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A review by petermedeiros1988
Bookburners: The Complete Season 1 by Margaret Dunlap, Max Gladstone, Brian Francis Slattery, Mur Lafferty
5.0
I cannot say if Bookburners was the best book I've read this year, but it was definitely the most no-holds-barried fun I've had reading this year, and that's saying something. The "episodic" format, adapted from the audio, makes it highly readable (and also good as something you can sit down, read part of, and then come back to later) and the 800 pages go by MUCH faster than you'd expect. The premise: police officer Sal gets recruited by Vatican-sponsored anti-magic team after her brother is possessed by a demon. And go.
One thing the book does REALLY well, both because of its format and its length, is that it lets these characters have high-stakes adventures AND reasonable "downtime" in which they learn more about each other and grow because of it. Normally, when I say that a book is "like a show" or "like a game," I mean it as an insult; I firmly believe books should capitalize on the affordances of text, not to sound pretentious. But this book has great writing AND all the GOOD things about contemporary TV, in terms of pacing and character development. It gives you the time you need to learn about these characters, slowly, so that when you put down the book you can't even figure out exactly when you started to fall in love with Sal and everybody else. If you're a fan of Bioware video games, I think this manages to capture the particularly feel of those games, but with all the best parts of a good dark fantasy book--imagination (and some things left to the imagination), the occasional searing metaphor, an array of compelling POVs--undercut with moments of humor and genuine pathos. It's terrific.
One thing the book does REALLY well, both because of its format and its length, is that it lets these characters have high-stakes adventures AND reasonable "downtime" in which they learn more about each other and grow because of it. Normally, when I say that a book is "like a show" or "like a game," I mean it as an insult; I firmly believe books should capitalize on the affordances of text, not to sound pretentious. But this book has great writing AND all the GOOD things about contemporary TV, in terms of pacing and character development. It gives you the time you need to learn about these characters, slowly, so that when you put down the book you can't even figure out exactly when you started to fall in love with Sal and everybody else. If you're a fan of Bioware video games, I think this manages to capture the particularly feel of those games, but with all the best parts of a good dark fantasy book--imagination (and some things left to the imagination), the occasional searing metaphor, an array of compelling POVs--undercut with moments of humor and genuine pathos. It's terrific.