Review: 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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Review: 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 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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Review: Mockingjay

Mockingjay by Suzanne Collins

My rating: 4 of 5 stars



This is a fine conclusion to the Hunger Games series. The readability remains high and the pace, breakneck.

The Hunger Games still stands as one of the few genuinely thrilling books I've ever read. So much so that I delayed reading the sequels for like 2 years because I didn't want to subject myself to that kind of emotional toil. Now that I've finished the entire series, I'm very glad I finally returned to it, even though neither of the last two books carried the same punch.

For one thing, the scenery is starting show some holes. Like for example, why the capitol would be filled with death traps. I know it makes for a more exciting climax, and ties everything in with the hunger games theme, but....really? a city full of death traps? I'm not buying it. Likewise, even the underlying tension level suffers a little bit. For the vast majority of this book, the major source of tension in this book is Peeta's safety. This works great for the first half of the book, when he's a captive of the capitol and we keep seeing glimpses of him on TV, and great for the last third of the book where he's damaged and unstable and trapped against his will in a war zone. But for the middle 6th when he's safe and sound in District 13? It kind of kills the momentum which in these books is the greatest of sins.

As for the ending, I had to think about it for a while, but I ultimately decided that I liked it very much*. It's sad, messy, and unsettling, and diminishes the characters, but, of course, this is what happens when you fight a war, even one that desperately needs fighting.

Bottom line? The Hunger Games books are excellent! Well worth your time and their universal praise and popularity.

*I'm not talking about the team gale/peeta discussion. I think it's been fairly clear that Katniss was going to end up with Peeta (assuming he and Katniss were both to survive) from about half way through the first book.



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Review: Catching Fire

Catching Fire by Suzanne Collins

My rating: 3 of 5 stars



Say one thing for Suzanne Collins, she writes incredibly addictive stuff. Much like the Hunger Games before it, this book was down-right un-put-down-able. And frankly, after some of the crap I've been reading lately, that alone is a relief and enough to guarantee this book a positive review.

Apart from the pace and quality of the writing, though, everything about Catching Fire is weaker than the Hunger Games. The plot is down right stupid. The following contains massive spoilers: Really Snow, you decide that the 75th hunger games is going to feature winners from previous games and you don't expect either that the populace is going to turn against you or that the tributes (most of whom have known each other for years) are going to plot something against you? How did you get to be president again? cause it wasn't brains, buddy...

Likewise, the actual hunger games in the book are kind of weak. They don't take up all that many pages of the book, which is good, because I was bored with the whole idea by the time we get there (and I think maybe Ms. Collins was too). But on the other hand, since so little time is spent in the arena we don't get nearly the same emotional attachment to the other tributes and hence their gruesome deaths are much less affecting.

As for the climax, I'm fine with the book ending abruptly. It sets up good momentum to carry the reader into the next book, but the leadup to the dramatic ending could have used 10 more good pages of set up. I knew I was coming to the end of the book from the dwindling number of pages remaining, but from the text, there was seemingly no change of momentum until SUDDENLY BIG FINISH!

Still, the resting momentum of these books is beyond breathless, so count this one as recommended.










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Review: Throne of the Crescent Moon

Throne of the Crescent Moon by Saladin Ahmed

My rating: 2 of 5 stars



I've read a number of Saladin Ahmed's essays on genre fiction. In fact the reason I bumped this book to the top of my lengthy book queue was his Big Idea essay (for John Scalzi's Whatever). I really like the things Saladin Ahmed has to say about the genre.

Too bad I didn't much care for his actual genre writing. The action is dull with no engaging set pieces, and barely serviceable choreography. The whole setting was, in general, a little thin. Adoullah is, apparently, the last ghul hunter, and as we see in the novel, Ghul's have the potential to do some serious damage. You'd think someone would notice, "hey, we've only got one of these left...we'd better get a fresh batch of recruits."

There are some good points. Adoullah and Raseed are both fairly engaging, and I the Falcon Prince effectively steals his scenes as he's supposed to. I thought the climax was effectively handled, especially for these characters, and I very much enjoyed the awkward, fumbling, and wholly believable relationship between Raseed and Zamia.

As for the good, that's about it.

The biggest problem in the novel is that there is just no plot momentum in the middle third of the book. Two new main characters are introduced and they get most of the POV in this section, and frankly the were perhaps the most boring and unimaginative alchemists and magicians I've ever stumbled across in fantasy fiction.

So, as you've gathered, I was very disappointed with this book. Ahmed has potential, and I hope he either improves upon his weaknesses or plays more to his strengths in his future volumes.



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Review: The Passage

The Passage by Justin Cronin

My rating: 4 of 5 stars



Sigh. It frustrates me how little genre fiction book critics read. So when a no apologies sci-fi book makes a bunch of best of the year lists, I assume it must be the pinnacle of the craft. Sadly, this is almost never the case. (And the Passage is sadly no exception.)

Don't get me wrong, it's a good book, with a solid premise, and some very good characters*, and one off the charts action scene. But one of the best books of 2010? Eh, I'm skeptical: There are quite a few plot holes, and some major flaws in characterization, the main one being the main character doesn't have much of a personality. This is going to be a major problem if she's the only character who is going to survive the duration of the series as seems likely. Worse yet, from the perspective of calling it one of the best books of the year: there's not much new. Vampirism caused by a virus? Check. Peeps pretty much nailed that one and it's not alone. A post-apocalyptic society where the survivors come to terms with humanity's fragility? Come on now, that's the plot of 75% of YA fiction in the post Hunger Games era (and 40% before). The narrative told in a mix of straight up third person narrative, characters journals, email exchanges etc? That was passe like 20 years ago.

Again, none of this makes the book bad. In fact the book is very good, but it does make me question the opinion and relevance of the scores of critics who ranked this at the top of their lists.

* One of the things that is very good about this novel is that it has some very strong characters of many different races, and both genders. Moreover, while the races of the characters are not hidden, at all, they're not harped upon. I call that a #racewin.



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