Review (ARC): Colossus

(ARC review from NetGalley)

Oh man, I didn’t realize I had a real thing for the Sci-Fi trope ‘issues with cryo-sleep’ (maybe because Passengers wasn’t such a great film and it distracted me from liking the trope) but Colossus absolutely brings out the best of this.

The book follow Clay West. A former economics lecturer who for various (spoilery) reasons finds himself volunteering for a long (unbelievably so) term space journey for what has been described as a colonizing mission to create a new society. The book begins as Clay is woken prematurely from a cryo-sleep and is faced with about a dozen moral dilemmas as he tries to figure out a. what to do and b. a seemingly endless amount of mystery about the true purpose of the mission.

As the story progresses we learn more about Clay’s backstory, Part I dances between the ‘present’ and this history in a seamless and well paced narrative. I often get annoyed with badly done backstory but this book does it well! We’re also introduced to the complex and controversial drug “Dying Wish” a substance which allegedly brings the most euphoric realizations but is always fatal.

If you’re wondering what a powerful drug has to do with a sci-fi about a very deep space mission, don’t worry – as Part I comes to an end the rabbit hole of concepts grows ever deeper and crazier and it does not disappoint.

So overall I REALLY liked this book. I love sci-fi that doesn’t shy away from really intense concepts but also manages to balance the human angle and good character stories alongside the big picture ideas.

My only beef is that Part II where the book takes us away from MC Clay for quite a while to explore the background of the more technical stuff – I recon it could have been 1/2 the length and still captured the vital parts of the story, Part II felt like a real slowing of the pace of this awesome novel and while it was worth getting through it, the section dragged a little.

As this is an advance review I’ll avoid a deep dive into the concepts – but I anticipate coming back to this after release to see others interpretations and explanations, its definitely the sort of book that will generate a lot of analysis!

Weekly Writing Roundup: The End Of January 2024

Harr de har har

Am I the Literary Assh*le? Judging Your Bad Bookish Behavior

I feel like Arnett has my dream job (except I imagine answering these questions gets old real quick) pretty funny for a quick read not sure if there is much to learn, but sometimes that’s OK.

The toddler book tolerability index.

This is great – I can’t believe the classic Corduroy is still I thing, its just so quaint I assumed it was something from the depths of the past. Poor old ‘Pout the Pout Fish’ appears to garner no toddler enthusiasm or adult tolerance…

Beyond BICHOK: How, When and Why Getting Your Butt Out of the Chair Can Make You a Better Writer

Not sure Butt in Chair, Hands on Keyboard should be acronymed but agree with the article. Much if not most literary inspiration and problem solving happens when not staring at the screen.

What Is LGBTQ+ Fiction—And Does a Writer Have to Be Queer to Write It?

I really liked this article (especially as someone with a fairly privileged identity [but I wouldn’t say no to some intergenerational wealth, just saying] who wants to create diverse characters this article is beyond helpful).

Really liked the Vito Russo Test much inspired by the Bechdel Test, for ensuring your Queer characters are represented well. (its a bit more practical than the Bechdel Test, which in not a critique of the B test, its just its requirements are immersed in the ironic and invisible prejudices in fiction. For those who have been rock living and are wondering about the Bechdel Test, all its passing requirements are: two female characters, who have a conversation together, NOT about men. Here is a list of movies that fail the test. It might seem like an odd test but when you consider there are barely any movies with the reverse concern you can see some concerns)

Writing Multiple Plotlines: Everything You Need to Know

Going to be brutally honest I haven’t read this article yet – but it looks good! And touches on the topic mentioned last week.

Reflection

This week I finished Stolen Focus which details fascinating and disturbing reasons for our attentions spans feeling like they in the seconds (spoiler – its not just the internet, also stress and information overload in general). It very interesting to apply it to writing. While I much enjoy these weekly writing roundups I’m also mindful of whether I am absorbing writing resources for my own learning or now to share them in my blog. I am hoping for both!!

Review (NetGalley Advance copy): When Shadows Grow Tall

(Advance Review through NetGalley)

When Shadows Grow Tall was an interesting read for me. Fantasy is a favourite genre for me, however I feel there are a lot of things to get right and a lot of risky tropes that can ruin a book (I suppose that’s not unique to fantasy, but I have a sense fails in fantasy are more severe).

