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Nov. 21st, 2017 11:41 am
Book Reviews In Brief
Wilders, by Charlotte Earth. Book 1 in the Project Earth series. 1/5 stars.
This was a bad book.
I didn't think it was written very well, it introduced plot elements that didn't feel well-thought out, and the characters were bad, but that's not what I want to talk about. I want to talk about two things -- one relatively minor, one overwhelmingly major.
The relatively minor thing is our protagonist, Coryn, who spends the vast, vast, vast majority of the book eighteen years old but conducts herself in a manner more fitting a twelve-year-old. While I don't think Young Adult books should be separated from everything else with fences and torches and knives or whatever -- my library puts Marie Brennan and N.K. Jemisin in with fiction, and tear down all genres, I say -- it bugged me because she was written so young despite being pitched as older. I have a nineteen-year-old niece, and she would not be all wide-eyed and saying "silly robot" every third word. I have a seven-year-old niece who wouldn't do that! And while everyone is different, and this is a more speculative setting, I can't wrap my brain around that. I can't get with a young adult being written like a young child, while not being treated as one by the story. It was bad. Don't do it.
The worst part about this book is the entire premise, which is that Lou and Coryn, our sisters, are orphaned when their parentsare killed. There's special mention of how much blood there was. I kept reading because that's a premise -- who killed their parents? What did they know? Did The City silence them?
Nah.
They committed suicide. Messy Mortal-Kombat-uppercut suicide, all over the house, so their daughters could discover it later along with the cops. They committed suicide because they were depressed. The girls blame the city, because this big Vancouver/Seattle hybrid uses people and traps them or whatever, ignoring what's going on in nature, and Lou wants to get back to nature so she leaves and Coryn just wants to find her and help, and blah blah blah fuck that noise. I read like 60% of this book before skimming, and as far as I can tell, they actually committed suicide, and the parents are not important for the book. They're killed to get them out of the way, like how every young adventurer is an orphan so you don't have to worry about parents worrying about their kids. Just kill 'em! So much easier. But suicide? Don't use depression and suicide as your hamfisted way to write your story about nature. Fuck that, and fuck this book.
The Burning Page, by Genevieve Cogman. Book 3 of The Invisible Library series. 4/5 stars.
I really liked this! I'm really into all of our recurring characters in this series -- Irene, Kai, Vale, Silver (I think Silver is compelling and also terrible and he should be onscreen more often so I can hate him), and while I think I like the promise of Alberich more than the execution thus far, I want to know what his actual deal is. If I could fantasy-book what I want to have happen from here, I'd really love to see some setting stretching happening. I want to see more of Kai's home world, or something that's not a throwback to the turn of the 20th century in setting. I want Librarians running through Android: Netrunner is what I'm saying. I want weird near-future or, I don't know, the Library of Alexandria, or something in Atlantis. If we're not going to hang out in London the whole time (a big reason why I didn't like Book Two as much is that I didn't want to leave Vale and London behind), I want to get somewhere strange.
If this doesn't end with our trio going full Serafina, too, I'm gonna be bummed.
Pawn, by Timothy Zahn. Book #1 of the Sibyl's War. 1/5 stars.
Maybe try next time, Zahn. You didn't care and I could tell.
Also never write people with drug problems again, you're bad at it.
Thrawn, by Timothy Zahn. Book #1 of Star Wars: Thrawn. 3/5 stars.
Let me lead off with this: This book was fine. It was good. It wasn't great, it wasn't exceptional, it was fine. It told a pretty good story, Thrawn's a very compelling character, and so on.
This was so disappointing, and I'm going to break it down into four separate categories.
Remix
When Disney bought Lucasfilm, they made the decision to purge all of the pre-existing Expanded Universe out of Star Wars, reducing Star Wars to the core movies and that alone (I believe). I read a book with evil space Jedi witches and another one with psionic conversations with a sarlacc, so it's not like it was the wrong decision, but here's where it gets weird.
Some elements of the original EU were incredibly well-received by fans, and the Heir to the Empire series, by Timothy Zahn, was almost universally beloved. Set six years after Return of the Jedi, these books were written to be the next Star Wars trilogy, showing the difficulties of the New Republic establishing control in the galaxy after the destruction of the second Death Star and the Emperor, and how the fragmented Empire still tried to hang on. Then there's this alien, calling himself Grand Admiral Thrawn, and he's amassing a force beyond all understanding, and he's an incredible tactician, always one step ahead, and our heroes have to team up with more bounty hunters with hilarious names (Talon Karrde, I love you and you're so dumb), and it's just all lovely. I really like this series, and it's full of new memorable characters (Thrawn, Winter, Pallaeon, Rukh, Karrde, Mara Jade) that slide in perfectly alongside Han, Leia, Luke, and the droids. It's just lovely.
