Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes (4 stars)

This book seems an unlikely candidate for a science fiction award, but it won both the Hugo (as a short story) and the Nebula in its longer novel form.  The story follows, in first-person perspective, the experience of a mentally retarded man whose IQ is drastically increased by an undescribed medical operation. It doesn't feel much like science fiction, as the focus is on Charlie, self-discovery, and his changing perspective and personal relationships.

I thought Keyes did an excellent job of capturing Charlie's thoughts, his realisation that his childhood 'friends' were often mocking and cruel, and his terror at losing all his knowledge as the effects of the operation begin to reverse.  Charlie finds difficulties at both ends of the IQ spectrum, when he is a genius his emotional age has not grown with his intelligence and he finds himself being arrogant and insensitive.

Keyes also explores the strain that a mentally retarded child places on the parents and siblings.  On the birth of a 'normal' daughter, Charlie's mother switches from obsessively trying to push Charlie's abilities toward normal, to being overprotective of her new daughter at the cost of any love she had for Charlie.

Some reviewers have described the novel as a tearjerker, but I found it strangely lacking in pathos.  I'm not sure why.  It was definitely sad, but not powerfully so.  The book was made into a movie in 1968, I'll check that out and update this post.

4 stars.

Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson (3.5 stars)

"Yo ho ho and a bottle of rum!" This book is the defining work of the pirate genre, and I think of it as a the sort of novel Tom Clancy or other modern action/thriller writers would have written if they were alive in 1883. It is a rollicking, action-packed tale that is great for kids, with a young adventure-seeking boy as the narrator.

Long John Silver is a great character - totally charming, ruthless, and self-interested. The writers of Pirates of the Caribbean borrowed much of his character for Jack Sparrow.

A couple of things I thought were a little ridiculous. One was when young Hawkins decides to go on the treasure hunt. He intends to follow a map that a bunch of pirates have killed a number of people to get their hands on, including very nearly Hawkins and his mother themselves. But there was no word of protest from the mother about him going on this journey. Maybe parenting standards were lower in 1883? Or treasure hunting was a more accepted vocation? This could have been solved by a simple paragraph about Hawkins running away.

The second thing that annoyed me was that Stevenson made it completely obvious that the clueless, foppish, squire had hired a bunch of murderous pirates and their leader Long John Silver to crew the Hispaniola on its treasure hunting mission. Couldn't he have left a bit more suspense and intrigue here? It was completely obvious that all of the crew were pirates and would turn on the good guys.

I hand you a black spot, and on the reverse it says:

3.5 stars

American Gods by Neil Gaiman (3 stars)

Just kind of meh.

I have read some of the Sandman graphic novels, and Good Omens, but this is my first Gaiman-only novel and I don't really have much to say about it. I liked the premise of the old gods with dwindling followings slowly losing power to new gods of Media, Internet etc. As an aside, the image of those new gods was well chosen - a sophisticated impossibly beautiful Media woman and a fat, arrogant pimply kid as Internet. I think this quote gives you a picture of the Internet god:

Tell him that we have fucking reprogrammed reality. Tell him that language is a virus and that religion is an operating system and that prayers are just so much fucking spam. Tell him that or I'll fucking kill you

But overall, while I enjoyed reading the book I felt no sense of urgency. The climax was non-existent and I found myself working through it like the character Shadow - plodding from one strange experience to the next, never questioning, never getting particularly excited or reacting to the events around him. Could there be a less interesting, vacuous protagonist?

Given the premise, this book could have been a fascinating look into an alternative world, but it just felt lacklustre. There is some humour, I will leave you with part of a two-page rant from Sam ("you have no idea what I can believe") but nothing in the league of Good Omens.

...I believe that candy really did taste better when I was a kid, that it's aerodynamically impossible for a bumblebee to fly, that light is a wave and a particle, that there's a cat in a box somewhere who's alive and dead at the same time (although if they don't ever open the box to feed it it'll eventually just be two different kinds of dead), and that there are stars in the universe billions of years older than the universe itself. I believe...

