Analogue: A Hate Story

You are a deep space explorer. You have been hired by a Historical Society to investigate a recently discovered derelict space craft. It is an ancient colony ship from the pre-FTL (faster than light) days. Uncover the final fate of a bizarre lost society.

Analogue: A Hate Story, by Christine Love, is not a standard book. It isn't a book at all in fact. It is whats known as IF, Interactive Fiction. Interactive Fiction is exactly what it sounds like: they are stories you interact with, generally through text commands. The player/reader has some amount of control over the story. If Analogue is a video game then why am I reviewing it? Well I feel like it mostly meets the criteria for a short story. This is a "game" in which your primary action is to read old diary entries. While the player/reader has some input in the game Analogue is mostly a linear experience. What I'm saying is that Analogue is practically short story- just instead of turning pages you navigate computer menus.

Analogue is, at its core, a detective story. The reader is the investigator. You slowly but surely unravel a brutal tale, told in snippets and rumor. The ship's AIs are your companions and helpers in this task. I should note that AIs in Analogue are fully sentient and have their own personalities. Hyun-ae, the ship AI, is a sweety. She is a particularly well drawn character. Mute is a bit trickier to describe but also interesting. The diary entries you pour over have their own sets of interesting characters. Reading through the private dreams and desires of the colony ruling class really makes life onboard the ship come to life. Obviously, there is a limit to what I can say without spoiling the story. Suffice to say it is both powerful and dramatic, providing the reader with moments of pure enjoyment. By relying on player agency, the reader really becomes drawn into the unfolding story.

I do have some quibbles with Analogue, of course. The setting, a massive dark tomb-ship is underused. Since the entire game takes place on a computer screen it can be easy to forget what the setting is. Never seeing (in either still image or even textual description) the setting blunts the dramatic impact of the mystery.  Also, the story takes awhile to pick up steam and momentum can occasionally be killed if you are stumped on something.

In conclusion, Analogue is a good read and an interesting experience. I recommend it to anyone adventurous enough to step out of their comfort zone. Don't be scared off by the anime style. While the author is a obviously a fan of anime, Analogue is an accessible story; and the juvenile tendencies of anime don't crop up. Analogue receives 78/100 journal entries. You can find it here.

The Sky Lords

Oh, The Sky Lords. You are a silly silly book. Not on purpose mind you. Indeed, The Sky Lords takes itself very seriously.  But all the same it is jam packed with fun concepts like talking panthers, post-apocalyptic amazonian societies, and insane killer cyborgs.  With all that and more, of course I enjoyed reading The Sky Lords.  But I would caution that it is not some sort of hidden gem. It's a dour and flat read.

The Sky Lords is set in a post-apocalyptic world in which genetic engineering run amok has all but ended human civilization. Most of the wilderness has been lost to a fungal blight and insane monsters created by science run amok. Those civilizations that remain follow the standard for post-apocalyptic societies- regressed to a brutal medieval level with only a few pieces of technology still understood and maintained.  One by one towns succumb to plague or genetically engineered monsters or warfare. While ground based towns have no way of attacking one another there are marauding zeppelin cities (the titular Sky Lords) that sustain themselves off tribute from the ground dwellers. As you can tell from my description it is jam packed setting. (Although it bears quite a few similarities to the anime Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind.)

A Korean trailer for you!

The plot follows the trials and travails of Jan, last of the Amazons. Yeah, this book is cheesy as hell like that. I want to avoid spoilers so I'll avoid getting into details. Suffice to say, Jan spends most of the book simply trying to make the best out of a series of bad situations.  Despite the occasional time jump, the plot is very linear. It follows the pattern of "this happened, then this happened, then this happened." The Sky Lords isn't badly written but there is an artlessness to the prose that makes the whole thing feel rather flat. The book does pick up at times. The only other character of note in the whole book is a mysterious man named Milo. Milo is a complicated, interesting character and the book's best moments generally center around him.

Ultimately, I feel a little frustrated by The Sky Lords. It had the potential to be a really fun book. I mean, the setting alone is golden. But plot is unrelentingly grim and methodical. Although it sounds sappy, I think what The Sky Lords is missing is heart. It is full of toys but refuses to play around. For that reason I reluctantly give The Sky Lords 6.7 out of 10 samurais on gliders.