Disney made Thrawn canon in Star Wars: Rebels. He's here now. But all that stuff there can't fit, so he has to have a new story.
How hard must it be to reintroduce a character you've already introduced, but do it in a different but also familiar way, but still be enough of the same where everyone recognizes it? Different, but not too different? All the same character traits, but a different background, but only a little different? It's like... it's like respecing a character halfway through an RPG, but changing your backgrounds and maybe one skill. It's so, so weird.
Behind the Wall
There's a Sherlock Holmes story that's from his point of view. In it, Holmes laments that he has to tell this story, because he cannot perform the wizardry Watson uses to hide the truth until the most dramatic moment. Since Holmes is a colossal dick, it's always stuck with me, because it's praise for Watson.
Sir Terry Pratchett's Watch novels will dip into many characters' heads -- primarily Vimes, but Cheery, Angua, Fred, Nobby, Cuddy, and more all get bits from their points of view. The character that gets this the least, though, is Carrot, because Carrot Ironfoundersson is this smiling steel trap of a man who surely cannot be that kind and generous and nice and crafty. Multiple characters wonder about the wall behind Carrot's eyes, and how they don't know what's behind it.
That's Thrawn, to me. I don't want to spend time in his head and find out that he looks at this bit of history in this species' art, and how when they only show this type of person in this type of setting they're actually going to do this. I want to want to spend time in his head when his plan goes off perfectly, Pallaeon is gobsmacked, and Thrawn calmly says that if you study their art, you study the people, and leave it at that.
Don't show me the magic trick. Don't let me humanize him. Keep him impossible and incomprehensible and this great ideal. Keep him mysterious.
Thrawn is one of the three viewpoint characters in this book, and while one good thing comes out of it -- chapters from his point of view have italicized descriptions of people's faces and gestures, and it's Thrawn filing away physical tics for emotions because he doesn't know humans -- I think the lost mystique is too much.
Empty Calories
Viewpoint character Eli Vanto is the most nothingburger of a character I've ever read. Eli's entire character is that he speaks a yokel language and then hangs out with Thrawn, like Rob Schneider to Thrawn's Adam Sandler. He takes zero actions and exhibits zero character traits throughout the story. At one point someone tries to get him upset that he doesn't get to be his own man and instead he just follows Thrawn around, and he's like 'nah it's cool.' He exists, as far as I can tell, to give Thrawn someone dumb so Thrawn can tell him what he's doing, so that years later he can tell someone else that Thrawn is smart. There's this attempt near the end of the book to say that Vanto's becoming this great strategist who can also see what's happening, and that he's got all this potential, but none of it works because he never makes his own plan or takes a single action. He is the most passive character, and it's not even that things are happening to him because he's not making things happen, it's that things are happening to the guy standing next to him.
Eli Vanto sucks and if he's the big hope for the Chiss, like the end of the book pretends, the Chiss are fucked.
Hallway Monitors
I've read three-and-a-half of the new Star Wars books. I thought Claudia Gray's Lost Stars was great. I thought Chuck Wendig's Aftermath was ass. I thought Claudia Gray's Bloodline might have been fine but I couldn't care for some reason. And then this. My main takeaway from the ones I've read, though, is that they're very formulaic, and that Disney feels like they have tight control over what's happening.
Original characters related to important Star Wars events.
A character from the pre-existing canon showing up. (Aftermath gets Wedge Antilles, Thrawn has Wulf Yularen, and Lost Stars has Mon Mothma)
An unhealthy obsession with the Death Star (it's a focal point in Aftermath, that Rogue One movie is all about it, and Thrawn has a blisteringly boring throughline about a metal being diverted to a project that is far too big for any shipyard)
Nothing happens to make you look at existing events any differently.
In the original Zahn series, he created entire elements of the Star Wars mythos. Nothing here felt like that. It all felt familiar and safe, like he could tell any story that was in this incredibly narrow hallway that Disney laid out for him, and he couldn't deviate from the hallway. Stay in your lane, Timothy Zahn.
