Chronic bookrastinator thanks to ADHD. Mostly SF & Fantasy.
Sheffield, UK
Mastodon: @kennykravitz@mindly.social
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From the master of the space opera comes a dark, mind-bending adventure spread across time and space, where Doctor Silas …
From the master of the space opera comes a dark, mind-bending adventure spread across time …
I love a good mystery and Reynolds has been very inventive with this one. Keeps the reader off-balance and puzzled throughout.
I love a good mystery and Reynolds has been very inventive with this one. Keeps the reader off-balance and puzzled throughout.
Acceptance is a 2014 novel by Jeff VanderMeer. It is the last in a series …
Content warning Spoilers for Annihlation and Authority
It's taken me a few years to get around to this one. Annihlation was, start to finish, an excellent and engaging book but Authority was a different beast altogether. Set outside of Area X entirely, it was more of a straightforward psychological thriller about bizarre events featuring some very odd characters. Acceptance successfully marries the two, weaving four POV characters into three temporally distinct narratives in order to (I think) answer the lingering questions from the first two books.
In the earliest we get to meet the lighthouse keeper and relive events in the days leading up to the formation of Area X. In the next, we find out about the Psychologist from the first book, her connection to the lighthouse keeper, how she maneuvered herself and was in turn maneuvered into her post as Director of the Southern Reach, and finally how and why she authorised, prepared and joined the 12th Expedition. And in the latest narrative branch, we follow Control and Ghost Bird as they return to Area X, discover more of the truth behind it, reunite with the original Biologist, and get a glimpse into the future of our world (or is it our world at all?)
Vandermeer succeeds in bringing all these threads together, while stopping just short of giving conclusive answers about...well, anything. My only wrinkle with the series as a whole is that there seemed to be a couple of big ideas that he dropped between books and they weren't explained away to my satisfaction. In Annihlation, a big part of what made Area X so scary was the way that it was expanding, inexorably, a little bit with each passing year. Authority retconned that by instead establishing that Area X wasn't expanding like that at all, instead periodically expanding in bursts depending on some sort of cosmic event. Then Authority ends with the replica Psychologist leading an expanding frontier of Area X toward the Southern Reach. Based on what we know from Acceptance, it would make sense that this is Area X reaching out to 'get' Lowry but if that actually happens we don't see it, leaving the replica Psychologist feeling like a loose end. Or maybe all these things were actually tied up and I just didn't follow what was happening well enough to see it? It's that kind of book.
Content warning Hard not to spoil this one, so the review assumes you have read the book already.
Let me start by saying this was a hard read. While many books can be described as 'unputdownable', this is much more in the 'unpickupable' category, so much so that it took me about four years of picking it up, reading one or two of Eva's letters and then putting it down for several months until I felt in the mood to tackle another. What Shriver has done here is very clever. We start out some years after Thursday, so from the outset the reader kind of thinks they've already been spoilered, that the book is progressing toward a blow-by-blow account of that day and some sort of resolution and/or reconciliation with Franklin. And it does, but (for me at least) Shriver so carefully tunes the language of Eva's letters that it implied that Franklin had left Eva and taken Celia with him. As a result, when the lights go up at the book's climax...let's just say that's a literary moment that will stay with me for the rest of my days.
As this was a complex book dealing with a number of very powerful themes, so I felt compelled to see what other readers were saying about it on Goodreads. I was surprised to see so many accusing Shriver of glorifying school shootings, of taking advantage of the spate of them in the preceding years to sell the book. I don't see that at all - both Eva and Kevin are openly scornful and scathing of all the real-life massacres referenced during the book and if anything, they are held up for the reader to see them in all their sordid, squalid detail in the light of day. No, no glorification here and I suspect those reviewers are probably the kind of people who routinely say "now is not the time to talk about gun control" after each new school shooting.
