Lunar: Dragon Song is a game for the Nintendo DS, published (on this side of the pond) by Ubisoft in 2005. It was (I think) the first RPG published for the then still-new handheld system.
Certainly from a blind, objective standpoint, Lunar DS is not the worst console role-playing game ever. (That honor probably goes to Hoshi wo Miru Hito.) But Lunar DS had twenty-five years (counting from the 1979 release of Temple of Apshai) to learn from the mistakes and foolishness of its predecessors — and it was released into a market and to a population that had also had those twenty-five years to learn what was and was not a quality RPG.
Lunar DS is only the second console RPG* I have put down unfinished knowing that I will nonetheless never return to it. (The first, Legend of Dragoon, was a rental.) It is objectively the single worst game that I own a physical copy of — including the infamous Atari 2600 port of Pac-Man, which contributed measurably to the video game crash of 1983.
... I had what I thought was a nice rant going, but this guy leaves me in the dust, so there you go. It's also pretty informative, but it does miss a few points that are worth covering.
First: some enemies can break or steal your equipment. No, really. Not bosses, either; just random enemies.
Second: the enemies' level, bosses and normals alike, matches yours. This means that fights never get any easier — and in fact get harder; the only way to counter this is better equipment. (See above.)
Third: ....
One other thing that's neither positive nor negative, but just is, is the fact that the game is almost entirely playable without use of the buttons or control pad: you can do very nearly everything one-handed wielding a stylus. This includes such amusing absurdities as blowing into the microphone being the buttonless 'Escape' command. Curiously, the only thing you absolutely can't do is talk to NPCs.
So, yeah. If you happen to see Lunar: Dragon Song for sale in the clearance bin, and you enjoyed Lunar: Silver Star Story and Lunar: Eternal Blue... just content yourself with fond memories of those, and walk on by.
* One could dispute whether the DS qualifies as a console, but it doesn't seem very useful to classify DS RPGs separately from other console RPGs.
Friday, January 8, 2010
Thursday, January 7, 2010
Review: The Eye in the Stone
The Eye in the Stone is a fantasy novel by Allen L. Wold, published in 1988.
So let me talk about In Nomine for a moment. In Nomine is a roleplaying game in which the player characters are Celestials, i.e., angels and/or demons. (The game explicitly assumes an Abrahamic mythos, although it doesn't declare any particular Abrahamic religion to be correct.) One of the decisions the writers of In Nomine made is this: that Adolf Hitler was entirely human, and that his actions were not significantly influenced by Celestials. "Humans, at their peaks and valleys, are better and worse than angels and demons (respectively)," the line editor has written.
In the setting of The Eye in the Stone, this is not true.
It's not mentioned in the story proper, mind; instead, it's mentioned in passing in at least two of the occasional one- to two-page expositions on the setting that Wold uses to communicate details that the protagonist already knows. It's these that present most of Eye's mythos. Eye doesn't quite use the Abrahamic mythos directly, but it does have a knockoff, almost-secular copy of half of it — the half that would allow for the existence of Satanic ritual murders in the setting. (Ah, the 1980s.)
There's enough clearly non-Abrahamic structure alongside that it doesn't, thankfully, feel like someone's just repackaged Fuzzy Christianity as fantasy (see: Knowing, Black Magic Woman). It might even be a slightly Abrahamized D&D-style cosmology (and this hypothesis may make more sense in a moment).
The protagonist, Morgan Scott, is a "[t]wentieth-century sorcerer"; the initial setting is the town of Harborbeach, Michigan [sic], and no other place on Earth; but over the course of the book Scott finds himself in a number of other planes of existence (mostly not of his own volition) as he tries to track down his missing brother, Michael, while avoiding or foiling the actions of the Servants of Evil.
The magic is RPGish, although not Vancian; spells are named (e.g., Heal Wound), draw from a pool of energy, and require both gestures and speech — either of which may be entirely performed in the mind given sufficient skill and familiarity. (The GURPS system comes to mind, and indeed it's not impossible that it derives therefrom: GURPS was published in 1986.) The language-of-spells, which is featured in snippets, deserves a call-out for not being the usual apostrophe-laden twaddle; it has a clear non-Latinate, non-Germanic phonological structure (CV[CV...], C `\in` {hl l r ng k ts d sh}, V `\in` ah ae eh ie, possible final n*). It feels somewhat incomplete given the lack of any back vowels, but not entirely unbelievable.
