The Great Book of Amber (1999)

by Roger Zelazny

The Amber cycle, Zelazny’s magnus opus. It’s the old story of chaos versus order, combined with a hefty dose of parallel/alternate worldlines. Zelazny was a master when it came to mixing seemingly disparate elements of fantasy and science fiction into a coherent whole. While some people prefer his more serious stuff, like Lord of Light, I do not. The Amber chronicles have a special place in my heart, my gateway to Zelazny’s work in general. Even after reading them a second time now, years later, they haven’t lost their appeal to me. Well, the first five books that chronicle Corwin’s adventures.

The later books that chronicle the adventures of his son, Merlin, are of lesser quality. The writing is superb as always, but the plotting leaves something to be desired. Like the Corwin chronicles there’s a cornucopia of fantastic ideas, but what’s missing is the grand concept, the metaplot that connects all these ideas into something wholly. It’s just a rehash of the adventures of Corwin with bigger magic but less coherence, as if Zelazny himself wasn’t sure where he was going with it, introducing new plot elements and story twists until it looked like a mess. At the end it’s just the old chaos versus order plot again. Which is a disappointment, since Corwin himself created a third pattern at the end of his adventures, that could have changed the duality of the chaos versus order conflict and created something much more complex. Instead you get more of the same.

But the first five books are great, some of the best fantasy I’ve ever read, more imaginative and inventive than most of the recent stuff about which has been said to have reinvented fantasy.

Rating: 5/5

Nine Princes in Amber (1970)
The Guns of Avalon (1972)
Sign of the Unicorn (1975)
The Hand of Oberon (1976)
The Courts of Chaos (1978 )

Rating: 3/5

Trumps of Doom (1985)
Blood of Amber (1986)
Sign of Chaos (1987)
Knight of Shadows (1989)
Prince of Chaos (1991)

The Sagan Diary (2007)

by John Scalzi (online)
2.5 Colonial Defense Forces novel

This slim book is exactly what the title lets you expect, a kind of Diary of the character Jane Sagan. It’s a novelette, a ongoing inner monologue that describes Jane’s thoughts and feeling about many things, how she became who she is today, what she fears, what she loves and so on. John Perry (main character of Old Man’s War and her love interest) is used to highlight the difference between normal humans and the lives of the members of the special forces.

Some of Janes ramblings made me remember the one scene of Blade Runner, in the abandoned house where Deckard is hunted down by the Replicant Roy and when Roy saves Deckard and comes to peace with what he is. Replicant and Special Forces are alike, very short lives, but packed to the limit full of living. TSD is, IMHO, a very fine piece of characterization that gives you a very good look into the mindset of Jane Sagan, I feel even a deeper look than you got at John Perry during Old Man’s War. It’s an impressive feat that makes you appreciate Jane as a character even more.

Rating: 5/5

Radio Freefall (2007)

by Matthew Jarpe

Using my mad skillz of persuasion to weasel a book out of the hands of its author seemed such a clever idea, forgetting my credo never to let something like this happen. But the book had such a shiny cover and I wanted to buy it anyway. Well, now it’s going to bite me, since I feel uncomfortably saying bad things about the book, but it would feel worse if I would praise it to heaven and not believe in it.

My worst problems with the book were clunky writing and clunky plotting. Sometimes I had a hard time believing some of the lines that the characters exchanged with each other, they felt just so unnatural. Also the internal monologue of the guy who strove for world-domination felt completely wrong, as if schoolyard-bully were talking, not a guy who, just using his brilliant mind, was taking over the world (I had similar problems with other secondary characters, they felt a bit one-dimensional and out-of tune with the character they actually portrayed).

The plotting had problems, both in the way the bigger structure of the story had been developed (I had a hard time accepting the whole unification business, that was far too unbelievable) and how the story took shape as I read along. Too often I felt like, when a problem appeared, someone presented a neat solution, then another problem appeared, the solution to it soon turned up, and so on ad nauseum.

Another thing that didn’t helped the book much is that it’s so mundane (there’s not enough wild science fiction craziness in it) and that the whole angle about musicians left me pretty much cold. Those two are, I admit, questions of personal taste, some may like the book exactly because of them.

