I bought Divergent as one of my ‘stab in the dark’ choices. I barely looked at the back cover, glancing briefly to make sure it wasn’t a Twilight knockoff before adding it to the large pile of books I wanted to buy.
As a result, it’s been sitting in my ‘to read’ pile for a while, looking at me forlornly. I’m generally less optimistic about books I don’t know anything about. But I decided to pick it up for a spot of lunchtime reading. Sometime later, I put it down again, having finished, and realised it was dark outside. All in all, with a few breaks, it took me just over six hours to read Divergent and that is a test to its quality, not its length.
It’s a tasty mix of The Hunger Games, Inside Out and Harry Potter. There’s a good deal of violence, a love story and a very well built world. It, like the aforementioned Hunger Games, manages to have a fantasy feel without ever going beyond the bounds of what a human can do. There’s desperation, decisions not entirely thought through and something going on at the top that isn’t quite kosher. You won’t find dragons, magic or gods here. Just people.
Divergent is set in a world that could be ours if you add in a massive war and a serious change in politics. The people are split into five group depending on what they think would heal the world: selflessness, happiness, knowledge, truth or courage. That’s the bit that reminds me most of Harry Potter - them gryffindors are all about the courage. Anyway, our heroine and family belongs to the selfless faction, but when she reaches the age of sixteen she gets to choose her faction. If she chooses any other faction than her own, she’ll be cutting most ties with her family. People who change faction are not well liked.
Annnnd that’s all I’m going to say about the plot. Because if I said anything more, it would ruin the book. The blurb is equally evasive and I can’t help but applaud that decision. You really should know as little about this book before you dive in. Because even our heroine’s choice in faction is not certain.
That said, some of the reveals are easy to see coming but it didn’t ruin my enjoyment one iota. They weren’t big plot points, just bits about characters that I guessed sometime in advance of the reveal. The main reveal was pretty well camouflaged.
My only real complaint would be that the build up to the ending was very short and not particularly large. That said I’m eagerly awaiting the second book, out on the first of May.
Saturday, 17 March 2012
Monday, 12 March 2012
By Light Alone by Adam Roberts
It hate it when something I'm really looking forward to manages to dissapoint me so completely.
The premise of 'By Light Alone' is so intriguing, so well thought out that I had to buy it. It sounded like a novel I could really enjoy. The basic premise: a science, wherein people can grow hair that synthesises food from the sun, rendering hunger a thing of the past, has been implemented some time in the past. Food is scarce but the rich still eat real food because they can. In the midst of this, a rich man’s daughter is kidnapped and, for a year, lives as one of the poor, with long photosynthising hair.
All of that you can learn from the blurb. Sound interesting? You bet! What changes has this wrought upon the girl, how does this effect the world in which she lives in?
Not a lot. Without going into too much detail, Robert’s book is not one for people who like fast paced, page turners. It’s a satire of our society today and rumbles along at the speed of a slug. Just to give some indication, it takes over a hundred pages for the text of the blurb to be played out, in which time, I’ve learnt more about the vacuous space that is the main character than I ever wanted to.
For a book so rich in its premise, there is a very meagre amount of actual plot. What there is, is padded out with drivel about the main character’s day, accompanied by mind-numbing passages of intensely dull philosophical thoughts about love or joy or despair or whatever emotion the character experiencing.
I understand why the information is presented like this. The world the character has grown up in is very different from ours and that is simply how he thinks. Never the less, I find myself skipping entire passages so I can move on with the story. While the thoughts add depth to character, they leech any enjoyment out of the book.
Which brings me around to my main point. Why, with such a blisteringly good idea for a world and plot, did Roberts choose the most boring man to be the main character? Why not the daughter, whose life would be infinitely more interesting to follow? Why not one of the poor, into whose village the young girl is taken? George, the father, has nothing to say, nothing to contribute and doesn’t drag the plot with him as much as flounder after it. Because of his background, brought up in a self-serving privileged society, he is completely unlikeable. I cannot relate to him.
I should point out that if you look up By Light Alone on Google, the reviews that pop up first are full up of praise. And I will admit, I’m not exactly the brightest spark. But a pondering book where most of the action is happening off screen just isn’t for me, not matter how shiny the cover.
If you manage to make it past those first 150 pages, what you’ll find is that Robert somehow manages to make all his characters as dull and vacuous as George. We do get to see the world from the perspective of George’s daughter and the wife. And I dislike all of them. Still, despite the changes of perspective, very little happens. Since the daughter got back from her kidnapping, her parents have split up and the daughter broke the fridge. Annnnnd that’s about it.
I’m just not interested in the emotional side of these people, especially as they’re meant to be horribly selfish. If I’m not supposed to like these people – and indeed I can’t – why should I read this book? I don’t care about them, I can’t see much plot on the horizon, why bother?
