Glory Days

I was traveling yesterday and today – quick trip to Boston for work.  While it kept me from posting last night, it did give me a chance to finish Scalzi’s sequel to “Old Man’s War”.  “The Ghost Brigades” is the second of six books in this series with the next being “The Last Colony”.  There’s also a long short story or a short novella – not sure how it should be classified – called “The Sagan Diary”.

First things first – I’ve decided to go ahead and finally read through this series – now that I’ve started back in, I feel I should finally finish.  Unless something changes, however, this is the last single book post I’ll make for the series.  My impressions of “The Ghost Brigades” were similar to those I had of “Old Man’s War” and I don’t want to keep writing the same critical review over and over.

Before reading this, you might want to go back to my post on “Old Man’s War” since many of the criticisms will be similar.  There’s nothing remarkable about the Scalzi’s writing – it’s sparse and I didn’t find it complex or captivating.  I found the plot kind of clunky and many of the sentiments a little too cliche and overblown.  It doesn’t stand out as Military Science Fiction.  Finally, the characters were unremarkable and one dimensional.  I found the antagonist to be particularly silly and caricatured.  Overall, after reading two of these, I just cant’ escape the impression that Scalzi took a pretty interesting idea and just didn’t do it justice.  They’re not bad stories – just not as good as they should be.

As I started into this book, I’d initially felt like it might represent an improvement or evolution compared to “Old Man’s War” – a fact I commented on in my “All Systems Red” post.  That didn’t turn out to be the case.  In “Old Man’s War”, the Ghost Brigades are introduced as a mysterious, unique and extremely capable Special Forces component of the larger Colonial Defense Forces.  I’d expected Scalzi to take those hints and do something truly novel with them in the second book.  Scalzi’s concept for Ghost Brigades personnel is that they’re vat grown, hyper-augmented bodies that receive an artificially generated consciousness – soldiers purposefully designed to be equal to or superior to any of the numerous alien species challenging humans for a place in the universe.

This is a blank slate that could have been used to develop a supremely interesting concept – something vaguely human yet shockingly and awe-inspiringly different.  Instead, as the book progresses, these soldiers are humanized to an almost disappointing degree until they’re ultimately not that different from the regular Colonial Defense Forces personnel at the heart of “Old Man’s War”.  I’m sure that many don’t share my perspective on this but – to me – it just felt like a miss.  I kept asking myself why Scalzi developed the concept and then chose to do so little with it.

As I’ve said, they’re not bad books and I am going to finish the remaining four installments – if for no other reason than to get closure on the story.  I’ll continue to hope that something magical happens and I will post again once I’ve finished the series.  Given what I’ve read so far,  however, I wouldn’t recommend that anyone start down this road.  There are much better books out there.  Besides, you’ll probably get the chance to see this on NetFlix in the not too distant future.

Here’s the 4th and final book I read during our cruise and I have to say – it wasn’t in the plan.  I’d downloaded this one awhile ago – around the time it was released – and it’s just been sitting on my iPad – collecting digital dust.  I bought it for two reasons:  1) I’d read Martha Wells’ “The Death Of The Necromancer” (DOTN) way back in 1998 when it first came out and enjoyed it so much that I later bought a special release hardcover edition – it’s an exceptional story that everyone should read, and 2) the reviews for “All Systems Red” were pretty positive – 4.5 stars on Amazon and 4.1 on Goodreads.  For both reasons, I felt like I should buy it and give it a try.

Well – we were pretty far into the cruise, I’d just finished “Shadow Of The Scorpion” and I was kind of directionless.  I wasn’t ready to head back to Malaz and pick up “Midnight Tides”, I didn’t have anything that I was really compelled to read and there it was – looking kind of neglected.  I opened it up, thinking I’d read the first chapter and before I knew it – I was done.

This is one you can just fly through.  It’s simple – nothing complex about the science (what little of it there is) – no real world building given that the scientific survey team in question is stuck on an unexplored planet – the plot is very linear – and there’s very little back story.  The book is entertaining and I think most would enjoy it but I don’t get all the kudos and the rave reviews.  The main character – Murderbot – is not that complex – probably by design as it looks like the author intends to develop him across a series of novels.  You get a hint of a tragic past – a massacre he’d committed on a prior contract which leads him to refer to himself as Murderbot.  You never really get to know the supporting cast – the other members of the survey team – with the exception of the survey team leader – who does have a chance on several occasions to impact the story and define herself as an admirable character.  Like I said – it’s fun but it’s simple – science fiction cotton candy.

