Artemis

I loved The Martian. It was the book that got me reading again after a years-long drought. I raved about it to my family and friends and drove them nuts with my uninvited opinions when I heard they were going to turn it into a movie. So I was very excited when I learned Andy Weir had a new book coming out and preordered it as soon as the option was available. However, I was sad to find myself disappointed by Artemis. While the science-y bits were interesting,  I found the protagonist, Jazz, rather unlikable. Mark Watney was a goofball but he was also a brilliant scientist who used his mind to stay alive when disaster struck. Jazz seems to take a perverse pride in not living up to her potential. She constantly tells us how smart and capable other people insist she is but scoffs at the idea of becoming a professional of some kind because it involves work.

Boobs. Has Andy Weir never hear another word for female breasts? Because every single character in this book refers to them as boobs. It was jarring. In real life, different people have various favorite euphemisms but on the moon it seems that they are always just boobs. It’s a minor thing but it bugged the heck out of me. Another criticism I have heard and agree with is that Andy Weir just didn’t do a very good job of writing a female voice. Jazz didn’t talk or think like any woman I know. 

Anyway, Artemis is the story of a functioning city on the moon and I did enjoy all the explanations that went into how such a place would operate. Our girl Jazz is a courier and smuggler who has a driving need to get rich and therefore is unable to resist turning down a dangerous high risk job when it is offered to her, since she is the smartest, most competent honest criminal on the moon. Plans are executed and oopsies happen and Jazz strips to her underwear in front of a guy to get into an EVA suit while teeheeing about how awkward it would be if he weren’t gay instead of treating it like routinely donning the gear she has had significant training in during an emergency situation but BOYZ. Sigh. Anyway - three stars. Good science, didn’t hate it, could have been so much better.

Silver and Stone (The Antipodean Queen #2)

Silver and Stone is the second volume in a steampunk trilogy set in a fantasy version of Australia where certain metals can be ‘activated’ to take on magical properties - iron can confer strength, gold can attract, silver can heal, etc. I read the first volume (Heart of Brass) last year so it didn’t qualify for the Cannonball but it did give me the background for this story, which takes up pretty much where the last one left off. (This review will therefore have spoilers for that first book).

The hero is Emmaline Muchamore, a proper young lady from London who is herself an inventor and scientist and whose inventor/scientist father replaced her biological heart with one made of brass and silver, leading to his untimely death. The family falls in its fortunes and Emmaline commits a crime that results in her being transported to Australia as a convict. While there she makes her escape with the assistance of Matilda, the half-Aboriginal girl with whom she falls in love, and Patrick, Matilda’s adopted brother. The second book involves their attempt to rescue Patrick’s mother from the Female Factory on Tasmania where she herself has been imprisoned, and their subsequent efforts to fulfill a promise they make to Patrick’s mother that puts them in significant danger of being recaptured. As in the first book, the story is set against an event of actual historical significance - in the case of Heart of Brass, it was the battle of the Eureka Stockade, and in this book it is the women's suffrage movement.

The books do have their flaws - the characters, particularly the secondary characters, could stand to be fleshed out more - but I found them to be a fun, breezy read. A particularly entertaining feature is that they have Choose-Your-Own-Adventure style stories in the back of each book which take place in the same setting as the novels. 

The Only Harmless Great Thing

I first read about “The Only Harmless Great Thing” as a Big Idea on John Scalzi’s blog. It instantly intrigued me but the past year has been very hard on me and left me in a fragile state so I was reluctant to read anything that I would find disturbing. Still, I kept seeing references to it and realized that I needed the beauty and magic that the story promised. 

“The Only Harmless Great Thing” is a novella that tells the story of an alternate world where “elephants have been recognized as sentient beings. Of course, that hasn’t stopped their exploitation, because when has it ever?” (So says the author via the Big Idea.) She describes the story as short and angry, and so it is, as well as strange and defiant. 

It takes only an hour or so to read but the story and characters make themselves at home in your head. Each narrator has a distinct voice and the disparate points of view get braided together to tell an exquisite tale. The story revolves around Regan – whose body is decaying painfully as a result of her employment in a factory painting watch dials with radioactive paint – and her relationship with Topsy, one of the elephants being trained to replace human workers in the factory because their more massive bodies can handle more radiation exposure before succumbing to the lethal effects. There is also Kat, a scientist who is trying to negotiate with a representative of the elephants. Finally there is Furmother-With-The-Cracked-Tusk, who long ago gave stories to her people.

