oxfordhacker | Entries tagged with reviews

Reason for reading: I read and very much enjoyed his first novel, The Gone-Away World, which was SF set after an apocalypse caused by bombs that destroy the information content of their targets. It was wonderfully weird and frequently hilarious, so when I saw a proof of his next book in Oxfam, I bought and read it immediately.

Synposis: Joe Spork is a gentle man living a quiet life repairing clockwork devices until an unusual commission draws the attention of some extremely dangerous people. Being spoiler-averse I don't want to say much more about the plot, but the book contains old-school gangsters, steampunk monks, many conspiracies and secret societies, fighting elephants, an immortal villain, a manic pixie dream girl scientist trying to invent something to make everyone better, an incredibly bad-ass old lady (with flashbacks to her war career as a schoolgirl spy) and a clockwork threat to reality itself.

Review: As I mentioned earlier, I find it much harder to write about good books. Not only is it intimidating to write about good writing, but I also find harder to convey enthusiasm than contempt, and I worry more about spoiling aspects of the book for potential readers. Also, in this case, I don't have my copy because I've lent it one of the list of my friends who were as eager to read it as I was, so I might just going to cop out and say that I really liked it. It's about ordinary people (albeit with extraordinary pasts) facing the sort of shit that you'd normally need Doom Patrol to fix. It's larger than life, but it's consistent about it so the world feels cohesive and real. It also had some cool secret London stuff which read like Neil Gaiman was into pulp adventure instead of fairy tales.

Illustrative excerpt from Amazon review:

2 stars
Too whimsical for my taste, like a second rate Dickens

Current Mood: Enthused
Current Location: The garden room
Current Music: 'It's All Over' - The Slew (in my head)

Remember when I said that I had decided to post more often, and to work my way through my 'to read' pile? In an ingenious attempt to combine both of these schemes, I hereby begin a Week Of Book Reviews (Hopefully). I don't think I'm very good at reviewing, because when I'm faced with a good book I fear that I will fail to do it justice. I over-think everything that I write anyway, but thinking hard about good writing and then trying to write about it can be utterly paralysing. Caution: This introduction may constitute a spoiler as to my feelings about the upcoming book.

Reason for reading: I have a book-acquisition technique which has served me well: when an interesting-sounding book is mentioned in conversation or on-line I add it to my wishlist before I forget about it. This means that every birthday and Christmas I am greeted with a selection of books that look very much to my taste yet come as a surprise. This was one such, though I'm characteristically unaware of how I came across it in the first place. I can see why I might have liked the sound of it, though.

Synopsis: Shane is a rootless, hapless young adult. He has bad habits and no real friends, but his real problem is his indifference towards everything including himself. In the course of the book he has regular sex with two different women (unsatisfactory for two different reasons), gets a shit temp job which he treats with even more contempt than it deserves, and has awkward conversations with his landlord and neighbour characterised by mutual incomprehension and distaste. There's a vestigial plot about him being a suspect in a murder of the most sympathetic character, but it's quickly and anti-climatically resolved.

Review: If the above synopsis evokes a book lacking in pleasure and point then it has done its job. Of course, given the title, one could convincingly argue that the author has done his job too. It certainly isn't badly written, has some nifty turns of phrase and did convincingly convey (indeed, induce) the protagonist's feeling of empty despair. It has a stab at making his indifference almost heroic, but in the end he can't even convince himself that it's anything other than a failing. Discussing books over dinner the other day I said that I don't like books that are about people being unpleasant to each other (not that I demand no unpleasantness, just that I don't want to read a book that's about it.) This book is about someone being unpleasant to himself, which is arguably worse.

I am therefore in danger of that cardinal sin of reviewing: criticising a book for not being what I wanted. My objection, therefore, applies more to the marketing than the book itself. The blurb and review quotes all present this as being a humour book, and it isn't; or if it is, my sense of humour differs fundamentally from that of the reviewers (and presumably of the author, unless he thought he was writing a cry for help but was too polite to correct his chuckling readers). It has some witty lines, but they're in service of a fundamentally grim book. It's not the first time I've been baffled by this approach to humour, so I concede that there must be a mindset that finds grotesque characters intrinsically hilarious, presumably because they exaggerate human foibles. BBC Radio 4 occasionally does comedies like this, where apparently the entirety of the fun is expected to arise from characters reacting unreasonably and inappropriately. They leave me in a sort of uncanny valley of characterisation, and profoundly glad that I don't recognise their depictions of humanity.

Illustrative excerpt from Amazon review:

*****
The main character is someone you feel a great connection with as he acts out all the different things that you wish you could do in your office job (feel asleep during work, cut people down with comments, not care about anything generally).

Current Mood: Disappointed
Current Location: The garden room
Current Music: Jo singing along to Mika upstairs

A busy day at Oxfam and a last minute party this evening have left me with little time or inclination to write a post today. So, rather than just leaving this as a rubbish non-post, I dug through my (ridiculously comprehensive) archives of stuff that I have started writing and never finished, in the hope of finding something that I can spruce up quickly. In fact, I found a whole bunch of stuff that shows promise, so perhaps I'll be able to spend tomorrow building up a backlog of posts for the rest of the month (and then make myself a bacon sandwich by using my newly-developed telekinesis to bring down a flying pig). The first postable thing I found is an angry review of Doctor Who, written at the end of the final David Tennant season. It's not getting any more timely sitting on my phone, so I might as well share it now. Caution: rants and mild spoilers ahoy.

