Review: Leviathan Wakes

Leviathan Wakes by James S.A. Corey
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This was a solid, enjoyable science fiction book that was recommended to me by a friend. While in the process of consuming it, I did not have the "Oh my gosh, I just love this" feeling, but it was pleasant enough that I have started reading the second book in the series.

First, I must admit that the setting was right up my alley. It is far enough in the future to have many aspects of everyday human life be very different than what we experience now. But it is not so far that you couldn't imagine things actually progressing in that direction. A lot of the action takes place on space ships or space stations, yet it is always described in ways that made me feel like I could fit right in.

Second, I did enjoy several of the main characters. They had some depth and surprises to them that kept me interested, despite the fact that they didn't always make the right decisions.

However, the small downside for me was that there were not quite enough characters. Or maybe just not enough factions involved to completely dazzle me. Don't get me wrong; as I mentioned, there were some surprises along the way. But the overall plot moved in a fairly predictable direction, with things ending pretty much the way I would have expected.

I really want to give this book only 4.5 stars, but this site doesn't allow for half-stars. It falls just short of what I'd consider a "top" rating because I don't think that I would read this book over and over again. However, I'm letting my rating sit at the full 5 level, since science fiction is my favorite genre and this is definitely a story I would recommend to a friend.

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Review: Great North Road

Great North Road by Peter F. Hamilton
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I really enjoyed this book because it wasn't quite what I was expecting. It has a number of interesting characters and world details that entice me to read it again sometime in the future.

I'm familiar enough with Peter F. Hamilton to expect his science fiction to be based in an interesting setting and filled with lots and lots of characters. In fact, it was with a certain amount of dread that I avoided this book for awhile because I wasn't ready to dive into an epic story. After consuming several chapters, I began to realize that this particular book is not quite as expansive as some of his other tales, and I was pleasantly surprised at being able to jump into the narrative quickly.

Also, although this is set in the future with many familiar aspects of science fiction (space travel, colonization, DNA manipulation, miniature computer technology), the heart of the story is a murder mystery. That small twist on the theme kept me really intrigued through the first two-thirds of the book. Once the killer was revealed, I experienced a small let-down, but still enjoyed the rest since by that point I was invested in many of the characters and their stories.

The biggest 'problem' I had with this book has to do with the fact that I didn't actually read it; I listened to it in audio format. The reader did a good job overall with the narration and even a decent job with the character voices, however, he had a strong accent (Scottish maybe?) that made it hard for me to understand him from time to time. I found myself confused by names a few times and getting locations mixed up in my head. However, since the book was so long, rather than rewind and listen to a portion again, I would just let the story continue on and figure things out after a few more paragraphs. This is part of the reason I want to 'read' it again -- hopefully the next time I'll pick up on some details that I may have missed, especially since I know now where the action is headed.

One final plus for this particular story: it was nice to have a heroine with my first name.

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Review: Redshirts

Redshirts by John Scalzi
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Basically this book is just average. It is averagely written, with average humor, average characters and average humor. I was hoping for something like the movie 'Galaxy Quest', but this didn't quite live up to that. It wasn't all completely bad, but I've forgotten most of the details already.

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Review: Year Zero

Year Zero by Rob Reid
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

If you like Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams, then you'll like this book. It has that same, "people of Earth are silly and manage to avoid planetary destruction through inadvertent ineptitude" feel to it. There are a few key differences, first that the author is American, not British, so this story is set in New York and has a slightly different humor to it. Another difference from HHGG is that it was written recently, so it includes some very modern references that were refreshing. Finally, although the main characters are not heroes per se, they are also a bit more competent that their counterparts in HHGG, which means they actually end up using their wits a little more than blind luck to win out in the end.

Definitely a book I would recommend.

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Review: Old Man's War

Old Man's War by John Scalzi
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I don't have much to say about this book. It didn't really pull on me strongly in any one direction. I thought the writing was well-done and the story-telling was very well structured. The universe felt kind of "Star Trek" to me though -- you know, like a late 70's or early 80's TV show. Although there is a lot going on in the background, the focus was just on the main character and his small group of friends. And they had very little impact on the world at large. Furthermore, the "science" to this fictional story seemed a little too good to be true, while at the same time having just the right sort of limitations for an interesting drama. Not serious drama mind you; just a little bit of interesting drama.

In the end, I'll probably come back and read more of the series when I don't have anything else grabbing my attention, but it can wait.

