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| Posted By : Frank - 8/13/2005 4:53 PM | 'The Engines of God' by Jack McDevitt
I'd heard many great things about this author. I decided to begin with this novel. The opening chapter was right up my alley. So much promise, so many interesting questions raised. As I approached the end I kept saying to myself, "OK. He's gonna tie it all together any page now and answer all the questions." But he didn't. This book had the lamest ending of any novel I've ever read. So many questions left unanswered. I hate to say it but I'll never read anything else by this author. I'm too angry about having read through over 600 pages only to arrive at this lame ending.
'Icehenge' by Kim Stanley Robinson
An expansion of his short story 'On the North Pole of Pluto'. This novel, perhaps like a real-life trip to Pluto, just took too long to get there. Sorry, Kim. Stick to Mars. |
| Posted By : erazmus - 8/13/2005 5:44 PM | Frank,
Good topic! Ok, heres mine:
_The Frankenstien Papers_ by Fred Saberhagen. The ending of this one was so cheesy it pissed me off so that I didn't read another book by Saberhagen until 2003, after he'd personally appologised. I had gone into this book with very high hopes, having just finished _The Holmes-Dracula File_ and _An Old Friend of the Family_ which were both teriffic. I still read sf from Fred, but no fantasy or 'monster' books and damn little SF.
_Digital Knight_ by Ryk Spoor. Ryk's a friend, I'll say that right out. Seawasp, as he's known in cyberspace, writes a hell of a story and I was enjoying this nice, fast paced paranormal detective story when suddenly, right in the middle mind you, it segues into a lost atlantis history info dump that goes on for pages and pages, changes everything in the story and bores me to tears, I totally lost interest from that point on though I did, because Ryk's a friend, manage through dint of hard labor, to finish the book. If he leaves that junk out I'll read anything he writes but if he puts that bad gamer junk in it, I wont.
Those are two, I'm sure to have more but thats a start.
Mike
Michael D. Turner
"Psyched Up" in _Turn the other Chick_-ed. E. Friesner-Baen books
www.baen.com
"Two Ravens" in Amazing Journeys Magazine coming Sept. 05 |
| Posted By : Red Viper - 8/13/2005 5:57 PM | Saberhagen's the culprit in my disappointing book story, too. I enjoyed the Holmes-Dracula piece, and the Berserker stuff ... so I really looked forward to diving into the "Book of Swords" series. The cover blurbs had me fired up, too. And then the books just seemed to get ... nowhere. Foundations were laid for good stuff, some good ideas seemed on the verge of fruition, but ... poof. Not horrible, but just not what I expected or wanted, I guess.
Red Viper, aka Steve Goble
Fantasy writer with stories appearing soon in "Flashing Swords" and "Amazing Journeys Magazine" |
| Posted By : erazmus - 8/13/2005 6:51 PM | Sabrehagen just doesn't seem to finish well. Don't understand it, he does most other things well enough.
Mike
Michael D. Turner
"Psyched Up" in _Turn the other Chick_-ed. E. Friesner-Baen books
www.baen.com
"Two Ravens" in Amazing Journeys Magazine coming Sept. 05 |
| Posted By : Edward Knight - 8/14/2005 4:39 AM | Okay, I'll get toasted for this one, but I was disappointed by Dune. Maybe if I had read it early I wouldn't say that. But, after years of being hyped up by other readers, I finally gave it a try. It was a good book, but for me it didn't live up to the expectations I had been slowy building over the years.
Edward Knight
Editor
Journey Books Publishing
Amazing Journeys Magazine
http://www.journeybookspublishing.com
http://www.journeybooksonline.com |
| Posted By : Frank - 8/14/2005 12:43 PM | I can understand EdK's position with 'Dune'. It's really hard to live up to that much hype. You hear about a book over and over again for decades as being one of the supreme masterpieces of SF literature and then you read it and its good but not blow-your-mind-good and then you're disappointed because you expected the perfect sprawling epic that has always been there in your imagination and what you got was merely a shadow of that ultimate novel. (Wow, that sentence was way too long...sorry). I've felt that kind of reaction before, specifically with Bram Stocker's Dracula (which was an unreadable mess but I finished it anyway) and Frankenstein (which was almost as bad except for the middle section in which she told some of the story from the point of view of the monster) and I also felt that way about The Iliad which suprised me greatly because I had enjoyed The Odyssey so much.