Murderbot’s one defining characteristic – other than that he very loyally serves the survey team he’s contracted to protect despite the fact that he’s hacked the security protocols which would mandate his doing so – is that he likes to watch the story era equivalent of daytime drama.  What struck me about that peculiarity is the author makes no effort to weave his weird binge-watching obsession into the story – it only gets used on one occasion where Murderbot passionately defends the integrity of one of his favorite fictional characters during an argument with another member of the survey team.  If felt to me like a lost opportunity.

For a novel that sometimes gets characterized as hard science fiction, I found it pretty science lite.  Murderbot is obviously a pretty complex creation, you get a hint that he’s one of multiple models of synthetic humanoid (military bots, pleasure bots) but you get no real insight into how or why he and the rest of his kind were created the way they were or who did the creating – again, something that the author probably intends to explore in later books.

Like I said – it’s fun and I think you’ll enjoy it but it’s simple.  I will buy the sequels – two have already been announced – “Artificial Condition (scheduled for release in May 2018) and “Rogue Protocol (scheduled for release in August 2018) – but I probably won’t buy them in hard cover – just e-copies – since “All Systems Red” just wasn’t good enough to justify the investment.  I’m also left scratching my head a bit – given the three month separation in release dates between volume 2 and 3 – it makes me feel like I’m being played by the author and publisher.  Having said all that, I’m open to a change of heart and will go into the next two volumes ready to be impressed.  I know Martha Wells is capable of doing it – “DOTN” was a truly amazing book.

And on that note – the best thing that came from reading this book was the realization that “DOTN” is actually one of five books set in the world of Ile-Rien – one stand-alone (as is DOTN) called “The Element Of Fire” and a trilogy consisting of “The Wizard Hunters”, “The Ships Of Air” and “The Gate Of Gods”.  If I’m going to spend time and money on Martha Wells, I think I’d rather go back and dig into Ile-Rien.  Once I’ve acquired and read them, I’ll let you know how they were.

Final thought – if you haven’t read anything by Martha Wells, start with DOTN – you will not be disappointed.

I’ll be off-line tomorrow and won’t be able to post but I should be able to finish Scalzi’s “Ghost Brigades”.  That should be worth an update as I’m finding it to be a better read than “Old Man’s War”.

Cheers

Anyone who read my post on “The Collapsing Empire” probably remembers that I found the book to be interesting but not outstanding – a tick above average.  I also talked a bit in that post about the less than detailed memories I had of reading John Scalzi’s first book – “Old Man”s War”.  It was quite some time ago but I remembered having really enjoyed the book.  Finally, I mentioned that I’d purchased all of the other books in this series but for reasons I couldn’t recall – hadn’t ever gotten around to reading them.

The act of reading and writing about “The Collapsing Empire” and the vague memories of “Old Man’s War” that surfaced as a result prompted me to go back to the shelf, pull the book and give it a second read.  It’s a very simple book – easy to read in a day or two – and I’m glad I did as it’s left me with a very different view of the book and the author.

First, the observations I made about “The Collapsing Empire” seem pretty transferable to “Old Man’s War”.  I found the characters a bit shallow and one dimensional.  I found the aliens to be simplistic and cartoonish.  The Boot Camp / Training section of the book now seems kind of silly – patterned after the boot camp scene in every war movie I’ve ever seen.  There were aspects to the scientific / technical / military / weaponry descriptions that just didn’t make sense to me.  It was the same type of average that I found in “The Collapsing Empire” – a book that was, in many ways, better written – without the awesome presence of a character like Kiva Lagos.  In fact, I found the main character in “Old Man’s War” – John Perry – to be boring even after he transitions into his new life.

Here’s an example of what was, for me, a weird disconnect.  At the beginning of the book, after visiting his wife’s grave, Perry makes a visit to the local Colonial Defense Forces (CDF) recruiting station.  It’s described as being located in a non-descript strip mall sandwiched between a tattoo parlor and a state authority liqour store.  As you progress through the book and you start to get perspective on the resources possessed by the CDF as well as the sophistication of the technology it commands, it’s hard to understand why they’d put a recruiting station in that kind of location.  Actually, it’s kind of hard to understand why they’d need a recruiting station at all.  Everything done in that scene looks to me like something that could, should and would be done online.  Those types of non-sequiturs persist throughout the book.  It’s like Scalzi started with an interesting high level concept – enlisting seniors and rejuvenating them in return for military service – but wasn’t able to place it within a fully realized, future world.

The book wasn’t a waste of time – it’s entertaining and I’m glad I reread it.  It also hasn’t dissuaded me from starting the 2nd book in the series – “The Ghost Brigades”.  I do find the concept interesting and I want to see where Scalzi takes it all but I’m not going to give it that much time.  Unless things change, I can skim these and get what I need from them.  Once I’m done, I’ll let you know where I land.