And yet, I have kept reading, possible due to the sheer horror than so boring a book could ever be published.
The last chunk of story is through the eyes of Issa who – spoilers, if you care – is actually the daughter, having be given a new name or possibly forgotten her old one. And this is about the only vaguely interesting bit of the book and even then, I’d never rate it more than one out of five. Issa travels from a village – it’s never really explained where she is to begin with - with little to no sense of purpose and occasionally something happens. And yes, we do see the world of the longhairs and how civilisation has changed for them. But Issa’s lack of motivation, her somewhat hazy personality and Roberts’s brain meltingly boring prose makes it the same turgid brown as the rest of the book. There’s no struggle within Issa, within George or his family to do anything, they just sort of wallow from one event to the next, never really reacting much, never making a difference.
The shame of it all is underneath the weight of all this rubbish, there is a story and it is amazing. It’s unique and original. It could a diamond and sparkle like the stars. But the diamond is coated in substances best left to the imagination so you’ll never see the twinkles.
Monday, 2 January 2012
Lost Girl
If you’ve seen the trailer for Lost Girl you’ve probably not really got anything about the show other than that the main character is a succubus. Which is a shame because it’s a whole lot more than that.
In my last article, I was bemoaning (again) the fact that no series I’d watched recently had managed to make a good pilot episode. There needs to be a simple introduction of characters but with enough information on each to understand their basic traits – this girl is the one who knits the group together, that boy enjoys arguing. The characters must also be likeable, even if they’re evil. The plot of the first episode should put the main character/s into the new situation that will set up the series but not in an obvious way. Lost Girl does that quite well, adding a main and side character into the new world without turning into forty minutes of clichés.
Said world is the main bit that gets missed from that trailer. There are two mob-like groups of fae, made up of the general bag of supernatural characters. One group is called ‘the light’, the other ‘the dark’. Exactly what each side stands for isn’t explained in the pilot. I suspect it could be something akin to the state of affairs in Night Watch where one group controls the night and one the day. Or, it could be more simple than that – light equals good, dark equals bad. Anyway, entry into one of these groups is mandatory for all fae, including the succubus, Bo, who has no idea what she is until the supernatural’s doctor tells her. Since not knowing what you are is unheard of, they immediately subject her to a ‘trial’ followed by a command to choose a side – light or dark. I won’t tell you what happens, but fair to say it got my interest.
Their inclusion of the side character, Kenzi, a human kleptomaniac with a side order of kooky, is perhaps the best part. It’s a small stroke but it adds so much and her relationship with Bo is already fun to watch. Because both are outsiders, I don’t get the ‘audience surrogate’ feel. And, the fact that she’s not some ordinary shop worker who gets pulled into the mix through no fault of her own – Rose Tyler, for instance – means she’s a character who’s forging her own path, not simply trailing in the wake of Bo.
Obviously, it could all go wrong and turn out to be awful from episode two onwards but I have high hopes for Lost Girl and I’m really interested to see where they take it.
In my last article, I was bemoaning (again) the fact that no series I’d watched recently had managed to make a good pilot episode. There needs to be a simple introduction of characters but with enough information on each to understand their basic traits – this girl is the one who knits the group together, that boy enjoys arguing. The characters must also be likeable, even if they’re evil. The plot of the first episode should put the main character/s into the new situation that will set up the series but not in an obvious way. Lost Girl does that quite well, adding a main and side character into the new world without turning into forty minutes of clichés.
Said world is the main bit that gets missed from that trailer. There are two mob-like groups of fae, made up of the general bag of supernatural characters. One group is called ‘the light’, the other ‘the dark’. Exactly what each side stands for isn’t explained in the pilot. I suspect it could be something akin to the state of affairs in Night Watch where one group controls the night and one the day. Or, it could be more simple than that – light equals good, dark equals bad. Anyway, entry into one of these groups is mandatory for all fae, including the succubus, Bo, who has no idea what she is until the supernatural’s doctor tells her. Since not knowing what you are is unheard of, they immediately subject her to a ‘trial’ followed by a command to choose a side – light or dark. I won’t tell you what happens, but fair to say it got my interest.
Their inclusion of the side character, Kenzi, a human kleptomaniac with a side order of kooky, is perhaps the best part. It’s a small stroke but it adds so much and her relationship with Bo is already fun to watch. Because both are outsiders, I don’t get the ‘audience surrogate’ feel. And, the fact that she’s not some ordinary shop worker who gets pulled into the mix through no fault of her own – Rose Tyler, for instance – means she’s a character who’s forging her own path, not simply trailing in the wake of Bo.
Obviously, it could all go wrong and turn out to be awful from episode two onwards but I have high hopes for Lost Girl and I’m really interested to see where they take it.
