Lord Valentine's Castle

Lord Valentine's Castle, by Robert Silverberg, is a fluffy book. You can tell just by judging it's cover. There is a handsome man wearing tights and a half-cape juggling. Some doofy looking aliens are hanging out in the background. Throw the fruity title into the mix and... well the book isn't a journey into the dark heart of humanity, lets just say.

Just look at that goofy son of a bitch!

But you know what? That's fine. Silverberg no doubt set out to make a light adventure novel, and he succeeded.  Because the world needs light frilly fantasy. Hell, I need a frilly fantasy, from time to time. This past month is one of those times. Those of you who have been following the blog may have noticed I've been reading weird slog after weird slog.  Lets just say I needed to read a book that actually had a concrete plot and relatable characters. 

Lord Valentine's Castle follows the adventures of the amnesiac wanderer, Valentine. It quickly becomes apparent that there is more to Valentine than there seems; and to the credit of the author there is no attempt to make the 'twist' of the first part of the book seem shocking. No, in Lord Valentine's Castle the emphasis is always on the journey. The plot is almost shockingly straight forward. The details and thoughtfulness is instead lavished on the setting. Descriptions of mighty cities, of strange forests, and bizarre creatures fill the book. The mechanics of the world of Majipoor are gently explored in interesting exposition asides. Majipoor is a paradise world full of wonders big and small (mostly big though).

This is unrelated to Lord Valentine's Castle.

The downside to this world building is twofold. First, the plot could have used a little bit more spice. Valentine decides on a straight forward plan of action and it goes off without a single hitch, exactly as it was expected to. Second, the characters are on the anemic side, dwarfed by the size of the world and their monumental task. Which was frustrating, since each character introduced has some fascinating hook to their person that hints at greater plot/character potential. 

Lord Valentine's Castle is a smooth, compulsive read. For a book so full of exposition it only rarely drags. But it is also a big book and by the end the hollowness of Valentine's Castle began to gnaw at me.  There is no great ethical dilemmas, no heated character moments, none of the tension of greater literature. No humor, no cleverness, no message. But Lord Valentine's Castle does have inspiring imagination and the promise of endless new adventure around every corner. Which makes for a pretty good time!

Lord Valentine's Castle receives 39 of the 50 cities of Castle Mount.

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.

Rogue Star

As you should be able to tell from the (frankly amazing) cover, Rogue Star by Friederik Pohl and Jack "The Thunder" Williamson is hella pulp. This thing is old, and wild.  Rogue Star has trippy aliens, a damsel in distress, and a love-conquering-all ending.

Unfortunately I'm kind of over selling it.

The book follows creation and growth of an artificial solar intelligence. In the far flung future mankind has joined an interstellar community of billions, including sentient stars. The science here is sketchy at best- and not really the point. The point of Rogue Star seems to be just luxuriating in an unfathomable future and delivering the goods on its fun premise. The main plot, the menacing ascension of the infant rogue star, is the high point of the book. The rogue is kind of like a superpowered ghost. Through manipulating the invisible forces of physics the rogue can consume energy/mass and thus possess machines, animals, and eventually planets. It is confused and animalistic, but its mighty alien intellect grows exponentially in the space between picoseconds.

The story wrapped around the rogue star's is less exciting. The book follows a clutch of characters drawn into the growing disaster. The problem is twofold. The characters are not terribly compelling. The hero, Andy Quam, is supposed to be a quiet nice guy. But he comes off as kind of insane. His obsession with his old ex-girlfriend overrules everything for him. And when I say everything, I mean he doesn't particularly care about the fate of Earth and billions of lives when weighed against his goal of seeing his ex again. The ex-girlfriend, Molly, may be super nice and really fun to be around- but we'll never know since literally every one of her scenes in the book is her being blown up, knocked out, passing out from smoke inhalation, being terrorized by Sleeths, being terrorized by sentient stars, being exposed to the vacuum of space, radiation poisoning, headaches, paper cuts, etc. The cover of the book promises a nubile young woman being menaced by a strange alien. Well Rogue Star fucking delivers. But it never really introduces us to who Molly is.

The other issue with Rogue Star is that, just as Andy seems 'off' in his actions and reactions, the entire universe feels off-kilter and hard to understand/empathize with. It just didn't click with me. The half abandoned Earth, the zombiefied citizens, the maddening bureaucracy encountered at every turn- it feels like Pohl and Williamson were trying to say something or make some kind of point. But what is more likely is that it simply isn't very well crafted.

So where does all this leave Rogue Star?  Read it for the evil sentient stars. But don't expect to be too impressed by anything else. Rogue Star receives six of ten stars.

Against the Fall of Night

Against the Fall of Night, by Arthur C, Clarke,  is not a book for everyone. It is classic science fiction for better or worse. Like most sci-fi from the 50s (although it was technically written in '48), Against the Fall of Night is filled of grandiose visions and big big big ideas. Also like the sci-fi of it's time, the book leaves something to be desired when it comes to characters and actual plot. Clarke was obviously mainly interested in delivering a compelling and fascinating setting. The plot then is a basic "boys' adventure" book, a simple device through which to explore the world.

The cover of the magazine that ATFON originally appeared in.

