Review: Feet of Clay

Feet of Clay by Terry Pratchett
My rating: 5 of 5 stars



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Review: Inversions

Inversions by Iain M. Banks
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

No really; just magnificent. I am aware that I say this about most of the Culture books immediately after re-reading them, but... I think this is one of my favorites.

Masterful job of telling a tale from two points of view, that only comes together at the end. I love that at no point is the existence of the Culture even overtly ackowledged.

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Review: Feersum Endjinn

Feersum Endjinn by Iain M. Banks
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

The first time I read this, I found the language of Bascule a bit off-putting and difficult, but on future re-reads I've found that it simply disappears. A wonderful tale set in a fantastical world, though the ending is a bit... abrupt.

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Review: Gentleman Jole and the Red Queen

Gentleman Jole and the Red Queen by Lois McMaster Bujold
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Really a rather sweet "learn to love again" story, thoroughly ruined by irrelevant side-jaunts and extraneous baggage from the 14+ previous books.

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Review: CryoBurn

CryoBurn by Lois McMaster Bujold
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

It's ok. Like many of the later Vorkosigan books, it would have been better if it wasn't carting all the Vorkosigan baggage around with it, in my opinion. Some fun new characters who are completely overshadowed by All the Usual Suspects, whether there was a reason for them in the story or not. Weirdly unfocused, with a tendency to drill into extreme detail about things that then have nothing to do with the plot. Lots of time/pages spent by various characters recounting to other characters the details of things we've already read about. Also, Bujold has a habit of occasionally swapping point-of-view characters in mid-scene with no warning or context. I noticed this once or twice in earlier books, but in this one it happened constantly. Could be an artifact of bad transition to ebook.

On a planet obsessed with cryonic freezing, people who are frozen still get votes, which are managed by the companies that froze them, who thereby - obviously - control the entire government. This phenomenally stupid idea works out badly, though actually nowhere near as badly as you'd expect it to in real life. The executives of the companies try to get out of the ensuing mess by exporting their system to another planet, which plan never had even a shade of a chance of succeeding, because the people on planet 2 aren't idiots, and don't have the same laws for frozen votes. Collapse. Confusion. Alarums. Good guys triumph by virtue of surviving long enough to outlive their suicidal opponents. The End.

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Review: Captain Vorpatril's Alliance

Captain Vorpatril's Alliance by Lois McMaster Bujold
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

Nothing much happens, and what does is fairly nonsensical. Ivan meets some political refugees. He says he can get them safely back to Barrayar, but they don't want that, because they don't trust Barrayar. So he marries one of them, and now they trust him enough to go to Barrayar with him? Ohhhhhh kaaaaaay. And then we get a bunch of fairly tedious detail of him tour guiding and romancing his "wife". And then a weirdly grafted-on heist caper storyline wherein the Emperor rewards some people hugely for trying to rip him off and failing. So, whatever.

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Review: Excession

Excession by Iain M. Banks
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Still magnificent.

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Review: Diplomatic Immunity

Diplomatic Immunity by Lois McMaster Bujold
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

It's all right. The ending is kind of terrible; Miles passes out and wakes up with everything sorted out behind the scenes, so the loose ends are just assumed to be tidied away. And the details of Miles turning up to a foreign nation - one with which Barrayar is currently embroiled in some seriously tense diplomacy - and just ordering everyone around seemed a little unbelievable. But we get to watch Miles in investigation mode again, which is fun, and we get details about the Quaddie society which is interesting.

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Review: Use of Weapons

Use of Weapons by Iain M. Banks
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Must be about the fifth or sixth time I've read these, though it's been a few years. Still magnificent.

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Review: The Player of Games

The Player of Games by Iain M. Banks
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Must be about the fifth or sixth time I've read these, though it's been a few years. Still magnificent.

This was my first Banks, discovered in a share shelf at a hostel in Europe in what must have been the year it came out, or very nearly. Took me at least a decade to bump into him again.

