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dare

dare@kirja.casa

Joined 2 years, 5 months ago

Roolipelaaja, seikkailuharrastaja, spefi-kirjailija

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reviewed The Consuming Fire by John Scalzi (The Interdependency, #2)

John Scalzi: The Consuming Fire (Paperback, 2018)

"The second, thrilling novel in the bestselling Interdependency series, from Hugo Award-winning author John Scalzi. …

I've been Scalzi'd

A wise man once said: The failure mode of 'clever' is 'asshole'. The Consuming Fire spends way too much time in the failure mode of clever.

It's not a bad story, as such, it's just that the style of writing constantly rubs me the wrong way. Everything is dialogue, like a radio play. Everyone is trying to out-clever everyone else. Everything is a joke. While there's substance here, it's all subservient to style. It knows its tropes and winks knowingly while employing them. But the rub is: knowing the tropes and pointing them out is just being cynical, if you're not elevating your material beyond them. Redshirts did that. TCF does not.

TCF wants to be as clever Redshirts, but falls flat. This is easy reading, this is space opera in the guise of junk food, this is being a smartarse without being smart, this is characters saying 'fuck' a …

reviewed The Flame in the Maze by Caitlin Sweet

No cover

Caitlin Sweet: The Flame in the Maze (2015)

Dungeon!

It's a dungeon crawl.

Sure, it's a smart reimagining of an ancient Greek myth, written with the ruthlessness typical of the author. It has numerous, interesting, well-written characters -- some carrying over from The Door in the Mountain, some new. It's a twisting, non-linear story featuring bad things happening to all kinds of people. At times, it's so horrific that you feel like you don't want to keep reading, knowing that you will anyway.

But still, it's a dungeon crawl. This is a good thing in my book.

reviewed Hella by David Gerrold

David Gerrold: Hella (Paperback, 2021, DAW)

No Chtorr, unfortunately.

I'm a big fan of Gerrold and his biological sci-fi, yet Hella left me cold. The worldbuilding was interesting enough, but there was little plot for 3/4ths of the novel, and the narration was mostly annoying. I know first-person neurodivergent can be hard to write and hard to read, but I've seen it done better than here. So, just meh. I didn't hate it, but am not running to check out the Dingilliad after this, and will keep waiting for more Chtorr. It's only been almost 30 years so far.