Doomsday Book

It feels a little unfair to compare this to Blackout/All Clear because this was written years earlier and Ms. Willis has obviously improved as a writer in the intervening timespan.  However, with their both being part of her "Oxford Time Travel" series, it is hard not to.  Don't get me wrong, Doomsday Book is quite the good book, it is just not as good as Blackout/All Clear.

Instead of World War II, this story takes the time travelling protagonist to England in the Middle Ages.  Also, in this book it continues to follow the characters in the "present" as well as in the past which makes for some interesting parallel dramatic tension (though if you don't understand the difference between the Julian and the Gregorian calendar, the timeline can be a mite bit confusing).

The beginning and the ending of this are both very strong,  but I felt that it slacked off a little in the middle.  Some important things happen, for sure, but I feel that it could have been compressed.  However, the final act is wrought with emotion and a pretty moving expression of what life what probably like in that time period for some people.

Despite the slowness in the middle, I would say that the biggest problem that I had with this book was, since it was written shortly after I was born, the future that the time travelers come from no longer feels very futuristic.  There is surprisingly large number of pages devoted to one of the characters trying to find someone to stay by his phone while he goes out, which kinda broke my suspension of disbelief because he really should have a cell phone.

Like Blackout/All Clear, the strongest part of the book is the characters, heroes and "villains," they are all very well done and you really feel for them.  It would be hard to imagine a time travel story that tried so hard to emphasize the lives of everyday people that wasn't by an author of Connie Willis' caliber.  She is the only author that can consistently bring me to (at least) the verge of tears whenever she tries to.   I think that these characters will live on in my head for a long time.  (Also, there are two little girls in this book who remind me a great deal of an Arya and Sansa Stark if they lived in the actual middle ages rather than Westeros.)

That being said, the time traveler in this book seemed a little less competent at her job then those in Blackout/All Clear (last comparison, I promise), she is much freer with information that she is from the future than the other books' protagonists.  She is also a lot quicker to give up hope than the others.  To be fair, she is less experienced than at least some of the characters in the other books so she has that rationalization going for her.

Overall, I would give this book a 93%.

Out of this World: An Anthology of Fantasy

I recently inherited all of my late grandmother's books.  After finishing The Thorn Birds, I chose a book at random from a box that came from her collection.  The one that I pulled was this one.  Generally speaking, I like fantasy and so the title sounded interesting.  Plus, this collection has some surprisingly famous authors in its pages.  The most surprising was probably Jack London, who I know from his books like White Fang and The Call of the Wild, both of which I read as a child.  In this collection, his contribution is dark, post-apocalyptic story, which is very different from the brand of wilderness adventure that I am used to seeing from him.

This is my copy, the lines are some sort of plastic cover that has developed linear bubbles.

This is not really fantasy in the modern sense. There isn't any unicorns or centaurs or really magic. This is an older definition of fantasy. In addition to the story about the world trying to recover from an apocalyptic plague, there is, for example, a story about people who live in department stores and their feud with the night watchman. All of the stories could be described as “fantastical” if someone tried to convince you that they actually happened, but would not be what you would expect from the fantasy section of your local book store.

Some other famous contributors were H.G. Welles with his vision of the last judgment and Oscar Wilde and his story about a British ghost that becomes exasperated with Americans. H.G. Welles’s story has his same biting style of cynical commentary as many of his other works but it is much more humorous than some of his other stories and Oscar Wilde's story shows how America (and really the world) has moved beyond tradition ghosts in horror.

The story behind this book was that it was compiled by a Sergeant named Julius Fast during World War II of the soldiers favorite short stories read. It is sort of interesting to imagine a different generation reading these stories in their makeshift quarters somewhere in Europe or the Pacific while I am sitting reading these over a hot meal in my comfortable apartment.

I think the thing about this book that I will talk about the most later on is Robert Arthur's "The Devil and Sam Shay" which is about a man winning a bet with devil, and the devil, furious, curses him with never being able to win another bet again and the story explores the aftermath. The character behaves rationally and does exactly what I would have done in the situation. It is great example of making the best of a bad situation.

