So, when I thought this was on the list I first thought it must be the novel version of the film Sunshine and was then tremendously disappointed that it was a fucking vampire novel. I haven’t read Twilight and the books that I’ve read with vampires tend to either be Terry Pratchett, Bram Stoker or … Continue reading
Tag Archives: The List
Book review: Contact
I think this is the first Carl Sagan I’ve ever read cover to cover. I have owned Cosmos but never read it. Anyway, if you’ve seen the film, it’s actually a lot like it. They compress various characters into one (in the film) and in the end (in the book) 5 people are sent in … Continue reading
Book review: Conan the Barbarian
Oh my god. OH MY GOD. The grandfather of fantasy, Conan the Barbarian, sets the stage for all the ridiculous sexism that shows up in later fantasy novels. I wish I could say it was kind of a guilty pleasure like Starship Troopers but it’s not. It’s just…upsetting. There are a lot of stories, so … Continue reading
Book review: The Mote in God’s Eye
So, when I read Dune I realised that I hated the idea of some vast space empire built on heredity. I mean, Star Wars has an empire but we know it was because of Senator Palpatine. This book’s central government is a vast space empire, with a royal imperial family, that has other aristocrats afforded … Continue reading
Book review: Ringworld
This book was a bit of slog. You would figure 278 pages of 2 humans and 2 aliens being shipwrecked on an alien built ringworld would fly by. You would be wrong. There doesn’t seem to be anything fundamentally wrong with the idea, it was just a bit badly written, I think. Also, some of … Continue reading
Book review: Furies of Calderon
The tragedy about this book is that it had a fairly good plot but was pretty much let down by several shoddy characters and the fact that we’re still basically left in the same position as we were at the start of the book. The plot is: a newly minted Cursor (like a secret agent) … Continue reading
The list – not very diverse
It’s been interesting to see the reaction to K T Bradford’s piece on not reading white, cis, male authors for a year. I don’t think I could do that (given most of my PhD guys are all white, cis and male) but I like John Scalzi’s approach to it. It did get me thinking almost … Continue reading
Book review: Starship Troopers
You know when you like something and you know you shouldn’t? This was kind of like that (a lot like the film actually). Surprisingly, it’s quite similar to the film – some people have been conflated they don’t have power-assisted suits in the film – but otherwise, it kind of follows the same trajectory. The … Continue reading
Book review: Gardens of the Moon
This book had A LOT going on in it. A lot of it seemed to be like “Ooo! This is a neat idea…” and then it went NOWHERE. How do I describe the plot: there’s an Empress who is hell bent on expansion, taking over cities there’s a lot of people who don’t like her … Continue reading
Book review: The Last Unicorn
Okay, so maybe there’s some inverse law where a book is really good, the film has to be crap and if the film is good, the book is crap. This is how I feel about The Last Unicorn and The Princess Bride. Seriously, does anyone remember how weird the animation of The Last Unicorn was? … Continue reading
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