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Book Log 2021 whoops
Apr. 9th, 2021 07:09 amI came in to post #5 and saw I hadn't posted #3 or #4.
I guess I'll have to do a combination post later in the day...
I guess I'll have to do a combination post later in the day...
DEATH OF A BLUE MOVIE STAR by Jeffrey Deaver
An early (1988) effort from Deaver, and the middle one of the Rune trilogy (preceded by Manhattan Is My Beat, and followed by Hard News), this was something of a mixed bag- Rune is a great character, and Deaver gives us some decent twists, but it’s somewhat over-padded, and is too full of the “watching or creating porn turns everybody into into serial killers” kind of mentality… (He even tells us how “real” BDSM can kill with riding crops, and makes you into a Snuff filmmaker for hire serial killer… FFS…
An early (1988) effort from Deaver, and the middle one of the Rune trilogy (preceded by Manhattan Is My Beat, and followed by Hard News), this was something of a mixed bag- Rune is a great character, and Deaver gives us some decent twists, but it’s somewhat over-padded, and is too full of the “watching or creating porn turns everybody into into serial killers” kind of mentality… (He even tells us how “real” BDSM can kill with riding crops, and makes you into a Snuff filmmaker for hire serial killer… FFS…
JAMES BOND- SERPENT'S TOOTH by Paul Gulacy and Doug Moench.
Hoo boy. I vaguely remembered enjoying this when it came out in 1995. Of course I always liked the Gulacy/Moench graphic novels team, so there's that, and the artwork is good (Bond rather oddly looksa fair bit like Henry Cavill for most of it!), and the pacing is fast, there's plenty of action, and so on...
If this was a more, well, comics-based graphic novel – by which I mean if it was about Nick Fury or something, or even an original character – it would be great. Unfortunately it's supposed to be James Bond. Now, there are two types of Bond to enjoy- the movie Bond, and the books Bond. This clearly sets out to be the movie Bond – there's a pre-credit, and a title splash page reminiscent of the movies' title sequences. Beyond that, however... it makes the daftest bits of Moonraker look like The Third Man. It makes Austin fucking Powers look like The Third Man.
Starting off with a girl fleeing from el chpacrabra and being abducted by a flying saucer, it proceeds to get silly thereafter, bringing in not just traditional Bond movie tropes like “steal nuclear weapons and reshape the world” but genetic mutations, giant octopi, and Bond Vs Dinosaurs in a mobile underwater city.
The plot makes zero sense (even by Bond movie standards), and it doesn't help that this Bond is congenitally incapable of speaking a line that isn't a creaky failure of an attempted pun. It's what the phrase “comic book” was pretty much invented for, but in this case, even though it is a comic book, it's the wrong approach, and to a horrific degree.
This feels like a comic book Bond created by someone who's had The Spy Who Loved Me and Moonraker described to him by someone who has only read an online review of the movies. While drunk and/or stoned.
But if you tippex out all uses of the name “James Bond” and write in something more appropriate like “Clint Thrust” it makes a decent pre-Powers OTT pastiche with plenty of action.
Hoo boy. I vaguely remembered enjoying this when it came out in 1995. Of course I always liked the Gulacy/Moench graphic novels team, so there's that, and the artwork is good (Bond rather oddly looksa fair bit like Henry Cavill for most of it!), and the pacing is fast, there's plenty of action, and so on...
If this was a more, well, comics-based graphic novel – by which I mean if it was about Nick Fury or something, or even an original character – it would be great. Unfortunately it's supposed to be James Bond. Now, there are two types of Bond to enjoy- the movie Bond, and the books Bond. This clearly sets out to be the movie Bond – there's a pre-credit, and a title splash page reminiscent of the movies' title sequences. Beyond that, however... it makes the daftest bits of Moonraker look like The Third Man. It makes Austin fucking Powers look like The Third Man.
Starting off with a girl fleeing from el chpacrabra and being abducted by a flying saucer, it proceeds to get silly thereafter, bringing in not just traditional Bond movie tropes like “steal nuclear weapons and reshape the world” but genetic mutations, giant octopi, and Bond Vs Dinosaurs in a mobile underwater city.
The plot makes zero sense (even by Bond movie standards), and it doesn't help that this Bond is congenitally incapable of speaking a line that isn't a creaky failure of an attempted pun. It's what the phrase “comic book” was pretty much invented for, but in this case, even though it is a comic book, it's the wrong approach, and to a horrific degree.