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Review: Consider Phlebas

Consider Phlebas by Iain M. Banks
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Must be about the fifth or sixth time I've read these, though it's been a few years. Still magnificent, though I noticed this time a little roughness around the edges (unsurprising, given how early this was in his career.) It's not that Banks is _bad_ here at all; but he gets even better.

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Review: A Civil Campaign

A Civil Campaign by Lois McMaster Bujold
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

Ugh. This was a lot of work to read. Miles continues to be an utter manipulative arsehat to his latest obsession, who he has barely bothered to get to know well enough to realize that she might not appreciate being treated as the objective of a military campaign, rather than a person. And look, the world is full of people being idiots and abusive in their romantic lives - this is half the plot of every sitcom and Shakespeare comedy, ever - and I can read a book where I don't like the main character. But Miles is the sympathetic protagonist of what, 11 books before this one? It's difficult to cope with him suddenly turning into such a total jerk, when we want to keep liking him, and yet I don't enjoy the feeling of being made to like someone who so desperately needs to be slapped.

The book gets a second star because it is still well-written, and Miles does get his comeuppance in the end... and then nearly loses that star again because of the artificial conclusion where everyone forgives everyone and pairs up regardless of reason like the end of a musical comedy, just to make the curtain call balances out.

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Review: Komarr

Komarr by Lois McMaster Bujold
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I may be suffering a bit from reading these all in a row but...

It must be difficult for Miles, that he falls madly in love with every single female whom he so much as catches a glimpse of across a crowded room. It might be more convincing if he didn't, you know, fall madly in love with every single one. And keep harping on about how few women there are on his planet, and how much he needs one. Any one, apparently. I _want_ him to be a sympathetic character, because he otherwise _feels_ like a sympathetic character. But honestly, his creepy stalking of the married woman - who does not, given, appear happy in her life at the beginning of this story, but who nonetheless gives not the least hint of being interested in him or wanting his help to change it - really makes him out to be kind of a jerk.

The rest of the story was a fun sort of what-if crossed with a police procedural, and Katerina is an interesting character, when she gets away from Miles long enough to come into her own.

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Review: Memory

Memory by Lois McMaster Bujold
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Mostly a decent book, though I did get a bit tired of reading about Miles moping about. I'm not saying that it's unrealistic - his entire life has just been upended - but I still got tired of reading about him sulking. Particularly because 1) it's entirely self-inflicted, and he knows it, and 2) he's kind of an ass to Elli about it. I wanted Miles to be a better person than that.

The Goodreads plot description above - at least at the time of this writing - is terrible, and largely untrue.

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Review: Mirror Dance

Mirror Dance by Lois McMaster Bujold
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Up til now, the Vorkosigan books have always been a bit fluffy for tales of mercenaries - the only people to get hurt are usually badguys and nameless redshirts. This book, not so much. It adds a little bit of a grittier kick to this one, which I mostly liked, though there is some fairly disturbing imagery here.

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Review: Brothers in Arms

Brothers in Arms by Lois McMaster Bujold
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

The writing is as usual a joy, but the story strains at the seams a bit more than some in the series. Miles foils an elaborate Rube Goldbergian plot to replace the Barrayan emperor, and finds a long-lost brother.

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Review: Ethan of Athos

Ethan of Athos by Lois McMaster Bujold
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I actually think that this is one of my favorites of the series so far, despite the fact that Miles is essentially not in it. We get glimpses of another post-diaspora splinter human culture, interestingly though somewhat far-fetchedly all-male. We get a dynamic new character with a real arc in Ethan. And we get some depth on Elli - a character who til now has been an extra, but is about to take center stage. Plus a good old-fashioned locked room mystery and some Bondian spy shenanigans.

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Review: Cetaganda

Cetaganda by Lois McMaster Bujold
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Interesting primarily for it's deep view of a very alien (human) culture, but the plot also ticks along nicely, and retains the humour we've come to expect. Miles goes to the home planet of Barrayar's nefarious enemy Cetaganda, and is embroiled in politics.