*****

Doctor Who - The End Of Time

I don't watch much TV. For some reason I'm not very good at it. I think it's the non-interactive nature that's the problem, because I can spend all day and night playing a computer game or reading a book, but start to get twitchy after an hour's TV. It's a shame, because I know there's a lot of stuff out there that I would enjoy (and indeed do enjoy when it happens to be on), but I just can't summon up focus to actually watch it. Luckily, my peer group have eclectic taste, so having missed any given program is no bar to conversation, because there are always other people in the same boat. And once you factor in PVRs, downloads and DVD boxed sets, it's very rare for there to be a programme that everyone's watching at the same time, no matter how compelling.

However, Doctor Who is about as close as we get, and what with this one being the last of the season (or specials, or whatever) and the Doctor scheduled to die and all, I could be fairly confident that there'd be a discussion about it and didn't want to feel left out. When I was an impressionable teenager, peer-group pressure never got me into anything worse than drinking Coke and roleplaying, but now, as an adult, I was going to do something that I didn't feel comfortable with just to keep in with my friends.

Well, all right, it wasn't just that. For me, the recent episodes of Doctor Who have what I have come to think of as the Voyager Effect. I'd never been very into any of the flavours of Star Trek, but during my listless days immediately post-university I did go out of my way to catch episodes of Voyager. While I found the other series boring and hokey, Voyager was different: it was consistently compellingly awful. I had much more fun groaning at the terrible 'Irish theme pub in spaaaace' holodeck episodes, or the one where they went too faster than light and evolved into newts, than I ever did watching any of the blandly competent alien-bothering of the other ones. I'm sure they had their terrible moments too (and I'm willing to believe they even had good bits), but I actually found it more pleasing to watch something reliably bad. And though I've heard spirited attempts to deny this, the last few Doctor Whos have been reliably bad. So, in summary, I watched something I expected to hate just so I could trash it in conversation later. I am given to understand that most reality TV is popular for the same reasons.

So that's why

tinyjo and I sat down on Christmas Day at her parent's house to watch it. It was a oddly nostalgic feeling; as it had been a long time since I'd watched TV with grown-ups and found myself terribly embarrassed by it. As a teenager, it was the fault of unexpected sex-scenes or risqué jokes, but this time it was just the fact that we had actually asked to watch something so incoherent and mawkish. I found myself worrying that

tinyjo's (very non-judgemental) parents would think that this was the sort of thing that we liked or, perhaps worse, that this is what science fiction is like.

My lovely grandmother was always pleased that I read so much, but always a little bit disappointed that it was pretty much all SF. I think she hoped that it was a phase I'd grow out of, then start reading proper books. I tried to explain that it was a genre at least as capable of being mind-expanding and thought-provoking as any other, but she never seemed convinced. In fact, I'm pretty sure she didn't really have much of an idea of what science fiction really was, just a vague impression that it was full of bad writing, slim characterisation and arbitrary rules. Recent Doctor Who feels like an inexplicable attempt to prove her right. SF fans who are pleased just because it's a big budget mainstream science fiction show are as wrong as people who are glad that teenagers are reading Twilight because at least it means they're reading. In both cases, I think the wrong lessons are being taught, and I profoundly hope that no-one takes these things as representative. Doctor Who is a bad ambassador.

I realise that I've spent all this time writing about my response instead of the programme itself, but I'm pretty sure that's a legitimate school of reviewing. On the other hand, I feel that I should probably make at least a cursory attempt to explain why I though it was terrible; after all, there were enough good reasons. A key problem, shared with the previous episodes in this series, is that it felt far too long, or, perhaps equivalently, that the plot felt far too sparse. There was a horrible moment when we were breathing sighs of relief that it was ending, then a quick press of the pause button revealed that there were still twenty minutes to go. We both groaned in despair. Entertainment should not have this effect. This is not even so bad it's good, it's just a painful waste of time.

Maybe the problem was that there wasn't really much of a plot at all. Instead a situation was (gracelessly) established, then we alternated between derivative action, limp comedy and ghastly character development until the Doctor sorted it out. I'm inclined to blame the magical nature of the plots. For instance, we have a device that's turned every human into copies of The Master (unless they were in a special box) and hence(?) a planet is materialising from some[where/when] outside time and space to just above the earth. I've read a fair few Doctor Who books, seen odds and sods of previous seasons, and (as I've explained) even discussed the lot from time to time, but I had absolutely sense of why any of this was happening, or what could possibly stop it. In fact, I was in much the same position as the Doctor himself, in that we both assumed that solution would present itself if he ran around a lot until he found himself in the right time and place, put everything back to normal, then died. Sure enough he did, and not nearly fast enough and I was still none the wiser.

