Another WindTrap, Disappointingly Holding No Water

To anyone familiar with the original DUNE universe, Frank Herbert's vision was so rich and majestic that as a reader I did not want the story to end. Well, at this point I very much wished it had.

Paul of Dune had everything going for it: an interesting timeline, a detailed setting and unresolved cliffhangers. Yet it manages to fail.

This book picks up the action just after the first book (and the movie) of the series (Dune) and before the second (Dune Messiah), a very interesting period of 12 years for which, so far, we only had hints and suggestive glimpses of. At the same time, a number of flashbacks flesh-out the details of the life of an adolescent Paul Atreides.

Wheels within wheels? No. Rather more like a lone, rusty wind-wheel turning in the soft breeze of decadent Kaitain. Let the good times roll...

According to Dorothy Parker, there are books "not to be tossed aside lightly, [but] thrown with great force". This is one of these books. My study coffee-table now has the indentation to prove it.

I received this book for free from the publisher and for over 6 weeks I tried to read it numerous times. I kept getting so discouraged that I was this close in giving up. The first 100 pages can be summarized in just one phrase: "Paul is devastated by the ongoing Jihad but it is inevitable and the lesser of many evils according to his prescience". Paul says it. Irulan makes notes about it. Alia has inner voices echoing it. OK, we get it, please move on!

Which prescience, one must note, apparently is a very fickle commodity as we keep hearing of it but never actually see it in action.

What has became of Paul, the leader of men and conqueror of worlds? That little man is the...Kwizats Haderach? That is what the Bene Gesserits were selectively mating people for, for thousands of years? That is what the Tleilaxu were trying to duplicate? Well, someone must tell both the the witches and genetic abominations that they are not missing much!

To keep the new emperor human is one thing; to make him dull and cruel, spineless and indecisive is quite another.

This is a book of science fiction so, yes, suspending one's disbelief is a requirement from page one. Nevertheless, a basic logical scaffolding is required for the whole world not to collapse. Taking over entire planets with only a handful of unruly Fremen and some Sardakaur fresh from switching their allegiance? Paul having delegated almost every important decision to...Korba and his Qizarete priests? Where has the unstoppable momentum of Paul gone? If he had lost steam so soon, there is just no way that his vision would materialize by others.

And just how did Fremen become so bloodthirsty and lost all sense of honor in a few weeks?

The young Paul stories fair a bit better but are cursed with the readers'...prescience of the Dune future: every new storyline must serpentine and eat its own tail before the end. After all, the Golden Path future has been set by Frank. And Writing is not a hereditary ability.

It feels like a bad batch of semuta to be sold anyway only, once more, to take advantage of the hardened addicts.

Will The Iceman Survive The Rain?

I have followed John Rain's saga ever since the very first book, Rain Fall. Sure, the road had its ups and downs but it was totally unforgettable. Barry Eisler knows how to create a cool yet deadly character that will stay with you forever. The problem is, can he keep him cool and deadly while exploring fresh storyline ideas - and his character grows older?

In Requiem for an Assassin, Rain is forced out of his retirement in Paris. An old nemesis had abducted his friend Dox and unless he performs three naturally-looking assassinations, his friend pays the price. Is the deal just bad or is it doomed from the gates and both Rain and his friend will end up shark bait?

The clock is ever menacingly ticking; the stakes keep getting higher and higher; the locales keep changing from Thailand and Vietnam to LA, from Singapore to Rotterdam; and Rain, uncharacteristically, has to accept unsolicited help from old friends that had actually once been older foes.

The problems with this book actually started from the previous installment of the series (The Last Assassin) and they can be summarized into this phrase: Rain started having doubts. Having an alienated kid and a steady love interest has dulled his edge and diluted his determination.

Character development and fancy literally footwork aside, I think that, in the end, Barry Eisler tries to morally save his character - and in the process is corroding him to the core. A cold-blooded assassin may have his inescapable reasons to have turned out that way - but he cannot exist on a moral high-ground no matter what. And if he is no longer the cool cold-blooded assassin, he is no longer John Rain.