Overall, I would give this book a 91%.

The Thorn Birds

I was introduced to Colleen McCullough by her Masters of Rome series which basically singlehandedly sparked my interested in Roman history.  However, this is the book she is the most famous for, so, when I saw it on sale, I thought I would give it a read.  The book is very well written, if not exactly my normal genre. While this book is long, it uses that length to make a generational epic that pulls no emotional punches.

While the cover makes it look like a romance novel, it is really not.  There is certainly romance involved but that is not the primary focus of the story.  In the beginning of the book there is a quote about how some birds impale themselves on thorns and sing their most beautiful songs, even as they are dying.  That theme, so blatantly laid out, pervades this book, showing how loss can be empowering.

The book covers a 50 year period, allowing it to show the growth and change of the Cleary family as they suffer their personal victories and defeats.  The writing really gets across the expanses of Australia and both its beauty and harshness.  It also allows the characters to really come alive and to let the reader emphasize with them with ease.

Overall, I would give this book an 89%.

The Songs of Distant Earth

I picked this book up in a little used bookstore in Northwestern PA.  To be honest, I picked it up because the title reminded me of the title of George R.R. Martin's tribute to Jack Vance: Songs of the Dying Earth. However, this book bears no relation to that collection or its subjects but it is a very enjoyable read.  Arthur C. Clarke has said it was his favorite of his novels, which is interesting because authors are often unwilling to name their favorites of their work.

The only other Arthur C. Clarke books that I have read before this point have been the 2001 tetralogy. I enjoyed all of them, except for the last one which was really pretty bad.  This book however, was quite good.  The science in it is quite interesting and the new world is close enough to be relatable while still having some distinguishing features.  It is hard to say that there is anything superlative about this book, but there is certainly nothing bad about it.  The parts of the book meshed well to hold my interest and the end leaves it both ambiguous and hopeful.

Where this book really shines, is in its description of the events that had happened before it began.  There are multiple chapters devoted to the history of Earth in this universe and I would love to see a story told of those days.  That perhaps might be a better book than this one.  But, as I have said multiple times before, I am a sucker for a complete canon.

One of the more interesting parts of this book was that (with a small enough population) they had "perfected" democracy. Everyone was informed enough and able to vote on every decision. They did have a president, but they were chosen by random lottery and nobody wanted the job because it was basically just being the master of ceremonies at events and listening to people complain.  That may be the most influential thing I take away from this to talk about later.
Overall, I would give this book a 87%.

The Hitman's Guide to House Cleaning

Frankly, I picked up this book because the title was interesting and the digital version was only two dollars.  The book was an entertaining read, if a little cliche.  The book is not actually a guide to house cleaning, as the title might imply, though the protagonist is a hitman.  The story follows the hitman as he is laying low after a hit gone bad, showing what he does and the misadventures that befall him.  The novel is written with a somewhat irreverent tone and manages to not take itself too seriously without the negatives that normally entails.

The book is written by an Icelandic author but he translated it himself so it lacks the rhythmic issues that a lot of translated books have.  Which is good news for this book because I think that a subpar translation would have ruined its darkly humorous tone.  There were several parts that made me laugh out loud.  There were also some exceedingly violent parts (he is a hitman after all) but that is not really what the book is about.

I did feel like certain parts of the book would have been funnier if I lived in Iceland and had better context for some of the commentary on the lives of the people who lived there.  It is far from unfunny, but I feel like the jokes would just all be slightly more poignant.

The book does a good job of fleshing out the character and showing why he is the way he is but there are certain parts of the story I felt deserved a lot more attention and certain parts that I felt could have used a little less detail.  The book also ends on a serious cliffhanger (depending on how you take the last sentence) which is generally annoying.

Overall, I would give this book an 87%.