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Review: Existence

Existence by David Brin
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I liked a lot of the science fiction in this book, but it felt much too abstract for me. In fact, it took me longer than usual to even get 'interested' in the story. Usually, with a new book, I'll dive right in and become engrossed with the characters within the first few chapters. With Existence, I don't think it was until around chapter 25 that I decided I would stick it out until the end. Up to that point, I was considering not reading the entire thing.

Part of the difficulty might be that I was listening to the audio format of this book. Based on what I heard, there are sections that are quoted chapters from some other book like an encyclopedia of sorts. It took a few chapters for me to figure this out and get used to the different perspectives. It also didn't help that these excerpts were often of an erudite nature and far too abstract to hold my attention. I kept yearning for the story to get back to the action.

Another problem was that there were too many characters introduced too quickly before I could really settle in with a particular point of view. And then the story spanned a length of time that necessitated old characters dying and thus the introduction of more new characters. In the end, there were a few narratives that I enjoyed, but nothing that really stood out.

I think overall the subject matter of this book is just too philosophical for my personal taste. I prefer to watch individuals or small groups go through a story arc, rather than humanity as a whole. Yet all this being said, it was a well written book and an interesting setting.

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Review: The Name of the Wind

The Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I’ve been having a hard time figuring out how I want to review this book. In the end, I’m going to give it 4 of 5 stars because I did enjoy the story and plan to continue the series. However there is just something nagging at me ... something that doesn’t feel quite right about the book, but I can’t put my finger on it.

I didn’t start this one with a completely blank slate. I went into it knowing that it was a fantasy story, and I do have a prejudice against most of those in general. The first few paragraphs made me even more biased because of the overly poetic wording. I mean, there is only so much talk about different forms of silence and how it embodies a space that I can stomach before I want to get on with the story. I managed to get through that bit and found myself eventually drawn in by the characters and situation.

And I really did begin to enjoy the actual plot quite a bit. There is a lot of the typical author’s tricks of hinting at something larger, more ominous, but letting the reader know that it’s not going to be revealed until much later. However, it hasn’t felt too heavy-handed or distracting yet. There are enough other interesting things that are explained quickly enough that I feel willing to save some patience for the bigger elements. Yet at times, we delve into these poetic paragraphs that grate at me ever so slightly that I can’t embrace the book as a whole.

Now don’t get me wrong. I love descriptive words and a well written narrative that might have some poetic leanings. However, it’s like that favorite food that’s just been sprinkled with a little too much salt –- you know just how enjoyable it could be so that even the slightest deviation sours the experience for you even if it makes it better for someone else. I know that a lot of people really love this book. And I agree that it is a good book, but it just isn’t quite to my taste.

The other small detractor is the fact that I didn’t realize this was part of a trilogy until I was more than half-way through. I have been looking for self-contained novels to read of late so that I don’t get sucked into these never-ending stories, and here I find that I was duped yet again. The author has me sufficiently hooked that I will continue reading, but I’m going to do more research before I jump into another story.

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Review: Mockingjay

Mockingjay by Suzanne Collins
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

In the end, this is just more of the same as "Hunger Games". Not a lot of surprises, but an enjoyable and easy read.

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Review: Catching Fire

Catching Fire by Suzanne Collins
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

In the end, this is just more of the same as "Hunger Games". Not a lot of surprises, but an enjoyable and easy read.

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Review: The Hunger Games

The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I read this book after watching the movie. Although both were enjoyable, I felt they were "shallow". The label of young-adult applies aptly to this book.

I think if I had read this when I was in grade school, I would be one of the many avid fans who consider Katniss a personal heroine. I know back then I really enjoyed stories of young people who had to go above and beyond the average person to help support themselves and their family, especially if that meant hunting and/or living in a forest. And my glee was even greater when the main character was a female -- a seemingly plain girl who was loved secretly or from afar. This books hits on all those notes.

However, I am older now and I appreciate stories with characters that make surprising choices and struggle on a more internal level to be a better person. Katniss felt pretty formulaic; never really surprising me. Furthermore, I predicted much of the story as a whole, even guessing where the twists and turns might come in.

Still, because it brought back some childhood memories of old favorites, I would recommend this highly to other young readers.

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Review: Coyote

Coyote by Allen Steele
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

I think as long as an author has good grammar, decent sentence structure, and basic storytelling skills, I will give them the benefit of the doubt. I believe I will try hard to like a book but sometimes, it just doesn't work. At the end of Coyote, I found I just couldn't like it despite the fact that I held on until the end.