Monday, 10 October 2011
Eureka (US) /A Town Called Eureka (UK)
I found Eureka while checking out Warehouse 13 on Wikipedia. Apparently it’s not only a sister show to Warehouse 13 but started some three years before.
If, like me, you’re seen Warehouse 13 before Eureka here are the comparison notes: Eureka is less cuddly, with a significantly bigger cast list. The main character is not really ‘one of the team’ which doesn’t really help. It’s a strange cross of a small town detective and Bang Goes The Theory, with a hint of Castle in the inclusion of the main character’s daughter.
If you’d like that in a more prosaic format littered with spoilers – and let’s face it, why wouldn’t you? – a detective, Jack Carter, finds himself in Eureka after attempting to drive his runaway daughter back to her mother in LA. Eureka is a town filled with scientists who tend to break the rules of the universe and destroy bits of their town while they’re at it. Carter finds himself with a new job after the pilot episode – town sheriff – and he’s been introduced to a super secret sciency institute. Said institute is headed by Dr. Nathan Stark, who is quite closely modelled on Tony Stark – Iron Man for those who aren’t into their comics – and who has a fantastically loveable evil side to him.
Other characters of note are the local B&B owner whose subplot is bizarre and occasionally disturbing, the handyman who builds rocket engines in his spare time and Douglas Fargo, who turns up in Warehouse 13. I love Fargo the most, but I care quite a lot about the whole cast.
Which is why I’ll keep watching. The dialogue is quite hammy in places and the overall feel of Eureka is a bit…lonely. Carter isn’t part of the super secret institute so he’s always the least informed. In Warehouse 13, the main characters are generally in the know and they’re allowed access to any information they need, so the problem is being able to find the information, not simply having access. Yet despite all of that, I want to know what happens next. There’s a very subtle main plot that threads all of the episodes together so there’s always something to be resolved.
Also, talking house situated in an underground bunker. What’s not to like about that? SARAH (Self Actuated Residential Automated Habitat) is a bit like KITT but with some interesting emotions that lead it to, spoilers, trap Carter and some prominent members of the community inside the house until they resolve their differences.
Generally, if you want to describe Eureka, plump for the word ‘quirky’ like everyone else has. Even the music is quirky. The intro is very 1950s, American and small towny. People mowing their lawn with lasers and filling up their hover cards with fuel. Quirky, quirky, quirky. Unfortunately, that means the main word to describe Eureka isn’t, or instance, ‘awesome’ or ‘fantastic’. It’s a bit like someone saying your hairstyle is interesting.
Feel free to check Eureka out – I recommend starting at the beginning – but if you’re looking for a new show to get into, I’d go for Warehouse 13. Either way, enjoy Fargo being cutely clumsy.
*
I’ll be looking at Alphas next week, the newest of the sister shows, which deals with people with superpowers. Heroes remake anyone?
If, like me, you’re seen Warehouse 13 before Eureka here are the comparison notes: Eureka is less cuddly, with a significantly bigger cast list. The main character is not really ‘one of the team’ which doesn’t really help. It’s a strange cross of a small town detective and Bang Goes The Theory, with a hint of Castle in the inclusion of the main character’s daughter.
If you’d like that in a more prosaic format littered with spoilers – and let’s face it, why wouldn’t you? – a detective, Jack Carter, finds himself in Eureka after attempting to drive his runaway daughter back to her mother in LA. Eureka is a town filled with scientists who tend to break the rules of the universe and destroy bits of their town while they’re at it. Carter finds himself with a new job after the pilot episode – town sheriff – and he’s been introduced to a super secret sciency institute. Said institute is headed by Dr. Nathan Stark, who is quite closely modelled on Tony Stark – Iron Man for those who aren’t into their comics – and who has a fantastically loveable evil side to him.
Other characters of note are the local B&B owner whose subplot is bizarre and occasionally disturbing, the handyman who builds rocket engines in his spare time and Douglas Fargo, who turns up in Warehouse 13. I love Fargo the most, but I care quite a lot about the whole cast.
Which is why I’ll keep watching. The dialogue is quite hammy in places and the overall feel of Eureka is a bit…lonely. Carter isn’t part of the super secret institute so he’s always the least informed. In Warehouse 13, the main characters are generally in the know and they’re allowed access to any information they need, so the problem is being able to find the information, not simply having access. Yet despite all of that, I want to know what happens next. There’s a very subtle main plot that threads all of the episodes together so there’s always something to be resolved.
Also, talking house situated in an underground bunker. What’s not to like about that? SARAH (Self Actuated Residential Automated Habitat) is a bit like KITT but with some interesting emotions that lead it to, spoilers, trap Carter and some prominent members of the community inside the house until they resolve their differences.
