Review: Redshirts

Redshirts by John Scalzi

My rating: 4 of 5 stars



"Huh."

That was my response to Redshirts.
Now, to be fair I finished the novel in a severly jetlagged state
and so I blame that for at least part of my ambiguous and incoherant response.

To be fair though, it's a kind of an apt summary.
Let me clarify. It's a nuanced "huh." vaguely positive, said with a small nod, but perhaps with
furrowed eyebrows. A "huh" that says, "I understand, but will have to
ponder about what I think about all this."

For those of you living under a rock* Redshirts is the new novel by John Scalzi in which he deconstructs the lives
of the hapless members of a Star-Trek-ian away team who would inevitably suffer some horrible fate to add additional drama
or convince the watcher that the situation really is dangerous.

Scalzi himself claims the novel can be spoiled, so consider yourself forewarned, but frankly, I had been avoiding reading reviews
before hand for fear of spoilers, and I had a pretty good guess about the twist by the time I had finished the prologue.
I mean, it's pretty obvious, really.

The concept is fun. The Universal Union is appropriately evocative of Federation Starfleet, and the deaths that
inevitably befall the crew are amusing and keep (most of) the moribundity at bay.
I actually felt like the writing and editing were weak for scalzi. The device "a part of his mind said this, a part of his mind said this, a part of his mind said,
boy I sure do have a lot of parts today" is used like two too many times.*** And to be frank the characters are all a little too slight. I realize this is part of the
conceit, but I feel like a better written (or hell, maybe just a longer) book could have preserved the conceit and still given each character enough dialogue
to formulate a more distinctive voice. Plus, there's a major gaping plot hole which kind of ruined the mood for me.

Ultimately, though, the novel isn't really about being on an away team or anything else. It's a deeper meditation
on living, living well, dying, dying well, destiny, fear, and fate. And actually, the real meat of the themes doesn't really come out in the novel itself but rather in the
codas.

Which brings me to the primary redeeming quality of this book.

The codas are really great. The first one is best. It's really funny, but it's also a slightly profound look at art and life.
The other two are pretty great too, but revisit some pretty familiar Scalzian themes.****

So, "huh" John Scalzi. I liked this. And I was worried after Fuzzy Nation, but if you average a good novel and a great set of codas I think you get something very good. I wish it were better, but I think very good is probably good enough.

* By which, of course, I mean most normal people who aren't tied in to the nerd-o-sphere.**
** To everyone else, though, you should have heard of this. It has a theme song from Jonathon Coulton for god's sake.
*** To be fair, I think it was only used twice.
**** (This one really is a spoiler) I'm on to you Scalzi--Having two people fall in love because their alternate representations
were in love sounds an awful lot like what happened to John Perry and Jane Sagan in Old Man's war.



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Review: Shortcut Man: A Novel

Shortcut Man: A Novel by p.g. sturges

My rating: 3 of 5 stars



Private Eye novels are my genre. They have been ever since I asked my mom (a librarian) for the kind of
mystery novels where they talked about "dames" or something like that.

My mom said immediately, "oh, they're called hard-boiled detective stores" and pointed me to Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler and the rest was history.

20-ish years later, I try to keep track of the private eye genre. One of the most straightforward ways of doing this, of course, is
keeping track of the Shamus awards. I mean, that's the awards from the Private Eye Writers of america.
Seems like it ought to be a good place to start.

Problem is, most of the Shamus award nominees suck. But still, I keep an eye on them, read the ones
that seem interesting, and occasionally I find a sleeper hit.

This book is not that sleeper hit, but nor does it suck, so I'll let it slide.

The plot is straightforward: The main character is a shortcut man, someone who solves problems, not by doing any detecting per se, but
more like by breaking noses and legs.

The good news is, he's funny. The plot moves swiftly, after an unrelated introduction to show how the character does his business, our hero
the detective is asked to determine whether a porn producers wife is cheating on him.
The wife in question happens to already be the detectives girlfriend. (So, as mysteries go,
this ones a dud. but as a crime novel it works ok.)

The author plays it close to the noirish tropes. The wife/girlfriend is a femme fatale of
the first order, and ancillary characters are engaging enough.
In the end though, there's not much *there* there. If there are grander adventures for the
character in place, i'd be interested in seeing it, but for the moment this is a light, fun, and substanceless noirish thriller,
heavy on the noir, light on the thrill.



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Review: The Lost Ones

The Lost Ones by Ace Atkins

My rating: 4 of 5 stars



This novel is quite an improvement on its predecessor, largely because in place of the former's clumsy consequenceless action sequences, this novel features some genuine character development on the part of many of the characters from the first book, and some new ones.

Even the bad guys (well, some of them) get a more nuanced perspective. The ending is a bittersweet affair, that leaves everyone significantly changed.


If the next one shows the same degree of improvement, this is going to be a series to be reckoned with.



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Fuck yes, Bastion!

Bastion (game)
Supergiant games
5 out of 5 stars.