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Review: The Vor Game

The Vor Game by Lois McMaster Bujold
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This one earns a 5 free-and-clear. What I particularly love about this book is the way our hero's decisions from The Warrior's Apprentice come back to haunt him, both personally and at a planetary politics level.

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Review: The Warrior's Apprentice

The Warrior's Apprentice by Lois McMaster Bujold
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I've read the essay from Bujold about reading these in chronological order, and I'll put myself out there and say I think she's wrong. Yes, about her own books. Because I read the first three (chronologically) and thought they were fine but unenthralling (see my reviews of Falling Free, Shards of Honor, and Barrayar) mostly because they didn't feel like complete stories - they felt like the prequels to _this_ book, which is great. If I were recommending an order (having not finished the series yet myself) I'd have to go with starting here, reading the next chronologically (The Vor Game) and then at some point after that backtracking to the "prequels".

Fairly classic coming-of-age story to begin, but our hero is physically-impaired but brilliant. The way that he cons everyone into following him is perhaps a tad unbelievable, but entirely enjoyable. I'd probably have called this 4.5, but I'm rounding up for the enjoyment of the whole series so far.

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Review: Black Dogs

Black Dogs by Richard Lee Byers
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

Transcript of roleplaying game.

This is the first in a series, supposedly, but it completely fails to introduce the characters or the world - which might be fine for true fanboys of the Warmachine universe, but I am not one, despite having played the game and read a few books. Maybe their target audience for this book is those fans who already know and recognize everything. Nothing is described. I am left with a vague notion of what maybe half of the characters look like, and no idea whatsoever how this city could possibly exist. It's in a swamp, so the buildings are constantly sinking... and then what? Falling through the ceilings of massive multi-story caverns big enough to be battlefields for giant robots, and landing intact? In these caverns under the swamp? That makes no sense at all. Give me some hand-waving magic explanation and I'll take it in stride in this genre, but you don't get to not even mention it...

The action scenes are workmanlike, and the writing style isn't awful (just nonfunctional) so I'll grudgingly give it 2 stars.

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Review: Beguilement

Beguilement by Lois McMaster Bujold
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

18-year-old farmgirl decides that she wants to learn about sex, so she initiates a bit of a roll in the hay with a local boy and gets herself pregnant. When confronted, the boy denies everything and acts like a total arsehat, and the girl decides to solve her problem herself by running away to the big city and making a new life for herself and her child, instead of turning into the weepy mess that stereotype demands. So far, I'm all on board with this firey independent character... but unfortunately all that happens before the book starts.

Said girl stumbles into a series of bad situations - through no fault of her own - and has to be rescued three times by the same heroic man in his mid-fifties, and they proceed to fall madly in love with one another. He's literally three times her age, but apart from the occasional comment - just enough to let us know that this kind of age disparity isn't common in their world either - the subject is basically passed over completely. From this point on, our spirited farmgirl becomes almost entirely a passive character, as the old man steps in to teach her the ways of love, sort out all of her old problems with her family and village for (not with) her, and finally ask her parents for her hand in marriage without ever even broaching the idea with her first.

Ick. Ick ick ick. It's actually a very accurate depiction (in my limited experience) of exactly the sort of lopsided power dynamic that such mixed-age relationships seem to be prone to in the real world. Not "are doomed to"; I'm sure some work out well for all concerned, but definitely they seem prone to. Maybe that sort of thing hits a little close to home to me, as a 50-year-old man who has worked much of his life at universities full of 18-year-olds, but there is _nothing_ romantic to me about the idea of a man my age so completely dominating a young girl even if he _does_ genuinely care about her. Their relationship, and particularly the way she goes so completely passive from the moment they become a couple, creeped me the hell out, despite quite liking both characters individually before that. It reminded me of some things I have read about the Twilight series (which I'll happily admit to not having read) and the romance archetype of the older experienced man who will sweep in and take care of everything. It's apparently particularly popular in books aimed at teenage girls, who despite their natural independence may be struggling with a lot of new responsibilities at once. Who doesn't occasionally dream of everything just being taken care of, even if they wouldn't actually put up with it if it happened? I know I still do, at times. And also, of course, teenage girls are suffering through a time in which romantic prospects their own age - teenage boys - are almost universally idiots (I know I was...) But having the occasional dream of freedom from responsibility is a far cry from wanting to watch a young person's agency so thoroughly negated, and I really couldn't get past that in this book.