I can but hope this either discourages my friends from watching any more and I can allow it to drop back off my radar, or that the new writers manage to turn things round. Sadly, neither seems likely.
*****

I still stand by all of the above, though I am pleased to note that, in retrospect, that final line was pessimistic. The Matt Smith episodes have been vastly more enjoyable, and occasionally actually good, and thus my resentment of my friends' tastes has much abated. In time, I may even come to forgive them.

Current Location: The garden room
Current Music: 'Tenuousness' - Andrew Bird (in my head)

I just went to see see 'Gamer' and - as one might with a dream - I want to write down my impressions in a vague attempt to form them into some sort of coherence before I think too hard and they disintegrate like a tissue in a washing machine. It's a film with many flaws; in fact, it would perhaps be more accurate to describe it as a collection of flaws tacked together into a film, as if someone - perhaps on a bet - had set out to make a cocktail of science fiction film mistakes. Let's begin with the plot.

In the near future, America avoids being bankrupted by their prison system by making convicts fight for their freedom in 'Slayers', a wildly popular blood sport. The slightly original (if nonsensical) twist is that each fighter is actually being controlled remotely by a player, using brain-replacing nanites. Of course, our protagonist is an innocent man set up by the main baddie who, for some reason, has decided to dispose of a risk to his entire scheme by making him fight to the death in an internationally-televised game show. The mind-controlling technology is also used in 'Society', which is like a cybersexier Second Life except your avatar's a real person whose body you're hiring. Oh, and there's a mysterious band of hackers called Humanz who oppose all this sort of mind-control malarkey by interrupting broadcasts with incoherent rants and crude animations.

Does this all sound vaguely familiar? It should. Slayers is basically Running Man (though having 'players' behind it all makes me think of Avalon), the grungy yet heroic rebel hackers are very Matrix, the Society costuming recalls Fifth Element, the more pretentious 'video art' bits reminded me of The Cell, and the protagonist seems to be stolen from the Death Race remake (though I only saw the trailer for that). I put it to you that any film that encourages unfavorable comparisons with that motley bunch is doing something wrong. I also counted at least two explicit Blade Runner references, which were a doubly poor choice as they broke immersion and did so by reminding me of a much better film.

It lurches between styles in a way that's all the more annoying for obviously being deliberate. The bits in the 'game' are all grimy and jerky, like watching someone else play Half Life 2 in an earthquake; the prison is a blazing white edifice of concrete and sand; Society is like a soft-fetish-porn Aqua video; and the real world is your standard-issue crowded metropolis with video screens everywhere and slightly cyberpunky fashions.

A better film might get away with condemning mindless violence while encouraging the audience to revel in it, but it just seems cheap here. No-one really has much of a character, so it's hard to feel for the hundreds of interchangeable figures that we see gunned down or blown up. The computer game aspect further robs the combat of significance. The bits where the protagonist is unexpectedly able to talk to his 'controller' could have been intriguing, but actually they just discussed winning strategies. I wonder if this 133t 17 year-old who's participating in the mayhem from a safe distance (physically and emotionally) is supposed to be an audience surrogate. Sure, he's a callous, self-absorbed prick obsessed with sex and violence who doesn't end up contributing much or learning anything, but that may well be their target demographic.

I get the impression that the film-makers fondly believe that they're making a point, but I'm not convinced. 'If everything that happened on-line and in games was really real, that would be bad'? True, but hardly insightful. 'Don't trust people who're trying to control your mind'? Well, duh. 'The masses just want sex and violence, and don't care about the consequences.' Ah, perhaps that's it. Very meta.

Current Mood: Over-thinking, as usual
Current Location: In bed, alone :(
Current Music: 'The Staunton Lick' - Lemon Jelly

Synopsis: Max is a self-described 'classic loser', drifting through a succession of unsatisfactory jobs and relationships. Part of his problem may be that he's nocturnal; but surely more serious is that he considers his dreams to be at least as real as anything else he experiences. So, when a recurring character from one dream offers Max a job and instructions for passing between worlds, he takes the opportunity without a second thought. He ends up in the city of Echo working for a small magical law-enforcement department who are somewhere between detectives, secret police and a SWAT team.

Review: It took me a while to work out what was so odd about this book. When I'm reading something that was originally written in a different language (Russian, in this case) I often wonder whether the tone is part of the original piece or an unintended artifact of translation. Whichever the explanation here, everything felt oddly distanced: the banter a little stilted; the characters, flat; the setting, peripheral; and the antagonists somehow threatless even when they're actually killing people. Max is a passive protagonist, going where he's told, ambling between set-pieces and, where necessary, prevailing through luck, intuition or hitherto unsuspected powers. In some ways it recalled nothing so much as Alice In Wonderland, except here the unexpected developments seemed a product of mere convenience instead of dream-logic. I assume it was originally published as short stories, as each of the seven chapters begins with a quick recap of the situation, and presents a fairly self-contained adventure. The overall effect is of a 'monster of the week' TV series with a small main cast who are invulnerable for plot reasons, a few one-note bit parts, and as many featureless victims as necessary to give the impression of danger.

