Take a photo of a barcode or cover
ergative's reviews
1058 reviews
Night Lamp by Jack Vance
2.5
What an... odd book. I've heard that Jack Vance is a fine writer, but I didn't see much sign of it here. The whimsical inventiveness of the various cultures and traditions were cute, but also had a very strong overtone of exoticisation and othering of people. These cultuers are being presented as curiosities, not as people, which leaves a bad taste in my mouth. (I did rather enjoy the bit at the academic conference, though.)
The pacing was a complete mess: Jaro's whole childhood is built around his desire to go to space and uncover the mystery of his past, so it's awfully deflating when his missing father just . . . turns up and tells him what happened. The mystery plot then turns into a revenge plot--but even the revenge plot is pretty anemic. All of the plot is pretty anemic. Things just kind of happen, one after another, with very little structure or direction.
Overall, I'm not impressed, and feel no need to read more by this author.
The pacing was a complete mess: Jaro's whole childhood is built around his desire to go to space and uncover the mystery of his past, so it's awfully deflating when his missing father just . . . turns up and tells him what happened. The mystery plot then turns into a revenge plot--but even the revenge plot is pretty anemic. All of the plot is pretty anemic. Things just kind of happen, one after another, with very little structure or direction.
Overall, I'm not impressed, and feel no need to read more by this author.
The Silver Pigs by Lindsey Davis
4.0
This had a lively, entertaining narrative style, and I enjoyed the depth of detail in the setting. The plot was quite sprawling, though; I'm much better at keeping track of the minutiae of worldbuilding and magic systems than I am at the slow uncovery of twisty turny conspiracies. Props to Davis for giving everyone distinct names, though. Everything I know of classical Roman history suggests that there were, like, three names that everyone shared.
He Who Drowned the World by Shelley Parker-Chan
5.0
Gosh, Parker-Chan is SO GOOD at what they do! The character arcs, the plotting, the intrigue! The WILDLY UNHEALTHY sexual relations. I'm astonished that Baoxiang managed to come out of it without a miserable horrible death. And I'm even more surprised that Ouyang's arc could have been made any more tragic than it already was, but Parker-Chan managed to find a way! Well done, well done indeed!
The Hippopotamus Pool by Elizabeth Peters
3.25
Solid installment, not much different from the others. I like how the events of previous adventures form the foundation for this one.
We'll Prescribe You a Cat by Syou Ishida
2.5
This is an undemanding book about how Cats Are Good, with a rather charming premise: people who are struggling in their lives (in minor ways: irritating co-workers, uncongenial jobs, difficulties connecting with their children) somehow find their way to a psychiatric clinic in a building that isn't always there, where an odd doctor gives them a cat as a prescription. It's cute. It's pretty obvious. There's a little bit of a mystery about the nature of the clinic that is resolved in a sweet but not terribly surprising way. This would be a good book for someone who is grieving the loss of a beloved cat, perhaps; but there's not much else to it.
The Scholar and the Last Faerie Door by H.G. Parry
3.0
I've seen the rallying cry go around writers' circles: don't be afraid to do something that's been done before! Because it's never been done before by you. You make it special! Give us your take on [tired old trope], because in your voice it will be fresh and new!
And, like, that's good advice for a shy writer. But H. G. Parry is not a shy writer. H. G. Parry has written quite a few books already. And so surely H. G. Parry has the experience to see that, in fact, outsider goes to magic school and finds a home and friends but learns that there are dark secrets and hidden evils etc etc is a very, very tired trope. That it needs to be approached with an extremely fresh take. And this take is not fresh enough. It's got fairies and bargains and the whole magic school thing, but it really didn't feel like anything I hadn't seen before. I did rather enjoy the time-jump in the middle to nine years later, since the alternative is to do alternating timelines, and I never particularly liked those. But, in sum, meh. The book took no chances, gave no particular twists I hadn't already figured out, and the internal struggle of our narrator feeling guilty about leaving her family behind was forced and felt inconsistent.
