![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
defrogIt’s gonna take a Christmas miracle to complete my Goodreads Reading Challenge this year (I need to read four books in the next 30 days), But Joey Ramone believed in miracles, so anything is possible.
Clockwork Angels by Kevin J. Anderson
My rating: 2 of 5 stars
When Rush released what turned out to be their final album, Clockwork Angels, in 2012, the last thing I expected was that it would come with a novelization. But that’s what happened, and apparently it was in the works from the beginning. Drummer/lyricist Neil Peart was good friends with Kevin J. Anderson, and as Peart started writing the lyrics to the songs, he and Anderson (along with longtime Rush artist Hugh Syme) collaborated on fleshing out the concept and lyrics into a full-blown steampunk novel, and even a graphic novel. And while I’ve never read Anderson before, I do like Rush, the album was great, and I’ve never come across a novelization of a concept album – I’m not even sure such a thing has been done before. So of course I had to try it.
Like with most concept albums, the Clockwork Angels LP doesn’t have an obvious narrative arc, but you can tell it’s a sort of Wanderjahr concept set in a land called The Stability, where the Watchmaker maintains total order and control over everything. The novel essentially (and intentionally) follows the Candide formula – teenaged Owen Hardy lives a simple life in the village of Barrel Arbor believing that the Watchmaker is a benign grandfatherly overseer making life easy and protecting his people from the mysterious bomb-happy Anarchist, while his Clockwork Angels offer words of wisdom and encouragement. But Hardy has big dreams of seeing the world and having adventures, and embarks on an epic journey in which a lot of naïve, idealistic bubbles get harshly popped, and everything he believes turns out to be illusions.
It sounds good when you put it that way, and the overarching theme of competing opposite extremes (total order vs total chaos) is a compelling one that makes the eventual outcome quite satisfying to me, even if it does result in quite a few loose ends. However, Anderson’s prose is a big problem here for me – I find his style rather flat and repetitive, and over half the book is “the parts people skip”, as Elmore Leonard once put it. Also, naïve idealist Hardy comes across as a little too corny for my taste, and the story relies too much on the usual tropes for this sort of thing. Still, credit to Anderson and Peart for eschewing an obvious good vs evil tale for something more philosophical, even if they’re borrowing heavily from Voltaire to do it.
Even so, I found myself more interested in the craftsmanship of Anderson fleshing out song lyrics into a proper story with carnies, pirates, rogues, lost cities and a mysterious multiverse bookshop. Also, Anderson clearly had fun working in not only key lyrics from the album, but from other Rush songs as well. Peart was happy with the result, and by his account they had great fun working on it, and that’s all that really matters, I suppose. However, there are two more standalone instalments in the Clockwork Angels saga, and I can’t say I’m keen to read either of them, or anything else by Anderson. It did inspire me to read Candide, though, so there’s that.
Nine Hundred Grandmothers by R.A. Lafferty
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
I enjoyed R.A, Lafferty’s second short-story anthology, Strange Doings (1972), and was keen to rewad more of him. Then I found a copy of his first anthology, released in 1970. One of them I’d already read: "Land Of The Great Horses", which appeared in Harlan Ellison’s Dangerous Visions. However, that story didn’t make much of an impression on me at the time, and re-reading it here didn’t help that much. And it turns out there’s quite a few other stories here like that. Luckily they’re in the minority.
The stories here cover a range of scenarios: an aspiring space pulp hero tries to discover the beginning of the universe; a man who wakes up to discover he can move through time at lightning speed; another man who discovers he somehow knows everyone in the world; a bear god named Snuffles; a kid invents a device that can make things disappear; people are replaced by monsters and no one notices at first; a valley that looks five feet wide but isn’t; an Earth that ends up literally hip-deep in friendly aliens; and a team of scientists with a supercomputer to see alternate realities through the eyes of other people. Etc and so on.
