Books I've read

Finished 2023-09-08

Scifi with an original premise: the aliens have already come and gone, barely even noticing the inconsequential humans, but leaving piles of refuse scattered at their landing sites. Some of it is useful, much of it is hideously dangerous, and none of it is understood.

In the wake of this springs an entire industry — scientists trying to understand the detritus, companies selling the items to the scientists, and “stalkers” illegally entering the closed zones to scavange what they can.

Despite the interesting setup, I did not like this book. Perhaps it suffered in the translation from Russian, but I didn’t like any of the characters, much of the dialog was vague and confusing, and the conclusion was unsatisfying. I know it’s a well-respected classic, so maybe I’m just missing something.

Finished 2023-05-03

Beautifully written sci-fi that explores contact with extraterrestial life in a very original way. Also very interesting the way that the story is rooted in revolutionary China in the 60’s. That being said, most of the interest for me was in the setup of the story and the laying out of the puzzle pieces. Once the curtain was pulled back, so to speak, and the puzzle was revealed (almost 90% of the way in), it became less interesting. The reveal felt handwavy and farfetched, even for sci-fi, and somewhat contrived to make the plot work. It also ends on a fairly abrupt note.

Regardless, I enjoyed it, it gave me something to think about, I would probably recommend it, and I will likely read the sequels.

Finished 2023-03-25

Science fiction? Urban fantasy? Murder mystery? Political thriller? One of the most interesting premises I’ve read: two cities in present day central Europe superimposed on each other, occupying the same physical space, and a murder that happens in between. The first time the duality of two cities is referenced is at the end of the first chapter, in the following paragraphs:

An elderly woman was walking slowly away from me in a shambling sway. She turned her head and looked at me. I was struck by her motion, and I met her eyes. I wondered if she wanted to tell me something. In my glance I took in her clotehs, her way of walking, of holding herself, and looking.

With a hard start, I realized that she was not on GunterStrász at all, and that I should not have seen her.

Immediately and flustered I looked away, and she did the same, with the same speed. I raised my head, otwards an aircraft on its final descent. When after some seconds I looked back up, unnoticing the old woman stepping heavily away, I looked carefully instead of at her in her foreign street at the facades of the nearby and local GunterStrász, that depressed zone.

Since the book is categorized as science fiction, I assumed that this involved multiple dimensions or something, which occasionally overlapped. However, it gradually becomes evident that the actuality is somewhat more mundane, and far more interesting: it’s purely a political separation, and residents of both cities are trained from birth, implicity and explicitly, to disregard (“unsee”) the other city and all its happenings.

This leads to many really beautiful and fascinating passages, such as:

I watched the local buildings’ numbers. They rose in stuters, interspersed with foreign alter spaces. In Besźel the area was pretty unpeopled, but not elsewhere across the border, and I had to unseeing dodge many smart young businessmen and -women. Their voices were muted to me, random noise. That aural fade comes from years of Besź care. When I reached the tar-painted front where Corwi waited with an unhappy-looking man, we stood together in a near-deserted part of Besźel city, surrounded by a busy unheard throng.

What I really enjoyed and respected about this book is that despite its incredibly original and complicated premise, very little is left unexplained. Almost every time I thought, “Okay, how would X possibly work in two superimposed cities?”, that very thing was touched on, at least in passing, within a few pages — even mundane things like garbage, utility lines, emergency vehicles, etc.

The plot itself wraps up in a satisfactory if not entirely stunning way, but the plot is almost secondary to the incredible worldbuilding. A book that leaves you thinking.

Would recommend.

Finished 2022-11-18

A beautiful and devastating murder mystery. The plot is almost incidental; the beauty is in the lyrical writing and the way she wraps you up in the characters and their relationships. The devastation comes when she destroys them and takes you along as collateral damage.

Captivating.

Finished 2022-10-15

Detective Kala Stonechild is at it again, this time on the case of a disappeared mother and child. Everyone thinks the husband did it…but did he?

I listened to the first two books in this series as audiobooks, and really enjoyed them. Good mysteries, with an indigenous female protagonist (although I don’t think the author is indigenous). However, reading this one rather than listening to it made me notice that the writing is pretty sloppy. Also, leans too heavily on some farfetched narrative devices that don’t really makes sense with the plot. Why on earth would the bad guy take the kidnappee to his family’s cottage (which, of course, the police already know about) and tell the kidnapper’s husband to meet them there?

Still entertaining though, and will probably read more.

Finished 2022-10-06

Detective Kala Stonechild is at it again, this time on the case of a disappeared mother and child. Everyone thinks the husband did it…but did he?

I listened to the first two books in this series as audiobooks, and really enjoyed them. Good mysteries, with an indigenous female protagonist (although I don’t think the author is indigenous). However, reading this one rather than listening to it made me notice that the writing is pretty sloppy. Also, leans too heavily on some farfetched narrative devices that don’t really makes sense with the plot. Why on earth would the bad guy take the kidnappee to his family’s cottage (which, of course, the police already know about) and tell the kidnapper’s husband to meet them there?

Still entertaining though, and will probably read more.

Finished 2020-10-30 Did Not Finish

Set during WWII, the Allies sneak a young Jewish man who came to the U.S. after escaping Poland into Auschwitz to extract a physics professor crucial to the war effort. The first sentance of the book is a grammatical mess: “The private room is on the fourth floor of the Geriatric wing at the Edward Hines Jr. Veterans Administration Hospital outside Chicago, bent, old men shuffling down the hall in hospital gowns with nurses guiding them and portable IVs on their arms.” There are similar oopsies throughout the book, and much of the dialog feels contrived. However, the breaking point for me was, when, the day before the hero is sent into Auschwitz, his overseer makes him kill a cat to “prove that he can kill if needed.”

Come on.

Finished 2020-10-25

A decent thriller. Engaging and fast-paced. It’s set locally to where I live lived, in an area that’s not often written about in mainstream novels, which makes it interesting to me. It also takes place on a reservation and depicts the Native American characters in a clear-eyed and sensitive way. However, the characters are flat and predictable, and often perform actions that don’t make sense and are clearly designed only to move the plot along, a device which drives me crazy, since it makes it feel like the characters aren’t freewilled people.

Worth reading once.

Finished 2020-10-20

Great story with memorable and vivid characters. A weird amount of talk of how attractive and sexually appealing the narrator’s mother is, and by page 300 or so it starts to feel like the book is going in circles.

Worth reading once, probably won’t be compelled to read it again.

Finished 2020-09-12

Historical fiction about the doomed Franklin expedition to find the northwest passage, this 770-page book spends most of its length chronicaling the tribulations of the men trapped on the ice, facing hypothermia, starvation, scurvy, madness—while also being stalked and picked off by an unknown monster on the ice. The first 600+ pages can, at times, feel like it’s not going anywhere—more starvation, more men dying, hopelessness continues—but still manages to remain engaging. The writing at times feels sloppy, with contradictions only a couple of sentances apart.

In the last one hundred pages it becomes an almost entirely different novel, in a rather jarring but good way. Without spoiling it, the legends of the native Esquimaux people come to the forefront of the story.

Definitely a very male-centric story, which I guess would be expected considering the expedition that the story is about consisted of exclusively men. Although there is a strong female protagonist, she is literally unable to speak, and although she is portrayed as being very strong and self-sufficient, her role of subservience to the men around her is clear. As with any story like this, it’s hard (for me, at least) to determine how much of this is just a portrayal of the sexism of the times that the story is set in, and how much of it is perpetuation of the stereotypes.

Overall, I enjoyed it. Worth reading once.