Having said that, I want to make clear that this is one of the best fiction books I read in years. I enjoyed both its tactics and action as well as its reasoning and detailed descriptions.

Veritas Ex Machina?

Writing is a lonely endeavor, yet Preston is one of those rare writers who thrive in collaboration but straggle when writing alone. When writing in tandem with Lincoln Child more often than not lightening strikes (The Relic, The Reliquary, The Ice Limit to name a few). In contrast, his previous solo efforts (The Codex, Tyrannosaur Canyon) fall just short of their mark. Blasphemy goes a bit further.

Isabella is the supercollider that American particle and high-energy physicists dreamed about (but Congress killed in 1993 - why waste money on Science when we will be going at war to help our oil companies make even more billions, right? ). Anyway, in this novel it is actually built, not in Texas but in Arizona. In an abandoned coal mine, under a Native American burial grounds. And if these were not ominous enough, when it is run at full power, all heavens seem to break loose.

Navajo medicine men and frothing tele-evangelists; a lonely pastor driven over the edge and a cynic ex-monk turned deniable-PI for the government; a president risking riots only to protect his legacy and a Nobel-prize winner scientist with a severe Messianic fixation. The science may be half-baked and the characters underdeveloped and monochromatic but the story will keep you turning pages well into the night.

A particle beam worth a ride.

A Map Without A Treasure

This book is not what I will remember the late Michael Crichton by. He was an excellent writer, excelling in popularized science techno-thrillers but also fully capable of producing period dramas of high quality, such as The Great Train Robbery. Having read that gem recently, I can attest that Pirate Latitudes was either not written by Michael Crichton or was only a rough script - and was then polished and hastily packaged as a novel.

True, Michael Crichton's main focus had always been the story, often at the expense of his characters. However, the characters here are so crudely and halfheartedly developed that I could not find myself caring for any of them, including Cpt. Hunter, the main hero. The story goes from one cliffhanger to the next (in a James Rollins fashion) and it will keep you turning pages. Nevertheless, it is writing-an-action-novel-by-numbers: the story never managed to get a hold on me.

Where is Crichton's signature obsessive research that used to turn long-held misconceptions on their head? Where is his attention to obscure details and little-known scientific facts with big impact? Where is his ability to entertain and educate at the same time?

After the sad cases of Frank Herbert and Robert Ludlum, Crichton's heirs are attempting to exploit his fans as well. He did not deserve this.

Let this act of piracy hang from the yardarm.

Purshuing Its Own Tail

This was my first Cotton Malone novel and I think it shall be my last. The protagonist's previous exploits are amply advertised throughout this novel but I do not care enough to go through another one of these. And I will try to explain this without any spoilers.

The Charlemagne's Pursuit starts off promising enough, a sub in trouble and probably lost at sea. Cut to the hero about to pick up a package in a clandestine setup, at the high terminal of a ski lift. Of course all hell brakes loose. Of course the hero survives. And the pursuit begins. But it is hardly ...Charlemagne's.

I cannot understand why Charlemagne was dragged into this, besides providing a catchy title in a "Da Vinci Code" fashion. The story could unfold without the dead emperor's item as it holds no crucial hints and it provides no motivation to anyone. The entire "mysterious symbols / ancient writing" gives off a sense of mimetic attempt rather than add anything to the story. Both Cotton and his antagonistic companions already have a strong motivation to go on with their quest (in fact, no imagination was stretched in providing said motivation) and the records of the footsteps that are to be followed already exist.

What is never explained is why the nefarious bad guy is paying an expensive assassin to take out a number of people only to keep a secret that is not exactly...earth-shattering if it came out. The (minor) scandal would have been the covering-up and not the information that was supposedly protected - so why cover it up in the first place?

If you are the airport and are between this one and the latest Kathrine Neville novels, go for this one. In any other case, though, pass.

An Endless Medieval Saga

Do not expect to find high literature here. But expect to be very entertained. Ken Follet's World Without End, the sequel to the tighter and more cared for The Pillars of the Earth is an endless medieval soap-opera.