The quality of the plots vary, but as before, what makes it work for me is Lafferty’s wild, twisted imagination and playful writing style that swings between lyrical and whimsical. While this does result in characters reacting strangely to weird and dangerous phenomena, I find it a lot of fun to read. Lafferty also seems to be poking fun at standard SF tropes at times, such as the story where scientists try to use time travel to change history whilst assuming that they themselves won’t be changed. It’s one of the funniest stories here, or anywhere, really.
Corona by Greg Bear
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
As I’ve mentioned before, I’ve only ever dabbled in the Star Trek novel series, but after recently reading John M. Ford’s excellent How Much for Just the Planet?, I’ve become a little more open to further dabbling. This one (#15 in the ST:OS canon) caught my attention, mainly because I had no idea Greg Bear wrote a Star Trek novel when his career was just starting to take off. My intro to Bear was Blood Music in 1986, which I enjoyed. I’ve read a number of his books since with varied results, but I was curious to see how he would write a franchise book, and so here we are.
The premise: The Federation receives a 10-year-old distress signal from a Vulcan research team (one of whom, T'Prylla, is a distant relation of Mr. Spock’s) on a planetoid studying a trio of protostars called Corona. The Enterprise is sent to rescue them after previous investigations have failed. Naturally there are complications, starting with the fact that the Federation has just installed a new computer system that monitors command and medical decisions to prevent bad or reckless decisions from being carried out. There’s also a reporter on board, Rowena Mason, who is doing a story on the monitor system and happens to be prejudiced against non-humans. Oh, and it turns out Corona is sentient and can control people and wants to reboot the universe.
On the whole, it’s alright for what it is – Bear’s writing style has always been a bit flat to me, but he has a good grasp of the characters and the “science” of Star Trek, and has a good sense of pace. The main weakness for me is the character Mason, whose xenophobia isn’t really fleshed out enough to make the point Bear wants to make about bigotry, or to make the climax (in which Mason plays a key role) really work. I also think he could have had more fun with the monitors idea. Some Star Trek fans have some canon-based complaints about the novel (especially in relation to Vulcan culture), but these don’t matter to me. Even if you stripped out the Star Trek context, it would still make a decent and readable SF adventure.
View all my reviews
Kirk out,
This is dF
Clockwork Angels by Kevin J. AndersonMy rating: 2 of 5 stars
When Rush released what turned out to be their final album, Clockwork Angels, in 2012, the last thing I expected was that it would come with a novelization. But that’s what happened, and apparently it was in the works from the beginning. Drummer/lyricist Neil Peart was good friends with Kevin J. Anderson, and as Peart started writing the lyrics to the songs, he and Anderson (along with longtime Rush artist Hugh Syme) collaborated on fleshing out the concept and lyrics into a full-blown steampunk novel, and even a graphic novel. And while I’ve never read Anderson before, I do like Rush, the album was great, and I’ve never come across a novelization of a concept album – I’m not even sure such a thing has been done before. So of course I had to try it.
Like with most concept albums, the Clockwork Angels LP doesn’t have an obvious narrative arc, but you can tell it’s a sort of Wanderjahr concept set in a land called The Stability, where the Watchmaker maintains total order and control over everything. The novel essentially (and intentionally) follows the Candide formula – teenaged Owen Hardy lives a simple life in the village of Barrel Arbor believing that the Watchmaker is a benign grandfatherly overseer making life easy and protecting his people from the mysterious bomb-happy Anarchist, while his Clockwork Angels offer words of wisdom and encouragement. But Hardy has big dreams of seeing the world and having adventures, and embarks on an epic journey in which a lot of naïve, idealistic bubbles get harshly popped, and everything he believes turns out to be illusions.
It sounds good when you put it that way, and the overarching theme of competing opposite extremes (total order vs total chaos) is a compelling one that makes the eventual outcome quite satisfying to me, even if it does result in quite a few loose ends. However, Anderson’s prose is a big problem here for me – I find his style rather flat and repetitive, and over half the book is “the parts people skip”, as Elmore Leonard once put it. Also, naïve idealist Hardy comes across as a little too corny for my taste, and the story relies too much on the usual tropes for this sort of thing. Still, credit to Anderson and Peart for eschewing an obvious good vs evil tale for something more philosophical, even if they’re borrowing heavily from Voltaire to do it.
