A talky, ponderous, philosophical novel about an incomprehensible alien entity that is somehow supremely dangerous. There were so many things here that did not work for me: the egregious stereotypes, the tell-don't-show approach to everything from emotions to plot points, the annoying naïvete of the main characters, and a central conceit that ultimately did not resonate with me at all. I couldn't find any depth in the mysticism either. Honestly, this felt like the story of an experimental LARP or a low-budget and not particularly good Twilight Zone episode. I didn't really hate the story as much as I was utterly unmoved and uninvested.
Gunnery Sergeant Torin Kerr is a Confederation Marine's marine. She's survived more deadly encounters--and kept …
Review of "Valor's Trial" on 'Goodreads'
3 stars
Sometimes you want characters, who are human, well-rounded, have weaknesses and make mistakes. And sometimes you want Gunnery Sergeant Torin Kerr, who's more awesome than Batman.
The Confederation novels are essentially a pulp mil-scifi space opera. They have a big plot that interests me not in the slightest, but they have a protagonist I cannot help but love. Weird superpowerful aliens blah blah, I'm just here for Godzilla ... err, I mean Gunny Kerr. If the book was nothing except her taking on impossible odds, I'd be perfectly happy and would probably have given it four stars. But the big plot, while sort of clever, is to me just not as interesting as the low-level heroics.
Nebula Award–winning author Elizabeth Moon makes a triumphant return to science fiction with a thrilling …
Review of 'Cold Welcome' on 'Goodreads'
2 stars
These books are seriously not for me. Yes, they are competently written, the plots are interesting, the protagonists good enough BUT I honestly cannot stand the malicious incompetence of everyone else in the world. Particularly the ending of this one felt needlessly cruel in the vein of "nah nah, you cannot get what you want because everyone else is a stupid asshole". Also, all the detail is somehow ... in the wrong place? We get detailed competence porn of clever people doing clever things with zero tension, but we absolutely gloss over things I'd have felt deserved a bit more explanation.
I don't know. I'm just on a different wavelength than the writer, apparently.
Video game novel adaptations and tie-ins - are there any good ones? I'm trying to find out.
I've never played Crysis II. Peter Watts is one of my favourite authors. Maybe that was the best possible angle to come at this book. Also, Peter Watts was probably the best possible person to write this novel.
Crysis: Legion is about nanotechnology, the nature of consciousness, free will, biology and all other things typical of Mr. Watts, wrapped in a relentless grunt's-eye view story of an alien invasion. You can see the bones of a (linear and silly?) first person shooter in the narrative, but the prose here is simply beautiful. The care and intelligence put into a story that might be really damn stupid blows your mind.
After reading the book, I feel I need to play Crysis II, just in case it's half as impressive as this novel. So, mission …
Video game novel adaptations and tie-ins - are there any good ones? I'm trying to find out.
I've never played Crysis II. Peter Watts is one of my favourite authors. Maybe that was the best possible angle to come at this book. Also, Peter Watts was probably the best possible person to write this novel.
Crysis: Legion is about nanotechnology, the nature of consciousness, free will, biology and all other things typical of Mr. Watts, wrapped in a relentless grunt's-eye view story of an alien invasion. You can see the bones of a (linear and silly?) first person shooter in the narrative, but the prose here is simply beautiful. The care and intelligence put into a story that might be really damn stupid blows your mind.
After reading the book, I feel I need to play Crysis II, just in case it's half as impressive as this novel. So, mission accomplished, I guess. Also, the question of whether there are good video game novel adaptations has received a definite answer. There is at least one.
Review of 'Dishonored - The Corroded Man (Video Game Saga)' on 'Goodreads'
2 stars
Video game novel adaptations and tie-ins - are there any good ones? I'm trying to find out.
I wonder if the game publishers who commission video game tie-ins have ever heard of copyeditors? Dishnored: The Corroded Man reads like a first draft, but someone thought "eh, good enough, ship it" (and maybe "we'll patch it later if we need to"?). It's not entirely a bad novel; it might be a solid three-star fantasy thriller, but the writing is very clumsy and the pacing is poor. Also, at times the story reads like a series of Greatest Hits from the games, which is too bad as it also has some nice ideas of its own (and, it must be said, at times some stupid ideas of its own).
It's obvious this one is for fans of the game -- who else would it be? -- but it's like the writer is …
Video game novel adaptations and tie-ins - are there any good ones? I'm trying to find out.
I wonder if the game publishers who commission video game tie-ins have ever heard of copyeditors? Dishnored: The Corroded Man reads like a first draft, but someone thought "eh, good enough, ship it" (and maybe "we'll patch it later if we need to"?). It's not entirely a bad novel; it might be a solid three-star fantasy thriller, but the writing is very clumsy and the pacing is poor. Also, at times the story reads like a series of Greatest Hits from the games, which is too bad as it also has some nice ideas of its own (and, it must be said, at times some stupid ideas of its own).
It's obvious this one is for fans of the game -- who else would it be? -- but it's like the writer is constrained to a rather narrow framework of how things must work out in all things Dishonored. So eh. It paid the bills, I suppose.
Review of "Victory Conditions (Vatta's War)" on 'Goodreads'
2 stars
"What an idiot", the protagonists in Vatta's War keep exclaiming, and with good reason. It really feels that everyone in this series who is not either a main character, or super impressed by one, is well and truly an idiot. This results in a novel series that's on the surface about interstellar war, but is in reality about a war against an unceasing parade of criminally stupid obstructive bureaucrats.
This gets really tedious for the reader, as there seems to be no bigger point to be made here: everyone but the protagonists is just blindingly stupid and stubborn, constantly doing The Wrong Thing in order to provide yet another convoluted twist for a plot that would be engaging and interesting, if it wasn't for all the Idiot Ballgames that keep interrupting it. That's the tragedy here: there's an actual gripping war story to be told here, but it keeps getting …
"What an idiot", the protagonists in Vatta's War keep exclaiming, and with good reason. It really feels that everyone in this series who is not either a main character, or super impressed by one, is well and truly an idiot. This results in a novel series that's on the surface about interstellar war, but is in reality about a war against an unceasing parade of criminally stupid obstructive bureaucrats.
This gets really tedious for the reader, as there seems to be no bigger point to be made here: everyone but the protagonists is just blindingly stupid and stubborn, constantly doing The Wrong Thing in order to provide yet another convoluted twist for a plot that would be engaging and interesting, if it wasn't for all the Idiot Ballgames that keep interrupting it. That's the tragedy here: there's an actual gripping war story to be told here, but it keeps getting lost in the weeds.
Vatta's War series was interesting enough to keep me reading, but at the same time it was also so very annoying. The subplots are silly and rely on one contrived coincidence after another. Characterisation is predictable and monochrome. The 'verse is a Wild West of armed and trigger-happy private individuals and inefficient, corrupt public services. You can't even pass it off as serious society building, since there's not a single society, there's a bunch, it's just all of them seem to be caricatures of civilisations populated by fools, who can only be saved from their own idiocy by gung-ho loose cannons.
(I gave all the other books in the series three stars; this one got two stars just because it got saddled with my final annoyances. It's not actually any worse than the others.)