The story seems to wander as much as the protagonist. If there were, rather than a single, clearly primary protagonist, an entire group of them, I wouldn't hesitate in labeling this a novelization of a tabletop RPG session**. Even without them, that's still how it feels: notably, Morgan has to go on two separate quests for two separate MacGuffins in the course of the story (in both cases, on behalf of the Servants!). It is, at least, not transparently predictable.
The characters are largely not cardboard, but also not terribly easy to empathize with. Their feelings (like so much else in the novel) are largely narrated, not implied by their actions. There's little to say about any of them, so ... I won't.
Still and all, it's not really actively bad. The author narrates too much, but is at least a good narrator, so this is somewhat forgivable. The setting is not (strictly speaking) coherent, but is consistent, and consistently interesting — my dislike of the transference of responsibility for humanity's real-world failures to an ethereal scapegoat notwithstanding. I can't really strongly recommend reading this book solely for entertainment when there are so many better ones out there; but on the other hand, if you're looking for an idea mine for a game setting, there are a few rich veins of possibility to be found herein. It earns ... a single point, I suppose, for at least occasionally being different and weird.
* The language name "Raen" was neither italicized nor used in a Raen phrase, and may have been formed from the otherwise acceptable and attested syllable "Rae" with the Germanic adjectivizer -en attached.
** Not necessarily a bad thing; see Villains by Necessity for one I enjoyed, though other reviewers have panned it.
So let me talk about In Nomine for a moment. In Nomine is a roleplaying game in which the player characters are Celestials, i.e., angels and/or demons. (The game explicitly assumes an Abrahamic mythos, although it doesn't declare any particular Abrahamic religion to be correct.) One of the decisions the writers of In Nomine made is this: that Adolf Hitler was entirely human, and that his actions were not significantly influenced by Celestials. "Humans, at their peaks and valleys, are better and worse than angels and demons (respectively)," the line editor has written.
In the setting of The Eye in the Stone, this is not true.
It's not mentioned in the story proper, mind; instead, it's mentioned in passing in at least two of the occasional one- to two-page expositions on the setting that Wold uses to communicate details that the protagonist already knows. It's these that present most of Eye's mythos. Eye doesn't quite use the Abrahamic mythos directly, but it does have a knockoff, almost-secular copy of half of it — the half that would allow for the existence of Satanic ritual murders in the setting. (Ah, the 1980s.)
There's enough clearly non-Abrahamic structure alongside that it doesn't, thankfully, feel like someone's just repackaged Fuzzy Christianity as fantasy (see: Knowing, Black Magic Woman). It might even be a slightly Abrahamized D&D-style cosmology (and this hypothesis may make more sense in a moment).
The protagonist, Morgan Scott, is a "[t]wentieth-century sorcerer"; the initial setting is the town of Harborbeach, Michigan [sic], and no other place on Earth; but over the course of the book Scott finds himself in a number of other planes of existence (mostly not of his own volition) as he tries to track down his missing brother, Michael, while avoiding or foiling the actions of the Servants of Evil.
The magic is RPGish, although not Vancian; spells are named (e.g., Heal Wound), draw from a pool of energy, and require both gestures and speech — either of which may be entirely performed in the mind given sufficient skill and familiarity. (The GURPS system comes to mind, and indeed it's not impossible that it derives therefrom: GURPS was published in 1986.) The language-of-spells, which is featured in snippets, deserves a call-out for not being the usual apostrophe-laden twaddle; it has a clear non-Latinate, non-Germanic phonological structure (CV[CV...], C `\in` {hl l r ng k ts d sh}, V `\in` ah ae eh ie, possible final n*). It feels somewhat incomplete given the lack of any back vowels, but not entirely unbelievable.
The story seems to wander as much as the protagonist. If there were, rather than a single, clearly primary protagonist, an entire group of them, I wouldn't hesitate in labeling this a novelization of a tabletop RPG session**. Even without them, that's still how it feels: notably, Morgan has to go on two separate quests for two separate MacGuffins in the course of the story (in both cases, on behalf of the Servants!). It is, at least, not transparently predictable.
The characters are largely not cardboard, but also not terribly easy to empathize with. Their feelings (like so much else in the novel) are largely narrated, not implied by their actions. There's little to say about any of them, so ... I won't.
