Rate The Last Book You Read

Exactly what it says. For example:

Agatha Christie and the Eleven Missing Days by Jared Cade. Shortly after the release of what will soon be one of her most famous books, a mystery author vanishes, leaving her car and a very nasty love triangle behind. Said author is later found at a hotel under an assumed name, and claims to be suffering from amnesia. Sound like the plot of an Agatha Christie novel? Nah, not enough murder, and the Queen of Crime would have permanently blacklisted you for mentioning it, ya shmuck.

This book claims to be about Agatha Christie's eleven day disappearance, but it's a tad more than that. The disappearance itself is covered by the half-way point, the rest of the book is about how it affected her, and her relationship with her second husband. There's also more of a focus on her romantic novels under the name of Mary Westmacott. Some might call this a bit of a let-down, certainly not what I thought I was going to get out of the book, but it's honestly quite interesting, especially for Christie fans.

However, that's an issue, I really can't recommend this to anyone but Christie fans. The information here is interesting, but even plain fans of true crime and unsolved mysteries won't have much to look for. Recommended for Christie fans, but Recommended With Hesitation to non-fans, as I do think it's interesting.

PS. I read the revised and expanded edition. Since I don't have the non-revised and shorter edition, I can't tel what this has that the other doesn't, aside from a chapter which consists of the author complaining about Laura Thompson's biography of Christie and Agatha Christie LTD.

Last Book I read: A Gift From Earth - Larry Niven, 1968.

Niven's second full-length novel, set in the early (pre-hyperdrive) part of his "Known Space" continuity. The colonists sent to Tau Ceti discovered too late that the probe sent before them had landed on the only inhabitable portion of the planet they were to colonize - a 40-mile high mountain with a plateau half the size of California at its summit. The rest of the planet is covered by a super-dense, poisonous atmosphere. Three hundred years later, Earth sends the latest of its gene-tailored gifts, and the tyranny of the Crew over the Colonists is about to end...

A Gift From Earth is a bit unusual for a Niven novel, as one might expect form it being his second effort. There is the usual society that is a direct result of the available technology, with the horrors of the organ banks and the oppressive society they helped create on Plateau, but it's much more of an action piece than some of his later works, with less time spent looking at the scenery. The plot moves along at a very rapid clip.

On the plus side the characters are a little more filled-out than some of Niven's later work, and he has a very nice villain in the form of Jesus Pietro Castro, the head of the Implementation police. Jesus Pietro is cold-blooded and ruthless, but very smart. When he is confronted by the impossible he quickly adapts and is a very real and credible threat right up to the end of the rebellion. The every-man protagonist, Matthew Keller, is more reminiscent of other Niven heroes like Louis Wu or Beowulf Shaeffer, although his unique ability has certainly shaped who and what he is.

I recommend this book for anyone interested in Niven's work or more hard sci-fi in general. It's not really linked to any of the other Niven novels or stories, so it's not essential to following that universe, but it is another interesting look at the organ bank problem which was so prominent in his "Gil the ARM" stories and it features a very unusual case of Cursed with Awesome.

Okay so The House That Kills by Noel Vindry. This is the first book by who some termed back in his day, "The French John Dickson Carr". Now, I'll be the first to admit that I don't know as much about Carr as I should, but I think that he could do better than this.

The story is told from the point of the view of the Watson of the novel, an assistant/apprentice to French magistrate M. Allou. Allou skips off to do something else, leaving our hapless narrator to deal with the shooting of a tramp by Pierre Louret.* Evidence soon indicates that someone is planning a campaign of terror against the Louret family, the random tramp attack being Round 1. Before long, the house is under siege, people are getting stabbed in locked rooms, getting attacked by invisible murderers, and even M. Allou himself does not escape unscathed.

Cons:

• Rather dry book on the whole. And...too....many...ellipses. And before someone says that it's just translation...I've read other translated French books by the same publisher...they don't have this issue...
• The first locked room is too simple and requires the killer to be a master of slight of hand. The second is merely borderline ridiculous.
• The book goes to pot at the two-thirds mark, shifting from "whodunit" to "battle against omnipotent criminal gang who has never been mentioned before". It felt puply, and not in a good way.
• The criminal's motive is an anti-climax. And they're friggen obvious to boot.
• Characters are quite...dry. Pretty much every bit of personality that anyone gets is solely because it benefits the plot. I don't personally mind that, but I'd prefer that it accompany a stronger mystery than this.

Pros:

• Competent proofreading, some odd spacing between the lines on certain pages, but nothing severe.
• Third locked room is simple, yet bound to slip under the radar of the reader in a way that doesn't feel cheap or obvious.
• The last third of the novel goes in a different direction than I predicted, and actually brought up an interesting . M. Allou plays with morals a bit to catch the killer, not unlike a modern crime drama. While I was getting ready to hate him for this, the narrative actually explored the fallout of that, and even M. Allou seemed to be having doubts about how it all went down. Not deep characterization or anything, but interesting.

