The Confessions of Max Tivoli was a nice break from the plot-driven fiction I've been reading of late. Conforming to the style of a memoir, the book tells the story of the eponymous character from his point of view. The catch, of course, is that Max ages backward--born with the appearance of a seventy-year-old, growing younger until he only appears twelve at the time of his writing. Max's unusual attribute causes no end of trouble as he strives to obtain his one desire: love.

It's difficult to fall in love with the book, however. Its cast of supporting characters is quite small, and it focuses exclusively on Max's life. This has the consequence of putting turn-of-the-20th-century San Francisco into the perspective of a single person's life: momentous events like the 1906 earthquake and the first World War become footnotes in this autobiography. In the case of the latter, I found this rather refreshing. But the drawback is that you will only like this book if you like Max.

Andrew Sean Greer tries hard to portray Max as a sympathetic, perhaps even tragic, character. To be fair, Max is almost always a force of good in the world, trying to help the people close to him even as he deals with his unique circumstances. I'm not sure if it's Greer's heavy-handedness or deliberate, but Max often comes off as melodramatic. He frequently goes off on asides where he addresses potential readers of his manuscript (his son, Sammy, and his former wife, Alice), slipping into the second person, as he expresses his myriad regrets with his life.

When it comes to Max's unique circumstances, Greer makes the most of them as a storytelling device. Handwaving away issues of identity and property, Greer focuses on the ramifications to relationships. In particular, Max has trouble finding and keeping the love of his life, Alice, who first encounters him while he's an "old man" and finally becomes his adoptive mother. And we see him form a peer relationship with his son.

Nevertheless, there are numerous moments in The Confessions of Max Tivoli that made me cringe and wonder what purpose they served. For example, why did Hughie Dempsey, probably the only person left alive who knew of Max's true nature, choose to commit suicide like that? Why did Greer marginalize Max's existing family so much? Oh, Max manages to provide justification--he let them "slip away" as he became involved in his marriage with Alice--but it still feels like the book was unable to focus on more than one aspect of Max's life at a time. In short, as interesting as Max was due to his reverse ageing, he was a less complex character in other more conventional, ways that may matter even more.

I haven't read The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, by [a:F. Scott Fitzgerald|3190|F. Scott Fitzgerald|http://photo.goodreads.com/authors/1176164670p2/3190.jpg], nor have I seen the movie based on the story, so I'll avoid making any comparisons with Fitzgerald's work. Io9 has an interesting review to that effect. For a story about reverse ageing, The Confessions of Max Tivoli is an interesting exploration of a man trying to deal with the consequences of living backward. Unfortunately, it isn't always the moving memoir that it so desires to be.

This is exactly what I needed: a fast-paced mystery novel wrapped in the goodness of cyberpunk science fiction. Altered Carbon is an enthralling read.

The main character, Takeshi Kovacs, is an ex-United Nations Envoy, a sort of borderline psychopathic personality who went into messy situations and cleaned them up using any means necessary. As an ex-Envoy, Kovacs has had a hard time adjusting to civilian life, so the book starts with him as a fugitive. Then he dies. Immediately, Richard Morgan demonstrated he's playing a high stakes game.

In Altered Carbon, digitising the human mind has become commonplace to the point that the body is just a "sleeve" and everyone gets fitted with a cortical "stack." So as long as the stack is intact, physical death isn't much of a barrier, assuming you've got money. Kovacs' mind gets broadcast from his home planet to Earth, where he's forced by a powerful businessman to solve the businessman's murder. On the risk of relying on generalities--because I don't want to get too bogged down in the plot specifics--I'll say that Morgan skilfully balances his setting and his plot, playing the latter off the former. Every new twist in the plot happens to reveal more about this realistic dystopia. As a result, the world of Altered Carbon feels rich without trying to force itself down my throat through unnecessary detail. Although the concept of mind uploading is far from new, Morgan is never heavy-handed with it. He has fun with "double sleeving" Kovacs and introduces a spunky hotel AI. But the body-hopping in Altered Carbon is less about identity and more about the prolonged psychological effects of separating consciousness from attachment to a physical form.

Kovacs is far from a sympathetic character. Morgan constantly portrays Kovacs as a product of his environment--that is, Kovacs is fucked up because he grew that way. This becomes a running theme, particularly for the novel's antagonists, and fits with the nihilistic dangers inherent in the novel's principal technology. As an antagonist cynically puts it, human life is cheap compared to machines. Why care about a protagonist who seems to place little value on human life and isn't a nice guy in general? Well, the fact that he's a totally fun badass aside, he at least tries to be a good guy. He demonstrates this in his attempts to help the unfortunate Elliott family, as well as the level of concern he shows for the cop who reluctantly helps him out because he's sleeved in her boyfriend's body.