I've not yet read any Saberhagen but I've had a few of his 'Sword' books sitting on my shelves for years. Now I'm wondering whether or not I should ever start them. |
| Posted By : Edward Knight - 8/14/2005 2:13 PM | Much with the Iliad and the Odyssey depends on translation. Some are better than others.
Some of the old classics are hard to read. The language was different then. I tried to read Dumas a few times and gave up. I have a hard time with Hemmingway, but I like Melville. I wonder if future readers will find it hard to understand current writing? I'm sure they will.
Edward Knight
Editor
Journey Books Publishing
Amazing Journeys Magazine
http://www.journeybookspublishing.com
http://www.journeybooksonline.com |
| Posted By : erazmus - 8/14/2005 2:41 PM | Frank,
Don't write off Saberhagen based on anything I've said about him. He writes a hell of a book. I never read the swords series and I'm told by many it has fewer flaws in the execution than some of the work I've cited. Fred has made a good living at this game for more years than many of us have been alive and he must do something right.
That said I have mostly loved his SF for its ideas instead of his writing. The beserker series was just cool even if the writing didn't exactly glow. He's also a heck of a teacher and if you can sit a panel featuring him do so, if you can catch one of his infrequent solo panels on writing, jump at it. He puts across more good info quickly and cleanly than most writers and is a heck of a gracious guy to boot.
Mike
Michael D. Turner
"Psyched Up" in _Turn the other Chick_-ed. E. Friesner-Baen books
www.baen.com
"Two Ravens" in Amazing Journeys Magazine coming Sept. 05 |
| Posted By : Frank - 8/14/2005 2:49 PM | I agree with Edk's point on translation. I once tried to read a translation of Pinocchio that was so bad I couldn't get past the second chapter. I quickly traded it but now my problem is finding a different translation so I can finally read the book.
Funny thing about my experience with Homer is that I was reading modern prose translations of the epic poems. There are several different modern prose versions available. Those "in the know" generally regard E.V Rieu's translations for Penguin as the best. I loved Rieu's Odyssey but I didn't care for his Iliad. Yet, Rieu goes on and on in the introduction about how he regards the Iliad as the superior poem of the two. Bizarre.
As for Dumas, I have a version of The Three Musketeers as translated by Lowell Bair and I think it's quite good. It's a hard cover from 1998 by William Morrow & Company, illustrated by Tom Kidd. (ISBN: 0-688-14583-3)
Sometimes it's difficult to believe how much language can change, how modes of speech can go in and out of fashion, and this can make certain books a difficult read to us today. Yet, sometimes two different authors from the same period and writing in the same language can seem worlds apart. War of the Worlds and Dracula were published in the same year and in the same country, yet Wells is a pleasure to read and Stoker is unbearable. I realize that Stoker became famous for the subject matter and not for the quality of the writing but I honestly don't know how anyone (then or now) could stand to read him. I finished Dracula but I'll never read anything else by Stoker. Wells, on the other hand, I'll read again and again, regardless of subject matter, simply for the pleasure of his use of language. |
| Posted By : erazmus - 8/14/2005 3:16 PM | Frank,
Its definatly not just the year of publication that makes some older works harder to read. I find this true across the board. I have no trouble reading Doyle's Holmes or Baum's Oz but I have trouble with Stoker or Barre's Peter Pan. Somethings just don't sing.
Mike
Michael D. Turner
"Psyched Up" in _Turn the other Chick_-ed. E. Friesner-Baen books
www.baen.com
"Two Ravens" in Amazing Journeys Magazine coming Sept. 05 |
| Posted By : Frank - 8/14/2005 4:45 PM | | Yeah it's weird like that. I also have trouble with Doyle, Baum seems slightly odd to me but still readable, but Barre I find very charming. I recently read Barre's novelized Peter Pan and enjoyed it immensely. My wife found the opening chapter a bit too weird for her and put it down but I found it funny and well written. |
| Posted By : erazmus - 8/15/2005 8:16 PM | I think Baum still comes across to the young reader, its the subtle add ins for the adults that don't come across and seem odd. there's a lot of subtext in the books, especially the first six, that has to do with topical subjects of his time thats just lost to the causual reader. You see it but don't get it and end up saying "huh?"