All in all, despite my complaints, I enjoyed the book, it's a quick read, though experienced fans of the genre will find better brainteasers elsewhere. Those who are new to mysteries or who are looking to introduce others though might find something of value, as it's a pretty easy mystery to follow. I give it a Recommended with Caveats.

edited 11th May '16 7:26:39 PM by Halter7W

Dune. At times I had to struggle through this, but it was ultimately a good, rewarding read. I guess the only "genre" fiction of comparable length I've read before is Lord of the Rings, and in both the length is justified because the author did an impressive amount of Worldbuilding. Also, I've finished reading the actual novel, but not the appendices, which seem to be places for additional world-building Frank Herbert didn't get to fit into the narrative itself. Recommended, but probably moreso if you know you've got a lot of downtime ahead of you, maybe on a long plane or bus ride or whatever. I personally got through the first few hundred pages on a trip to/from Las Vegas, which is kind of appropriate because I felt like i was living on a desert planet there at times.

edited 23rd Jul '16 3:12:25 PM by MikeK

I just finished That Hideous Strength this weekend, the last of C. S. Lewis' Space Trilogy. It was...

Well, it's kind of hard to say what it was, really. The protagonists are almost entirely inactive. They spend most of the book waiting around, essentially, while the villains try to forward their rather vague plan of evilness.

When one of the protagonists finally does act, the villain's scheme (and most of the villains) fall completely apart in a matter of pages, in a surprisingly bloody fashion as well. Did you know that Lewis wrote a book in which one villain is decapitated as a ritual sacrifice, another is eaten by a bear, a fourth is buried in an earthquake, and a fifth burns himself to death while being mind controlled? Then we're left wondering if they were really as dangerous as they were made out to be, seeing as how they were so easily defeated. It's definitely an Old Testament sort of defeat, with the very town they were working in swallowed up by the earth, or something.

The ending is...unsatisfying. With the plot over the question is raised whether the estranged husband and wife will get together and then it goes essentially unanswered. It is implied that yes they will, but with the husband's new attitude of putting his wife on an unattainable pedestal and the wife's attitude of "I have to try to be with my husband because it's what God wants," there seems no real assurance they'll make it work.

I enjoyed bits of the trilogy, but it seems clear why Lewis is known for his other works.

edited 8th Aug '16 7:44:24 AM by Bense

Philip K Dick - A Maze Of Death. I've read several of his books (including short story collections), and this is kind of the most mixed reaction I've had to one. It's sort of interesting to see a thoroughly PKD-ized version of a Ten Little Murder Victims plot: fourteen colonists are sent to a planet for an unknown purpose and slowly get killed off as things get more and more mindscrewy along the way. There are some interesting ideas along the way, like a seemingly living building that moves around, a religion involving technologically aided prayer, and gelatinous cubes that replicate items given to them, but give out extremely cryptic answers on paper when they're given a slip of paper with a question on it. Ultimately though, the characters are pretty flat and it feels like one of his more incoherent works to me: I don't know if he was writing by the seat of his pants here, but it sure feels like it.

Michael J. Fox: A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Future: Twists and Turns and Lessons Learned. It's a book that seems to take the form of an educational plan, and details ways he learned the ways of the world. It was pretty good, I guess.

Lawrence Wright - Going Clear: Scientology, Hollywood and the Prison of Belief

Probably THE definitive journalistic examination of the Church of Happyology, from its foundation, growth, its beliefs, methods, and the experiences of ex-Chuch members who managed to get out.

Very in-depth, very well written.

'"The Time Travelers' Guide to Elizabethan England'', Ian Mortimer.

A very interesting book on many levels, but I'm afraid I was put off by Mr. Mortimer's smug attitude of superiority towards his subjects, especially on the subjects of religion and violence.

I'm not saying the author should enjoy bear baiting and want to revive it, but when the whole section on it is simply "I can't believe how revolting this is, how could they do such a thing!", then I quickly lose interest in reading pages that boil down to "aren't we so much better than this today?" Mortimer makes little attempt to understand why it was popular or sympathize with the Elizabethans.

Mortimer also seems mystified at why religious reformers would want to have religion be a more powerful source of morality in a society rather than just trying to remove religion. Again, he doesn't seem to really understand the subject.

Never underestimate the people of the past. The fact that they didn't have all the advantages you have today doesn't mean they were stupid, or that you would have done any better in their place.

Night Train to Rigel - Timothy Zahn

I generally like Zahn's books. The plot always hums along like nobody's business, and he usually makes good use of interesting science fiction ideas. He tends to write pretty strong villains that seem like credible threats too.