The callous disregard for the Radium girls and the horrific mistreatment of elephants are both part of our world, our history. I have read with indignation and sadness about both but here those stories are woven together with new elements to create not a tapestry but a Rouffignac cave painting flickering in the torchlight of imagination and fury. The ending is rather abrupt but overall the story is a wonder and everyone should read it.

The Light Fantastic

“When light encounters a strong magical field it loses all sense of urgency.  It slows right down.  And on the Discworld the magic was embarrassingly strong, which meant that the soft yellow light of dawn flowed over the sleeping landscape like the caress of a gentle lover or, as some would have it, like golden syrup.”

Pratchett describes the sunlight of Discworld as flowing like golden syrup several times during The Light Fantastic, which meant I spent a fair amount of the time that I was reading this book fantasizing about pancakes. Yes, I’m kind of weird, and carb deprived.

Anyway, stacks of fluffy flapjacks aside, we’re back with the continuing adventures of Rincewind and Twoflower! I didn’t find this book quite as laugh-out-loud funny as the previous one although it certainly did have its moments. Mr. alphabootoo is an inveterate punster and there were several passages I had to share with him because they were too groan inducing to keep to myself. This book finds the entire Discworld in peril from a great ruddy star that is growing ever closer and the spell in Rincewind’s mind is revealed to have a role to play in saving the world (Rincewind himself is considered somewhat expendable). We learn more about wizards and wizarding and spells – which left me eager to start reading about the Discworld’s witches because they sound like they will be far more sensible.

As much as I enjoyed Twoflower in the previous book, I absolutely fell in love with him in this one. I love his rose-colored glasses and his ridiculous optimism. And I totally and completely lost my heart to him near the end when he showed Rincewind – and the reader – that he is also more savvy than we had been giving him credit for. Since 2018 is currently kicking my butt, I could stand to cultivate some hardcore optimism myself. Maybe I need a WWTFD bracelet or something. Surely there has to be an etsy shop somewhere to help me out.

The next book in the publication order is a departure from the Rincewind tales so I will get a look at a different facet of the Discworld literary universe. I am really enjoying the books so far and glad I finally took the plunge.

The Colour of Magic

I attempted the second Cannonball Read and failed miserably (seriously – looking back at the posts I made way back when shows that but a single book review ever got posted). I’m finally back to try again, although I’ve lowered the bar to just a Quarter Cannonball in the hopes it will be more manageable. I am the sort of person who buys books in the hopes that perhaps I will someday find a way to read them and this challenge may be the impetus I need to actually do just that. Also, 2018 seems like it could benefit from some literary distractions! 

I had been dancing around starting Terry Pratchett’s Discworld series for a verrrrry long time because I was intimidated by the scope. I finally went with Small Gods based on a recommendation and, not surprisingly, fell in love. I want to read the whole thing now and settled on just plowing through them in chronological order. I have managed to stick with the plan long enough to start with The Colour of Magic. Many people say this is exactly the wrong thing to do because the first Discworld books are lacking the, er, magic of the rest of the series but since I have sufficient faith in the series to stick with it I think the decision was a good one for me.

The book is a breezy and fun introduction to the Discworld universe, via Rincewald the magician and his association with Twoflower, the visitor from the far off Agatean Empire who comes to the twin cities of Ankh-Morpork with gloriously full purses and some truly singular Luggage. Soon enough, Ankh-Morpork burns and the two are forced to flee. Shenanigans ensue, along with amusing send-ups of the fantasy genre. There were a number of times I found myself literally laughing out loud as I read. I don’t have much to compare it to beyond Small Gods and Good Omens but this book did feel like an early effort to me in that it had the humor but not so much of the bite that I loved about the other two.

As a total aside, Bravd and the Weasel made me remember how much I loved Fritz Leiber when I was young. I may have to add him to my book list, although it was his short stories that were always my favorites.

Cannonball Ten is a go

Whew, sure is dusty around here!

I started this blog way back in 2009 for the second Pajiba Cannonball Read, a cancer fighting challenge that involves reading books - you can read all the details about how they work here: https://cannonballread.com/about/. After failing miserably at that one, I avoided them for subsequent years but I have decided to try again in 2018 for the 10 year anniversary. I have been posting my reviews on the official Cannonball blog but decided to bring this one out of retirement and post them here as well for no particular reason other than whim. Well, that and I ended up needing to wrest some information from the blog and it was a formidable battle and now that I have bent it to my will I want to be sure it remembers who is boss, I suppose.

Anyway, I will put up the three reviews I have already done and hopefully there will be more to follow soon. I admit that the reviews are the hard part for me - I have read more than three books so far this year but I just don't think I do a very good job with the reviews so I have been dragging my feet writing them.