This could have been so much better, and it was before, and I don't think there's any getting around that problem.
This was a bad book.
I didn't think it was written very well, it introduced plot elements that didn't feel well-thought out, and the characters were bad, but that's not what I want to talk about. I want to talk about two things -- one relatively minor, one overwhelmingly major.
The relatively minor thing is our protagonist, Coryn, who spends the vast, vast, vast majority of the book eighteen years old but conducts herself in a manner more fitting a twelve-year-old. While I don't think Young Adult books should be separated from everything else with fences and torches and knives or whatever -- my library puts Marie Brennan and N.K. Jemisin in with fiction, and tear down all genres, I say -- it bugged me because she was written so young despite being pitched as older. I have a nineteen-year-old niece, and she would not be all wide-eyed and saying "silly robot" every third word. I have a seven-year-old niece who wouldn't do that! And while everyone is different, and this is a more speculative setting, I can't wrap my brain around that. I can't get with a young adult being written like a young child, while not being treated as one by the story. It was bad. Don't do it.
The worst part about this book is the entire premise, which is that Lou and Coryn, our sisters, are orphaned when their parentsare killed. There's special mention of how much blood there was. I kept reading because that's a premise -- who killed their parents? What did they know? Did The City silence them?
Nah.
They committed suicide. Messy Mortal-Kombat-uppercut suicide, all over the house, so their daughters could discover it later along with the cops. They committed suicide because they were depressed. The girls blame the city, because this big Vancouver/Seattle hybrid uses people and traps them or whatever, ignoring what's going on in nature, and Lou wants to get back to nature so she leaves and Coryn just wants to find her and help, and blah blah blah fuck that noise. I read like 60% of this book before skimming, and as far as I can tell, they actually committed suicide, and the parents are not important for the book. They're killed to get them out of the way, like how every young adventurer is an orphan so you don't have to worry about parents worrying about their kids. Just kill 'em! So much easier. But suicide? Don't use depression and suicide as your hamfisted way to write your story about nature. Fuck that, and fuck this book.
The Burning Page, by Genevieve Cogman. Book 3 of The Invisible Library series. 4/5 stars.
I really liked this! I'm really into all of our recurring characters in this series -- Irene, Kai, Vale, Silver (I think Silver is compelling and also terrible and he should be onscreen more often so I can hate him), and while I think I like the promise of Alberich more than the execution thus far, I want to know what his actual deal is. If I could fantasy-book what I want to have happen from here, I'd really love to see some setting stretching happening. I want to see more of Kai's home world, or something that's not a throwback to the turn of the 20th century in setting. I want Librarians running through Android: Netrunner is what I'm saying. I want weird near-future or, I don't know, the Library of Alexandria, or something in Atlantis. If we're not going to hang out in London the whole time (a big reason why I didn't like Book Two as much is that I didn't want to leave Vale and London behind), I want to get somewhere strange.
If this doesn't end with our trio going full Serafina, too, I'm gonna be bummed.
Pawn, by Timothy Zahn. Book #1 of the Sibyl's War. 1/5 stars.
Maybe try next time, Zahn. You didn't care and I could tell.
Also never write people with drug problems again, you're bad at it.
Thrawn, by Timothy Zahn. Book #1 of Star Wars: Thrawn. 3/5 stars.
Let me lead off with this: This book was fine. It was good. It wasn't great, it wasn't exceptional, it was fine. It told a pretty good story, Thrawn's a very compelling character, and so on.
This was so disappointing, and I'm going to break it down into four separate categories.
Remix
When Disney bought Lucasfilm, they made the decision to purge all of the pre-existing Expanded Universe out of Star Wars, reducing Star Wars to the core movies and that alone (I believe). I read a book with evil space Jedi witches and another one with psionic conversations with a sarlacc, so it's not like it was the wrong decision, but here's where it gets weird.
Some elements of the original EU were incredibly well-received by fans, and the Heir to the Empire series, by Timothy Zahn, was almost universally beloved. Set six years after Return of the Jedi, these books were written to be the next Star Wars trilogy, showing the difficulties of the New Republic establishing control in the galaxy after the destruction of the second Death Star and the Emperor, and how the fragmented Empire still tried to hang on. Then there's this alien, calling himself Grand Admiral Thrawn, and he's amassing a force beyond all understanding, and he's an incredible tactician, always one step ahead, and our heroes have to team up with more bounty hunters with hilarious names (Talon Karrde, I love you and you're so dumb), and it's just all lovely. I really like this series, and it's full of new memorable characters (Thrawn, Winter, Pallaeon, Rukh, Karrde, Mara Jade) that slide in perfectly alongside Han, Leia, Luke, and the droids. It's just lovely.