I'm not a reader of fan fic ~~unless it's about Buffy and Willow lezzing up~~ so I may have been slow on the uptake, but on reflection there's a pretty clear diagnosis for how and why the whole thing is ultimately so unsatisfying: Max Frei is a Mary Sue. I do know enough to know that this is a term that can be deployed unjustly, but a little research left me in little doubt that we have a classic case here. Evidence for the prosecution includes:

The protagonist's name is the same as the author's.
He is special: even amongst the special people he hangs out with, he has powers unlike anyone else.
He gathers more powers, for reasons neither adequately explained nor even plot-necessary.
His eyes change colour, in a unique, mysterious and alluring way.
Everyone likes him right from the outset, and tells him so.
- ... except one grumpy guy
- ... who no-one else likes
- ... and who comes to fear Max
- ... then subsequently (once Max saves his life) to worship him.
Everyone likes each other as well. Apart from the baddies, the harshest interaction is some good-natured teasing.
The Girl falls in love with him.
- ... but (after she's slept with him) Fate heavy-handedly determines that they can never be an item.
- ... so they remain just good friends, but with a patina of mild angst and wistfulness.
He overcomes everything in his path with a deeply convenient power of intuition which leads him to do exactly the right thing in the nick of time.

...although he (more-or-less spontaneously) develops a number of powers which could resolve pretty much any problem instantaneously.

He gets everything he wants, notably acclaim, cats, good food and drink, and cigarettes.

I could go on...

There are moments when the book flirts with some deeper and more interesting questions: what's the relationship between the 'real' world and Echo? Did Max discover this world, or create it? Is he the only one who can pass between realities? Sadly, these issues just end up as excuses for the next encounter rather than drivers for the plot. The book's pleasantly quirky and a quick read, but it never feels real, or even very dream-like...

The blurb:
"If Harry Potter smoked cigarettes and took a certain matter-of-fact pleasure in administering tough justice, he might be like Max Frei." - Kirkus Reviews
If blurb writers had read any non-epic fantasy other than Harry Potter (or thought their readers had), they might be able to produce more accurate comparisons. I suppose it is about an ostensibly ordinary person from our world who finds himself Elsewhere, where he is an exotic but naive stranger who discovers he has mysterious powers and goes on exciting adventures and everyone thinks he's great. However, that's not a very unusual plot and, to be honest, Harry Potter's more edgy.

Dubbed 'the Russian Neil Gaiman'.
They don't mention who dubbed him thus (one suspects his publishers). I suppose Neil Gaiman has also written stuff with this basic outline. And the author photo looks a bit gothy. Nevertheless: no.

My proffered pull-quotes for the next edition:

If Alice in Wonderland smoked cigarettes instead of eating mushrooms, she might be like Max Frei.
or
If you pretend it's a Young Adult book it's a little less disappointing...

Illustrative excerpt from Amazon reviews:

*
To me this book has simple words and little depth.

Current Mood: Quizzical
Current Location: Upstairs in bed
Current Music: White noise on the radio, drowning out 'Veronica Mars' downstairs

I am an inveterate hoarder, so part of the point of this NaBloPoMo exercise is to force me to trawl through my archive of 'things I might blog about one day' and actually do something with them (and then move them to my 'things I have blogged about' archive. How I wish I was joking...) While so doing, I found this IM conversation I had with

tinyjo literally years ago:

( In which we IM )

( And then I am inspired to actually write something new, about web-comics )

Current Mood: Tagged out
Current Location: Downstairs on the sofa
Current Music: 'Dreams', The Cranberries (in my head)

Synopsis: The sun is orbited by 11 vast slabs, almost-inconceivably powerful AIs whose capabilities have been deliberately limited by 'Asimovian Protocols' to just below the point of 'Vingean-singularity'. The AIs' primary use is to create pocket universes accessible via wormholes, which, by careful tweaking of their initial 'big bang' parameters, can have any conditions required. Humans can backup their minds, which can then be rehoused in artificially grown bodies in the case of death or boredom. Guarded by the AIs, effectively immortal and possessed of limitless resources, humanity is in a happily stagnant utopia. Aristide is one such human, though a little older and more restless than most. He's a 1500 year-old 'semi-retired computer scientist turned biologist turned swordsman' and we first meet him wandering through a deliberately low-tech recreational pocket universe (essentially a real-life MMORPG) armed with a wormhole-generating sword and accompanied by a sardonic talking cat that's a manifestation of one of the AIs. He's there because he's interested in the unlooked-for side-effects of universe generation, the 'implied spaces' that exist between the deliberately created bits, necessary but not designed. Of course, he's not above fighting bandits and chatting up chicks while he's there, but when he finds impossible creatures in the desert, his hobby becomes vital for uncovering and defeating a threat to the entirety of human civilisation.

