Monthly Archives: March 2010

All the packages I was expecting from Nemira have arrived. Just so you know, 8kg of great books, almost 170ron. Photos of the entire collection when Bigbro arrives with the 17 books I left behind in Paris.

The plan was to entertain myself with two Brussolos, but I ended up reading just one, and The Demolished Man, a great science fiction noir by Alfred Bester. The story is somewhat a combination of the yet-to-be-written-then Ubik & The Minority Report, which, for all accounts and purposes, should be enough of a reason to make anyone read it. Although brief, this proto-cyberpunk police procedural is a dazzling bit of writing that hooks you just as tight as any Raymond Chandler yarn could. With stunning twists & turns, great characters & a mystifying subplot, @ just 250 pages, The Demolished Man is not only the first Hugo Award winner, but a hell of a good read.

Moving on – Krucifix – a delightful and engaging story about an elite squad of soldiers who end in a place where they really shouldn’t be (and that’s all you get if I plan to not spoil the plot). Suspenseful and terrifying almost the entire way through, the novel is winning a combination of Scott Smith and George A. Romero. The characters weren’t as well defined as I’d hoped because the spotlight was always on the action, and that wasn’t bad at all. Short, concise, baroque, adorable.

The Terror, my last Dan Simmons for a few months, is just that. As much as I loved his previous work in epic science fiction, this suffered more from bad writing than the Hyperion and Ilium sagas combined. At a whopping 955 pages, it’s certainly a lot to work with. The narrative is a 10 character exploit of jumbled chronology, all in the form of a diary or a log. Terror is a remarkably well researched historic novel disguised as a bone chilling horror. Well, it’s not. At no time is the book horror, while it has its moments of scares and thrills, scattered throughout hundreds of pages.

As it was advertised, I was expecting something in the vein of Carpenter’s Thing, a snowbound horror to scare the crap out of you, but what I got was a modern Moby Dick. Simmons recreates with astounding detail everything that could have happened on that dread expedition, you actually almost end up getting frostbite from the cold while standing guard alongside Lieutenant Little. While it is a beautiful about the doomed polar expedition led by Sir John Franklin, which set out from England in 1845 in search of the Northwest Passage — the long-dreamed-of Arctic shipping lane connecting the earth’s two great oceans — and never returned - this is not what I signed up for. After 600+ pages I was still waiting for the supernatural horror to take the lead, instead of the mundane horror of living on a frozen ship stranded in the Arctic in the early years of Dickens.

Knowing how much Simmons has to offer us, The Teror was a bit of a let down being so firmly established in reality. To understand his talent I have to confess I haven’t finished Moby Dick, White Jacket or Redburn, but, with great effort, I finished this beast of a book. While not as riveting, thrilling, entertaining or creative as his other efforts, it still manages to hook you into the world, even if you hate the sea and don’t really care about non-fiction. Despite the urgent need for a editor to cut half or at least a third of the book, Terror delivers as a richly textured thriller.

FYI: On the count of 3500+ pages of Dan Simmons since March 1st, I’ll be reading two light fixtures – Haita (The Pack) and Krucifix from Serge Brussolo - before moving on to G.R.R. Martin’s A Game of Thrones.

BTW: Already sold The Terror (bills to pay).

PS: March headcount: 43 books / 325ron. Not bad at all.

Despartiri

Sobolanul

Viata scurta

Santierul fantoma

Duffy sau cu stangu-n dreptu

Duffy sau praf in ochi

Duffy sau cum se taie cascavalul

Misterul mortii din strada Jubilee

Bufnita

Lumea lui Rocannon

All ordered for just 10ron, as part of the offer-of-the-day at Nemira. Now it’s just getting ridiculous.

Wow. I was unprepared for this. Even though this can be summed up the same way as the Hyperion Cantos (HC) – a story of epic proportions, a fantastic multiple narrative, great characters, awe-inspiring backstories and a darkly entertaining reality, just an amazing read – the Ilium saga is so much more than Hyperion. While not better per se, it is much more complex, gripping and thrilling. As a plus, the maudlin story-within-a-story is missing.

Trojans, greeks, Olympian Gods and sentient robots, all at war in a love letter to Homer, Shakespeare and Proust, Browning, Virgil and Aeschylus, as much as Hyperion was a love letter to Keats. Simmons certainly knows his stuff. While not as engaging as HC, is a space opera like no other – a stunning new take on ancient legends in which literary references abound. It contains more science fiction, more fantasy and a lot more humor than HC, and succeeds at being a bold and thrilling piece of writing that leaves you thunderstruck.

As in the case of Hyperion versus The Fall Of, here also the first part is better than the latter. As last time, Ilium is more philosophical, literary and defining of characters and their reasoning, whereas Olympos kicks off quasi-non-stop action, short-changing us, leaving our beloved characters to the wind, making stupid sacrifices for the sake of the plot. While the two novels can’t be read alone, there is a clear cut difference of style, but – just like in Kill Bill – that old quote kicks in – The whole is greater than the sum of its parts.

As a integral read, the two sagas are just as good – mesmerizing space opera – but because of my previously declared love for Shakespeare and greek mythos, I enjoyed the Ilium saga a hell of a lot more. Now I’m starting The Terror, my fifth Dan Simmons novel in two weeks.

FYI: spent yesterday kicking CPU ass in HOMM3 and last night kicking ass at pool at a nightclub. Having people around isn’t as bad as once thought.