Set on the backdrop of the English cathedral city of Kingsbridge in the early 14th century the heroes have to avoid poverty and starvation, weather an ongoing war and survive both the ever-returning plague and their cruel overlords. Fortunes are made and lost, love is reciprocated or shunted, offspring is fathered by strange bedfellows. Life and death are intermingled - but life always finds a way to go on. Even in those harsh times.

This is a long book. It could use a heavier-handed editing but I doubt it would make much of a difference. Sure, there are themes that keep repeating (the greedy and ever scheming monks of the priory make underhanded attempts to steal, bring down or even kill the independent Caris again and again; Merthin the prodigy builder having to fight the self-serving conservative establishment to implement his innovative designs; the villainous Ralph in an insatiable vengeance-trip against a peasant boy who once broke his nose). After the third time you go through the same story-arcs you grow a bit tired of it. And yet you cannot stop reading on.

Is there a happy end? Well, I shall not spoil it for anyone. However, whether there is one or not, brace yourself for a long journey. You shall enjoy it too.

At Fault For Not Keeping His Coloring Within The Lines

I have to start up by saying that I am a huge fun of Barry Eisler. I have greatly enjoyed all six of his Jack Rain novels (highly recommended to anyone!) so my expectations were high even though I knew this was to be a break from that story arc. Having said that, I have to confess that I found the Fault Line to be a disappointment.

Alex is in trouble. He is a lawyer and his client's software under patent seems to have triggered a murderous spree and the list includes his name. Conveniently, his older brother, Ben, is a CIA wet-works operator that has just completed a semi-successful op in Istanbul. Although estranged and barely on speaking terms (not to mention unaware of his brother's true occupation!), Ben is the one Alex calls when it hits the fan. And even if suspension-of-disbelief requirements were not high enough, here come yet another couple of things that gum up this novel from working.

First off, the brothers' back story: it seems to drag on and on forever. We are well past the middle of the book when the narration of events from that fateful night is finally completed. And the switching of perspectives from one brother to the other, not something I would try again. It only manages to add excessive emotional details to an action novel, and without really strengthening anyone's motivation. I suspect that, this being the first book of the new Ben Traven series, it had to suffer a little in the heavy background department; nevertheless, it could had been done more subtly and concisely.

Secondly, there is no such thing as an action novel/political treatise hybrid - and when attempted it simply does not work. Barry's political observations (although accurate and valid) cannot be supported in an action novel. I doubt that any young Iranian lawyer under mortal threat would vent her liberalism on the only man standing between her and her killers because ...she found his employment actions unsanctioned and unconstitutional, even if they clearly are. And any such intelligence professional would had walked away from such a thankless task long before he had to reload his Glock 27.

Whenever there is a tactical situation or an action sequence, that is where Barry Eisler's strengths shine. He is one of the few contemporary writers that can choreograph a close combat scene so beautifully and then describe it in a way that puts you in the thick of it, leaving you looking for bruises on your body and blood spays on your clothes when it is over. Unfortunately, this is not a book that brings out his talents enough.

As someone disillusioned from both the trapping of modern "democracy" and the pseudo-fight between the left and the right, Barry seems to be blossoming into an excellent anarchist. Unfortunately, such insights belong more to a political Blog than an action novel.

I love Barry Eisler's works. I just did not love this one.

Taking Down An Angel

Only three years in it, and CyberPunk 2077 is the most anticipated release of the decade.

CD PROJECT RED, the gaming Studio behind the legendary Witcher Series is bringing together mature Role-Playing Gaming in a Gibsonian hard-boiled cyberpunk setting.

Based on Mike Podsmith's 1990 Cyberpunk 2020 pen-and-paper RPG, the story has been hinted to borrow and pay homage to numerous pillars of the genre, from Blade Runner to the Sprawl Trilogy.  

Fixers and Nomads, NetRunners and Techies, Razor-Girl Psychos and Max-Tacs - the mix keeps getting ever more explosive by each passing week.

Will it hold until its release in 2015?

Pathetic Masonic Propaganda

Dan Brown is a writer more famous for stirring up controversy rather than his meticulous research. Although the media noise surrounding his last two books treats them as historic novels, they are much more fiction than fact. Understandably; were they treated as works of wild fiction there would had been nothing to argue about. And if there ever was a writing career built on controversy...