This feels like a comic book Bond created by someone who's had The Spy Who Loved Me and Moonraker described to him by someone who has only read an online review of the movies. While drunk and/or stoned.
But if you tippex out all uses of the name “James Bond” and write in something more appropriate like “Clint Thrust” it makes a decent pre-Powers OTT pastiche with plenty of action.
Recreational reading and the crossover book, being number 23 of 2018 and number 1 of 2019 is THE UNKNOWN KIMI RAIKKONEN by Kari Hotakainen
A bit of a mixture. It's a fun book for F1 fans, and there is a mix of interesting trivia and confirmation of what a lot of us figured about Kimi, as well as some good bits of insight behind the scenes at race weekend. On the other hand, F1 fans will have read or seen footage of what goes on behind the scenes elsewhere already, so even the new bits all sound fairly familiar.
It's also not really a traditional biography, as it jumps around with occasional interview snippets and leaves out a lot links from one thing to another.
The blurb mentions Hotakainen being an experienced novelist who has never written a nonfiction book before- and that latter element definitely shows. Whether it's because it's his first or whether it's down to the translation from Finnish, it comes over as bitty and not that engaging. It's also very Finnish-parochial, but to be fair, British and American books do the same thing, so...
I did get a certain amusement from Kimi's first driving experience apparently being from Lahti, and his antics when arriving at customs at airports...
Still, an F1 fan or Kimi fan will get entertaining moments from it, but it's not that good a biography, not that well written (or perhaps translated). But it plays well into Kimi's brand, and is less “look how great and cool I am” than most celebrity books.
A bit of a mixture. It's a fun book for F1 fans, and there is a mix of interesting trivia and confirmation of what a lot of us figured about Kimi, as well as some good bits of insight behind the scenes at race weekend. On the other hand, F1 fans will have read or seen footage of what goes on behind the scenes elsewhere already, so even the new bits all sound fairly familiar.
It's also not really a traditional biography, as it jumps around with occasional interview snippets and leaves out a lot links from one thing to another.
The blurb mentions Hotakainen being an experienced novelist who has never written a nonfiction book before- and that latter element definitely shows. Whether it's because it's his first or whether it's down to the translation from Finnish, it comes over as bitty and not that engaging. It's also very Finnish-parochial, but to be fair, British and American books do the same thing, so...
I did get a certain amusement from Kimi's first driving experience apparently being from Lahti, and his antics when arriving at customs at airports...
Still, an F1 fan or Kimi fan will get entertaining moments from it, but it's not that good a biography, not that well written (or perhaps translated). But it plays well into Kimi's brand, and is less “look how great and cool I am” than most celebrity books.
22) ASTERIX AND OBELIX: ALL AT SEA by Uderzo
First time I've read Asterix in years, but it still holds up, despite Rene Goscinny's death leaving Uderzo as sole creator. In this one, Obelix is reduced to childhood while aCaesar's galley is stolen by Spartakis [sic]. There are all the usual tropes and puns, the art of course remains as distinctive as always (thick-lipped black caricatures included, though bear in mind that all the races as caricatured in a stereotypical way that changing probably would stand out worse), and it was as entertaining as I always found them – though not reaching the peaks of the classics from the 60s and 70s. The plot does peter out towards the end, as if Uderzo suddenly realised he'd gone for a multilayered thing and only had three pages left in the format, but... Look, it's Asterix, it does what it says on the tin. And bonus points for the Apicius and culinary references, and Spartakis being drawn to look like Kirk Douglas...
First time I've read Asterix in years, but it still holds up, despite Rene Goscinny's death leaving Uderzo as sole creator. In this one, Obelix is reduced to childhood while aCaesar's galley is stolen by Spartakis [sic]. There are all the usual tropes and puns, the art of course remains as distinctive as always (thick-lipped black caricatures included, though bear in mind that all the races as caricatured in a stereotypical way that changing probably would stand out worse), and it was as entertaining as I always found them – though not reaching the peaks of the classics from the 60s and 70s. The plot does peter out towards the end, as if Uderzo suddenly realised he'd gone for a multilayered thing and only had three pages left in the format, but... Look, it's Asterix, it does what it says on the tin. And bonus points for the Apicius and culinary references, and Spartakis being drawn to look like Kirk Douglas...
