A curated Collection of Fantasy and Science Fiction Media
- Novel written by Alasdair gray
- Published 1992
Poor Things is such an ambitious book that I feel like I need to reread it at least once before I will be able to fully comprehend it. But even in the first read-through I already very much appreciated how skillfully crafted this story is.
The book is written in the style of a Victorian novel, with an intricate narrative structure. The various stories within stories have the purpose of making you doubt the reliability of the different narrators. Therefore, from the very beginning you are forced to question everything that you are reading, and to decide for yourself which version of events you believe.
The many references to Frankenstein, Jane Eyre and other famous texts serve to support the books themes of female agency, freedom and sexuality. But here too the book refuses to provide easy answers, forcing the reader to do a lot of the thinking for themselves and to make up their own mind.
Apart from the structure of the story, the book also plays around with language itself. My favourite example of this is the evolution of Bella’s speech, as this is where Alasdair Gray really gives free rain to his ability to engage and experiment with language.
The story is in many ways alligorical, which results in some of the characters being somewhat of a caricature. While this fits to book and it’s purpose, it does mean that the readers are kept at more of a distance to the characters, not really being able to fully identify with them. Nevertheless, I found enough to puzzle over in this book that this did not keep me from enjoying it.
The book is very different in tone compared to its 2023 movie adaptation, so if you saw the movie and did not enjoy it, that does not necessarily mean that you will not enjoy the book. I would definitely recommend it to any lovers of either Victorian(-style) or feminist literature.
- Book written by Robert A. Heinlein
- Published 2 June 1966
- Standalone
I love the classics of the genre, and if I have ever talked to you about science fiction, you will know that I am always explaining that ancient sci-fi novels are worth reading because they are still relevant to the present day. Still, even I am sometimes surprised myself exactly how true that statement can be.
The Moon is a Harsh Mistress is closing in on its 60th birthday. The overarching theme – of a population rising up against their oppressor – is as old as time, and will no doubt be recognisable for as long as people will be able to read. That is not what I am referring to, however. The Moon is a Harsh Mistress also delves into AI, deepfakes avant la lettre, polyamory, and gender – topics that may be more relevant now in 2024 than they ever were in 1966.
I will admit that Heinlein can be relatively crude about these issues – I don’t find his writing particularly thought-provoking because it lacks a little in subtlety (looking at you, Starship Troopers). There is a certain self-righteousness in Heinlein’s works, a certain conviction that doesn’t always feel like just the characters’.
In The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, the main character Manny’s dry cynicism can be a bit off-putting, though I do find it a charming way to introduce certain topics as extremely normal and hardly worth mentioning – such as the complex polyamorous family structure he is a part of. It is contrasted nicely with Wyoh’s rebellious fervour. But I never really liked the supposedly brilliant co-conspirator professor De la Paz’s platitudes about the evil of government and the virtues of self-organisation. He feels just a little too much as a conduit for Heinlein’s own political ideas. It is in fact the moments when Heinlein is consciously delving into the politics of building a nation that I think The Moon is a Harsh Mistress is at its weakest.
Perhaps that is simply a matter of space: Kim Stanley Robinson’s Mars Trilogy is not dissimilar to The Moon is a Harsh Mistress in some ways; though being a trilogy of books triple the size of Heinlein’s work certainly helps in establishing the Martian independence movement and the politics of the solar system in that.
Fortunately, The Moon is a Harsh Mistress has more than enough to offer besides the supposed wisdom of professor De la Paz. In particular, the AI Mike is a delight to read. His development as a character is central to the story, and I think Heinlein does a great job of making his interactions with the human characters believable. I like that Mike could probably have been really frightening, but never comes across as such in the story (though that is probably a matter of perspective).
Overall, The Moon is a Harsh Mistress is a surprisingly relevant classic that is well worth the read for its interesting characters and the tension of its plot, if perhaps not for its politics.
- Book written by Robert A. Heinlein
- Published 5 November 1959
- Standalone
The Paul Verhoeven movie is probably better known than Heinlein’s novel, but Starship Troopers is just as much a classic in print sci-fi as it is in Hollywood blockbusters.
The stories are completely different, however.
Where the movie is an angry commentary on the futility of dying for a fascist government, the novel is probably best described as salivating over how cool super-trained human soldiers in power armour can be. Basically, Warhammer 40.000 without the irony (so… just modern 40k then?).
