by Scott Sigler

I have to say, this book is extremely graphic and not for the squeamish.  But, if you like Invasion of the Body Snatcher type books and if you either (a) make sure you don’t eat while you read this, or (b) have an ironclad stomach, this book is a rollercoasterworth riding.  The essential plot summary is:  Aliens deliver single-celled troops to Earth in the form of a mass cloud, seeding the atmosphere.  The cellular troops latch on to and take over a human host.  The ultimate goal, wiping out the human race and populating the planet with their own species.  The book works more like a mystery for the majority of chapters and is graphic in it’s depiction of one of the main character’s experience as an infected, but the last few chapters are exceedingly graphic (I actually had to skim over some of the paragraphs, they made me nauseous) and action packed.  The back cover says “Sci Fi / Horror / Thriller” and I should have noted that prior to purchasing (I’m not a huge horror fan.)

After reading it, I needed something to take my mind off the pictures, and since my fiance had asked for Twilight for Christmas, I went ahead and picked up the four book set to read (the movies aren’t that bad, but neither of us are anything like this:)

(The caption read: “If these were 40 year old men screaming for 17 year old girls, someone would call the police.” And it’s soooo true it’s sad.)

Twilight

by Stephanie Meyer

It was good, and very close to the movie as far as script.  Some of the martyrdom from Bella doesn’t get moved in to the movie (thank god) and there’s not as much of the “It’s all my fault,” “No, it’s all my fault,” “No really, you’re not to blame, it’s MY fault,” back and forth in the movie as there was in the book.  And since my mother was a bit of a martyr, this part in the book just drags… like nails on a chalkboard. (shudder)  The teen drama angst is quite high, far higher than my Recommended Daily Allowance is… but for a teenage girl, I can definitely see it being compelling.

The author seems to have a love affair with the book Wuthering Heights, which according to Wikipedia is the story of “unresolved passion.” Having read the entire series, I can say quite conclusively that every time Bella and Edward attempt to deny their love (dare I say obsession?) for each other, something horribly tragic takes place and they narrowly miss death each time.

Twilight is the story of how Edward and Bella meet, how Bella comes to realize that Edward is a Vampire, how they fall in love, and eventually  the epic climax between Edward and the antagonist of the story battling over Bella.  However, the author is quick to point out by way of the antagonist, that had Edward simply gone ahead and made Bella a Vampire so that they could love happily ever after, her life would not have been in danger.  (Hence the theme of unresolved passion.)

New Moon

Not as good a book to me, but still good.  Having recently seen the movie in the theatre, I can say that the script of the movie pretty closely follows the book.  I’d read some online reviews saying that there were a few inconsistencies (both in this movie, and the previous) but in my opinion, they were all sequential.  Certainly the lines are not exactly the same, but the essence of the book made it in to the movie as did every important scene (with New Moon however, some of the scenes were re-organized to make more sense).  They did add a scene in the movie to provide an explanation for why Bella becomes obsessed with motorcycles that was not in the book, but the book had an internal dialog exposition as Bella reasons through certain events that take place in New Moon.  This exposition leads her to become obsessed with motorcycles.

New Moon is the story of how Edward decides that keeping Bella a mortal and staying around her is too dangerous for her, so he decides to abandon her completely in hopes that she will recover from the separation and return to living a completely normal, mortal life… and how that all goes horribly wrong (again, the theme of unresolved passion).  The first two-thirds of the book surrounds her attempts to recover, which includes incredibly risky behavior, climaxing in a cliff jump which nearly kills her… dragging back Edward’s future-seeing sister, Alice, to see if Bella is alive or dead.  And, due to a misunderstanding, Edward believes Bella is dead and sets about to cause his own suicide.  Bella then must rescue Edward, because neither can live without the other.

Eclipse

Darker and less teen-angsty than either of the previous two books, Eclipse is the story of Bella’s final days as a human.  Edward has finally accepted her desire to become a Vampire, and he and Bella spend most of the book negotiating her conversion (Edward wants her to have as many “human experiences” before she gives up her life for immortality, Bella is strident in her insistence that “the sooner, the better.”)  The climax comes when an antagonist left over from the first book returns to kill Bella and Bella’s “Werewolf” friends from the second book must join forces with her soon-to-be Vampire family to defend her.  The angst from this book comes primarily from Bella’s refusal to release her maybe-boyfriend Jacob, the “Werewolf” protagonist from New Moon to go his own way (unresolved passion anyone?) in her decision to live Edward’s life as a Vampire.  And, if you haven’t read either of the previous books or seen the movies, Werewolves and Vampires are stereotypically at odds with each other (which means that Bella is about to become Jacob’s enemy.)

