Thursday, April 30, 2009

April '09

THE COUNCIL WARS: THERE WILL BE DRAGONS
-J. Ringo-fantasy
-719-in the 41st century mankind lives in a utopia. People do whatever they feel like while a computer program called 'mother' makes sure that nobody kills somebody else and that everyone gets all the energy they need. 'Mother' is overseen by a council of humans. It has split into 2 factions. One wants to just keep things the way they are, the other wants to return to the "good old days of hard work and character building" with them in charge, of course. A coup happens. In the ensuing fight, earth is deprived of all her energy, and hence her gadgets. So everyone has to go back to pre-coal industrial happenings. One guy rallies a town and prepares for the attack by the other people. The good guys win but the council wars look like it could be generational, so everybody settles down to live a long, pre-industrial life. It was quite interesting. Ringo confuses me though. One minute he is talking about patriotism, importance of a strong military and the dangers of a bloated federal govt, etc, etc and then 2 people are shacking it up like it is totally normal.

INUYASHA #25 & 26
-R. Takahashi-manga

STAR WARS: THE CLONE WARS
-K. Traviss-fantasy
-256-Jabba's son is kidnapped by the Separatists who make it look like it was the Jedi. The Jedi have to rescue the little slimer. Anakin has a padawan. LOTS of clone troopers die. Kenobi fights Asajj Ventress. Once again, Traviss's anti-jedi streak shows, strongly. Asajj is shown as some hurt little girl who is just trying to make up for her masters death by becoming a mass murderer.

RECLUCE: NATURAL ORDERMAGE
-L.E. Modesitt, Jr-fantasy
-496-a young punk is exiled from Recluce to Hamor. He turns out to be a "natural ordermage", basically someone who can't learn, just can or can't, do things with his power. Interesting and better writing than the early Recluce books.

A MADNESS OF ANGELS
-K. Griffin-fantasy
-538-urban fantasy. A sorcerer comes back from the dead 2 years after being killed. He has hooked up with a magic in the telephone lines. He was killed by his old master who wanted the telephone magic, the Blue Angels. Matthew, the resurrected guy, goes after his former master and lackeys to get revenge. The word that came to mind after reading this was "guttural". I don't like urban fantasy. If fantasy can be compared to water, urban fantasy is dark scummy water. There was no redeeming value about this book. There was SO much profanity/obscenity spewed out that I felt like I was standing in a sewer hole. I would never recommend this to anyone.

THE TWO HANDED ENGINE
-H. Kuttner and C.L.Moore-scifi
-unfinished. A bunch of short stories that all seemed to be gloomy and "psy" this and "psy" that. There was a nameless dread in almost every story that just got old after about the 3rd story.

OZ: THE EMERALD CITY OF OZ
-F. Baum-juvenile fantasy
-unfinished-Dorothy's aunt and uncle come to Oz after failing to make the farm work. It was just to much "oh, everyone is good and happy in Oz" in one chapter while the next shows some neerdowell getting together all the malcontent elements of Oz. Baum just contradicted himself and it was all extremely, to much so for me, sugary syrupy sap.

THIS IS NOT A GAME
-W.J. Williams-tech fiction
-367-This was great! Real world, bots, net gaming, social networking, murder, Russian mafya, national economies attacked, this book ties them all together. It started off kind of slow and odd, with the main character in a 3rd world country that was collapsing. But once she got back to LA, the main story took off. The ending was a bit rushed, imo. Basically, an overlapping and intertwining of the real world and the networld. It was a cool ride. However, due to the slow start and rushed, almost simplistic, ending, I don't think it was as good as it could have been. Really recommend it though to anyone who thinks that the net can't affect the real world :-0

BLEACH #21 & 22
-T. Kubo-manga

REBORN! #3-5
-A. Amano-manga

STAR WARS: CLOAK OF DECEPTION
-J. Luceno-fantasy
-342-An immediate prequel to Episode 1. I never was a big fan of Qui Gon, so that aspect of things didn't appeal to me. This was more a book of the politics of the day and as such, wasn't very exciting. More about Palps manipulating things. That was interesting :-) One thing I did like was the inclusion of Vergere. I wish we had the actual story of her turning though. Sadly, this was much like of most of Luceno's Star Wars books. Not badly written, but not exciting by any stretch of the imagination. I wouldn't recommend this to a casual Star Wars fan.

RED MARS
-K.S. Robinson-scifi
-572-a story about the colonization of Mars. It was filled with characters who had no redeeming qualities. Nothing in this book appealed to me at all. From dysfunctionality on a 100+people size to large paragraphs rambling about Mars to the pure pettiness of the characters involved, nothing interested me. It was almost like Robinson set out to write a book about the worst set of exceptional characters he could. I certainly won't be reading the other 2 Mars books.

THE LOST FLEET: COURAGEOUS
-J. Campbell-scifi
-299-things started to wear a bit in this book. Geary saves them, they complain. They get smacked up. Geary does this, Geary thinks that. Really need to move past the whole "running around in enemy territory" thing. This was almost a carbon copy of the 2nd book. Different names and places, but same idea. I want something new.

WITH FRIENDS LIKE THESE...
-A.D. Foster-scifi
-232-a collection of short stories of some of Foster's early stuff. I enjoyed this. It was cool seeing ideas that were later expanded in his novels. Nothing really stood out but it was a nice light read and now my collection looks better, with this sitting next to ...Who Needs Enemies?.