That said, the characters are otherwise fun to read, and the world that Bujold paints feels unique, interesting, and deep. Maybe their relationship overcomes its' tragically lopsided beginnings in later books, and she regains her independent character arc? _That_ might redeem this story in my eyes, but at this point I'm struggling to overcome the "ick factor" of 55 dating 18...

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Review: The Aeronaut's Windlass

The Aeronaut's Windlass by Jim Butcher
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

A good read, that leaves a lot of threads unresolved for the sequel (which regrettably, does not exist yet...) The book pays open homage to 18th century naval fiction, like the Horatio Hornblower books, but includes enough novel fantasy to be more than a mere copy. I like the characters - particularly Bridgette and Rowl.

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Review: Armada

Armada by Ernest Cline
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

If you liked Ready Player One, you will almost certainly like this. If you didn't, you probably won't. I thought it was a fun romp without much depth.

That said, this is kind of an odd fish. It's quite clearly aimed at a Young Adult audience, but absolutely chock-full of 1980's geek references. News Flash: us 80's geeks aren't young anythings anymore, and the "Yoof a Tuhday" don't exactly think we were cool... So while I am squarely in the target reticule for half of this book (the nerd bit, obviously) I was occasionally annoyed by some of the more overt YA bits. I can imagine the same thing being true for YA audiences, the other way.

The other weird thing about this book is that it mocks itself, but not really in what feels like a self-deprecating way. It pointedly makes fun of the whole genre of power fantasies for teenagers where their mad video game skills end up being relevant and save the day. It calls out The Last Starfighter, Iron Eagle, and others by name and laughs at the implausibility of them. And then tells exactly the same story. And not in a self-aware "Gosh I know this sounds ridiculous..." kind of a way, but more with a "Whew; glad _I'm_ this cool and not that silly" swagger. I don't quite know how to characterize it, but this book didn't _feel_ like it knew it was was making fun of itself.

Quick and easy read, and fun at least for me.

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Review: Oathbringer

Oathbringer by Brandon Sanderson
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

One of the things that has always impressed me about Sanderson, is that he writes about these detailed original worlds, and yet he does so very organically; he somehow avoids the "turn-to-the-camera-and-deliver-a-history-lesson" Council of Elrond moments, where the entire history of the world is spelled out for the reader in a massive wall of text with no story in it. Sanderson instead is very good at telling you a story and giving you snippets of world around the edges of it, until you piece together a picture of it yourself from the fragments.

Until now.

I mean, I guess it's still impressive that he mostly avoided the setting-dump until the third book? But the first half of this sizable volume is just one long series of lore articles, with no plot to speak of, and couched in a minimum of framework. It's interesting and original lore still, but it's unloaded on the reader relentlessly en-masse, so it gets a bit dry, and we kind of miss our characters, who might as well not be present at all.

By the second half of the book, the characters come storming back and give us a grand tale if you can stay awake that long, so that's all right. They struggle with their inner demons almost as much as they struggle with the external threats, which has always been part of the appeal of the series to me. The character of Odium - the Big Bad - is finally developed a bit and is a little underwhelming, but overall there is a fine book in here... starting on about page 600.

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Review: Words of Radiance

Words of Radiance by Brandon Sanderson
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

An excellent follow-up from the first, and it does wrap up a story arc much more than the last one did, so reading the first two and having to wait for the next is not too much a hardship.

