Over at the pixelatedgeek.com offices, there’s been a lot of talk about Holiday Gift Guides and presenting a list for every category of entertainment. As one of the book reviewers, I couldn’t make up my mind: do I list a bunch of great books I’ve already read, or do I review the new books that have everybody excited? I figured the second would be more fun, except for the fact that there’s no way I can finish reading enough books between now and Christmas to make a worthwhile list.
I read pretty fast, but I can’t read that many books in time. But I can certainly read parts of many books.
On that note I bring you “Ten Books, a Thousand Pages.” I’ve picked ten books and read the first hundred pages of each title. Some might argue that a hundred pages isn’t a fair assessment of a book (what if it’s a terrible book with a great ending?) but I think that far into a book, you’ll either love it enough to continue or quietly put it down and go find something you like better.
My only rules for the books I read are:
- They need to have been written in 2012.
- They need to be sci-fi or fantasy titles.
- They need to be sitting someplace front-and-center at the bookstore.
I wanted to read some of the books you’re likely to see a lot of when you’re doing your Christmas shopping. Hopefully I’ll find a few you’d like to get for that special someone. (Or for yourself when you’re supposed to be buying stuff for other people. Don’t feel bad, it happens, and you deserve a treat for getting all that shopping done.)
Bowl of Heaven by Gregory Benford and Larry Niven
This isn’t geology,” Fred pointed out immediately. “It’s a, well, a building.
Who would like this book: fans of hard sci-fi in general, and Larry Niven’s books in particular.
Like many of Larry Niven’s books, Bowl of Heaven has a good balance of hard science and human personalities. You’ll have to work hard at understanding a description of relativistic engineering, but smile at a description of how someone pours wine in low gravity (pouring it it into the air and then cutting it into segments with a dinner knife will work if you’re quick enough.)
I haven’t read any of Benford’s books before, but his and Niven styles seem to mesh well. The story’s very clearly told, with an easily understood plot, despite a lot of in-depth descriptions of the LTW (Larger Than Worlds) construction the crew comes across. Like Dyson Spheres and Ringworlds, the alien artifact they’ve found is flamboyantly artificial, with more than 200 million times the square footage of the earth. And unlike Dyson Spheres and Ringworlds, this one isn’t tethered in one place.
Will I Finish Reading It: Definitely, though I feel like I’ll have to parcel out some quiet time for it. This isn’t a book to read in a crowded, noisy area (like a bookstore in the middle of the Christmas season, as I found out.) But I enjoy Benford and Niven’s style of writing, and at the 100-page mark the crew had just come across an alien race, one of many to come it looks like, so I really want to see what happens next.
Death: The Deluxe Edition by Neil Gaiman and various other authors and artists
I think the whole world’s gone mad.”
“Uh-Uh. It’s always been like this. You probably just don’t get out enough.
Who would like this book: anyone who’s ever loved anything by Neil Gaiman, and readers of beautiful, dark fantasy.
I almost felt like it was cheating for me to include this in the list. This book is the definitive collection of stories about Neil Gaiman’s character Death, who appeared many times in his Sandman series and several times in graphic novels of her own. Yes, I read 100-pages, but only because I’ve already read every Death story I could get my hands on. Several times.
However, this would make a wonderful present. It has all her famous stories (Death: The High Cost of Living and Death in Venice from the Endless Nights graphic novel being my favorites) as well as a gallery of drawings of Death by artists like Dave McKean, Chris Bachalo, Michael Zulli, Kevin Nowlan, P. Craig Russel, and more. It’s a hardback, large-format book, with glossy pages and beautiful reproductions of all her stories. And, of course, a stunning cover by Dave McKean.
I’ll admit this one is going on my Christmas wishlist for myself.
Will I Finish Reading It: Already did. And will so again. Many, many times.
Clockwork Angels: The Novel by Kevin J. Anderson
Because there’s so much out there to imagine. The whole world! And if I can’t see everything for myself, then I have to imagine it all.
Who would like this book: Steampunk fans, fans of Rush’s album “Clockwork Angels” and possibly people who don’t need a heck of a lot of excitement in their fantasy.