So Against the Fall of Night is about a precocious boy who goes on a wild adventure. The stakes are decidedly low, and while there are obstacles to be overcome, the book never manages to be exciting. Where the real action is is in the setting. ATFON is set over a billion years in the future. It is set in a city so marvellous that, even though its inhabitants are immortal, they never exhaust it's wonders. And the plot moves from grand location to grand location. It took humanity less than 100,000 years to master the Earth- ATFON asks us to imagine how much more we could create given 100 million years. For one thing, if it takes humanity less than 100,000 years to produce the Mona Lisa imagine how many Mona Lisas there will be in a billion years. More Mona Lisas than even an immortal would have time to go through.

ATFON's large scale is the best thing it has going for it. Unfortunately, it also hampers reader engagement. It's hard to be drawn into a story that has such enormous distance in it. ATFON's subjects are too large for it to draw close to and so the story ends up feeling weirdly clinical and cold. Despite that the book is a quick read and fairly interesting in spite of itself. Against the Fall of Night recieves 589,034 of 100,528 alien races banding together to form a Galactic Empire.

Halo Cryptum

Halo Cryptum is one of those books I read because it was the only book around at the time. While I have played several of the Halo games, I disdain cash-grabby book tie ins to popular franchises. One thing that interested me about Cryptum is that it is written by Greg Bear, a distinguished award winning science fiction writer. What would/could an author of proven quality do with the anemic and juvenile "world" of Halo?

First: a little background into the actual Halo series of video games. The Halo games are Hollywood action movie blockbusters. They are not intended to provide compelling characters (the main character is basically mute and faceless). And the setting is aimed at having the broadest possible appeal. Therefore, instead of creating new and unique aliens, Halo casually repurposed the aliens from the popular computer game Starcraft. Given that Halo is about a space marine running around gunning down evil aliens all this is fine. But nothing about Halo is particularly deep or interesting (to me anyways).

Bear sidesteps a lot of the problems of writing a Halo book by setting Cryptum tens of thousands of years in the past. Because of course Halo has that old hoary trope of ancient god-like aliens who left ruins filled with a secret, dangerous power. Cryptum is something of a novel premise then: it is set at the height of the galaxy-wide hegemony that left its moldering mark upon the universe of Halo. It's actually something that I have never seen attempted before. For a good reason I think. The big draw of the cliche is the mystery- the feeling that the full story of the bizarre alien artifacts and the mighty power that made them can never truly be known. Part of the allure is the power of the civilization that made devices so incredible that they have endured both the passage of time and their own creators. Setting a story in a civilization so advanced and powerful is problematic. Likewise, coming up with a believable apocalypse is tricky. Then there is the problem of scale, how can a character get ringside seats to the end of days and still get across the size of the event. Finally, the main character and his people are doomed, totally doomed. The reader knows that no matter the heroics of the characters they will fail.

Not appearing in this book!

Greg Bear handles these challenges with a varying degree of success. The Forerunner's (such a name for a doomed race!) culture is intriguing but its hard to get a handle on their exact capabilities and day to day life. Rather than spend the book world building, the plot races from location to location providing the information necessary for conflict; but leaving the setting weirdly sterile and blurry. I suppose it was too much to ask for a sociological breakdown of super aliens in a franchise tie in book though.

The story is (in what I think is a pretty bold choice) a coming of age story. It follows the journey of a young adventurous Forerunner as he... gets swept up in a giant crisis? Because of that damn hazy setting its hard to really feel the full force of the threat of the disasters menacing the Forerunners. The reader isn't invested in the Forerunner civilization- how could we be invested in something we know so little about. And where are the humans? Humanity is basically window dressing in this story. And where is the Halo franchise in all this? Well there is powerful robo-armor and blue lady AIs that live in the armor. ...just like Halo! The two evil aliens from Halo make a cameo appearance. Beyond that Cryptum is practically its own beast.

If all this kind of sounds like a mess that's because Cryptum is a mess. It can be an interesting read at times. Enjoyable even. But ultimately its just too muddled for me to really recommend. I guess if you are a huge Halo fan you could read it. Halo Cryptum receives only 5 of the original 12 Halo rings.

Spin State

Today's book is Slip State or Spin Gate... possibly Star Slip. Spin State's forgettable title heralds an equally forgettable book. Spin State (by Chris Moriarty) isn't necessarily bad... but it is a far cry from a good sci-fi book. Let us examine it's sins below.

The book is set firmly in the cyberpunk genre (for those of you just tuning in cyberpunk marries the atomsphere and story beats of Noir with high flying sci-fi). I'm on the record as being a big fan of cyberpunk but Spin State did not sit well with me. The main character is Catherine Li, a tough, jaded soldier with a dark secret past. Which is standard for the genre. Why then did I find her so unlikable? To me, she seemed less  "hard ass" and more "high strung." And rather than existing in a state of moral ambiguity, Li just seems confused.

The setting had the same problem. Spin State's universe is a place of dirty deals and corruption. Of slums and harsh lives. Once again, standard for a Noir setting. But I found atmosphere annoying rather than cool. The author goes out of his way, clumsily, to hammer home the cynical nature of the world.

Spin State is kind of like this except that it's bad.

The plot itself is about a murder investigation that quickly gets tangled up. Everyone has an ulterior motive, and mysterious clues pile up quickly. This is pretty standard for detective stories. It's one of the reasons I like Noir. But in Slip State it simply makes the story feel muddled and bloated.

What it all comes down to is that Slip State just isn't written very well. There are all sorts of little things in it that nag me. Like when Li yells at an idealistic rich kid for trying to help poor miners. Or everytime Li is verbally or physically attacked by a cop technically under her control and does nothing to reprimand him. Li's  ambivalence towards people who try and kill her in general. So while I'd like to recommend Spin State I really can't. It receives 4 stars out of 10.