wilderthan: (Default)
I actually read Alastair Reynolds' Pushing Ice in a rather disjointed way -- the first two hundred pages or so in one chunk, and the last three hundred pages or so in another, more than a month later. So that might well colour my thoughts on it. Overall, I enjoyed it. Alastair Reynolds' writing is always easy to read, in my opinion, and his plots are interesting, without so much technobabble it becomes incomprehensible to me.

Character-wise, though, I'm not sure I really feel for them. They're human, with human failings and human virtues, and the way they're written is believable and interesting, but I don't think any of them really made a mark on me. I also felt that the pacing was kind of off -- speeding up dramatically at some points to get to the conclusion. Several things that seem important in terms of character and world-building are just skipped entirely, and barely alluded to afterwards.

Enjoyable, then, but not my favourite of Reynolds' books.
wilderthan: ((Fujin) Won't understand)
Just finished reading Accelerando, by Charles Stross. It's a sci-fi book, and tosses around words like singularity and wetware and all kinds of words that seem to be required knowledge for reading sci-fi (since I recognise them from Ken MacLeod's books). To be honest, I'm rapidly discovering I'm out of my depth with a lot of sci-fi. I'm alright with Le Guin, Alastair Reynolds, Tad Williams and Asimov, but a lot of the rest is beyond me.

Most of the book basically flew right over my head. The characters weren't that special, either. About half way through the book I got more interested in it all -- perhaps because I finally got into the world and characters a little.

I'm pretty sure that for someone who reads more sci-fi, or maybe does physics and also knows a bit about business/law, it would have been a really, really interesting book. Some of the ideas intrigued me. It felt very, very fast paced -- which makes sense, considering the speed of the world its set in -- and felt to me like a succession of ideas, none of which were fully realised.

Really, I was left with the overwhelming feeling that I am not the target audience for the book. It's not keeping me from picking up one of Charles Stross' other books, Singularity Sky, but that's only because I already have it. I don't think I'd buy it.

Reviews

Jul. 11th, 2007 08:59 pm
wilderthan: ((Garnet) On my own)
I was just thinking about some books that I really like and tried to take apart why I liked them, so I thought I'd post it here. The books mentioned are:
-Sunshine (Robin McKinley)
-The Old Kingdom trilogy: Sabriel, Lirael and Abhorsen (Garth Nix)
-The Kovacs books: Altered Carbon, Broken Angels and Woken Furies (Richard Morgan)
-Century Rain (Alastair Reynolds)
-Newton's Wake (Ken MacLeod)
-Engines of Light: Cosmonaut Keep, Dark Light and Engine City (Ken MacLeod)
-Warlord Chronicles: The Winter King, Enemy of God and Excalibur (Bernard Cornwell)
-The Culai Heritage: Magician's Law, Demon's Law and Death's Law (Michael Scott)

Cut for length )

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