The mystery aspect of the novel is fully satisfactory. If someone claims to have worked out the entire plot before the climax, he or she is lying. Yes, I did figure out most of it by the end of the first hundred pages. The specifics are too vague to discern until much later though. And that's partly Morgan's fault, since the novel does err on the side of too much complexity. There were aspects of the plot that seemed superfluous, characters who served little purpose except as shock or entertainment value. The plot could have stood some simplification without losing any punch or thematic significance, in my opinion, which would have made for a tighter story.

Still, I thoroughly enjoyed Altered Carbon and will be going on to read more of Morgan's Takeshi Kovacs series. It's an ideal blend of science fiction and mystery.

This edition of Altered Carbon seemed to have an above average number of typos. I don't count that against Morgan (it's not his fault), but just thought I'd note that. It wasn't enough to distract me, but prospective readers may want to acquire another edition if they can.

While reading this book, I formed two major opinions: firstly, John Irving deserves every whit of respect he can get as a writer; secondly, The Cider House Rules is a very different book now from the book it was then, back when I read it the first time. It must have been two or three years BG (Before Goodreads). I know it's not my favourite John Irving novel, but it did resonate with me when I was younger. It still resonates with me now, although for somewhat different reasons.

On one level, The Cider House Rules is an orphan story. Homer Wells is an orphan who never manages to escape his loneliness, even when he is "adopted," falls in love, and has a child. Although far from despicable, it's difficult to love Homer as either a character or a person. He's grown up so much on his own that his mind has retreated to the point where very little of him exists on the surface. He's not so much an introvert as a hopeless introspective. The difficulty Homer encounters in relationships, both with Candy and Wally and with the infamous Melony, emphasizes his sense of isolation, turning it basically into a routine. Yet he still seems, for the most part, content, if not "deliriously happy," as Dr. Larch evaluated one prospective adoptive couple for Homer.

I first read The Cider House Rules as an orphan story. Yet on another level, it's also a very exploration of compromise, and that's how I read it this time through. While I was reading, I thought, "these characters think and act far more cynically than I remember," particularly Dr. Larch. Of course, the characters were the same--it was my interpretation and judgement of their actions that had changed with my maturation. Still a father figure and man of great respect, Dr. Larch also became a symbol of manipulation and deceit--he very skilfully manoeuvred Homer into becoming his successor at St. Cloud's, sacrificing Homer for the greater good. The reader must decide if Larch did the right thing--I would contend that Larch did the necessary thing, regardless of its justice toward Homer and its morality. Being the sap that I am, I wish it hadn't been necessary, that Homer could have been spared his fate ... but Irving can't change history, and if the book had ended with, "St. Cloud's got a new doctor who refused to perform abortions, and Homer lived happily ever after" ... well, that would have just sucked. This isn't a book for happy endings. It's about compromise.

Candy, Wally, and Homer all compromise when Wally returns from his overseas deployment (and subsequent jungle adventure). In what may be one of the best love triangles of 20th century literature, Candy and Homer continue to sleep together sporadically, even while wondering if Wally knows that Homer's "adopted" son, Angel, isn't really adopted. Wally never explicitly says, "I know the truth," but Irving heavily hints that this is the case. If so, then these three Maine apple farmers are a testament to making the best of what apples they can get, even the bruised ones.

The apples are a nice metaphor, conveniently free of more conventional Biblical overtones, and contribute to the pleasant style of The Cider House Rules. Although long, this is an easy book to read if you don't rush it. John Irving masterfully uses an omniscient narrator to connect the most disparate events, portraying simultaneously the related actions of two distant characters like Homer and Dr. Larch. Sometimes omniscient narrators can be overly didactic or too fond of exposition, but Irving avoids these pitfalls. The Cider House Rules is a very smooth novel, with almost all of its themes conveyed directly through characters' speeches and actions, helped out a little by quotations from Dr. Larch's A Brief History of St. Cloud's.

