Well dear reader its been a while since I’ve posted what I’ve been reading. The reading hasn’t stopped, but the posting has. A mixed bag, but mostly good.
A delightful read was Jasper Fford’s “Lost in a Good Book”. The reviews describe this as “Harry Potter for adults” (which I take some exception to as I think Rowling’s books, particularly the most recent ones, are quite enjoyable if not immensely sophisticated). Fford’s wit is extraordinarily dry, and the jokes, both literary and otherwise, come fast and furious.
The central conceit of the novel is that, in the vaguely parallel universe the novel inhabits, it is possible, through a device called the “Prose Portal” to “jump” into a book, to inhabit its environs, and even change the events of the story. There’s also time travel, genetic engineering (pet Dodos and Neanderthal train-drivers make an appearance). The book starts more or less where Fforde’s previous novel “The Eyre Affair” leaves off, and the action centers around the adventures and mis-adventures of Thursday Next, Special Operations, er, operative. Actually the Prose Portal doesn’t make much of an appearance, as Next discovers she can jump into any text without the assistance of the Portal. The action centers around conflict with agents from the Goliath Corporation, and their many mis-deeds. Characters from Jane Eyre, Dickens, Poe, and other literary classics abound.
This short novel is too complex to easily summarize, but I found myself laughing out loud several times (which is disturbing to one’s partner at night, and worrisome to strangers on the street). The humour is great, and the notion that what happens in books really matters is wonderful.
Stephenson is well-regarded for his Thomas Covenant books, which I’ve read a couple of times and have enjoyed a great deal. So I thought I would revisit Donaldson’s sci-fi works. The “Gap” series inhabits a sci-fi future centered on space travel, mining, corporate and police conflicts, and the interrelated lives of his central characters. The series is patterned after, or at least inspired by, Wagner’s Ring cycle. So the action is, not surprisingly, dark, dramatic, and tragic.
I can’t say I enjoy these books. I didn’t like the first one, didn’t like the second one that much, and stopped about halfway through the third (which feels like a mortal sin to me). Maybe Donaldson redeems himself at some point, but the action feel like melodrama to me, and his characters are frankly uninteresting.
I really like Ian M. Banks’ writing. His genre is “space” sci-fi, and I find his novels to be wonderful subtle and complex. I am particularly fond of “Against a Dark Background” and “Excession”, the latter of which is central to his “Culture” series. What I find particularly appealing about the “Culture” books is his notion of Minds, which are the machine intelligences which inhabit and operate the great capital ships that form the basis for interstellar transport in the Culture, which is a far-future, utopian civilization that Banks has created. Just the ship names alone are worth a good laugh. “Look to Windward” (the most recent Culture book) and “Consider Phlebas” are also quite good.
Reynolds has published three books: Revelation Space, Chasm City, and Redemption Ark. All three are similar in scope, tone, and complexity, and inhabit the same future universe. Its been a while since I read the most recent, but I would recommend Reynolds highly. His writing is lean, his pacing is very good, and while the novel is not particularly character-focused, I like the characters he writes. I would consider these excellent page-turners in the “space sci-fi” genre, and represent some of the best writing of that kind in a long time that I have seen.