If you want to read something by H. G. Parry that was fresh and new, I highly recommend The Unlikely Escape of Uriah Heep.
And, like, that's good advice for a shy writer. But H. G. Parry is not a shy writer. H. G. Parry has written quite a few books already. And so surely H. G. Parry has the experience to see that, in fact, outsider goes to magic school and finds a home and friends but learns that there are dark secrets and hidden evils etc etc is a very, very tired trope. That it needs to be approached with an extremely fresh take. And this take is not fresh enough. It's got fairies and bargains and the whole magic school thing, but it really didn't feel like anything I hadn't seen before. I did rather enjoy the time-jump in the middle to nine years later, since the alternative is to do alternating timelines, and I never particularly liked those. But, in sum, meh. The book took no chances, gave no particular twists I hadn't already figured out, and the internal struggle of our narrator feeling guilty about leaving her family behind was forced and felt inconsistent.
If you want to read something by H. G. Parry that was fresh and new, I highly recommend The Unlikely Escape of Uriah Heep.
The Kaiju Preservation Society by John Scalzi
3.75
This was not trying to be anything it wasn't. It was fluff. It was a romp. It had the Scalzi touch on the dialogue that makes every character sound identical (a witty quipper), the recurrring jokes that recur just a smidge too often ('I lift things'), and was exactly what it set out to be. It was essence of Scalzi. It was exactly what I wanted.
The Principle of Moments by Esmie Jikiemi-Pearson
1.75
Don't get me wrong, this book was... not good. But it was not good in an incredibly earnest, childlike way that was kind of endearing. You know how they say dance like no one is watching? This book danced like no one was watching. It was not a good dancer. But it was unashamed, and I have to respect that.
The Snake, the Crocodile and the Dog by Elizabeth Peters
3.25
This was not the strongest of the Amelia Peabody mysteries. The amnesia plotline had elements of humour to it, but the whole framing -- 'oh, remember how exciting things were when we were young?' -- wiith all its pining for the fun of thee earlier books, meant that the interactions between Amelia and Emerson when he doesn't remember her felt like Peters was attempting to recapture some of the bits that worked well in the first book. I'm sympathetic to the idea that a decade-plus married couple might remember wtih some yearning all the good times of the past, so it's not like the whole amnesia narrative was poorly motivated. But still: combining that theme with damn Sethos again (recurring villains are so tedious) was very risky, because it also reminds the reader, 'nope, nothing new here! Same old, same old.'
I hope Sethos stays dead. It's too easy to have a villain who can disguise himself as anyone he wants, even old acquaintances who are personally known to the narrator. I can swallow the amnesia plotline with no problems, but I always found Sethos's disguises a bit unconvincing.
Ramses's letters were very funny. I always think Ramses is a hoot. It's very, very difficult to do a genius whiz-kid well, but this book has nailed it.
I hope Sethos stays dead. It's too easy to have a villain who can disguise himself as anyone he wants, even old acquaintances who are personally known to the narrator. I can swallow the amnesia plotline with no problems, but I always found Sethos's disguises a bit unconvincing.
Ramses's letters were very funny. I always think Ramses is a hoot. It's very, very difficult to do a genius whiz-kid well, but this book has nailed it.
Dark City Rising: Medicine, Magic and Power Collide in this Sweeping Georgian Historical Fantasy by Cl Jarvis
2.0
This had so many good elements to it that could have made a kick-ass book, but instead just fell limp and flat. Dark academia with anatomists and chemists developing secret magical uses of phlogisten and aether and sigils? Yes please! 18th century Glasgow vs. Edinburgh medical professors fighting Scottish enlightenment battles? Yes please! Secret societies engaging in hidden power plays of town vs. gown to determine who runs the universities? Private assassins who are risen from the dead in arcane rituals? Hidden libraries with magical portals? Yes yes yes please!