I will refrain from letting any spoilers slip through and, instead, I shall make clear why this is one of the very worse books I have ever read - and that is not solely because I refused to be fed unadulterated Masonic propaganda. The book is haphazardly researched, badly written and the plot runs in circles. Come to think of it, just like a Masonic ourovoros!

Allow me to give a couple cases in point.

The over and over glorified "field" of Noetics is nothing but a New Age philosophy masquerading as "science" only to peddle warmed up ancient ideas as scientific. I never heard of Noetics before reading this book and I am not surprised. If the best arguments supporting the notions that human (and why, I wonder, is it only human?) ...thoughts have a direct effect on reality and that there is a soul and it can be...weighted are the ones presented in this book, well snake-oils and good-luck charms should start to look pretty "scientific" by now.

In his attempt to substantiate a scientific basis of the idea of Global Consciousness (in yet another excuse for the Masonic efforts towards a Global Government), Brown presents some very shaky "facts". On p.70, he claims that following 9/11 "37 Random Events Generators"(sic) [and I am guessing that, since they are capitalized, they must be some Serious Scientific Equipment, right?] "suddenly became significantly less random". Wow, hold the presses! Shouldn't we wake the President?

Even if someone were to ignore the question of ...what exactly are these 37 generators measuring, can someone give us a precise time frame of these "events" following 9/11, to establish even a mere time-line of causality? For how long were these generators been monitored to be sure that a similar "event" did not occur, say when Vettel took the checkered flag at Abu Dabi's F1 race? And if it took a catastrophic event of the magnitude of 9/11 to get a "significantly less random" measurement, what are chances of this pseudoscience getting anything measured ever again?

As to ...weighting the soul - is he serious? What are his scientific references, the ...movie 21 Grams? Was he not aware that the actual scientific explanation for the (dubious) weight difference is the release of the residual air from the collapsing lugs? But that was not fitting with the rest of the "theory" so it had to be cut to size. Here is an expression to work out the etymology of, Dan: Procrustean methods!

By the way, I doubt that anyone hiding out in a Greek island would remain inconspicuous for long with the ridiculously made-up name of..."Andros Dareios". The correct spelling is Darius and it is a ancient Persian, not a Greek name. What's more, the word "andros" is the name of a Greek...island, it means "lair" and it is not a proper name - yet another example of how epidermal and self-serving his "research" really is. Just think how many heads would turn to the name..."Piratecove Adolph".

Nevertheless, the most serious issue with this book is its incessant Masonic propaganda. Their rituals are glorified, their beliefs are polished and presented again and again whereas the political implications are (conveniently) glossed over.

Brown expresses his condescending outrage to the masses that would fail to comprehend that "Senators, Chief Justices and CIA directors are all Masonic brothers". Really Dan? Do you fail to grasp the implications of a judge having to pass judgment on a Masonic brother he has sworn to protect? Is it too complicated for you to comprehend how a Mason CIA director or a Secretary of State may promote the interests of his (International) Brotherhood above those of his country?

And exactly how ...enlightened can a secret society be when it refuses to accept women and shunts minorities? I am also wondering why there was not even a pip about Nazis' obsession with the occult Ancient Mysteries and the Illuminati (the German offshoot of Freemasonry) or and the role of the infamous Masonic Temple P2 of Rome in connecting the Fascist regime of Mussolini with the Sicilian mafia bosses. Dan's silence is deafening on these matters.

Any free-thinking person would be very suspicious of groups operating under blood-oaths of secrecy, enforcing strict obedience to their (selected and not-elected) hierarchy and wielding the ability to undermine every pillar of a democratic society, from the judiciary to the executive branch, when their members are called upon to "support a brother".

I for one do not buy the "if I were an Mason I could not be writing about all this because of the secrecy oaths" argument. As if repaying a debt, Dan Brown goes to great lengths to function as a loud PR department to the Masons. His descriptions of the Masonic rituals are peculiarly selective - and they are strictly limited to what is already public knowledge. With some selective omissions of course.