It helps that Irving has a cast of supporting characters the likes of which most novels only dream of having. We learn very little about Nurses Angela, Edna, and Caroline beyond what's important to the plot; likewise, parental figures like Olive Worthington and Ray Kendall exist almost exclusively to give us an external view of the main characters. The nurses are constant: Angela is always practical, Edna is always in love with Dr. Larch, and Caroline is strong and socialist. In contrast, Olive Worthington and Ray Kendall change quite a bit for secondary characters. Both struggle with the effects of Homer Wells' arrival at the Ocean View Orchards. Olive loves that Homer provides Wally with a role model, and Ray identifies with Homer's solitary nature. Yet these perceptive parents see the love triangle developing and find themselves conflicted over which man is best suited as Candy's companion. To Irving's credit, he raises questions that have no good answers, admits that they have no good answers, and goes on to portray what happens when ordinary people try to find those nonexistent answers.

When it comes to abortion, I think the book is definitely pro-abortion but that those who don't condone abortion can still love the book. Right away, The Cider House Rules sidesteps one of the most debilitating aspects of the abortion debate, the idea that it's an all-or-nothing pro-life versus pro-choice argument, with the complex reasoning of Homer Wells. Homer himself thinks that abortion is morally wrong, yet he believes it should be legal and that others should choose for themselves--he just doesn't want to perform them. Dr. Larch ultimately preys upon this philosophy to persuade Homer to become the new doctor at St. Cloud's orphanage--as long as abortions are illegal, Homer has an obligation to give them to women who need them, even if he personally believes they are wrong. As long as abortion remains illegal, Larch wisely points out, it takes away everyone's freedom of choice. And through the voices of Larch and Nurse Caroline, Irving also manages to address another often-neglected aspect of the debate--the impact of abortion on women. So much of the debate focuses on the rights of the fetus that few take the time to consider how access to abortion, or lack thereof, affects pregnant women, beyond just the right to choose "an orphan or an abortion." By presenting a wide view of the abortion debate, The Cider House Rules does justice to one of the most controversial moral issues of our time.

The Cider House Rules is a wonderful piece of fiction because it's not neat, it's not tidy, it isn't a story with a happy or sad ending. It's fiction that's true to life: messy, full of loose ends, and saturated with necessary compromise. I know that some people can find it depressing or too cynical; as I mentioned above, the ambitions of some of the characters seem less altruistic to me than they did when I was younger. At worst I would call it "morbidly realistic," and that's not a bad thing, as long as you're in the right mood for such a book. Ultimately, The Cider House Rules is going to be, along with several other John Irving novels, one of those books to which I'll return over and over throughout my life. It just has so much to offer.

While I've been meaning to read more by Philip K. Dick, Counter-Clock World is worth skipping. It's a mildly-interesting premise lengthened into an uninteresting novel. In fact, the premise is pretty much the only part of the book I enjoyed (and only because of suspension of disbelief). I can't say I cared for either the plot or the characters.

The Hobart Phase that causes everyone to live their lives in reverse is somewhat unlikely, but whatever; I'll roll with it for the sake of the book. The protagonist is Sebastian Hermes, owner of a vitarium--a business that specializes in digging up the reanimated dead and caring for them until someone can claim custody. Sebastian finds the grave of Anarch Peak, a religious leader from the 1970s, who will return from death in less than a day. Peak becomes the centre of a power struggle among his followers, a third party in Rome, and the information-eradicating Library. Sebastian acts alternately as pawn, dupe, action hero, and floor mat.

I'm not at all sympathetic to Sebastian. He rarely takes action throughout the course of this slim novel, preferring instead to remark upon the futility of his situation. At first I was willing to accept this as trepidation over his reluctant role as hero—it's not like he trained for this. Yet he stays like this for the entire book, resisting even the most ardent attempts toward character development. The rest of Counter-Clock World's characters aren't much better. I couldn't stand Sebastian's wife, Lotta. The only one who shows any spunk is Anna Fischer, a sexy amoral antagonist who wraps Sebastian around her little finger and convinces him to betray his current convictions every single time (admittedly, she had a little help from the Anarch the last time).

The plot is supposed to focus on the conflict among the three bidders for Anarch Peak and Sebastian's role as mediator-cum-mercenary. Whenever the book attempts to interject with an occasional interesting action sequence, Dick firmly disciplines it and sends it sulking back to its room, whereupon he resumes lecturing us on the fact that the Library's goal of eradicating Anarch Peak's radical teaching is utterly wrong. In this way, Counter-Clock World embodies the word "thin," in length and quality. It's thinly written and has a thin story with thin characters.

Aside from its anti-eradication stance, Counter-Clock World takes a poke at the nature of God and the afterlife. And again, it really falls short of the mark—not so much in the message as the delivery of the message. There are just so many books that try to address these questions while also delivering a well-written and exciting story; I could be reading one of them instead of this ponderous story of self-pitying Sebastian.