Still and all, it's not really actively bad. The author narrates too much, but is at least a good narrator, so this is somewhat forgivable. The setting is not (strictly speaking) coherent, but is consistent, and consistently interesting — my dislike of the transference of responsibility for humanity's real-world failures to an ethereal scapegoat notwithstanding. I can't really strongly recommend reading this book solely for entertainment when there are so many better ones out there; but on the other hand, if you're looking for an idea mine for a game setting, there are a few rich veins of possibility to be found herein. It earns ... a single point, I suppose, for at least occasionally being different and weird.
* The language name "Raen" was neither italicized nor used in a Raen phrase, and may have been formed from the otherwise acceptable and attested syllable "Rae" with the Germanic adjectivizer -en attached.
** Not necessarily a bad thing; see Villains by Necessity for one I enjoyed, though other reviewers have panned it.
Wednesday, January 6, 2010
Review: Hammered
Hammered is a 2005 science-fiction novel by Elizabeth Bear — her debut novel, and the first in an untitled trilogy consisting also of Scardown and Worldwired.
It's a little odd that there's no name for the series: Hammered isn't at all a complete novel on its own, and I expect (once I've read the others) that it will make more sense to consider all three of them to be a single novel sold in three parts. In the meantime, I"ll follow the convention of the Japanese translation and call it the Cyborg Shikan Jenny Casey trilogy, or Saishijenkei for short. ^_^
Yeah, no, not really.
Hammered is set in the year 2062, in a dystopia that I can only hope future SF readers will look back on and say, "oh, this was written during the second Bush administration, wasn't it?" The details are largely unimportant, however, except to ground the setting. (At least for the duration of Hammered; the excerpt from Scardown in the back of the book brings the ecological problems into focus.) Moore's Law has proceeded apace, and neural interfaces are just becoming reasonably safe.
The protagonist (as you may have discerned) is one Jenny Casey, veteran of a war some twenty-five years past, who has a working prosthetic left hand, controlled by the predecessor of the neural-interface technology that becomes important. Along the way, as we follow her, we're treated to wrecked alien starships on Mars, tainted Canadian Special Forces combat drugs being leaked onto the streets, quasipolitical/quasicorporate intrigue, and a benign rogue AI with the memories and name of Richard Feynman.
Unfortunately, almost none of this fits together coherently, at least not yet. The book ends as the overarching story is just beginning to come together. It's a coherent read, as far as it goes, but it just kind of ... cuts off. I don't have the other two books to hand to review the whole thing properly, and trying to do it to Hammered alone would involve event-spoilers just to start explaining.
So, what do I say? The setting is coherent and plausible (although I hope I don't still think that ten years from now), and the characters so far seem to be more than just cardboard cutouts — even the antagonists. On the other hand it doesn't have anything like a reasonable stopping point, and I've had promising series turn sour on me too many times before to grant the Jenny Casey books any points on potential. In the end I'll have to remain undecided, and give it `(1/sqrt2|\bb1:) + 1/sqrt2|\bb1:))` out of `\bb1`.
It's a little odd that there's no name for the series: Hammered isn't at all a complete novel on its own, and I expect (once I've read the others) that it will make more sense to consider all three of them to be a single novel sold in three parts. In the meantime, I"ll follow the convention of the Japanese translation and call it the Cyborg Shikan Jenny Casey trilogy, or Saishijenkei for short. ^_^
Yeah, no, not really.
Hammered is set in the year 2062, in a dystopia that I can only hope future SF readers will look back on and say, "oh, this was written during the second Bush administration, wasn't it?" The details are largely unimportant, however, except to ground the setting. (At least for the duration of Hammered; the excerpt from Scardown in the back of the book brings the ecological problems into focus.) Moore's Law has proceeded apace, and neural interfaces are just becoming reasonably safe.
The protagonist (as you may have discerned) is one Jenny Casey, veteran of a war some twenty-five years past, who has a working prosthetic left hand, controlled by the predecessor of the neural-interface technology that becomes important. Along the way, as we follow her, we're treated to wrecked alien starships on Mars, tainted Canadian Special Forces combat drugs being leaked onto the streets, quasipolitical/quasicorporate intrigue, and a benign rogue AI with the memories and name of Richard Feynman.
Unfortunately, almost none of this fits together coherently, at least not yet. The book ends as the overarching story is just beginning to come together. It's a coherent read, as far as it goes, but it just kind of ... cuts off. I don't have the other two books to hand to review the whole thing properly, and trying to do it to Hammered alone would involve event-spoilers just to start explaining.