Mike
Michael D. Turner
"Psyched Up" in _Turn the other Chick_-ed. E. Friesner-Baen books
www.baen.com
"Two Ravens" in Amazing Journeys Magazine coming Sept. 05 |
| Posted By : Storn - 8/16/2005 3:15 AM | For me, at this very moment, I'm finding the "Golden compass" by Pullman to be a real slog and not all that interesting.
Which is a shame, several folks have raved about it to me. But I rarely discontinue reading books and I'm contemplating dropping this one.
Visual Storytelling
http://www.stornc.rpggallery.com/ |
| Posted By : Frank - 1/9/2006 3:25 AM | One thing I'm finding quite annoying as I get older is depressing fiction. Allow me to explain exactly what I mean:
Reading about characters who are depressed is a very different thing from reading a depressing description of a woe-begotten character. In Frederick Pohl's Gateway, for example, the main character is obviously depressed, and for good reasons, but reading about him is not depressing. In fact I very much enjoyed reading Gateway and would read it again.
In Kim Stanley Robinson's Icehenge, however, the main character is not only depressed but it is depressing to read about him as well. When the fiction itself is depressing I have a problem finishing the novel. My real life is depressing enough, I don't need to be further depressed by what I'm supposed to be reading for pleasure.
Robert Silverberg's Dying Inside is a brilliant novel, but I also found it difficult to read because it's another example of the double-depressing whammy: both the character's life and the mood of the writing itself are disheartening. One cannot deny its genius, but the experience of reading it was so thoroughly depressing that I never want to read even a single chapter of it ever again. But in Silverberg's case at least the fiction was good, while in Robinson's case the fiction was both depressing and mediochre.
I think that's one more reason why I prefer old school SF&F: rarely was the mood of the writing sombre, even while describing sombre events. Flowers For Algernon, for instance, is a sad tale. Yet, the description of the events in that story is not depressing to read, and will I gladly read it again.
My problem with a lot of SF written after the late 1970's is that authors began reflecting the real world around us (which everyone knows has gone to hell) a little too accurately in the mood of their writing and characters are described with far too much depressing psycho-analytical babble.
And what's with all the shrouding in mystery? SF&F has become too mysterious for its own good. Too many questions and not enough answers, in my opinion, or the answers provided in the end are so lame you want to light the book on fire. That was my experience with McDevitt's The Engines of God. By the end of that novel I was so angry with the author for wasting what precious little spare time I have that I could've crashed my car through the publisher's front door, had I lived in New York at the time.
So I guess my advice to any professional writers out there is this: some readers (like me) have at least a few unresolved major issues in their personal lives, and we don't like it when anyone wastes our time. If you're going to write a 600 pager you better make damn sure it's worth reading to the very end. Because we're getting angry, and you wouldn't like us when we're angry...HA HA HA!!! |
| Posted By : erazmus - 1/9/2006 5:50 AM | Frank,
I know what you mean by depressing books. If I wanted to depressing stories I'd get a newspaper.
But don't blame the writers exclusivly for 600 downer pages. I might be perfectly happy reading a depressing but fascinating novel if it would do the job in two to three hundred pages. The publishers, bless them all, have decided people, meaning you and I, won't buy shorter works anymore. If I had a great story and was pressured to extend it an extra three hundred pages, I'd be depressed about it and I think it would show.
OTOH it does seem to be quite fashionable to write long, intricate novels that basicly say "the world sucks and then, if you're lucky, you die". I never really have been able to see the point to this. Its okay when done well by a master, say Philip K. Dick, to a point. Myself, I'd rather leave my audience feeling uplifted and hopeful than confirmed in the belief the world is scat.