Counter-Clock World's best asset is that it's short, which means that I finished it in an evening and am now free to pursue more entertaining fiction. Die-hard Philip K. Dick fans will read this for the sake of completing his oeuvre, but even a neophyte like me can tell this isn't one of his better stories; I won't tell anyone if you skip it.

I began this book fairly sceptical and remained ambivalent throughout. Chick lit isn't a genre I read too often, so I'm not sure what made me pick this book up off the library shelf--perhaps a combination of the title and the promise of a glimpse into the world of New York high society.

This book made me extremely aware of how young I am. Growing up, all the books I read talked about technology commonplace to my parents' world: television, radio, cars, and computers. Hence, it's become noticeable when I read a newer book that treats more recent technological developments like they're commonplace: in The Ex-Mrs. Hedgefund, it's iPods, iMacs, mobile phones, DVD-player-equipped cars, and Google. I got the sense that the book, through its narrator, was trying awfully hard to impress me by dropping brand names and using abbreviations I couldn't even understand. And I can't help but wonder how dated this book will seem ten years from now.

As modern as this novel is, its story is the same one they've been telling for ten thousand years now:

* Girl Meets Boy
* Girl Marries Boy
* Boy Cheats on Girl
* Girl Divorces Boy and Takes His Apartment
* Girl Falls for Jerk Who Can't Take No for an Answer
* Girl Falls for Boy(Redux)
* Girl Forgives Boy When He Screws Up Big
* Girl Marries Boy

While I'm aware that no story is ever original, The Ex-Mrs. Hedgefund doesn't even try to avert the standard romantic comedy tropes. The moment Holly met her eventual second husband, I knew he was Mr. Right (Redux) and that the other guy she was contemplating dating would turn out to be a loser. Because, you know, in Real Life, you never have to choose between two decent guys; one will always turn out to be a jerk. Uh-huh.

There's far too much exposition. Holly should spend more time doing something instead of stopping to explain, with graphs and "math", the intricacies of her little world. I don't particularly care about the secret formula used to name hedge funds. I don't particularly care about the "scale of blondness." And no, I don't care about how your charity functions work and which guests get what table assignment. How about you try some character development instead? No?

Few of the characters in The Ex-Mrs. Hedgefund ever attempt to come out of their one-dimensional shells and show us a good time. I shouldn't blame them, however; it's not their fault that they have stilted dialogue and regularly SHRIEK IN CAPITAL LETTERS because it's TOTALLY going to make you sound more hip and enthusiastic. I think my favourite character was the evil mother-in-law (you knew that was coming), simply because she's an unapologetic frigid bitch. My least favourite character was the kid, because he seems to have been imported from Stepford: not one temper tantrum in the entire book. Not one. This is the most balanced, grounded, mature, well-behaved fictitious six-year-old I have ever encountered. He is perfectly understanding of Mommy and Daddy's divorce, doesn't blame them, and doesn't mind that Daddy is sleeping with a different blonde and Mommy's seeing another guy.

Oh, it's not all bad. Once and a while, the book seems to remember that Kargman probably wants to say something pithy about how fake and stifling all this high society is. So it puts on the brakes and allows Holly to observe the hollow lives of her former fellow hedge-fund wives compared to Holly's new life of blissful freedom and single motherhood. There are moments when the tour bus stops and Kargman emphasizes the double standard: "Boys. Will. Be. Boys. You didn't have to go and call him out on it.... Women have been looking the other way for millennia." That's actually kind of what I wanted when I started reading this book, and occasionally that's what I got. For instance, I laughed out loud when Holly's nonconformist best friend challenges a rich couple because their horse has a massage therapist. So if Kargman is playing her characters over the top to mock New York high society, I can forgive her for that. Except that then I wonder why the rest of the book is so shallow and predictable.

And that is ultimately the fatal flaw of The Ex-Mrs. Hedgefund; it can't decide what type of chick lit it wants to be. By refusing to choose between a serious satire of hedge-fund-wife society and a silly romantic summer read, Kargman undermines her own story, transforming it from something with great potential into just another mediocre romantic comedy. Pandering to everyone just won't work. Good literature has to take risks, even if they don't pay off, and even if they alienate one audience in favour of another. The Ex-Mrs. Hedgefund has a couple of moments of shining glory tarnished by the absence of any element of risk.