This one is the first in a series, and is basically "film noir train caper, but IN SPACE!". He's got the hard-boiled protagonist with a troubled past telling the whole thing in first person. He's got the girl with suspect loyalties (who is even called "The Girl" before he learns her name). He's got an unexplained murder. He's got hob-nobbing with the well-to-do who all have dangerous hidden agendas. He's got thugs and kidnappings and shanghais and a hostage situation or two. The protagonist doesn't shy from killing the bad guys, even though it's a little bit of a moral gray area (perhaps more than usual). And there's twist after twist.

It's a little light on characterization (Zahn prefers to move the plot along rather than stop and smell the roses), and I found the nature of the villain fairly obvious a few chapters before the protagonist figured it out, but it's still a pretty good read.

A few points that are spoiler-iffic: Zahn does unfortunately use the "hive mind decides to ignore the heroes as no threat when taking them out should really be its first priority" trope. When will those arrogant hive minds learn that this never goes well? Also, considering how easy it is to catch The Virus (a tiny, unnoticeable microscopic scratch is enough), I don't see any way the heroes could have realistically escaped except, again, arrogance on the part of the hive mind.

At one point it wants information from the protagonist, and instead of simply infecting The Girl and then him and getting the information that way, it threatens to infect the girl until the hero can surprise and overpower it and escape. Why not just infect them? Sure, they might decide to kill themselves before the infection is complete, and thereby keep the information from the villain, but the villain's goal was to prevent the information from spreading further, and they were on a completely isolated train completely controlled by the villain for the next several days. Immediately infecting them is basically an instant win.

edited 8th Feb '17 10:23:54 AM by Bense

Lois McMaster Bujold - Cryoburn.

The latest story focusing on Miles Vorkosigan written so far. Once again, Lord Auditor Miles Vorkosigan finds himself in the middle of a huge mess on a planet that turned death into a market - by freezing dead people in hope for a future resurrection, and allowing the companies performing the procedures to use their "clients" rights as voters.

That's probably not the best book in the series - which still means it is excellent, but the standards that have been set are pretty damn high. In particular, this one, more than the others, requires an extensive knowledge of the universe and characters to get the numerous in-jokes, mostly directed at Miles' personality and "slight tendency" to find himself in life-threatening situations (of which he usually escapes). The mystery also rapidly splits between two disjointed stories, with one being explored considerably less in-depth than the other, and after so many adventures this time it is so obvious Miles is always ten steps ahead of everyone else that the threat level is rather low (especially when put next to Memory or Mirror Dance for example).

Still, once again, LMMB uses sci-fi as a means to explore an interesting theme, in this case the relationship between humanity and death - while never sounding gloomy. I saw it as an essay against the search for immortality, as one of its main points is that even if technology advances, it will not fulfill the social gap between rich and poor. But that was a personal interpretation, it is possible I got it completely wrong. Despite starting right in the middle of the action (or, to be accurate, just after that), it is overall rather contemplative. I think it is supposed to be kind of a turning point in the Vorkosigan Saga, made even clearer since it ends with the news of Aral's death and the next entry stars Cordelia, not Miles.

The story also feels more exotic than most (like my previous read, Captain Vorpatril's Alliance, which takes place between Komarr and Barrayar) being set in a remote location (which was founded by colonists of East Asian origins) and where many prominent characters are absent or extremely secondary (Ivan, Ekaterin, Simon, Gregor, Cordelia...). Which is nice if you know the series and want a different experience, but not as a first introduction to this amazing saga.

edited 10th Mar '17 9:10:34 AM by Julep

Welcome To Nightvale. The podcast of the same name came to my attention via this wiki, and it seemed like something I would be into, but I usually choose music or audiobooks over podcasts and it sounds like there's kind of a lot of continuity to sort through. This worked well as an introduction. The whole thing with the Nightvale setting is that it's made purely of Surreal Horror, Surreal Humor, and various combinations thereof, so they can throw in callbacks to the podcast and not have to explain the joke to newbies because the plot kind of conditions you to just roll with whatever weird unexplained events happen. I especially like how the main characters, Diane and Jackie,have backgrounds that are pretty surreal but are also relatable, at least as metaphors: Being the parent of a moody, unpredictable teenager is like living with a shapeshifter, and being stuck in a dead end job while your friends all move on is like staying 19 forever.

Les chants de Maldoror by Comte de Lautreamont.

I adore this novel. It is one of the most transgressive, hilarious, melancholic & beguiling books I have ever read.

It is essentially about this evil presence/creature/entity named Maldoror that engages and experiences these incredibly surreal episodes (From fornicating with a shark to having a giant worm tell him to murder a woman) in successive form until he meets up with a boy named Mervyn. Only to beat him to death and discard the body. An act I believe to be the destruction of the French novel itself given the strange style change within last few subchapters (Note: The book although it tends to function as a novel is effectively a long poem split into six specific "cantos").

I highly recommend it if you lovingly follow the French Symbolist/Situationist/Letterist/Surrealist movements. And in general just like strange things.

Edited by KeironCioran on Sep 23rd 2018 at 4:19:05 AM