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Antolius started reading Legends & Lattes by Travis Baldree

Legends & Lattes (Paperback, 2022, Tor Books)

Legends & Lattes by Travis Baldree

Worn out after decades of packing steel and raising hell, Viv the orc barbarian cashes out of the warrior’s life …

Antolius reviewed Spook Country by William Gibson

Spook Country is a 2007 novel by speculative fiction author William Gibson. A political thriller …

Mediocre

3 stars

It was a bit weird for me to read Gibson outside of Sci-Fi genre. For example, while his brand heavy descriptions give credence & lived-in texture to a more fantastical cyberpunk setting, here they can be a bit cumbersome. Even in Pattern Recognition they were thematically appropriate, but here they felt kinda out of place.

In light of recent 2020s tech trends It was also funny to see a purportedly "non-fictional" 2000s world in which high fidelity AR goggles are commonplace, but everyone looses their minds about GPS.

Otherwise, the novel is perfectly serviceable. Pace is good, character motivations mostly check out. There's some "eccentric billionaire with goldfish-like attention span" reasoning, but that too seems plausible. In the end mystery is revealed, plot points solved, good guys win & bad guys lose.

In the end it left me craving for a more traditional Sci-Fi read.

Antolius reviewed The Outside by Ada Hoffmann

Autistic scientist Yasira Shien has developed a radical new energy drive that could change the …

Not bad, short of good

3 stars

Content warning Discussing some plot and world building details

Unfortunately this book failed to resonate with me. Its themes all sound interesting: AI gods, mad scientists, cosmic horrors. But its delivery made it all too unbelievable for me.

For example, AI gods depicted here are obviously sadistic, bordering on comic book villainy. Yet the general populous regards them as loving and worships them with honest devotion. Now, this by itself would not be a problem: I'd gladly read a book that explored this dichotomy. However, this book kinda glosses over it at first, and then it makes revealing gods' true nature to people a key part of the plan to resolve the plot. At no point does it explore or reflect on why everyone kept ignoring the obvious signs before. It is content to ignore this aspect of human condition. Which again would be fine, had it not been critical for the plot itself.

Science receives a similar treatment. Both the main protagonist and the main antagonist are supposed to be brilliant scientists. However whenever it comes to them doing anything scientific the depiction of it devolves into mysticism and stereotypical "the energy did it" wordage. Which would not be a problem in a more soft sci-fi story, but this book in particular keeps insisting on the scientific angle. Without delivering it.

In the end the story is interesting, and some of the concepts it plays around are worth exploring. But it fails to deliver on its full potential.

Antolius reviewed The Psychology of Time Travel by Kate Mascarenhas

The Psychology of Time Travel (2019, Crooked Lane Books)

In 1967, four female scientists worked together to build the world’s first time machine. But …

Master class on time travel

5 stars

I really appreciate how time travel is envisioned and portrayed in this book. It has no logic holes and it avoids paradoxes, e.g. the future is predetermined here. It doesn't make up too much technical details to explain how it works, because techno babble is not what this story is about.

It is, as the name suggest, about impact of time travel on human psychology, but also sociology. It envisions a culture emerging inside the organization of time travelers. It explores what taboos it develops, what language, how it operates considering the foresight available to it, etc.

On a backdrop of this thoughtful world building Mascarenhas explores inter-personal relationships of her characters. There's a revenge subplot, a romance subplot, a power struggle subplot. They all intertwine wonderfully between time periods and characters; often the same character coming from different time periods. It does take a little bit of concentration to …

I really appreciate how time travel is envisioned and portrayed in this book. It has no logic holes and it avoids paradoxes, e.g. the future is predetermined here. It doesn't make up too much technical details to explain how it works, because techno babble is not what this story is about.

It is, as the name suggest, about impact of time travel on human psychology, but also sociology. It envisions a culture emerging inside the organization of time travelers. It explores what taboos it develops, what language, how it operates considering the foresight available to it, etc.

On a backdrop of this thoughtful world building Mascarenhas explores inter-personal relationships of her characters. There's a revenge subplot, a romance subplot, a power struggle subplot. They all intertwine wonderfully between time periods and characters; often the same character coming from different time periods. It does take a little bit of concentration to track it all, but doing so is super rewarding.

The characters are endearing. The plot is riddled with puzzles and mysteries. The concept and world building are thoroughly thought through. I wholeheartedly recommend this book to anyone interested in Sci-Fi more broadly, and specifically soft science fiction.