Set in the 2170s, Julian Comstock depicts a fallen America. Hit hard by Peak Oil and global climate change refugees, America has re-imagined itself as an officially Christian nation. With technology and social norms on par with the nineteenth century—which the Dominion of Jesus Christ on Earth extols as the perfect template for contemporary American society—this is a profoundly different society from our own, but it strikes a chord because it may not be far off from what our society could become. That's Robert Charles Wilson's true coup with this book: he relentlessly illustrates how easily an enlightened civilization has slipped back into the pitfalls of slavery, class-ism, and religious intolerance.

At first I was ambivalent to the narrator of Julian Comstock. Adam Hazzard, friend to the eponymous protagonist, has a plodding tone full of pointless asides like "I won't bore you with the details of..." that serve little purpose. And although Hazzard expresses his aim of writing a biography of Julian from an inside point of view, the book seems to be more about him than Julian at times. Yet as I got further into the book, I understood why it was necessary to have a first-person narrator who was sidekick instead of hero, Watson to Julian's Holmes. This book would not have worked with Julian as the narrator, plain and simple, and it would have lost a great deal with a third-person narrator. It needed the perfect blend of innocent incredulity and incorruptible loyalty—in short, it needed Adam Hazzard.

Through Adam's eyes, Wilson shows us what America has become. Julian emerges early as a paragon who not only understands the past but is in a position to influence the future—he's the nephew of the President of the United States, although said President is also the one who sends Julian into the army hoping he'll be killed (twice). Adam chronicles Julian's rise to power through his singular intelligence, strength of self, and his friends (including Adam) and allies. This occupies the first four acts of the novel, but it's the fifth act that I found most interesting.

Julian emerges as a war hero for the second time in his life and finds himself the figurehead of a military coup. Nudged into the Presidency, Julian attempts to use his power for good, and makes powerful enemies: the Dominion, which essentially certifies the Christian churches that operate in America; and later, the very military forces that deposed the last President. I enjoyed this part of the book because it was both the most tragic and the most believable. The first four acts are rife with improbable events that, while entertaining and useful to the plot, are the sort for which suspension of disbelief is required. Act Five seizes upon reality and shoves it in Julian's face, precipitating an inevitable decline from hero to desperate dreamer.

Julian takes the Presidency hoping to improve conditions in America and enfeeble the Dominion, which holds too much power over the "democratic" Senate and Executive branches. We know from our experience with the previous president, Deklan Comstock, that the Presidency of this United States is only nominally democratic; Deklan was continually acclaimed president, not elected, and he showed little skill in his role as Commander in Chief. While Deklan ruled as a despot, we see Julian gradually become a sort of 17th-century Philosopher-King. Intelligent and good-intentioned, Julian nevertheless finds himself one man against a behemoth that has had a century to entrench itself in society. He scores several Pyhrric victories but ultimately finds himself the target of another coup. Julian Comstock ends not with a bang, but a whimper.

And that's what saved it. I was going to give the book four stars; as brilliant as I found Wilson's world-building, some of the writing was dull, and the book seemed much longer than it needed to be. But the ending simply blew me away because it felt so true. Julian, even Julian Conqueror, could not take on the entire Dominion by himself. Rather than reward the reader with a quick resolution, Wilson instead opted to offer us a ray of hope: that Julian's actions, and the actions of people like him, would lead to the fall of the Dominion and the renewed freedom for everyone in America. It wasn't the end; it was a beginning:

"You're a failure, Julian Comstock, and your Presidency is a failure, and your rebellion against the Dominion is a failure."

"I guess the Dominion will stagger on a while longer. But it's doomed in the long run, you know. Such institutions don't last. Look at history. There have been a thousand Dominions. They fall and are forgotten, or they change beyond recognition."

"The history of the world is written in Scripture, and it ends in a Kingdom."

"The history of the world is written in sand, and it evolves as the wind blows."

As an adventure story, Julian Comstock is an average book. Oh, there's plenty of action, and it's adequate in that respect. The strategy and combat aspects of the second and fourth acts should satisfy war enthusiasts (they didn't appeal to me as much, which is perhaps why I found the first four fifths of the book less intriguing, but there was nothing technically wrong with them). But it's a long adventure, with a ponderous narrator—a very nineteenth-century style work of prose, which is of course appropriate.

As a didactic work of fiction, however, Julian Comstock embodies the sublime. It neither preaches nor lectures. There are precious few speeches. Instead, Wilson shows us a possible future, and as the consequences of his what-if game unfold, we see his themes in both the dialogue and the action: it takes strength to stand up against injustice, especially when it's inevitable that you won't live to see your victory achieved; the only comfort is the knowledge that this too shall pass.