So, what do I say? The setting is coherent and plausible (although I hope I don't still think that ten years from now), and the characters so far seem to be more than just cardboard cutouts — even the antagonists. On the other hand it doesn't have anything like a reasonable stopping point, and I've had promising series turn sour on me too many times before to grant the Jenny Casey books any points on potential. In the end I'll have to remain undecided, and give it `(1/sqrt2|\bb1:) + 1/sqrt2|\bb1:))` out of `\bb1`.
Tuesday, January 5, 2010
Review: The Accidental Sorcerer
The Accidental Sorcerer is a 2008 fantasy novel by K. E. Mills, a nom de plume of the Australian writer Karen Miller. It is also the first book in the Rogue Agent series, which may bring to mind James Bond-style espionage, but really shouldn't (at least not yet).
The protagonist of The Accidental Sorcerer is one Gerald Dunwoody, a third-rate washed-up wizard who, naturally, gains and/or discovers spectacular and largely undetailed powers in a way that gets him cast out of society.
This is, fortunately, not a fair summary.
To start, the setting is one in which magic is a science; standard science is advanced enough that electric lights exist; and poor Dunwoody starts out a thaumatological safety engineer, which is to say, a regulatory civil servant.
The novel throws the reader into the thick of things with no introduction whatsoever, letting character background filter in through dialogue and the rare narrative hint — the kind of quasi-in-medias-res opening and introduction that most authors reserve for sequels. It had me wondering what the prequel to this book was nearly all the way through. But there is no prequel — the protagonist and his circle simply start out as fully developed as those in most authors' sequels. It sounds like the sort of thing that could easily be a train wreck, but Miller seems to have made it work.
Despite being called the first book in the Rogue Agent series, Dunwoody isn't recruited as a secret agent until the denouement of the book; for most of it, he's the Court Wizard of New Ottosland. His hiring is the one event that really doesn't make any sense, in retrospect: ur'f cerffherq ol gur erpehvgre gb orpbzr na ntrag, jvgu gur uvag bs n guerng bs qrngu; ohg ng guvf cbvag ur'f nyernql orra guebhtu avar qnlf bs gbegher. V jbhyq unir gubhtug vg terngyl nccebcevngr vs uvf erfcbafr gb Fve Nyrp unq orra fvzcyl, "Ab. V jvyy abg znxr lbh n qentba."
Of course, then it probably wouldn't be titled the Rogue Agent series (if indeed there were a second book at all).
Except for that last, the story, characters, and setting hang together well, and it's an entertaining read from cover to cover. I suppose that's enough for me. 1/1.
(... oh, almost forgot: the incantations and magical terms consist of atrocious dog-Latin. As a student of the classics, I weep.)
The protagonist of The Accidental Sorcerer is one Gerald Dunwoody, a third-rate washed-up wizard who, naturally, gains and/or discovers spectacular and largely undetailed powers in a way that gets him cast out of society.
This is, fortunately, not a fair summary.
To start, the setting is one in which magic is a science; standard science is advanced enough that electric lights exist; and poor Dunwoody starts out a thaumatological safety engineer, which is to say, a regulatory civil servant.
The novel throws the reader into the thick of things with no introduction whatsoever, letting character background filter in through dialogue and the rare narrative hint — the kind of quasi-in-medias-res opening and introduction that most authors reserve for sequels. It had me wondering what the prequel to this book was nearly all the way through. But there is no prequel — the protagonist and his circle simply start out as fully developed as those in most authors' sequels. It sounds like the sort of thing that could easily be a train wreck, but Miller seems to have made it work.
Despite being called the first book in the Rogue Agent series, Dunwoody isn't recruited as a secret agent until the denouement of the book; for most of it, he's the Court Wizard of New Ottosland. His hiring is the one event that really doesn't make any sense, in retrospect: ur'f cerffherq ol gur erpehvgre gb orpbzr na ntrag, jvgu gur uvag bs n guerng bs qrngu; ohg ng guvf cbvag ur'f nyernql orra guebhtu avar qnlf bs gbegher. V jbhyq unir gubhtug vg terngyl nccebcevngr vs uvf erfcbafr gb Fve Nyrp unq orra fvzcyl, "Ab. V jvyy abg znxr lbh n qentba."
