Recently Read - April, 2008
Not a lot this month. I've been reading a lot of shorter stories,
particularly the freebie Hugo and Nebula fare from online. Nothing
stands out enough to justify a separate comment. May the best novellas
win. :)
Banks, Iain M., "Matter" ***
The latest Culture novel is an odd duck. I want to rate it higher, I
just can't figure why.
The Sarl royal family is thrown into chaos. An ambitious minor
civilization on the vast shell world of Sursamen, the king is now dead,
the fugitive Prince Royal knows it was murder, and the conspiracy is
afoot.
It's a very unwise conspiracy, it turns out in the end, mostly by
accident. Even the conspirators would have regretted it. Royal princess
Djan left for the Culture long ago as hostage, or payment for services
rendered, or something. She's coming back as Special Cir***stances to
pay her respects.
In re the title:
1) The slightly dotty discourse on matter being the fine grained
discriminator that let's us know we live.
2) At the end, Ferbin the dissolute matters.
3) It was a small thing, as far as the Culture was concerned, this
matter of Sursamen.
4) Dura Mater "hard mother" - brain matter around the brain proper and
spinal chord
5) There are probably more. I wonder which ones he meant?
Not sf:
Ricks, T., "Fiasco" ****
This sad accounting of the US's misadventure in Iraq is infuriating. Not
because Ricks has any deficiency as a writer, he doesn't. It's
infuriating because, according to him, had even a few people at high
levels understood the lessons of history, or listened and acted on
military advice, or even reacted to bad news quicker, the Iraq fiasco
wouldn't have been a fraction as bad as the current quagmire.
In a new postscript, Ricks believes that, while Gen. David Petraeus is
the best choice for his current job, even under his leader****p it may be
too late for anything other than a decade-long grind up from a
near-continual state of insurrection in Iraq. Since that scenario won't
be US policy for long, Ricks is pessimistic about Iraq's future.
________________________
My stars:
***** A classic, read it now!
**** A very good book, you might even buy it in hardback
*** A good book, but maybe not in hardback
** A readable book, wait for it used, or in cheap paperback, or the
library
* A book with at least one redeeming feature (even if it's nice cover art)
none =agkh pppht= (I probably didn't finish it, and I want my time and
money back, and the only reason I'm reviewing it is to dis the author,
editor, publisher, printer, distributor, vendor, and the clerk behind
the counter who sold it to me.)
Usual Disclaimer: YMMV, check Amazon, etc's reviews before you buy.
Happy Reading,
Jack Tingle
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