Although Julian Comstock is a tragedy, I found it cathartic and uplifting. I'm too young to remember any of the tense moments of the twentieth century, its Cold War, Vietnam War, or Gulf War that so shaped the psyche of the Western world. As such, I worry about the ramifications of global warming, poverty, and unrest. I'll probably be alive in fifty years, if I'm lucky, and I'd rather not see the world go to hell in that time. Julian Comstock reminded me that no matter how bad it gets, even if civilization collapses and humanity rejects Darwinism as heresy and America forgets that walked on the moon, there is still hope for the future. Yet that does not give us license to be complacent when there is work to be done:

"The spread of literacy is the problem here," said Palumbo. "Oh, I'm all in favor of a sensible degree of literacy—as you must be, Mr. Hazzard, given your career as a journalist. But it has an infectious tendency. It spreads, and discontent spreads along with it. Admit one literate man to a coffle and he'll teach the others the skill; and what they read won't be Dominion-approved works, but pornography, or the lowest kind of cheap publications, or fomentive political tracts."

Well, I certainly hope so, Mr. Palumbo! And I know you're probably biased, since if you're reading this you are a literate person yourself, but I hope you agree. The most dangerous threat, Julian Comstock teaches us, is not Peak Oil, climate change, or terrorism. It's that we will become content with mere survival instead of true freedom—freedom to speak, to act, and to contest.

Julian Comstock is a thought-provoking story of a what might happen, a tale both compassionate and cautionary. Read it. Ignore the science fiction label, if that scares you; it may be set in the future, but it's about the present.

Saramago's style is just totally unreadable. I generously gave the book two chapters, skipped ahead to the middle and end, and discovered that it's like this throughout the entire book: run-on sentences, dialogue offset only by commas and never separated by paragraphs, nary a quotation mark to be seen. Now, I don't mind when an author subverts a few grammatical rules to make a point or enhance his or her style. Totally disregarding them, on the other hand, is just sadistic.

Since this is a translation from the original Portuguese, I'm willing to accept it's not entirely Saramago's doing. However, after some further reading, it looks like this is Saramago's "signature style", so I shall place the blame at his feet.

Blindness may or may not be a fascinating story, but I'm not going to subject myself to that torture in order to find out. A plot summary will have to suffice.

For some reason, we tend to consider the terms "bounty hunter" and "empathy" as oppositional; in Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, Philip K. Dick manages to make them seem like nothing of the sort. This book both entranced and disappointed me; your mileage may vary.

The key to any futuristic, post-apocalyptic world is establishing a lack of empathy among its citizens—that is, dystopias come about because the government suddenly starts ruling people instead of caring for them. Here, the governments on Earth, aided by the United Nations, are doing the best they can to kick people off the planet, which has been so devastated by nuclear war. Even as governments lack empathy, people are judged human based on how empathic they are; the planet's leading religion, Mercerism, is a mass-hallucinatory experience designed to promote empathy. And humanity's secret enemies are android fugitives who—you guessed it—can't feel empathy. So what happens when someone feels empathy for the androids?

Rick Deckard is an average bounty hunter with a wife and a sheep—electric, which is a source of shame and guilt; since one's moral worth is measured by one's ability to care for an animal or animals, Deckard and his wife are essentially frauds: "owning and maintaining a fraud had a way of gradually demoralizing one." When a fugitive android puts Deckard's department head at the San Francisco police station into the hospital, Deckard has to hunt down the android and his six companions. Along the way, Deckard begins questioning the rightness of his actions, and whether or not androids qualify for the same sort of respect accorded to human beings.

Dick's talent lies in his ability to skew society. He retains traditional concepts, such as jobs, while introducing bizarre new rules and mores that have interesting ramifications for people's behaviour. After humanity narrowly survives "World War Terminus," empathy becomes the name of the game, and the government decides that the best way to demonstrate empathy is to care for animals—which is also crowdsourcing the conservation of now-endangered or nearly-extinct species brought low by the radioactive, contaminated "Dust" that has settled around the planet. Not caring for an animal seems taboo: "You know how people are about not taking care of an animal; they consider it immoral and anti-empathic," so those who can't afford a live animal, like Deckard, often opt for electric models and risk exposure.

The role of empathy is also important in distinguishing human from android. Indistinguishable biologically, save for a painful and intrusive bone marrow test, androids fail an "empathy test" that measures biological reactions to psychological situations: "empathy, evidently, existed only within the human community." Yet Deckard seems to have a surfeit of empathy, and it's interfering with his work.