Book log 2018 #20 and 21
Dec. 18th, 2018 05:21 pm20) STAR TREK INTO DARKNESS by Alan Dean Foster
It's ages since I watched the film, and I was curious to see whether I heard the original or JJ-verse cast in the novelisation. In the end I heard a mixture- Kirk and Spock were mostly Pine and Quinto, Bones was Bones, Sulu was, weirdly, mostly Nimoy, but Khan was solidly Montalban throughout... Which gives an interesting insight into the overall characterisation in the script. God only knows who Foster thought he was writing as Scotty, but apparently he's never heard either a Scottish accent or Simon Pegg.
Other than that, it wasn't Foster's best novelisation, but it was good solid fun- he brought some clarity to things like Khan's magic blood merely being a baseline from which Bones synthesized a new treatment, rather than just being magic blood, so it probably ended up being slightly better than the movie, IMO...
21) JONESY: NINE LIVES ON THE NOSTROMO by Rory Lucey
A nice little graphic story of Alien, from the POV of Jones the cat. The art is amusing, and it's good fun for anybody familiar with both the movie and cats. It would actually work really well as a version of Alien for younger kids, with a loveable character, some mild scares (probably) and no adult complexities – except that, because there's no words in the book at all, you'd have to explain all the context of what's going to your younger audience. (E.g. “Oh, here one of the crew has been injured on a planet”). But I loved it anyway cos I'm a cat-loving Alien geek, and that's really who'll get the most out of this.
It's ages since I watched the film, and I was curious to see whether I heard the original or JJ-verse cast in the novelisation. In the end I heard a mixture- Kirk and Spock were mostly Pine and Quinto, Bones was Bones, Sulu was, weirdly, mostly Nimoy, but Khan was solidly Montalban throughout... Which gives an interesting insight into the overall characterisation in the script. God only knows who Foster thought he was writing as Scotty, but apparently he's never heard either a Scottish accent or Simon Pegg.
Other than that, it wasn't Foster's best novelisation, but it was good solid fun- he brought some clarity to things like Khan's magic blood merely being a baseline from which Bones synthesized a new treatment, rather than just being magic blood, so it probably ended up being slightly better than the movie, IMO...
21) JONESY: NINE LIVES ON THE NOSTROMO by Rory Lucey
A nice little graphic story of Alien, from the POV of Jones the cat. The art is amusing, and it's good fun for anybody familiar with both the movie and cats. It would actually work really well as a version of Alien for younger kids, with a loveable character, some mild scares (probably) and no adult complexities – except that, because there's no words in the book at all, you'd have to explain all the context of what's going to your younger audience. (E.g. “Oh, here one of the crew has been injured on a planet”). But I loved it anyway cos I'm a cat-loving Alien geek, and that's really who'll get the most out of this.
Book log 2018 #19 - Tokyo Vice
Oct. 29th, 2018 12:11 pmTOKYO VICE by Jake Adelstein
Not a bad bit of true crime journalism memoir, covering Adelstein's career as a journalist on the crime beat for the Yomiuri Shinbun in Tokyo, and his rising from small local crimes to bringing down one of the biggest Yakuza gang bosses. It's eminently readable, and with some self-deprecating humour. I'm actually surprised it hasn't been turned into an HBO/Netflix type prestige miniseries. Some of it's hard to read, especially on the sex-trafficking front, and how he seriously fucked up and got a woman brutally murdered. Some of it's funny. Some of it seems oddly familiar (as a UK reader I vaguely remember the Lucy Blackman case from a few years ago, so it was interesting to get a fuller story on what happened there). And some of it I can sympathise with far too much.
There are some flaws – the opening scene doesn't get returned to in a way that places it chronologically in the progress of the story, for example – but the biggest problem is really its lack of an index- there are a lot of characters with confusing or similar names, nicknames,and so on, all getting the occasional “I'd known him since we had...” which all blend together, and it would be so fucking improved just by being to be able to go back and check the previous appearance on whichever page.
But it was worth reading, even if I came out of it thinking the guy is in many ways a fucking idiot who should have known better.
Not a bad bit of true crime journalism memoir, covering Adelstein's career as a journalist on the crime beat for the Yomiuri Shinbun in Tokyo, and his rising from small local crimes to bringing down one of the biggest Yakuza gang bosses. It's eminently readable, and with some self-deprecating humour. I'm actually surprised it hasn't been turned into an HBO/Netflix type prestige miniseries. Some of it's hard to read, especially on the sex-trafficking front, and how he seriously fucked up and got a woman brutally murdered. Some of it's funny. Some of it seems oddly familiar (as a UK reader I vaguely remember the Lucy Blackman case from a few years ago, so it was interesting to get a fuller story on what happened there). And some of it I can sympathise with far too much.
