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Content by dogbarkssome
Reviewer Rank: 60
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Reviews Written by
dogbarkssome (England)
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Quicksilver, 11 Nov 2009
The first instalment of Stephenson's `Baroque' trilogy, `Quicksilver' is a mammoth doorstopper of a novel, following the lives of several characters through the late 1600's and exploring the various political and scientific intrigues of the times. Although on one level this novel acts as a distant prequel to Stephenson's earlier `Cryptonomicon', new readers can be assured that the links are tenuous enough that no prior knowledge is necessary to enjoy this work in isolation.
The novel itself is subdivided into three books: `Quicksilver' focuses on natural philosopher Daniel Waterhouse, detailing his early years in England with Isaac Newton and the Royal Society , and the piratical actions that ensue as he attempts a return from the America's in 1713. `King of the Vagabonds' shifts the action to continental Europe, detailing the adventures of roguish Jack Shaftoe and social climber Eliza, whilst `Odalisque' divides it's attention between Daniel and Eliza as it details the English revolution of 1688.
The novel is bursting at the scenes with historical flavour, and a strong thread of ironic humour keeps the writing engaging. With its wide-ranging scope the novel does tend to lack any strong coherent narrative drive, and at times its rambling nature can become tiring, but on the upside the book does contain many moments of brilliance (not least the exploits of `Half-Cock' Jack Shaftoe, whose pox madness overlays even more fantastical elements on his already overblown adventures), and despite it's length and occasional longueurs it builds to such a finale that leaves the reader hungry to know what happens next.
As merely the first third of a larger whole, this doesn't satisfy as much as `Cryptonomicon', and the occasionally dry subject matter may not be to everyone's taste, but this is still an impressive and effective achievement.
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Little Brother
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by Cory Doctorow
Edition: Paperback |
| Price: £6.39 |
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| Availability: In stock |
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0 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
Little Brother, 2 Nov 2008
Customer review from the Amazon Vine™ Programme (What's this?)
In a very near future San Francisco a young hacker finds himself wrongfully imprisoned by the Department of Homeland Security following a new 9/11-size terrorist attack, and following his release determines to wage war against the oppressive regime...
'Little Brother' is a pacy and engaging read, but it's also a highly politicised book, and one that sometimes (OK, often) comes across as less a fictitious novel than it is the author's personal rant against the excesses of post 9/11 security. As such, ones enjoyment of this will doubtless depend on whether or not you agree with the politics. If you hate all forms of prying into your personal life by the government, and rail against the idea of CCTV, ID cards and the like, then this is the book for you. If you're of the 'if you've got nothing to hide, why are you so worried?' persuasion, then steer well clear.
Personally I'm somewhere in the middle, and can see issues with both sides, something which this book doesn't really address too well (though there is one good scene where the hero is asked how another terrorist attack can be avoided if the current security measures aren't working, and has no answer to give). Doctorow doesn't really explore the full range of opinions in this book, and the narrative is conveniently skewed towards his own viewpoint that curtailing personal freedom in the fight against terrorism is completely pointless, which makes the resulting novel feel a little simplistic and forced at times. This is particularly noticeable when the main character offering an alternate view to that of the hero is cast in the form of a meatheaded school bully - an obvious villain who is practically cartoonish in their drooling idiocy. Similarly, while we get scenes of US soldiers torturing innocent civilians, the human cost of the terrorist atrocity that starts the novel is left unseen, making it distant and hard to care about.
There is still much to admire in 'Little Brother', and in highlighting injustices being perpetrated by the US in Guantanamo Bay this could undoubtedly prove to be an eye opener for younger readers, but I would have liked a little more depth and a little less authorial preaching. In the final analysis I suspect that if 'Little Brother' goes on to win a huge amount of critical praise and awards it will be because people consider the issues it tackles to be important, rather than because the book itself works as a great piece of fiction.
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Impossible Stories
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by Zoran Zivkovic
Edition: Hardcover |
| Price: £25.00 |
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| Availability: Not in stock; order now and we'll deliver when available |
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2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
Impossible Stories, 18 May 2008
`Impossible Stories' collects together twenty-nine short stories, all but one of which are segments of five linked `story cycles': In `Time Gifts' a mysterious stranger offers the gift of time travel to four separate people; `Impossible Encounters' tells of a sequence of bizarre meetings that thrust normal people into the realms of the fantastic; `Seven Touches of Music' feature stories where music is the catalyst for the bizarre; `The Library' is a sequence of tales concerning books; and `Steps Through the Mist' details the dreamed adventures of five women.