Here’s the third book I finished during the cruise – the second in internal chronological order in Neal Asher’s Polity series.  This is a pretty massive body of work – 15 books with the 16th coming this year.  I decided late last year to dive into this because I’ve been intrigued by the most recent trilogy in the series – “Dark Intelligence”, “War Factory” and “Infinity Engine” – but figured I should go back and start from the beginning – experience the universe as Asher has evolved it.  The first book – “Prador Moon” – was good enough to keep me going so I took “Shadow of the Scorpion” along on the trip.

I mentioned in yesterday’s post that books and series capture my attention for a whole host of reasons.  In “Collapsing Empire”, it was all about one really entertaining, larger than life character.  With this book, it was very different.  I actually found the central character a bit one-dimensional and the narrative kind of choppy.  I mentioned in an earlier post that I also found the same to be true for “Prador Moon” – the first book in the series – but wrote it off to the fact that it was a very early work .

*Quick correction – I mistakenly assumed that “Prador Moon” was an early work – it’s actually a prequel that Asher went back and wrote sometime around the midpoint of his career – same goes for this book.

In that respect, I’m two for two with Asher and multiple impressions along these lines would normally prompt me to move on to other things.  Having said that, what I enjoyed about “Prador Moon” was the universe Asher created and that held true for “Shadow of the Scorpion”.

Asher’s universe is one ruled / managed by benevolent AIs who, instead of deciding to eliminate their troublesome human creators, have decided to co-exist in a peaceful, constructive and symbiotic manner.  The AIs and the merged society they’ve established are what have really intrigued and entertained me with both of these books.  There are utopian aspects to the Polity that I can’t help but find encouraging and attractive.  The AIs also make for pretty interesting characters.  In these books, I find the Golems – AI subminds resident in ambulatory, humaniod constructs – to be far more interesting than the humans they work with and mentor.  They tend to be wise, kindly, self-sacrificing coaches to their messy biological partners.

I’m also glad I started into the novels when I did – given the public debate currently underway regarding artificial intelligence and the ramifications it has for the future of our race.  It’s hard not to feel some concern – with luminaries like Stephen Hawking and Elon Musk speaking out about the existential threat posed by the technology.  As unconnected to any current reality as these books are, it’s nevertheless interesting to see someone describe the possibility of a more positive outcome.

So…while the first two books of the series haven’t actually blown me away – there’s enough here to hold my interest – enough to prompt me to purchase the third book in the series – “Gridlinked”.  I’ll tackle it as soon as it arrives.

PS:  One final comment related to last night’s post on “The Collapsing Empire”.  Writing the post actually prompted me to pull “Old Man’s War” off the shelf and give it a second read.  I plowed through about a quarter of the book and I’m really enjoying it – enough so that I’ll try to finally finish up all six books in the series.  I’ll post something as soon as I’m done.

PPS:  I’ll be offline until Friday – hope to post again on Saturday – should have plenty to write about.

Cheers

Here’s the second book I finished during the cruise – “The Collapsing Empire – first book in the newest series by John Scalzi.  Like most readers, the first Scalzi book I read was “Old Man’s War”.  I read it when it first came out way back in 2005 and – while I don’t remember the details – I do remember that I really enjoyed the book.  It’s attraction grew out of a novel premise – which I’m not going to describe – and Scalzi went on to build a 6 book series around the original release.

The rights to the first story were bought by Paramount and there were plans to turn it into a movie that was never made.  Rights were then picked up by the SyFy Channel with the intention of turning it into a TV series – another plan that never came to fruition.  In December of last year, the rights were acquired by NetFlix and I believe their intention is to turn it into a 2 hour movie.  I’m very hopeful that it’ll finally make it to the screen this time – even if just the small screen – I remember the book being that good.

One quick confession here – I never finished the remaining five books of the Old Man’s War series.  Along with “Old Man’s War”, I’ve purchased them all in hard cover:

• The Ghost Brigades
• The Last Colony
• Zoe’s Tale
• The Human Division
• The End of All Things

Unfortunately, I never made it back to the series.  They’re still sitting on my shelf – waiting for the day when I have the chance to dig back into what was a pretty fascinating character and universe.

That’s relevant because when “The Collapsing Universe” was released last year, I saw it and decided I really should give Scalzi a second try.  As I sometimes accidentally do, I double bought and now have two copies – which means I’ll eventually be writing an “In The Cart” post on that second copy.  I also downloaded an e-copy so that I could take it on my trip.  It was a quick and easy read and – while I didn’t enjoy it as much as I remember enjoying “Old Man’s War” – I was glad I gave it the time.