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Review: The Way of Kings

The Way of Kings by Brandon Sanderson
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

A genuinely novel fantasy world, with interesting cultures, characters and magic not quite like anything I've read before.

This is a big book, and it doesn't really have a clear separate arc of it's own, and the series doesn't yet go past book 2. I liked it quite a lot, but if I'd noticed that earlier, I might have waited a bit to start it...

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Review: Half a War

Half a War by Joe Abercrombie
My rating: 4 of 5 stars



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Review: Half the World

Half the World by Joe Abercrombie
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I liked this slightly more than the first book in the series, though it's hard to put my finger on exactly why. Certainly, both Thorn and Brand are fun and interesting characters, and Yarvi really fills out as a character too. And we get more cool details about the world. But characters and world-building were really the strengths of the first one too. I think what we get here, that was kept more in the background in the first, is the overall plot of the events happening throughout the world. The politics and scheming.

For whatever reason, I found this very enjoyable, and devoured it in short order.

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Review: Half a King

Half a King by Joe Abercrombie
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I'm curious that a number of other reviewers have labelled this as YA fantasy. I mean sure, the main character is young, but what fantasy protagonist isn't? And it's maybe a bit less dark than some of Abercrombie's other work, but it's hardly a cheery tale about talking frogs either (not that I think YA fantasy can't be dark; that was just my best guess for a reason why this counted as "younger".) Maybe just because it isn't 1500 pages long, like most modern "adult" fantasy? As far as I'm concerned, that just means Abercromie has a decent editor. Doesn't really matter, but for what it's worth I'd say this was perfectly acceptable for adults or children who can handle a little violence.

It's a well-written tale about an interesting viking-like fantasy society. It has some good characters, and some nice world-building, so when the plot itself ends up being a fairly simple "king is deposed and sold as a slave; fights his way back to his throne" that doesn't detract from the fun of reading it. It tells a stand-alone story, but is also fairly clearly a setup for future books, which will presumably rely on that nice world-building to tell a larger and more complex story.

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Review: The Stone Sky

The Stone Sky by N.K. Jemisin
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I really don't have anything clever to say about these books. They're brilliant; set in a wonderfully detailed and unique world, with real and interesting characters. But apart from that: just go read them.

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Review: The Fifth Season

The Fifth Season by N.K. Jemisin
My rating: 5 of 5 stars



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Review: The Rise and Fall of D.O.D.O.

The Rise and Fall of D.O.D.O. by Neal Stephenson
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

Meh. Not one of Stephenson's best.

When Neal is on fire, he tells 13 different side stories about 47 different characters, and then ties them all together into a single coherent story. When he isn't, he does the former without the latter. This is that.

There's an interesting short story here about Mellisendre meeting Tristan, and discovering how to bring witchcraft back through technology. It has essentially nothing to do with the other interesting story about time travel back to colonial America to make money. Or the other interesting story about time travel back to Shakespearian London to prevent a business deal. Or the bit in the middle where the authors attempt to convey the mind-numbing boredom of government bureaucracy by telling their story through government memos (boredom successfully conveyed, I'm afraid.) Or the crazy chaos at the end of the book, that just stops making any sense at all. The levels of implausibility in the plot you could overlook if they _were_ short stories, but if you're going to drag me through 750 pages about it, it kind of needs to hang together a bit.

Thing is, even a disorganized Stephenson novel that doesn't manage the tie-together usually entertains me more than this one did. Because the various threads are usually marvelously well-written, so I enjoy the journey even if it is just doing donuts in the parking lot. This time he and/or Galland (his co-author) tried to tell large chunks of the story in the form of journals (as well as the aforementioned disastrously uninteresting government memos) and they come across as clumsy and amateurish - totally appropriate, given the characters who are supposed to have written them, but still not a lot of fun to read.

It's not an _awful_ book, but it's not even in the top half of Stephenson's best. (I haven't read any of Galland's solo work, so I can't comment there.)