The strengths of Voss’ novel are the great pacing – I don’t think I experienced boredom at any stage of the story, nor little desire to speed things up to get to the ‘good parts’ the story had a good balance of exposition and world building, very epic and vivid action, and overall was always fun to be in the pages of this one.

Our MCs are Lovelace – a good, albeit rebellious, ranger mage who is desperate to save young mages from a an evil outcast who keeps finding and murdering emerging mages before his order can recruit them.

And Kylene, whose story is a little more mysterious – her father has disappeared after being revealed to be too seditious for the dystopian regime in place over ‘The Grasp’ and Kylene is willing to risk it all to find him.

While the story was good fun there were a few flaws in my eyes.

The prose was on the odd occasion, a bit much, I never realized a dawn could be “fresh and crisp as a new apple” but also break “as easy as an egg.” To be honest, its not quite purple but there were moments that the simile were just enough to push me out of the story. (Although I will say use of the word ‘Lumpsucker’ wins a lot of points from me)

While the world building was really well delivered throughout the story rather than big info dumps, it felt like the whole story was interspersed with lore and particularly towards the end I really wanted more ACTION not more exposition. Especially the last few chapters – there was a bit of a sense of ‘first book in a series’ syndrome where not a huge amount of significant plot points happened as obviously enough needed to be saved for later books.

My final beef was that the villains were just a bit shallow and cheesy, their dialogue very “mwah ha ha.” while the mythos around them was suitable, the delivery of their actual presence was somewhat flat.

Overall this book is great for fantasy lovers, especially if you’re looking for intense magic battles but based in a relatively gritty grimy mundane world.

Review (Discworld): I Shall Wear Midnight

Of the many things that strike me about reading through the Discworlds, is that even after so many dozens of books (Pratchett didn’t just write Discworlds either!) they can still be such high quality and have new and original ideas. I’m also a little shocked I slept on the Tiffany Aching series when it first came out – although the benefit of that is that I am immensely enjoying them now.

I’ve also mentioned throughout the whole series that even though Pratchett is known for being fun loving and humorous I really like his darker moments. Well to be honest I Shall Wear Midnight is almost too dark. It’s actually pretty shocking. The first sequence has Tiffany dealing with a girl who has been beaten into a miscarriage by her father, the ‘big-bad’ is the biggest bad yet (I’ll avoid describing for spoilers on the very off chance of a newbee) and some of the actions of said baddie are a few steps beyond our usual villains.

What I will spoil a little is my much anticipating return of ‘Esk.’ I’d heard she appeared again at some point but had no idea when/how/what (Esk is the 8th “son” of an 8th son and thusly a powerful sorcerer that G. Weatherwax helped get into the Unseen University way back in Equal Rites). Esk is grown(?) now and her relationship with Simon grew into quite the wild time-travelly intriguing story – one that literally gave me goosebumps to read as I was reminded what a tragedy it is that Pratchett couldn’t produce more stories.

Which brings me to the fact I’m getting cray cray close to finishing this Discworld run-through. Maybe I should slow down!

Weekly Writing Roundup 20.1.2024

A few horror prompts for you

So… I met a bunch of successful writers. They all said that beta readers are a stupid idea.
byu/Fit_Aardvark_9989 inwriting

This reminds me of the advice not to listen to successful people for their advice on how you too can be successful – because they basically just tell you their story of how they got there, they don’t necessarily know what you need!

Beta readers can be useful, but I think some people get dragged into lengthy discussions or a sort of people-pleasing. Beta-readers really shouldn’t be treated as expert editors but rather just a useful 3rd party reader that helps you get out of your own head with your writing.

I really like this topic because I need to get better at it. I tend to write ‘lonely’ plotlines – McNulty provides great down to earth practical writing advice – I do wish for more thematic resources on plotlines but both are important!

7 Tips to Craft Compelling Character Motivation in Fiction

Another strong post from Weiland – I think a real takeaway is the reminder to imbed your characters motivation into their POV (and their POV into the prose) I think beginner writers often try to create dry settings and scenes to place their characters in, better to make the CHARACTER the scene.

Kingfisher

Reflection

People pleasing and Perfectionism are enemies of progress. Both are creating a useful fiction in making ourselves feel better (if I get 100% in pleasing others or some other test I’ll be happy) but these ways of thinking are distortions – reality and writing requires any number of things that we need to be simply ‘good enough’ at it might feel as fulfilling but its more real.