The other theme raised in the reviews is, unsurprisingly, nature vs. nurture as that appears to be the book's central pillar. Was Kevin born bad or did he become bad because of Eva's parenting (Franklin very often gets a pass in these reviews, I notice)? I'm struck by the suspicion that my take on the book's events while reading it now, as a parent in my mid-40s, would probably contrast quite starkly with what I might have felt had I read it when it was published, when I was in my mid-20s and childless. Back then, raising a child appeared so much more straighforward, the decisions about how best to do it so clear cut, than the reality proved to be. Looking back on the entire book, with all my years of experience in life, child raising and even a bit of time working in mental health, my view of events is this:
Kevin did develop, or was born with, one or more profound psychiatric disorders. Eva was a reluctant mother, only really having Kevin out of duty and fear of losing Franklin, whom she loved very deeply (for reasons that evade me, to be entirely honest). Motherhood did not come naturally to her and she struggled to bond with Kevin, but Kevin was also clearly resistant to being bonded with from a very early age. Eva certainly puts a lot of effort into being a good parent but as Kevin grows, it increasingly appears that he both craves her love whilst wanting to test her limits and push her away. I feel this duality lies at the heart of everything Kevin does. He cynically cultivates Franklin's affection, but he places no value on it because it is too easily given and ultimately superficial - Kevin presents Franklin with the false version of himself that he knows Franklin wants to see, and Mr Plastic buys it. Eva's feelings toward him are often very negative indeed but he knows that in spite of them, or perhaps because of them, that her underlying love is genuine. Ultimately, whether Kevin's psychiatric issues are innate or caused by his upbringing is a moot point because either way, it's quite obvious from his actions that something is wrong but whenever Eva brings it up, Franklin basically gaslights her about it. Why he does so is perhaps the more interesting question. Does he buy Kevin's good sport act so completely that he truly believes Eva is overreacting? Or on some level does he just not want to believe that there could be anything wrong with his child? I have known so many parents screw up their children by doing the latter, including my own. And maybe that's why I've come away with the book with these particular views?
The concluding part of the Path of the Eldar trilogy benefits from having by far the most interesting range of locales and events. Thorpe closes the overarching story arc quite well, with a somewhat open and satisfyingly Eldarish ending. Like the first book, this one suffers from the PoV character being overall rather whiny, sulky and foppish (although thankfully not as self-regarding as Korlandril). This results in what is really the story's Achilles Heel - it's hard to imagine anyone taking Aradryan seriously enough to allow him to do a lot of the things he ends up doing. If the story slowed down and stopped thrusting the reader into one eerily fascinating world after another, they might pick holes in the unlikeliness of Aradryan's ascent to the point where the whole think collapses. I managed to avoid that, but YMMV.
The concluding part of the Path of the Eldar trilogy benefits from having by far the most interesting range of locales and events. Thorpe closes the overarching story arc quite well, with a somewhat open and satisfyingly Eldarish ending. Like the first book, this one suffers from the PoV character being overall rather whiny, sulky and foppish (although thankfully not as self-regarding as Korlandril). This results in what is really the story's Achilles Heel - it's hard to imagine anyone taking Aradryan seriously enough to allow him to do a lot of the things he ends up doing. If the story slowed down and stopped thrusting the reader into one eerily fascinating world after another, they might pick holes in the unlikeliness of Aradryan's ascent to the point where the whole think collapses. I managed to avoid that, but YMMV.
This book continues on the same vein as its predecessor, being set largely on Alaitoc, but this time Gav fleshes out the life of Eldar seers and in particular, just how their powers of foresight work thanks to 'the skein'. It's all plausible enough, within the context of 40k and the story, which overlaps with both the first and third books, serves to anchor the trilogy's entire narrative arc. Perhaps as a consequence of that, the story itself feels a bit less eventful than the other two but the book benefits from Thirianna being a far, far less self-centred and irritating protagonist than her two friends that narrate the other books.
This book continues on the same vein as its predecessor, being set largely on Alaitoc, but this time Gav fleshes out the life of Eldar seers and in particular, just how their powers of foresight work thanks to 'the skein'. It's all plausible enough, within the context of 40k and the story, which overlaps with both the first and third books, serves to anchor the trilogy's entire narrative arc. Perhaps as a consequence of that, the story itself feels a bit less eventful than the other two but the book benefits from Thirianna being a far, far less self-centred and irritating protagonist than her two friends that narrate the other books.