Why is there no description of Baphomet, the hoofed and horned deity ever Mason upon reaching the 33th degree has to declare allegiance to? Is this not the final "Truth" that is revealed at the 33rd degree?

Judging by his ramblings in the last pages of this book, I am guessing his next book to be on the (equally bogus) Bible Code. For someone who has been attacking the Bible so vehemently he sure seems obsessed with it. Well, I am curious to see how he is going to twist the serpents' suggestion of "Ye are Gods" into something "enlightening" Masonic.

If the Masons wanted to improve their image, maybe they should had picked a better writer.

No matter how much this guy is pushed and pulled, sure, he may be selling books - but he is convincing no one.

A SIGMA Sequel

James Rollins has penned a number of excellent escapist novels. I would recommend Ice Hunt, Subterranean, Amazonia and Sandstorm to anyone who enjoys adventuring science/techno-thrillers. I would be more reluctant to do so with The Doomsday Key, though.

This is yet another thoroughly researched, keep-surviving-by-the-skin-of-your-teeth adventure. Less pronounced in this book yet still present is Rollins' tendency to move from cliffhanger to cliffhanger, with small breathers in between. It is a book to enjoy during a flight or a rainy weekend - and it will keep you turning pages for hours. However, for a number of reasons this would had been a much better book had it not been yet another Sigma sequel.

Sigma simply does not work that good for me. I cannot buy the small number of people undertaking such critical tasks. In fact, Sigma is so understaffed that not only has to rely on certified idiots (sorry Kowalski, but you know it is true...) but even the director himself has to go into the field. They operate all over the world under thin pretexts, they do not even seem to be official sanctioned. And to add insult to injury, most new recruits seem to suffer the Star Trek's away-party odd crew-member fate...

On top of that, Sigma seems to deal with one crisis after another while under attack from both a shadow power group and other government secret services. For a writer who takes great pride in the accuracy of his facts interweaved with his fiction, this requires a continuous leap of faith.

I can understand how having a book franchise can work for both the writer and his publisher. The first has a set framework of characters to weave his new plot with whereas the later has a more or less loyal fun-base to fall back to. However, they should both keep in mind that this does not always work for the reader.

Top-10 Cyberpunk Novels You Must Read Before The Corporate Dystopia Is Upon Us

Cyberpunk is the cross between the genres of Science Fiction and Hardboiled Noir. Since both of its parenting vectors have always been considered marginal to canonic literature, it enjoyed more freedom to point out societal shortcomings and attack instances of collective shortsightedness.  

It had been foreshadowed for some time (mainly by the giant of SciFi literature, Philip Dick) but did not find the confidence in its step until the mid 1980’s, after Bruce Bethke coined it as the title of a short story of his, published in 1983.

There is no set recipe for cyberpunk yet there seems to be a number of requirements to be met before a novel is to be considered to belong to the genre. The story has to be set in the not too distant future. This future world must be dystopic for the masses, while hedonistic for the ruling elite. Technology has advanced asymmetrically, its abilities far outweighing its safeguards, and the computer/brain barrier has been breached. Said technology has completely different uses in the street, where hacking is a required survival trait. Said ruling elite consists not of politicians but of interconnected corporations. The Tyrells, the IOIs, the Maas BioLabs, the Ono-Sendais. The zaibatsus and the keiretsus. More often than not, cyberpunk novels come with an underlying message or a warning. Envisioning dystopias approaching in the horizon often does.

Obviously, I could not include any pure Science Fiction or Space Opera novels (such as the Dune or the Void series). I only included the novels that have the street moves down pat. The ones that come fully equipped with the hard and the soft. The ones that bring you into the near future and, there, brick up the door back to reality for you. The ones that will cut through all the Black ICE holding each and every one of us into place.  Crack open the spine of any of these books and the sound they make is the sound of a world ending. Do so at your own risk.

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10. PHILIP K. DICK: Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?

Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? is the novel that the movie Blade Runner is based upon. And by “based” I mean loosely. Do not expect to read the movie. Regardless the differences though, the basic concept remains intact: how fragile is humanity from loosing itself amongst technological simulacra. When these imitations approximate us in both form and function, what is the remainder of the human essence that will carry our uniqueness? And, at the end, does such uniqueness actually exist?