Review (ARC copy): One Hundred Shadows

I was originally drawn to the intriguing sounding premise of One Hundred Shadows, people’s shadows rising? Wow, what would be the potential outcomes, or twists of this phenomenon?

And while I realize that the shadows would be somewhat metaphoric and/or related to the social and political messages of the story (it says right there in the blurb the focus is on a slum in the otherwise bright lights of Seoul, South Korea. The honest response from was a bit of disappointment for this book.

Which was frustrating. I have no problem with sociological critique tales, especially challenging the perspectives of the powerful and flashy, and I don’t mind a supernatural theme being used sparsely and as an allegory, but I felt like One Hundred Shadows was perhaps just a bit too specific to its niche? As an NZ reader I don’t know much about South Korea, and although themes of demolishing slums to build tennis courts are unfortunately highly universal I felt like this book might have had more impact in Korea than outside.

To be a bit more specific, the story presents as a few slices of Eungyo and Mujae’s life occasionally mentioning something odd about shadows and occasionally presenting a poignant image about the slums and the impending demolition, but mostly just small anecdote moments of their lives. I think a highly attentive reader who wanted to study this book more academically and connect all the moments and images together with the brief shadow metaphors would enjoy this, or as I already said perhaps if you lived in Seoul or South Korea some of the stories might be more relatable (just as a story about Dunedin would be to me!) however as a general read I found the book a little directionless.

Review: The Deading (Advance copy through NetGalley):

(this is an advance review through NetGalley)

The Deading had a lot attracting me to it, a strange premise, links to King’s Under the Dome and an intense title. And as I dove into the book it only got stranger still. The book has many ‘parts’ – part virus horror, part cosmic, part societal critique, part cult, with a dash of satire snuck in there.

The plot follows Baywood, or rather the mysterious hivemind/blob/infection that spreads into the small isolated town, leading to an enforced quarantine. A violent quarantine which is somehow less concerning than the bizarre process of ‘deading’ where people and animals infected have a tendency to ‘die’ for short periods.

Perhaps my favourite thing about this story is the quirky and unique juxtaposition of normal everyday life alongside the unusual and disturbing infection. It’s not a zombie thriller, nor is it a typical pandemic thriller – The Deading obviously has a major impact on the population but at the same time people are sort of going about their lives, either trying to understand/resist/lean into the infection process.

My only real concerns about the book is there is a LOT. A raft of characters, plot points, and themes all while maintaining an air of mystery about the events of the story. For the first few chapters I actually genuinely thought this was going to be one of those winding narratives where each chapter was a brand new perspective as for about the first 5 or so was always a new POV. In a similar vein there were moments were I found the narrative a little too speedy, there were some really intense grounded scenes, but often some really significant moments seemed almost rushed, and reviewed in a sort of narrative summary. I honestly thought this book could have been twice as long and spent more time exploring the events of the story and been the better for it.

Overall The Deading though is really good, I could imagine this being a really good movie or TV series as the premise is so different, while there are nods to tropey or genre elements the tale feels like itself and itself only. Some might be disappointed to read this that the story isn’t heavy on answers, perhaps leaving more questions afterwards – also I feel this book acts as a kind of ‘multiphor’ the blob/infection/Deading kind of representing many different themes (racism, classism, ageism, nature striking back, at least) so in some respects it avoid preaching because the story touches on many different issues, but some might prefer a more direct message.

An exciting and original work, recommended!

Weekly Writing Roundup: 14.1.2024

So this might be a little tangential to writing, but I love Folding Ideas, also I think being aware of both fiction and non-fiction ‘stories’ being used as marketing is very useful. Even before the interwebs this has been a technique of advertising – producing a genuine ‘story’ but highly motivated story (usually published in newspapers/newsletters etc).

I don’t necessarily hate that stories can have this motivation behind them, but its very much worth being aware of them. Whether its kids cartoons being little more than advertising for for the that branch of toys, or the US military supporting movies that make them look good:

It’s important to be mindful that this is a ‘thing’

For a slightly lighter topic:

This is a REALLY interesting deep dive into masculine heroes and fantasy. I think for me the take-home message is that being excused from the mundane IS the point. While it would be nice to think that we capture some beyond deep and meaningful purpose, deep down I believe the ‘fantasy’ is to be free of the day-to-day, to excuse not taking part in effortful chores due to “glorious purpose.”

I think the above video is relevant for fiction and life.

