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A review by wyrmdog
Gun Machine by Warren Ellis
5.0
I'm not sure what it is about Ellis' writing I love so much, but it draws me in and keeps me there like a cephalopod with co-dependency issues. I find the casual weirdness compelling I suppose, as if it's what I've been looking for in my fiction all along.
Planetary is the greatest piece of storytelling ever done (if you argue this, you are simply wrong in ways the universe hasn't yet devised ways of punishing), and while this and everything else he's done pales next to that, it is still a riot of a ride.
Where Crooked Little Vein was just bizarro for its own sake, this story is more coherent, if almost bland by Ellis standards. But it takes a horridly tired genre (police procedural/thriller) and breathes fresh life into it, waking it from a slumber its purveyors stroked it into while milking it for its pure stream of cash.
The characters are extreme and some of the dialogue reads like NextWave: Agents of HATE. This is a good thing, but could also be a little much if you're sensitive to such things (or if you are averse to prolific expletives). It nearly has its own vernacular lexicon, though it's keen to let you in on it, making what could be a barrier into a wink and a nudge. It was fun to see Bat channeling the Captain.
So yeah. I loved it.
Planetary is the greatest piece of storytelling ever done (if you argue this, you are simply wrong in ways the universe hasn't yet devised ways of punishing), and while this and everything else he's done pales next to that, it is still a riot of a ride.
Where Crooked Little Vein was just bizarro for its own sake, this story is more coherent, if almost bland by Ellis standards. But it takes a horridly tired genre (police procedural/thriller) and breathes fresh life into it, waking it from a slumber its purveyors stroked it into while milking it for its pure stream of cash.
The characters are extreme and some of the dialogue reads like NextWave: Agents of HATE. This is a good thing, but could also be a little much if you're sensitive to such things (or if you are averse to prolific expletives). It nearly has its own vernacular lexicon, though it's keen to let you in on it, making what could be a barrier into a wink and a nudge. It was fun to see Bat channeling the Captain.
So yeah. I loved it.