Helen, the Hermit

To begin:

Don't read this book if you want to believe.

This book started well...and then fell apart halfway through.

I didn’t care for the protagonist from the start. No, I don’t need to sympathise with a character to like a book. But in this case, I felt like I was supposed to - a little, at least - and I couldn’t bring myself to. I’m not sure how much of the protagonist is an author avatar - I hope very little or none at all. Either way, Eco portrays intellectual snobbery at its worst; impotent wrath of those who decided to dedicate themselves to obscure fields and cannot completely accept the obscurity that comes with it. Usually manifested by bitter attacks at people who fail to share their interests or perceived intellectual level.

It's an interesting piece of speculative fiction and definitely not what I expected.

It's a novel that reads like a collection of short stories, each placed in different point in past and, eventually, a possible future, with the story of Joan Useb's attempt to save the dying world via science as framing device. The main focus is on the primates.

The strongest part are the stories of the past, particularly those before we enter the history we are more familiar with. Now, Baxter admits in the afterword that not everything is based on hard facts, and it shows; still, most of his speculations are based on mostly solid foundations. Furthermore, he has to make allowances for narrative techniques, giving "protagonists" names even when they would not be familiar with the concept, or showing the example of how speech and grammar rules were formed via English even when it would not have been developed for centuries.

Things, sadly, went downhill in this one. All pros of the first book are either ignored or tainted.

We start with a sudden, "dramatic" leap forward from where we left off. Our heroine is dropping names and mentioning about how they threaten the life of...McKenna.

They named their daughter McKenna.

As in, the given name.

And it's not that it has some special meaning, like the various Fangirl-Japanese names that are thrown around. Just...McKenna.

Anyway, back to the sudden skip. It appears we are supposed to jump directly into the drama and save infodumps for later. There are a lot of new people we have never seen before. Things that have never been hinted at are happening.

One of the worst retcons ever.

Say hello to reducing the unique concept to yet another of Zeus' bastard children. And the queen of Amazons into yet another conquest. Yay.

Not even Circe the Straw Feminist back in the day left as bitter a taste in my mouth as this did.

I don't care that it's a "reboot". I don't care that she still kicks ass. They took away the very foundation of the character. And once again, it's all about men. And no, this is not "rabid feminist nitpicky rage", the character was created to be a pro-active influence on young girls. There is none of that here. She is not the proud daughter of Themyscira anymore, she is just another in the line of Zeus' "little indiscretions". DCU Amazons are retconned into evil man-haters who sell their male babies into slavery - oh yes, their origin is rebooted too - but when Wonder Woman tries to free her until-then unknown "brothers", she is rebuked, because their "enslaver" has been kind to them. Yes, let's school the ignorant man-hater.

Excuse me, I have to vomit.

I...just cannot shake the "already seen" feeling. Yes, a lot of literature is basically the retelling of the same old story, but the storyteller has to add something new to intrigue the audience. This book didn't intrigue me in the least. The lone part that stirred my interest - and consequently, one of the few that remain in my memory - was the one about father being "airy", perpetually floating and distant.

I felt this book was not unlike this father - like air. Maybe the idea was to make it like perfume. But perfume is still heavier than the air, it lingers and stirs something in people. It leaves a mark, even if it lasts but a few seconds before it vanishes. I am not sure words of this book left even that long an effect on me.

Maybe it's partially because of different perceptions of sexuality. No, I do not mind subtle and unspoken. But here, it's way too ephemeral. Too stylised, if you will. All pretty, cliched metaphors, but nothing that strikes a single chord and makes me remember my own experiences. It's like a painting of what ideal sexual awakening should be like - the kind that is put on pedestal, but no one really experiences. At times, it's so heavily stylised it's borderline insincere and unrealistic. The final act of surrender felt so rushed, almost tacked on. And then things were brought full circle to a few flashes forward to narrator's "current" love troubles. I think this further development of her character's eros would have been better off left out or expanded. Granted, we have the maturity already represented via the narrator's mother, but it is firmly established that they are very different persons, with different sexuality.

This is not to say that this is a bad book. As far as the prose goes, it's vastly better than those books where I've "already seen" the things that are repeated here. But, unfortunately, just lovely writing is not enough for me. If we were going just on pure craft and literary values, this book would be "five stars". But I consider the ability to intrigue the reader an important quality as well, and I just cannot feel any stronger about than than "nice".

I'm not quite sure how I feel about this book.

I'm quite sure, though, that it could have benefited from an editor. Even considering purposefully distorted narrative and intentional errors in first-person, there is still too much. The amount of typos due to author self-editing a huge amount of text over a short time before submitting it to the publisher is infamous. Not just the typos - the writing is just plain awkward at places and even the structure could have used some tightening. (Again, even taking the purposefully unortodox into the consideration.)

It's technically SF, but not much more so than, say, A Brave New World. There is a post-apocalyptic feel, but not quite - or perhaps, more realistically than in most post-apocalyptic novels. People are still clinging to the old order, even as new moons are rising and Sun seems to be getting too close and dates on the newspaper jump decades from day to day. Dubiousness about SF part increases

In the end, it's ambiguous if it's all a dream, hallucination or genuine time-space distortion. Furthermore, it steps away from the genre also because it doesn't discuss science or even focus much on the speculation about developments in such an environment. Rather, Delany uses the setting as a soapbox and characters as mouthpieces to speak about issues from female sexuality (surprisingly well) over rape (somewhat dubious, but uses several different perspectives) to creative processes of the artists (probably the most explored of themes). It's hanging somewhere halfway between genre and literary fiction. Which is not a bad thing, just a bit unexpected.

