Tuesday, April 05, 2022

Review: Who Fears Death

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Tuesday, December 21, 2021

Review: The Lightstone

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Tuesday, October 12, 2021

Review: The King's Blood

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Thursday, September 30, 2021

Review: The Dragon's Path

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Monday, September 20, 2021

Review: Throne of the Crescent Moon

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Monday, August 02, 2021

Review: A Girl in Time

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Wednesday, July 28, 2021

Review: The Departure

The Departure The Departure by Neal Asher
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

Notes while in progress:

This has to be one of the silliest books I've ever read. Not the _worst_ - overall, the writing isn't terrible, though I have some issues with the characters - but definitely the silliest. The plot makes no sense whatsoever.

Our hero, who we shall henceforth refer to as Marty Stu, is a supergenius polymath superspy ninja freedom-fighter loner uberhacker. He has the world's only true AI in his head, and a direct brain interface to computers - both of which he was involved in inventing - but he's still also better at martial arts than any given half-dozen trained security professionals. However, he has amnesia, so he has no connection to any other human apart from his overpowering desire for REWENGEE, and he is emotionally distant from all other characters including his female sidekick who thinks he's hot. Seriously, just go read that linked description of a Marty Stu, and turn every aspect up to 11.

But look, a little power fantasy isn't always a terrible thing. That's not what makes this such a silly book. Or not all of it, anyways. What makes it silly is that Marty doesn't win because he is a god among men - though clearly this is true - but because his enemies are idiots. He raids an enemy base single-handedly because he is able to subvert their computer-controlled security guns and kill everyone, but at least he has to break into the base to do the subverting, and he's using his magic AI powers that the enemy is unaware of. So we're going to have words with our network security team, but this is not entirely unreasonable. But then the enemy, having witnessed Marty's heretofore unbelievable hacking prowess especially in regards to automated security systems, _still_ fails to install even the most basic attempts at security. Which are demonstrably possible, because Our Hero hacks into the enemy robots and installs _his own_ security codes in a matter of seconds which the owner of the hardware - who also has the same magic brain-computer interface - is unable to circumvent. So with multiple days forewarning, the baddies aren't able to do to their own hardware what Marty can do in seconds while breaking in, in the middle of a firefight. And having witnessed he can (still) subvert a handful of their robots and use them to kill all the security (again) they don't even - I don't know - shut down all the robots? Steal his idea, and re-program their tens if not hundreds of thousands of robots on a space base the size of Manhattan, to stop accepting new orders and overcome the handful he's subverted?

The whole book is like this so far; Marty Stu strides forward through the chaff of his enemies, and they... completely fail to try to react to him in any reasonable fashion, even given the fact that he is demonstrably an unstoppable godking. At some point, when the Heartless Evil Overlords Who Are Willing to Sacrifice Humanity for Their Own Gain, work out that this guy can effortlessly waltz through every aspect of their security without even pausing, shouldn't they just drop a tactical nuke on him? I'm sure he'd survive, dusting the debris from the giant S revealed emblazoned on his chest, but at least they'd be _trying_ to stop him.

Meanwhile, I don't really care about him, or anyone else in the book. Marty is a psychopath who occasionally pauses to notice this fact and point it out to the readers as his only form of introspection. His girlfriend is essentially Dr Mengele. The only other characters who live long enough to be noticed are some people on Mars who we check in with for a couple of paragraphs at the start of each chapter, presumably so they can be part of some plot twist later. (Though if the big "twist" is that (view spoiler) then its well-spoiled by halfway through the book...)

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posted by anti ob at 8:53 PM 0 comments