The book's other plot, the loneliness and subsequent exploitation of "chickenhead" J.R. Isidore is actually more rewarding, at least in my opinion, because it has some interesting observations about entropy:

Kipple is useless objects, like junk mail or match folders after you use the last match or gum wrappers or yesterday's homeopape. When nobody's around, kipple reproduces itself.... We can't win.... No one can win against kipple ... except temporarily and maybe in one spot, like in my apartment I've sort of created a stasis between the pressure of kipple and nonkipple, for the time being. But eventually I'll die or go away, and then the kipple will again take over. it's a universal principle operating throughout the universe; the entire universe is moving toward a final state of total, absolute kippleization.

I love that last line, with the phrase "total, absolute kippleization." I then imagine a horrible action catchphrase: "prepare to be kippleized!" Anyway, Dick's description of entropy, while by no means unique, is quite humourous and apt—but perhaps that's because I have a weakness for entropy. And Isidore is, besides Decker, the only other character for whom I felt sympathy. Every other character is one-dimensional and, ultimately, uninteresting. Deckard's solitary introspection and Isidore's kipple-ruminations provide the only glimmers of true philosophical import in this book.

The other disappointment of Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? is that the book never truly addresses the fundamental inequality between humans and androids. Yes, OK, androids lack empathy—so what? Deckard eventual decides bounty hunting is wrong, but he does it anyway, and that's supposed to be OK because:

You will be required to do wrong no matter where you go. It is the basic condition of life, to be required to violate your own identity. At some time, every creature which lives must do so. It is the ultimate shadow, the defeat of creation; this is the curse at work, the curse that feeds on all life. Everywhere in the universe.

It's never really explained why androids bother to escape the colonies—yes, we're given to understand that the colonies aren't all they're cracked up to be and that Earth looks more attractive once one has left. But Dick ducks the main issue in order to look at a sideshow attraction.

My reaction to this book can be summed up in three phases: first I was intrigued, then I was excited, but finally I was disappointed. There are some good moments in this book, parts that I found quotable, memorable, perhaps even magical. Overall though, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep promises more than it can deliver. While at times delightful and even stimulating, it's like a symphony with a beautiful development but a flat coda; it ends on a note both dull and unremarkable.

As the title implies, Imager is the first book in a new fantasy series where certain people can visualize things into existence. The cover of the book is a bit mislead—at least it was for me—because at first I thought that people did magic by drawing things. It's much cooler than that; once again, L.E. Modesitt, Jr.'s talent for worldbuilding, and in particular for creating systems of magic, is evident throughout this book.

Modesitt manages to establish an intricate network of sociopolitical relationships without making the reader drown in a sea of names and numbers. (Alas, that ability doesn't extend to names of people ... in several heavily-populated scenes I was suddenly inundated by excess names I knew I'd never be seeing again.) Certainly, half of Imager is probably exposition ... but Modesitt manages to work it in as didactic dialogue germane to the plot. Some of the ethical discussions among characters could have been more subtle, but again, that's not really Modesitt's style. Still, I never felt like I was reading a fictitious history or ethics book instead of a fantasy adventure novel. If anything, I was painfully aware the entire time that I was reading an L.E. Modesitt fantasy adventure novel.

Some other reviewers have commented on the similarity of structure between Imager and [b:The Magic of Recluce|185253|The Magic of Recluce (The Saga of Recluce, Book 1)|L.E. Modesitt Jr.|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1172524590s/185253.jpg|1246811]. Once again, we've got a talented young man who isn't content following in his father's footsteps but happens to have a knack for magic. So he ends up as a trainee mage with a more experienced mentor who uses the Socratic method to teach. Additionally, Modesitt tends to focus heavily on the mechanics of the crafts he mentions in his novels, whether it's woodworking, smithing, the wool business, or magic. There are endless conversations among people about the minutiae of the wool business or the embroidery design business. Most of this served a latent function, of course, but on the surface it was severely banal. Again, I don't need to know exactly how many golds or silvers Rhenn is spending each week.

The characters who serve as mouthpieces for such conversations are anything but banal. I enjoyed the broad palette of characters in Imager. Rhenn seldom sees eye-to-eye with his father, who, as a businessman, has a fairly static view about life and respectable occupations. While more open-minded than her husband, Rhenn's mother clearly has concerns about social status; Rhenn does worry about whether she'll find his Pharsi girlfriend acceptable. Said girlfriend, Seliora, was probably my favourite character: capable and confident, but not condescending. Not that there's much wrong with the main character, but he's just such a stock Modesitt protagonist: young man in need of tempering who does good and makes a couple of mistakes along the way.