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Review: Interface

Interface by Neal Stephenson
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I enjoyed this quite a lot. Near-future political sf about politics and brain implants. It was written quite a few years back, and focusses rather intently on the hyper-scrutinized world of Clinton-era politics, which is a bit amusing and quaint, from today's post-scrutiny world. (Or still hyper-scrutinized, but apparently post-consequences? We'll watch your every move but then vote for you anyways, regardless of what you do or say?)

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Review: Futures Imperfect

Futures Imperfect by Connie Willis
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Three marvelous stories. At least two of which are subject to being spoiled, so I won't say much else.

Uncharted Territory - a tale of exoplanet explorers, and their interactions with the indigenous sentients.

Remake - an exaggerated look at the consequences of high-tech editing of old films.

Bellweather - fads, and the process of science.

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Review: The Blood of Kings

The Blood of Kings by Douglas Seacat
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

Not a terrible battle report; not a great novel.

This book tries to include all eleventy-million characters from the Warmachine universe in one book, so they all get strange little cameos that don't really serve any purpose to the story. And - perhaps as a consequence - the overall plot doesn't really make a lot of sense. The action is told well, and it's an easy read, but it doesn't hang together as well as some of the others that Privateer has put out about their game.

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Review: Mark of Caine

Mark of Caine by Miles Holmes
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

(This is, by the way, the 3.1415927th book in a not-series of collected-but-mostly-unconnected universe of novels by different authors, all set in the world of Privateer Press' miniatures game Warmachines.) I expect that it would be very hard to follow without some background in the Warmachine setting, and there doesn't seem to be any definitive order to read the books about it, so I can't say where I'd start. At times you will hear the dice rolling, and expect page references to the unit stats in the rulebook, but this does have a bit of a plot of it's own, unlike (I thought) the previous Way of Caine. I enjoyed the ride, though I got a bit tired of the machoness of the relatively pointless references to heavy drinking and Caine's long trail of women he's left behind.

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Review: The Way of Caine

The Way of Caine by Miles Holmes
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

Fantasy based on a fun character from Privateer Press' miniatures game. It's an all-right bit of backstory for the character if you play the game, but nothing you'd bother with if you don't.

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Review: The Furthest Station

The Furthest Station by Ben Aaronovitch
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

Decidedly flat. Nothing really happens, no characters develop in any meaningful way, none of our ongoing storylines are even checked in with, much-the-less go anywhere, and the story for this volume is basically a straight-up police procedural with the merest nod to urban fantasy. It's not actively bad, just dull and short, and really doesn't live up to the promise of the earlier works in the series.

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Review: Kraken

Kraken by China Miéville
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

As often seems to be the case with Mieville - at least for me - his world is cool and detailed and magnificent... and his plot seems largely to be a series of random events happening to people in his cool world. The whole plot with the squid seems kind of nonsensically circular, even by the weird logic of the world our characters inhabit:

Why does the squid have power?
Because people believe that it does.
But people believe all kinds of wacky things in this story, most of which are provably - and often actually proven - wrong!
Yes, but those things aren't true...
Huh?

But I like Mieville's travelogue of apocalyptic London, and I enjoyed some of the characters quite a lot - especially the "extras" around the edges (like Simon the trekkie teleporter, haunted by the ghosts of all his selves that he has killed...) And I had fun visiting all the weird places, like the Embassy of the Sea. So in the end I enjoyed the book quite a lot.

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Review: The Golem and the Jinni

The Golem and the Jinni by Helene Wecker
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

A lovely, stately piece about the troubles of a masterless golem and a trapped jinni trying to survive in turn-of-the-century New York. Some great characters and wonderful attention to detail.

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Review: The Bands of Mourning

The Bands of Mourning by Brandon Sanderson
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I feel about this book essentially exactly what I felt about the last one, only moreso. The humour, while well-executed, is getting a little over-the-top, and hits kind of a wrong note against the rest of the plot. I also feel that power escalation is becoming a problem. It's a common one, in fantasy, but ironically it's worse here because Sanderson did such a _good_ job in the first book of making his magic feel realistic and not overpowering. By this book, Wax is shrugging off bullets from literally hundreds of trained soldiers at once, and it feels like reading an issue of SuperMan comics more than the Western-with-magic that it started as.