Review: This is more like it. Fuck mad vigilantes, angsty gamers, hapless possessees, troubled teenaged telepaths and dying old ladies, and especially fuck Elizabethan faeries. This is high speed, high-tech science fiction at its most fun. It's got an intriguing and unusual setting, and explores its implications for individuals, societies, and the entire universe. It wrestles with political, ethical, technological and existential dilemmas. But unlike much of the SF with these features, it's also action-packed and really entertaining. There's spaceships, snappy dialogue, death cultists, likeable characters, underwater combat, assassinations of public figures for their own good, zombies, Batman references, robots, memes, talking cats, and stars used as flamethrowers. A lot of books seem to be described as a 'rollercoaster ride', but this is the only one that I've read that really earns the metaphor. There should be more books like this.

Suggested pull quotes for the next edition:

A rollercoaster ride of a book! And that's a space rollercoaster!
or
Contains at least 100% of your RDA of awesome!

Illustrative excerpt from Amazon reviews:

* * * * *
This is high speed, high-tech science fiction at its most fun.

[Mine again. Apparently I'm quite the trailblazer.]

Current Mood: Enthused
Current Location: Downstairs on the sofa
Current Music: 'Last Train To Transcentral' - The KLF (in my head)

Warning: The following spoiler warning contains mild spoilers.

Warning: The following review contains mild spoilers. Nothing specific, I just mention that the book doesn't contain any surprises at all. Does that count? If so, my apologies.

Synopsis: It's 1588, Elizabeth is on throne in London, and the ambitious young Michael Deven has just landed a plum job in her private guard. Meanwhile in the stygian city beneath London, Lady Lune finds herself in the notoriously vast bad books of the faerie queen Invidiana. Seeking excitement and prospects, Michael starts working for Walsingham, Elizabeth's spy-master, who has inferred the existence of a mysterious hidden player in the intrigue of the court and wants Michael to help find out who it is. Fearing for her life, Lune is persuaded by Invidiana's sinister lieutenant to infiltrate Elizabeth's court in mortal guise. Can you guess where this might be leading?

Review: I must confess that this is another book that I wouldn't have read were it not for the spec. fic. elements. My knowledge of history is pretty ropey, thanks to a combination of poor teaching and a basic lack of interest. I therefore don't tend to go for historical fiction, for fear that it will name-drop people, places or events that I should recognise but don't, making me feel like I'm missing something and leaving me unsatisfied and frustrated. I had hoped that this book would be more accessible to me, for a couple of reasons. One is that's it's alternate history, which means that at least some of it would be as new to every reader as to me. The other is that it's hopefully written to be accessible to faerie fans as well as history buffs, and therefore wouldn't make too many assumptions of prior knowledge. I turned out to be right: it was unsatisfying and frustrating for entirely different reasons...
The story has little action, being mostly politics or investigation in one or other court. That's not an intrinsic problem, but it founders here because there are so few surprises. Ironically, the central duality (the strap-line is 'A great light casts a great shadow') is the book's downfall: Invidiana and her cronies are obviously essentially evil, Michael, Lune and their allies (including Queen Elizabeth) are equally obviously fundamentally decent. There's not much potential for character drama or political intrigue when each character is clearly either trustworthy or not. Even the characters who are more than they seem reveal this fact and pick a side almost immediately. The investigative elements too lacked excitement, as the protagonists just find the right people, ask the right questions, and are rewarded with the next bit of the answer. It had the feel of a computer RPG where you complete a quest simply by speaking to characters in the correct order. The end result is a book that's perfectly well written and undemanding, but still not worth the effort. It felt like a slow train ride to a dull destination, and while some might have enjoyed the historical scenery on the way, I just wanted the journey to be over. So, can historical political fiction be improved be the addition of faeries? My answer is: not nearly enough.

Suggested pull quotes for the next edition:

Combines the plot surprises of historical fiction with the gritty realism of faerie stories!
or
Readers of Laura K. Hamilton's faerie fiction will find a refreshing lack of multi-coloured penis shenanigans!

Illustrative excerpt from Amazon reviews:

* * *
If you like the Elizabethan period or are interested in faerie and folklore then this book should be a happy balance for you as it provides both.

Current Mood: Fey
Current Location: Upstairs, on the bed
Current Music: 'Ain't Talkin' 'Bout Dub' - Apollo 440 (in my head)

Synopsis: Roushana is an aging violinist, dying of a degenerative disease in her cottage on the Cornish coast. She's preparing for the end by looking through her keepsakes, mentally arranging and reassessing the memories that they summon. Also, she just found a buff, naked, amnesiac dude on the beach and he's hanging out in her house, listening to her talk and play, and cooking her food.

Review: I know, it sounds bloody awful: the sort of tiresome novel that's all emotion and no action, beautifully told and cleverly constructed, no doubt, probably even symbolic in a somewhat nebulous fashion, but ultimately just a worthy fun-free mope towards the inevitable. Fortunately this one has a redeeming feature: the universally improving ingredient that is science fiction! Our heroine appears to have been born in about 2000 AD, she's survived a century of race riots, nuclear exchanges, killer diseases and environmental catastrophes, and she's now living in a world where dying need not be the last thing that you do. And yes, she's also experienced love and loss, complicated relationships with friends and family, obsession, ecstasy and remorse. And it is all meticulously put together, with vivid characterisation and evocative scene-setting. And while the framing device does distance one from the action, the sense of melancholy inevitability that it imparts is entirely appropriate given the circumstances.
I'm given to understand that this is 'Literary SF', which I generally take to mean 'SF from which one could excise the SF elements without materially affecting the story'. That's not quite true in this case, yet the narrative inevitably focuses on Roushana's experiences and reactions, and hence the constants of the human condition rather than the more superficial changes. Coupled with the bleakly unobtrusive plausibility of the extrapolated history, this keeps the world of the future very much in the background. While you may gather that this style is not to my usual taste, it really is a very well written book; to the extent that I genuinely enjoyed it rather than simply being forced to acknowledge that it was Good. I hope I've done it justice.

