Thursday, May 21, 2015

The Warded Man (Book 1 of The Demon Cycle) by Peter V. Brett (4 stars)

I'm giving this 4 stars because it was highly entertaining and kept me wanting more. It's pretty trashy though. Some spoilers ahead.

Brett brings us to a post-apocalyptic Earth where demons (corelings) rise up from the earth every night and kill any humans that aren't shielded by magic runes (wards). Here begins my first beef. The demons are smart enough to systematically test a ward net for weaknesses, but not smart enough to kick some dust or mud onto the wards, rendering them useless? This would surely happen accidentally, and they display capability to learn - one coreling tracks Arlen across vast distances and maintains a vigil outside the city walls. So how have they not crushed this flimsy defensive system? Also, how have people been using wards for generations but never thought to put them on clothes or weapons?

But, suspending my disbelief about the wards, the world is very interesting, and I wanted to find out more about the demons. They remain one-dimensional purely evil beings through the whole book, which is kind of a shame, but this is addressed in the later books.

The characters are good, and the development is significant, in fact most of this first book is character development. The exception is Leesha, and the treatment of women in general.

I get that this is essentially the dark ages, which wasn't exactly a great time for women's rights, but Leesha's POV is 80% about who is trying to rape her today. And when something serious does actually happen, she brushes it off and has sex with a stranger a couple of days later in the least plausible sequence of the entire novel. I don't think there's a single female character that escapes the clumsy sexual descriptions.

4 stars.

Wednesday, May 13, 2015

Vernon God Little by DBC Pierre (3 stars)

This Booker prize winner attempts to give us a satire on American life using a teenage narrator whose language is full of four letter words and malapropisms, "skate goat" being one of the most well-used. Vernon is a naive Texas teenager caught up in a mass murder-suicide by his best friend Jesus.

The satire is dark and grating, but never actually got me laughing. Vernon's character is well constructed and full of age-appropriate naive fantasies about escaping to Mexico with the hot girl from school, and a ridiculous (but completely in-character) willingness to ruin his life rather than own up to bowel problems. I felt sorry for him, and frustrated by him, but I never enjoyed reading through his eyes. The refrigerator obsessed mother, Bar-B-Chew-Barn-addicted mothers-friend, and TV-repairman/reporter/super-villain were exaggerated caricatures that should have been funny, but just weren't.

Many people have compared this novel to a Confederacy of Dunces, but it isn't remotely in the same league. Ignatius was a spectacular character, made me laugh out loud a number of times, and is so memorable I find myself recalling him completely out of context. Vernon is completely forgettable, but certainly realistic. Honestly though I think an overly-educated character acting in a ridiculous way has more appeal to me than an idiot being an idiot, so perhaps Pierre just picked a tougher assignment.

The biggest contradiction in Vernon's character is the occasional poetic phrase that will slip out. DBC Pierre is obviously an impressive writer and manages to maintain the dumb teenager voice but apparently couldn't resist pulling back the veil occasionally:
A strip of buffalo leather scrapes into the room, tacked around the soul of Sheriff Porkorney.
A receptionist with spiky teeth, and a voicebox made from bees trapped in tracing paper, sits behind a desk in the waiting room.
I remember once calling my daddy to collect me from a place, but was sad when he came because I’d since grown to love the place. Death takes me like that.
3 stars.

Sunday, May 3, 2015

Bossypants by Tina Fey (3.5 stars)

It's funny, but I wish I'd gone for the audio book instead, apparently it's really good. So much of comedy is in the delivery and body language that even the best stuff can usually only get me to 'heh' whereas seeing the same thing in a sketch could have been a belly laugh. Some of my favourite quotes:
Luxury cruises were designed to make something unbearable—a two-week transatlantic crossing—seem bearable. There’s no need to do it now. There are planes. You wouldn’t take a vacation where you ride on a stagecoach for two months but there’s all-you-can-eat shrimp. You wouldn’t take a vacation where you have an old-timey appendectomy without anesthesia while steel drums play. You might take a vacation where you ride on a camel for two days if they gave you those animal towels wearing your sunglasses.
“My mother did this for me once,” she will realize as she cleans feces off her baby’s neck. “My mother did this for me.” And the delayed gratitude will wash over her as it does each generation and she will make a Mental Note to call me.
3.5 stars.