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NeilNjae
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- NeilNjae
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I know very little about the War of 1812, but everything in the book seemed to agree with what I knew about the Napoleonic Wars in Europe. I imagine that American and Canadian audience would find the setting more compelling than me. There wasn't an…
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This is where the novel fell down for me. I could see what Cooper was trying to do, and I think she almost succeeded. I think the characters were well-drawn and the major ones were distinct. But I didn't really care much about them. It could be bec…
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I've read pretty much all the Hornblower books, inspired by the UK TV series. I've read a couple of other naval adventure books outside the club, but not much. The main difference is that most of those other books focus on the commanders of the shi…
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One I need to read. For some reason, I conflated this and The Stars my Destination (which is also a good book).
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Amusing review, thank you! Sounds like another instance of someone hitting a winning formula and keeping at it. That's something that came up in the discussion of the "Thousand True Fans" idea: the artist needs to produce work that is simi…
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It sounds like something formulaic he churned out to pay the bills. But there's nothing wrong with that!
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Let's be boring, and stick with Ninefox Gambit. We could so a slow read of Arabian Nights in parallel, if anyone's interested.
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Nothing to say, except that the bonobos were written as distinct characters that we got to know by the end of the book. Another instance of Schulman lowering the boundaries between human and ape?
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I thought the lack of speech marks was a way to blur the distinction between spoken and signed language, another way of lowering the barrier between human and bonobo. Overall, I think it was a decent pop-science book, with the emphasis on the "…
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Wilderness travel can be difficult to game, because it's mostly reactive ("situation X appears, can you handle it?") and there's often little player decision-making that goes into it (you either successfully find a good campsite or you don…
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Yes, I don't think the story ended so much as stopped. There was next to no closure there. And if the pop science angle was about women actively choosing their mates from a selection, there was no real competition of mate choice. Enjoyable enough, b…
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The experience of pain seemed plausible (it resonates with other chronic pain suffers have told me). On the one hand, it was good to have the representation in the book, and raised awareness of the condition. On the other hand, I'm not sure how it c…
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(Quote) It seemed to be a research institute and sanctuary for the apes. There were mentions of low numbers of apes in the wild. In that case, the visitors are a source of supplementary income and an audience to educate about apes. And I did like t…
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I think the Aftermath was there to show how the bonobos and humans formed a single community. After all, Schulman is trying to say that Frankie takes the place of Mama as the group's matriarch. As a story, I don't think it makes a great deal of sen…
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Maybe, but I think a better description of it would be "dramatised pop-science." Is there anything about the behavioural or medical aspects that's fictional? There are a couple of bits of technological extrapolation, such as the AR devices…
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For information, the Lyons translation of Arabian Nights is about 2600 pages, and my Fagles translation of The Odyssey is about 400 pages (but those are two-third length lines of "spoken lines"), plus introduction and notes. And there are …
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Actually, a couple of alternative suggestions, if we want to get away from the standard of reading "SFF novels of the last fifty years." One is the current Humble Bundle of RPG guide books, which features a bunch of books to supplement RP…
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Nothing leaps out at me as being an urgent read. One book I may suggest is Ninefox Gambit, which re-appeared on my radar because it has an RPG coming out. The downside is it's the first of a trilogy, but I don't know how stand-alone it is.
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(Quote) I agree that in this case, I wasn't in the right frame of mind to enjoy the book. Perhaps if I'd read it at some other time, I'd have enjoyed it. On the other hand, the general opinion of this book isn't effusive, so I don't think I'm missi…
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This is my only comment on the book. I barely started it because I found the pace far too slow. There were pages and pages of description and padding that I just skimmed over, before abandoning the book. This probably had a lot to do with my state o…
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(Quote) As I understand it, in this setting, ship minds aren't human and were never human, and will always become ship minds. They're not (I think) humans that are chopped up and trapped in a ship. That shuts down a bunch of questions about "h…
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Ah, "what is SF" and "what is genre". I think this book could be an exploration of ideas. What does a non-WEIRD spacefaring culture look like? How can you have personal relationships across "species" boundaries? (This c…
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Like @Apocryphal , I found the characters thin and the romance perfunctory. Like @RichardAbbott , I thought the romance wasn't a meeting of minds and a growing affection, but an instance of lust at first sight.
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I'm in agreement with everyone here. I've read a couple of de Bodard's novellas in the same setting, and enjoyed them. I've also enjoyed a couple of here full-length novels. I think this book was another decent novella, but there wasn't enough to su…
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(Quote) I believe you're incorrect here, but I only know that because I asked de Bodard directly! The mindships in the Xuya universe (this book) aren't trapped disabled humans, they're a separate class of being that are only ever going to be in a sh…
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Yes, Riddley's worldview is one of symbols upon symbols. He's an "unreliable" narrator, I think, in that what he narrates isn't direct physical reality, but what it should be like in a neat folktale. For instance, when Granser mixes the gu…
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My interpretations: I thought the painting was inspiration for Hoban, more than something directly in the book. I didn't make the connection to the WW2 bombs: I thought 1 Big 1 was the nuclear war ("the big one") and Little Syning Man was…
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I think the misinterpretation of St Eustace is just one element of the book. And I've seen a few examples of people basing RPG campaigns on prog rock albums.
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Bits of it reminded me of Heroquesting in Glorantha, where the questers enter they mythic world to recreate the stories of the gods, and gain some benefit from it. Riddley's journeys came across in the same way, of him following a set script (or int…
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Yes, I got caught in the lack of commas too. "Greevus" I took as coming from the offence of assault causing Grevious Bodily Harm (GBH), a particular charge in the UK, and more sever than Actual Bodily Harm (ABH). A cock pheasant's squawks…