The most annoying problem was what I refer to ask "carrot dangling". Sometimes in a narrative there will be vague references and allusions to the past or the future so that the reader is curious enough to keep reading. For example, a character might briefly remember bits and pieces of some bad accident from their youth and the reader hangs on until the details and complete story are revealed over time. I often felt this technique come up in Coyote unnaturally, and it brought my focus out of the story instead to critique the writer explicitly. There are a couple of examples I will provide to demonstrate why this was so annoying.

The first example is a case where the story was following a young girl and her relationships to two different boys. The next chapter was an excerpt from the same person's diary, written in her old age, describing events like a flashback. For no apparent reason, the woman refers to her husband as "my current partner". So when does someone writing in their diary not use first names, especially of those people close to them? Furthermore, no where else in the book was the term "partner" used like that – is she married or not? Why would she bring it up like that? It felt like a direct poke at the reader – "you're not supposed to know which boy she picked yet, so you have to keep reading."

Another example in same vein – we are still reading a woman's journal as she describes events from her youth that haven't happened yet in the primary narrative. She makes a reference to an adventure she went on that "cost a person's life." Really? When you're writing in your diary, you wouldn't just say how you miss so-and-so because they died on your adventure?

These details were really jarring to me and made it hard to empathize with any of the characters. Another reason that it was hard to empathize is that the story never really focused on one character. I think that as the reader I was supposed to care about the group as a whole – their survival and ability to start a new colony – but the motivations of everyone where so disjointed that instead I just felt tossed from one individual struggle to the next. If there was an underlying thread that was supposed to tie all the independent actions together, I never found it.

This is one book I can't see myself ever reading again, and probably won't even try any of the author's other works.

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Review: Judas Unchained

Judas Unchained by Peter F. Hamilton
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Overall, I liked the series because it had the hard scifi feel I've been craving, however, certain themes fell a little short for me. Final score is 3 out of 5.

I finished the book awhile ago, so this review may be a little fuzzy on details from bad memory. (I was busy preparing and then experiencing a vacation in the Caribbean -- a good excuse!) The general take away I have from this story is a pleasant one. One of my primary drivers to read this in the first place was to find some serious hard science fiction and this definitely fit the bill. It was well-written and didn't fall into any tropes that I am familiar with. In other words, I was engaged and on my toes most of the time. However, there are a few areas that didn't work so well for me.

First, I felt overwhelmed with the number of protagonists and never really sympathized with any of them. The large cast and wide scope of the story felt a lot like the Song of Ice and Fire (George R. R. Martin) to me. However, with George, I perceived the world as being small at first and then growing bigger and bigger gradually. Peter, on the other hand, just plunged me in to this huge Commonwealth so quickly I had a hard time getting my bearings. (I will admit that some of this could be biased because I’ve read Ice and Fire more than once.) And this is my fuzzy memory talking here –- but the viewpoints from the Commonwealth didn’t seem truly first-person. Like I never really got the sense that I was getting inside anyone’s head. Thus, being an outsider, the events didn’t impact me that much.

(Minor spoilers here)
Second, several aspects of the technology were not explored to my personal satisfaction. The fact that humanity is basically immortal at this point should have changed our culture more drastically in my mind. Similarly, if humanity can create memory-storage chips that are built into our brains, wouldn’t we have a ton of other cybertech? Too many aspects of everyday life remained the same as what we experience today that at times, I almost forgot how far-future the story was supposed to be.

Those complaints aside, I did enjoy the series. I like it when alien species are presented as truly alien and not just a different human culture in costume. I like exploring the universe in space ships and using computers and technology to do amazing things. Once my ‘to read’ list empties out, I would even consider revisiting this story again.

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Review: Pandora's Star

Pandora's Star by Peter F. Hamilton
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Well, my review for this book cannot be considered quite 'complete', since the story isn't finished. I didn't realize that when I started it, but this is the first of two parts.

That being said, I am really enjoying the story so far and plan to continue the second half as soon as possible. This is almost the exact kind of science fiction saga I have been hoping to read -- far future, with strange aliens and all sorts of interesting social questions. The only small drawback is that this tale is MASSIVE and I was really looking for something on a smaller scale. It wasn't until about 3/4 of the way through the book that I felt I had a decent grasp on all the characters. I am sure I have missed a lot of interesting details and will probably end up listening to the audio version a second time, assuming that the ending doesn't disappoint me.