Mike
Michael D. Turner
"Psyched Up" in _Turn the other Chick_-ed. E. Friesner-Baen books
www.baen.com
"Two Ravens" in Amazing Journeys Magazine #9 Sept. 05
"An Incident at Black Tongue Tavern" in _Bash Down the Door and Slice Open the Badguy_ from Fantasist Enterprises |
| Posted By : jackmangan - 1/9/2006 8:17 AM | I partially agree with you guys.
Frank and Mike Turner both make good points, so I'm not looking to troll or debate - just to offer another POV.
I don't know about other readers, but I tend to carry a book around with me while in the midst of reading it. I remember a friend commenting about Naked Lunch while he was halfway through it that while the book is brilliant, he didn't want to internalize and carry all of that horrific imagery around in his head. I tend to agree, but I'm also still really glad to have read Naked Lunch. It's easier for most audiences to handle utter despair in film, music, etc. because that comes in smaller doses, which are finished up in a matter of hours or minutes -- in one session. You carry a dark book around with you for however long it takes you to read it. If the 600+ page bleak novel is especially moving, then a long time with that gloom might begin to weigh on you. I suppose the dosage of conveyed misery is the key. Hamlet made us sympathize with his misery and even mourn his f##ked up final days, but the play wasn't such a downer that you'd read it and want to your "quietus make".
OTOH, I think dark, brooding, depressing fiction is as necessary as fiction in all other tones and moods, whether you or I or my friend want to read it or not. I'm all for accurate reflections of our world and its grimmer places and feelings. Let's not shy away from that stuff and pretend it isn't there! Art is one of our most powerful tools for understanding and coping with our reality, especially literature, IMHO. (that's not what I believe Frank or Mike Turner are suggesting either. I read their posts as expressions of personal tastes, not as manifestos against dark tones in literature).
Get Spherical!
"Spherical Tomi" from Creative Guy Publishing
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| Posted By : darkbow - 1/9/2006 11:20 AM | One word: Silmarillion.
It took me months to finish that book. The only other book so dry to me has been Bill Clinton's "My Life."
"Peter Piker the Pankin Man" -- upcoming in "Liquid Ohio" in 2006 |
| Posted By : Frank - 1/9/2006 12:44 PM | | You really thought so about The Silmarillion? Even Beren and Luthien? When I read it about ten years ago I thought much of it quite beautiful. Of course, we must keep in mind that this volume and all the other History of Middle Earth books that followed were pieced-together fragments edited by Tolkien's son. The old man himself never intended any of it to be read by anyone. It was all just a few million words of backstory building up to the published works. |
| Posted By : darkbow - 1/9/2006 1:06 PM | I understand it wasn't originally meant for publication, and there were sections of The Silmarillion I did enjoy, but as a whole I didn't care for it. For that matter, I feel like I have to trudge through the Two Towers. I do, however, love Fellowship and the Hobbit. Return of the King was so-so to me.
"Peter Piker the Pankin Man" -- upcoming in "Liquid Ohio" in 2006 |
| Posted By : Frank - 1/9/2006 3:37 PM | | I enjoyed all of the Lord of the Rings books but I agree that Fellowship and The Hobbit are Tolkien's best works. I've read The Hobbit four times over the years and Fellowship three times. I just never tire of them. |
| Posted By : ScrewMoonshine - 1/10/2006 8:11 AM | I second darkbow's comments on The Silmarillion. In addition to finding it incredibly dry, I was annoyed at how derivative the vast majority of the stories were. It felt like reading a scrapbook of pages ripped from the Bible, the Knights of the Round Table, and Norse mythology(except the writing in that scrapbook would be better than in Tolkein's). I don't blame Tokein for writing it, but I do blame whoever decided to publish it.
Another big disappointment for me was The Pillars of Creation by Terry Goodkind. Believe it or not, I hadn't noticed the decline in The Sword of Truth(at one time one of my favorite series) from truth-seeking and great storytelling to prejudice,close-mindedness, and preaching until this book. And then I was foolish enough to pick up and read Naked Empire...[begin deep,convulsive shuddering] At any rate, I've finally learned my lesson where Goodkind is concerned.
