Peter Wombat

Entertaining, could do with some editing

Revisado: 04-11-25

First off, a one liner for this story might be "the 'Ready Player One' of the 21st Century." Why? Because it's heavy with pop culture references from, mostly, the late 20th and a bit of the early 21st centuries. This makes logical sense given the main character's habits and the book's setting, but also means it helps immensely if the reader is familiar with the references.

Overall, the book is entertaining. The story was interesting, with enough twists and turns to propel the plot forward, but not so convoluted it was just ridiculous. In addition, given the proposed state of technology, both mechanical and biological, the actions and characters seemed to be consistent with the described world.

But that last point. Especially early, there is some heavy info-dumping. The author tries to justify this in the ongoing plot, but that just makes clear this 'story' is written cognizant of it being a story. Then it depends on how absorbed you can get into it, if you can, you'll enjoy this. If you can't make it over that hump, maybe not so much.

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Satisfying conclusion

Revisado: 12-06-24

Good coverage of the last phase of the American involvement in the ETO. Covers direct allied interactions, as well as key German activities and responses.

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Intriguing and imaginative, but with flaws

Revisado: 11-23-24

Up top, the imagined world of fairies, djinn and the world just out of our site is intriguing and interesting. The various races are kind, malevolent, caring, cruel, charitable, sadistic, and more. Often all at the same time.

But I just couldn't manage to get lost in the story.

I bought based on the blurb, and while I expected what's essentially a prologue, I hadn't expected to spend as much time as we did with children. Credit to the author, he seemed to capture the caprice of youngsters well, but as a rule, it's not the kind of stories I enjoy. Fortunately, that was only the first half.

But the other issue for me was maintaining suspension of disbelief. The whole premise is that there is a parallel world to the human world, that only the incredibly rare human can perceive or enter. But that the denizens of the other side have more freedom to cross. Okay. But events where "volleys of arrows" were fired, and clearly described as striking the buildings. But, I just couldn't reconcile his descriptions of this crossover. So a battle of fae agsinst fae would be fought on the streets of a human city, leaving behind broken weapons and dead bodies... and no one would notice? I just couldn't 'buy in' based on the author's descriptions.

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Changing perspectives

Revisado: 11-23-24

I was aware of most of the 'facts' presented here, such as the 'loss' of glassmaking knowledge in Europe with the fall of the Western Roman Empire, But not quite the corollary to that, the loss of mirrors. And how that had a profound impact, and the importance of their rediscovery. Definitely interesting and worth the time to get a new understanding of the not so dark 'dark ages.'

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Mostly entertaining

Revisado: 11-23-24

Like any anthology, it was largely interesting. A couple of stories fell flat, one seemed to drag on way too long. I know there are other releases of this, I might grab one if the mood definitely strikes me, but won't go out of my way.

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A novel-length prologue

Revisado: 10-18-24

I'll put this up front, Ray Porter's narration was, as usual, excellent. At least as far as the material allowed.

I've mulled how to describe this book, but one item that struck me was the structure. For better or worse, it brought Ray Bradbury's "The Martian Chronicles" to mind, a 'fix-up' novel. Why? It's almost like this novel was written as a number of novellas, with the connection being that they involved either original Bob or one or two at a time of his descendent clones, in storylines that were essentially separate from each other. With just the Bobs in common. And then some connective narrative was added and the individual chapters were reordered to break up the individual novellas.

And that's one problem. Some of these novellas were, not to put too fine a point on it, boring and uninteresting. Whether it was the author's reason or not, the two that were the most boring seemed to be there so that he could feature feminine characters, given that the book, and the entire series, is centered around an uploaded man's mind. The problem with these was that they simply revisited plotlines that were already used in previous Bobiverse books. And while it wasn't quite Find Old Race and Replace with New Race, it was close (for me.) To be honest, about halfway through the book I quit liberally using 30 second skips in these chapters and simply skipped to the end of each and moved on.

Also, as I read this book in October of 2024, the LAST thing I wanted to be reminded of was current politics. Unfortunately, the author seemed determined to hew to the 'science fiction is set in the future but should comment on the present.' Sigh. Another novella, not so much boring as just simply annoying and unnecessary.

The other 'novella' was original, and did provide an interesting and entertaining storyline. And this ties back to the headline (nope, I didn't forget.) I call it a 'novel length prologue' because, while interesting, all it accomplished was to set up the NEXT Bobiverse book. At least, I hope so. But it all depends on the balance. And this is why it gets even the three stars, but given how much time it took compared to the other sections, it couldn't push the overall score any higher.

Overall? It steepened what I've felt was a downward slide from the first book, and trilogy, that the fourth book had kick-started. Whether the next book can reverse that depends on how the author uses the setup from the end of this book.

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esto le resultó útil a 1 persona

Interesting, at times compelling, but uneven

Revisado: 10-10-24

It's not so hard to offer a summary of this book, but difficult to express my reasons for dissatisfaction without exposing major spoilers.

As the blurb says, Aomame steps into a parallel world. But does she? That's one of the ongoing mysteries. And overall, her story is compelling.

Tengo is more difficult. I'm not a Murakami scholar and have certainly not read him widely, but of what I've read, Tengo matches a pattern for male focal characters. Reasonably successful, if nowhere near the top rung of his chosen profession(s), but seemingly, what? Disinterested? Dissolute? Dissatisfied? No, not quite. But something of a passenger.

