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The Legacy of Eden

The Legacy of Eden - Nelle Davy Melodramatic and portentous. Gave up.

Libriomancer

Libriomancer - Jim C. Hines This book had a great premise and lots of fun and clever details, but was somewhat bogged down by info-dumps and the uncomfortable romantic subplot with Lena. I'll read the next one, but I won't rush out to get it in hardback like I did this one.

Reviewer Carol beat me to everything I thought about this book. Check out her review.

Redshirts

Redshirts - John Scalzi I should have liked this book. I like Star Trek, and I like John Scalzi's blog. I enjoyed another book of his called "The Android's Dream". This book, however, just didn't work for me for several reasons.

Maybe my expectations were too high. From the hype surrounding this book and from the first few chapters that were available for free online before the book's release, I was expecting something clever, funny, and very subversive to the genre. It was sometimes clever and occasionally very funny, but subversive? Maybe in the obnoxious, masturbatory way that writers sometimes write about talking to their characters (but this is a writer writing about writers talking to their characters so it's meta!! yeah, no, still obnoxious), but otherwise an awful lot of tropes and cliches go largely unchallenged. I guess I expected an intelligent exploration and undermining of the underlying assumptions and cultural structures that allow us to so easily discard 'extra' characters we don't know even while we root for the ones we know and love. Instead what I got was a book-length equivalent of an internet meme-style image of Gene Roddenberry looking at a lolcat in a red shirt with a caption stating "redshirts are people tooo!!!!111!" Well... if you ignore some of the deeper implications.

Most of the characters sound the same--except for the characters based on the original main Star Trek cast, most of them have the same snappy, too-clever Buffy-style voice. I couldn't tell who was who a lot of the time, but it really didn't matter because they were mostly interchangeable. Wait... wasn't the interchangeability of secondary characters supposed to be under scrutiny here? The only reason I could sometimes tell who was talking was on the rare occasion that 'she' was used instead of 'he'.

On that note, let's talk about female characters. "Redshirts" hearkens back to and draws its parallels directly to the original Star Trek series. You know... the one where Captain Kirk seduces a new gorgeous, scantily-clad alien bimbo woman every episode. The one where the network outright forbid Roddenberry from having a woman as a first officer. The one where the women's MILITARY UNIFORMS were tiny miniskirts. The one where female characters were primarily there for one of three purposes: background eye candy, fleeting (and often tragic) love interest, or seductive villain. Sorry, villainess.

So what do we get in "Redshirts"? The single important female character's main role revolves around the seduction of one of the Star Trek-based main characters. Yeah.

And the guy who has figured it all out... did he figure it out because he wanted to live? No. Did he figure it out because he wanted to blow the whistle and end redshirt attrition for the greater good? No. Did he figure it out through sheer scientific curiosity? No. He figured it out because his wife was killed on an away mission and he went nuts, giving him the motivation to learn why, why? WHY? was wifey gone. So his wife was both redshirt AND a classic woman-in-the-refrigerator. How very original. How subversive. I literally rolled my eyes when I read this clever revelation.

Most of the rest of this review is pretty much an extended spoiler. You've been warned.

So a bunch of the interchangeable redshirts try to change their fate, which could have been a neat story. Instead, it became an uncomfortable descent into the murky, sometimes ethically ambiguous realm of "real person fiction". The redshirts find that they are actually fictional characters in a fictional universe, and go to the "real" universe (which, like the "fictional" universe of the redshirts, is perfectly recognizable with clearly identifiable characters--only instead of fictional versions of fictional characters, we now have fictional versions of real people) to convince their creator to quit killing them off willy-nilly. Several of the characters meet their "real" actor counterparts; one of the 'extra' actors describes one of the main actors as quite a jerk, which was kind of off-putting since the main actor in question was easily identifiable as a real person.

Then comes the really unsettling part. Their Gene Roddenberry-esque creator is depressed and won't talk to anyone because his son was in a motorcycle accident from which he is unlikely to recover. The novel neatly wraps up with the son saved by switching bodies with his fictional-universe counterpart and not-Roddenberry agreeing to take better care of 'extra' characters.