There are some flaws – the opening scene doesn't get returned to in a way that places it chronologically in the progress of the story, for example – but the biggest problem is really its lack of an index- there are a lot of characters with confusing or similar names, nicknames,and so on, all getting the occasional “I'd known him since we had...” which all blend together, and it would be so fucking improved just by being to be able to go back and check the previous appearance on whichever page.
But it was worth reading, even if I came out of it thinking the guy is in many ways a fucking idiot who should have known better.
THE HAUNTING OF HILL HOUSE by Shirley Jackson
This is a reread of an old favourite- will have to watch the 1963 movie again. Still a classic with a great sense of eeriness and atmosphere, and depth and subtext and an unreliable POV character – but I'd never noticed before how foot-fetishistic it is... (Seriously, Eleanor is repeatedly studying her own and Theo's feet in some detail...) I'd also forgotten it isn't set in England, but in New England. Anyway, yeah, nice to revisit an old favourite.
This is a reread of an old favourite- will have to watch the 1963 movie again. Still a classic with a great sense of eeriness and atmosphere, and depth and subtext and an unreliable POV character – but I'd never noticed before how foot-fetishistic it is... (Seriously, Eleanor is repeatedly studying her own and Theo's feet in some detail...) I'd also forgotten it isn't set in England, but in New England. Anyway, yeah, nice to revisit an old favourite.
Book log 2018 #17 - Surak's Soul
Jul. 18th, 2018 05:35 pmby JM Dillard
Dillard's long been a favourite Trek writer of mine, but this Enterprise one... Well at least it was short and quick. And still over-padded. Basically it's a simple moral dilemma for T'Pol which was already answered by Spock in Wrath Of Khan, bolted onto a thin short story and stretched out to 200 pages rather than the 5 or 6 pages of story it actually has. It's basically an exercise in wondering how fucking stupid the characters are to not notice the goddam motherfucking obvious.
It is therefore also utterly predictable from the get-go.
On the upside, Phlox in particular, and also Archer, T'Pol, Trip and Reed all read fairly true to the TV counterparts (Hoshi far less so, and Mayweather never got a personality in the series anyway), and there is an alien that was pleasantly TOS-like, which kind of helps in viewing Enterprise as a prequel to that series- I could damn well see how it would have looked in TOS.
But otherwise... Sadly a decent 5 or 6 page story lost in 220 pages.
Dillard's long been a favourite Trek writer of mine, but this Enterprise one... Well at least it was short and quick. And still over-padded. Basically it's a simple moral dilemma for T'Pol which was already answered by Spock in Wrath Of Khan, bolted onto a thin short story and stretched out to 200 pages rather than the 5 or 6 pages of story it actually has. It's basically an exercise in wondering how fucking stupid the characters are to not notice the goddam motherfucking obvious.
It is therefore also utterly predictable from the get-go.
On the upside, Phlox in particular, and also Archer, T'Pol, Trip and Reed all read fairly true to the TV counterparts (Hoshi far less so, and Mayweather never got a personality in the series anyway), and there is an alien that was pleasantly TOS-like, which kind of helps in viewing Enterprise as a prequel to that series- I could damn well see how it would have looked in TOS.
But otherwise... Sadly a decent 5 or 6 page story lost in 220 pages.
Book log 2018 #16 - Four Doctors
Jul. 7th, 2018 04:05 pm16) FOUR DOCTORS by Paul Cornell, Neil Edwards, & Ivan Nunes.
This trade paperback collection of the five-issue mini is the first of the Titan Comics Nu Who lines that I've read. The Doctors mostly feel like themselves, Clara does too, but I'm unfamiliar with the other two (comics-only) companions. The story was fun, hit the right notes all through – and I like the Voords being basically the suits rather than the wearers (a bit like Venom in the Spiderman comics). The art was generally decent, especially the colours by Nunes, but I did find the actor likenesses by Edwards.... variable, with Capaldi tending to fare worst. (Though I also first thought Wilf was the War Doctor, and didn't recognise River at all...). The timelines made sense, and did indeed feel “the timiest-wimiest of all” in a Moffat-era way. There's at least one repeated gag which is amusing the first time, but feels like an editorial slip the second.
There's also a one-page backup strip for each issue, which do tie in with the main story at the end (Which is just as well as they were otherwise pointless, not playing to the writer's strangths), and which have surprisingly likeable cute art. There's a cover gallery for issues 2-5, but oddly not for #1.... Dunno why that isn't there.