The Birthday of the World and Other Stories

Ursula Le Guin is somewhat a shame of mine.  I consider myself a big fan of sci-fi and fantasy and yet I have read almost none of her books.  My mother recommended this short story collection to me, saying that I had to read the final story.  It seemed silly to only read one part of a short story collection, so I read the whole thing.  The recommendation was correct: the novella at the end was what made it worth reading, but there were some other good parts as well. 

Perhaps this collection would have been more enjoyable for me if I had read more of the author's work.  Since most of her stories take place in the same universe the shorter ones might have benefited from some context.  None of them were incomprehensible or even close to it, I just wonder if I could have liked them more.

Having never read much Le Guin before, I was surprised at the degree that (especially of the earlier stories) were concerned with sex.  There was a lot of interesting gender roles or changes from our world but it was just interesting how much they revolved around sex.

In my opinion, the best two stories, the title story and the novella, occupied the last third of the book.  The title story is about a primitive culture being exposed to the larger world around them.  It is a science fiction-y look at conquistadors from those being conquist-ed, with a twist.  I liked the stories naive viewpoint.

The novella, called Paradises Lost,  is a very interesting take on what would happen on a generation ship.  Without giving too much away, it has to do with a religion being formed around the concept of the journey and how the ship completely cares for them.  It comes across as completely plausible (while at the same time reminding me of Battlestar Galactica in some ways).  The characters are believable and interesting and I have difficulty coming up with another story that looks at life aboard a generation ship like this.

The theme of the collection is societies different than those found on today's Earth and in that it certainly does a good job of showing off a variety of different societies in the Ekumen universe.  There are some interesting thought experiments contained within the pages of this book but none so good as the final novella.

Overall, I would give this book a 90%.

The Years of Rice and Salt

A while back I did a post about Agent of Byzantium.  I talked about how it was not at all bad but the short story format didn't flesh out the world nearly as much as I wanted it to and how I wished that it had gone further down the path of history.  The Years of Rice and Salt answers most of those complaints, ironically from the opposite direction.  In Agent of Byzantium, Islam is never founded and so the Eastern Roman Empire never falls.  The premise of this book is that instead of one third of Europe dying during the black plague, 99% does.  The book starts when the black plague is just finishing up its course and goes through about 2050 C.E. So it covers about a 1000 years and really fleshes out the world showing how different parts adapted differently.

The book was recommended to me by a friend after he lent me Kim Stanley Robinson's Red Mars.  I didn't get around to reading it for about four years until it caught my eye in the small used book store in the little town where my Dad lives.  Since I have a difficult time leaving a book store empty handed I bought it.  $8 for a hard cover in good condition is pretty good.

Unlike a lot of alternate histories, this book does not make special effort to point out that certain events did or didn't happen.  Perhaps it is partially because this is so drastic of a historical change but I would like to attribute it at least partially to Mr. Robinson's skill at writing.  Despite the massive change, it is a pretty believable history (though Japanese ronin helping Native Americans fend off  Chinese conquistadors is a little far fetched, I will admit).  The history, rather than focusing on the leaders and major events, follows the lives of relatively normal people.

The book covers its time span by having 10 short-story-esque parts with varying amounts of time between each one.  The group of characters are always the same group, reincarnated in different positions.  This would merely be a quirk of the book except that some of the stories follow the characters after death while they have conversations in the afterlife; a seemingly needlessly fantastical flourish.  Each of the characters is then reincarnated as someone whose name starts with the first letter of the last life's name so you end up thinking of the characters as K and B.

One of the themes of the book is that the idea of a one overarching "shepherd" god is a bit naive and that there is holiness in all things.  Multiple different characters express this view and even the ones that don't seem to believe it.  In addition, the book spends a lot of time following the advancement of women's rights in the world and, while not as much the progression of science, the progression of scientific thinking.  It is very interesting.

This book makes for an good read, however, it can come across as a bit dry at times.  Not exactly a fun read, but a nice intellectual one.

Overall, I would give this book a 92%.