I had a weird, unpleasant feeling reading this part, and I wasn't sure why. This plot point felt so oddly specific after the (clearly deliberately) generic romps of the "fictional universe" characters that I was actually compelled to look up Roddenberry's son to see if anything untoward had ever happened to him. Google has nothing to report about Gene Roddenberry's son ever having an accident... but his oldest child, daughter Darleen, died of head injuries from a car accident in 1995.

Ouch.

Bear in mind here that I was expecting a light-hearted yet insightful deconstruction of some of the more absurd and abused genre tropes. In fairness, it should be noted that Roddenberry himself died in 1991, so he was never in the position that the not-Roddenberry character Paulson was in the book. At this point, however, I'm forced to wonder what the point of this story was. All stories have a moral, or a message, or multiple messages, regardless of their creator(s)' intentions. I can see the attempt in "Redshirts" to subvert the sexism of Star Trek, but I think it was a complete failure. I can see the layers of meta, I can see how the main characters of "Redshirts" (the redshirts themselves) are drawn deliberately flatter than the secondary characters (the "real world" not-Roddenberry characters) so that the reader sympathizes with not-Roddenberry and crew. I can see the concept that everything we create and put out into the world, no matter how seemingly trivial, has real meaning and potentially even real consequences.

Unfortunately, the deepest layer I can see is pretty much an exploitative re-envisioning of the actual death of a real woman, altered in classic Star Trek woo woo fashion. At its core, "Redshirts" appears to be a real person fanfiction story about Gene Roddenberry saving Darleen Roddenberry from death by car accident-related head injuries... by changing his Star Trek storylines and being nicer to his minor characters. Names have been changed to prevent a lawsuit protect the innocent.

Paulson's son's story in "Redshirts" bears enough resemblance to Darleen Roddenberry's real death that, especially given the direct and obvious parallels in so many other other characters, it completely derails the the novel. I'm not sure how better to put it than that it just feels wrong, especially given the "light-hearted romp", "funny", "loving ode" sorts of press this book is getting. There is a deeper stab into reality here that plays off like a video game Easter egg. After playing spot-the-reference throughout this whole "light-hearted romp" of a book, the realization that a major plot point changes a real life tragedy to a Trekified magic fix is a bit of a sucker punch. Maybe that was the point... but what a distasteful way to make it.

Maybe there is a deeper level of meta here that I'm just not seeing, or (I think more likely) maybe I've found a layer that wasn't intended, or at least wasn't intended to be so squicky. If the moral of the story was supposed to be that "redshirts are people too" and that we need to be careful about what we create and and put out into the world and that all lives should be treated with respect rather than as throwaway plot devices, then greater care should have been taken not to twist a real person's story into a ridiculous plot device and cheapen a real person's death. That's a twist I'm just not comfortable with. This is why, as I stated earlier, I consider real person fiction to be shaky ground.

Of course, using real people in fiction has been done--and has been done in Star Trek itself--many times, albeit usually with historical figures from more distant history. I loved "To Your Scattered Bodies Go" by Philip Jose Farmer, for example, which is real people fiction that includes literally everyone who ever lived up to a certain point. Where exactly the line is for what is okay and what isn't when using recognizable real people in fiction is a matter for debate, but I was uncomfortable with the not-Roddenberry plotline of "Redshirts" even before learning about Darleen and even moreso after. Your mileage may vary.

Are there other messages in this text? Certainly... but anything you take away from this story is complicated and contaminated by the problematic not-Roddenberry plot and its tidy solution.

The codas at the end, featuring an internet chat log (written in the first person), a follow-up on the problematic character described above (second person), and a trite and predictable romance (third person), make it clear to me that this was an indulgent experimental work, and in my opinion it was not a successful one. All of the tropes and cliches that were explored in the text, like the flat characterization, the sexism, the handwavium mechanics, and the writer interacting with his imaginary creations seem to fall flat and do more to reinforce the cliches than to subvert them. The creative and unlikely methods of death suffered by many redshirts were great, but not enough.

All in all, I was very disappointed with this book. I was on board with it and enjoying it--despite its shortcomings, as I still expected them to be addressed--right up until the big reveal about why all the redshirts were dying on away missions. It even could have worked until they came up with their clever fix. At that point the story went in a direction that felt wrong both for the narrative and wrong for the reasons discussed in the gigantic spoiler above. I gave it two stars because it does have some genuinely funny moments and a few insightful passages, but there wasn't enough to carry the novel or counterbalance its flaws.