Of course, then it probably wouldn't be titled the Rogue Agent series (if indeed there were a second book at all).
Except for that last, the story, characters, and setting hang together well, and it's an entertaining read from cover to cover. I suppose that's enough for me. 1/1.
(... oh, almost forgot: the incantations and magical terms consist of atrocious dog-Latin. As a student of the classics, I weep.)
Monday, January 4, 2010
Review: Principles of Angels
Principles of Angels is the debut novel of Jaine Fenn, published in 2008. It is soft science-fiction: which is to say there are psychic powers, and the antagonists are called the Sidhe, and there is no particular explanation of how anything works, merely that it does.
It is billed as a "vivid, relentless all-action thriller." This is accurate, I suppose: there is action, there are thrills; there is little breathing room between one thrill and the next, and the descriptions are indeed vivid — one might even say lurid.
The setting, unfortunately, isn't terribly believable — not the part where it's a gigantic dystopian city of technology no one understands hovering within the toxic atmosphere of an uninhabitable planet*, but the human-scale details of the society that inhabits it. Short version: it's a quasidemocracy where disfavored politicians get sacked by means of public assassination. The assassins in question, the titular Angels, are universally feared and respected, even in the worst parts of town ... but they're not generally superhuman; one wonders why no Angel has ever been torn to shreds for an only borderline-popular assassination, or for that matter whether or not any gang has ever tried to pile up on one and shiv her for her purse-equivalent.
So yeah, they don't hold up to analysis very well.
The class-divided City itself is reminiscent of such quasi-arcologies as Midgar or Mega-City One: anvilicious and unlikely. The technology that keeps it up and running, as has been mentioned, might as well be made of fairy dust.
There's no point in focusing on the characters instead; the only character in the entire book who even comes close to being three-dimensional is Elarn Reen, the second of the two viewpoint characters. Everyone else (including Taro, the other viewpoint character) is either wooden and distant, a one-note villain, or both.
So yeah. There is action; there are thrills. If that's all you're looking for, Principles of Angels is for you. I don't think I'll be picking up Ms. Fenn's next book, however, without a coherent recommendation by someone else. 1 out of 1.
It is billed as a "vivid, relentless all-action thriller." This is accurate, I suppose: there is action, there are thrills; there is little breathing room between one thrill and the next, and the descriptions are indeed vivid — one might even say lurid.
The setting, unfortunately, isn't terribly believable — not the part where it's a gigantic dystopian city of technology no one understands hovering within the toxic atmosphere of an uninhabitable planet*, but the human-scale details of the society that inhabits it. Short version: it's a quasidemocracy where disfavored politicians get sacked by means of public assassination. The assassins in question, the titular Angels, are universally feared and respected, even in the worst parts of town ... but they're not generally superhuman; one wonders why no Angel has ever been torn to shreds for an only borderline-popular assassination, or for that matter whether or not any gang has ever tried to pile up on one and shiv her for her purse-equivalent.
So yeah, they don't hold up to analysis very well.
The class-divided City itself is reminiscent of such quasi-arcologies as Midgar or Mega-City One: anvilicious and unlikely. The technology that keeps it up and running, as has been mentioned, might as well be made of fairy dust.
There's no point in focusing on the characters instead; the only character in the entire book who even comes close to being three-dimensional is Elarn Reen, the second of the two viewpoint characters. Everyone else (including Taro, the other viewpoint character) is either wooden and distant, a one-note villain, or both.
So yeah. There is action; there are thrills. If that's all you're looking for, Principles of Angels is for you. I don't think I'll be picking up Ms. Fenn's next book, however, without a coherent recommendation by someone else. 1 out of 1.
Sunday, January 3, 2010
Review: The Mermaid's Madness
The Mermaid's Madness is a fantasy novel by Jim C. Hines, published in October 2009. It is the sequel to his earlier novel The Stepsister Scheme (previously reviewed here).
The novel introduces to the setting Hans Christian Andersen's The Little Mermaid, and of course twists it hard in one tiny little place. The characters and setting beneath the sea are fleshed out well.
But...
Well, I enjoyed reading it, but I'm not sure I enjoy having read it. There's little I can say about it without being spoilery (something I'm not generally fond of being, especially for recent works). Which means I'll be speaking in vague generalities.