Generally, if you want to describe Eureka, plump for the word ‘quirky’ like everyone else has. Even the music is quirky. The intro is very 1950s, American and small towny. People mowing their lawn with lasers and filling up their hover cards with fuel. Quirky, quirky, quirky. Unfortunately, that means the main word to describe Eureka isn’t, or instance, ‘awesome’ or ‘fantastic’. It’s a bit like someone saying your hairstyle is interesting.
Feel free to check Eureka out – I recommend starting at the beginning – but if you’re looking for a new show to get into, I’d go for Warehouse 13. Either way, enjoy Fargo being cutely clumsy.
*
I’ll be looking at Alphas next week, the newest of the sister shows, which deals with people with superpowers. Heroes remake anyone?
Wednesday, 21 September 2011
The Atrocity Archives by Charles Stross
Not long ago I had half an hour to spare and, being the person I am, thought Waterstone’s was a good place to while away the time. I came across The Atrocity Archives and, having seen the cover before but not read the back, I checked out the blurb and the first page. I got the impression from that The Atrocity Archives would be another present day fantasy fiction with magic and some technology advances. The writing seemed informal, witty and the blurb had enough to hook me. I was expecting Jim Butcher’s Dresden Files meets Computers For Dummies.
There is plenty of the first. For those of you who haven’t read any of the Dresden Files, it is characterised by the main guy, Dresden, who tells the story with a lot of wit and humour. You can tell things about his character simply by the way he says things – for instance, he can joke and being quite blasé about very scary subjects which means he’s brave and possibly a bit of an idiot. And, to an extent Stross has this in Bob Howard. His charm lies in the same ‘not good with authority’ way as Dresden and, as mentioned, the wit with which the story is told. But Stross is not in Butcher’s league. Where Butcher will put in perhaps one or two references to things you might not get – TV show references from the 70s and 80s for instance –, Stross litters them across every page. I’m lost already and I’m only seventeen pages in.
For those of you who want a plot, here’s a summary of what I understand so far: Bob works in an obscure branch of the government who deal with magic and alternate dimensions – don’t expect Tinkerbell or dragons though – as a computer repair man. Then, he gets promoted and has some fun with field work. Where it all goes wrong. (Except the bit where it all goes wrong takes a long time to appear. Nothing substantial really happens for almost the first third of the book.)
I’m not a computer nerd, I’ll admit that. I know how to defragment my computer and I can write basic html but I get totally lost with Stross’s explanations of things, or lack of explanation. What, for instance, is a node when it’s at home? He mentions ‘the Turning result’ but doesn’t explain what that is for another six pages, by which I’ve entirely forgotten what the point of the conversation was when it was first mentioned. What’s worse, no-one knows what the Turning result is, because he made it up, so no-one could possibly know what the reference is to.
The worst offender by far, though, (that is, the worst offender in the seventeen pages I’ve struggled through so far) is this: ‘The theorem is a hack on a discrete number theory that simultaneously disproves Church-Turing hypothesis (wave your hand if you understood that) and worse, permits NP-complete problems to be converted into p-complete ones.’
First off, that wave comment, that’s part of the quote. And I found myself slightly upset that Stross was either talking to the few people who understood what he meant and no-one else or that he was intentionally flagging up the fact no-one’s meant to understand it, in which case, why put it in there? I felt totally alienated. (If anyone reading this does feel they could wave their hand, I’d love to know what on earth it all means.) The other problem I have is…well it’s with his problems. What is an NP-complete problem? The only thing I can think of is ‘no problem’ but that doesn’t really work. A No Problem complete problem?
((Having read a little further after writing this, I found this and felt the need to share.) ‘Most of it boils down to the application of Kaluza-Klein theory in a Linde universe constrained by an information conservation rule, or so they tell me when I ask.’ )
There’s another snag. If you haven’t read H.P. Lovecraft, you’re not going to get the references to his work, such as Shoggoth. I’ve read some Lovecraft but I’ve not heard of that one. Similarly, do you, without looking at Google, know who Knuth, Dijkstra or Al-Hazred are? I’ve never heard of them but apparently I should have because Stross uses them to suggest a person’s character by the material he’s reading.
All this is building up to one very large, very unmoveable difficulty. I cannot follow what’s happening. There’s computer jargon being thrown around, mixed in with philosophy, mathematics, an awful lots of theories and some pretty heavy ideas, none of which I understand. I get the physical things that are going on – he’s walking over there, now he’s hacking a computer – but if the ending hinges on a concept I can’t grasp, what’s the point in reading any further than page seventeen?
Perhaps I’m being unkind and judgemental. Perhaps that isn’t enough material to judge the whole book by. But still, there’s that niggling doubt that if I can’t get the basic premise, all hope is lost.
