Review: The Praxis

The Praxis by Walter Jon Williams
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

A second read-through for the series, and I enjoyed it very much the second time too. It's a detailed, believable universe with realistic-seeming space battles that don't just wave a hand and disregard all of Newtonian physics. No artificial gravity or warp drives here. That, combined with the stilted, stratified society of the Praxis, makes the whole thing read a bit like one of those 18th century naval stories. There's action, and politics, and a bit of romance.

On that latter count, I quite like the turbulent relationship between Martinez and Sula. I despise the standard sit-com (or Shakespearian, for that matter) setup where two people who like each other end up at each other's throats through a misunderstanding that could easily have been avoided by them, you know, actually speaking to one another. But here Williams pulls that off with believable reasons why they wouldn't or couldn't communicate, and the result is compelling. None of the characters is defined solely, or even primarily, through their role in a relationship, and that makes their relationship feel all the more real.

Without spoiling anything, the ending of the series is a bit of a bittersweet victory that deftly avoids the more obvious cliches. I enjoyed it quite a bit.

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Review: The Idiot Gods

The Idiot Gods by David Zindell
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

So, this started out as an interesting take on the world seen through an orca's eyes. Which I quite enjoyed, even if it was a touch hero-worshippy, and painted orcas as not just intelligent, but wise philosopher-kings. And humans catch the orca and make it jump through hoops because they suck, and I'm all on board with hating those jerks. But then it got _really_ preachy, and started depicting the orcas as hyper-intelligent ultra-moralistic superbeings who could travel through time and space with the power of their minds and yet couldn't comprehend the most basic of human language concepts (but could, when it was convenient to condemn them some more and be superior, and then couldn't again, when it was convenient to condemn them instead for being incomprehensibly stupid.) Basically, the only thing that you could count on remaining consistent from one paragraph to the next is that all humans are bad. And somewhere in there I lost the passion to keep reading. I still wanted to finish it, just to see how the story ended, but I found myself easily distracted, until finally the library book was due and I hadn't finished it.

I still think this is an intriguing book, if by no means Zindell's best. Full of interesting thought-provoking ideas, even if they often didn't quite make sense in the story they were set in. (For instance, it is stated as fact - and somewhat exaggeratedly belabored - that orcas basically don't have and cannot comprehend the concept of abstract nouns. They always send a perfect picture of whichever orca (e.g.) that they're discussing in conversation. Which is a really interesting idea, and would make for an interesting story, if it weren't immediately contradicted by the very next sentence of the orca speculating about the nature of "orcas" and "humans" - two abstract nouns.)

I would happily have finished the book, given enough time. But I'm not that crushed that I didn't.

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