Zivkovic's stories generally focus on the intrusion of the bizarre or fantastic into otherwise normal lives, often with characters facing moral dilemmas, with the results often reading like bizarre modern fairy tales or fables. Dreamlike, occasionally nightmarish, and loaded with symbolism, Zivkovic's characters find themselves sliding through time, encountering God, the Devil, and even the author himself in several post-modern moments.
Not all the stories here are entirely successful, with some feeling like half-finished or lacking a knockout ending, and taken en mass some of them can feel rather samey, but when Zivkovic is on form these tales hit home hard, and this collection certainly has enough gems contained within to make this a worthwhile read.
A unique and distinctive voice in fantasy science fiction. Recommended.
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1 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
Spreading the Disease, 16 May 2008
After their slightly patchy debut album and a change in personel, Anthrax's secnd album is undeniably a classic of the thrash genre. Most fans will point to 'Among the Living' as the band's defining moment, but it's really hard to find any fault with this 1985 offering, as from the opening moments of 'A.I.R.' the album spews out a seemingly endless collection of killer riffs, while new vocalist Joe Bellandonna's melodic vocals provide numerous catchy choruses. 'Spreading the Disease' ranges from such relatively melodic songs as the insanely catchy 'Medusa' and 'Lone Justice', which at times sounds almost Iron Maiden-ish, to the full on thrash of tracks like 'Gung-Ho' and 'Aftershock'. The band themselves have at times stated a despair at being unable to escape 'Madhouse', but with a song this strong it's not hard to understand why it's in constant demand at gigs. Highlight for me though would probably be 'The Enemy', with the over-processed tribal drum opening givng way to what must rank as one of the greatest thrash metal riffs of all time.
Inevitably a little dated, especially in Bellandonna's clean vocals, but still utterly essential for any thrash metal fans.
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1 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
It Just Gets Worse, 14 May 2008
`It Just Gets Worse' is sadly an appropriately titled album, with this being a big step down in quality from the bands previous opus `I Like It When You Die'. The album is most (in)famous for being the first Ax Cx album to include lyrics, with the subject matter being amped up to even greater extremes. Opinions differ as to whether the band's lyrics are ironic, or if Seth Putnam really is a racist misogynist, but the lyrics here are so over the top it's difficult to imagine anyone taking them too seriously. Ultimately however the South Park-style shock factor soon wears off, with almost all the songs here sounding identical in construction. Musically this is also a deliberate regression, with most of the musical riffs buried beneath sloppy musicianship and production values that make this sound as though it was recorded by simply putting a tape deck in the corner of the bands rehearsal room.
Of course, being Ax Cx the fact that it's badly produced grindcore that often annoys the listener is partly the point, but ultimately `It Just Gets Worse' just doesn't have the variety or the impact to rank up there with the bands best material.
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0 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
100 not out!, 12 May 2008
While Big Finish have produced a mass of specials and spin-off series, having reached the 100th release in their main range of original Doctor Who audio dramas is quite an achievement, and certainly one worth celebrating. The result of that celebration is this double CD set containing four seperate stories based around the number 100, all featuring Colin Baker's 6th Doctor alongside audio companion Evelyn Smythe. With four stories to go round one might suspect that including Davison, McCoy and McGann might be a more inclusive gesture, but some variety at least is achieved by dividing the tales between four of Big Finish's most important authors.
In Jacqueline Rayner's '100BC' the Doctor and Evelyn take a trip back to ancient Rome and find themselves unwittingly interfering in the birth of Julius Ceasar, with implications that may prove catastrophic for the timelines. The whole 'Doctor teaches companion how history cannot be altered' angle is very old hat by now, but the central premise is striking with a satisfyingly clever resolution. The clash between the Doctor and Evelyn is also the source of some good comedy between Baker and Maggie Stables.