Now, after having pretty much said only bad things about Radio Freefall, on to the good stuff. For science fiction, it’s very accessible and can be easily used as a gateway drug. I already said it’s mundane, but that’s not entirely true. There’s AI’s and stuff about the web that’s rather neat, idea-wise, but Matthew makes it sound and feel mundane, so much that you forget that the book actually takes place in the future and not in the here and now.

Despite the, IMHO, clunky writing and plotting at times, it has a well developed pacing, you’ll never get bored and it’s easy to lose yourself in the book. It’s fun. It’s entertaining. And there’s real heart to it, and reason as well. While I thought the way the unification was handled as a plot-device was less than subtle and realistic, the arguments against such a process presented in the book seem sound to me. As first books go, it’s a solid effort.

Rating: 3/5

Count Geiger’s Blues (1992)

by Michael Bishop

CGB starts as a satire of superheroes, but it’s not very good at it. It’s too harmless, there’s no real bite to it (if you want to read a superior superhero satire, try Warren Ellis’s Nextwave) and worst of all. It’s boring. Halfway into the book, CGB transforms into the very thing it tries to mock, a superhero book. But like the satire part in the first half, the same applies for the rest of the book. It’s too harmless, the action is too lowkey and it’s still boring and tedious. At the end of the book I was wondering, what the hell Bishop did want to achieve with it. Because the book wants to eat its cake and have it too, it teeters on the edge between satire and farce, never quite knowing whether to mock the whole superhero stick or to take it seriously. In the end, CGB fails to do either of them well.

Rating: 1/5

Song of Kali (1985)

by Dan Simmons

If a book gets the World Fantasy Award, you expect it to be good. Sure, awards have been given out for any kind of crap, but somehow deep down some part of your brain still thinks: Awards = Goodness. And there’s the fact that Dan Simmons has written some of my most beloved stories and books. He can’t do wrong.

Well, he did. I understand, on a conceptual level, what he tried to do with it and why probably many were so impressed with the book. There are those adherents of horror that say real horror has nothing to do with monsters jumping out of the dark and slowly devouring you, but some nameless horror that has no face. SoK is about the real horror of losing your child and never knowing what happened to her. And the danger of not being able to let go and go on with your life, devouring yourself every day in her absence.

As I said, I understand it conceptually. Doesn’t mean I like the book based on that concept even an iota. It’s boring, it’s tedious, it goes on far too long for its own good and at the end the only thought I had was: It’s finally over, I can sell it on ebay. I understand why it got the award, I just don’t like it as reading material. Writing a thesis on it would be probably much more entertaining than sitting down an afternoon to read it for fun.

Rating: 1/5

Greenmantle (1988)

by Charles de Lint

Condensed to the point: Assassin Toni Valenti changes his life, runs away from the Mafia, retreats to the borders of the Canadian woods, meets life-affirmative people, meets some mysterious, ancient entity from the woods, changes his life to become a better person, other Mafia-types follow, hilarity ensues. Deus Ex machina of ancient entity from the woods helps to solve all problems. Thoughtful silence.

It’s well written, fun to read. Every character is drawn with a love for detail. But I was a little underwhelmed by the plot. All the time I was waiting for something interesting and unexpected to happen. Also I could have done with a bit more of explaining, but then I probably shouldn’t have read a book that uses a MYSTERIOUS, ANCIENT power as a plot driving device. Everything is vague: what’s the point of Greenmantle, what’s the point of the book. I know, readers should make up their own mind, but there’s a point where you get the feeling that not even the author has an idea what he’s actually writing about and makes shit up as he goes along. Which is more often than not the modus operandi of every writer, but the reader shouldn’t realize this while reading.

Rating: 3/5

Cold Copper Tears (1988)

by Glen Cook
3rd Garrett novel

The thing about Garrett is that he isn’t a Sherlock Holmes. He’s just a survivor who sorts out who is still standing at the end. But since Cook’s Garrett stories never have some master villain who has orchestrated the perfect crime, it doesn’t matter much. You can be as smart or powerful in a Cook story as you want, if you’re alive you can be killed or destroyed. And even if your plan might be perfect in theory, in the end it all comes down to chance sometimes. Little details that get out of hand, until Garrett somehow gets involved and everything goes down the shitter, with people dying left and right.

