Books: Read-dump
May. 14th, 2010 22:30![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dancing_moonHave read a bunch of stuff lately.
First I caved in and bought the Dirk Gently Omnibus (by the esteemed Douglas Adams of Hitchhiker's fame). The hardcover was only slightly more pricy than buying the two books separately in paperback and this way, it can stand next to my Ultimate Hitchhiker's omnibus.
Then I read the first book, Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency and it's. Whoa. It's so damn weird, this book.
There's plot, lots more plot than in the extremely meandering Hitchhiker's series, but it is if anytihng even stranger. Perhaps because it's here and now (or, recently-then, these days), so that the weirdness is more obviously visible? Whatever the reason, this book is friggin weird... and brilliant. Some of the sentences, some of the similes, brilliant.
I was going to continue straight on to book two, but I found Richard Morgan's Black Man again. Was planning to say a great deal about that book, but I'm a bit too tired. Suffice to say, I was not very impressed. Too much pointless technobabble, the story just flopped uselessly here and there. I mean, there was a clear thread through the story, we knew they had to solve a murder and political commentary and blaha, but the tension, the feel that I'm following an investigator solving a puzzle just wasn't there. And it is there even in stuff like Sherlock Holmes, where you can rarely figure out anything about whodunnit, but you can see that Holmes is figuring it out.
Here, we got graphic violence, awful sex scenes, some vague kind of love story which fell even flatter than Morgan's usual fare and a lot of fairly interesting but too repetitive discussions about the ethics of cloning and genetic manipulation by someone who may know hiw SF tropes but is horrendous when it comes to modern discussions of gender, feminism and nature vs. nurture
Also, why would they breed a human that hibernates for some months? What was the point? I never got that part
Then I've read Black Butler 2, Kobato 1 and 2 (review coming next week to a J-fi page near you, I hope) some yaoi I can't even recall the title of much less the "plot" and Youka Nittas Otodama. Is it okay to review her art style evolving positively when she's been found guilty of plagiarism before? I mean, I don't much care if she's copying or not, I like this softer style.
First I caved in and bought the Dirk Gently Omnibus (by the esteemed Douglas Adams of Hitchhiker's fame). The hardcover was only slightly more pricy than buying the two books separately in paperback and this way, it can stand next to my Ultimate Hitchhiker's omnibus.
Then I read the first book, Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency and it's. Whoa. It's so damn weird, this book.
There's plot, lots more plot than in the extremely meandering Hitchhiker's series, but it is if anytihng even stranger. Perhaps because it's here and now (or, recently-then, these days), so that the weirdness is more obviously visible? Whatever the reason, this book is friggin weird... and brilliant. Some of the sentences, some of the similes, brilliant.
I was going to continue straight on to book two, but I found Richard Morgan's Black Man again. Was planning to say a great deal about that book, but I'm a bit too tired. Suffice to say, I was not very impressed. Too much pointless technobabble, the story just flopped uselessly here and there. I mean, there was a clear thread through the story, we knew they had to solve a murder and political commentary and blaha, but the tension, the feel that I'm following an investigator solving a puzzle just wasn't there. And it is there even in stuff like Sherlock Holmes, where you can rarely figure out anything about whodunnit, but you can see that Holmes is figuring it out.
Here, we got graphic violence, awful sex scenes, some vague kind of love story which fell even flatter than Morgan's usual fare and a lot of fairly interesting but too repetitive discussions about the ethics of cloning and genetic manipulation by someone who may know hiw SF tropes but is horrendous when it comes to modern discussions of gender, feminism and nature vs. nurture
Also, why would they breed a human that hibernates for some months? What was the point? I never got that part
Then I've read Black Butler 2, Kobato 1 and 2 (review coming next week to a J-fi page near you, I hope) some yaoi I can't even recall the title of much less the "plot" and Youka Nittas Otodama. Is it okay to review her art style evolving positively when she's been found guilty of plagiarism before? I mean, I don't much care if she's copying or not, I like this softer style.
