Star Wars: X-Wing: Mercy Kill

The X-Wing series has been a series long beloved by Star Wars book fans.  Unlike many of the other stories, it barely features anyone from the movies and almost no use of the Force.  Before this most recent addition, the books came out over the course of three years over two different authors.  However, for more than a decade, the series laid fallow, until now...

Mercy Kill is the 10th book in a series where the 9th book came out in 1999.  It also serves as kind of an epilogue to a different 9 book series.  In other words, this book has a lot of history behind it.  Surprisingly, it doesn't really feel that way.  Despite being what is basically the 10th book in two separate series, it manages to stand on its own surprisingly well.  This book manages to require very little domain knowledge while avoiding the pitfall of explaining a bunch of previous plot points in a manner that is blatantly just filling new readers in.

Like many Aaron Allston books, this story, while being serious, has a multitude of humorous parts.  Some, especially those worked into the elaborate and stressful climax, provide such a perfect break, that they can have the reader howling with laughter. 

My biggest complaint with this book is that the title is not very accurate.  There is almost no space action in this book.  Almost everything occurs on foot.  There is not really a problem with this, I just feel that a book that has X-Wing in the title should have a little more action having to do with, well,  X-Wings.

The villain was physically not introduced until relatively late in the story but the author does a good job of making him seem like a bad guy without making him a caricature.  Just some of the little things he does really make it clear that the guy is not a paragon of virtue.

Overall, this book is surprisingly accessible and unsurprisingly funny.  I would give it a 91%.

The Mongoliad: Book 2

The second book of the Mongoliad is an interesting read.  It definitely continues the promise of the first book with vividly realized and described combat.  The historical era that the books cover is one that is rarely discussed in mainstream history, the point after Genghis Khan died but before the Mongol tribes splintered.  I like it for that reason too, the books make a rarely discussed era of history exciting.

Even though this is a collaborative work between many authors, it works very well.  It gives each character (or group thereof) their own unique feel without each section being jarringly different like some collaboration novels (I'm looking at you, Wild Cards).

I was totally understanding of the last novel ending on a cliffhanger, however, I was vastly less understanding of this one leaving that cliffhanger open for the first 80 pages.  Plus, I am sure that the storyline that took up most of those 80 pages will eventually tie into the ones introduced in the first book, but at the end of the second book it seems pretty mysterious how it is going to do so.

Since it had been a while since I had read Book 1, it was a little difficult to be sure that I was making all the connections I was supposed to be making.  The names are also not the type of names that are easy to remember and distinguish so that didn't exactly help.

Like in Book 1, the sword fighting was excellently written.  It was taken to a basically unique level of detail.  There was a little less of it in this book, but that is because the series is headed to (I believe) a big climax with much sword fighting and that takes some non-swordfighting plot bits to be set up.

After reading this I read a couple of short stories set in the Mongoliad universe before this main series.  They are short and don't cover what I want out of Mongoliad stories: swordfighting and cool insight into that era of history.  They are more character pieces, giving the reader a bit more insight into some of the characters.  I think together the two stories might come to 150 pages, so they are pretty short but fun little reads.

Overall, I would give this book an 88%.

This Book Is Full of Spiders: Seriously, Dude, Don't Touch It

This Book is Full of Spiders is the sequel to a book I like very much entitled John Dies at the End.  Before even talking about This Book is Full of Spiders, you have to know a little about John Dies at the End. John Dies at the End started off as a collection of stories about the narrator (David, the author) and his friend John.  These stories were compiled and condensed into one novel.  While it still retains hints of its origin, the compilation works much better than many I have seen.  The book is a mixture of humor and horror, with a tidbit of science fiction thrown in for good measure.  If you haven't guessed from the titles, the books are a strange mix of taking themselves seriously and not.  For a further example, here are the covers of both books:

As you can see, the covers are... unique.  The books have been described as if Douglas Adams wrote Stephen King and I think that is a perfect description.  There are multiple parts of the book that are significantly creepy but there were many parts that made me laugh out loud.

Some of the humor is juvenile (suggesting communicating with smeared feces) while there are parts that really make you think.  The books revolve partially around a worldwide conspiracy and while parts of it are clearly fictional, there are some parts that make you question the direction the world is headed in.

I have never seen humor and horror blended as artfully as it has been in these books.  If you are a fan of either genre I would recommend these books.  Fair warning, however, they do lean more towards the humor than the horror.



Overall, I would give this book (is full of spiders) a 93%.



House of Leaves

House of Leaves is a truly unique and fantastic book.  From it's opening page that says simply "This is not for you" all the way to its conclusion that completely rerenders the reader's view of the story, this book blew me away. 

Describing the basic premise of the book makes it sound somewhat ridiculous.  It is about a man who finds and edits an exhaustive movie review.  This review is of a documentary (or perhaps horror) film called The Navidson Record.  However, as the man, Truant,  reads and edits the review things in his life tend to get stranger and stranger.  The Navidson Record doesn't exist within the world of the book (nor in real life) which makes the story all the more intriguing.  The main portion of the book is the review of the movie and the story of the editor is told in footnotes.

