A.S. King
Saffron Adams is a modern day teenager. She is also Emer Morrisey, a feared 17th century teen pirate. At the tragic end of her pirate life, she is cursed to live the live of 100 dogs (with all her memories intact and retained) before being born again in a human form. As Saffron, she has one purpose: retrieve her treasure. King does an excellent job telling both stories (Saffron and Emer) making them both engaging. We do not ever pine for the other story, but are content (even enthralled) by the life we are reading about presently. And as a bonus, we get occassional life lessons from Emer/Saffron's time as a dog. Well thought out, well executed. A great pirate novel.
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Monday, June 29, 2015
Friday, June 5, 2015
All the Light We Cannot See
Anthony Doerr
Set in World War II, the story follows two main characters who are both teenagers: a blind French girl and a scientifically gifted German orphan boy. We bounce back and forth (rather quickly) between these two stories until they eventually intersect about 2/3 of the way through. In some ways, this is a fascinating view into regular life in occupied France, and into life as a boy conscripted into the German military machine. However, it felt flat and wrote. Somehow the entire story felt defeatist, without inspiring hope in the characters, or the characters providing hope for the reader. Maybe that was the intent, to immerse yourself in this hopeless world of WWII, but in a fictional novel I want a bit more escapism. Or I want emotional arc (give me hope and then dash it) so I have something to react to.
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Set in World War II, the story follows two main characters who are both teenagers: a blind French girl and a scientifically gifted German orphan boy. We bounce back and forth (rather quickly) between these two stories until they eventually intersect about 2/3 of the way through. In some ways, this is a fascinating view into regular life in occupied France, and into life as a boy conscripted into the German military machine. However, it felt flat and wrote. Somehow the entire story felt defeatist, without inspiring hope in the characters, or the characters providing hope for the reader. Maybe that was the intent, to immerse yourself in this hopeless world of WWII, but in a fictional novel I want a bit more escapism. Or I want emotional arc (give me hope and then dash it) so I have something to react to.
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Lock In
John Scalzi
Reading the description of this novel I immediately thought of Blindness by Jose Saramago. That was an OK novel (fascinating in many ways, but overall flat). As such, I was not jumping to get into this. However, I must say it was brilliant. Set in a future where a new disease has caused some people to become "locked in", where they have zero physical ability, but their minds are vibrant. The result is a massive worldwide effort to develop neural interfaces with those brains so that the victims of this disease can interact with a world through a remotely operated physical transport (i.e. robot). With this setting, Scalzi gives us a straight up detective thriller. Think mashup of Counting Heads, I-Robot, and Michael Connelly's Harry Bosch. I can definitely see this becoming a serial. What is particularly fun is the ability of the locked in to rent physical transports (thereby traveling across country almost instantly) or borrow (local police departments have loaners for out of town detectives), and all the difficulties that entail. I also liked the way Scalzi would introduce new characters without explicitly stating whether they were a locked in or not. As a reader, you couldn't make assumptions about the person and were forced to read other characters reactions and interactions carefully. Very fun, very clever.
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Reading the description of this novel I immediately thought of Blindness by Jose Saramago. That was an OK novel (fascinating in many ways, but overall flat). As such, I was not jumping to get into this. However, I must say it was brilliant. Set in a future where a new disease has caused some people to become "locked in", where they have zero physical ability, but their minds are vibrant. The result is a massive worldwide effort to develop neural interfaces with those brains so that the victims of this disease can interact with a world through a remotely operated physical transport (i.e. robot). With this setting, Scalzi gives us a straight up detective thriller. Think mashup of Counting Heads, I-Robot, and Michael Connelly's Harry Bosch. I can definitely see this becoming a serial. What is particularly fun is the ability of the locked in to rent physical transports (thereby traveling across country almost instantly) or borrow (local police departments have loaners for out of town detectives), and all the difficulties that entail. I also liked the way Scalzi would introduce new characters without explicitly stating whether they were a locked in or not. As a reader, you couldn't make assumptions about the person and were forced to read other characters reactions and interactions carefully. Very fun, very clever.
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