I liked this much more than Small Things. Though, child narrators typically aren’t my thing, this was well done enough to be compelling enough. The ending was particularly good and the arc was something that shifted from something I couldn’t care less about to being fully invested.

This has some interesting ideas. Theology in a technological age literalized in a very strange way, for one. But it also doesn’t make much sense. Maybe the second volume answers some of them, but it sure felt less cohesive because it undermined the questions it poses by essentially hand waving everything. Maybe this is something you roll with in horror? I tend to avoid it. I will read the second volume because I do want the answers, but I can see why it’s polarizing. I also found out via the cover that it was made into a Netflix show, which I had not heard about and am a bit curious about.

Neat that this made the Eisners though. Its worth checking out, even if a couple other titles, like Talk To My Back, feel quite a bit stronger, overall.

One of the better story collections I’ve tried. A couple have pretty outdated endeavors into scifi, like the guy who was exposed to trauma and the treatment for it gave him wild intelligence m, transforming him into basically another species. However, why most people come to it—and why I myself did—was for the Story the movie Arrival based on (one of my all time favourite scifi films). Happily, it was exceptional. As were one or two others. The highs are high and the lows aren’t bad at all.

As you might expect this was massively overwritten, but not as bad as I thought it might be. It’s also wildly different than expectations because I had watched the TV show, and that show was nothing like this book. How weird is that? Maybe the main character has the same name and he’s a SEAL… everything else was pretty different. They both have a dude seeking revenge?

Anyway, this reads as quite antiquated already. Though, the main themes centering around trafficking women and drugs is basically eternal—and actually, the compassion for the sex workers was progressive for the time—and the major cross current is what you’d expect from Clancy: patriotism, white knights, women put in danger in service to the later. A lot of detail goes into the specificity of combat, air and ship mechanics, tactics, and weapons. They’re the
antithesis of this commercial formula. And there’s some appeal here.

But it’s also not what I’d describe as well written. With sections like, “…peopled by suspicious people”, you can be sure it’s a commercial work. There’s entirely too much detail in inconsequentially plot beats. Basically any woman that makes our sailor sing is in danger. Though, I guess it’s a step off of being fridged. It’s all very 90s, The Jackal, Tell Declan He Can’t Protect His Women. But I have a mood and I grew up with these movies, so it scratched the itch. The Hunt for Red October is much better, surprisingly. If you’re like me and thought the reading order started here, Jack Ryan isn’t even of consequence here it’s just in the same “universe”, or whatever. It’s the precursor to Rainbow Six, instead. Which, I guess isn’t the worst if you plan to read that and want background on SEAL guy.

For such a polarizing book in some corners of the Internet, I didn’t expect it to be so middle-of-the-road for me. I think it excelled at granular interactions between people, giving genuinely interesting context to their thoughts, feelings, and actions. But in contrast to plot beats that communicate that there was very little sense to many things that occurred during the troubles, it didn’t feel like it had all that much to actually say. Especially for those who have read books on that time period and other novels set during it.

I’m not sure how much the verisimilitude helped, for me. On one hand, it glowed when minute exchanges were elucidated, on the other, every single thing that happens is predictable. The tone doesn’t ever change. The characters feel either overexposed and compelling, or at arms length in service to the beats you know are coming, making it hard to get attached to anything, and ultimately I think it will make for a fairly forgettable, but serviceable read.

I mean, I can see why this is a classic. The prose were too my taste. Luscious and with a lot of specificity. The story simple, but steeped in complexity. After reading Yellowface, a text that doesn’t has very poor information design, the contrast is night and day. The reader is clued into the themes and nuances of The Multiple Points being made without it feeling ham fisted or pandered to an already clued in audience. It manages to be full of tension, making it compelling throughout.

This has enough on the bone and good enough writing to bump it up a star, though I’ve been ruminating on it for days, unsure.

I’m terms of showing marginalization and poverty governing the decisions and lives of a cast of characters, I think it’s very good. In terms of making the plot and message organic and seamless though, it struggles, perhaps fails completely. Each character is absolutely on rails and because we understand the messaging and, “point”, of the book, we can know well in advance what each major plot beat will be; though, there is a surprise near the end I hadn’t predicted… it is still thematically telegraphed, only the granular detail was a surprise.

If you don’t mind being hit over the head with theme though, I can see this being a five star read. There are a few really, really well observed character moments. My favourite being a woman staving off an abusive partner by installing a cross on the wall due to its cultural and the time period, the effect it has and how it’s articulated was a brilliant piece of writing.

This is not quite as good as Blindsight, but still has the Watts touch, in terms of weaving in science, immediate at the time of writing, to a plot and concept that spirals out into wider implications, onboarding the reader to the various ramifications of the germination of the core notions. It’s really fun reading just for that. Though, the world is absolutely shot to shit in basically every way possible and it has serious horror undertones. Plus, it clips along nicely. Hard scifi basically never does that.

There are a few darlings though. Vampires. Actual vampires, since this is post humanism, exist. And there is a species gap that is significant. As are the other post human elements, where parts of humanity essentially are no longer human, as they do not experience the world as someone non augmented or altered. And that’s the crux of this novel. The implications of the ways in which technology is already altering us, only rapidly extrapolated into cogent “what ifs”.

But also zombie type people and factions at war, manipulated in a very cyberpunk manner, by machinations they cannot ever perceive, nor will they ever. It’s an idea book, which I think succeeds very well (unlike some Stephenson books I have hated the reading experience of), and I am certainly on the Watts train now. I believe I also have Starfish somewhere.

Still very much enjoying this series. It feels like a comic, in the best way possible. It’s quirky, almost solely focused on character and verisimilitude, and is very self aware. Rather than the brain dead formula where it’s the same bad guys and same arc, the grounded nature of the storytelling makes it very easy to empathize and root for her, and the challenges more interesting because they are atypical of comics, but very typical of everyday life. It’s also quite funny. Thrist trap she hulk continues to succeed with flying colours.