Suggested pull quotes for the next edition:

If you like meditative, moving SF, don't let the dreadful cover, blurb or concept put you off!
or
A old lady with nerve damage and a young man with brain damage? They're the original odd couple!

Illustrative excerpt from Amazon reviews:

* * * *
...it really is very well done, to the extent that I genuinely enjoyed it rather than simply acknowledging that it was Good.

[Yes, once again I've found myself having to upload and quote my own review...]

Current Mood: Retrospective
Current Location: Downstairs on the sofa
Current Music: 'Barbie Is A Robot' - Space Heroes of the People (in my head)

Synopsis: Poor Todd is the youngest boy in Prentisstown, a primitive, isolated village surrounded by swamps infested with dangerous animals and (maybe) genocidal aliens, and that's not even close to the worst bit. You see, just after he was born, a biological attack by the aforementioned aliens apparently left all the women dead, and all the men and animals uncontrollably broadcasting their thoughts to anyone nearby. Oh, and in a month's time he's due for the village's secret rite of passage into manhood, and whatever it entails, it certainly left his former childhood companions oddly changed and distant. Frankly, Todd is fucked. The only thing in his favour is the fact that this is a Young Adult book, so while the Noise produced by a men-only village of telepaths is pretty disturbing, I can't help but feel that an adult version would be so much worse.

Review: We're very much inside Todd's head throughout the book, and he's a distinctive narrative voice. The writing is colloquial and idiosyncratically spelt, reflecting his lack of schooling (the sinister mayor of Prentisstown disapproves of education). Initially Todd knows next to nothing of the outside world, and precious little even of the village and its inhabitants, and though this may be a convenient story-telling device, it's also a plausible character note. After all, given his environment, he's well-practised at avoiding ugly truths and hiding his thoughts, even from himself. This was one of the few books that a substantial number of people read on our holiday, and while some found this writing style grating, the majority (including me) seemed to enjoy it. The setting is unconventional and pleasingly fluid, weaving together elements of SF, fantasy and horror; there's even a Western feel to the low-tech land of villages separated by wilderness.
The central concept of a telepathic world is handled powerfully and convincingly: calm, disciplined people can communicate in sentences, but crowds produce a baffling cacophony and when emotions run high, thoughts fragment into uncontrolled phrases and images. The different people and villages that we encounter display a credible range of coping mechanisms, at both personal and societal levels. And of course there are the telepathic animals: Todd's faithful dog Manchee blurts urgent verbs and nouns, birds squawk "Where's my food? Where's my house?", crocodiles float muttering "Bone... Flesh...", and the sheep just repeat "Sheep"... It's a likable, vivid, action-packed book, and though it's practically one long chase scene it doesn't get repetitive or wearying and allows its characters time to reflect, learn and grow (whether they want to or not). Some of the best Young Adult fiction I've read, and despite that brand I had (and have) no compunction in recommending it to all but the most curmudgeonly.

Suggested pull quotes for the next edition:

Sure to be a hit with the ever-growing 'knifecriming teenager' demographic!
or
It will leave you shouting "Poo, Todd! Poo!"

Warning: That second quote is absolutely true. Well, that's the effect that it had on our group, anyway.

Illustrative excerpt from Amazon reviews:

* * * * *
The book made sense and the plot progression was fabulous as our young male hero left Prentisstown. The dog also became less annoying...

Current Mood: Poo, Todd! Poo!
Current Location: Downstairs on the sofa
Current Music: 'La Femme D'Argent' - Air

Synopsis: Del lives in a world like ours, except occasionally people are possessed by demons: without warning, anyone's body could be hijacked by a single-minded entity concerned only with fulfilling its idiosyncratic purpose. The demons are named for these goals: The Truth murders liars, The Painter draws the same scenes every time using whatever material is to hand, and Smokestack Johnny just drives trains really fast. Though churches, scientists and psychologists all do their best, no-one can explain what these entities are, why they behave as they do, or why some people seem more prone to possession than others. Del, himself a survivor of childhood possession by The Hellion, becomes increasingly convinced that his sanity depends on answering these questions. His quest is interspersed with vignettes of various demons in action, though always from an observer's viewpoint.