Even so, I found myself more interested in the craftsmanship of Anderson fleshing out song lyrics into a proper story with carnies, pirates, rogues, lost cities and a mysterious multiverse bookshop. Also, Anderson clearly had fun working in not only key lyrics from the album, but from other Rush songs as well. Peart was happy with the result, and by his account they had great fun working on it, and that’s all that really matters, I suppose. However, there are two more standalone instalments in the Clockwork Angels saga, and I can’t say I’m keen to read either of them, or anything else by Anderson. It did inspire me to read Candide, though, so there’s that.
Nine Hundred Grandmothers by R.A. LaffertyMy rating: 4 of 5 stars
I enjoyed R.A, Lafferty’s second short-story anthology, Strange Doings (1972), and was keen to rewad more of him. Then I found a copy of his first anthology, released in 1970. One of them I’d already read: "Land Of The Great Horses", which appeared in Harlan Ellison’s Dangerous Visions. However, that story didn’t make much of an impression on me at the time, and re-reading it here didn’t help that much. And it turns out there’s quite a few other stories here like that. Luckily they’re in the minority.
The stories here cover a range of scenarios: an aspiring space pulp hero tries to discover the beginning of the universe; a man who wakes up to discover he can move through time at lightning speed; another man who discovers he somehow knows everyone in the world; a bear god named Snuffles; a kid invents a device that can make things disappear; people are replaced by monsters and no one notices at first; a valley that looks five feet wide but isn’t; an Earth that ends up literally hip-deep in friendly aliens; and a team of scientists with a supercomputer to see alternate realities through the eyes of other people. Etc and so on.
The quality of the plots vary, but as before, what makes it work for me is Lafferty’s wild, twisted imagination and playful writing style that swings between lyrical and whimsical. While this does result in characters reacting strangely to weird and dangerous phenomena, I find it a lot of fun to read. Lafferty also seems to be poking fun at standard SF tropes at times, such as the story where scientists try to use time travel to change history whilst assuming that they themselves won’t be changed. It’s one of the funniest stories here, or anywhere, really.
Corona by Greg BearMy rating: 3 of 5 stars
As I’ve mentioned before, I’ve only ever dabbled in the Star Trek novel series, but after recently reading John M. Ford’s excellent How Much for Just the Planet?, I’ve become a little more open to further dabbling. This one (#15 in the ST:OS canon) caught my attention, mainly because I had no idea Greg Bear wrote a Star Trek novel when his career was just starting to take off. My intro to Bear was Blood Music in 1986, which I enjoyed. I’ve read a number of his books since with varied results, but I was curious to see how he would write a franchise book, and so here we are.
The premise: The Federation receives a 10-year-old distress signal from a Vulcan research team (one of whom, T'Prylla, is a distant relation of Mr. Spock’s) on a planetoid studying a trio of protostars called Corona. The Enterprise is sent to rescue them after previous investigations have failed. Naturally there are complications, starting with the fact that the Federation has just installed a new computer system that monitors command and medical decisions to prevent bad or reckless decisions from being carried out. There’s also a reporter on board, Rowena Mason, who is doing a story on the monitor system and happens to be prejudiced against non-humans. Oh, and it turns out Corona is sentient and can control people and wants to reboot the universe.
On the whole, it’s alright for what it is – Bear’s writing style has always been a bit flat to me, but he has a good grasp of the characters and the “science” of Star Trek, and has a good sense of pace. The main weakness for me is the character Mason, whose xenophobia isn’t really fleshed out enough to make the point Bear wants to make about bigotry, or to make the climax (in which Mason plays a key role) really work. I also think he could have had more fun with the monitors idea. Some Star Trek fans have some canon-based complaints about the novel (especially in relation to Vulcan culture), but these don’t matter to me. Even if you stripped out the Star Trek context, it would still make a decent and readable SF adventure.
View all my reviews
Kirk out,
This is dF