I leave you with this, probably my favorite passage, that more or less accurately predicts and responds to my reaction to this book:

"Jesus," Kerensky said, looking around. "You people. I have one of the most incredible experiences I'll ever have, talking with the one person who really gets me--who really understands me--and you're all down here thinking I'm performing some sort of time-traveling incestuous masturbation thing. Thanks so much for crapping on my amazing, life-altering experience. You all make me sick." He stormed off.


That's fandom for you.

The Magicians

The Magicians - Lev Grossman If Harry Potter was a self-absorbed narcissist who took a trip with his equally repugnant, magic-frat-boy friends to Bizarro Narnia, this is the book that would result. The only good character dies to save people who don't deserve it, and the not-Narnia plot is way too recognizably derivative for comfort. Yuck.

Jenny Pox

Jenny Pox - J.L. Bryan This story started out promising, but somewhere along the line it devolved into a weird combination of standard YA contrived romance and an attempt to gross out the reader.

Jenny begins as a sympathetic character, and her characterization and backstory are genuinely touching at times. In addition to her inability to touch others without hurting or killing them, she's the poor girl in a town where most of the people seem fairly well-off. Her father is a drunk and her mother, predictably, is dead. Jenny keeps her ability a secret, but when she discovers that bully Ashleigh's boyfriend Seth both has an ability and is immune to her "Jenny pox"... well... the story starts to fall apart.

Once the unconvincing romance between Jenny and Seth begins, Jenny's characterization starts to change. At first it seems like she's starting to stand up for herself, which is great, but eventually Jenny becomes a completely different character. By the end of the book, shy, gentle Jenny, who has taken great pains her entire life to avoid touching anyone so as not to harm them, takes her clothes off and grabs everyone she can get her hands on, killing nearly the entire town in a gory, pestilent rampage. Yes, the people were gathered by Ashleigh in her attempt to have Jenny and Seth killed by an angry mob, but most if not all of the people were innocent. Ashleigh herself shot Seth, not the townspeople. Ashleigh's influence had the town under a mass-hypnosis-like effect, and people under her influence were not in full control of their own actions. Jenny shows no regret or compassion for these people except when she spares the pregnant girls, an action that really didn't make any sense. She'd killed the rest of the town, why not them?

Just as I suspected the moment he died, Seth's healing ability brings him back to life, and he follows Jenny's tracks, pulls her out of the river she threw herself in to die (I do hope that the river was not a source of drinking water anywhere downstream...), and resurrects her. During the time they were dead, each of them magically 'remembered' their previous lives, in which they pretty much did the same things over and over. Infodump ex machina, yawn, and the story ends without the logical conclusion wherein the CDC comes in, quarantines the town, and the government hauls Jenny and Seth away for experimental research. And, oh yeah, mass murder. Yeesh.

Darkness on the Edge of Town

Darkness on the Edge of Town - Brian Keene While this book did have a few genuinely unsettling moments, there just wasn't anything particularly noteworthy or compelling here. As I was reading this book I kept thinking how similar to Stephen King's "The Mist" it seemed... then one of the characters actually asked if the other characters had seen "The Mist" movie. The main difference between "Darkness on the Edge of Town" and "The Mist" is the origin of the darkness/mist. That was a little too derivative for my comfort.

There is no subtlety of characterization, and most of the characters are wooden, uninteresting, and/or cliche. The young "hood" kids' dialog wavers between kind of funny and almost painful, and Christy, the main female character, behaves totally incomprehensibly and inconsistently. (The only other important female character, incidentally, is practically a carbon copy of the religious female antagonist in "The Mist".)

The main character, Robbie, seems like he might have some sense and might be on to something by trying to study the darkness, but he doesn't try very hard or take intelligent action based on the information that he is given. When he realizes that the runes that Dez drew are effective at keeping the darkness at bay, the first thing I thought was that he should try copying the runes and throwing them into the darkness to try to drive it back, but it doesn't occur to Robbie at all. Although he does have the sense to ask Dez about the runes, it also doesn't occur to him to study the books that Dez has to see if he can find a solution. It doesn't seem to occur to anyone else in the entire town to try to seriously investigate what is happening. Rather, it seems like the details about the origin of the darkness were there just for the reader's information and to squeeze some Lovecraftian lore in, not because they really mattered to the plot--it certainly didn't seem to matter much to Robbie.