Another small detraction for the book is that I didn't find too many enthralling characters. There are just so many to keep track of, and not very many of them are explored in depth. There wasn't anyone that I really hated (you know, like a Tywin Lannister), but nor was there someone to really root for. There was just a general, "What's going to happen next?" urge that continued pulling me through this first half of the saga.

On the other hand, I really enjoyed the description of some of the alien species. They really give you that 'alien' feeling. This aspect of the narrative has me very curious about the events of the next book in the series. So I will give it a 4 out of 5 for now, with a caveat that I may amend that rating after I read the second book, Judas Unchained.

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Review: Reamde

Reamde by Neal Stephenson
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

TLDR: I enjoyed this book all the way up to the end. The conclusion felt a little abrupt to me and sort of hollywood-ish since I was expecting more bad things to happen. (I may be ruined by GRRM)

I almost let my internal expectations of this book disrupt my actual enjoyment. My familiarity with Neal Stephenson is based mostly on 'Snow Crash' and 'Diamond Age'. Those were both heavy science fiction settings with long passages of philosophical ramblings. So while reading 'Reamde', I kept expecting there to be either an aspect to the virtual game T'Rain that would make it futuristic somehow, or for the author to digress into a long discussion about how virtual game worlds affect the real world. Actually, now that I think about it, there were a few small tangents about that, but they were short enough that I felt they didn’t detract from the bigger story.

And that bigger story was certainly action-packed! This was a small surprise and delight for me. Again, based on my memories of his past works, I was prepared for Neal to set up some pauses in the story where the protagonists could agonize and theorize about their situation for long periods of time. This book kept me on edge the entire time, continually wondering what would happen next and if the heroine would ever get some rest.

Therefore, when I finally came to the climax of the story, it didn’t actually feel so climatic. Rather I had the impression that the non-stop action, which had been moving at a pretty steady quality and pace, just comes to an end. My opinion on this might be slightly fooled by the fact that I listened to this in audio format and as the fixed end approached, I thought there was another section to listen to, and so I wasn’t really ready for the story to be over.

Another detractor for me was the overwhelmingly positive outcome. I don’t want to spoil things too much – there are some sad parts and not everyone comes through in one piece – however, I did get the feeling that many of the story elements were tied up too neatly. People were able to overcome outrageous obstacles a little too easily. Although I like for there to be a happy ending, I wanted tougher consequences handed out. (This is where I think I may be spoiled by reading too much George R. R. Martin lately. He has skewed my perception of what is a ‘happy ending’.)

Overall, the book was a definite page-turner and something that I will probably read again in the future.

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Review: American Gods

American Gods by Neil Gaiman
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

TLDR: Very well written, but bland story. I might try another Gaiman book, but I did not really enjoy this one.

I don't think this book and I got off on the right foot. Because I prefer to be surprised by a story, I usually don't do any research beforehand which was definitely the case here. I had heard several people refer to Neil Gaiman as a good author, and somewhere along the line I placed his name in the category of 'science fiction authors' in my head. So lately when I've been feeling this urge to read a good science fiction story, I thought to myself, "Maybe it's time to check out that Neil Gaiman guy." So here on goodreads, I posted a request for recommendations on which of Gaiman's many stories to start with and the most suggestions were for 'American Gods'.

Obviously, the first problem here was my desire for science fiction, which this story is not. This story is placed in present day with strong fantasy elements. These are not necessarily bad things in and of themselves, but this is not what I was in the mood for, hence, the "wrong foot" beginning.

However, Gaiman is definitely a good writer. His prose drew me in at first, and I felt that I should stick it out to see where things went. I was rewarded with some interesting imagery and many surprises, because this plot did not follow along any well-established arcs.

On the other hand, the second problem I struggled with was the nature of the fantasy elements. Here is where the title, 'American Gods' should have clued me in -- the story includes actual gods; deities; beings that are worshiped by humans. My own issues with religion make such a story very difficult for me to enjoy because of the personal drama associated to this topic. Therefore, I was continually looking for other things in the book to entertain me, such as characters or locations. Yet again, this often fell flat for me because I just couldn't relate to the main guy and many of the people described were just confusing or obnoxious to me.

In the end, I would not recommend this book to someone else. However, there was enough talent in the storytelling itself to lend me hope that Gaiman could produce something else I might enjoy. I'll probably come back and try a different story after I'm able to satisfy my science fiction craving.

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