But all I can say about my own dissatisfaction is the third section (or, third book as it was released.) For me, it dragged. Badly. The only saving grace for me was the introduction of a third POV in this section, added to the above two, who seemed to be stuck in neutral. Only this third POV pushed anything forward.

I will add a comment based on the bonus material at the end, which was an interview with the two translators who did the Japanese to English translation. What I've read of Murakami, I sometimes get the feeling that the author was actually writing in English, with a solid eye on, especially, American culture. This actually came up in the interview, with both translators saying they were sometimes stumped on how best to translate certain elements 'back' to English.

The narrators were excellent. One element that they did well, was in a few sections where a supporting character appeared 'out of place' with a different POV character than earlier in the book. These moments put a deeper shine on these supporting characters, beyond the single view we'd had in their previous interactions, because of the different narrator for this POV. This is possibly one of those elements that definitely wouldn't have come through with a single narrator, and maybe not reading the written text.

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Started out well, didn't finish so well

Revisado: 08-19-24

This is a two-book combined version, so the first two books in the "Galaxy's Edge" series.

My overall rating of three is a four for the first book and a two for the second.

The first book is a mushily hard military science fiction story. It introduces the Republic, an interstellar human polity of some unspecified specific size, but implied reasonably large. The story is engaging, we follow a troop of Legionnaires, a force best-compared to a combination of the US Marines and various Special Forces. The characters introduced are the usual range of soldiers, with the expected mix of wise and brave NCOs, gung-ho and scared but dutiful troops, and officers ranging from competent to craven political time-servers. While the military action is exciting enough, and accurate to a sufficient degree to not cause eye-rolling, it's the 'science fiction' that's in question. We have faster than light comms and travel and not quite mecha but certainly advanced armor, but all of it is just assumed to work.

Had this story been set on Earth in the 21st century, it wouldn't change much, with the assumption that interstellar travel is a matter of hours or at most days, not decades or centuries. But, still, entertaining.

Book two is a jump of some unspecified years, but it seems around a couple of decades. Book one clearly indicated that the Republic was in decay, a late-stage polity that comparing to the late Roman Republic wouldn't be totally amiss. That's accelerated in book two. The plot focuses around bounty hunters, many of them ex-Legionnaires dismayed at the deterioration of standards in the Republic. While some interesting characters, it also veers away from even the minimal efforts at 'hardening' any of the science in favor of, oddities. It wasn't a direction I enjoyed, and it's convinced me to not read any more of the series, but to reveal more would be to state too many spoilers.

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Took the title figuratively, that was a mistake

Revisado: 08-19-24

I'll start off by mentioning that I read this without reading "Reamde." I don't recall the listing I saw highlighting this was the second book in a series, and I was looking for a stand-alone. That said, I'd looked at "Reamde" a few times and had never been intrigued. But I didn't recall any connection.

That said, I can't think of much here that would've been better illuminated by reading the 'first' book. Perhaps a bit of the technology implied by Stephenson would've been clearer, but really, this was NOT a book about technology. But as my title implies, I took the title to be a figure of speech, like, "it's hot as hell today." Not a literal description of the plot.

Unfortunately.

Which leads me to my key point. I wish this had been a book about technology. Oh, technology was mentioned, but only in passing.

And that leads me to my second point. I'm not aware if the author is or isn't a practicing Christian, but he's clearly a product of the Western traditions. I'd wonder what a book like this would look like if the author was from a different background, such as the various Eastern religions or a traditional Australian or African view. As it is, as the "Hell" of the title implies, we're revisiting Western creation myths. It became bad enough, that I ruthlessly used the '30 second skip" button. Especially when the bards were singing.

And that's the biggest disappointment for me. Rather than a focus on the technology of mind uploading and its true social impacts, we were treated to glib coverage of such world-changing tech and instead rehashed creation myths.

Despite that, I have no complaints about the narrator. He could only work with what he was given.

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I've been sheeped

Revisado: 08-19-24

I'm not necessarily qualified to claim this book is a tour of post-WW II Japan, but it felt that way to me. Bu. Let me highlight that when I purchased this, I hadn't noticed it was 'Book 3' of a trilogy ("Rat"). Rat was, of course, present in this book, but I'm not sure of the necessity of having read the first two to fully appreciate this one. Or, maybe, that helped. I can't say. I can say that Rat was, for the purposes of this book, a sufficiently fleshed-out character.

But to this book. The title isn't figurative, it quite literally summarizes the plot in four words. But it doesn't condense the plot. The book acts, as I mentioned, a discussion of Japan as the post-war generations achieve maturity, and also a travelogue. A tour of Japanese places that I've never considered. Such as the trivia that I've always thought of Japan and rice in the same breath, but never thought of nor realized that there's a 'line' where cultivation moves from rice to wheat, and its importance.

Aside from that, this is just an entertaining book. Not all that long, and as a rule, I don't like to spend a credit on such a short book. But I also decided to get the author's "1Q84," which is about seven hundred hours long, so it balances (and, so far, that one's quite compelling, although barely scratched the surface on it.)

If you like sheep, or, if you don't know the first thing about sheep, this is an excellent book.

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