It's just .... it felt very shounen. Seinen, at best: there was a great deal of politicking and power and action, and the storyline was reasonably strong, but the lead trio felt... two-dimensional at best. Oh, it's not that character development was lacking, but it seems to have all gone to the secondary cast or the antagonists rather than to the lead characters. (Except for the last bit where I promptly lose any and all compassion for Snow. I wasn't expecting that subplot to end happily, mind, but ... yeah.)
I dunno. Don't get me wrong -- I did enjoy it. It's just that I know better than to confuse my own enjoyment for quality or merit. If you've read and enjoyed the first book — as I did — you'll probably enjoy this one, too. Just don't confuse it for anything other than direct-to-paperback high fantasy. 1/1.
The novel introduces to the setting Hans Christian Andersen's The Little Mermaid, and of course twists it hard in one tiny little place. The characters and setting beneath the sea are fleshed out well.
But...
Well, I enjoyed reading it, but I'm not sure I enjoy having read it. There's little I can say about it without being spoilery (something I'm not generally fond of being, especially for recent works). Which means I'll be speaking in vague generalities.
It's just .... it felt very shounen. Seinen, at best: there was a great deal of politicking and power and action, and the storyline was reasonably strong, but the lead trio felt... two-dimensional at best. Oh, it's not that character development was lacking, but it seems to have all gone to the secondary cast or the antagonists rather than to the lead characters. (Except for the last bit where I promptly lose any and all compassion for Snow. I wasn't expecting that subplot to end happily, mind, but ... yeah.)
I dunno. Don't get me wrong -- I did enjoy it. It's just that I know better than to confuse my own enjoyment for quality or merit. If you've read and enjoyed the first book — as I did — you'll probably enjoy this one, too. Just don't confuse it for anything other than direct-to-paperback high fantasy. 1/1.
Saturday, January 2, 2010
Review: Algorithm
Algorithm is a science-fiction novel by Jean Mark Gawron, written between 1973 and 1976, and published in 1978.
I may have just lied to you; if so the lie is contained in the word "novel". The book reads like E. E. "Doc" Smith and Jacques Derrida got drunk and started hitting each other over the head with typewriters. There is clear narrative sequencing and pacing, but that doesn't really help.
Partway through, I was asked what the book was about. My best and clearest response was this: "It's about a person I don't like very much doing things I don't care about or sympathize with in an attempt to prevent someone who may or may not even actually exist from performing an act that may or may not be an assassination in either a literal or metaphorical sense." (And I stand by that statement, even though the waveform of the Schrödinger's-plot did eventually collapse.)
There's also this mysterious thing called the Novak Transformation which is allegedly a mathematical construct (like the Fourier Transform); it actually seems to be an extended allegory for something-or-other that falls into the 'you haven't convinced me to care about this' category. (There's a technobabble explanation starting on page 123 that rambles about exactly like crank math.) I'd like to think it's perhaps supposed to be some sort of mapping between physical and metaphorical spaces, the way the FT maps between the time and frequency domains — but I doubt it; that, I'd probably have grokked.
Yeah, I dunno. It's a shame; I was drawn in mostly by the back-cover blurb:
As it is, I can't see fit to give Algorithm better than 1/1. Perhaps my opinion would have been improved if I'd come into it expecting the depravity of jaded philosophers, rather than that of a jaded populace. And then, perhaps not: I'm not sure Algorithm knows the difference.
I may have just lied to you; if so the lie is contained in the word "novel". The book reads like E. E. "Doc" Smith and Jacques Derrida got drunk and started hitting each other over the head with typewriters. There is clear narrative sequencing and pacing, but that doesn't really help.
Partway through, I was asked what the book was about. My best and clearest response was this: "It's about a person I don't like very much doing things I don't care about or sympathize with in an attempt to prevent someone who may or may not even actually exist from performing an act that may or may not be an assassination in either a literal or metaphorical sense." (And I stand by that statement, even though the waveform of the Schrödinger's-plot did eventually collapse.)
There's also this mysterious thing called the Novak Transformation which is allegedly a mathematical construct (like the Fourier Transform); it actually seems to be an extended allegory for something-or-other that falls into the 'you haven't convinced me to care about this' category. (There's a technobabble explanation starting on page 123 that rambles about exactly like crank math.) I'd like to think it's perhaps supposed to be some sort of mapping between physical and metaphorical spaces, the way the FT maps between the time and frequency domains — but I doubt it; that, I'd probably have grokked.