I felt I had to include this as I consider it the most clear cyberpunk precursor.

9. PIERRE OUELLETTE: The Deus Machine

Set only ten years into the future (The Deus Machine was written in 1995) this is a unique cyberpunk novel in the sense that it relies heavily on biotechnology and the consequences of its abuses. How well do we understand the power of life? How secure is our hold over it? And just how bad can things go when the greedy wizard’s apprentice is overwhelmed by the power he unleashed? Is our ever-scheming, striving for power and instant gratification, murderous species a biological oddity about to be evolutionary corrected?

The story is set in a crumbling society where middle-class has been replaced by interchangeable drones that barely scrape a living. The novel has its rough edges but it is also unforgettable.   

8. CORY DOCTOROW: For the Win

Virtual economies within vast in-game worlds and third-world gold-farmers scrapping a living in internet cafés. Economic and political oppression in the process of merging into the Beast envisioned by the cyberpunk tradition. The author is not light-handed when it comes to slipping in his political views (with which you will probably come to agree with at the end). More importantly though, For the Win is a book that will not only make you give pause the next time you engage in any Massively Multiplayer Online Gaming, but it will also make you reexamine your structure of our global investment-bank economy.   

Congratulations! You have just completed Level 8! But are you playing the game – or is the game playing you?

7. NEAL STEPHENSON: Snow Crash

The future is this: franchises. From the pizza-delivering Mafia to the city-states (“burbclaves”) America managed to fraction itself into, everything has been turned into incorporated franchises. Including drug running. So when a new drug, called Snow Crash, kills a friend of the protagonist (and only Neal Stephenson could name his main character …Hiro Protagonist and get away with it!) while logged into the Metaverse, he decides to take action.

Some readers are put off by the juxtaposition of the futuristic story and Sumerian mythology, however, for me the worlds contrast brilliantly against one another. Also, prepare to laugh quite often. Snow Crash is a funny book.   

6. PAOLO BAGICALUPI : The Windup Girl

The world is getting smaller. Not because of a cataclysmic cosmological event but because the shortage of fossil fuels made us revert in relying on animal labor. Collapse of the economies of entire continents, chronic malnourishment, religious cleansings and an endless string of resistant terminal infections have pushed humanity to the very edge of existence. And yet, human greed and blind ambition still offer the impetus for the endless power-games that care not how many lives get trampled under its threads.

An American investor/spy after Thailand's only remaining bio-treasure; a shrewd and ruthless refugee trying to rebuilt his empire lost to murderous fundamentalism; government factions locked in a power-struggle to the death; and a seductively-designed Japanese Windup Girl that will unwillingly serve as the catalyst for the brewing explosion. I do consider The Windup Girl to be a cyberpunk novel as it depicts the aftermath of our ongoing technoeconomical binging. 

5. JAMES S.A. COREY: The Expanse Series

Even if this may be one of the rare occasions, where transferring a book to the screen actually enhances its impact, The Expanse novels are still well worth your time. An expansive adventure that perfectly blends unbridled futurism and technological meta-humanity with basic vices and familiar motivations. Daniel Abraham and Ty Franck (the collaborating authors behind the pseudonym James S.A. Corey) took cyberpunk and shot it to the reaches of our solar system - and beyond. While, at the same time, they managed to convey the smell of a well used spacesuit, the uncertainty of moving in freefall, the taste of cheap printed protein paste and the terminal terror of the vacuum.  

Bite down hard and let the juice carry you through the gs.

 

4. WILLIAM GIBSON: The Bridge Trilogy

The three books consisting William Gibson’s vision of a near future West Coast are: Virtual Light, Idoru and All Tomorrow’s Parties. The technological futurism of the 20th century is on the cusp of emergence (even if the flavor we are getting is much more bitter than expected) and the corporate powers are elbowing for position. America has been Balkanized into numerous fractions while life tries to paint over the cracked pavement a thin coating of the normalcy people grew up in. Meanwhile, in depressingly upbeat Japan, the first crude attempt is made to treat personality simulations as real persons.    