The book has a beautifully executed gradual ramp up to anything scary, in the beginning it is much more of a mystery than anything else.  As the histories of the characters are slowly revealed, one step at a time, the book really grows.

This book also, in the world of ebooks and pdfs, truly embraces the printed medium.  The book itself is such a critical part of the feel of the story, from the small touches like certain words being consistently printed in different colors, to the big touches like strange page layouts and multipage upside down footnotes. The very layout of the book tells part of the story.

The book is eccentric in other ways too.  It is over 700 pages, 200 of which are appendices and an index.  The appendices have random additional information, some of it relevant, some of it not.  The index is another beast entirely.  Some parts have interesting

I will say that the story of the editor did not interest me anywhere near as much as the story of the characters in The Navidson Record but it provided an interesting break from the main story and some of the most pervasive imagery, the parts that literally kept me up at night, were in the sections written by Truant.

I feel like there is almost nothing that I can say that will truly do this book justice, but I can say for a certainty, it is a unique literary experience.  This is my favorite book that I have read so far in 2012.

Overall, I would give this book a 98%.

The Dirk Gently Duology

Douglas Adams is famous (rightfully so) for his Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy series, which was, as he called it, a trilogy in 5 parts.  However, many people forget that he also wrote other things.  While nothing can really top the Hitchhiker's guide in the niche it carved for itself, the Dirk Gently duology is an good read, especially if you like funny mysteries with a taste of sci-fi. 

The two books are called Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency and The Long Dark Teatime of the Soul.  They share almost no characters other than Mr. Gently and deal with completely different areas of science fiction.  You could read them almost in either order or one without the other (OK, so perhaps calling it a duology was a stretch).

I read them back to back after picking up the second book in Chicago and then months later finding the first in a used book store where I go to school.  They certainly have the trademark Douglas Adams' weird, funny, and slightly depressing dark humor.  Anyone who enjoyed Hitchhiker's will enjoy these.

The main character is a detective who believes in the interconnectedness of all things.  Acting upon these beliefs gets him into very silly situations and yet things always seem to work out for him.  I laughed out loud at some parts of this book.

A note of warning, don't go into this expecting a traditional whodunit.  This definitely has science fiction and fantasy elements and if you don't like those mixed with your mystery then these books will probably be a disappointment.

Overall, I would give these two an 83%.

Star Wars: Lost Tribe of the Sith: The Collected Stories

The Lost Tribe of the Sith stories were released as free eBooks to promote Del Rey's publishing of other Star Wars works.  They were written by John Jackson Miller who is a history nerd and tries to weave all of the history knowledge bottled up in his head into science fiction, making for quite the enjoyable tale.  If you can ever hear him talk about what influenced him to write basically any plot point, it is sure to be interesting and probably have some grounding in world history.

The eBooks became quite popular and so Del Rey decided to publish them together in a collection as well as with a novella that followed after the last story and wrapped up the open ending of the last story.  The novella takes up about 3/8ths of the book, while the other 8 short stories take up the rest. 

The stories cover over 2000 years, so the reader can really watch the society evolve and change over time.  There are basically three trilogies with the novella making up the third part of the last trilogy.  The basic premise is that this group (tribe) of Sith crash lands on an unknown (lost) planet and must support themselves without killing each other, a tall order for Sith.

Each of the stories has a pretty clear protagonist and it is sort of interesting to think that the guy that you are rooting for could easily have been the villain in a variety of other tales.  Also, seeing a large group of ego-centric people try to get along is pretty humorous.

An issue with this is that (if you haven't done the math) not all of the characters get the same amount of screen time.  The final part in the time line takes up about half of the book.  While I didn't have a problem with this, I could easily see how someone could be miffed that they were stuck with characters they didn't like as much as those the author introduced 1000 years ago.

No one from the movies shows up in this story and it requires no real knowledge of the Star Wars universe to enjoy.  The book presents a unique perspective on Star Wars and while the marooned on an alien planet is sort of a sci-fi trope, I can't think of another story that follows the growth of the marooned civilization like this one does.

Overall, I would give this collection a 82%.

Star Wars: Scourge

Scourge is sort of a unique Star Wars book, it contains basically no characters from any of the movies.  However, unlike most Star Wars books, it is kind of a mystery, trying to figure out who the actual villain is.  It has some really fun action scenes and some unique characters.  It really doesn't feel like most tie in novels, mostly because it just expands the overall universe.

The main character is something that you don't see very often in Star Wars, a Jedi lacking in self-confidence.  Then when he is thrown together with other characters, some of whom are from stereotypes not often portrayed as protagonists, they really mesh and it makes for a good story.

The only downside is that it is very short.  It really doesn't take long to finish.  While I cannot point to any specific part of the book that I wish was fleshed out, it just seemed like it could have taken up a little more shelf space.  It was like those amusement park rides that are fun but over far too soon.

Overall, I would give this book a 79%.