1Q84

1Q84 piqued my attention when it first came out.  1984 was one of my favorite books that I was forced to read for school (probably no coincidence that it was the closest to science fiction) and a similar book by a well respected Japanese author sounded quite interesting.  The book hung out on my list for years; basically, I was waiting to see it in a used book store to pick it up.  Finally, one of my friends offered to loan it to me which I gratefully accepted.

The book takes place (most of it, anyway) in an alternate 1984 Japan and for the first two parts flips back and forth between two limited third person viewpoints, oddly reminiscent of Leviathan Wakes in that respect (and almost no other).  The third and final part adds a third viewpoint, whose chapters are written in a slightly more omnipotent style but still keeping the same general method.

This 1984 has a slightly different history (though honestly I know very little about recent Japanese history so I could not tell you how different other than what the book highlights) and has some magical aspects which allows the author to sculpt a much more exciting world than a period piece about 80's Japan would have been.

This book opens wide a window into a fantastical world, taking the reader on a tour of many interesting things in the world.  The problem is that this world asks a lot of questions but doesn't really give very many answers.  Lots of varying things are introduced that seem to have no bearing on the plot.  It seems almost like the author had a succession of cool ideas and tried to tie them all together with a story but realized around page 900 that there was no way that the plot could do justice to all these ideas and so just left a bunch of potential things hanging.  Perhaps this was intentional, possibly setup for a sequel or just the authors way of showing that life in the world will continue after the final page has been turned.

However, if you outlined the actual key plot points and shaved off all of the interesting world building, you end up with a not particularly exciting story.  As I described it when talking with my friend, the plot itself seemed like a story that did not really need to be told.  The world is interesting and I would read a sequel but I would hope that it picked up some of the many loose ends at the end of this book.

Note: The title of the book seems a little weird considering when/where the story takes place.  Perhaps it would make more sense if the book was 198Q.  However, the title is done this way because in Japanese 9 and Q sound similar and so it is sort of a play on words.  An equivalent English title would be 200-Too (pronounced "Two Thousand and Too" and a great name for a sequel).  Also, at 1157 pages, this book has more pages than any other book I have read cover to cover.

Overall, I would give this book a 90%.

Abaddon's Gate

Warning: While this post contains only minor spoilers for Abaddon's Gate, it does have more major spoilers for Leviathan Wakes and Caliban's War, the previous books in the series.

As I mentioned in the Caliban's War review the authors said that they wanted to do a different thing with each book.  This book is certainly different than the previous two.  The first two hopped about the solar system.  The majority of this book takes place on one ship that barely moves for most of the story.  This is not necessarily a bad thing, once again, it is just different.

Based on the timing of the blog post in which they discuss it, it looks like the authors recieved an offer for three more books while they were writing this one.  It is exciting because I enjoy this series and I am looking forward to seeing where it goes but there are a couple places in the book where there are visible stretch marks of the book being changed from the thrilling conclusion to now the middle book of the six book saga.

This book, like the previous one, has four characters that are followed from the third person limited perspective.  However, with the exception of Holden, these characters all new (as in the readers didn't even know they existed in the universe before now).  None of them were as well done as Avasarala but I think the average quality of these four is better than those of the previous four.

The combat in this was very cool.  In the first two books, a lot of the combat takes place between ships but in this one it takes place mostly person to person.  While the layout of the battlefield was a little confusing at a couple points, the intricacies of zero gravity combat were well explained.  In addition, this book makes good references to the previous two with the technology and name dropping characters from other books.

There was one plot element that seemed to be basically a red herring, which is fine but it seemed a little like a wasted storytelling opportunity.  In addition, there was a second plot point which appears to have just been dropped.  Perhaps it will be picked up in future books but I have difficulty seeing how that would happen.

I know I spent a lot of page space on complaints here but this book is really pretty good.  It is a lot like the first two but with just enough tweaked to make it exciting and different (and more tweaked than the second one which felt a little like a slightly more complex repeat of the first).

Overall, I would give this book a 91%.