I'm baffled that this is Conrad's most acclaimed work. It does have technical merit; the language is beautiful; but the atmosphere wasn't consistent. It does appear here and there, but there is no gradual buildup of oppression and darkness the further the trip goes. There are moments when it's unclear what is going on. Some transitions are very abrupt.

That said, it paints a very good portrait of many issues: race and clash of cultures, megalomania and cult of personality, and isolation, to name a few. It's a great book, but it just lacks a little something to make me enjoy it more than a simple "like".

A primordial Gary-Stu - or a parody of one?

Conneticut Yankee is a hot mess that most likely has no clue what it wants to be: Satire? Parody? Manifesto? Attack at Romanticism? Attack at American South? Attack at church - Catholic or in general? Attack on contemporary economics? The tune changes with author's mood - but this results in cacophony rather than a complex symphony. It has not the quality of belles lettres to pass for a work of art high enough to need no other merit; the narrative is the one of a reminiscing methuselah, meandering and inconsistent, full of digressions, unnecessary details and embellishments; humour is too topical and dated to withstand the test of time, and too mean-spirited and full of personal bias to be taken as a serious critique. Most of the arguments have too shaky foundations for me to even consider agreeing or disagreeing with.

It's a major trip written by a person on a major trip. What do you think it is like?

On a technical level, while it's not a part of The Nova Trilogy, it's still made via cut-up technique. It is fascinating, the way parts fit together nevertheless. Still, there are obvious throwbacks to the beginning in the latter half. Yet, like Burroughs says in the "atrophied preface" which, true to the form, appears near the end, this "naked lunch" can, indeed, be cut into from any point - beginning, middle, end.

Not for those of faint stomach or easily triggered.

Yet wasn't offended at all; unlike Palahniuk, who reminds me of a under-ten-boy who will fling crap and/or boogers at you in order to provoke a reaction, Burroughs' stream of vile imagery is - paradoxically? - genuine. There is no artifice with aim to shock the reader; these are truly excretions of a hyper-stimulated, half-rotten mind.

I'm underwhelmed.

I was unable to get invested in anything! I didn’t care about the fate of the world, since I knew nothing about it. See, I understand the need to avoid infodumps. And then there is this new tendency in fantasy to keep it action-packed and fast-paced. However, there is a pitfall; I know nothing about what's going on. In the beginning, it didn't appear close enough to our world for me to be able to project previous experience onto it. (Later, it turns out to be a bit too similar for my tastes, but that's another matter.) We are introduced to Shanka from the get-go, we even get another name for them soon, but it takes a while until we get any clue as to what they are or even how they look like. Until about a quarter of the book, it didn’t even feel like Logen’s story and Glokta and Jezal’s story took place in the same world! And then, out of nowhere, mages! And that's just the first half of the book. It might be that the author is merely trying not to bog down the pace, but it leaves the impression that maybe things weren't as much thought through as tossed in when convenient. It doesn't have to be pages of backstory, but I'm sure a line or two might have snuck in somewhere.

I liked this book much, much more than Pride and Prejudice and Sense and Sensibility. I cannot quite pin down the reason, but the difference in the balance of satire and romance might be the cause. Romance in the modern sense of the word, that is. Austen had different views:

"But I could no more write a romance than an epic poem. I could not sit seriously down to write a serious romance under any other motive than to save my life; and if it were indispensable for me to keep it up and never relax into laughing at myself or at other people, I am sure I should be hung before I had finished the first chapter."

Now let me remind you of the fact that every other romcom is based on P&P and let's enjoy the irony. Even allowing the fact that romance did, indeed, mean something different in Austen's time, one cannot help wonder how she would feel if she knew what has been done with her legacy - and that's not even accounting for the unholy abominations that are prequels/sequels/Mr Darcy POV.

Great idea, sloppy execution.

Past the quarter-mark, I couldn't shake off the impression that it was lazily written. Each chapter opens with a bit of relevant infodump that is most often third-person omniscient or once, even, POV-switch, and then we go back to the story in first-person. Other characters were intriguing, but they bent any way the winds of plot blow. Yes, when in first person limited, there should be slight unreliability, but I daresay inconsistencies here cross the line. A few "late reveals" don't really feel set up well. That gun should have been seen lying around instead of suddenly materialising in hand, cocked.

Inspired by a recent discussion, I went to seek out some robo-romance. After all, I've always had strange machine fetish. It should be right up my alley, right?

Well, the natural step is to check out the series that top all the robot/cyborg/android-related lists. I mean, first all the books in it, than the rest. On every single one. Therefore, it must be at least somewhat good, even if it's EC. Right? Right?

WRONG.

Why oh why must every series go downhill eventually?

I sort of wish the author wrote straight-out adventure novels. Becase while in other books so far sex felt more-or-less fitting, here it really sounded shoehorned in. It got in the way of plot, I daresay. I'd even go as far to say some parts of the characterisation were muddled in order to get them doing the deed ASAP. It's almost as if though author was under a contract to insert a certain number of scenes at certain intervals.

Here, there is also a spin toward (well, a tease really) very, very lite BDSM. But the bigger problem was the very cavalier handling of

I don't think this turn towards a darker character worked out well. Can we go back to our usual gentlemen?

This book is unpleasant. Very, very unpleasant.

Doesn't make it any less terribly true.

(For people who aren't sure what's going on: a collection of (cartoon) drawings, focusing mostly on women but other matters as well. Not a word of explanation, so be sure to turn on your brains.)

Glow should go on a top list of books with misleading cover/title. Right up there with The Right To Arm Bears.

This is not a pleasant read.

It's not that the writing is bad - quite the contrary, while not stellar, it's a smooth-sailing page-turner. But the subject matter is heavy.

This is the book that should have been touted as ultimate Crapsack Setting YA with anti-Bella heroine instead of The Hunger Games.

Why?