The Trilogy gets its name from the first book, in which people have turned the earthquake-condemned Golden Bay Bridge into a makeshift habitat for the homeless. It is always creepy to realize how good Gibson is in predicting nodal points in both technology and societal progression.

3. RICHARD MORGAN: The Takeshi Covacs Trilogy

Handle with care, for the testosterone levels of these novels needle into the red. The Trilogy (so far) consists of Altered Carbon, Broken Angels and Woken Furies - but it would be an omission not to mention Black Man (released as Thirteen in the US) as a very worthy prequel. 

Dive into Takeshi Covacs’ world and you will crave resleeving your backed-up consciousness into fresh bodies, enlisting into the Envoy Corps, dreaming of Martian Artifacts (that are not Martian after all) and you will try to find a way to book tickets to Harlan’s World. My advice: start saving for a needlecast, the only way to travel!

Morgan has meticulously created a world that feels, sounds, looks and smells real. As a result, the story only grows richer and deeper every time he revisits it. 

2. NEAL STEPHENSON: The Diamond Age (A Young Lady’s Illustrated Primer)

Mid 21st century Shanghai. Imagine a nanotechnology book-shaped supercomputer designed to train and morph any upper-class privileged girl into the proper young lady the neo-Victorian microsociety of her enclave demands. Now, imagine that this very valuable piece of technology somehow ends up in the hands of an underprivileged orphan girl instead. The Diamond Age is Stephenson’s tour de force in cyberpunk that manages to grab your attention from the very beginning and never lets go. A book worked to its finest detail, an impressive body of work that is extremely entertaining to read while leaving you with a thought provoking aftertaste that lingers on for years.

1. WILLIAM GIBSON: The Sprawl Trilogy

Neuroromancer. Count Zero. Mona Lisa Overdrive. Together with the collection of short stories, Burning Chrome, these are the Four Gospels of cyberpunk. 

A bleak world of nerve/biochip integration; ICE-cutting cyberspace cowboys and jacked up razor girls; artificial intelligence entities holding citizenships and striving to be more; immortalized billionaires spread single-cell thinly over acres of support vats. The constant grey drizzle condensing under the unfinished domes of the Boston-Atlanta Metropolitan Area urban sprawl tries to hide a world of drugs and hustlers and players – all losers and all winners in their little games. And Freeside, the Babylon in the sky, the rotating space station that serves as off-world data heaven and money-laundering banking shelter and houses a byzantine family of clones, locked in an endless power struggle.

In a world where knowledge and abilities is the insertion of a single biosoft away and media stars share their entire fine tuned sensorium with their fans, ambition and murder is the only aura to radiate. And William Gibson’s prose is poetic and hypnotic.

Welcome to the Edge. That is the Future. And it does not get any better, the closer it gets.     

The World Of The Witchers

I bought The Last Wish on the strength of the first Witcher PC game but could not find time to read it before completing the second one. It matters not in what sequence one experiences them but if unfamiliar with the Witcher universe, I would suggest starting with this book.

It is more of a collection of stories about Gearalt of Rivia, a witcher also known as the White Wolf, and his world than a fantasy novel. It is part of a series that, unfortunately, is not translated and published in English in the author's intended sequence.

This is a world full of Eastern European lore, greedy kings, scheming princes, starving elves, bickering dwarfs, seducing witches, wizards on the run, mythical creatures and hideous monsters - and the rare witcher to keep them all in balance.

The stories, however, are more independent of one another than usual and even if some of them converge, in the end this reads as part of a series than a standalone novel.

Recommended to fantasy fans and RPG gamers alike.

The Other Half Of The Witcher's Sky

I am going to go against the current here but I actually enjoyed the Blood of Elves, this third collection of The Witcher stories, better than the first book, The Last Wish. In fact, I found this to be more of an actual novel than the first one which was more of a collection of loosely interconnected stories.

Scheming knights and short-tempered dwarfs; charming elves and enchanting witches; monsters and monster-slayers; greedy kings and the thickening of the fog of war; conspiring wizards and the law of Surprise.And in a world in turmoil, Geralt of Rivia, the White Wolf, is entrusted with Ciri, the girl of prophesy - and his destiny. Whichever that may be.