I think there is a compelling story in here, but it isn't the one that Keene told. Dez's background story describes how he used to fight demons/malevolent entities, and he and his group sound like a Buffy-like group that failed and fell apart. I think his perspective through that lens would have been much more interesting.

It's an easy, short read but lacks any depth at all. I kept reading mostly hoping for a payoff that never came. Meh.

Everything is Broken

Everything is Broken - John Shirley This novel depicts a town that is severely damaged by a tsunami. Due to the mayor's expulsion of most of their government-run services (like the police and fire department) in favor of some nebulous free-market private-sector-worshiping magic, the town infrastructure is so crippled that chaos ensues and a lot more people end up dying than should have.

The book is a pretty damning condemnation of certain breeds of "pull yourself up by your own bootstraps" libertarianism and conservatism, and that's great and all, but I just wasn't impressed. It was brutal, felt rushed, and the parts that followed the "bad guys" had an awkward point-of-view. I never really grew to care about the characters and I wasn't convinced by the character development.

I just didn't like this book as much as I thought I would. I'd love to see this concept done better.

Kitty and the Midnight Hour

Kitty and the Midnight Hour - Carrie Vaughn This was a cool book idea, but the weak protagonist and horrible gender dynamics completely ruin it. There are plenty of ways to write werewolves. Why, why, why did this female author choose to write hers in a way that justifies the main character's repeated rape?

This is not okay.

Seriously. Take out the werewolf aspect of this book and you are left with a story about a woman being abused and repeatedly raped by a man who is treating other women the same way (oh, and taking half of their earnings). This is gross and wrong and why the f*** would a female writer choose to create her pack dynamic like this without soundly slapping the concept down? There was no critique of rape culture to be found here, just a mewling, whimpering protagonist who kinda sorta actually likes being raped and it's kinda sorta actually okay because werewolf. Well, I guess the moral of this story is that if a man has power over you it's okay and you really want it. Slapping a paranormal facade over a real and common phenomenon that women experience at staggering rates all over the world does not make it any less a gross justification of that phenomenon.

This kind of garbage is turning me off of the entire paranormal subgenre. I almost see this book as I see Twilight--as less a novel and more a long-winded cry for help. Ms. Vaughn, although I will not personally be contributing to your finances any further, I sincerely hope you can afford therapy now with your absurdly high book sales.

It's unfortunate that this book even exists.

It's worse that it was written by a woman.

And it's absolutely appalling that female readers are eating this rape apologia up (along with other similarly-themed books, so many of which are also written by women). I'm ashamed for my gender. To my fellow women: you deserve better.

After the Golden Age

After the Golden Age - Carrie Vaughn Although I read this book in a single afternoon, I ended up feeling irritated and a bit cheated at the end. An awful lot of the book is a prolonged whine by the main character, Celia West, who has a major issue with being the normal daughter of two super-powered parents.

The book starts out all right and even has some decent humorous moments, but as it progresses it becomes more and more clear that Celia is a narcissistic idiot who really hasn't learned anything from her life experiences. Her "teenage rebellion" is an act of attempted terrorism and mass murder, and she feels only indignation at the mention of it rather than shame or regret. Yikes. There is a shallow love story pasted on to the barely-there main plot, but neither of Celia's suitors is adequately fleshed out or has any chemistry with Celia. Her father actually seems to be a bigger jerk than she is in some ways, but have no fear--he will be redeemed in the tidiest, most cliched possible way.

I picked up this book without realizing that it was from the same author as the Kitty Norville books, of which I've only read the first (and will not read any more). I seem to be encountering lately a glut of books featuring privileged, fairly well-off, yet incredibly whiny and shallow young women whose lives just aren't quite perfect enough (and who can't shut the eff up about it), and Carrie Vaughn seems to be a serial offender. I'm done with this author.