While all of my friends were busy with Diablo 3, I decided to save $48* and buy the humble indie bundle instead. The thing is, I was kind of in the mood to play a Diablo-like game.

Enter Bastion. A quirky roleplaying adventure game that is completely and unequivocally awesome. The mechanics are straightforward. You move around with the keyboard and click to attack the random beasties that attack you. There is a small amount of customization: throughout the game, you find new weapons***, which you can upgrade in a variety**** of different ways. Along with your weapons you can choose a special attack and as many special powers as you have levels. One of the things this game did really really well is keep the amount of customization manageable. I felt like my decisions had real impact, but I didn't spent all that much time thinking about it.***** The design is, likewise, just right. It's brightly colored****** and all of the levels have a distinctive look and feel.

What really makes Bastion a fabulous game, though, is the storytelling. The story is good enough. There has been some kind of apocalypse. You appear to be the only survivor, until you meet Rucks, a mysterious old man who guides you on the path to save what's left of the world. What makes it transcendent is how it's told. Everything you do is narrated by Rucks in a gravely, old-timey, vaguely hard-boiled sort of voice. And Rucks is an amazing character, he is sweet, and funny, and interesting, and, single handed-ly******* keeps the player engaged in the story. With his narration the story becomes something you really want to hear, and makes the ending one of the more dramatic and engaging endings I've ever seen in a video game. At some point in the ending the game has you make some choices, and the way the story is told, it felt like the choice matters.******** 


Somewhere out there, there's probably a Myers-Briggs-lite test that tells you what your choices in bastion say about your personality. All I know is that I'm happy with my choices, so much so, that I'm not going to go back and try the other ending...

I had some minor quibbles, of course: the difficulty is, shall we say, uneven. I was playing on normal mode, which gives you a finite number of lives (two or three depending on your power-ups...) with which to finish the level. This was not at all a problem until the first interlude level where you fight 20 rounds of monsters. This fucking destroyed me until I figured out the right combination of powerups. And then the game went back to being pretty (to too) easy.*********  Also, the control system is kind of crappy on the computer. You move around with WASD, but since it's a three-quarters top down view, the natural directions that you generally want to move are diagonally. Also, the mouse response left something to be desired, my mouse frequently dropped clicks, and "forgot" I was holding down the mouse button. 

Bottom line? Save ${the current cost of diablo} - ${the cost of bastion}, and play Bastion. It's great!


*And better yet, my measly** $12 was well above the average, which is how I got Bastion!
** I wouldn't feel bad for them. The humble indie bundle made $5,107,675.35. 
*** You find them deterministically though. Apart from picking up money and health potions there is, blessedly, no looting in this game.

**** 2^5 if you're counting.
***** Did I mention there's not looting?
****** Eat your heart out, Diablo fans.
******* Single voicedly, maybe?
******** None of this red explosion, green explosion bullshit.
********* Except for another gem of Bastion innovation: Early in the game, you unlock the ability to customize the difficulty level--in doing so you give the monsters a particular power up, and in return get increased money and XP. With all of these "idols" activated, I defy anyone to claim that the game was too easy...

Review: Someone Comes to Town, Someone Leaves Town

Someone Comes to Town, Someone Leaves Town by Cory Doctorow

My rating: 3 of 5 stars



OK, let's just take it as read that Cory Doctorow is great for publishing all of his novels under a creative commons license and get straight to the point: This book is freaking weird. And not just because the protagonist is an ambiguously named, navelless Mary Sue whose father is a mountain and whose mother is a washing machine ("he kept a roof over our heads, she kept our clothes clean." it rhymes, get it?*), not because there are characters who are, unironically, Russian nesting dolls (they can't digest food unless all three of them and appropriately stacked), not because the heroes girlfriend has wings that need to be trimmed regularly so she can appear in public, and certainly not because the various handy man tasks that the hero does are described in glorious, meticulous detail. No, this book is freaking weird because of how it randomly and capriciously jumps from a (granted low stakes) Cryptonomiconian techno-thriller about dumpter diving for computer parts to make routers to provide free wi-fi to downtown Toronto, to a quasi horror story about Danny,Doug,Davey**, the psychotic brother chasing down Alan,(Albert,Aaron), to a story-within-a-story allegory about being one's brother's keeper.***

At a thematic level, everything is linked. All of the stories are about how people depend on each other both in explicit and implicit ways. (The brother's keeper-ness being an example of the former, dumpster diving an example of the latter.) But while the novel is heavy on ideas and examples it's low on conclusions.*** What is to be done about Davey,Devin,Darcy, the psychotic and evil brother? He can't be killed, he is an entirely unredeemable malevolent force.**** Everyone loves the idea of free municipal wifi, but who provides the electricity? Who provides the bandwidth?

Or maybe I'm missing the point. As I've commented in my other reviews of Cory Doctorow books, he does a fine job of packing an emotional punch, within reason. The flashback sequence of Alan and his first girlfriend are sweet and moving and heartbreaking.