Starship Troopers glorifies the military, and it is clearly intended for an audience that likes that. It’s also very conservative in its philosophy (though I’ve also heard it described as libertarian – I guess it doesn’t neatly fit in one box. For example, race is depicted as a non-issue for once). I’m not going to lie, it fits in a certain societal niche so well it made me slightly uncomfortable at times. Then again, the book was written in the 1950s and Heinlein has been dead for over three decades so it is probably best to look at it with some distance.
Political message aside, I think Starship Troopers is actually well-written, if perhaps overly detailed on military organisation. It has surprisingly easy-flowing prose for the level of detail, and is well-paced overall due to a couple of nice flashback scenes.
Starship Troopers builds tension well, especially towards the drops Johnny participates in, and releases tension well when he returns to safety. Starship Troopers reads like a WWII diary, except Johnny Rico is fighting Bugs on Klendathu rather than Germans in the Ardennes or the Japanese in the Pacific.
And that’s its strength as well as its weakness. The enemies are Bugs and the Mobile Infantry suits are cool, but apart from that… it’s just a novel about a guy in an imaginary war that makes war seem really cool. Yes, there is some discussion of philosophy and moral virtue, but it is really heavy-handed and kind of juvenile, to be honest. It makes you wonder whether Heinlein somehow felt like he ‘missed out’ due to leaving the US Navy ahead or WWII.
While Starship Troopers has been influential, I don’t really think it a necessary read in the 2020s. Its technological ideas have been internalised in science fiction to the extent that there is really very little in the book that is new or surprising, and again the right-wing philosophy is bordering on icky (’moral decline’ bullshit, advocacy for corporate and and capital punishments, for example…). In some ways, Starship Troopers feels like the most bland Hollywood-science-fiction-for-men-with-lots-of-testosterone-script ever put to paper.
It actually makes you rather glad Paul Verhoeven decided to go for a satirical take rather than a straight up adaptation. As a result the movie stands out from the pack more than the book does.
Tagged:
See also:
- Book written by Grace Curtis
- Published 19 March 2024
- Standalone
Full disclosure: We received a free advance reader copy for Floating Hotel.
I’m not the biggest fan of low-plot stories. I read one Becky Chambers book and didn’t hate it, but I generally need stuff to be Happening in order to keep me engaged. I had a similar issue with Legends & Lattes, though as I listened to the audiobook I could just let it happen without having to really focus. Oftentimes with cosy books, you can miss a couple of minutes and you won’t miss much of the story.
I really enjoyed the setup of this book. You’re pulled in with the story of the hotel manager, which in turn introduces you to several other of the crew. Each new story explores the origin story of the crew member, as well as their current life on the ship. Throughout all this, a mystery is introduced, which keeps you on your toes and gives you a reason to keep reading.
The strongest part of the novel for sure are the characters Curtis introduces. Carl is my absolute favourite and I would have enjoyed to see more of him in the book, but there are plenty more characters I would have loved to find out more about. This book is mostly character driven, and it does a really good job at making you like its characters.
Overall, this type of story still isn’t really for me, but it was executed well enough that I enjoyed my time reading it. Especially near the end, I struggled to put it away!
Some books you read because you’ve wanted to read them forever, because they come highly recommended, or because they’ve won awards left right and centre. Other books are just thrown into your lap at the right time and you figure ‘why not?’. Floating Hotel is in the second category. It is perhaps not the type of book that I might otherwise have read, but it’s good to get out of your comfort zone every now and then.
Although… Floating Hotel is very much a comfort zone-book. It is an aggressively light read. I’ve read a few ‘cozy’ stories, lately, and Floating Hotel falls squarely in that corner of speculative fiction.
Each chapter of Floating Hotel follows a different staff member of the eponymous floating hotel as they go about their duties for the day (often derailing as the story progresses), while giving us that particular staff member’s story for ending up in the interstellar hospitality business. Each of them a misfit in their own world, they have come together as a found family under the kind leadership of supremely inoffensive hotel manager Carl.
There is a through line in Floating Hotel, but at times, the book almost feels like a collection of character-driven short stories. In fact, the through line (lines?) are probably better not thought about too much. You’re certainly not reading Floating Hotel for the plot.
So what are you reading it for?
