It's another review of Crystal Rain, but it's what I have

[esmeraldus-neo.livejournal.com]

I really liked Crystal Rain. I read it on my own after I was assigned to review Ragamuffin for the SFRA Review. I'm in the process of reviewing Ragamuffin.

The reviews I usually write are meant to be balanced, and very heavy on context. That’s my philosophical position on the purpose of most reviews, so it works for me. Context is everything. But since I’m not writing for any particular publication at the moment, I don’t have to be balanced unless it pleases me to be so, and it does not.

I’ve been looking for some good SF to take up the slack left by the lack of new Heinlein novels. Heinlein surprised me by posthumously producing For Us, The Living, but I don’t think there are any more. I think that Buckell’s kick-ass characters have some resonance with Heinlein’s characters, and I like that. One good thing about having written a review of Ragamuffin is that I can quote it:

…one or two solitary, quasi-immortal characters who are technologically enhanced, augmented human beings hundreds of years old—very much like the characters in Wil McCarthy’s To Crush the Moon, or Heinlein’s Friday. Sometimes the action highlights the separateness of these superhuman people, each of whom is capable of taking out entire squadrons of trained soldiers alone. But the two we meet, Nashara and Pepper, are both part of something larger.
 

Some of the specific things I liked about Crystal Rain were the vividness of the main characters’ culture, the combat, and the sustained tension of the siege situations.

( Mild spoilers. )

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'Feeding the Ghosts' by Fred D'Aguiar

[annwfyn.livejournal.com]

What you are about to read is a review which reveals what a terribly unsophisticated reader I am.

'Feed the Ghosts' is a novel about the African slave trade. It's based on the Zong Massacre in 1781, where a greedy captain threw 132 slaves overboard to drown, hoping to pocket the insurance money. The insurers appealed and the matter went to court. Although it didn't result in a change in the law, it is generally remembered as one of the big cases which changed British attitudes towards the slave trade.

( Review, with spoilers )

It's not a bad book. It's a book which didn't work for me - I think I'm too anal about my history and too vanilla in my literary tastes. I wanted either a really tightly put together account of a historical event, or a far looser account which would give me characters I could relate to and a story which could take me on a more rewarding journey. And 'Feeding the Ghosts' didn't give either to me.

Walter Mosley: Devil in a Blue Dress

[alias_sqbr]

18: Walter Mosley: Devil in a Blue Dress

This is a really good noir novel, written in 1990 but set in 1948 about the black war veteran Easy Rawlings being hired to solve a case which gets nastier and more complicated the more he pokes at it. I saw the movie a few years ago so knew the twist but it's complicated enough that I'd forgotten all the other details of the plot and was still a little confused at the end. (I do have a headache though :))

It's easy to read and very engaging, and manages the perfect noir mix of gritty realism and lyrical moodiness. Noir is one of those genres which I both enjoy and find a little annoying so I didn't love the book but that wasn't due to any actual flaws I could see. The portrait of late 40s American race attitudes was very effective (and undercut the traditional White Hero noir narrative), and it didn't give the creepy exploitative feel I get from a lot of other period/subculture etc crime stories (eg CSI/Burn Notice and their "Freaky subculture who brought their damnation on themselves by being so freaky- of the week" format)

Achebe, Rushdie, Satrapi and Hosseini

[kouredios.livejournal.com]

I found this community by way of the RaceFail posts, and I'm inordinately happy to be able to contribute something positive other than listening, which I've been doing since January.

These first four books aren't new to me--they are books that I'm currently teaching in the 11th/12th grade English class I teach at a local charter school, the first two of which I have taught many times before as a graduate student TA at UMass Amherst. As such, I'm not sure I'm going to count them towards my 50, but I wanted to post them for others' benefit.

( Chinua Achebe, Things Fall Apart )

( Salman Rushdie, Haroun and the Sea of Stories )

( Marjane Satrapi, Persepolis )

( Khaled Hosseini, The Kite Runner )

That's it, from me, for now.

Liu, Shadow Touch (#3)

[kate_nepveu]

A while back, I read the first of Marjorie M. Liu's Dirk and Steele paranormal romance series, Tiger Eye. I enjoyed that well enough to stock up on the next several books in the series as light reading during my pregnancy, and then of course never got around to reading any of them. Recently, however, I needed something light, fast, and fun, and picked up the second book, Shadow Touch.

I believe the general consensus is that this is a better place to start the series and a better book generally, and I agree wholeheartedly. Elena's touch can heal; Artur's touch forces him to experience the emotional history of people or objects. They meet as captives of a shadowy organization. Together, they try to escape, fall in love, and, yes, fight crime.

This is full of fierce funny characters, fast-paced cracktastic action, and tasty tasty angst: just the thing for taking one's mind off other stuff at three in the morning. It also has the start of a long-term plot arc that opens up the world established in the first book, which now seems rather like a series prologue to me. I had altogether too much fun reading this, and while some of that may be the delight of finding exactly what I was in the mood for, well, there's nothing wrong with that. I look forward to reading more of Liu's work as the mood calls for.

[ original booklog post ]

Possibly also of interest, though not qualifiying for the challenge: Daniel Fox, Dragon in Chains: first book in a fantasy trilogy inspired by Taiwan, about which I have extremely mixed feelings.