I have a great deal of respect for Cory Doctorows writing *and* his ideas. I think he's Right an awful lot of the time, and what he says, he usually says very well, but this novel could have really, *really* benefited from some kind of grand unifying conclusion?

But, as i've said before. Cory Doctorow writes fascinating, moving, highly readable, grandly ambitious and deeply flawed novels. I'm glad he does what he does, but I think i'm ready for a break.

* This is apparently a Gene Wolfe literrary reference, so bonus points to Mr. Doctorow for digging deep into the archive.

**Oh, yeah, did I mention none of the characters have a name? Over the course of their appearances in the novel, only their first initials remain constant. This has lead to a delightful remix of the novel where a script dynamically randomizes the first names as you read. (http://craphound.com/someone/) Brilliant!

*** This is straight out of the classical Doctorowian playbook, actually.

**** This degree of malevolvence is one of the most genuinely scary things I've read recently and his character is one of the high points of the novel, but loses something for not having anything resembling a cathartic climax.



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Review: Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom

Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom by Cory Doctorow

My rating: 3 of 5 stars



Thank god for Cory Doctorow. Thanks to him and his quest to Understand the Future one's reading device can be packed full of Corey Doctorow novels for free and guilt free.

And his novels are fun, light gooey balls of science fictional zanyness. Bonus!

That's not to say that these novels are actually good. Near as I can tell Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom is an exercise in whether or not one can produce a compelling story where absolutely nothing is at stake.

I mean, the premise is that in the {not-too|extremely distant} future, death has been conquered, as has scarcity of resources. One backs up one's digital brain weekly, and should one meet death, one is simply restored from a backup. Likewise, one does not have to work for a living--food is free, instead the coin of the realm is the deploringly named whuffie: a weird hybrid of facebook ''likes'' and brownie points, where good deeds, hard work, or just generally being awesome are rewarded, aparently in proportion to how far out of your social network you've managed to advertise yourself.

The plot then, involves a plucky group of deathless characters trying to save The Haunted Castle exhibit at Disneyworld. Wait. what? Why do I care about that?

The book is highly engaging, and there's several levels of nested irony. This book released on a creative commons license and is about how great disneyworld is. Of course, Mickey Mouse isn't in it because Mickey Mouse will ALWAYS be under Disney's copywrite.
Likewise there's a wink and a nod to the fact that on one hand Disneyland is a magical place, where the details of the user's experience is given foremost attention, but on the other hand, lurking in the background are the secret disney police whose job it is to stamp out any rebellion before it starts. All in the name of preserving the good time of the paying customers, of course.

In fact, these are things I was interested in! I wish they'd been explored more fully. But again, ironically, I suspect it was the fear of ramifications of besmirching Disney's precious reputation, that caused the author to pull quite a few of his punches.

Despite the lack of grave consequences in a world without death, Mr. Doctorow convincingly creates a plot hook that is both convincing and compelling, and there are moments of brilliance as the duality of being an artist and a fan are explored, along with the conflicting desire to both conquer and appreciate the objects of our affection.

But ultimately, the setting (no one can die, everyone lives in fucking disneyworld) gets in the way of the gravitas of the ending and I am left wondering why I should care, and finding that I don't, much.



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Review: The Prestige

The Prestige by Christopher Priest

My rating: 3 of 5 stars



From perhaps the moment you pick up this book, The Prestige, you get the sense that it's going to be a book with an Ending. (You know, where there's some grand mystery revealed only in the final pages to be a devious and perversely unexpected plot twist. If it were a movie you would think it would join the ranks of The Usual Suspects or the Sixth Sense).

But, in the case of the book, the surprise ending is that there isn't really a surprise ending.
Although there is a central mystery, which involves a mystery phantom twin of a modern character and can only be resolved by looking into the past to the history of the rival magicians, its solution is evident long before the end of the book. And although the book itself (and the ending) is atmospheric and creepy, upon finishing it I found myself wishing that there had been more there.*

That being said, this novel is delightfully plotted and has great timing. The solutions to the various puzzles are not hard to work out, but the manner in which they are presented is interesting and engaging, and the fact that the story is broken into several small pieces each with their own buildup, and tension, and resolution, makes it a fast and for the most part satisfying read.

As a note to my readers, I ended up reading The Prestige because of Christopher Priests online rant about the deplorable state of science fiction awards. This rant I found to be delightful (http://www.christopher-priest.co.uk/journal/1077/hull-0-scunthorpe-3/) (as did some of the people he was ranting against http://www.zazzle.co.uk/internet_puppy_t_shirt-235730813931635704). I highly recommend you read that, at least, even if you end up skipping Mr. Priest's actual literary output.

* And although to a certain extent the book spoils the movie, the movie
is a much tighter and darker piece of storytelling, with not one, but two surprise ending, to boot. I might recommend that in favor of the book, but beware this book is downright cozy relative to its movie version.



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