3 stars.

PS. Rock City is actually a real place, and the barns advertising it from miles around do exist. I just added it to my list of things to see in the US!

Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson (4 stars)

The United States of America is reduced to a suburb-state within its previous geographic boundaries; millions live in palaces in a virtual reality Metaverse while their bodies sit in 'houses' in former storage garages subdivided into a concrete ghetto; the mafia delivers pizzas, and being a pizza delivery driver (a 'Deliverator') is a high-risk superstar occupation like being a formula-1 driver of decades past:

When the Deliverator puts the hammer down, shit happens. You want to talk contact patches? Your car's tires have tiny contact patches, talk to the asphalt in four places the size of your tongue. The Deliverator's car has big sticky tires with contact patches the size of a fat lady's thighs. The Deliverator is in touch with the road, starts like a bad day, stops on a peseta.

Stephenson creates a fantastic cyberpunk world, with a good eye for forward-looking technology advancements, given it was penned in 1992. He has a wry sense of humour and witty writing style that pervades all parts of the book, including our hero protaganist 'Hiro Protagonist' and offsider 15-year-old Your's Truly or 'Y.T.':

"Y.T. Where are you?"
"In the parking lot of a Safeway on Oahu," he says. And he's telling the truth; in the background she can hear the shopping carts performing their clashy, anal copulations.

Everything is a franchise: countries, crime, the mafia, religion. Compton is still a dangerous place, run by managers following instructions from a three-ring binder that tells them how to run their Narcolombia franchise. I loved the description of Fed-land where penny-pinching is taken to the extreme such that employees need to establish toilet-paper communal funds to stock bathrooms.

Snow crash is wreaking havoc on the Metaverse, and the real world at the same time. Cue the incredibly boring, ridiculous explanation of verbal viruses based on Sumerian ancient texts and other religious historical research in worse-than-Dan-Brown format.

"Deuteronomy is the only book of the Pentateuch that refers to a written Torah as comprising the divine will: 'And when he sits on the throne of his kingdom, he shall write for himself in a book a copy of this law, from that which is in charge of the Levitical priests; and it shall be with him, and he shall read in it all the days of his life, that he may learn to fear the LORD his God, by keeping...

yawn. It is a tragedy that Stephenson wrote these passages where Hiro has lengthy discussions with the Librarian. They destroy the flow of the book, and seem to only exist because Stephenson spent a lot of time doing this research and wanted to include it in the final product. The book would have been far better with no explanation, or a limited summary such as Hiro gives to Mr. Lee and Uncle Enzo. It cost you a star Mr. Stephenson, I'm sure you're crushed.

4 stars.

The Lies of Locke Lamora by Scott Lynch (4.5 stars)

The Lies of Locke Lamora has been on my to-read list for a long time. I tried to find it in book stores a few times, and it was never in stock, so I was very pleased to see there was a kindle edition.

It is different from most fantasy novels in a couple of ways: there is a lot of swearing that seems strangely modern, i.e. suited for the times of guns and cars, rather than swords and horses where the novel is set.  In a way that also fits with the other difference, the presence of 'elderglass' skyscrapers left behind by the planet's previous alien inhabitants and occupied by the current generation of  less technologically advanced humans.

The dialogue is often very witty, and Locke is written in a hilarious sarcastic and irreverent style.  This passage where he completely ignores Chains' advice about how to treat a Bondsmage (sorcerer) with respect is a great example:

"Sorcery's impressive enough, but it's their fucking attitude that makes them such a pain.  And that's why, when you find yourself face to face with one, you bow and scrape and mind your 'sirs' and 'madams.'" 
"NICE BIRD, asshole," said Locke.
The Bondsmage stared coldly at him, nonplussed.

Lynch also seems to have a particular interest in food - he treats us to detailed explanations of food that Locke and the other Gentleman Bastards prepare, and makes the culinary arts a particularly unlikely part of their con-artist education. His description of the Duke's banquet "The bullock's head with the body of a squid, he was happy to avoid" was like something straight out of Heston's feasts.