I did appreciate that Sanderson never even pretended that Wax's sister (view spoiler)[ hadn't gone over to the badguys (hide spoiler)]. It was so obvious from the moment we met her that it would have been nearly insulting to have him jump out and yell "Gotcha!"

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Review: Shadows of Self

Shadows of Self by Brandon Sanderson
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Still enjoying these quite a lot. There's sort of an odd mix of tone though: the books have a touch of silly humour to them. Little things like "Wax and Wane" as the main characters, but also over-the-top oddball Wayne and the gently mocking "romance" of Wax and ridiculously uptight Steris. And the thing is, I like those elements of the books, and I think they are done well. But Wayne feels like he belongs in a Douglas Adams book, not a grim steampunk western, and his slapstick humour - much though I like it - feels at odds with a story in which literally dozens of people are brutally killed. The comedy feels a bit misplaced, and at the same time detracts a bit from the impact of our hero wading through knee-deep corpses to an ambiguous soul-destroying victory.

I did like the overall arc of the book, and it was fun to get some of Wax's backstory filled in and resolved.

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Review: The Alloy of Law

The Alloy of Law by Brandon Sanderson
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I loved the steampunk/fantasy setting of this, and the characters are fun, but the plot doesn't really hold up to Sanderson's usual standards. The book does an amazing job of depicting superhero battles... but depicting superhero battles seemed to be the entire point of the book. Sanderson seems to have a whole complicated system of magic worked out behind-the-scenes - which I enjoy, because it adds a sort of realism, but I am glad that he didn't explain it at length. The side-effect of that, though, is that we the reader are walking around with an incomplete view of something that is apparently common knowledge in his world, so I'm going to be annoyed if he pulls too many Gotchas! out of his hat. The weird interaction between feruchemy and allomancy for a single character in this book is a great example; if such combinations are so powerful - and the character in question is basically immortal! - then you'd think the combinations would be well-known, and anyone who had them would be world-famous.

I am ashamed to admit that I was well into the second book before I noticed the pun of the main characters' names: Wax and Wa(y)ne.

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Review: The Coming

The Coming by Joe Haldeman
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

The story is nothing much new, but the characters are rich and compelling, and the style it is written in is unusual and interesting. Throughout the book, out PoV character changes almost at random, and always to someone physically present with the previous one. So our view through the story is one continuous winding thread physically, but weaves in and out of a wide weft of personalities. Reminded me a bit of Steinbeck, actually, in that the plot wasn't really the point so much as the glimpse into the different characters.

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Review: The Hero of Ages

The Hero of Ages by Brandon Sanderson
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Overall, loved the series. Will probably read it again someday, and have already bought the first couple of the follow-on Alloy of Law sequence.

That said, this particular volume only gets a "like" from me, not a "love". The originality of the world is still there, but obviously has less novelty value by volume 3. One of the main characters being suddenly transformed, through a big ole Deus Ex Machina device at the end of the last book, from mild-mannered good-natured bookish politician into superhuman killing machine seemed... unnecessarily Marty-Sue-ish. Even for the fantasy genre, which is for obvious reasons full of "Geek Gets Power" stories. And the wrap-up for this book is pretty classic literal Deus Ex Machina as well; our heroes get a good arc (which I enjoyed!) going down fighting the good fight, and then, at the very end, when all seems lost, they are literally saved by a god that they didn't know existed and didn't believe in, who just Makes Everything Good.