I enjoy Fantasy and Science Fiction novels for many reasons.  Sometimes it’s just an amazing, totally immersive experience that does everything right.  “Dune” falls into this category – a book I’ve read many, many times.  Most don’t reach that level but still manage to grab me.  Sometimes it’s because of a compelling culture or universe – a topic for tomorrow’s post.  Sometimes it’s because of one compelling character that carries the entire book.  For me, “The Collapsing Empire” falls into that second category.  The concept, the plot, the universe in which the story takes place and most of the characters are all good and interesting enough but they aren’t compelling and they aren’t particularly memorable.  The exception in this book is Kiva Lagos – the one aspect of the book that goes waaaaay beyond better than average.  She’s a foul mouthed, amoral, incredibly capable, couldn’t give a s**t, overwhelmingly alpha female character who stumbles her way into being on the side of the angels.  My only regret about the book is that there wasn’t enough of her in it.  I don’t know what else to say – except that Kiva will be enough to keep me buying these books for as long as Scalzi continues to write them.  You’ll likely buy the first book because you like Scalzi.  You’ll buy the second book in the series – when it eventually comes out – because you LOVE Kiva.

One final note – reading the book was enough to convince me to go back and finish up the Old Man’s War series.  I’ll be moving all the books in the series – including the first – “Old Man’s War – out of my “On The Shelf” category and into my “On The Nightstand” category this year.  I think it’s finally time to tie up this loose end – particularly since it may be popping up in the not too distant future on NetFlix and I don’t want to tie my hands here in the same way I’ve tied them with Game of Thrones.

Cheers

I finished this one tonight and thought I’d try to get some thoughts down before calling it a night.  Not sure whether or not this is a good call.  Given the nature of the book, a wiser course may have been to just sleep on it and write tomorrow night.  I’ll make the call once I’m done and before I push the “Publish” button.

First Observation:  I mentioned in my first post on the book that I felt compelled to read it as soon as possible due to all the attention it was receiving in the media.  I couldn’t help but think, as I was reading through the book, that the media was just missing the point.  In their coverage, they’ve focused on the juicy bits – Bannon’s quotes regarding the meeting at Trump Tower with the Russians or questions raised by the book regarding the President’s fitness.  The real story here is the shockingly dysfunctional relationships between three competing White House power centers – Bannon and his devotees, the Family consisting of Jared, Ivanka and their Goldman allies (Cohn and Powell) – and Priebus and his Republican mainstream colleagues (although this third group earns far less attention than the first two).  The author spends almost all of his time on the destructive competition between these three groups.  I know that all administrations have to deal with these types of internal struggles but the situation of almost open warfare described by the author seem far less civilized and far more amateurish than those we’ve seen in other administrations.  This no doubt goes to the character – or lack thereof – of those involved as well as the President’s lack of interest in establishing any control over those serving him.  We’d all be better served by coverage that spends more time on this dynamic.

Second Observation:  This book isn’t about the President.  It’s primarily about Steve Bannon.  He’s at the center of almost everything that happens over the course of the six month period covered in the book and it ends with his firing.  While the President is always a presence, he usually comes into focus when the author is relating public events about which we’re already well aware.  The two times in the book where the President becomes a truly central figure are the two events that will likely become the focus of any future obstruction of justice charges – the firing of James Comey and the drafting of the first statement describing the meeting between Don Jr., Manafort and Jared Kushner with the Russian delegation in Trump tower.  Most of the rest of the book focuses on Bannon, his role within the White House, his competition over the course of six months with Jared, Ivanka and the Goldman crew and his fight to impose his priorities and philosophies on the Administration.  The Family faction, while they get plenty of attention, are described in a slightly dismissive way and are, in my opinion, used primarily as foils for Bannon and his agitation.  It’s pretty obvious that Wolff finds Bannon to be a fascinating individual – almost distastefully endearing.

Third Observation:  Bannon is fascinating.  As Wolff has laid it out, Bannon is the only player in this White House that actually had a vision for what he wanted to accomplish and he was both incredibly determined and consistently unscrupulous in his attempts to advance that vision.  Interestingly enough, he’s the only character in the book that doesn’t have the pall of Russia hanging over him.  He also comes off – as described by Wolff – as the most thoughtful and strategic member of this weird team.  Both facts tend to make him more interesting than every other actor in the book – with the exception of the shadow of the President that hangs over most the activity described.  When you combine all of that with some of the quotes attributed to Bannon – one in particular being the conversation he had with the President about why it had been stupid for him to declare personal finances as a “red line” for the Special Prosecuter – a couple of pages which had me laughing out loud – he carries this book.  He’s easy to dislike but he’s impossible to ignore.