Robert Shearman is undoubtedly Big Finish's greatest writer, so his return with 'My Own Private Wolfgang' should be the releases highlight, but this tale doesn't quite scale the dizzy hights of the authors best work. The idea, with a long-lived Mozart drifting from genius into mediocrity is inspired, but the sheer mass of multiple time-travelling Wolfgangs on display here ensure the story ends in a bewildering tangled ball of confusion. Shearman comments in the behind the scenes extras about wanting to ensure the story remained a comedy rather than drifting into more morbid territory, but to be honest a little darkness may have given this amusing but minor piece a little more impact.
Joseph Lidster's 'Bedtime Story' is a more moody tale, being a horror tale concerning a family curse where the birth of a new child signals the death of an earlier generation. Maggie Stables gets to have fun as an evil witch, but ultimately this variation on 'Sleeping Beauty' strays a little too far into the realms of melodrama, a problem that often afflicts Lidster's work.
Finally Paul Cornell's '100 Days of the Doctor' has the Doctor tracking down an assassin who has infected him with a slow-acting deadly virus. This story has it's moments of charm between the 6th Doctor and Evelyn, but it's ultimately a fairly hollow exercise in nostalgia, as the pair visit other Big Finish Doctors (and Bernice Summerfield) and wax lyrical about them.
'100' is a varied and interesting release, but it doesn't quite impress as much as it should. The situation isn't helped by the stories thunder having been stolen somewhat by 'Circular Time', a similar four x one-part story release which if anything was slightly superior.
Good, but not great.
3.5 out of 5
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Nearly People
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by Conrad Williams
Edition: Paperback |
| Availability: Currently unavailable |
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1 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
Nearly People, 2 May 2008
In a dystopian future landscape a woman called Carrier searches for food and medicine for her dying lover, only to find an escape of sorts when she meets an enigmatic dancer, who teaches her how to transport herself through an internal landscape...
A short and punchy novella, 'Nearly People' lies somewhere between science fiction and horror, with Williams creating a bizarre nightmarish future, while a sting-in-the-tail ending ensures this ends on a high note. Good, wierd stuff.
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Saxophone Dreams
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by Nicholas Royle
Edition: Paperback |
| Availability: Currently unavailable |
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1 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
Saxophone Dreams, 2 May 2008
As the collpase of Communism leads to revolutionary changes in Eastern Europe, a disparate group of jazz musicians find themselves gifted with the ability to journey through a dreamlike continent haunted by the surrealist imagery of painter Paul Delvaux.
Nicholas Royle's second novel continues themes familiar from his debut, with a European travelogue rendered into a bizarre hallucinatory dreamscape, though with it's wider scale and cast of characters 'Saxophone Dreams' lacks the emotional impact of 'Counterparts'. Reading like the novelisation of an unmade David Lynch film, this is a profoundly strange story, and one that touches on the horror genre when the undead victims of Communist regimes rise from the grave to steal organs from the living for Western transplant operations.
Dreamy, strange, and occasionally frustrating, 'Saxophone Dreams' is a decidedly different horror novel.
3.5 out of 5
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1 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
I Like It When You Die, 28 April 2008
The bands 4th full-length album, 'I Like It When You Die' is also their best, combining the more musical metal riffs of '40 More Reasons To Hate Us' with a grimy grind sound harkening back to their earlier material.
Sure, the tongue in cheek song titles are amusing, but the sound of this record is ferocious, with a new band line-up blasting out some super intense grind, while Seth Putnam's vocals are hate-filled maniacal shrieks.
It's often easy to overlook Ax Cx as merely being a 'joke' band, but 'I Like It When You Die' certainly bears comparison with the best grindcore records ever recorded. Highly recommended for fans of truly extreme metal.
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0 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
The Mysterious Affair at Styles, 28 April 2008
Never having read an Agatha Christie novel before I thought I had best start with her debut, and 'The Mysterious Affair at Styles' turned out to be a good choice.
There are certainly a number of genre cliches present, with an upper class family (complete with servants) providing the cast of potential murders, twists and double twists regarding the identity of the real murderer, and a drawing room denoument in which the amateur detective unmasks the killer - however, the whodunnit is sufficiently complex to make this a constant page-turner, while Poirot himself is so eccentric as to be a compulsive figure.
The novel's tortuously comlex plot is both it's strongest and weakest feature, as the ins and outs can become wearying at length, but this is still an enjoyable whodunnit,and stands up well over 80 years after first publication.
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