Robert Orme |
| Posted By : jackmangan - 1/10/2006 10:23 AM | Gotta stick up for the Silmarillion.
I'd tried a few times, but could never get through it until I reached my 20s. Once I finally did, I also found it to be extremely slow and dry -- like a history text -- which is exactly what the Silmarillion is. There are many stories told within, the majority full of wonder and amazing richness of imagination. Great stuff, steeply rooted in real-world historical legends and traditions. It's not "light reading" in the way that Hobbit and LOTR may be, but I still found it well worth the effort. I believe that Mr. Tolkien and his wife have "Beren" and "Luthien" inscribed on their tombstones.
Get Spherical!
"Spherical Tomi" from Creative Guy Publishing
http://www.fictionwise.com/ebooks/eBook33162.htm
|
| Posted By : ragemachine - 1/29/2006 1:53 PM | I love Saberhagen's stuff. maybe I haven't read the right ones. The author I think ends poorly is Stephen King. He's a short story writer who writes huge novels. Always about 3/4 of the way through he peters out. (He's also hugely successful so I guess I'm wrong.)
GW
G. W. Thomas has appeared in over 350 different books, magazines and ezines including Black October Magazine, Writer's Digest and The Armchair Detective.
http://ragemachinemag.tripod.com |
| Posted By : erazmus - 1/29/2006 3:18 PM | G.W.,
I wouldn't say that you are wrong about S. King. He's an incredible writer who needs a gutsy editor to make him toe the line and get the most from his work. He hasn't had one for a couple of decades and it shows.
Mike
Michael D. Turner
"Psyched Up" in _Turn the other Chick_-ed. E. Friesner-Baen books
www.baen.com
"Two Ravens" in Amazing Journeys Magazine #9 Sept. 05
"An Incident at Black Tongue Tavern" in _Bash Down the Door and Slice Open the Badguy_ from Fantasist Enterprises |
| Posted By : Stuart Clark - 3/8/2007 6:46 PM | | Sphere by Michael Crichton.
The ending was such a cop out. Almost like he didn't know how to end it and had just written SOMETHING. Just made me feel like reading the previous x hundred pages had been a total waste of time.
No disrespect to Crichton, Jurassic Park is still one of my favorite reads.
VIEW IMAGE |
| Posted By : Specfiction - 3/26/2007 3:01 PM | To show how out-of-touch I am with much of the SF community today, I was very disappointed by "Enders Game" after hearing so much about it.
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| Posted By : erazmus - 3/26/2007 3:26 PM | Specfiction.
I think that might be a key indicator-- after hearing so much about it. Some great books come with such a build-up they can't help but dissapoint the late coming reader. I've had trouble getting into a couple (Ender's Game and Dune) because I expect to be disappointed, there is no way they can meet up to the decades of hype I've been exposed to about them. I try to go in with lowered expectations, but I really can't.
I can not imagine how a reader could start something like LotR at this late date and not be somewhat dissapointed.
Mike
Michael D. Turner
"Psyched Up" in _Turn the other Chick_-ed. E. Friesner-Baen books
www.baen.com
"Dutchman Rescue"in Continuum SF #6
www.continuumsciencefiction.com/orders.htm
"An Incident at Black Tongue Tavern" in _Bash Down the Door and Slice Open the Badguy_ from Fantasist Enterprises:
www.fantasistent.com/books/anthologies/BASH.php |
| Posted By : crystalwizard - 3/26/2007 4:58 PM | I can't remeber the title of this book, so I'll give a plot synopsis.
The thing was a thick book and most of the plot took place inside a city. For some reason relavent to the story which I can't remember now, most of the population took turns at physically moving the city. They had to keep the city moving or they were all going to die or something.
I waded through the entire book and then it ended with the author suddenly revealing that 'oh well, the city had actually been shrunk some time in the past, the people had been pushing it across the united states, they were now at the edge of the pacific ocean, the world didn't stop revolving and they were all itty bitty people compared to the rest of the human race. the end." I don't think I've been quite that angry about an ending. It was blatantly obvious that either the author couldn't figure out how to end it, he died and someone else ended it or he ran out of time and the publisher demanded he end it.
blech. I think it was called something like the inverted world or the inverted city but I could be really wrong on the title.