So, yeah, a fun bit of Nu Who that hit the spot, and would have made a fine episode or two on TV. I shall certainly keep an eye out for other Titan DW collections.
This trade paperback collection of the five-issue mini is the first of the Titan Comics Nu Who lines that I've read. The Doctors mostly feel like themselves, Clara does too, but I'm unfamiliar with the other two (comics-only) companions. The story was fun, hit the right notes all through – and I like the Voords being basically the suits rather than the wearers (a bit like Venom in the Spiderman comics). The art was generally decent, especially the colours by Nunes, but I did find the actor likenesses by Edwards.... variable, with Capaldi tending to fare worst. (Though I also first thought Wilf was the War Doctor, and didn't recognise River at all...). The timelines made sense, and did indeed feel “the timiest-wimiest of all” in a Moffat-era way. There's at least one repeated gag which is amusing the first time, but feels like an editorial slip the second.
There's also a one-page backup strip for each issue, which do tie in with the main story at the end (Which is just as well as they were otherwise pointless, not playing to the writer's strangths), and which have surprisingly likeable cute art. There's a cover gallery for issues 2-5, but oddly not for #1.... Dunno why that isn't there.
So, yeah, a fun bit of Nu Who that hit the spot, and would have made a fine episode or two on TV. I shall certainly keep an eye out for other Titan DW collections.
Book log 2018 #15 - Hell To Pay
Jul. 5th, 2018 02:36 pm15) HELL TO PAY by George P Pelecanos
Hm, bit of a mixture. Good characters, flows well, but the plot advertised actually starts more than halfway through the book, and prior to that it really feels like the middle-section of a larger book, or an episode in an ongoing TV series arc (which isn't surprising, as Pelecanos is one of the people behind The Wire, The Pacific, and The Deuce). I suspect it would have played better as a TV show – and in fact there's one with these characters due in the coming year, which I suspect I'll prefer. Other niggles would be that there are couple of obvious lectures to the audience, and I swear if you took out the specifying of which music tracks are being listened to in any given scene, you'd reduce the page count by at least a quarter. Throw in the (American) Football plays and it'd be a third. I'm also a bit unsure how accurate it is representing the everyday black life and slang (of 2002 in Washington), since it's focussed on that while written by a white guy – it feels like The Wire, is all I can say, really.
So, good two-thirds of the time, and I look forward to a TV show with these characters, but somehow left me wanting.
Hm, bit of a mixture. Good characters, flows well, but the plot advertised actually starts more than halfway through the book, and prior to that it really feels like the middle-section of a larger book, or an episode in an ongoing TV series arc (which isn't surprising, as Pelecanos is one of the people behind The Wire, The Pacific, and The Deuce). I suspect it would have played better as a TV show – and in fact there's one with these characters due in the coming year, which I suspect I'll prefer. Other niggles would be that there are couple of obvious lectures to the audience, and I swear if you took out the specifying of which music tracks are being listened to in any given scene, you'd reduce the page count by at least a quarter. Throw in the (American) Football plays and it'd be a third. I'm also a bit unsure how accurate it is representing the everyday black life and slang (of 2002 in Washington), since it's focussed on that while written by a white guy – it feels like The Wire, is all I can say, really.
So, good two-thirds of the time, and I look forward to a TV show with these characters, but somehow left me wanting.
Book log 2018 #14 - Red Country
Jun. 23rd, 2018 08:48 pmRED COUNTRY by Joe Abercrombie
A somewhat Western-styled fantasy standalone set in the First Law world, with a few characters from that series making appearances. Despite being in the fantasy genre there isn't any magic or suchlike in this one (there was in the First Law trilogy, of course), but it still makes itself a believable world. The plot is both simple and rambling, and filled with interesting, memorable, and generally thoroughly unlikable characters, who are an oddly pleasing mix of stereotypes with depth. There are wise lines, funny lines, and a tendency for the narration to dip into a pseudo-Western sort of verbiage, which mostly works (except that “arse” doesn't, cos it seems too British to me). It's good and epic and filled with wit and character and action, and it works perfectly well as a standalone, so it doesn't matter whether the reader has read the First Law trilogy or not. The downside to this one is a tendency, in the last quarter or so in particular, to labour the perfectly OK – if obvious – subtexts and meanings by having multiple characters state them to each other in dialogue as often as they think them in internal monologues... Still, good for fans of epic fantasy and Westerns.