EDIT: Oh good God, I see that this book has now been designated the first in a series and another one is coming in January. I don't know what to say. I'm not sure who is worse--the publishing industry that keeps pimping junk like this, Twilight, Eragon, City of Bones, etc., or the shallow, subliterate masses that buy them in such numbers as to justify it. Bah.

Eragon

Eragon - Christopher Paolini This book is an embarrassment to the publishing industry, an affront to literature, and an insult to both the intelligence of its readers and the several authors from whom Mr. Paolini blatantly stole. I fart in its general direction.

Hero

Hero - Perry Moore I really wanted to like this book. A YA novel about a gay superhero--cool! And yet, despite the author's obvious attempts to break away from the standard, cliched superhero lore, there remains quite a bit of disappointingly standard fare.

For example: most of the female characters are irritating cliches, and the one who stands out as the most original one, of course, dies. Let's chuck some more women in that refrigerator, it's not full just yet. Also, if I read one more "lackluster-to-outright-bad dad redeems himself through sacrificing his life" story I'm going to scream.

The pacing was sometimes awkward, and it was obvious that the main group of superheroes was a blatant ripoff of the DC universe's Justice League. At times the story almost felt like it could have started its life as Justice League fan fiction, to the point where determining which "Hero" character was based on which DC character became distracting.

Thom's superpower seemed pretty trivial to the story most of the time, and conveniently vanished as the plot called for it. Thom himself vacillates between being a realistic and sympathetic character and being a whiny, careless idiot. I guess I can chalk that up to his age, but it does make for sometimes frustrating reading. It seemed like everyone was against Thom because of his sexuality, which sometimes seemed overdramatic and unbelievable, but I think that part of what the author was trying to convey was that everyone doesn't have to be against you if those who could be on your side remain silent. It seemed like there were a lot of people in the background who just didn't care, and the more vocal bigots were never slapped down. A sad commentary indeed.

Minerva Wakes

Minerva Wakes - Holly Lisle I read this a couple years ago, so my review is based on the lingering impressions this book left me. For starters, the husband was a wishy-washy, cheating jerk who never really owned up for his infidelity. In fact, I believe the wife never found out, which seemed like both a cop-out and a wasted opportunity for character development and needed closure. I felt sympathy for the harried and determined mom at times, but the kids were over-kiddie-fied to the point of being cutesy and annoying. The action seemed to drop off sharply and the book came to a sudden end, making me think that the author may have run out of time to turn this in or something. The story had a great hook, but I was ultimately disappointed and annoyed with it.

Twilight

Twilight - Stephenie Meyer Reading this book gave me an aneurism. The brain damage I suffered made finishing it possible, but I still had too much higher function to really enjoy it. I'm writing this from the ICU. True story.

City of Bones

City of Bones - Cassandra Clare Derivative, unimaginative, and poorly written.

Dies the Fire

Dies the Fire - S.M. Stirling Great premise. Awesome title. Terrible execution. I can usually slosh my way through even bad or boring books, but I couldn't finish this one.

The main bad guy is a completely absurd history professor/LARPer who takes over all the gangs and begins murdering, enslaving, and raping at will to build a little medieval-style kingdom for himself. All technology not working? Gunpowder not exploding? I'll accept. This fool not being brutully killed very early after "The Change" as a result of his attempts to seize power? I will not accept.

Between that guy, Juniper's CONSTANT "Goddess this!" and "Goddess that!", the Lord of the Rings wannabes, and the incredibly convenient way people with specialized skill sets would show up, I just couldn't take it. This book read like a Ren Faire enthusiast's wet dream.

Make that a MALE Ren Faire enthusiast. Although I know that rape is common now and would probably be more common in a lawless post-apocalyptic world, I'm tired of it being used as a shorthand for "look here's a bad guy", particularly the way Stirling presents it. I read "Island in the Sea of Time" (hated it too, but decided to give the author another chance since the premise was so interesting) and his treatment of women and rape there was problematic as well; the jaguar scene is so vomit-worthy that I don't think I could even attempt to review that book. Women who aren't lucky enough to be main characters are usually there to be rape fodder and display how awful one of the bad guys is or further the plot development for a male character. I don't think I could stomach another work by this author due to this issue.