In the end, Edward capitulates to Bella’s demands that he be the one to turn her (they don’t actually do this in the book, because she has a few “human experiences” she wants prior to being turned) instead of Edwards “father” Carlisle doing the deed, the antagonist of the story is killed and Bella seemingly has come to terms with the fact that she cannot have her cake, and eat it too (both Jacob and Edward in her life.)

Breaking Dawn

Even darker still, even less angsty.  Bella finally gives up most-if-not-all of the teen angst and martyr complex behavior that drove the first three books.  She is a woman finally (she starts at 15-16 in Twilight), having arrived at 19.  She refuses to turn 20 as a human, but slowly comes to realize that some things (read: sex) might be worth putting off becoming a Vampire for.  Unlike Anne Rice’s novels where sex is not even possible for a Vampire, it is possible for the Vampires of Stephanie Meyer’s world… but Bella has been warned that during the first decade or possibly more, her self control over her Vampire nature will be slight to non-existent… that she will have little, if any, interest in activities that would be “human” and that the thirst would be all consuming.  (read: no sex)

Let me also add that Meyer handles the topic of sexual relations very prudently.  There are no seens of love or lust, such things happen “off screen.”  There is no reservation about kissing or expression of desire, merely the act itself is taken off the pages. This successfully communicates the essentials of what’s going on, without devolving in to the blow by blow of literary pornography that some other authors have resorted to (read: Laurell Hamilton, whom I’ve long since ceased reading because the books became little more than pornography wrapped around a flimsy-to-non-existent plot.)

Meyer breaks the book in to three unequal “books,” with each “book” having a first-person subjective perspective different from the other “books.”  “Books 1 & 3″ are from Bella’s perspective, while “Book 2″ is from Jacob’s perspective.  Meyer takes a dive in to Jacob’s world about a quarter of the way in to Breaking Dawn and does not return to Bella’s perspective until around the two-thirds mark of the book.  I find Jacob’s perspective only made him more annoying (very teen angsty again, and again a bit of a martyr).  Perhaps it’s age speaking, but I find all of that martyr angst/drama to be highly annoying and frustrating.  I can’t say it’s very far off from the things I remember from my childhood, but it’s all the memories I want to forget and spend very little time contemplating.  I was highly thankful that it was thrown in sporadically throughout the series instead of dedicating entire chapters to the angst the way some other authors will dedicate chapters to their particular love interest (as far as literary topics go.)

Still, as much as I didn’t enjoy the change in perspective (having little if any interest in Jacob as a character), I must admit the change works for the story.  Through the last part of “his book,” Bella is in severe pain or unconscious.  You see, Vampires and human women can mate and procreate, and Bella has become pregnant.

While I found the pregnancy itself a bit contrived, it’s handled well throughout the rest of the story (read: once you can suspend your disbelief of that, the rest of the story follows in a believable fashion). The end result of the pregnancy is Bella’s death (and turning).  When Bella awakes she’s now everything she could possibly want, a Vampire and with Edward, presumably forever (and a bit more she had no idea she wanted, a mother.)

However, the Vampire royalty we learn of in New Moon have come to take an interest in Bella and her family, and her clan must rally all of their allies to ensure their escape from certain destruction.

While Meyer implies that Vampires rarely have special gifts, over 80% of the Vampires presented in her story do.  There must be something that says that only those with gifts have a hope of surviving immortality.

Likes & Dislikes

• Like: Good vs Evil
• Like: Happy Endings
• Like: Supernatural battles
• Like: Bella becomes a Vampire in the end (this sort of falls under happy endings, but deserves it’s own special comment)
• Like: Bella and Jacob finally get over each other (also falls under happy endings)
• Like: Vampires
• Like: Story progression from first book to last (especially that Bella changes as a person through each, that she isn’t mired in her original character traits from Twilight throughout the series)
• Dislike: Teen angst
• Dislike: Vampires vs Werewolves (unfortunately, it’s overdone by now thanks to Whitewolf, Underworld, etc.)
• Dislike: Constant references to Wuthering Heights (blech), including some actual quotes directly out of the book
• Dislike: Angsty Jacob-Bella love triangle (get over it already, most people can only successfully keep one other person happy in an honest, intimate relationship)
• Dislike: Vampires as statues/mineral deposits.  (It seems a little too close to Anne Rice’s version of the originators of the Vampiric bloodline from Queen of the Damned, although the sparkly diamond skin thing and mixing Rice & Stoker Vampires to create her own brand of Vampire was admittedly creative.)
• Dislike: Not much history on the Vampires (Carlisle Cullin has been around for at least 300  years, and all the history we get is the creation story of each of the Cullins and a few other tidbits relevant to the current plot.)