A somewhat Western-styled fantasy standalone set in the First Law world, with a few characters from that series making appearances. Despite being in the fantasy genre there isn't any magic or suchlike in this one (there was in the First Law trilogy, of course), but it still makes itself a believable world. The plot is both simple and rambling, and filled with interesting, memorable, and generally thoroughly unlikable characters, who are an oddly pleasing mix of stereotypes with depth. There are wise lines, funny lines, and a tendency for the narration to dip into a pseudo-Western sort of verbiage, which mostly works (except that “arse” doesn't, cos it seems too British to me). It's good and epic and filled with wit and character and action, and it works perfectly well as a standalone, so it doesn't matter whether the reader has read the First Law trilogy or not. The downside to this one is a tendency, in the last quarter or so in particular, to labour the perfectly OK – if obvious – subtexts and meanings by having multiple characters state them to each other in dialogue as often as they think them in internal monologues... Still, good for fans of epic fantasy and Westerns.
Book log 2018 #13 - A Dawn Like Thunder
May. 26th, 2018 10:05 pmThe other day I finished A DAWN LIKE THUNDER by Douglas Reeman
Bloody hell. Somewhat of a slog. Reeman's Bolitho novels under the pseudonym Alexander Kent are great. His WW2 standalones vary wildly- the early ones are good, and he always gives a good sense of place and time, and what it must have been like to live in 1940s with a naval bent. Unfortunately his later ones get lazier every time, and the characters are just a checklist of requirements with no decent dialogue - not even one-dimensional, (But, then, people say that about mine).
This is a later one, from the second half of the 1990s. The plot sounds intriguing, but is frequently glossed over, and doesn't flow; I kept waiting for it to actually move or hit a peak, and have some payoff to the setups, but they just don't come, because a really inept pair of romance plots keep getting in the way and bogging it down to dead slow and stop. The two main guys have each seen a girl for two minutes, and then spend the rest of the book noticing that the other guy must be thinking of her, and signifying their understanding with a non-sequitur that makes them each relieved they know the other guy. I think if it was slash it'd be more believable, and work better. There's even a random murder plot that wanders in from a different book altogether and doesn't provide any mystery, since the person everybody automatically suspects/assumes/hopes did it, actually did it.
The climactic raid is mostly OK, but then suffers from a sudden ending in mid-flow. In fact the whole damn thing, even including the good bits, comes over as a hodge-podge of random elements and none-dimensional characters from which some sort of file corruption has irretrievably deleted a random third of the words in the text, and a desperate editor has glued the remainder together in the frantic last hour before the office closes for a holiday. (The back cover has quotes from The Times and The Sunday Times praising it for being “well-characterised”. They lie, unless they mean the characterisation was dropped down a well and left there.)
Bloody hell. Somewhat of a slog. Reeman's Bolitho novels under the pseudonym Alexander Kent are great. His WW2 standalones vary wildly- the early ones are good, and he always gives a good sense of place and time, and what it must have been like to live in 1940s with a naval bent. Unfortunately his later ones get lazier every time, and the characters are just a checklist of requirements with no decent dialogue - not even one-dimensional, (But, then, people say that about mine).
This is a later one, from the second half of the 1990s. The plot sounds intriguing, but is frequently glossed over, and doesn't flow; I kept waiting for it to actually move or hit a peak, and have some payoff to the setups, but they just don't come, because a really inept pair of romance plots keep getting in the way and bogging it down to dead slow and stop. The two main guys have each seen a girl for two minutes, and then spend the rest of the book noticing that the other guy must be thinking of her, and signifying their understanding with a non-sequitur that makes them each relieved they know the other guy. I think if it was slash it'd be more believable, and work better. There's even a random murder plot that wanders in from a different book altogether and doesn't provide any mystery, since the person everybody automatically suspects/assumes/hopes did it, actually did it.
The climactic raid is mostly OK, but then suffers from a sudden ending in mid-flow. In fact the whole damn thing, even including the good bits, comes over as a hodge-podge of random elements and none-dimensional characters from which some sort of file corruption has irretrievably deleted a random third of the words in the text, and a desperate editor has glued the remainder together in the frantic last hour before the office closes for a holiday. (The back cover has quotes from The Times and The Sunday Times praising it for being “well-characterised”. They lie, unless they mean the characterisation was dropped down a well and left there.)
