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A review by kittyg
Theatre of the Gods by M. Suddain
4.0
I read this as part of the #tometopple readathon.
This book is truly quite mad and the various blurbs on the book definitely are true (Tor states it's a, 'Mad bastard of a book!') I had wanted to get to this for a fair while as I'd not heard anyone else talk about it, and I was fairly sure it would be something I would fall in love with. I wasn't wrong, this is witty, batty, funny and mad, all whilst blending adventures through various worlds, galaxies, dimensions and including steampunk elements too. Basically there's a LOT going on in this, and a lot of it is so imaginative, that I was hooked throughout.
In this book we follow the story via a writer telling us the tale. Immediately upon entering the story we find out that this tale is being written on an abandoned moon in the midst of nowhere that our author has traced our main character to. He's living there in loneliness, old age, and madness, but our wonderful author has managed to extract his story over his time spent with him, and this is the story we are reading.
This book is made up of various different sections of the adventure interspersed with illustrations of crazy inventions, asides from the author commenting on the scene he describes, or backstory to explain actions of the characters. One of the elements I most enjoyed was the 'Little Page of Calmness' which is the very last page of the book and is simply there for the reader to flick to if they are feeling stressed or worried by the course of the story.
To be honest I think you're better off going into this book no knowing too much about where it will take you, but some of the things I most liked were:
- M. Francisco Fabrigas' invention of headphones which ONLY let in 'nice' noises, nothing such as noisy neighbours or annoying builders etc gets thorough, but you can still have a conversation with a friend or listen to calm birdsong etc. I definitely want one.
- I love the fact that we have flesh-machine blend people - they are certainly different and interesting becuase of how they are made up, and seeing the difference within people made of more flesh and those made of more machine was certainly intriguing and raised some moral debates I liked to ponder.
- Finding a young girl who is trapped in a block of ice, defrosting her, and seeing she's still alive and she's quite incredible...
All of these things happen very early in the book and give little about the plot away, but you can get a feeling from these what this book may involve (madness) and how entertaining you may find it (very). I think this has echoes and similarities to Douglas Adams, Terry Pratchett and Mark Hodder, so if you like any of them you'll probably like this too :)
I will say that I am very eager to check out M. Suddain's new book (although it's not in this same genre I believe) as he's a great writer and one I certainly want to follow more. I look forward to that, and this one gets a 4*s from me in the meantime!
(oh and also ... homunculus - this will make sense if you read the book)
This book is truly quite mad and the various blurbs on the book definitely are true (Tor states it's a, 'Mad bastard of a book!') I had wanted to get to this for a fair while as I'd not heard anyone else talk about it, and I was fairly sure it would be something I would fall in love with. I wasn't wrong, this is witty, batty, funny and mad, all whilst blending adventures through various worlds, galaxies, dimensions and including steampunk elements too. Basically there's a LOT going on in this, and a lot of it is so imaginative, that I was hooked throughout.
In this book we follow the story via a writer telling us the tale. Immediately upon entering the story we find out that this tale is being written on an abandoned moon in the midst of nowhere that our author has traced our main character to. He's living there in loneliness, old age, and madness, but our wonderful author has managed to extract his story over his time spent with him, and this is the story we are reading.
This book is made up of various different sections of the adventure interspersed with illustrations of crazy inventions, asides from the author commenting on the scene he describes, or backstory to explain actions of the characters. One of the elements I most enjoyed was the 'Little Page of Calmness' which is the very last page of the book and is simply there for the reader to flick to if they are feeling stressed or worried by the course of the story.
To be honest I think you're better off going into this book no knowing too much about where it will take you, but some of the things I most liked were:
- M. Francisco Fabrigas' invention of headphones which ONLY let in 'nice' noises, nothing such as noisy neighbours or annoying builders etc gets thorough, but you can still have a conversation with a friend or listen to calm birdsong etc. I definitely want one.
- I love the fact that we have flesh-machine blend people - they are certainly different and interesting becuase of how they are made up, and seeing the difference within people made of more flesh and those made of more machine was certainly intriguing and raised some moral debates I liked to ponder.
- Finding a young girl who is trapped in a block of ice, defrosting her, and seeing she's still alive and she's quite incredible...
All of these things happen very early in the book and give little about the plot away, but you can get a feeling from these what this book may involve (madness) and how entertaining you may find it (very). I think this has echoes and similarities to Douglas Adams, Terry Pratchett and Mark Hodder, so if you like any of them you'll probably like this too :)
I will say that I am very eager to check out M. Suddain's new book (although it's not in this same genre I believe) as he's a great writer and one I certainly want to follow more. I look forward to that, and this one gets a 4*s from me in the meantime!
(oh and also ... homunculus - this will make sense if you read the book)