Hard Magic

Hard Magic - Laura Anne Gilman There was a lot that just didn't do it for me in this book, but I'm giving it two stars anyway. Why? Because I think that my main issue with this book was the main character.

Pretty much every other important character in the book is more interesting than Bonita Torres. Superficially, Bonnie is a lot of things: (A) product of Council (association of magic users) upbringing and freejack (independent magic users) parentage, (B)amateur detective who investigated her father's murder, (C) recent college graduate looking for a job... and yet none of these things seem to have a serious impact on the story. Her background is told rather than shown (as is most of the story), and her mixed magical background (A) and independent investigation into her father's murder (B), which could have made an interesting story by itself, are throwaway facts that help her circumvent (C) when out of nowhere she is offered a job she didn't apply for. Would that we were all so lucky.

A lot of Bonnie's traits seem superficial. She should be interesting, but she just falls flat and frankly I felt a bit deceived about some of her self-descriptions. It was as if she was meant to have this variety of traits without actually adhering to them. She is half-Latina... with natural honey blonde hair. Fine, I'll accept that although I suspect that would be somewhat rare/unlikely. She is bisexual, but spends nearly the entire book drooling over men (which will be its own discussion in a moment). Yes, she checks out Sharon, but after accepting that Sharon isn't interested, gives it up quickly, unlike her interest in the men. She is worried about money even as she lives in a nice hotel room paid for by her apparently ungodly rich mentor/father figure. Sure, she wants to make it on her own, but given the golden safety net she's got under her, her job search woes sound like so much angst and don't give much sense of urgency. Nothing about her carries much weight or meaning.

Speaking of her job woes, though, she would probably have more luck acquiring and maintaining a career if she didn't date both clients and suspects. She is very firm about not wanting to date coworkers because of the potential trouble involved, but she constantly drools over one of her two bosses, she goes on a date with their first and only client's son, and she goes on a date with the main suspect right after she questions him. I suspect that that author was trying to make it clear that Bonnie is a sexually mature and independent woman, but the character just comes off like both an unprofessional idiot and an overly hormonal teenager. I was almost embarrassed for her in some of the scenes with her boss; that wasn't sexual tension as I've seen other reviewers describe it, it was an exercise in juvenile humiliation. Zoinks. If the descriptions of Bonnie's lustful nonsense were cut out, the book would probably be a couple dozen pages shorter.

Also, I don't care what she is wearing. It is not necessary to describe the full details of every outfit unless it is relevant to the story, which it usually wasn't.

Even with all of Bonnie's diversity failure and foolishness, the book does have things going for it. Pretty much every character other than Bonnie seemed more interesting than Bonnie herself. Her mentor Joseph is a high-powered magical lawyer with a seat on the Council. One of her bosses left Chicago after seriously shaking up the Council over something we are never told details about, and he and her other boss (the one she can't stop drooling over) can work tandem magic, which apparently pretty rare but which, again, we don't get to hear much about. One of her coworkers is on parole, which we find out in a single line and never hear about again. Another coworker (the truthteller! surely significant!) is hauling whiskey to work, but it isn't explored further. One is a gifted magical hacker in a world where magic fries electronics pretty easily. The last one is a former star football player. Come on! So much to work with here, but nothing is really explored or even thought about by our protagonist, who has much more important lusting over inappropriate targets to do.

The premise of the main plot is excellent. Magical CSI! What more can you say? The name of their team is cutesy and regrettable (PUPI? Seriously? I think that one of the two bosses should have been snickering over that one.) but their approach to magic, which amazingly no one in the entire magical community has ever tried to do before, is very cool. The author presents a number of potentially interesting side plots that I would have liked to see explored. The case they are working on is sort-of solved... they learn who ordered the murders but do not (or seemingly attempt to) track down the actual (hired) killer.

I'm guessing that the loose ends are there because this is the first of a series, but there really needed to more more meat and less filling in this volume. This book retails for $14.95 in the U.S., and at that price I don't think it's too much to ask for a complete story, which I don't think this book is. I could honestly imagine all or most of my complaints being addressed and/or made plot points of in future books, and I'm just barely interested enough to maybe -maybe- read the second book to see if anything pans out, which is the only reason I gave it two stars instead of one. I won't go out of my way for it, though.