In the end, while I enjoyed the books, they’re not the best I’ve ever read (either individual book or series.) As a series, it doesn’t even make it in to my top 5.  However, this series far exceeds the horror that was Wizards First Rule (great first book, but every book after that was a traffic accident in progress…  ugh)

I own this book and occasionally re-read it myself.  I found the world as it existed during the Peace War to be an interesting exposition on how sciences would adapt to the loss of electricity.  First with some scientists advancing technology that required less and less energy to achieve similar results (energy star cameras and communication devices that cannot be detected by the Peace Authority), and advanced biotechnology including human genome manipulation via virual cures.

Across Realtime was even more interesting in that the book was linked by the woman who started the revolution against the Peace Authority (and was the first person to ever be bobbled, proving that they provided a one-way time travel method instead of killing everyone inside them as the Peace Authority original claimed).

The book posits that scientific discovery operates on a modified Moore’s Law (Moore’s Law is that computing power doubles every X months).  There are several really interesting ideas that dovetail with each other.  One is how an extremely rapid rate of invention would affect manufacturing (there’s a reference in there somewhere about how technology would be obsolete by the time it reached the market, requiring that things be more and more customized and smaller and smaller manufacturing runs be made).

Likewise, the book posits that extreme scientific advancement would result in a singularity.  A scientific event through which all of humanity was either destroyed or transformed.  And we get to see a sample of technology held by the survivors of this singularity (those who were bobbled when it took place were left behind), and those who bobbled up closer to the singularity had technology that was smaller, more advanced and more innovative than those who bobbled before them.

The suggestion of technology advancement, and the increasing rate of that advancement was characterized by comparing technology that was in some cases only a few years apart versus technology that was decades apart, showing that in the few years immediately preceding the singularity the rate of technological advancement had increased.

There were some odd references to a think-tank (literally where humans would join their mind together for some purpose) and if I recall correctly, one of the purposes to which that brain power was put was to syphon energy directly off the sun (not by converting light to energy, but by syphoning the matter of the star in to some kind of generator or battery.)

However, what really sold the book for me is that the technology was treated as more of the background and the characters drove the story. (It’s a murder mystery, while The Peace War is more action/adventure.)

If you’re interested in learning more about Cherryh’s work, you can always check out the unofficial Yahoo Group here:

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/cherryhlist/

I know that I’m different from this author.  For instance, I’m flying to Wisconson in November to have Thanksgiving with one of my friends who moved out there rather than whining about it’s unfair that my friend moved way.  Certainly I sympathize with the desire to keep all of your friends close and convenient, but it seems a little selfish (even as tongue in cheek humor) to decide that just because your friends move away means that they don’t care about you any more.  They have to do what’s best for them, what keeps them a good friend is their desire to keep in touch and their willingness to invest the necessary energy to do so, not giving up the rest of their life to hang on to the past.

I really had my heart set on keeping in touch with a number of people in my life, but the forces at work in my life (combined with my unwillingness to chase people who don’t return my calls, coupled with their unwillingness to stay in touch unless we came within 7 feet of each other daily because of work/etc.) conspired to separate me from several of my good friends.  I regret it, which is why I can understand where this author is coming from, but I’ll do my best to stay in touch with those whom I call friends and hope they’ll return the compliment.

Additionally, Scott found a nifty little equation that seems to propose a method of solving the energy crisis [NSFW].  It’s certainly applicable in my case.

In other news, Harry Potter author, JK Rowling won her copyright claim against her fan.  That’s right, children’s book author JK Rowling sued a (I’m sure that by now it’s former) fan of the widely popular Harry Potter series for putting together a book deal to print a lexicon that he manages online right now.  Interestingly enough, JK Rowling praised the web site administator made book author, saying that she used the online lexicon herself to help research facts in writing the last several books (to help keep the facts straight).  And yet, by converting this content from web to print, somehow he’s violated her copyright.