And yet none of it actually came together in any kind of meaningful plot. William Cullen and Joseph Black spend most of their time playing musical chairs between positions at Glasgow and Edinburgh. The secret societies and various aristocratic patrons engage in murderous battles to support Cullen and/or Black for one positoin or another, except when they go away for ten years for reasons that are never entirely clear. Really, a lot of the power structures and motivations that drive all of the plot of this book are murky. What do the dark chymists actually want besides power that makes them so anti-Cullen? How do the institutional politics of university governance, split apparently between town councils, aristocratic meddlers, funding bodies, and--I guess--secret evil dark societies---how does that all actually work? Department meetings and wars of public opinion would be a lot more interesting if I actually understood the stakes and mechanisms of decision making. It was a weird combination of too much telling and also not enough telling. I spent a lot of time being told about people's various alliances, but I still wanted more exposition. What were the stakes behind the rivalries? Some of the ultimate stakes are so secret that nobody can actually be basing their alliances on them, and others are so entirely secondary to the main power struggles (like, road repairs, or the logistics of translation in smallpox inoculation projects) that it's baffling that they can be behind the deadly power struggles at the universities. I saw a lot of ticking, but none of the mechanism behind it, and so the experience of reading the book was about as interesting as watching the second hand on a clock go around in circles.
I think the problem here is that all the people are real: William Cullen was a real dude; Joseph Black is so real that there's a campus building named after him at the University of Glasgow. So the seemingly aimless switchy swapping between Glasgow and Edinburgh and the weird 10-year delays between plot points are presumably constrained by actual historical records. I imagine the Cumbernauld Road repairs and Highland smallpox inoculation projects were likewise based on real history. But the result is that the pacing was lumpy and the plot dragged and clumped. Oh, and the attempt to include women in the very dude-heavy plot was so miserably contentless that I would prefer they'd been left out entirely. It felt almost insulting to have token female characters with pointless appendix plots assigned o them thrown in my face, as if that would be enough to mitigate the fact that this is a book entirely about men doing men things.
So: great conceit; lousy execution.
And yet none of it actually came together in any kind of meaningful plot. William Cullen and Joseph Black spend most of their time playing musical chairs between positions at Glasgow and Edinburgh. The secret societies and various aristocratic patrons engage in murderous battles to support Cullen and/or Black for one positoin or another, except when they go away for ten years for reasons that are never entirely clear. Really, a lot of the power structures and motivations that drive all of the plot of this book are murky. What do the dark chymists actually want besides power that makes them so anti-Cullen? How do the institutional politics of university governance, split apparently between town councils, aristocratic meddlers, funding bodies, and--I guess--secret evil dark societies---how does that all actually work? Department meetings and wars of public opinion would be a lot more interesting if I actually understood the stakes and mechanisms of decision making. It was a weird combination of too much telling and also not enough telling. I spent a lot of time being told about people's various alliances, but I still wanted more exposition. What were the stakes behind the rivalries? Some of the ultimate stakes are so secret that nobody can actually be basing their alliances on them, and others are so entirely secondary to the main power struggles (like, road repairs, or the logistics of translation in smallpox inoculation projects) that it's baffling that they can be behind the deadly power struggles at the universities. I saw a lot of ticking, but none of the mechanism behind it, and so the experience of reading the book was about as interesting as watching the second hand on a clock go around in circles.
I think the problem here is that all the people are real: William Cullen was a real dude; Joseph Black is so real that there's a campus building named after him at the University of Glasgow. So the seemingly aimless switchy swapping between Glasgow and Edinburgh and the weird 10-year delays between plot points are presumably constrained by actual historical records. I imagine the Cumbernauld Road repairs and Highland smallpox inoculation projects were likewise based on real history. But the result is that the pacing was lumpy and the plot dragged and clumped. Oh, and the attempt to include women in the very dude-heavy plot was so miserably contentless that I would prefer they'd been left out entirely. It felt almost insulting to have token female characters with pointless appendix plots assigned o them thrown in my face, as if that would be enough to mitigate the fact that this is a book entirely about men doing men things.
So: great conceit; lousy execution.