I always try to judge a book by how friendly it is to the reader. That is, in terms of how accessible it is, not how nicely it can compliment your hair. And, granted, there will be science fiction that’s out of my range. But I’m not sure how many sci-fi fans would enjoy this either. And that’s what it comes down to: an author tries to sell books, which will be difficult if he’s alienated all by a tiny slice of his readership.
Fail, Mister Stross. Fail.
There is plenty of the first. For those of you who haven’t read any of the Dresden Files, it is characterised by the main guy, Dresden, who tells the story with a lot of wit and humour. You can tell things about his character simply by the way he says things – for instance, he can joke and being quite blasé about very scary subjects which means he’s brave and possibly a bit of an idiot. And, to an extent Stross has this in Bob Howard. His charm lies in the same ‘not good with authority’ way as Dresden and, as mentioned, the wit with which the story is told. But Stross is not in Butcher’s league. Where Butcher will put in perhaps one or two references to things you might not get – TV show references from the 70s and 80s for instance –, Stross litters them across every page. I’m lost already and I’m only seventeen pages in.
For those of you who want a plot, here’s a summary of what I understand so far: Bob works in an obscure branch of the government who deal with magic and alternate dimensions – don’t expect Tinkerbell or dragons though – as a computer repair man. Then, he gets promoted and has some fun with field work. Where it all goes wrong. (Except the bit where it all goes wrong takes a long time to appear. Nothing substantial really happens for almost the first third of the book.)
I’m not a computer nerd, I’ll admit that. I know how to defragment my computer and I can write basic html but I get totally lost with Stross’s explanations of things, or lack of explanation. What, for instance, is a node when it’s at home? He mentions ‘the Turning result’ but doesn’t explain what that is for another six pages, by which I’ve entirely forgotten what the point of the conversation was when it was first mentioned. What’s worse, no-one knows what the Turning result is, because he made it up, so no-one could possibly know what the reference is to.
The worst offender by far, though, (that is, the worst offender in the seventeen pages I’ve struggled through so far) is this: ‘The theorem is a hack on a discrete number theory that simultaneously disproves Church-Turing hypothesis (wave your hand if you understood that) and worse, permits NP-complete problems to be converted into p-complete ones.’
First off, that wave comment, that’s part of the quote. And I found myself slightly upset that Stross was either talking to the few people who understood what he meant and no-one else or that he was intentionally flagging up the fact no-one’s meant to understand it, in which case, why put it in there? I felt totally alienated. (If anyone reading this does feel they could wave their hand, I’d love to know what on earth it all means.) The other problem I have is…well it’s with his problems. What is an NP-complete problem? The only thing I can think of is ‘no problem’ but that doesn’t really work. A No Problem complete problem?
((Having read a little further after writing this, I found this and felt the need to share.) ‘Most of it boils down to the application of Kaluza-Klein theory in a Linde universe constrained by an information conservation rule, or so they tell me when I ask.’ )
There’s another snag. If you haven’t read H.P. Lovecraft, you’re not going to get the references to his work, such as Shoggoth. I’ve read some Lovecraft but I’ve not heard of that one. Similarly, do you, without looking at Google, know who Knuth, Dijkstra or Al-Hazred are? I’ve never heard of them but apparently I should have because Stross uses them to suggest a person’s character by the material he’s reading.
All this is building up to one very large, very unmoveable difficulty. I cannot follow what’s happening. There’s computer jargon being thrown around, mixed in with philosophy, mathematics, an awful lots of theories and some pretty heavy ideas, none of which I understand. I get the physical things that are going on – he’s walking over there, now he’s hacking a computer – but if the ending hinges on a concept I can’t grasp, what’s the point in reading any further than page seventeen?
Perhaps I’m being unkind and judgemental. Perhaps that isn’t enough material to judge the whole book by. But still, there’s that niggling doubt that if I can’t get the basic premise, all hope is lost.
I always try to judge a book by how friendly it is to the reader. That is, in terms of how accessible it is, not how nicely it can compliment your hair. And, granted, there will be science fiction that’s out of my range. But I’m not sure how many sci-fi fans would enjoy this either. And that’s what it comes down to: an author tries to sell books, which will be difficult if he’s alienated all by a tiny slice of his readership.
Fail, Mister Stross. Fail.
Monday, 5 September 2011
Heaven's Shadow
(Minor Spoilers on the line, delays expected)
I don’t read much sci-fi, I’ll admit that right from the off. I dabble but most space-set novels put me off by their jargon, science or pseudo-science and the general size which tends to come under ‘tome’.
But I picked up Heaven’s Shadow. The blurb was quite exciting. A near-earth-object starts venting air and it quickly becomes obvious there’s a reason for it. ’But by whom – and for what purpose?