Maybe I’m not being fair, but I was pretty bored by this book.
From what I understand, Rush’s latest album Clockwork Angels tells a story, through Neil Peart’s lyrics, of the Stability, the civilization created by a figure called the Watchmaker. Anderson later expanded on the lyrics in order to write the book. There are also beautiful paintings throughout the novel by Hugh Syme.
The whole book is well-made, gorgeous, and obviously Kevin J. Anderson is a talented writer that I respect very much. But the story really dragged.
I felt like we kept getting the same information over and over: the main character is bored with his life, in the idylic, peaceful civilization that the Watchmaker has created. The young man feels guilty that he isn’t more grateful with how perfect everything is. Most people are happy to have their entire lives ordered for them if it means peace and contentment. And of course you have elements of society that fight back against that rigid order, because people should be free to live imperfect lives, order can also be stagnation, and peace can be another means of control. Add in a strange circus and a lot of apples, and I think I’ve summed up the first 100 pages in a paragraph. Aside from a nicely creepy bit with the Watchmaker’s dog, the story never caught my attention. It’s well-written, but the plot needed to go somewhere, faster.
Will I Finish Reading It: No, I was perfectly happy to put this one back on the shelf. You might like it though, I’d recommend at least browsing through it while you’re shopping. Maybe at the 150 page mark it starts to pick up.
Three Parts Dead by Max Gladstone
Did you really think it was possible he died of natural causes?”
“These are strange days. We have had to widen the definition of “natural” six times in the last decade.
Who would like this book: fans of dark fantasy with a slightly modern aesthetic. And also people who like to read about magicians raising the dead, for business purposes.
Gladstone has created a incredibly detailed word of magic and supernatural creatures. In the first 100 pages I’ve already seen witches, zombies, gargoyles and vampires, and I’m pretty sure he’s just getting started. I liked the idea that magic is very much a contractual thing, almost like a legal document. There’s checks and balances, and the people who control magic are partly tied to unseen forces and partly just really good accountants.
The main character was thrown out of her school on her graduation day (literally thrown, the fall almost killed her) and then she had a little bit of trouble when she went back to her hometown. After eight years in the Hidden Schools she sort of forgot that townspeople don’t really like it when you reanimate their dead guardsmen. Even if you were just trying to be helpful. But after a few false starts she’s been assigned to investigate the circumstances regarding a death. Unfortunately, this time it was a god that died and the repercussions of not fulfilling his contracts might destroy the city and possibly the entire world economy, so the situation gets complicated very quickly.
Will I Finish Reading It: I definitely will. At the 100 page mark I found out how vampires work in this world, and I’d like to hear a lot more.
Only Superhuman by Christopher L. Bennett
Real life was such a ripoff sometimes.
Who would like this book: fans of very intelligent superhero fiction, who don’t have to take their stories quite so seriously.
Bennett pulls off an interesting balance in this book. On the one hand, a reader has to be at least familiar with science-fiction elements like La Grange points, has to know that “Zephyr” is a word out of Greek mythology, and has to have an idea of what toroidal means or what a chador is. Bennett will throw these concepts at you, and you can probably figure them out in the context of the sentence, but he’s not going to stop and explain everything to you. So it’s very intelligent writing.
On the other hand you have characters with superhero strength and unlikely beauty who like to drop into the middle of a dangerous situation and toss off their latest witty remark before they beat the tar out of the bad guys. The main character is first introduced with a dramatic pose and a 30-word description of exactly what her outfit looks like.
This is not hard sci-fi. It’s a space drama with skimpy clothes and evil bad guys and robots and super powers. It just also happens to also be very well-written.
Will I Finish Reading It: Oh definitely. I’ll roll my eyes at the main character screaming “NOOOOOOOOOO!” and laugh at all the awesome one-liners and remind myself to look up the La Grange points and how a habitat ring would exist there. There’s something for everybody.
That’s the first five books. Stay tuned for part two, which I WILL finish before Christmas. Honest!