While I guess I can understand the logic behind saying that since this printed lexicon is for-profit instead of for free, the for-profit work violates the copyright since the contents of the lexicon are entirely derived from a single source (i.e., All 7 books of the Harry Potter series).  But what I’m not sure I follow is the premise saying that non-profit work is in any way less harmful than for-profit work.  Certainly if she intends to let the web site lexicon stand, she should not have problems with the web admin now author trying to recoup a few bucks for the service he did Rowling in providing a lexicon in the first place.  Granted, I know nothing about copyright law, but it seems a reasonable way to deal with this would have been to make the web admin now author a deal.  He gets a percentage, JK gets a percentage (it is her intellectual property that’s being re-arranged), the publisher gets a percentage, the reader gets their lexicon…  everyone is happy.

Instead, I wouldn’t be surprised (or fail to understand) if the fan who got sued decided to take down the HP lexicon on his website.

Unlike in book one of this series, female characters play a more central role in the story, which I think is a good thing.  The lack of female characters in even secondary role was noteworthy in the first book, with the exception of one character.  What’s even better is that women are portrayed in a variety of ways, but most are strong in both personality and ethics, while some are just background.  I felt it brought a bit of balance to the second book that was noticably lacking in the first.  (Never mind that the primary character of the story is a PICA, or human looking android, filled with the consciousness of a long dead female soldier.)

The one thing that I’m not really happy with, well… two things:  One is that the book ends rather abruptly, as if it was the only place the author could find to break up a far larger story in to two sections.  So the second book is not so much stand alone as the first book had been, and you’re left with something of a cliff hanger.  The other thing I don’t like is that since the entire book ends after less than a year transpired in the story (half of what took place within the first story) it seems as though the entire story will be limited to only what happens within the lifetime of the co-primary characters in the story.

To me, this leaves a huge burning question of “what happens when humanity returns to the stars and faces the Gbabba again?”  And quite frankly, I think that question is going to burn a hole right through me.  Don’t get me wrong, I think this story is an immesurably important tale within the history of the larger conflict, but with such a huge story element hanging over the plot, without a proper resolution (and I don’t mean epilogue quickly wrapping up a much larger story by doing a flash forward to the end of the Gbabba-Human conflict, or even somewhere in the middle of that future conflict implying human victory) I’m going to be left wanting more.

Although, that certainly leaves room for a complete story within the current timeframe of the fictional universe and a completely new trilogy for the completion of that future story ark.  And that leaves me very hopeful indeed.  As much as I’d love another Honor Harrington book, I feel that Weber has successfully created another fictional universe in which I care what happens to the characters that populate his story.

If only the 3rd book was due out soon!

***** (5/5) stars

Iron Kissed by Patricia Briggs

Like another series with a similarly strong female lead, I enjoy the mix of plot and personal relationship exploration.  Unlike the other series, I am much happier with the way this author addresses the topic of… let’s say “intimacy.”  (The somewhat archaic “fade to black” with some good hints “the next day” about what happened the previous night.)

This is the third book in the Mercy Thompson series of books, a series of paranormal mystery.  If you like Jim Butcher’s Dresdel Files, I think you’ll love this.

**** (4/5) stars.

Books

• Started reading the Off Armageddon Reef series by David Weber.  I’m enjoying it, although it’s interesting to note (as one reviewer did) that the cast of the book is entirely male, no major female characters, and females make an appearance only rarely.
• Finished reading Small Favor by Jim Butcher, excellent.
• Trying to find time to start reading Iron Kissed (Mercy Thompson #3) by Patricia Briggs.
• I’m rabidly looking forward to Cyteen II which has been announced (and which I posted about previously)

I somethings think that I should start a little Amazon.com store, but I kind of doubt that I really have many people reading my blog (which is fine, as it’s really just a notepad most of the time.)

Television

• Moonlight got cancelled by CBS.
• I stopped watching Battlestar Galactica after “Razor”.
• Started watching Burn Notice (season 2) and trying to catch up on all the shows I’ve missed so far.
• Watching Eureka (season 3) and Stargate Atlantis (season 4)
• Anticipating the return of Heroes and Chuck.

• By Schizm Rent Asunder, by David Weber
• A Dance With Dragons, by George R R Martin
• Cyteen II: Regenesis, by CJ Cherryh
• Wings of Wrath, by CS Friedman

 Some books I find myself curious about:

• Storm from the Shadows, by David Weber
• Busted Flush, edited by George R R Martin
• Ender in Exile, Orson Scott Card