Netgalley

I’ve also been ‘sleeping on’ Netgalley for a long while, I’m giving it a go this year as a way to perhaps keep better in touch with new releases and whatnot (when I first started reviewing books I addictively sought out new Kindle releases in the vain [both meanings] to get as much attention to my reviews as possible.)

Reflection for the Week

Perhaps a slightly glum one (for writers but kinda great for readers). Books are somewhat different from movies and Tv shows in that you are spoiled for choice. Any number of books get published per year, and in my opinion, books do not age as poorly at screen works. (not all screenplays age poorly but for example MCU movies are partly hyped by their proximity to other MCU movies [at least in the first 3 phases] I don’t image many people would flock to them])

As I said this is great for readers that we have tonnes of choice, but it does mean that when you want to publish you aren’t just competing for attention with other new releases, some people will want to grab classics, old favourites and that book they never got around to reading. It’s a lot.

Review (Discworld): Unseen Academicals

AWK AWK

This is going to be a bit of a strange review, I haven’t read Unseen Academicals before and I have to confess for the longest time I had it confused with ‘The Science of the Discworld’ and/or thought it was more of a companion book rather than a complete story in itself.

So it was interesting diving into this one. I’d heard from other commenters that UU was sometimes disliked due to its focus on Football, and I have to say I don’t think it’s the Football, UU is for want of a better word odd.

I don’t think its bad by any stretch, its just that a few of the main characters are brand new, so not long running series mains – and while the Wizards presence is fun (it feels like they hadn’t featured much at all in the later books) it is a bit strange having their involvement be a Football match, from which they are banned using magic!

It’s a little hard to delve deeper without reviewing the plot so SPOILERS ahead.

The story follows the mystery Nutt who initially identifies as a Goblin, however there are numerous rumblings and worries about his identity and as the plot develops we discover he is in have an Orc – interestingly a fantasy species not introduced in Discworld yet, and in Pratchett’s world Orc’s are (even for Discworld) known as bestial and violent and overall no-good. The main drift of the story is Nutt finding acceptance while also using his prowess to win Football. The Wizards don’t necessarily have much plot per say other than setting up the Football match they have been required to and generally injuring and embarrassing themselves attempting to play.

I think a big part of where the plot feels very different is that the stakes are sort of lower, there is no big bad about to happen (although it is kind of implied that should the Wizards lose the Football match this will undermine Vetenari as ‘Tyrant’ and Ankh-Morpork will all fall over. The climax of the story is the Football match and a bully villain getting his comeuppance, but compared to say almost any other Discworld the stakes are quite different. Much of the fabric of the book is held together by Football gags / insights and while the book acts as a good riff on the strange balance of civilization versus barbarism the tone is a little different than the other books.

Nonetheless for all its difference, it’s a fun book and an enjoyable read – it shows a surprising amount of authentic Vetenari who even laughs outloud, which I’m not sure happens in any other book!

Review (Discworld): Making Money

I mentioned in my review of Thud! that I thought there was some evidence of Pratchett’s ’embuggerance’ affecting his writing (and Googling this I found that a lot of discussion has been had around this and its hard to tell as Pratchett had a deep writing ‘pit’ several projects on the go at once, and so on). I did note in Unseen Academicals that Pratchett directly thanks Wilkins (his assistant and biographer) who typed the story out – how this impacted the story is unclear.

Anyway, all of that was to highlight that Making Money is BEYOND sharp and carefully crafted. I genuinely can’t remember if I’ve read Moist #2 (I did have a faint sense of possible deja vu for a few plot points but couldn’t really recall) and I can almost see Making Money as being one of the best Pratchett. Reading it feels like the perfect balance between Pratchett’s earlier zany frantic pieces, and his more structured ‘grounded’ later novels.

Similar to Going Postal the book has more directly pointed commentary on real life, and it may just be because I’m older and more financially aware but his riffing on the ‘stock market’ and economics are really hilarious.

Something that stands out a little more, is that I mentioned ages ago that romantic relationships tend to take a back seat in Discworld novels – Carrot and Angua are probably the main relationship on page, Vimes and Sibil are a backbone of the Guards, but direct focus isn’t common. Pratchett seems to enjoy love that isn’t to be (perhaps due to being too awkward) rather than love love – but Making money gives us ‘Spike’ and Moist a great couple with funny chemistry, and a refreshing change from typical platonic Pratchett.

Every closer I swirl to finishing the Discworld series – next up Unseen Academicals!