Heaven’s Shadow is written by David S. Goyer, a comic book writer, screenwriter and director and Michael Cassutt, author, TV producer and screenwriter. The fact that Goyer and Cassutt work most in visual media is obvious and perhaps Heaven’s Shadow would have made a good film.
It does not make a good book.
The story starts off at a pace that would make a glacier look speedy and while it does manage to up the pace in places, Heaven’s Shadow ruins it all by shooting at it’s feet, with bullets made of long, dull sections where nothing happens and a habit of switching characters.
Talking of characters, there are way too many and a lot of them are introduced together. It doesn’t surprise me that they feel the need to include a character list at the front and I found myself having to refer to it a lot. There are four astronauts and four cosmonauts, various family members, scientists, a large group of people who work for NASA and a girl called Amy who appears, as far as I can see, without explanation. Said girl is meant to be a friend of the main character’s daughter but why Amy is allowed to run around the NASA site with her friend, unchecked, is unclear.
This might all be fine, just, if the author’s had stuck with one name to one character. Yvonne Hall, for instance was introduced as Yvonne but is, at points, called Hall and I had to go look at the character list to who out who Hall was.
The other problem with this huge cast is that the viewpoint moves between quite a few of them. It’s a bit like sharing a bottle of vodka with seventeen people – no-one can really taste it in the coke and no-one gets tipsy. The characters feel like templates at best and the main character is one of the worst hit. There are three things I know about him – his wife is dead, he has a temperamental teenage daughter and he’s an astronaut. That is what defines him. Personality you ask? Well…um…nope, I’ve no idea. If he died horribly, screaming, on the next page I wouldn’t mind because I really couldn’t care less about this 2D, cardboard cut out of a character. A few of the more minor characters manage to rise above it slightly but only slightly and while they might possess a hint of personality, I’m still not given enough to ever care about them.
Which spawns another complication. If I don’t care who lives and who dies, or, indeed, if any live at all, where’s the excitement, the drama, the gripping fear my favourite character is going to be eaten alive?
The other strange thing about Heaven’s Shadow is it’s habit of starting the chapter with a few lines of gripping dialogue and then scrabbling to explain the context in an immediate flashback. It actually does this for the whole first part of the book. We get the excitement of being aboard the space craft before they touch down but for the next few chapters after, it bumbles around some dull, dreary back story. A few snapshot flashbacks, no more than a page long would have been sufficient. Once I’d started noticing it, I realise they do a lot. It’s fine, ooo, once or twice but when they continue it chapter after chapter, it gets on my internal organs.
My last rant point is that the dialogue has some truly botched lines that just don’t
make sense. I even re-read them and I still couldn’t work out who was talking. Again, I wonder if this is because both writers are more used to mediums with visual qualities. Where the confusion isn’t applicable because we can see who’s talking.
Can I recommend Heaven’s Shadow? Well, perhaps if you’re into space sci-fi you might be able to look past its flaws to the juicy ideas beneath. But I’d recommend putting it below some of the better examples and using it as a last resort. A ‘it’s-this-or-watching-golf’ sort of thing.
I don’t read much sci-fi, I’ll admit that right from the off. I dabble but most space-set novels put me off by their jargon, science or pseudo-science and the general size which tends to come under ‘tome’.
But I picked up Heaven’s Shadow. The blurb was quite exciting. A near-earth-object starts venting air and it quickly becomes obvious there’s a reason for it. ’But by whom – and for what purpose?
Heaven’s Shadow is written by David S. Goyer, a comic book writer, screenwriter and director and Michael Cassutt, author, TV producer and screenwriter. The fact that Goyer and Cassutt work most in visual media is obvious and perhaps Heaven’s Shadow would have made a good film.
It does not make a good book.
The story starts off at a pace that would make a glacier look speedy and while it does manage to up the pace in places, Heaven’s Shadow ruins it all by shooting at it’s feet, with bullets made of long, dull sections where nothing happens and a habit of switching characters.
Talking of characters, there are way too many and a lot of them are introduced together. It doesn’t surprise me that they feel the need to include a character list at the front and I found myself having to refer to it a lot. There are four astronauts and four cosmonauts, various family members, scientists, a large group of people who work for NASA and a girl called Amy who appears, as far as I can see, without explanation. Said girl is meant to be a friend of the main character’s daughter but why Amy is allowed to run around the NASA site with her friend, unchecked, is unclear.
This might all be fine, just, if the author’s had stuck with one name to one character. Yvonne Hall, for instance was introduced as Yvonne but is, at points, called Hall and I had to go look at the character list to who out who Hall was.