Never meddle in the affairs of a wizard unless you are soggy and hard to light!
Visit my art gallery on art wanted at
http://artwanted.com/crystalwizard
All my books in print:
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| Posted By : Specfiction - 3/26/2007 6:12 PM |
crystalwizard said...I can't remeber the title of this book, so I'll give a plot synopsis. The thing was a thick book and most of the plot took place inside a city. For some reason relavent to the story which I can't remember now, most of the population took turns at physically moving the city. They had to keep the city moving or they were all going to die or something. I waded through the entire book and then it ended with the author suddenly revealing that 'oh well, the city had actually been shrunk some time in the past, the people had been pushing it across the united states, they were now at the edge of the pacific ocean, the world didn't stop revolving and they were all itty bitty people compared to the rest of the human race. the end." I don't think I've been quite that angry about an ending. It was blatantly obvious that either the author couldn't figure out how to end it, he died and someone else ended it or he ran out of time and the publisher demanded he end it. blech. I think it was called something like the inverted world or the inverted city but I could be really wrong on the title.
I don't blame you for being disappointed. First thing I did after reading your synopsis was lol. It also doesn't surprise me that you can't remember the title.
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| Posted By : morska - 6/13/2007 7:21 PM | Sounds like "Inverted World" by Christopher Priest. They weren't shrunk, their physical laws had been altered so behind the city (which they call the past) time ran slower, and dimensionally they got taller and thinner compared to the rest of the world; and the opposite ahead of them. They had to keep their city moving following the moving spot on the Earth's surface where their physics matched normal laws, or the city would gradually become distorted and eventually destroyed. That's not a complete description but best I can do.
Coincidentally around the time the experiment that caused this to happen went wrong (several thousand miles in the past i.e. at least a hundred years) some world catastrophe wiped out most of civilisation, therefore they don't know they're still on the Earth.
The ending is a bit lame since it becomes obvious to the reader they're on the Earth quite a long time before the city characters figure it out, but I'd still recommend reading it, actually - I thought the rest of it was an interesting and unique idea, well thought out and plotted.
Incidentally on Christopher Priest I'd avoid "Indoctrinaire", which is several previously unrelated short stories forced together into a novel, which doesn't really work. "Infinite Summer" I'd borrow but not buy. "A Dream Of Wessex" is OK, and "The Space Machine" is quite good if you're a fan of HG Wells. |
| Posted By : Daniel - 6/14/2007 10:28 AM | I was disappointed with Peridido Street Station, the last Mieville book I bothered to read. The deux au machina "plot" along with Mieville's over-use of certain words and phrases ("Godsh*t" and "agog" among others) really drove me nuts.
Liked the vision of the book and the world-building but 3/4ths of the way through I could really feel myself losing interest.
Daniel |
| Posted By : Daniel - 6/14/2007 10:29 AM | I've had trouble getting into a couple (Ender's Game and Dune)
***
Dune sucks. That's right, I said it  Now send your sandworms to destroy me Herbert lovers!
Daniel |
| Posted By : Frank - 6/14/2007 11:27 AM | | I liked Dune but I won't send forth any sandworms to destroy you. You must admit, however, it was an important book in its day. No one else was really writing anything like it in 1964. |
| Posted By : Braksis - 6/14/2007 11:29 AM | The name eludes me at the moment, but there was a trilogy written by Ed Greenwood that introduced his new Fantasy World (Forgotten Realms). I've enjoyed other Forgotten Realms books (most notably R.A. Salvatore books), and the art for these covers was phenommenal, so I decided to give it a try. Books typically take me a matter of a couple of days to a couple of weeks depending on how much time I have. These books took nearly 3 months! Even when I was reading, I just couldn't get into it (or develop any reason to care about the characters....I was reading solely for the purpose of "I bought these, I'm reading them!").
Clifford B. Bowyer
Author of The Imperium Saga novels
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| Posted By : Daniel - 6/14/2007 11:36 AM | Yeah, I was just teasing about Dune. It's a very important work of SF and has brought many a reader in from the cold....