Review: Del himself is an amiable if hapless character, his increasingly concerned family are well-drawn and plausible, and their conversations are convincingly depicted. Some of the rest of the cast feel more like characters than people - notably bonkers ex-exorcist (and Sinead O'Connor doppelganger) Siobhan O'Connell - though this could well be intentional as the novel wrestles with questions of identity and purpose, as do many of the characters. It's not just part of the setting - the fact of possession changes the world subtly yet profoundly, turning free will and archetypes from abstractions into matters of life and death. It put me in mind of the (awesome) Ted Chiang short story 'Hell Is The Absence Of God', in which angels appear - unpredictably and inexplicably - in the modern world, often causing horrendous collateral damage. Both explore their high concepts without sacrificing action or character, though 'Pandemonium' is (perhaps inevitably) less spare and focused, with some scenes and characters that feel either extraneous or underused. Nevertheless it's a good fast-paced read; and fans of fiction which literalises metaphysical conundrums will appreciate the cameo by Philip K. Dick, who may or may not be possessed by a demon called VALIS...

Suggested pull quotes for the next edition:

A perfect gift for any fan of the literalisation of metaphysical conundrums!
or
A fun debut novel, if a bit hit-or-It Is Perfect! Buy It!... I'm sorry, where was I?

Illustrative excerpt from Amazon reviews:

* * * *
...the novel wrestles with questions of identity and purpose (as do many of the characters). It's not just part of the setting - the fact of possession changes the world subtly yet profoundly, turning free will and archetypes from abstractions into matters of life and death.

[Well, no-one had reviewed it yet, so I thought I'd better add my own.]

Current Mood: Perfectionist
Current Location: Downstairs on the sofa
Current Music: 'Mississippi Soul' - Koot (in my head)

Synopsis: This is a 400 page book structured as an unedited walkthrough for fiendishly complicated adventure game, written by a heavy-metal-loving 20-something slacker with a short attention span, sketchy language skills and - literally - a malfunctioning Caps Lock key. He writes in a stream-of-consciousness style, incorporating glimpses of his life, sometimes attempting to draw parallels with the game in a bid to illuminate one or the other.

Review: From the central conceit, I expected it to be an artfully post-modern blurring of the boundaries between game and reality, or unreadably horrible. In fact it's neither, just a sweet book that reads very much like it's from the Young Adult section. There are no SF elements (except for some aspects of the game) and not much in the way of action (even the in-game fights are mostly described obliquely). It's a challenge to review, because although I actually rather liked it, I find it hard to explain why it wasn't as tooth-grindingly ghastly as it sounds. I'd certainly recommend that you read a few pages before purchasing, in case your tolerance is differently calibrated. I can at least reassure you that it is mercifully free from 1337 or txt spk, and the plausibly patchy grammar and spelling didn't set my pedant sense tingling, perhaps because they're clearly to establish character. Well worth a try, not least because I'd love to hear someone else's take on it...

My pull quotes for the next edition:

Sure to 'pwn' the best-seller lists!
or
This year's most moving walkthrough!

Illustrative excerpt from Amazon reviews:

*
If you like the idea of reading the diary of a boring nerd, then go ahead this is perfect.

Current Mood: Quizzical
Current Location: Downstairs on the sofa
Current Music: tinyjo talking about the new G1 phone

Reassurance: I'm very spoiler-averse, so this should be safe to read even if you are too.

Synopsis: Jane has been arrested for murder. In a series of interviews with a psychologist, she explains that she's a 'Bad Monkey', part of a vigilante group dedicated to covertly killing evil-doers who would otherwise escape justice. Her interviewer tries to keep up and decide what to believe as she reveals more and more about this group, its missions and its enemies, and her story just keeps getting darker and stranger...

Review: This book moved fast and dragged me along with it. Halfway through I was thinking "Shit, I'm halfway through. I wish this was longer, or part of a series or something." In retrospect it was exactly the right length, but that response reflects how entertaining the book was, both in premise and in execution. If the set-up put you in mind of a smart modern thriller film like 'The Usual Suspects' or 'Fight Club', you're thinking along the right lines. It's visual, vivid, atmospheric and action-packed, and just keeps intensifying as it builds to its climax. Sure, you might find yourself looking back on it all with a slightly dazed suspicion that the speed was used to dodge questions or jump plot holes, but it was bloody good fun while it lasted.

Suggested pull quotes for the next edition:

This monkey's gone to heaven!
or
Like 'Wanted', but not shit!

Illustrative excerpt from Amazon reviews:

* * * * *
...it is a clever piece of science fiction writing, for reasons that will become obvious all too soon to a discerning reader. However, I suspect that most will miss these reasons, and conclude erroneously that Ruff has written just a brilliant, exceptionally well-crafted, psychological thriller.

Current Mood: Accomplished
Current Location: Upstairs in bed
Current Music: 'The West Wing' playing downstairs

In December I went and saw The Prestige at the end of its all-too-short cinematic run in Oxford, and whole-heartedly recommend it to those of you in times and places where it is available for viewing. I can't think of another film that has been so structurally pleasing without seeming contrived, self-conscious or smug. I had read the book before,

tinyjo hadn't, but we both loved it.

Interestingly, while I would certainly have recommended the book to her beforehand, I am more dubious about doing so now. It's longer, of course, and hence almost inevitably lacks the film's focus and lean tightness; and though the ending of the film might have been a little too pat, I felt that the ending of the book went too far the other way and petered out somewhat. I wouldn't hesitate to advise someone against watching film adaptation - even a pretty good film adaptation - of a book they absolutely loved. Indeed,

tinyjo's resolutely underwhelmed response to Lord Of The Rings is a case in point. Is this an analogous situation? If you've seen and read it, what do you reckon?