The other problem with this huge cast is that the viewpoint moves between quite a few of them. It’s a bit like sharing a bottle of vodka with seventeen people – no-one can really taste it in the coke and no-one gets tipsy. The characters feel like templates at best and the main character is one of the worst hit. There are three things I know about him – his wife is dead, he has a temperamental teenage daughter and he’s an astronaut. That is what defines him. Personality you ask? Well…um…nope, I’ve no idea. If he died horribly, screaming, on the next page I wouldn’t mind because I really couldn’t care less about this 2D, cardboard cut out of a character. A few of the more minor characters manage to rise above it slightly but only slightly and while they might possess a hint of personality, I’m still not given enough to ever care about them.
Which spawns another complication. If I don’t care who lives and who dies, or, indeed, if any live at all, where’s the excitement, the drama, the gripping fear my favourite character is going to be eaten alive?
The other strange thing about Heaven’s Shadow is it’s habit of starting the chapter with a few lines of gripping dialogue and then scrabbling to explain the context in an immediate flashback. It actually does this for the whole first part of the book. We get the excitement of being aboard the space craft before they touch down but for the next few chapters after, it bumbles around some dull, dreary back story. A few snapshot flashbacks, no more than a page long would have been sufficient. Once I’d started noticing it, I realise they do a lot. It’s fine, ooo, once or twice but when they continue it chapter after chapter, it gets on my internal organs.
My last rant point is that the dialogue has some truly botched lines that just don’t
make sense. I even re-read them and I still couldn’t work out who was talking. Again, I wonder if this is because both writers are more used to mediums with visual qualities. Where the confusion isn’t applicable because we can see who’s talking.
Can I recommend Heaven’s Shadow? Well, perhaps if you’re into space sci-fi you might be able to look past its flaws to the juicy ideas beneath. But I’d recommend putting it below some of the better examples and using it as a last resort. A ‘it’s-this-or-watching-golf’ sort of thing.
Friday, 29 July 2011
Shadowmagic by John Lenahan
I don’t normally dislike a book for the quality of writing. Sometimes I will bemoan a particular habit or tone of voice – like King’s strange turns of phrase – but I’ve very rarely gone into a book thinking ‘I wonder if this has ever been edited?’. I’m surprised Shadowmagic has managed to get through the trials of the publishing world. I decided to look up Lenhan’s resume, sure in my impression that he’d be a young, first time writer with not much under his belt. Correct on the first timer, wrong on everything else. He’s a fifty year old illusionist and entertainer, who voiced the talking toaster in Red Dwarf. I have to wonder if he got published because of who he is and who he knows rather than because someone genuinely read the book and thought it was sterling stuff.
The story revolves around Conor, the son of a one handed man, who is randomly attacked by some strange people on horseback. He’s knocked out and when he reawakens he finds out he has a mother he never knew about, a murdering uncle and aunt and less chance of survival than a slug at a hedgehog convention. He manages to escape said murdering relatives and thus begins a journey through a magic land.
What Lenahan does get right are the ideas, which I’m not entirely sure were all original, but they were shiny enough to continue enticing me. Talking trees – mental communication before anyone starts thinking of Pocahontas – spells fuelled by gold or tree sap and a rite of passage that can create new lands.
Unfortunately, the plot is so riddled with holes, it falls apart for me. A quick list of some of the most glaring problems (few spoilers coming up here so skip if you feel the need):
1 The whole reason Conor is in trouble is a prophecy saying that he will be the ruin of the magical land. Except, if he hadn’t been kidnapped by his evil uncle in the first place, he’d have never been in a position to ruin anything. I could understand this if the uncle had come up with a reason to kidnap Conor days before he unfolded his master plan but no.
2 Without giving too much away, the prophecy sort of changes tack at the end of the book. It goes from ‘The son of the one handed man must die, in case he buggers up this land’ – I’m paraphrasing – to ‘The son of the one handed man must be sacrificed because…um’. Consistency if you’d be so kind.
3 The magic spell that transports Conor and his father into the land is never explained and one of the characters they meet very earlier on in the book could have performed the spell to send them back again – and does…at the end of the book – but there’s never any particular explanation about why they aren’t sent back immediately. This could have easily been solved by making the spell difficult to perform, or place specific or in need of a particular ingredient.
Then there are those writing quality problems I was chuntering on about before. First off, when introducing a character, it’s a good idea to show them in their natural environment. So…Doctor Who scrabbling around the Tardis or Frodo in the Shire before it all goes tits up. We never get this sort of introduction to Conor. There’s two and a bit pages where Conor helps his Dad put a shirt on and explains a few things but it’s ‘infodumping’ a lot of the time – all tell, no show. And a lot of it is about his Dad. Boring, boring and bad.
