Posts in category 'books'
Review: Inverted World
Review of Inverted World by Christopher Priest (9781590177051)★★★★
(https://b-ark.ca/Sk4e6o)Lately I’ve been struggling to find a book that could really pull me in, and certainly Inverted World did that! It’s a shame it had to end with such a fizzle because the journey was great!
The city is winched along tracks through a devastated land full of hostile tribes. Rails must be freshly laid ahead of the city and carefully removed in its wake. Rivers and mountains present nearly insurmountable challenges to the ingenuity of the city's engineers. But if the city does not move, it will fall farther and farther behind the "optimum" into the crushing gravitational field that has transformed life on Earth. The only alternative to progress is death.
The secret directorate that governs the city makes sure that its inhabitants know nothing of this. Raised in common in crèches, nurtured on synthetic food, prevented above all from venturing outside the closed circuit of the city, they are carefully sheltered from the dire necessities that have come to define human existence. And yet the city is in crisis. The people are growing restive, the population is dwindling, and the rulers know that, for all their efforts, slowly but surely the city is slipping...The set up is just so incredibly tantalizing. A moving city. A twisted reality. A gradual reveal as our protagonist, who was raised in ignorance, slowly learns the truth of his world. It really is gripping stuff and pulled me right in, which was a welcome change from my recent grinding re-read of The Sprawl series.
What follows is, I hope, a relatively spoiler free review of the book. However, if you really want no hints–and given the book is a bit of a mystery box, with the joy in opening it and revealing its contents–it might be best to read the book before proceeding further!
Though I will say: I don’t understand why the ending is praised. Be ready for a fairly dull, exposition-laden finish and a very sudden ending that at first made me wonder if there was something wrong with my copy of the book.
Continue reading...- (https://b-ark.ca/Aw62GO)
From Jenny Odell in “How to Do Nothing”, on the power of what she calls “manifest dismantling”, or the intentional dismantling of the artifacts of “progress” as part of recalibrating our relationship with both our environment and each other:
“When we pry open the cracks in the concrete, we stand to encounter life itself–nothing less and nothing more, as if there could be more.”
Review: Legends & Lattes
Review of Legends & Lattes (Legends & Lattes #1.0) by Travis Baldree (9798985663211)★★★★
(https://b-ark.ca/CcyQMq)My wife had previously raved about this book, and then I ran across a mention of it on Hacker News of all places. Commonly described as a ‘cozy’ fantasy novel, this was a delightful little treat and definitely worth the read.
Worn out after decades of packing steel and raising hell, Viv the orc barbarian cashes out of the warrior’s life with one final score. A forgotten legend, a fabled artifact, and an unreasonable amount of hope lead her to the streets of Thune, where she plans to open the first coffee shop the city has ever seen.
However, her dreams of a fresh start pulling shots instead of swinging swords are hardly a sure bet. Old frenemies and Thune’s shady underbelly may just upset her plans. To finally build something that will last, Viv will need some new partners and a different kind of resolve.
A hot cup of fantasy slice-of-life with a dollop of romantic froth.
Anyone who knows my wife knows she’s, well, calling her a ravenous reader is doing a disservice to her book consumption habit. Books being such a central passion in her life, I’m always asking her what she’s reading, what she’s read, what she liked, and what she didn’t, and so it was that at some point she told me about this book she loved by an audiobook narrator that she really likes: Legends & Lattes.
So, I will absolute profess to some initial skepticism. I’ve long been a fantasy reader, having initially cut my teeth on pulp horror from the likes of Stephen King and Dean Koontz before taking a hard turn to David Eddings and Robert Jordon. So I’m far from unfamiliar with the genre. But I’ll freely admit that a fantasy book about an Orc opening a coffee shop seemed… a bit far fetched?
In hindsight this was, honestly, a pretty dumb assumption on my part. Terry Pratchett made an entire career out of building a fantasy world (Discworld) in which books are centered around the invention of modern contrivances (paper money, movies, the telegraph, etc). Why not a coffee shop?
Well, as the year was winding down I ran across a book recommendations post on Hacker News and decided to poke around, and I’ll be damned if Legends & Lattes didn’t earn a mention! I relayed my surprise to my wife, and she offered to re-listen to the book with me on our anniversary vacation, and you know what? It was great!
Continue reading...Review: Descent
Review of Descent by Tim Johnston (9781616204303)★★★
(https://b-ark.ca/mw6q6a)A book billed as a thriller that explores a family as they come to grips with the disappearance of a child, the book defied my expectations, for good reasons and bad.
The Rocky Mountains have cast their spell over the Courtlands, who are taking a family vacation before their daughter leaves for college. But when Caitlin and her younger brother, Sean, go out for an early morning run and only Sean returns, the mountains become as terrifying as they are majestic.
Written with a precision that captures every emotion, every moment of fear, as each member of the family searches for answers, Descent races like an avalanche toward its heart-pounding conclusion.There’s no book in recent memory that I found as challenging to review as I’m finding this one. I think that’s because Descent tries to be two things at once: both a thriller, telling the story of the disappearance of Caitlyn, a high school senior and track star who is abducted while going for a run during a family vacation to the Colorado Rockies, and a deep character study of the family members–her father Grant, her mother Angela, and her brother Sean–and their lives, together and apart, as they grapple with the nightmare of a daughter and a sister who disappears without a trace. Each of these stories would, individually, be a gripping read. Unfortunately, I feel Mr. Johnston tried to do too much, and as a result, taken as a whole, nothing works as well as it could.
Of course, I still enjoyed the book very much, and was up way too late during the big climax. But, the more I thought about the book and talked about it to my wife, the more I couldn’t overlook the flaws in this debut novel.
Continue reading...Review: Calamity
Review of Calamity (The Reckoners #3.0) by Brandon Sanderson (9780385743600)★★★
(https://b-ark.ca/Eii4II)Apparently my new pattern is to read a whole series, then post a review only after the last book is done. So here I am, at it again, this time posting my thoughts about Brandon Sanderson’s The Reckoners, and the final book, Calamity.
When Calamity lit up the sky, the Epics were born. David’s fate has been tied to their villainy ever since that historic night. Steelheart killed his father. Firefight stole his heart. And now Regalia has turned Prof, his closest ally, into a dangerous enemy.
David knew Prof’s secret, and kept it even when Prof struggled to control the effects of his Epic powers. But facing Obliteration in Babilar was too much. Once the Reckoners’ leader, Prof has now embraced his Epic destiny. He’s disappeared into those murky shadows of menace Epics are infamous for the world over, and everyone knows there’s no turning back. . . .
But everyone is wrong. Redemption is possible for Epics—Megan proved it. They’re not lost. Not completely. And David is just about crazy enough to face down the most powerful High Epic of all to get his friend back. Or die trying.
First, a quick disclosure: while the book metadata I’ve included with this post implies I read this book, that is a lie! In fact, my wife and I listened to the audiobooks together, knocking down the first two during our trip to see the 2023 annular eclipse, and then finishing the last one in our livingroom.
Additionally, as I mentioned in the post summary, I didn’t get around to writing down my thoughts about the first two books as we finished them, so like my review of The Nexus trilogy, this review is based on my overall thoughts after finishing the last book, Calamity.
And since these reviews are mainly for Future Brett as he tries to remember what he thought about these books, I’ll just say: sorry buddy. I’ll do my best, here, but I make no guarantees.
Continue reading...
