I think I understood about 75% (maybe 80%) of what the hell was going on in this book. About 25% I can sort of infer or just assume “SPECIAL THING THAT GOES BOOM”. Saying that, it was very enjoyable. It did take about reading 40% of the book to really get a grip on the … Continue reading
Category Archives: Science Fiction
Book review: Ancillary Sword
Well I am inconsolable because I no longer have that book to read. IT IS SO GOOD.I think there are three main reasons why I love this series: I love the preciseness of all the rituals and formalities I love the artificial intelligences that populate the books Breq is such an awesome character, she is … Continue reading
Book review: Aurora
I really wanted to like this book. But in the end, it seemed like there were three interesting stories and none of them were told particularly well. The three main points being: the third generation of space voyagers are nearing the end of their journey they arrive, encounter many problems, some decide to stay, some … Continue reading
Book review: The Stand
What a bunch of bullshit. So the plot starts out as plague wipes out humanity and then turns into some mystical bollocks about a show down between good an evil. Perhaps if I wasn’t an atheist I would find it less awful, but as I am an atheist, I found the anti-intellectual, anti-progress, anti-rationalist twaddle … Continue reading
Book review: The Martian
I was going to read The Stand but I didn’t want to read the 1,200 page extended and uncut edition (because honestly, I did that another book and it was totally not worth it.) But luckily I had been loaned The Martian and so picked that up while I pondered how to get the slimmer … Continue reading
Book review: The Handmaid’s Tale
Right, so I’m going to admit from the beginning that I have a long standing resentment of all things Margaret Atwood, cultivated by grade 11 English class. We had to read The Edible Woman of which my abiding memory is of a woman who is miserable for a long time and then eats a cake. … Continue reading
Book review: Consider Phlebas
The tagline on the front of this book says: “Poetic, baffling, terrifyng, sexy…” and I’m wondering if whoever wrote those words had read a different book. Well, baffling is possibly accurate. I want to explain the plot, which sounds straightforward, but really is just the gossamer web of an idea that tricks you into thinking … Continue reading
Book review: The Left Hand of Darkness
I don’t know how to really describe this book other than really weird. The general plot is that a representative of a federation of worlds, lands on a planet to convince it to join their federation. That all sounds fine and normal for sci-fi, but the planet (called Winter by the alien envoy) has a … Continue reading
Book review: Stranger in a Strange Land
I didn’t grok this book at all. That folks, is a hilarious joke about the most annoying literary device I’ve come across in all the books from the list. Grok, you see, is a Martian word for…something. Like knowing or understanding or something so deep we can’t possibly translate it with our pathetic language. AND … Continue reading
Book review: Shadow of the Torturer
I do not have a fucking clue about what that book was about. Everytime I started reading it I suddenly started to feel very, very sleepy. Maybe this was part of the problem. Plot is vaguely: Severian is an apprentice torturer. He befriends one of the people his guild has to torture, helps her kill … Continue reading
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