I think Floating Hotel’s main attractions are probably its likeable characters, its unpretentious style, its gates-open-come-on-in storytelling. It’s the kind of book that takes no processing at all, a brains-off and go-with-the-flow experience.
I mostly enjoyed Floating Hotel, but it is not really my cup of tea. The story is set in a distant future, but it is a typical sci-fi-as-a-setting book. The same stories could easily have been told in a fantasy or even real world setting. It leans heavily into well worn tropes, without much variation or subversion. They’re well executed, but Floating Hotel really never surprises you (nor, I guess, does it intend to). It has loveable characters, but none really sparked for me. Overall, as someone who likes to take something from every book that they read, Floating Hotel is just a little too shallow.
Then again, I feel like Floating Hotel knows this. It does not pretend to ask or answer big questions. It is quick, short, easy. Floating Hotel is the kind of book that could have easily irritated me, but it never did, and I think that is because Curtis knows to keep it simple.
It is the one thing that sets Floating Hotel apart from the likes of The Long Way Round to an Angry Planet, which is far more ambitious, but falls flat a little when it tries to answer big questions and (in my eyes) fails because it is just not the type of book for it.
Overall, I think Floating Hotel is good at what it wants to do – though what it wants to do is just a bit too simple to really get me excited.
Tagged:
See also:
- Book written by Hank Green
- Published 7 July 2020
- Part two of two
Like with my review of the previous book in this series, I want to say that this low rating is not because I think the book is plain bad – it was just a frustrating read for me. I do believe the book has an audience – that audience is just not me or people like me. Additionally, if you read my review of part one and still read that book, then my review of part two is not going to do anything for you, for I think people that loved the first book will love the second, and people that didn’t like it probably shouldn’t be interested in reading this one to begin with.
My main problem with An Absolutely Remarkable Thing was the prose, which is only alleviated very slightly in this sequel due to the fact that other characters get to speak more. I know other curators did find it easy to read, and it is, but it remains surprisingly hollow.
The book has a more conventional plot than the previous instalment, which was promising at first, but Green dodges the science-fiction questions and handwaves explanations, giving the impressions that the aliens’ science magic functions exactly as the plot demands. I am not necessarily a fan of Brandon Sanderson’s approach to storytelling, but Green would have done well to take a leaf out of his book here: Sanderson believes that a writer’s ability to solve a character’s problem through magic (or here, the aliens’ ‘science’) is directly proportional to a reader’s understanding of that magic. In this book, however, it is never made clear what the aliens can or can’t do, and as a result the actions required of the main characters feel completely random. In that, the A Beautifully Foolish Endeavour just feels a lot more poorly thought out than An Absolutely Remarkable Thing, which, though weird, was coherent in its plot and message.
The story continues asking questions on internet influence, and the second book adds questions on the influence of social media companies and the failure of governments to rein them in. These are relevant questions and if Green manages to gain an audience for them through his books, then all the more power to him. As works of fiction, though, I think they do not cut the mustard, and unless you are very interested in a book on social media, I would recommend you leave these alone.
Tagged:
See also:
- Book written by Hank Green
- Published in 2018
- Part one of two
There are some very slight spoilers in my review.
I’m going to rate An Absolutely Remarkable Thing two stars, but (i) purely subjectively for me, it’s probably a one star because I wouldn’t have finished if it wasn’t on a reading list for a book club; and (ii) I am so obviously not the intended audience for this book that me reviewing it feels similar to rating a university math textbook or a toddler’s picture book.
My experience for this book was reading diagonally across pages filled with some of the absolute worst prose I’ve ever encountered in any publication. I was reading about characters that I could relate to so poorly that they all felt like caricatures. The book is set up as a memoir penned by an unfiltered, very American, very teenage blabbermouth, with the occasional 2016 meme reference thrown in. It reads as one of those terribly annoying YouTube videos where they cut the breathing pauses between sentences out of people’s speech. At the same time, most of the sentences carry hardly any meaning, and Green needs about three times as many words to say anything as most other novelists would. I absolutely detest it. I also think these editorial choices were fully intentional.
The plot is about first contact with an alien species, but I’ve never seen an author who manages to make so thrilling a concept so nonsensical and incredibly uncool. The aliens literally just stand there (that’s the point) while humans solve absolutely ludicrous, completely unrelated, meaningless puzzles fit for a bad point-and-click game – in a dream. This is an actual thing happening in this book. It boggles the mind that people want to read about this.