Too bad the publisher did not consider it necessary to translate and publish the second book of the series, The Sword of Destiny. It would had tied the story of the Witcher much better together.

Sure, it may not be canonical literature but it is a great fantasy book to bring to the beach or take to your comfortable armchair during a rainy weekend. For its genre, it is a great book.

Recommended to fantasy fans and RPG gamers alike.

A Bloated Mess

When a long book is also good, it is a delight. In contrast, a long book that slowly turns from indifferent to bad is a chore. Sadly, Fall of Giants is one of those books.

Ken Follett, instead of coming up with three new ideas decided to stretch the plot of a single book into three, thousand-page, parts of a Trilogy. And it is painfully apparent. The story could had easily fit into a third of the pages and it would had been tighter and much easier to follow. A thousand pages novel which received little work and even less craft is too much.

And yet, for all its length, the book never gives but a very epidermal and caricaturish study of its characters. You get to follow the honorable yet rigid aristocrat and his temperamental Russian-princess of a wife; the rich suffragette and the poor, single-mother activist; the level headed German gentleman and his homosexual Austrian cousin; the young American presidential adviser and the spoiled daughter of the nouveau-riche thug; and two Russian brothers that could not be more opposite in character. However, apart from a name and a brief character-tag you get nothing. They all feel like stick figures drawn at the corner of the pages containing the story.

You keep turning pages because you are curious, but, after a while, you realize that you do not actually care for any of them.

Around these characters the world collapses into World-War I and everyone's life is swept into the cataclysmic currents that engulf the world. Strangely, the political decisions and machinations described are oversimplified and described as much more naive and open than realistically possible. And everything has a strong left-wing bias.

On top of being a bloated book, for some strange reason, Follett makes numerous clumsy attempts to exonerate the House of Rothschilds from any wrongdoing. Their British branch is described as "peace loving" whereas the role of their German branch is conveniently omitted.

In fact, it was the Rothschilds who funded Lenin, Trotsky and their Bolshevik party in taking control of the Russian revolution. This well calculated move (which opened up what was later to be known as the Red Orchestra) turned an allied nation into the Communistic bogeyman that fueled the Cold War armament race of the past 50 years - and seeded the global debt crisis of our generation.

For over 1,200 years, in war or piece, republics or totalitarian regimes, this Khazarian House of international financing has been puppet-mastering history from the shadows - and the House always seem to win.

If this were a mere book of fiction it would be just an annoyance. However, Follett claims numerous historians as his advisers and, thus, opens himself to valid criticism. For all his historic claims, the story he tells is more of an Orwellian re-write than actual history.

Pass. With extreme prejudice.

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Øverated

Stieg Larsson's brilliant Millenium Trilogy made Scandinavian crime fiction hip again. So, in the wake of his success (and the vacuum created by his untimely death in 2004), Jo Nesbo was brought in to fill the empty spotlight. With only mixed results, I am afraid.

I decided to start with Redbreast because it is the first book of his Harry Hole series that has been translated in English (although there had been two books previous to this one in Norwegian - and there are references to the hero's previous cases). The story may be a standalone but the character development suffers from this truncation.

The story of Redbreast steps on two timelines that slowly converge. One is the story of a group of young Norwegian Nazis fighting on the side of the Germans during WWII. The other is a mess of a police story where a mistake prone Harry Hole stumbles onto a case of the import of a vintage (and extremely expensive) sniper rifle and then manages to fumble most clues and miss a number of opportunities to solve the mystery long before its climax.

I am not going to continue with any more books by this writer. The narration feels forced, with a number of mood-killing reality TV references, predictable stereotypes and one-page chapters. What is worse, the characters are both underdeveloped and internally inconsistent. Nesbo is clearly not in Larsson's league.

I gave the book some extra credit for cantor. When the Germans themselves try to squiggle out of their national shame of supporting Nazism (not to mention still avoiding paying their WWII debts), it was brave for Nesbo to admit that the majority of Norwegians in the 1940's indeed supported the National Socialists and were willing collaborators of Hitler's vision.

Unfortunately, the rest of the book does not justify the admission price.