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.)
Tuesday, January 5, 2010
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*
Friday, September 11, 2009
Rock Band: Beatles
Rock Band: Beatles is a video game by Harmonix, the latest in their Rock Band series, released with the assistance and oversight of Apple Corps. It is groovy and psychedelic.
Groovy describes the music; psychedelic describes the accompanying visuals, which should surprise exactly no one. It's not complete — notable songs missing, hopefully to be offered for sale later, include "Maxwell's Silver Hammer", "Eleanor Rigby", "Nowhere Man", "I'll Follow the Sun", "Magical Mystery Tour", and "Yesterday". (In fact I can confirm that "Maxwell's Silver Hammer" is intended to be offered for sale via the various online distribution channels on either October 20 or November 20 of this year.) A complete list of the songs that are included is here, courtesy of Gamespot.
I'm not terribly fond of the guitar included with the game: the keys near the head don't rebound to full extension the way a Guitar Hero controller's do. It's difficult to tell when one is actually pressing the keys as opposed to pressing blindly on the solid plastic below them. (I played briefly with a GH-style controller at the game store where I purchased it, and did much better than with the Rock Band guitar.) One could probably argue that this makes it more like playing an actual guitar, but if I cared about that I'd just learn to play, y'know, an actual guitar. Gripe, grumble.
As for the vocals: it is, I suppose, nice to have concrete, objective data concerning just how badly I sing. (This apparently being "very badly indeed".) I've noticed that my score goes up measurably when I just sing 'Aaaah' rather than the lyrics, so probably at least part of my problem is a failure to project properly: the white-noise of unvoiced stops and fricatives is registering as much on the vocals-measurement as does the portion of my vocalization with a meaningful primary frequency. (The fact that I have a tin ear composes`{::}^1` the other nine-tenths of my failure.)
The drums I fail at not so much due to a lack of rhythm (DDR is good for a few things!) as because of a lack of off-hand (or rather, off-arm) coordination.
Still and all, it's 1:47 in the morning as I type this, and I've spent the last I don't-know-how-long pretending I have something vaguely like musical ability. On a scale of 1 to 1, I'll have to rate it a gas. ^_^
`{::}^1` Pun only vaguely intentional.
Groovy describes the music; psychedelic describes the accompanying visuals, which should surprise exactly no one. It's not complete — notable songs missing, hopefully to be offered for sale later, include "Maxwell's Silver Hammer", "Eleanor Rigby", "Nowhere Man", "I'll Follow the Sun", "Magical Mystery Tour", and "Yesterday". (In fact I can confirm that "Maxwell's Silver Hammer" is intended to be offered for sale via the various online distribution channels on either October 20 or November 20 of this year.) A complete list of the songs that are included is here, courtesy of Gamespot.
I'm not terribly fond of the guitar included with the game: the keys near the head don't rebound to full extension the way a Guitar Hero controller's do. It's difficult to tell when one is actually pressing the keys as opposed to pressing blindly on the solid plastic below them. (I played briefly with a GH-style controller at the game store where I purchased it, and did much better than with the Rock Band guitar.) One could probably argue that this makes it more like playing an actual guitar, but if I cared about that I'd just learn to play, y'know, an actual guitar. Gripe, grumble.
As for the vocals: it is, I suppose, nice to have concrete, objective data concerning just how badly I sing. (This apparently being "very badly indeed".) I've noticed that my score goes up measurably when I just sing 'Aaaah' rather than the lyrics, so probably at least part of my problem is a failure to project properly: the white-noise of unvoiced stops and fricatives is registering as much on the vocals-measurement as does the portion of my vocalization with a meaningful primary frequency. (The fact that I have a tin ear composes`{::}^1` the other nine-tenths of my failure.)
The drums I fail at not so much due to a lack of rhythm (DDR is good for a few things!) as because of a lack of off-hand (or rather, off-arm) coordination.
Still and all, it's 1:47 in the morning as I type this, and I've spent the last I don't-know-how-long pretending I have something vaguely like musical ability. On a scale of 1 to 1, I'll have to rate it a gas. ^_^
`{::}^1` Pun only vaguely intentional.
Saturday, September 5, 2009
Capsaicin + Eyeballs = ?
If you answered "PAIN", you're right!
Having your eyes have a Scoville rating is no fun at all.
Having your eyes have a Scoville rating is no fun at all.
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