At its core, though, this book is about fame, and, to be precise, internet fame. It’s message is about how internet fame made the main character see herself less of a person and more of a product. First of all, while I don’t think that it’s untrue, it is rather obvious, and as a moral lesson weirdly inapplicable to the general public who, I shit you not, are not all suffering from their success as internet influencers. Secondly, for me, it’s all very much a – as we say so beautifully in Dutch – a ‘far away from my bed show’. I don’t personally have any social media accounts and I haven’t felt the need to have any since I left high school. The endless attention and validation seeking makes me want to vomit just thinking about it, and I secretly harbour the belief that having an active social media account is a weakness of character. 😛 Anyway, keep engaging with our content! /rant.
The result, though, is that I find the main characters in this book utterly unrelatable, its style borderline unreadable, and its message paradoxically unremarkable.
As much as I did not enjoy it, I do realise it is probably successful at what it tries to achieve. But in what it has achieved, I believe it is more fit for 18 year olds that think they could be an influencer than a serious fan of science fiction.
I am very impressed by this book. Under the guise of a fun adventure story it manages to discuss some really important issues about social media and its impact on our lives. I very much enjoy reading about people in their twenties and I care deeply about all of the main characters in this book. Even though April makes a lot of awful decisions that are very hurtful to the people around her, her character is well enough developed that I still care about her as well. She also has a really dry sense of humour which I find very funny.
Because the writing style is very conversational and April is addressing the reader directly, this book is particularly well-suited to the audiobook format. It is performed by Kristen Sieh (known from Orange is the New Black), and definitely worth checking out.
This book has an intriguing premise and relatable characters, packaged in a quick and accessible writing style. Ultimately, these things are used to get Hank Green’s theory on ‘internet fame and how it affects you’, across, which is done pleasantly elegant. However, the book keeps telling me this Very Big Worldwide Event happened, which kept pulling me out of my suspension of disbelief.
Overall I enjoyed the reading experience, but keep part two on hand when you like having answers to all your questions. I was very glad I had mine already on my nightstand, ready to go.
- Book written by Martha Wells
- Published 2018
- Part 4 in the Murderbot Diaries
Listened to the audiobook with Kevin R. Free. Well-told this time.
Having heard the recent rumours of an upcoming Murderbot TV adaptation, I figured I’d give the series another shot (after having dropped Murderbot after part three about two years ago). After all, I really like the idea of The Murderbot Diaries. So perhaps taking a break would be enough to help me appreciate it just a little bit more…
Unfortunately, no.
Exit Strategy is similar to the previous instalments in the series: the Murderbot travels to a new space station, hacks its way through station security, and pretends to be human, until it is confronted with powerful corporate security that attempts to stop it from completing its mission.
It’s message is also similar: capitalism sucks, humans supporting that system suck, human interaction is difficult (and sucks), sometimes you just want to lock youself in a room and watch television (which, incidentally, doesn’t suck), but even if you so, some humans, surprisingly, don’t suck and it’s worth the effort of socialising with them to be their friend.
But the Murderbot’s social struggles just didn’t really resonate with me, the hacking is starting to get really samey, and I’m really starting to feel that the piecemeal worldbuilding is letting the series down.
I really love that the story is told through bite size chunks of about 3-4 hours. But with Exit Strategy, I really felt like I was reading a chapter in a novel that was pretending to be a novella. There is clearly a direction for the series, but because Exit Strategy is supposedly a novella, that through line is very simple.
That is a pity, because I feel the potential of politics done right just swirling beneath the prose. The same goes for the worldbuilding, or the recurring human characters. I think Exit Strategy is really where the format is starting to hurt the series.
I wonder if it has ever happened before that I’ve tried to like something as much as I’ve tried to like Murderbot, but still failed. I like the format of a series of shorter stand alone stories, that still tell a connected tale. I love the idea of an androgynous socially awkward cyborg that hacked itself to watch space-Netflix. I love the idea of describing human interaction from the point of view of that character. I like the idea of hacking and bot-to-bot interaction playing an important role in the plot.
