The Perks of Being a Wallflower

The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Very easy to read, format of letters to a stranger creates an intimate, well-divisioned story.

Like most fiction, this story takes all the dramatic things that could happen to the character, and they all happen. Which, while unbelievable, is a useful device for exploring the drama of being a teenager, and being a teenager who doesn't quite fit in the normal high school crowd.

The amount of sex doesn't jive with my own experience as a teen, and there's definitely some graphic content here. It mostly falls short of being explicit, however. I think I'd have a hard time saying it was ok for a teen to read, but for adults wanting to develop more sympathy for the teenage years, it's a great start.

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Epiphany of the Long Sun

Epiphany of the Long Sun by Gene Wolfe

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


A continuation of "The Book of the Long Sun", which I reviewed earlier, this continues the story of a priest become revolutionary.

Gene Wolfe can write character voices. There's a lot of dialogue in these books, and sometimes there's not a lot of tags, like "he said, she said". It's still obvious who's speaking. After a couple words, you know if it's the always polite(politeness so sharp it can be a weapon) Patera Silk, the slang-dealing thief Auk, or the constantly hemming and hedging Patera Remora.

For a book that is so quick to read, I was surprised at how it had me using more words in everyday life. Some books are hard, and they exercise your brain, stretching it to places where it stores those more rarely used words. This book was able to do that without bogging down in parenthetical phrases.

As a book driven mostly by dialogue, some people will be annoyed by some of the voices, the tendency to interrupt, or fail to explain fully a point. Also, the action often happens in the dialogue. Threatening words might connote a raised gun. Of course, if you read the first half, then of course you won't be bothered by those things, so check out the first couple of chapters of the first book before committing to these two books.



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The Gates

The Gates by John Connolly

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


Since I read "The Book of Lost Things" by this author, my wife saw this in the Library, and decided that I would like it. She read it first, and loved it. I read it second.

The author certainly has a theme: childhood lost. In the first it was because of a parent dying, this one because of divorce. The difference between the two books is in tone, and appeals to a bit different audience because of it. The Gates has a very light tone. The author uses the well known British humo(u)r to keep a story about Hell, demons, and the end of the world, appropriate to younger kids. The same humo(u)r might make you laugh out loud.



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A Dance with Dragons

A Dance with Dragons by George R.R. Martin

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


A continuation of the dark, complicated, political, magical(not in the fairies and unicorns kind of way), conflicted, frustrating(why aren't the good guys winning? Why can't I tell which ones are the good guys? Why did that guy, who I spent the last 4 books following and rooting for die?), surprising(see previous), and satisfying(some of those bad guys are getting what's coming to them) series, recently made popular by a TV adaptation by HBO. I love it, but there are many people who will be turned off by the dark nature of the book. If you can, it's a great series to read. If you can't, don't force yourself. It's good, but no one "has" to read this series.



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King's Dragon

King's Dragon by Kate Elliott

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


A pretty standard, kingdom in turmoil, invaders from the north, treachery from a royal sibling, mysterious waif loses guardian to nefarious forces, adopted bastard chosen by fate to be protector of the kingdom type of book. The execution however, is pretty good. The waif suffers true trauma. The kind of thing that can damage a person for a long time. And it's not how her guardian dies, but what happens after.

The religion is very catholic-like, with saints and priests, though a more gender-neutral(or even reversed) version of the church hierarchy and dogma. Religion is depicted mostly positively, though some members use the church as a vehicle of their ambition, others are sincere. Saints do appear in exceptional circumstances, but most of the time, people have to follow their religion the same way we do, with faith.

The structure of the kingdom is interesting, with a roving court, a semi-autonomous church authority, and a semi-matriarchal line of succession. The politics are introduced slowly, only halfway through the book are we given a real picture of how the land is governed.

The characters have some real progression, with loyalties tested, religious callings conflicting with religious morals, trauma forcing an escape inwards, and imperfect mentors.

I'll be reading more of this series. I'll let you know if it loses its interest. But I'm optimistic.



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Riverworld, book 1 and 2

"To Your Scattered Bodies Go" and The Fabulous Riverboat by Philip José Farmer

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


I checked this out from the library, and I'm glad I didn't purchase it. The edition I checked out was an omnibus of the first two books of the Riverworld series.

My feeling is these books are like, "Wouldn't it be really cool if..." all the interesting characters of history were all living and ran into each other. And, yes, it's cool to think about, but it's not something you can base a novel on. It's more like a dinner party idea. Though, I've never been to that kind of dinner party.

The reason the idea doesn't really work is that the characters are restricted. Or at least, the author's ability to be creative with the characters is restricted. So the first book, written with a relatively unknown(at least to most modern audiences) character has a somewhat more interesting characterization. The second, starring Samuel Clemens, seems more forced, less natural.

The world is a little interesting--an artificial world with one long river, food and clothing supplied daily, but very little in the way of natural resources besides wood--but also unvarying. In a way it's an advantage, since after a single description of the landscape, it's easy to visualize wherever the characters may travel. You never feel like you don't know the place. The only difference is in the cultures of the people inhabiting the area. This gives you a sense of humanity being the landscape.

One thing I found surprising was the female characters. They were essentially objects. Not necessarily sexual objects,(though they sometimes were) but things to be acted upon, not actors in themselves. Sometimes Fantasy and Science Fiction are harped on for their depictions of women, and this book made me understand why. There's a big gap between the way Brandon Sanderson writes women, and the way Farmer did.


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The Bikes of New York

Something slightly different, free fiction, read it in full here:
The Bikes of New York

5/5

I read this a few years ago, but this story on slashdot reminded me of it.

A novella about the pressures of feeding a family and the difficulty of maintaining an ideologically pure rebellion. Starting with a startlingly believable premise that our economy fueled by oil crumbles, and instead of an unrecognizable world, it's a limited world. Cities are not graveyards, but they are dark at night. There's still money, there's still government, but the streets are filled with pedestrians, and power from an outlet is a luxury.

If it sounds like there's too much going on for something that's not a novel, set your worries aside. This is a focused story, with a sympathetic and flawed protagonist, action, villains who are both sinister and pathetic, and great speeches about the freedom to work.


If you don't like Science Fiction, try this anyway. Seriously. If you do like Science Fiction, try Simon of Space afterwards.

Has some profanity, and one euphemistic use of the word "Servicing".