The first of the Travis McGee books. A bit of a curate's egg. A straightforward plot and thorough loathesome villain, and a good thrilling finale. Some of McGee's situation and thoughts as he tries to help a couple of victims of that villain remind me of situations familiar to me. Writer and character are actually trying to be more progressive in the dealings with vulnerable women, and – at first – in the descriptions, which is good... except that because it was written in 1964 it has an air of being, as Arthur Dent might say, almost but not quite entirely unlike being sensible as I'd see it, and so, when it slips, the dissonance seems more creepy than if it was just written as regular 1960s blokiness... But kudos for trying.
#10) JLA- EARTH 2 by Grant Morrison & Frank Quitely
A fun DC superhero spin, not too long, with some nice use of the main characters, good art, and a decent twist too. Surprisingly short for what Marvel would probably have got a year out of, and I really think it needed to be perhaps half as long again for clarity in some places – or longer if they really wanted to establish a difference in atmospheres between the two worlds. I also hate the outdated “matter Earth and antimatter Earth” canard.
Still, I did love the art, and the story had a good twist towards the end. Oh, but a rushed and therefore somewhat missable resolution. Ah, well. Entertaining, nice to look at, and a nice change of pace in the run of recreational reading so far this year.
A fun DC superhero spin, not too long, with some nice use of the main characters, good art, and a decent twist too. Surprisingly short for what Marvel would probably have got a year out of, and I really think it needed to be perhaps half as long again for clarity in some places – or longer if they really wanted to establish a difference in atmospheres between the two worlds. I also hate the outdated “matter Earth and antimatter Earth” canard.
Still, I did love the art, and the story had a good twist towards the end. Oh, but a rushed and therefore somewhat missable resolution. Ah, well. Entertaining, nice to look at, and a nice change of pace in the run of recreational reading so far this year.
An amusing and characterful entry in the Discworld series, focusing on the background of Sam Vimes, having been hurled back in 30 years to meet his teenage self. It's a smaller-scale story than some, with less magic (of the wizarding sort) and fewer guffaws than some, and most of the meaningful bits about revolutions and the will of the people (you can tell the Maybot hasn't read it, and neither have her cabinet) are tucked into the last 70 pages or so. There are also some cultural references I'd have expected to see which weren't there, which was sort of surprising, and the villain was rather one-dimensional, almost but not quite reminiscent of the Joker. That said, the secret policeman was very obviously Ronald Lacey's Gestapo performance from Raiders....
It was good; it's always nice to revisit Ankh-Morpork, and Vimes is just the right sort of gruff but practical good guy. It's also, given the plot, a remarkably good take on Life On Mars/Ashes To Ashes for a book that came out four years before that TV show appeared! I guess maybe we can think of someone who did read it back when it first came out...
It was good; it's always nice to revisit Ankh-Morpork, and Vimes is just the right sort of gruff but practical good guy. It's also, given the plot, a remarkably good take on Life On Mars/Ashes To Ashes for a book that came out four years before that TV show appeared! I guess maybe we can think of someone who did read it back when it first came out...
Book log 2018 #8 - CRIME BEAT
Apr. 28th, 2018 07:45 pmCRIME BEAT by Michael Connelly
Not a novel this time – I'm a fan of his crime/detective novels – but a collection of his crime reportage from the late 80s and early 90s in Florida and LA. You can really see the seeds of the Harry Bosch series here (including a couple of plot bunnies that he then used for novels) as well as the evolution of his personal writing style that conveys characters in his books.
Being full of old crime reports it can be a wearing read, at the amount of nastiness in the world, but worth it. More of a downside is the fact that, because of the pieces cover cases through several reporting updates, there's a lot of repetition of basic details in some of them.
OTOH, some of the unsolved-at-the-time ones are so interesting that I may have to Google them and see if they've been solved in the dozen or so years since the book came out...
Interesting if you're a true crime fan, or a Connelly fan looking at his influences.
Not a novel this time – I'm a fan of his crime/detective novels – but a collection of his crime reportage from the late 80s and early 90s in Florida and LA. You can really see the seeds of the Harry Bosch series here (including a couple of plot bunnies that he then used for novels) as well as the evolution of his personal writing style that conveys characters in his books.
Being full of old crime reports it can be a wearing read, at the amount of nastiness in the world, but worth it. More of a downside is the fact that, because of the pieces cover cases through several reporting updates, there's a lot of repetition of basic details in some of them.
OTOH, some of the unsolved-at-the-time ones are so interesting that I may have to Google them and see if they've been solved in the dozen or so years since the book came out...
Interesting if you're a true crime fan, or a Connelly fan looking at his influences.
