User Profile

This just looks ugly to me. The font, that is. Using Caslon was a great idea. Very fitting. The Declaration of Independence, that is, the Dunlap broadsheet, was set in it, so a book about that area: great font choice. But. Bringhurst has this to say on Caslon: »(...) His work is the typographic epitome of the English Baroque(.) (...) Caslon was the first great English typecutter, and in the English speaking world his type has long possessed the semi-legendary, unexciting status of the pipe and slippers, good used car and favorite chair.« So. High praise for a font. But the text goes on: »(M)any of the faces sold as Caslon now are merely parodies.« Yeah. Like ITC Caslon. This book is set in ITC Caslon, and i think it is just ugly. Some of it, like the inconsistent contrast, may be because this is print on demand. Some of it, like the f, the g and the T, wouldn’t be much better if set in metal.

OK, yeah, there is the rule that you can – or should – use a hyphen for compound modifiers. Still, aren’t all working shops used? So »used book store« is fine, and i just think it looks better. »Used-book store« looks like it should be stressed on the »used«, but i like to stress it more or less evenly. ... Huh. Looking it up, the most common form is »used bookstore«. I don’t like that either, precisely because it sounds like the store is used.

Again outdated biology. Significant parts were outdated when Sawyer wrote this. Like the whole bit with »there is no fusion site, the telomeres from gene 2 and 3 (should have been 12 and 13) completely disappeared« was known to be wrong for over ten years by then. There are basically two telomeres stuck together in the middle of chromosome 2. That is how we know it was a fusion, and have known since 1991.

The end was very rushed, narratively. What to do with the personal villain? Have him commit suicide. Elaborate what it means that only women but not men can move to the parallel world? Eh, not worth more than about a page of text. What to do with the whole god organ? Have everyone have a vision at the same time, but I’m out of paper, so I can’t do anything with this.

And one more thing for the whole trilogy: The thing is very gender essentialist. Men this, women that. Men have XY chromosomes, women XX. Men are hunters, women gatherers. Oh, yeah. Literal mammoth hunters. Looking at real hunter gatherer societies, it is never that strict. Even here we have one woman hunter, but she’s a literal outlaw, in the »not protected (!) by law« sense.

Again, you can read this without thinking too much about it, and than it is an OK book.

That is oddly unspecific, and oddly specific.

She wants to genetically identify men. The choice for that is not »a gene from the Human Genome Project database that appeared only on (the Y) chromosome«. It is to use SRY. That gene is called the ex-determining region of Y-chromosome, but it was discovered by looking at XX male patients. Again, by 2003 (©-date), that was an old hat, known for more than 10 years.

Mary’s motivation thruout the trilogy is that she has been raped. So. When thinking of »good men«, which, one would assume, would include not being a rapists, ... Bill Cosby comes to her mind. Man, has this book aged poorly.