Antolius finished reading Kao u ljubavnoj pjesmi by Tracey Garvis Graves

Kao u ljubavnoj pjesmi (Paperback, Croatian language, 2022, Znanje)

Kao u ljubavnoj pjesmi by Tracey Garvis Graves

Ljubav ne čeka uvijek da budeš spreman. Layli su trideset pet i nedavno se razvela. Dok se pokušava osloboditi prošlosti …

Antolius started reading Spook Country by William Gibson

Spook Country by William Gibson

Spook Country is a 2007 novel by speculative fiction author William Gibson. A political thriller set in contemporary North America, …

Antolius reviewed The Telling by Ursula K. Le Guin

A beautiful masterpiece

5 stars

It is fitting that a story about storytelling is so beautifully told.

Out of several Hainish Cycle books that I've read this one is the most exquisitely written. Others might be more immediately thought provoking, or include more elaborate sci-fi elements. The Telling, on the other hand, is laser focused on its theme of suppression of a culture. Everything supports and complements this.

The main protagonist, Sutty, is the only character that we really get to know deeply. And her backstory and entire personality molds here into a perfect vessel for exploring the world of the book. The story focuses on her reflections and the atmosphere of the place and the people she interacts with, instead of plot points. Even the rarest instances of paranormal occurrences are not mysteries to be unraveled, but simply add to the mystique of the world.

I fullheartedly recommend reading this wonderful book.

Antolius reviewed At the mountains of madness by H. P. Lovecraft

At the Mountains of Madness is a science fiction-horror novella by American author H. P. …

It left me disappointed

2 stars

Perhaps I had too high expectations. But then again, it's H. P. Lovecraft. I'd say his work is generally hyped a lot. This was my first encounter with his opus and it was decidedly meh.

I guess my main issue is that simply restating that a thing is terrible and scary over and over again does not make it scary. Majority of descriptions are second hand in so far as they describe the impact of events, setting, etc. on the main protagonist (i.e. he perceived them as scary), and not the inherent quality of themselves. Even the description of this second hand impact is somehow sterile.

The novella is written as a quasiscientific report from an old school research expedition. Perhaps that is what influenced the sterile delivery. Then again, I contrast this with Eversion by Alastair Reynolds which came out recently, adopts a similar style (and to a point …

Perhaps I had too high expectations. But then again, it's H. P. Lovecraft. I'd say his work is generally hyped a lot. This was my first encounter with his opus and it was decidedly meh.

I guess my main issue is that simply restating that a thing is terrible and scary over and over again does not make it scary. Majority of descriptions are second hand in so far as they describe the impact of events, setting, etc. on the main protagonist (i.e. he perceived them as scary), and not the inherent quality of themselves. Even the description of this second hand impact is somehow sterile.

The novella is written as a quasiscientific report from an old school research expedition. Perhaps that is what influenced the sterile delivery. Then again, I contrast this with Eversion by Alastair Reynolds which came out recently, adopts a similar style (and to a point theme), and yet manages to delivers far more compelling storytelling. Of course, it is also a much newer book. But if I am to judge Lovecraft as the master of the genre I can't really disregard this issue on the grounds of relative age of his works.

One thing I liked was the feeling of a larger prevailing mythos loosely connecting this and other Lovecraft's works. It gave the world a richer texture. But, for now at least, I guess I won't be exploring this world any further.

Antolius finished reading Termination Shock by Neal Stephenson

Termination Shock (Hardcover, 2021, William Morrow)

Termination Shock by Neal Stephenson

Termination Shock takes readers on a thrilling, chilling visit to our not-too-distant future – a world in which the greenhouse …

Antolius reviewed Termination Shock by Neal Stephenson

Termination Shock takes readers on a thrilling, chilling visit to our not-too-distant future – a …

Classic Stephenson

4 stars

Content warning Mild spoilers about some topics covered by the book

While his heroes might be horse riding vagabonds or rocket riding scientists, I have a feeling that everything that Neal Stephenson writes is essentially a techno-thriller. With Termination Shock this is true in both the theme as well as the style, and Stephenson again demonstrates his mastery over this hybrid genre.

This time around the topic is the climate crisis, a solution to which is presented in groovy technical details. Story takes place in a near future. It carries over the increasingly plausible and dystopian depiction of US that we've previously seen in Fall; or, Dodge in Hell. Though this time the story is more global, so we get to see other places in more detail. I especially appreciated European locales.

Characters are typically clever, witty or stoic, if a bit stylized (no-one really info-dumps in their everyday conversations like that). Not the most believable bunch, but I liked them.

There are the standard weak points as well. The story drags on a bit, and I lost interest in it after a while. It took me almost a year to finish the book because I dropped it around 2/3 of the way through and it took a vacation for me to pick it up again.

In the end, if you like Stephenson you'll like this book. If you don't there's probably nothing revolutionary here that will change your mind. And if you haven't read much of him so far there are better books to pick up first.