In Cold Copper Tears old, religious relics have gone missing. Still, despite having declined to take on the job, people are out to get Garrett. Reading this just shortly after a Pratchett book makes me see parallels. Both are fantasy, both are written in a deadpan style that makes you smile at times, yet the matter at hand is deadly serious for everyone involved. Both writers, Cook and Pratchett, have a keen sense of observation of human nature, only that Cook’s conclusions (or those of his characters) about their observations tend to be much darker than Pratchett.

Rating: 5/5

Wintersmith (2006)

by Terry Pratchett
35th Discworld novel, 3rd Tiffany Aching novel

Another adventure by the apprentice witch Tiffany Aching. This time she made the error of dancing at the dark morris, the dance that awakens the winter. Like so often on the Discworld, forces that shouldn’t have a life of their own anthropomorphize (probably by too much magic). As Tiffany dances the dark morris, winter appears, confuses her with summer and falls in love with her. That opens the box of Pandora for everyone involved, since winter doesn’t actually have a good idea of what it means to be human enough to love someone, or what is appropriate in this case.

Again a great book by Terry Pratchett. Excellent characterization, neat plot developments, hugely entertaining without avoiding having some depth. Like always Pratchett relays his observations about human nature without being condescending. I like how he handles characters that would have, in the hands of other authors, been easy targets, like Annagramma. If there’s one thing annoying about the book: it’s over too soon (but that’s true for every Discworld book).

Rating: 5/5

The Witchmaster (2007)

by Walter Moers
5th Zamonien novel
not yet translated, german title “Der Schrecksenmeister”

This a renarration of Gottfried Keller’s story “Spiegel, das Kätzchen” (roughly translated: Mirror the cat), written in 1855. I’ve read some reviews here and there that complained that Moers, again, used another story as the core for one of his books. I actually have no problem with that, never having read the original before (and I’m sure I never would have read it). In that way Moers actually succeeded in bringing the story to a modern audience, something he openly addresses in his afterword.

The story is about an intelligent cat, named Echo, who can speak every language and has lived happily until his master died. Left alone he slowly begins to starve on the streets of the city Sledwaya until the local witchmaster finds him and gives him a deadly yet alluring offer (for a starving cat). One month of the best food he has ever seen, then he gets killed by the witchmaster (who wants his fat for alchemical means). Echo agrees but soon regains his will to live and searches for a way out of the contract with the witchmaster.

So far I haven’t said much about whether I liked it and that’s partly because this is one of these books I wanted to liked, but did much less than I hoped for. It still boasts the crazy imagination of Moers and the main plot is different from everything he’s done before in his Zamonien novels. He never does something twice, which I appreciate. Still, I felt like the book went on far too long. Some plot developments were too predictable, whether this was caused by renarrating another story or whether I’ve read enough by Moers to know his tricks, I can’t say. It’s okay, but I prefer some of his other books over this.

Rating: 3/5

Dragon Quest 2 (1987)

by Chunsoft
2nd Dragon Quest game / enhanced American NES release as Dragon Warrior 2

The grinding from the first part remains, but some details have been improved in comparison to the first part. Instead of just one hero you have a party (but you can’t customize them), the dungeons are much easier to traverse and you automatically use stairways. The story of DW2 is still simple, but since the game is much bigger than the first part, there’s much more to do.

The hero and the princess from the first part have colonized other continents and now the kingdoms of their descendants are threatened by one evil dude named Hargon. Why? It’s never said, probably just because he’s evil, doh. The gameplay is similar to the first one, but as I said, there’s more to do. First you have to find your companions, then you have to find some crests and other items to advance in the game. At one point in the game you get your hands on a ship, which makes the gameplay progression much less linear than in the first game.

Apart from the endless grind (fighting to collect exp and gold to get more levels and better equipment), the game is actually fun. In some ways it reminds me how harder those games in the past were, you have to note down every little piece of information, since the game doesn’t hold you by the hand and shows you what to do next. But the fighting really wears you down.

Rating: 3/5