Also, the closing credits featured Thom Yorke's 'Analyse'. Now, I'm a pretty big fan of the gimpy-eyed miserablist genius, but it didn't really seem to fit the meticulously-drawn mood of the film itself. On the drive home, I was idly considering better choices, and was sufficiently pleased with some of them that I may well have written this entire review just to ask this extra bonus question:
What should they have played? My top three choices:
3. It's A Kind Of Magic
2. Danger! High Voltage
1. Two Become One
What've you got?

Current Mood: Analytical, I guess
Current Location: Home
Current Music: 'Analyse' - Thom Yorke (in my head)

The spoiler-averse can rest assured that I have highlighted the one significant spoiler in this review. The rest is probably not going to spoil it any more than any other longish review. Or indeed M. Knight Shyamalan himself (oooh, snap).

So,

tinyjo and I went to see the Lady In The Water last night. Interestingly (to us, anyway) our opinions were very similar when discussing any given aspect of it, but I ended up rather enjoying it while she just thought it was crap. I suspect that the key to this disagreement is the 'So bad it's good' gene, which I have but she lacks. The last film that polarised us in such a way was Face/Off, a film which is otherwise almost completely disimilar. I guess both films take a simple yet ludicrous central idea and treat it with pride, gusto and more exposition than it can possibly deserve, but don't go to Lady In The Water expecting kick-ass costuming and slow-motion gun battles, or you'll be even more disappointed.

What's it about? A girl who is a Madam Narf (a sort of naiad-cum-muse) being chased by a Scrunt (a wolf made of grass) who is kept in line by the Tartutic (3 evil monkeys). She appears in the swimming pool of an apartment block, and must find a particular writer, inspire him - with a glance - to write a great work, then be carried off home by a giant eagle. What, you may be asking yourself, the fuck? Surely, you may well be thinking, this is

oxfordslacker taking stuff out of its rich mythological context to make it seem silly? Nope. There really isn't any context in the film at all.

The plot is told to the main character, at length, as a recounted, translated bed-time story, and it all proves to be thuddingly literal. True, bizarre creatures and arbitrary rules are staples of fairy tales. However, they are also the staples of badly written fantasy. I'd be hard-pushed to come up with a universal rule to separate the one from the other, but I know which category this film fits into. It felt like a Neil Gaiman short story which, through a terrible misunderstanding, was adapted into a film along with the accompanying author's afterword. You end up with a high fantasy plot in a modern urban setting full of quirky, one-note characters; who then they spend all their time telling each other what's going on, what will happen next, and what part they might play in it.

The film feels like it's replete with symbolism, but not to any particular end. (

tinyjo describes it as didactic, but again, it's not clear what it's trying to teach us.) The pseudo-mythic beginning suggests that it's about nature versus technology, or maybe masculinity and femininity. But then the film proper kicks in, and seems to be about how art (or belief) can change the world, or why stories are important, or why understanding stories is important, or about knowing yourself and how everyone has a purpose, or it's a examination of how stories themselves work, or I'm reading too much into it. The problem is that the actual plot is so simple, and yet so arbitrary, that I'm tempted to try reading it as an allegory simply because the alternative is that it's not really about anything at all. I may be trying too hard to compensate for the film itself not trying hard enough. Similarly, the characters are so simple and unquestioning, and their dialogue so stilted and heavy-handed, that it seems like they must be cyphers representing something; but it's never really clear what. The exception is the film critic, who seems to be representing humourless killjoy film critics who think they get it but they don't. Perversely, he's the most entertaining and realistic character in the whole mess.

The film is certainly very meta, which I do enjoy when it's done well. That's one of the things that reminded me of Gaiman, watching characters talking about how (and why) they fit into the story that they're living in. It's a potentially dangerous technique to employ, because it draws attention to the plot and characterisation, and if you're going to show off like that you'd better have something that's worth it. It's not a good idea in a simplistic, fairy-tale-style story unless you're doing something clever to subvert the traditional structure. It's a completely fatal idea to use such dialogue as padding for your simplistic, fairy-tale-style story. Nevertheless, that's what M. Knight seems to be doing. Sure, it leads to some entertaining lines, like the film critic complaining about the unrealistic way that people in films always say exactly what they're feeling. In a good film, this could serve both as a joke and a boast about its sophisticated naturalistic dialogue and 'show, don't tell' philosophy. In this film, it's just a laugh at its own expense.

( If you don't want to know how disappointing the ending is, skip this bit )

In conclusion, Lady In The Water is [gloriously^*] awful. I would be genuinely intrigued to hear from anyone who's seen it, whether they agree or not. If nothing else, it might help me to shift this vague feeling that I just didn't get it...

* Delete as applicable.

Current Mood: Speculative
Current Location: Work
Current Music: Talk Show Hoes-DJ Gyngyvytus (a crunk tribute to Radiohead)