A troubled man leads a writer and a scientist into "The Zone", a mysterious area …
I picked this up based on the media that has been influenced by it, like the Tarkovsky film, the STALKER games, Metro 2033, Tales of the Loop etc. Usually when you move from the influences and adaptations and return to the source work, you find a tighter and more concentrated version of what came after but with Roadside Picnic almost the opposite is true. Having consumed quite a bit of media that borrow from the tense, otherworldly horror of RP's Zone sections I was unprepared for the breadth of the book. I didn't expect it to, by turns, become a Noirish thriller, a jet black comedy, and a philosphilical treatise on human nature and capitalism.
It seems to me that this should be on every SF enthusiast's 'required reading' list but it doesn't seem like many people bother to read it and that's a huge shame. Especially because it …
I picked this up based on the media that has been influenced by it, like the Tarkovsky film, the STALKER games, Metro 2033, Tales of the Loop etc. Usually when you move from the influences and adaptations and return to the source work, you find a tighter and more concentrated version of what came after but with Roadside Picnic almost the opposite is true. Having consumed quite a bit of media that borrow from the tense, otherworldly horror of RP's Zone sections I was unprepared for the breadth of the book. I didn't expect it to, by turns, become a Noirish thriller, a jet black comedy, and a philosphilical treatise on human nature and capitalism.
It seems to me that this should be on every SF enthusiast's 'required reading' list but it doesn't seem like many people bother to read it and that's a huge shame. Especially because it says so much in so few words: 145 pages from start to finish. I've read so many big SF&F trilogies that use ten times as many pages to say a tenth of what the Strugatskys say here.
Another solid outing in this series. I found the mystery a bit too easy to unpick this time around but Caroline Hills is a pleasing main character as she tries to balance the demands of illness, family life, leading a small team and trying to keep EMSOU off her back. I do wonder whether the incidental details would hold as much interest to someone who didn't grow up in the area these books are set ("I received my first handjob in those woods!" he cried), though.
Another solid outing in this series. I found the mystery a bit too easy to unpick this time around but Caroline Hills is a pleasing main character as she tries to balance the demands of illness, family life, leading a small team and trying to keep EMSOU off her back. I do wonder whether the incidental details would hold as much interest to someone who didn't grow up in the area these books are set ("I received my first handjob in those woods!" he cried), though.
Forensic anthropologist Tempe Brennan investigates religious-cult murders in a monkey preserve in North Carolina. She learns of a planned massacre …
The Eldar have been retconned quite a bit since their inception and this book does a good job of introducing the reader to their way of life, their paths and the craftworld. Gav does a good job of getting across the intensity of Eldar emotion, even if they seem less mystical and alien than they did back in the day.
I thought this was going to be a three star book for a long time. It takes an age to get going and the plot is unusually convoluted for Woodman, but it pulls it all back with an excellent third act. Drinkwater has obviously been in scrapes and desperate situations before, but this time it feels different - the visceral horror of naval warfare in this era is more keenly felt than in prior books and its effect on captain and crew are explored in greater detail and depth. How much longer can Nat bear to live this life?
After an unassuming and somewhat slow start, Le Guin's story and prose builds to a crescendo that includes what must be among the most beautiful portrayals of platonic love in literature.
Thought-provoking and unpredictable from start to finish, The Left Hand of Darkness seems as fresh and relevant today as it did when it was published. The only aspect that seems dated at all is Le Guin's periodic descriptions of masculine and feminine behaviours, pigeonholing that would've gone unremarked in the 70s but which jars today.
After an unassuming and somewhat slow start, Le Guin's story and prose builds to a crescendo that includes what must be among the most beautiful portrayals of platonic love in literature.
Thought-provoking and unpredictable from start to finish, The Left Hand of Darkness seems as fresh and relevant today as it did when it was published. The only aspect that seems dated at all is Le Guin's periodic descriptions of masculine and feminine behaviours, pigeonholing that would've gone unremarked in the 70s but which jars today.
There is a world that hangs suspended between triumph and catastrophe, between the dismantling of the Wall and the fall …