Murderbot has all the ingredients for a huge hit – so it is no wonder that it is! Wells has received two Nebulas and four (!) Hugos for the series. That’s incredible, and I’m not going to argue that The Murderbot Diaries doesn’t deserve them. Wells just used all those great ingredients to bake a cake that is constantly disappointing for me.
Now, the next instalment, Network Effect, is actually a novel. Which makes me feel like Wells maybe agreed with me. So now I’m in doubt again, because maybe it would actually be a good idea to read Network Effect and see if it remedies some of the issues I am struggling with in this series. Boy, I am really trying hard to like Murderbot….
Tagged:
See also:
- Book written by Kim Stanley Robinson
- Published in 1997
- Standalone
Listened to the audiobook with Adam Verner – good narrator for a complex book; he did take an hour of getting used to.
Antarctica is one of these interesting near-future science fiction works that actually get overtaken by the near future they’re describing. Written in 1997, it feels much like it took place a couple of years ago, with ‘wrist phones’ having inexplicably replaced smartphones or smartwatches, and working remotely being called ‘telecommuting’.
Antarctica may be outdated in some ways – some of its scientific debates have, as I understand it, mostly been resolved – but it doesn’t read like an outdated work. Rather, it reads like a turn-of-the-millennium optimist’s version of the 2020s. Antarctica feels like a here and now where the problems aren’t necessarily solved, but the political cynicism of populism hasn’t taken hold and instead there is room for science and optimism instead. Looking back, Antarctica almost feels a little naïve at times. Still, reading Antarctica, I constantly felt like I would rather live in that version of our world.
So, thematically, the novel hasn’t aged a day. Antarctica is about climate change and about capitalism threatening the last real wildernis on Earth. It is about what we can do to stop it. That is even more pertinent now than it was in 1997.
But it is also about why humans go to the extremes that they do to live in the most inhospitable region on Earth. About the quest for prestige of the early explorers, the quest for knowledge of modern scientists, and about the quest for the edge of the human experience sought by today’s tourists who literally follow in the footsteps of the great explorers in an attempt to claim a piece of whatever it was that made those men great.
Mixed with all that are the small troubles of the daily lives of the guides and maintenance workers and scientist that live on Antarctica every day to make it all possible for everyone else. And as always, Kim Stanley Robinson writes these characters as well as he does the larger political picture.
Antarctica does not start off with a big bang, but Robinson rather builds the pressure slowly as the book progresses. Just as we feel we are starting to understand each character, something goes wrong. And as the troubles mount, life in Antarctica feels more and more dangerous.
The pace increases throughout the book, only held down by sections discussing research into Antarctic geology that might not be for everyone (and which reminded me a lot of Neal Stephenson’s style). But if you’re confident you can get through those, I can promise you Antarctica, despite its literary style, will not let up.
I finished the 20-hour audiobook in less than a week – perhaps that says something about my listening habits, but it definitely says something about how I kept wanting to dive back into this fascinating book.
Tagged:
See also:
- Novel written by Christopher Paolini
- Published May 16, 2023
- Part 0.5 of the Fractalverse
Christopher Paolini and I go back. Not very far, but far enough. I watched the Eragon movie when I was a kid, and quite enjoyed it because Dragons. About five years ago, I finally got around to reading the book, and was less than impressed. I gave it one star. Yeah.
I find it hard to hate on Eragon too much because Paolini wrote it when he was 15 years old. It’s impressive for a kid to write a whole book, even if it’s a bad one! I’m much less forgiving when it comes to his later work, however. His Sci-Fi novel To Sleep in a Sea of Stars had a lot of potential, which was wasted at every possible opportunity. It was just way too long, and even after 900 pages, it didn’t actually end. I won’t go too deep into my issues with the book, but if you’re interested in reading my rant – I mean analysis – feel free to check out my post about it.
Fractal Noise is a sort of prequel to Sea of Stars. None of the characters overlap, and we also don’t see any of the interesting concepts introduced in the latter novel in Fractal Noise. The ship Alex is on, the Adamura, also has a ship mind (a human whose brain has been implanted into a ship to control its processes like a sort of AI), but she barely plays a role in the plot.
One big similarity between the two books is that both main characters mourn a partner. Alex’s wife is dead and he’s understandably very upset about it. This was an improvement from Sea of Stars, in which protagonist Kira very quickly seemed to forget that her dead fiancé ever existed. The death of Alex’s wife, Layla, is a big theme in Fractal Noise. It’s essentially the main focus of the story, which is unfortunate because, based on the back cover, I thought I was about to be reading a thrilling first-contact Sci-Fi novel. Instead, this story is mostly about loss, which would be fine if it were a satisfying read, which it wasn’t.