From a published book, you tend to expect a good level of literacy as well as a decent writing skill, especially from a children’s book. These are the writers of tomorrow you’re writing for! The sentence: ‘To my right the trees changed to beech but not the thin spindly trees I was used to, but spectacular white-barked beeches with girth and height of Californian Redwoods’ makes me cringe. Two ‘but’s in the same sentence? Two mentions of ‘beech’ and ‘tree’?
Perhaps I’m being too fussy. But this sort of this keeps cropping up. It feels like Lenaham hasn’t gone through enough stages of editing, because that sentence, and others, should have been picked up. There’s an opportunity to get some great description in there. That second ‘tree’? I’d change to ‘sticks. The ‘beeches’ to something like ‘colossi’ or perhaps ‘towers’. And I wonder how many teens actually know how big a Californian Redwood is?
On the front cover, it’s called ‘A Lord of the Rings for the 21st Century. Only a lot shorter. And funnier. And completely different.’ Yes, I’d agree with the shorter and certainly the completely different but funnier? I’ve read the first book of the LotR series and, I suppose, it’s not exactly a bag of laughs or, indeed, any other container of a joyous emotion. But then, neither is Shadowmagic. The blurb includes the phrase ‘it will make you laugh on nearly every page.’ I think I smiled twice throughout the whole book. Could have been an involuntary spasm. Hard to tell.
I do not recommend Shadowmagic. Ever. Do not read it.
The story revolves around Conor, the son of a one handed man, who is randomly attacked by some strange people on horseback. He’s knocked out and when he reawakens he finds out he has a mother he never knew about, a murdering uncle and aunt and less chance of survival than a slug at a hedgehog convention. He manages to escape said murdering relatives and thus begins a journey through a magic land.
What Lenahan does get right are the ideas, which I’m not entirely sure were all original, but they were shiny enough to continue enticing me. Talking trees – mental communication before anyone starts thinking of Pocahontas – spells fuelled by gold or tree sap and a rite of passage that can create new lands.
Unfortunately, the plot is so riddled with holes, it falls apart for me. A quick list of some of the most glaring problems (few spoilers coming up here so skip if you feel the need):
1 The whole reason Conor is in trouble is a prophecy saying that he will be the ruin of the magical land. Except, if he hadn’t been kidnapped by his evil uncle in the first place, he’d have never been in a position to ruin anything. I could understand this if the uncle had come up with a reason to kidnap Conor days before he unfolded his master plan but no.
2 Without giving too much away, the prophecy sort of changes tack at the end of the book. It goes from ‘The son of the one handed man must die, in case he buggers up this land’ – I’m paraphrasing – to ‘The son of the one handed man must be sacrificed because…um’. Consistency if you’d be so kind.
3 The magic spell that transports Conor and his father into the land is never explained and one of the characters they meet very earlier on in the book could have performed the spell to send them back again – and does…at the end of the book – but there’s never any particular explanation about why they aren’t sent back immediately. This could have easily been solved by making the spell difficult to perform, or place specific or in need of a particular ingredient.
Then there are those writing quality problems I was chuntering on about before. First off, when introducing a character, it’s a good idea to show them in their natural environment. So…Doctor Who scrabbling around the Tardis or Frodo in the Shire before it all goes tits up. We never get this sort of introduction to Conor. There’s two and a bit pages where Conor helps his Dad put a shirt on and explains a few things but it’s ‘infodumping’ a lot of the time – all tell, no show. And a lot of it is about his Dad. Boring, boring and bad.
From a published book, you tend to expect a good level of literacy as well as a decent writing skill, especially from a children’s book. These are the writers of tomorrow you’re writing for! The sentence: ‘To my right the trees changed to beech but not the thin spindly trees I was used to, but spectacular white-barked beeches with girth and height of Californian Redwoods’ makes me cringe. Two ‘but’s in the same sentence? Two mentions of ‘beech’ and ‘tree’?
Perhaps I’m being too fussy. But this sort of this keeps cropping up. It feels like Lenaham hasn’t gone through enough stages of editing, because that sentence, and others, should have been picked up. There’s an opportunity to get some great description in there. That second ‘tree’? I’d change to ‘sticks. The ‘beeches’ to something like ‘colossi’ or perhaps ‘towers’. And I wonder how many teens actually know how big a Californian Redwood is?
On the front cover, it’s called ‘A Lord of the Rings for the 21st Century. Only a lot shorter. And funnier. And completely different.’ Yes, I’d agree with the shorter and certainly the completely different but funnier? I’ve read the first book of the LotR series and, I suppose, it’s not exactly a bag of laughs or, indeed, any other container of a joyous emotion. But then, neither is Shadowmagic. The blurb includes the phrase ‘it will make you laugh on nearly every page.’ I think I smiled twice throughout the whole book. Could have been an involuntary spasm. Hard to tell.
I do not recommend Shadowmagic. Ever. Do not read it.
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