Book – Page 29 – Made by Mikal

The Stars Must Wait

Post author:mikal
Post published:September 23, 2009
Post category:Book

This book is a novelization of "Night of the Trolls", which I have already read as part of The Compleat Bolo and Battlefields Beyond Tomorrow. I'm pretty fond of the short story, and this book version didn't start out strongly -- there is a prelude to explain some background, and then the book launches into what feels like the exact text of the short story. You can tell it hasn't been edited much, because there are minor continuity errors between this first chapter and the prelude. There are other continuity errors as well -- the blurb on the back says that the main character goes into stasis in 2002, but his wife dies in 1992 which is meant to be after the main character goes into stasis, and the map that he uses once out of stasis is copyright 2011 (even though the main character claims to have bought it just before going into stasis). Note that these dates are different to those used in the short story. These errors are distracting although the underlying story is still a good one. However, the good bits of the story are all contained in the short story. This feels like a poorly…

Days of Blood and Fire

Post author:mikal
Post published:September 21, 2009
Post category:Book

This is book seven of the extended Deverry series (preceeded by Daggerspell, Darkspell, Dawnspell, The Dragon Revenant, A Time of Exile, and A Time of Omens). The blurb on the back cover of this book implies that it should be safe for a new reader to enter the series here, and I can understand why publishers would want to do such a thing for such a long series. By contrast, Asimov's Extended Foundation Series has many entry points, with most stories being free standing. I think Kerr did a reasonable job of introducing the characters without being overly annoying about it. I've seen reviews from others that say that there is a lot of annoying ground to recover, such as the Etheric travel sequences. I disagree however -- these are just as long winded as in other books in the series, and we're talking about a couple of paragraphs, not hundreds of pages. The only part of this book which didn't sit well with me was Rori picking up a girlfriend with basically now warning. Perhaps I'm dense, but I didn't see it coming at all, and thought it was rather abrupt. I'm also not sure it did much to…

Mr. Penumbra’s Twenty-Four-Hour Book Store

Post author:mikal
Post published:September 15, 2009
Post category:Book

Boing Boing put me onto this online short story. Its really very good, and it distracted me from the book I am meant to be reading by not only being clever, but also by using jargon in a manner that not only furthered the story, but (and here's the rare bit) didn't make me immediately cringe. The story is also chock full of quotable quotes, of which I will supply you with one: I can't stop squirming. If fidgets were Wikipedia edits, I would have completely revamped the entry on guilt by now, and translated it into six new languages. An excellent short story of our modern times.

Isaac Asimov’s Robot City: Robots and Aliens: Maverick

Post author:mikal
Post published:September 13, 2009
Post category:Book

Bruce did an ok job with this book, although I think overall he was suffering from not having a lot to work with. The book is quite readable, which isn't true of some of the others, and has some nice details such as an attempt to sound technically feasible by the liberal sprinkling of unix jargon through the book. I'm not sure if the unix jargon is successful however. Its interesting that this is also the first of these books to not have an introduction from Asimov himself.

Dragondrums

Post author:mikal
Post published:September 11, 2009
Post category:Book

This is the third book in the Harper Hall trilogy (after Dragonsong and Dragonsinger). I didn't enjoy it as much as the other two. This book focuses on Piemur instead of Mellony, and the first half is about his pubescent turmoil, which is probably why I didn't enjoy this book as much. I had similar objections to The White Dragon, which is a very similar book to this one. However, the second half of the book is pretty good, and overall I thought it was a useful contribution to the overall story line of the series. [isbn: 0553258559]

Dragonsinger

Post author:mikal
Post published:September 8, 2009
Post category:Book

This book is interesting because its 200 or so pages only cover a seven day period. Its a coming of age story that continues directly on from Dragonsong, and overlaps somewhat with The White Dragon (if only peripherally). This book has parallels with Pawn of Prophecy in my mind, mostly because they're both about young children being taken under someone's wing and given the time they need to develop their talents. I liked this book, which gives me hope for the rest of the series. [isbn: 0553258540]

Books read in August 2009

Post author:mikal
Post published:September 1, 2009
Post category:Book

The White Dragon Bio of a Space Tyrant: Politician Bolos 6: Cold Steel Dragonsong

Dragonsong

Post author:mikal
Post published:September 1, 2009
Post category:Book

Dragonsong sits between Dragonquest and The White Dragon, although there is some overlap with The White Dragon and it doesn't matter what order you read those two in. Some friends and I were joking the other day that all McCaffrey books seem to involve a pained teenager coming to age. That's true with this book, although the story isn't as drawn out as The White Dragon, and I didn't find it quite as annoying to read. I think that's because McCaffrey didn't dwell on how terrible it was to be a teenager as much in this one. I really enjoyed this one, and thought it was better than The White Dragon, and on par with Dragonflight, although I do feel that The White Dragon opens up more interesting possibilities for the universe than this book did. [isbn: 0553258524]

Bolos 6: Cold Steel

Post author:mikal
Post published:August 29, 2009
Post category:Book

This bolo book is different from the previous ones, in that it heavily focuses on the humans side of the story, instead of the bolo's inner monologue. I've seen reviews online that say this makes it a bad bolo book, but I think that's unfair. The bolos are critical to the telling of this story, and you do hear from them. More than that, ultimately a point about the relationship between bolos and humans is being made that would be a lot harder to make if the story was told from the bolo side of the fence. This was a good book and I enjoyed it. [isbn: 0743435494]

Bio of a Space Tyrant: Politician

Post author:mikal
Post published:August 24, 2009
Post category:Book

This is the third book in the Bio of a Space Tyrant series (following Refugee and Mercenary). I picked this series up on a whim when it was cheap in a bookstore sale, and liked the first two books, although the first was quite grim and the second a little odd. This book isn't as strong as the other two, and it took longer to read than usual because of that... I guess the plot just seemed even harder to believe than the others in the series. [isbn: 0380896850]