The pacing of Imager could also stand improvement. Rhenn's abilities as an imager approve in a linear fashion throughout the book. The obstacles he faces do not. He's a constant target for assassins, and he foils a couple of assassination attempts on some allies. Otherwise, the stakes never seem as high as the characters claim they are. The book's pacing is flat, and there were never any big surprises that are indicative of truly superb writing. Indeed, although Modesitt is a competent writer, Imager is very typical of his work: predictable yet still creative, precise yet still lacking in a sense of wonder.

Modesitt has created yet another interesting world with plenty of potential for conflict and intrigue. Imager is solid, and despite any misgivings I might have, I'm looking forward to [b:the second book in the series|6407550|Imager's Challenge The Second Book of the Imager Portfolio|L.E. Modesitt Jr.|http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51FjBnyiO3L._SL75_.jpg|6596460]. Fans of Modesitt, or newcomers who appreciate clever and deft worldbuilding, should definitely check this book out.

The impact of religion on politics—particularly the invocation of divine authority to justify a specific social order—is an issue both interesting and complex. In The Stillborn God, Mark Lilla promises an episodic presentation of the rise and fall of political theology from sixteenth century England to twentieth century Germany. While often interesting and thoughtful, the book ultimately fails to fulfil this promise, instead becoming mired in its exploration of the interaction among various philosophical positions.

Lilla's goal is laudable, and for the most part I think I agree with his main thesis—that political theology's influence has declined since the Enlightenment, but as examples in early twentieth century Germany show, it's never far from people's minds. His writing isn't up to snuff, however, and the book never really takes on the "episodic" aspect for which he strives. I'm also now sick of the word "eschatological." Yes, it may be pertinent to the subject, but does Lilla have to use it every second page?

We're treated to a survey of the thoughts of Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau, Kant, and Hegel, as well as some more minor modern German thinkers, and the most cursory glimpse at Leibniz and theodicy. Having not read Leviathan or any of Rousseau's works, I did find these summaries interesting, but not really episodic. Lilla's language gets, at times, extremely technical and academic. This is not the crisp prose of [b:A Short History of Nearly Everything|21|A Short History of Nearly Everything|Bill Bryson|http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/4130HWHH8DL._SL75_.jpg|2305997]. Hence, despite my interest, I had trouble enjoying and savouring The Stillborn God; by the time I neared the end of the book, my urge to set it aside was growing ever stronger.

Certainly, I applaud Lilla for presenting a dry and academic overview rather than producing a highly rhetorical polemic. There's a limit to how dry a book can be and still be decipherable; Lilla approaches that limit several times. Only with considerable patience did I absorb each argument, piecemeal as he presented it, and followed his synthesis of these philosophers' ideas. So if you have the time or inclination to read extremely patiently, to parse and consider every page of this book, you may get more from it than I did. While I'm not looking for light reading by any means, The Stillborn God was a little too dense for me. And it never really achieves the unity of its thesis that can alleviate the tedium of a tense work.

Lilla takes a look at some of the major philosophers, as I mentioned, and shows us how each one built upon the thoughts of those who came before—either by accepting or refuting their predecessors' positions. He credits Hobbes with the initial novity, the idea that religion might not necessarily be inseparable from politics. Later thinkers, such as Rousseau and Hegel, take that kernel but apply a more humanist spin on it, adding a thread of religious toleration. This discussion of religion from purely a philosophical perspective, rather than the biological evolution of religion explored by [a:Richard Dawkins|1194|Richard Dawkins|http://photo.goodreads.com/authors/1188068989p2/1194.jpg], [a:Nicholas Wade|64203|Nicholas Wade|http://www.goodreads.com/images/nophoto/nophoto-U-50x66.jpg], et al., is pretty fascinating. Aside from mild intellectual interest, however, Lilla's synthesis of these positions never evokes a sense of wonder or illumination beyond what we already knew.

Those looking for advice or a prescription for the present will be disappointed; Lilla makes that quite clear at the beginning of the book. And I don't judge it the worse for that reason. The Stillborn God is a survey of modern Western philosophy parsed through the lens of political theology. It brings little enough new to the table, in my opinion, that it's probably more worthwhile to simply read the source philosophers (Hobbes et al.) yourself—and if what you desire are summaries and syntheses of those philosophers, I suspect that field is diverse and has plenty more to offer than this one book. It offers up some interesting thoughts, but The Stillborn God lacks any quality that would distinguish it from other discussions of political theology.