Daniel |
| Posted By : crystalwizard - 6/14/2007 1:03 PM | Inverted World by Christopher Priest.
The story was good, right up till the ending. The ending sucked. It screamed loudly that either Christopher didn't know how to end it or his publisher had decided he needed to end it now or something along those lines. |
| Posted By : Anthony G Williams - 6/15/2007 5:14 AM | Little People, by Tom Holt. I'm a fan of his early work (Expecting Someone Taller is a comic fantasy classic) but I was unable to finish this one. There were simply too many plot holes and inconsistencies for me to swallow. If I'd been his editor I'd have sent it back covered in red ink...
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| Posted By : Frank - 6/15/2007 10:53 AM | "covered in red ink" ?
Ouch!
I think I like this guy... |
| Posted By : cussedness - 6/15/2007 2:06 PM | Saberhagen's swords novels disappointed me. Great premise and poor execution.
Janrae Frank
I have no skeletons in my closet, they are all hanging from the yardarm.
Once there were three brothers, Brandrahoon the vampire, Isranon called the Dawnhand, speaker to spirits, and Waejonan the Accursed, first of sa’necari. Isranon defied his brothers and was destroyed, his descendants forced into the darkness.
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| Posted By : Nicholas - 6/15/2007 2:15 PM |
Stuart Clark said...
Sphere by Michael Crichton. The ending was such a cop out. Almost like he didn't know how to end it and had just written SOMETHING. Just made me feel like reading the previous x hundred pages had been a total waste of time. After reading about half-a-dozen Crichton books, I started to recognize a pattern, in fact what I'd call the Crichton formula. His books always draw you in with fascinating premises, and Sphere is a perfect case in point. He manages to evoke a sense of wonder and to stimulate intellectual curiosity with his premise. In Sphere, the characters' discussions of what forms alien life might take--whether theoritically we'd even recognize it as life, if it weren't carbon based--are riveting (to me, a lover of spec lit, anyway). But Sphere inevitably falls into the same formula with which Crichton seems to end all his books: characters chasing each other around with guns. Yes, regardless the plot--whether it be the discovery of an alien artifact or a lost civilization and deadly apes or dinosaurs brought back to life--ultimately the plot will wind down with who will shoot whom first? It's ridiculous. Crichton could take the plot of Bridges of Madison County and you can bet the ending would be a tense cat-and-mouse shoot-out between the photographer, the cheating wife, and the cuckolded husband (granted, this would probably be an improvement  ). But it gets tiresome and predictable, especially when it is used time and again to wrap up such innovative and imaginative plots. I agree that Crichton--not just with Sphere, but in general--cannot end a book.
http://ozment.livejournal.com
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| Posted By : Nicholas - 6/15/2007 2:26 PM | Guardians of the Flame by Joel Rosenberg. I remembered reading this when I was in junior high, and the premise drew me in because I was as a kid a huge D&D geek. Roleplayers who suddenly find themselves in the fantasy world as their characters, their actual personalities morphed with their characters! What made it more intriguing was rather than a case of teen wish fulfillment, they found themselves in a world that was hard, harsh, unforgiving, and many of them quickly began to miss their cushy American lives. Some died--and when that happened, it wasn't merely an excuse to roll up a new character: they were dead. In fact, I think that as an adolescent I only got about halfway through the series and then lost interest because it was too dark.
So, I picked it up again about a month ago, curious whether I'd appreciate it as an adult. The fact that I remembered it as being dark was a promising sign: to do this idea justice, it would have to get pretty grim.
I only managed about four chapters this time. In Rosenberg's defense, this was his first novel, but the writing struck me as sloppy and amateurish, the dialogue clunky. Maybe his writing improved over time, but I don't have time--with so many other books calling to me--to give him the benefit of the doubt. So it looks like the series will, for me, remain unfinished.
