caring about the initial mystery is not a good thing...)

The biggest problem that I have with the novel is that I didn't feel like Atkins has much to say. Being a stalwart and brave hero is good. Being a skinhead who pollutes the town with meth is bad. Being a disingenuous preacher or a developer who sells out his small town is worse.

Since most of the villains survive (which is refreshing, by the way) I intend to read future volumes to see if maybe this was just a set up of a longer epic. As it is, it's a fine quasi-western, but not as remarkable as I was hoping.







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Review: Dirt


Dirt
Dirt by Stuart Woods

My rating: 2 of 5 stars



Stuart Woods' Stone Barrington lives in a world where what table you get at the fancy restaurant you frequent in New York Matters. And as a result it makes sense for him to care about the wealthy gossip columnist whose sexual exploits are faxed to a short list of important people. Because apparently this Matters, too.


Not to me, of course. I had a desperately hard time caring about anyone in this novel. This is partially by design of course, as it sets up an absolutely charming the-good-guys-are-actually-the-bad-guys twist at the end and of course everyone gets their just desserts. (Uh, spoiler alert...)


For those of you reading this on the blog. This sums it up nicely.

The bright spot in the novel is Stone Barrington himself, the irascible, hyper-sexual lawyer slash detective who gets to poke around the nooks and crannies of Manhattan high society. Unfortunately, there's not much of a mystery for him to unravel. And, of course, Stone Barrington doesn't even make an entrance until quarter of the way through the book. Up until then we get a lengthy introduction to the implausibly lavish lifestyle of the gossip columnist in question. Believe me, 70 pages is a long time to contemplate why we are supposed to care about any of this.

And in the end, I find I don't. It's all very engaging and readable in the moment. There's lots of sex, and the plot moves quickly. But I wish Stone Barrington were solving a mystery that mattered to me.





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