I thought Lynch could have spent longer with Locke in the dank underground caverns with the Thiefmaker, that community and life was fascinating and very Dickensian. And while I enjoyed the racing plot line of the climax, the switch to James Bond-esque thriller and Locke's sudden growth of a social conscious didn't fit well with the rest of the novel.

Despite these minor flaws, I loved it and will be reading the sequel Red Seas Under Red Skies.

4.5 stars.

Rocket Boys by Homer Hickam Jr. (3.5 stars)

This autobiographical book was the inspiration for the movie October Sky (an anagram of Rocket Boys): a story of a kid growing up in a West Virginian mining town who beats the odds to pursue his dream of becoming a rocket engineer. The pictures of life in Coalwood were well-drawn, but I felt disconnected from most of the characters. This surprised me since it is written as a novel, rather than a completely historical account. I found myself liking Quentin a whole lot more than Sonny - not only did he have pretty much all the brains, he often provided the drive and motivation.

I enjoyed reading this book, but I can't think of much to praise or criticise, and it isn't a story that will stick with me for a long time. One reviewer mentioned this book is one of those rare breeds where the movie is better than the book. I'll have to check out the movie and see if I agree.

3.5 stars.

The Wise Man's Fear by Patrick Rothfuss (5 stars)

This is the second in the Kingkiller Chronicles, sequel to The Name of The Wind, which was one of the best books I read last year.  I was keen to read this and see how Rothfuss would follow his impressive debut.

The book continues to lay out the life of Kvothe, our ridiculously over-talented protagonist, through his adventures at the university and thankfully, in this book, breaking the Harry Potter mold to venture out into the real world for some adventure.  Kvothe certainly adds to his real-world experience: gaining favour in a royal court, leading a band of mercenaries, and training with the Adem super-ninjas. 

The sections of the book where he lives with Felurian and the Adem felt a bit like obligatory "skilling up" in a computer game.  Those sections seemed to be about "+10 experience with women" and "+10 combat skills", getting Kvothe ready for book three.  At least they were entertaining training montages.

In the first book I loved Elodin, but I think his character sucked in this one.  His "classes" were supposed to be ridiculous, but I found some of the comments and humour better suited to college jocks than to Elodin's eccentric and mysterious academic character:

Uresh.  Your next assignment is to have sex.  If you do not know how to do this, see me after class.

At times Rothfuss used some bizarre time compression, like his description of the entire boat trip from the university:

In brief, there was a storm, piracy, treachery, and shipwreck, although not in that order.  It also goes without saying that I did a great many things, some heroic, some ill-advised, some clever and audacious.

Sounds to me like his editor told him to take out an unnecessary plot line, but he didn't want to completely remove it.  And this was only one of a number of times that Kvothe loses absolutely all of his possessions except his extremely expensive lute which somehow miraculously survives each time.

Another character incongruity that bothered me was after Kvothe left the Adem he seemed to throw out all the psychological lessons they taught him and turn into a bloodthirsty arsehole.  Within a few pages he was killing a whole heap of people and saying things like:

And if you ever do anything to either of them, I'll know.  I will come here, and kill you, and leave your body hanging in a tree.

Oh, and I haven't read such ridiculous sexual tension as when Kvothe and Denna are bathing in the stream near Imre since the Twilight series.

Having said all that, I really did like this book, and it was pretty much impossible to put down.  The world Rothfuss has created is fascinating.  The branches of magic: sympathy, sygaldry, naming etc. are well presented, and semi-scientific.  I love the Chandrian, so dark, myseterious, and powerful that even speaking their true names can be a death sentence. 

Now for some spoliers and plot guessing.  I suspect that Bredon is an Amyr - he is too involved in the story to not show up again.  He may also turn out to be Mister Ash - Denna's patron, or her patron could be one of the Chandrian.  I think there are also more surprises coming about Bast, and I'm sure Kvothe's little Adem training friend will save his life at least once.

Update: I originally gave this 4.5, but decided I was being too harsh. 5 stars!