Yeah, I dunno. It's a shame; I was drawn in mostly by the back-cover blurb:
The Novak Transformation had altered the very shape of the universe and left proud Earth an outcast, a sleazy pleasure-colony at the outer edge of the Federation of planets "Way Up There."I think a good book could be written to match that blurb. It would probably involve a cyberpunk/noir-like Earth conjoined to an epic-scale SF setting in which the Novak Transformation had actually, y'know, altered the very shape of the universe.
As it is, I can't see fit to give Algorithm better than 1/1. Perhaps my opinion would have been improved if I'd come into it expecting the depravity of jaded philosophers, rather than that of a jaded populace. And then, perhaps not: I'm not sure Algorithm knows the difference.
Friday, January 1, 2010
Review: Soulless
Soulless is the debut novel of Gail Carriger, published by Orbit Books in October 2009. It is best described as "historical urban fantasy" &mdash, werewolves and vampires exist openly in Victorian London.
It's really very much like most Laurell-K.-Hamilton-descended urban-fantasy-slash-romance: the story centers around an unmarried, unattached young woman somewhat estranged from her family who has special powers that enable her to fight the supernatural; she does so, mostly unwillingly, and eventually ends up bedding one* of the most powerful members of the two supernatural groups (whichever the author prefers).
So yeah. If you're looking for a really original take on the urban-fantasy concept, this isn't it.
On the other hand, the characters are delightfully entertaining; arrogant and witty (or witless) in all the ways that make for excellent comedy-of-manners fodder. Miss Alexia Tarabotti, the titular soulless character, is delightfully snarky; many of the other characters have their moments as well.
The setting is supposedly Victorian London, but there is so much focus on the supernatural side that there's hardly any time for the time and the place to shine through. This may be because the author was trying for verisimilitude rather than comic effect (for an example of the latter, see the execrable Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, about which, I am sure, more anon). Regardless, I think this is something of a pity: I suspect most readers of urban fantasy would have found Imperial Britain a far more entertainingly alien place than Hamiltonville. Intead all we get are a few spectres of the past — Victorian prejudices turned up to eleven where their scientific failures were concerned, and very nearly ignored everywhere else.
(On a positive note, I do like the term hive for a group of related vampires, nasty talking mosquitos that they are. ^_^)
All in all, I'm not sure where I'd classify it. It's a decent read, and it's certainly funny, but it's clearly a product of the literature of the Twenty-Noughties rather than of the Eighteen-Umpties. I suppose I'll just have to give it a 1/1; it deserves a few caveats, but shouldn't be outright dismissed.
* Clearly not too LKH-derived, as it's just one. *rimshot*
It's really very much like most Laurell-K.-Hamilton-descended urban-fantasy-slash-romance: the story centers around an unmarried, unattached young woman somewhat estranged from her family who has special powers that enable her to fight the supernatural; she does so, mostly unwillingly, and eventually ends up bedding one* of the most powerful members of the two supernatural groups (whichever the author prefers).
So yeah. If you're looking for a really original take on the urban-fantasy concept, this isn't it.
On the other hand, the characters are delightfully entertaining; arrogant and witty (or witless) in all the ways that make for excellent comedy-of-manners fodder. Miss Alexia Tarabotti, the titular soulless character, is delightfully snarky; many of the other characters have their moments as well.
The setting is supposedly Victorian London, but there is so much focus on the supernatural side that there's hardly any time for the time and the place to shine through. This may be because the author was trying for verisimilitude rather than comic effect (for an example of the latter, see the execrable Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, about which, I am sure, more anon). Regardless, I think this is something of a pity: I suspect most readers of urban fantasy would have found Imperial Britain a far more entertainingly alien place than Hamiltonville. Intead all we get are a few spectres of the past — Victorian prejudices turned up to eleven where their scientific failures were concerned, and very nearly ignored everywhere else.
(On a positive note, I do like the term hive for a group of related vampires, nasty talking mosquitos that they are. ^_^)
All in all, I'm not sure where I'd classify it. It's a decent read, and it's certainly funny, but it's clearly a product of the literature of the Twenty-Noughties rather than of the Eighteen-Umpties. I suppose I'll just have to give it a 1/1; it deserves a few caveats, but shouldn't be outright dismissed.
* Clearly not too LKH-derived, as it's just one. *rimshot*
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