media gripes
Apr. 4th, 2013 10:39 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jazzfishHal Duncan, Vellum
The prologue is absolutely amazing: a fractured narrative of a university student who tracks down a book that may or not have been written by God. Highly atmospheric, chock-full of conspiracies and esoterica. Excellent.
Shame the rest of the book didn't continue in that vein. Instead we get a compelling enough retelling of a Sumerian myth and a lot of interesting stuff about names, and reality, and creatures that may be gods, or angels, or demons. Then it shifts gears into a retelling of Prometheus Bound in several different timelines, and at about that point I got fed up with having been badly misled by the prologue. Into the go-away pile.
Walter Jon Williams, Dread Empire's Fall: The Sundering
Continuation of very good space opera; devoured in the space of about eight hours, with various breaks. Spoilers follow.
Midway through the book the two viewpoint characters, who have been smoldering at each other despite a communication screwup early in book 1, get together, and it is brilliant and incandescent and I loved it. Then they have another falling-out due to Secrets Being Kept and Not Speaking To Each Other, and spend the rest of the book blaming each other and obsessing. Which, argh. It keeps them from being in the same place for the rest of the series, and it is perfectly realistic, and if I never see this particular plot device again I will die happy. I just want to shake them both.
Apart from that frustration, still very good.
Eden of the East
Anime. Picked this up awhile ago because the back cover copy looked promising: conspiracies, amnesia, all that good stuff. Two episodes in and it is a romance between two irritating people with random conspiracy stuff thrown in at times. Based on the Wikipedia summary it will continue to irritate me for another nine episodes as the conspiracy stuff gets more random. Bah. Into the go-away pile.
The prologue is absolutely amazing: a fractured narrative of a university student who tracks down a book that may or not have been written by God. Highly atmospheric, chock-full of conspiracies and esoterica. Excellent.
Shame the rest of the book didn't continue in that vein. Instead we get a compelling enough retelling of a Sumerian myth and a lot of interesting stuff about names, and reality, and creatures that may be gods, or angels, or demons. Then it shifts gears into a retelling of Prometheus Bound in several different timelines, and at about that point I got fed up with having been badly misled by the prologue. Into the go-away pile.
Walter Jon Williams, Dread Empire's Fall: The Sundering
Continuation of very good space opera; devoured in the space of about eight hours, with various breaks. Spoilers follow.
Midway through the book the two viewpoint characters, who have been smoldering at each other despite a communication screwup early in book 1, get together, and it is brilliant and incandescent and I loved it. Then they have another falling-out due to Secrets Being Kept and Not Speaking To Each Other, and spend the rest of the book blaming each other and obsessing. Which, argh. It keeps them from being in the same place for the rest of the series, and it is perfectly realistic, and if I never see this particular plot device again I will die happy. I just want to shake them both.
Apart from that frustration, still very good.
Eden of the East
Anime. Picked this up awhile ago because the back cover copy looked promising: conspiracies, amnesia, all that good stuff. Two episodes in and it is a romance between two irritating people with random conspiracy stuff thrown in at times. Based on the Wikipedia summary it will continue to irritate me for another nine episodes as the conspiracy stuff gets more random. Bah. Into the go-away pile.