Meanwhile, scattered throughout the book we get quite a few long, frankly-boring sections where one of the characters struggles with faith. He trots out all of the usual atheist arguments for his loss of faith - and look, I agree with most of them, but a trivial treatment in the middle of my fantasy novel is still boring to read - and then just decides that he's going to believe anyways, because he wants to be someone who believes. (The Counting Crows argument?) I am not a believer myself, but that's got to be just about the most shallow and insulting portrayal of belief I've ever seen: "I have literally proved to myself that none of this is true, and I believe in my heart-of-hearts that it is not true, but I'm just going to act like my friend is The Holy Saviour anyways because I like the way that makes me feel"? And as if _that_ wasn't disparaging enough, the cosmic reward for this hypocritical behaviour is (view spoiler)[becoming God? (hide spoiler)] I may not really understand faith, but I like to think that some of the people I know who profess to belief _actually believe_; they're not just pretending in the clear absence of belief.

So enough ranting; it's an action-filled fantasy romp, with most of our old favourite characters turning up again, and it's fun to read. I still liked it. But a somewhat scatterbrained all-over-the-place plot, wrapped up by Author's Fiat and mixed in with some tedious - and frankly weird - philosophy, brings it down from the level of amazing I had come to expect of the series.

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Review: The Final Empire

The Final Empire by Brandon Sanderson
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Sometimes you do an author a disservice by reading their books - even the ones not linked in a series - out of the chronological order in which they were written. I think this is the case here; I discovered Sanderson's recent Stormlight Archive first, and then came back to read these. It's a great, original world, and an intriguing, novel plot, and I really enjoyed it. And yet... I'm left with the vague feeling that Sanderson's writing improved between this and his later work. The characters in this are a bit less fully-formed, and the training montage where Vin goes from downtrodden orphan to one of the most powerful people in the Empire is just a bit too abrupt and lecturey. Vin's falling in love feels a bit contrived, and her reaction to it a bit sudden and out-of-character.

This is still a very good story. I liked how the Sting part of the plot doesn't always go well for Our Heroes, and the world and the plot are really top-notch and different from run-of-the-mill epic fantasy. But I do think Sanderson has gotten better at his craft since writing this book.

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Review: A Matter of Time

A Matter of Time by Glen Cook
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Picked this up the other day and quickly realized I'd already read it, but finished it again anyways. I very much enjoyed it, but that may say something about the book; it's very well-crafted, but it isn't the most memorable story ever.

That sounds like criticism, but really it isn't. It's just that the beauty of this story is in the details of the world, and the depiction of the characters, but they are at heart normal people living humdrum lives in an everyday world. Extraordinary events happen around them, but somehow those don't really feel like the focus of the story. That lack of focus can make the pacing feel a little ponderous - this is definitely not your Indiana Jones in Space science fiction - but I think that it's well worth the ride.

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Review: Neptune's Brood

Neptune's Brood by Charles Stross
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This book has a fascinating setting, and some interesting characters with witty dialogue. And it has an interesting plot. Slam dunk for a 5-star rating, right? The problem is that the plot and the characters have almost nothing to do with each other.

Our hero wanders around having adventures in a cool and interesting world where normal humans - Fragiles - have been almost entirely replaced by robots. In amongst the adventures, she occasionally flashes back to the results of some historical research she did before the book began, about events from 2000 years ago. Almost all of the plot is in those millenia-old events. This plot strays into somewhat-philosophical ponderings about the nature of economics in an interstellar culture but I at least found it really interesting. It just has little-to-nothing to do with any of the characters we're reading about. So I very much enjoyed both halves of this book, I just wish they'd been joined together a bit better.

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Review: Brokedown Palace

Brokedown Palace by Steven Brust
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Brust always does an amazing job of adopting styles in his writing. This time he does an excellent imitation of something like one of Grimm's faerie tales, with maybe a touch of 1001 Nights... but set in his own fantasy world (which will be familiar to readers of his Taltos books, but you don't need to have read those to understand and enjoy this.)

I liked this rather a lot. The plot is a little twisty, and even at the end you're never quite sure exactly what happened and why, but it has some interesting characters and a lovely setting full of fine detail.

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