A big problem for me were the characters. None of them are particularly interesting, and we don’t ever really dive deep into what drives them, other than “religion” for Talia, or “nothing” in the case of Alex. They’re not funny, they’re not compelling, and I couldn’t identify with any of them. The character we learn the most about is probably Layla, but even she never really becomes a “full” person.
The story itself also wasn’t really compelling enough to satisfy me as a reader. At the risk of spoiling the book a bit: nothing much happens. I kept waiting for the big moment that would make Fractal Noise worth my time, and it genuinely never comes. Much like To Sleep in a Sea of Stars, this book doesn’t really have an ending, and it’s very frustrating. When I finished the book, I almost threw it across the room because I was SO annoyed.
Before I leave you with the recommendation to just not pick this novel up, I do want to touch on one more topic. The cover of Fractal Noise uses stock art that was generated with AI. TOR is a publishing house that has plenty of money to pay actual artists to make their covers, and I hope they learnt from the backlash they faced over this issue. However, I don’t know if I agree with people who haven’t read the book leaving low-star reviews on Goodreads just because of the cover. That said, I think the book is kind of bad, so as far as I’m concerned the star rating is entirely fair.
Tagged:
See also:
- Book written by James S.A. Corey
- Published 4 June 2013
- Part 3 of The Expanse
As The Expanse progresses, its sci-fi may soften but the tension never slackens. Abaddon’s Gate is similar in structure to the previous instalments, following the story from separate points of view that intertwine as the plot progresses. This creates the series’ signature high pace, skipping from highlight to highlight as experienced by each of the characters at breakneck pace and keeping the reader glued to the pages.
Abaddon’s Gate also follows the series trajectory in moving from more technical hard science fiction to the softer kind where certain story elements are taken for granted and not explained. This also allows Abaddon’s Gate to take The Expanse new and exciting places that a more grounded narrative such as Kim Stanley Robinson’s Mars-trilogy could not go.
This, I think, is one of The Expanse’s strengths: even as the core cast of characters remains constant, the backdrop of the development of their relationships shifts just a little every time, keeping the story fresh.
That changement de decor is also, however, taking The Expanse into more generic sci-fi territory. Whether this is a downside is up to you, but I found that it makes me less excited, not more excited to pick up the next book.
That is not to say that I won’t read it or expect to enjoy it – on the contrary. But I’m now reading The Expanse for the smooth prose, quick Hollywood-in-a-book-style action and to a lesser extent, the main characters.
In this particular case, there is something else as well: with the vast array of opportunities opened up at the end of Abaddon’s Gate, I’m very curious to see where Cibola Burn will take us. I already have a copy on my to read-shelf, so watch this space!
Tagged:
See also:
- Novel written by Tamsyn Muir
- Published August 4th, 2020
- Part two of the Locked Tomb series
Last year, I listened to the audiobook of Gideon the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir. In my review, I stated that I wasn’t sure if the audiobook (though wonderfully narrated by Moira Quirk) had been the right choice for me, as Gideon the Ninth frequently left me extremely confused. I decided to buy the physical book of Harrow the Ninth for this very reason, and I’m glad I did. Being able to go back a couple of sentences whenever I didn’t understand what was going on was really helpful, because…
This book was still confusing, and not just because I couldn’t keep up with the audiobook (so I’m sure I would have struggled similarly with Gideon, had I read a physical copy of that). It’s the type of story where something has changed before the book starts (in this case, Harrow forgetting Gideon) and the reader is left to put together the puzzle as they read. I’m not great at puzzles, so this type of story structure usually doesn’t really work for me. And truly: it shouldn’t have worked. But there’s something about Muir’s writing that makes me happy to sit through pages and pages of confusion and enjoy it too.
Thankfully, there are fewer characters in Harrow the Ninth than in Gideon the Ninth. Unfortunately, I had just as difficult a time trying to keep them apart. This was partly because they all have like 3 names and if you put a gun to my head I wouldn’t be able to tell you who the saint of Duty was, or why the emperor gets referred to in 5 different ways. I had this problem in Gideon and it’s still kind of annoying and unnecessary, especially considering the relatively small cast of characters. It’s almost as if Muir is intentionally trying to confuse the reader. What doesn’t help is that Muir’s style is very snappy and quirky, sometimes at the expense of characterisation. Every character talks quite similarly, which makes them blur together.