Fourth Observation:  Wolff does not make an overt case for the President’s lack of fitness for the role – a topic that the media has focused on relentlessly over the course of the last few days.  It’s not hard to come to that conclusion as you read through the book but Wolff never explicitly makes that case.  He comments at length on personal characteristics that serve the President very poorly as Chief Executive but he doesn’t speculate on his mental health or make a case for ending his tenure.  As I read the book, what struck me most powerfully about the President was his weakness as a Manager.  Anyone who’s successfully led an organization of any reasonable size knows that several things have to happen: 1) clear priorities have to be identified, 2) roles and responsibilities have to be clearly defined, 3) power has to be delegated based on mutually agreed to boundaries, 4) expectations and accountability has to be established and 5) progress has to be monitored on a regular basis.  None of this is rocket science, it’s all learned fairly early in any journey up the management track in any career and any Manager who doesn’t do these things will fail.  None of this happened in the first six months of this administration.  When you combine that absence of structure with the particular personality of this President, the results should surprise no one.  It leaves me wondering what the first six months of this Administration would have looked like if Kelly had been chosen as Chief Of Staff out of the gate.  The President obviously displays a number of troublesome personality traits that hamper his effectiveness but it’s possible for flawed leaders to be saved by strong Staffs.  It wouldn’t have prevented all of the outrageous outcomes we’ve seen but it may have mitigated the chaos to a measurable extent.

Overall, you can’t read this book without experiencing a sinking feeling.  Put all of the discussion about verification / accuracy of some of the more salacious quotes aside, you can’t escape the conclusion that this represents a relatively accurate description of the chaos, foolishness and stupidity that has so visibly characterized the first year of this administration.  The best thing you can say about the people at the center of the narrative is that they were all rank amateurs – including and most prominently the President.  Long to short – experience matters and we all got what we paid for.

I am going to publish this tonight but I’ll come back and reread it tomorrow to see if it holds up or if there’s more to say.  If you have time, I hope you’ll check in again to see if I’ve made any revisions.

This was the first book I finished during my trip – mentioned in my Holiday Reading Post on 12/11/2018.  I’ve also posted on “Devil Said Bang” – the fourth novel in the series.  “Kill City Blues” is the fifth novel in the series, published in 2013, and it’s every bit as fun as the first four.  As I go deeper into the series, though, I find that a few things are starting to come into focus.

I can’t escape the feeling that, in so many ways, the books are kind of a hot mess.  The Cosmos in which they’re set and the whole origin story has a pretty random feel – like the author is just throwing things against the wall – hoping that something will stick.

It starts simple in the first book – Heaven, Hell, Angels, Demons, God and Satan – but things start to swerve all over the place as you progress into the series.  You go from a pretty simple and relatively tight premise in the first book to a second book that feels like a couple of stories crammed together.  It winds up focusing on a Zombie Apocalypse in LA.  I don’t think it’ll spoil anything to reveal that the main character saves the city from flesh eaters but the third book starts in an LA where everything is back to normal – after the city was, for all intents and purposes, burned to the ground.  The whole thing requires you just to push on and not obsess over the disconnects.

Same thing with the subsequent books – it feels like the author is just banging along, mashing together multiple stories, not really worried about connection or continuity but having a great time as he writes.

Here’s the thing though – mentioned more or less in my post on “Devil Said Bang” – while that would normally annoy me and lead me to dismiss the whole series as poorly conceived – it doesn’t really bother me with these books.  You read them because they’re funny.  The main character – Sandman Slim – is an arrogant, anti-social, violent, one man wrecking crew oblivious to the damage he causes everywhere he goes.

He’s also ironic and witty and obnoxious and hugely entertaining.  My wife can always tell when I’m reading one of these books because I wind up laughing out loud – literally – every few pages.  The Cosmos and the plots may not be tight but the dialogue is – crisp and cutting and hilarious.  The interactions between the characters and the absolute disregard that Slim and his band of weird brothers have for almost every social convention is both disorienting and oddly endearing.

That’s been more than enough to keep me interested and connected through the first four books and “Kill City Blues” was no different.  It was fun in a cringe-worthy sort of way – kind of like the mixture of horror and humor you feel watching the scene in “A Christmas Story” where the kid freezes his tongue to the flagpole.

Having said that – I worry a little – sitting at the halfway point in the series – whether this will be enough or whether the whole shtick will start to lose it’s bizarre charm.  I’ll get back to Book Six – “The Getaway God” – as soon as I finish “Midnight Tides” and let you know.  In the meantime, definitely worth the time.