Dear Santa, thank you for the dolls and pencils and the fish. It's Easter now, so I hope I didn't wake you but... honest, it is an emergency. There's a crack in my wall. Aunt Sharon says it's just an ordinary crack, but I know its not cause at night there's voices so... please please can you send someone to fix it? Or a policeman, or...
Back in a moment.
Thank you Santa.

Capsule Reviews

Zendegi, Greg Egan

Meh.  Lost interest, stopped reading.

Snuff, Terry Pratchett

Not his best.  But then, his best is very, very good.

The Children of the Sky, Vernor Vinge

The long-awaited sequel to the classic A Fire Upon the Deep disappoints.  Some interesting parts, but the villain of the piece is petty, stupid, and dull.  Doesn't measure up to the original or the prequel.*

The Atrocity Archive, The Jennifer Morgue, The Fuller Memorandum, Charles Stross

I like most (not all, but most) of Stross's work, and these are some of his best.  Think computational linguistics meets British spy thriller meets H. P. Lovecraft.  Snow Crash meets Declare.  Recommended if you like any of those things.  (I was re-reading those after I tossed Zendegi on the eight deadly words pile.)

The Clockwork Rocket, Greg Egan

Has potential, still reading.  It's about an amoeboid alien chick from another universe who is her species' Einstein-analogue.  The science is laid on a bit thick at times - what I'm looking for is more of Egan's brilliant last-third-of-Schild's-Ladder** and so far this is intriguing but not quite it.

* Mind you, both of those won the Hugo award for best novel, so it had a lot to live up to.

** The first third wasn't bad either; the second third plodded, but the last third took wing and soared.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 07:13 PM | Comments (10) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
Post contains 226 words, total size 2 kb.