Harrow the Ninth is written in part in second person, which – again – shouldn’t work but somehow it does. Like in Gideon, I really enjoyed the way this book was written. It’s extremely funny. Muir even sprinkles some memes throughout the book, which worked for me, but which I can imagine enraging other readers. I can imagine some people reacting very poorly to it.
Even after finishing it, I’m still not 100% sure I understood everything that happened in the story. Like, I just didn’t fully get it. But that’s okay! Despite there being a lot of aspects of this book that didn’t work for me, the overall charm of Muir’s setting and characters is so strong that Harrow the Ninth gets a solid four stars from me. I think these books would be particularly fun to reread after finishing the series, because I’m sure there’s so much that I missed on my first readthrough.
I even immediately went back to the store to find book three. Unfortunately, they only had an expensive hardcover, so back to the audiobooks I go!
Tagged:
See also:
Time to get to know the Escape Velocity Collection’s curators! How? By asking them the questions that really matter! Let’s see what our curators have to say…
Today’s question is:
Which fantasy/sci-fi character would you like to go on a date with?
Damn. I came up with this question myself and I have no idea.
I tend not to fall in love with characters I read/watch/play, maybe I enjoy media from a bit more distance than most of the other curators on this site… I could name some characters from television played by good-looking actresses, but that would feel like cheating. Besides, a date implies a relationship, so I ought to look deeper anyway.
I’ve recently re-read the Saga of Pliocene Exile and I find that I like the female characters that Julian May writes – I wouldn’t mind going for tea and carrot cake with Elizabeth or Mercy (though given their backgrounds, neither is relationship material). I’ve alway thought Imoen’s voice from Baldur’s Gate sounded really cute, so if that’s a thing to go by we could go for a nice hike sometime. I remember I really liked Dr. Rose Franklin from the Themis Files – she seems really smart and caring. Maybe we could go visit a museum together. She’s probably my top-1 candidate for a second date!
Peter
Lotte
Oh man this is both such a difficult but also easy question. There’s a lot of Bioware video game characters I would happily marry on the spot. I love video games that allow you to romance characters, because the romances are often the funniest part of a game, and the good people of Bioware know what I like. Still, if we’re just talking about one date…
I’d probably have to say Kassandra from Assassins’ Creed Odyssey. Look, she’s hot. There’s just no way around it. During this game, I was constantly distracted because of Kassandra’s voice acting. I want her to crush me like a grape. Or feed me grapes. Or we could just go on a date.
Oh, my… I’ll admit that I share Lotte’s sentiment when it comes to Bioware’s romances & characters. Dragon Age 2’s Merrill stole my heart the moment she babbled her way through our first conversation. Along the same lines, I’ll never forget my romantic journey with Dragon Age: Inquisition’s Josephine Montilyet; the despair when she told me she had to marry another, and the poorly thought-out duel I fought to win her hand back.
A date, however… Bioware characters aside, I would like to see how a date with The 100’s Lexa would turn out. Intelligent, beautiful and fierce as she is, yet with a hidden softer side. However the date would turn out, I suspect it wouldn’t get boring. Kettricken from Robin Hobb’s The Realm of the Elderlings is also a serious candidate. I would love getting to know her better.
Jop
Robin
I had just started going through a list of possible options when I realised the answer was obvious: of course I would want to go on a date with Lee Scoresby (from His Dark Materials). He’s charming and funny, adventurous, and also just generally a really good guy. What’s not to like? Plus, I figure the date would include a trip in his air balloon, so count me in!
I think I’d fall for Tauriel from The Hobbit movies. She follows her heart and believes in a better world, despite what others try to teach her. Furthermore, she is capable and persistent, traits I can always appreciate in a potential love interest. Also, Evangeline Lilly is not unpleasant to look at…
Jasmijn
That’s it: another soul-searching question answered!
Still curious? Visit each curator’s page to see what they’ve recently been up to!
Check out our reviews of the media discussed in this post here:
© 2023 – Escape Velocity – A Curated Collection of Fantasy and Science Fiction Media