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| Posted By : Eugene Allen Wilson - 8/30/2007 9:55 PM | |
Man,
Bad books? How about bad movies like Starship Invasions? (circa 1977)
Review Preview:
"The plot seems to be trying to pack as much Age of Aquarius and UFO mysticism in as possible. It touches obvious bases with Erich von Daniken, locating the aliens in pyramids in the Bermuda Triangle and giving them Graeco-Egyptian names like Ramses and Phi. It seems a wonderful concoction of all that is bad science-fiction played in absolute deadpan – alien women in bikini costumes and white spandex jumpsuits; pyramid interiors with blinking esoteric lighting schemes; bald aliens of coolly aloof superiority; a robot that is clearly a stuntman dressed in a crinkly grey spandex jumpsuit, a diving helmet with long metal spikes of no discernible function and gloves; an amazing series of UFO abductions, including the proverbial one where a dim-witted yokel is forced to have sex; UFO shootouts in outer space; mind-control devices that cause anarchy and suicide on the streets. What more could one possibly want?"
Eugene Allen Wilson
The Interstellar Crisis Author |
| Posted By : H.P. Lovesauce - 8/31/2007 6:17 AM | Mary Freakin' Gentle.
What is it with overlong English novels? Did they have strict wartime editor-rationing that carries through to today?
Orcs was a one-note joke told in far too many pages; Rats & Gargoyles took 100 pages to describe one hour of action. |
| Posted By : Gustavo - 8/31/2007 3:10 PM | I read Dune a few years ago and really, really liked it, even with all the hype.
For terrible disappointments, check out (or, better yet, avoid like the plague): The coming of the King by Nikolai (yes, Nkolai) Tolstoy. Great grandson of Leo, writing about Merlin. Should have ben good, but was the only book in the last twenty years that I've actually laid down unfinished. Other major disappointments have been the newer work by David and Leigh Eddings, especially "The Elder Gods". I loved the Belgariad, the Malloreon and even the Sparhawk books, but everything since has been much worse.
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| Posted By : ScrewMoonshine - 9/2/2007 1:56 PM | Gustavo said...
For terrible disappointments, check out (or, better yet, avoid like the plague): The coming of the King by Nikolai (yes, Nkolai) Tolstoy.
Well, which is it, Nikolai or Nkolai?
Robert Orme
Out now:
"On the Tree Top" in Ultraverse vol.3 #5 (www.ultraverse.us)
"The Scab, the Man, and the I.V." in Mount Zion Speculative Fiction Review #3 (www.mountzionpress.com)
Coming soon:
"Time in a Capsule" in Unparalleled Journeys II (www.journeybookspublishing.com/)
"Replacing Someone" in Aoife's Kiss #26, September 2008 (http://samsdotpublishing.com/aoife/main.htm)
"More Than One Way to Protect" in Lords of Justice (www.carnifexpress.net/blogs/) |
| Posted By : David Boultbee - 9/2/2007 1:58 PM |
Nicholas said...
Guardians of the Flame by Joel Rosenberg. I remembered reading this when I was in junior high, and the premise drew me in because I was as a kid a huge D&D geek. Roleplayers who suddenly find themselves in the fantasy world as their characters, their actual personalities morphed with their characters! What made it more intriguing was rather than a case of teen wish fulfillment, they found themselves in a world that was hard, harsh, unforgiving, and many of them quickly began to miss their cushy American lives. Some died--and when that happened, it wasn't merely an excuse to roll up a new character: they were dead. In fact, I think that as an adolescent I only got about halfway through the series and then lost interest because it was too dark.
So, I picked it up again about a month ago, curious whether I'd appreciate it as an adult. The fact that I remembered it as being dark was a promising sign: to do this idea justice, it would have to get pretty grim.
I only managed about four chapters this time. In Rosenberg's defense, this was his first novel, but the writing struck me as sloppy and amateurish, the dialogue clunky. Maybe his writing improved over time, but I don't have time--with so many other books calling to me--to give him the benefit of the doubt. So it looks like the series will, for me, remain unfinished.
IMO the first book in the GoF series is the best. The first 3 weren't bad over all as they all had the Carl / Karl character to carry them over but once he died it became a bit tired.
I still have the first 3 (somewhere I think) and I don't mind them. Mind you, I don't rave about them but I thought they were okay.
David Boultbee
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