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vaseem's review
5.0
"The truth will set us free.
But freedom is cold and empty and frightening, and lies can often be warm and beautiful."
Damn, George RR Martin is now officially one of my favourite sci-fi authors!!!
But freedom is cold and empty and frightening, and lies can often be warm and beautiful."
Damn, George RR Martin is now officially one of my favourite sci-fi authors!!!
foomple's review
4.0
I relished Theodora Goss' Singing of Mount Abora and enjoyed fully suspending disbelief to (very) poetic dreamlike license in Maria Dahvana Headley's Give Her Honey When You Hear Her Scream. Ghost River Red by Aidan Doyle was a nice, solid 3 stars for me, and I can't believe I'm saying this, but Peter S. Beagle's “Gordon, the Self-Made Cat” didn't do much for me. I think it could make a really cute kid's book, though.
Update:
I didn't get into David Brin's The Giving Plague the first time I took a run at it --I was put off by the heavy exposition- but on a retry I read through the whole thing and the idea behind the story is too cool not to love. Brin is great for big big, unusual ideas.
The only one I actively did not like was Requiem in the Key of Prose (great title, though) by Jake Kerr. It was nothing but a Gary Stu hero story with a satellite female character to orbit the hero and provide adulation. That would be fine but annoying, but the worst part is that the MC is objectively a jerk -he's late for a class that is his last and only hope at passing and graduating, careens into The Girl and knocks her lunch tray flying, and was going to just keep going and leave it for her to deal with; the only reason he doesn't is that he double-takes and realizes she's pretty. The author makes a point of writing that she just stood there and watched him clean it up without helping as though this was a haughty thing to do instead of just ...letting him clean up a mess he made. Then he decides, because of The Girl, to not show up at that class after all, and the narrative voice informs us that in that moment, he gave up his entire future for her --this is delivered as a totally straight line. (Shh, don't point out that he was completely responsible for his academic performance up to then: he's busy nobly sacrificing.) Then Girl does what cardboard cutouts of validation do and drifts along in his wake (this is actually, literally spelled out in the story), giving up her own ambitions to adore him until he does what heroes do. The end. [If icky self-insertion lasts longer than you're comfortable with, seek medical advice.]
Update:
I didn't get into David Brin's The Giving Plague the first time I took a run at it --I was put off by the heavy exposition- but on a retry I read through the whole thing and the idea behind the story is too cool not to love. Brin is great for big big, unusual ideas.
The only one I actively did not like was Requiem in the Key of Prose (great title, though) by Jake Kerr. It was nothing but a Gary Stu hero story with a satellite female character to orbit the hero and provide adulation. That would be fine but annoying, but the worst part is that the MC is objectively a jerk -he's late for a class that is his last and only hope at passing and graduating, careens into The Girl and knocks her lunch tray flying, and was going to just keep going and leave it for her to deal with; the only reason he doesn't is that he double-takes and realizes she's pretty. The author makes a point of writing that she just stood there and watched him clean it up without helping as though this was a haughty thing to do instead of just ...letting him clean up a mess he made. Then he decides, because of The Girl, to not show up at that class after all, and the narrative voice informs us that in that moment, he gave up his entire future for her --this is delivered as a totally straight line. (Shh, don't point out that he was completely responsible for his academic performance up to then: he's busy nobly sacrificing.) Then Girl does what cardboard cutouts of validation do and drifts along in his wake (this is actually, literally spelled out in the story), giving up her own ambitions to adore him until he does what heroes do. The end. [If icky self-insertion lasts longer than you're comfortable with, seek medical advice.]
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