Book log 2018 #7 - Remang
Apr. 13th, 2018 07:46 pmREMANG edited by Daphne Lee
An anthology of Malaysian ghost stories, which were entertaining. Some were more atmospheric than others, a couple – in particular the last one, Zirafah – quite touching. We tend to think of Victoriana when we think of ghost stories in the west, so it was nice to read some rather different ones. Some of the stories contain ghosts, some have local folkloric creatures such as the pontianak – and I don't think I've actually read a piece of modern fiction with the langsuir before, so it was quite a thrill to find some in here – though one of the stories (The Man In Red) doesn't actually seem to have anything particularly ghostly or supernatural at all.
If the collection has a failing it's that the endings of a number of the stories are unsatisfying, coming suddenly as if the writer has hit the word count and needs to stop, but this is true of many, many, short fiction collections. Western readers might be a little confused by occasional Malay or Indonesian colloquialisms in dialogue, but that's their problem, IMO, and in most cases readers will get used to it and get the gist.
For what it's worth, my favourites in here were: Grandmother Story (Sharmilla Ganesan), Umbrella Exit (Paul GnanaSelvam), The Twins Of Ramakhu (Heidi Shamsuddin, and this did give me a faint Jamesian buzz), Tok La's Gift (Fazlyn Abdul Malek), Heirloom (William Tham), and Zirafah (Wong Jo-Yen). But, really, they were all good. The first story, The Spectre Huntsman (Tunku Halim) is probably the weakest, relatively speaking and they get better from there on in. Which is a good thing.
It's probably difficult to get hold of over here, but worth the effort.
An anthology of Malaysian ghost stories, which were entertaining. Some were more atmospheric than others, a couple – in particular the last one, Zirafah – quite touching. We tend to think of Victoriana when we think of ghost stories in the west, so it was nice to read some rather different ones. Some of the stories contain ghosts, some have local folkloric creatures such as the pontianak – and I don't think I've actually read a piece of modern fiction with the langsuir before, so it was quite a thrill to find some in here – though one of the stories (The Man In Red) doesn't actually seem to have anything particularly ghostly or supernatural at all.
If the collection has a failing it's that the endings of a number of the stories are unsatisfying, coming suddenly as if the writer has hit the word count and needs to stop, but this is true of many, many, short fiction collections. Western readers might be a little confused by occasional Malay or Indonesian colloquialisms in dialogue, but that's their problem, IMO, and in most cases readers will get used to it and get the gist.
For what it's worth, my favourites in here were: Grandmother Story (Sharmilla Ganesan), Umbrella Exit (Paul GnanaSelvam), The Twins Of Ramakhu (Heidi Shamsuddin, and this did give me a faint Jamesian buzz), Tok La's Gift (Fazlyn Abdul Malek), Heirloom (William Tham), and Zirafah (Wong Jo-Yen). But, really, they were all good. The first story, The Spectre Huntsman (Tunku Halim) is probably the weakest, relatively speaking and they get better from there on in. Which is a good thing.
It's probably difficult to get hold of over here, but worth the effort.
Book log 2018 #6 - David Gemmell's Legend
Mar. 17th, 2018 08:16 pmby Stan Nicholls and Fangorn.
A nice graphic novel adaptation (from 1993) of Gemmell's first book – and it's so long since I read it when it first came out that I'd forgotten mine was a signed copy. It's a bit overly carried by narration captions, as comics go, but captures the essence of the book really well, and brings Druss to life nicely. Some of the descriptions are pulp gold, but the dialogue is good and it all works well.
The obviousness of the source material for the different factions is from the novel, so not the GN's responsibility, but I did nearly fall out of bed when I saw what was clearly Glamis Castle as the Temple of The Thirty....
Still, I was looking for a bit of nostalgic sword and sorcery action, and this did the trick as well as any actual Gemmell novel, with the great art being a wonderful bonus!
A nice graphic novel adaptation (from 1993) of Gemmell's first book – and it's so long since I read it when it first came out that I'd forgotten mine was a signed copy. It's a bit overly carried by narration captions, as comics go, but captures the essence of the book really well, and brings Druss to life nicely. Some of the descriptions are pulp gold, but the dialogue is good and it all works well.
The obviousness of the source material for the different factions is from the novel, so not the GN's responsibility, but I did nearly fall out of bed when I saw what was clearly Glamis Castle as the Temple of The Thirty....
Still, I was looking for a bit of nostalgic sword and sorcery action, and this did the trick as well as any actual Gemmell novel, with the great art being a wonderful bonus!
