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defrog
And now, the book reviews. JUST FINISHED
The Sixsmiths by J. Marc Schmidt and Jason Franks
Another one of those books I know by way of my LJ friends list, and one that started as a webcomic about an average suburban family with typical family-drama problems (dad laid off, kids have to change schools, etc) who also just happen to be devout Satanists. It’s a twist that could go wrong in so many ways – Addams Family pastiche, cheesy stereotypical Hollywood Satanism schtick – but it works here and is remarkably believable, thanks to Schmidt/Franks playing it deadpan, albeit not without a sense of humor (I smiled at the Jews For Satan booth, for example). Possibly not for everyone, but I got a kick out of it. Recommended.
JUST STARTED
Anathem by Neal Stephenson
I haven’t read Stephenson in a long time, having kept putting off The Baroque Cycle primarily due to weight (hey, 800-page trade paperbacks are heavy and I carry a laptop around all day). Anathem is intimidating on several levels (it’s close to a thousand pages, and it’s about a planet where math is a religion), but so far, Stephenson’s breezy writing style is helping me get into it. On the downside, it will probably keep my “to-read” pile from getting smaller for a few months.
RECENT TITLES
The Space Merchants by Frederick Pohl and CK Kornbluth
Ranked as one of the SF classics, The Space Merchants envisions a future where the planet is run by advertising agencies, whose main enemy is the Conservationists who see ads as manipulative cons selling lies to keep consumers under control. There’s a hook right there. The story follows an ad copywriter and a True Believer tasked to create a campaign to create a new market on Venus. Corporate backstabbing forces him out, and he gets a chance to learn about real life in the lower classes. The writing is a bit generic, but it’s a decent story, and considering it was written in 1952 – decades before Naomi Klein wrote No Logo – it seems ahead of its time.
Hit And Run by Lawrence Block
The fourth book in the Keller series, and possibly the last, given the circumstances: Keller the stamp-collecting hitman goes on one last job, and is framed for assassinating the governor of Ohio. It’s the one-last-job-gone-wrong motif and the innocent-man-on-the-lam motif in one story; but then Block has made a good living taking well-worn plot devices and making them seem fresh, or at least readable and compelling. And he pulls it off here, even if the crucial plot twist was pushing things a bit.
Farewell, My Lovely by Raymond Chandler
The second Marlowe mystery, in which Marlowe gets mixed up with an ex-con out after eight years and now looking for his girlfriend, whilst a client who hires Marlowe to accompany him on a blackmail run ends up dead. As usual, there is no such thing as coincidence. It’s a good tale, and Chandler writes with beautiful hard-boiled cynicism. A word of caution: it also dwells on the institutional racism of late 30s LA, with which Marlowe is somewhat complicit. But at least it’s realistic in that sense.
My Man Jeeves by PG Wodehouse
I’ve never read Wodehouse before, though plenty of people have recommended him. I should have listened – I really enjoyed this. It’s ten short stories, five with the butler Jeeves and five with Reggie Pepper (the prototype version of Jeeves’ employer Bertie Wooster). Apart from the joy of seeing the young upper class and the idle rich portrayed as lazy chumps, it’s also a great exercise in early 20th Century British slang, if yr interested in that sort of thing. Anyway, it’s a fun read, and I’ll be reading Wodehouse again.
The Return Of Sherlock Holmes by Arthur Conan Doyle
Thirteen more tales that kick off with Holmes coming back to life (so to speak) after being presumed killed by Professor Moriarty at the end of the last anthology. Apart from that, it’s business as usual, though this is one of the better collections of Holmes/Watson adventures.
Doc Savage: The Land Of Terror by Lester Dent
The second Doc Savage novel, in which Doc is out for revenge after a friend is killed by the “Smoke Of Eternity”, which puts him on the trail of the evil criminal Kar and leads to a lost island filled with dinosaurs! Indeed. It’s all silly science-hero pulp hokum, of course, but still imaginative and fun, if you can take the blatant hero worship tone typical of the format.
That’s not science,
This is dF