Disney made Thrawn canon in Star Wars: Rebels. He's here now. But all that stuff there can't fit, so he has to have a new story.
How hard must it be to reintroduce a character you've already introduced, but do it in a different but also familiar way, but still be enough of the same where everyone recognizes it? Different, but not too different? All the same character traits, but a different background, but only a little different? It's like... it's like respecing a character halfway through an RPG, but changing your backgrounds and maybe one skill. It's so, so weird.
Behind the Wall
There's a Sherlock Holmes story that's from his point of view. In it, Holmes laments that he has to tell this story, because he cannot perform the wizardry Watson uses to hide the truth until the most dramatic moment. Since Holmes is a colossal dick, it's always stuck with me, because it's praise for Watson.
Sir Terry Pratchett's Watch novels will dip into many characters' heads -- primarily Vimes, but Cheery, Angua, Fred, Nobby, Cuddy, and more all get bits from their points of view. The character that gets this the least, though, is Carrot, because Carrot Ironfoundersson is this smiling steel trap of a man who surely cannot be that kind and generous and nice and crafty. Multiple characters wonder about the wall behind Carrot's eyes, and how they don't know what's behind it.
That's Thrawn, to me. I don't want to spend time in his head and find out that he looks at this bit of history in this species' art, and how when they only show this type of person in this type of setting they're actually going to do this. I want to want to spend time in his head when his plan goes off perfectly, Pallaeon is gobsmacked, and Thrawn calmly says that if you study their art, you study the people, and leave it at that.
Don't show me the magic trick. Don't let me humanize him. Keep him impossible and incomprehensible and this great ideal. Keep him mysterious.
Thrawn is one of the three viewpoint characters in this book, and while one good thing comes out of it -- chapters from his point of view have italicized descriptions of people's faces and gestures, and it's Thrawn filing away physical tics for emotions because he doesn't know humans -- I think the lost mystique is too much.
Empty Calories
Viewpoint character Eli Vanto is the most nothingburger of a character I've ever read. Eli's entire character is that he speaks a yokel language and then hangs out with Thrawn, like Rob Schneider to Thrawn's Adam Sandler. He takes zero actions and exhibits zero character traits throughout the story. At one point someone tries to get him upset that he doesn't get to be his own man and instead he just follows Thrawn around, and he's like 'nah it's cool.' He exists, as far as I can tell, to give Thrawn someone dumb so Thrawn can tell him what he's doing, so that years later he can tell someone else that Thrawn is smart. There's this attempt near the end of the book to say that Vanto's becoming this great strategist who can also see what's happening, and that he's got all this potential, but none of it works because he never makes his own plan or takes a single action. He is the most passive character, and it's not even that things are happening to him because he's not making things happen, it's that things are happening to the guy standing next to him.
Eli Vanto sucks and if he's the big hope for the Chiss, like the end of the book pretends, the Chiss are fucked.
Hallway Monitors
I've read three-and-a-half of the new Star Wars books. I thought Claudia Gray's Lost Stars was great. I thought Chuck Wendig's Aftermath was ass. I thought Claudia Gray's Bloodline might have been fine but I couldn't care for some reason. And then this. My main takeaway from the ones I've read, though, is that they're very formulaic, and that Disney feels like they have tight control over what's happening.
Original characters related to important Star Wars events.
A character from the pre-existing canon showing up. (Aftermath gets Wedge Antilles, Thrawn has Wulf Yularen, and Lost Stars has Mon Mothma)
An unhealthy obsession with the Death Star (it's a focal point in Aftermath, that Rogue One movie is all about it, and Thrawn has a blisteringly boring throughline about a metal being diverted to a project that is far too big for any shipyard)
Nothing happens to make you look at existing events any differently.
In the original Zahn series, he created entire elements of the Star Wars mythos. Nothing here felt like that. It all felt familiar and safe, like he could tell any story that was in this incredibly narrow hallway that Disney laid out for him, and he couldn't deviate from the hallway. Stay in your lane, Timothy Zahn.
This could have been so much better, and it was before, and I don't think there's any getting around that problem.
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