Book Review: The Ghost Brigades

The Ghost Brigades, John Scalzi. 2006, Tor Science Fiction, New York.
The sequel to Old Man's War.

So I said a little something about covers last time, and let me tell you I think this cover is about as appealing as, uhm. Well, it doesn't appeal to me, let's leave it to that. Luckily, covers aren't the only things I choose a book by. This is a part two (though you can read it seperately), and I picked up the first book because it had a little recommended tag and I wanted some sci-fi. I read a few pages and th style sold me, so here we are, reviewing part two!

The first thing you might notice is that it's not fantasy! Yes, you'll be seeing a few more non-fantasy titles, even though, admittedly, about half of my reading material is fantasy. Anyway, I love me some good sci-fi, too, and that's what we got here.

In short: I'm sad I finished it.

The Science

One of the most important things in science fiction is worldbuilding. Wait no, I did this last time, I mean science. Science is actually one of the things that seperate sci-fi from fantasy, and not just any science, futuristic science. A view of things to come, with scientific developments we can only dream of.

In the first book, the universe was introduced in a nicely expansive way. Humankind has ventured into space under the protective wing of the Colonial Union. Unfortunately for humankind, space is full of things that want the same planets we want, and are willing to kill for them. That is, more or less, all the people on Earth know, because Earth has been quarantined for roughly two hundred years. The CU has full monopoly on who goes into space, when and how. For inhabitants of the richer countries, there is only one way, and that is to join the army. There is a catch, however, the Colonial army only takes on people over seventy years of age.

Our protagonist (unsurprisingly male after the title 'Old Man's War') joins the army, and finds out this is viable because somewhere along the way, the CU has managed to transplant people's consciousness into new bodies. Of course, these bodies are incredibly modified and augmented, and this is where the real fun starts. Skip drives, space ships, alien races, intelligent computers inside your brain, technological telepathy, cloning, DNA architecture, and th Ghost Brigades.

All in all, the science in these books is pretty damn believable, although the reasoning behind the skip drive makes my eyes water. It's all new, and captivating, and slightly disturbing in an ethical way, which is what sci-fi is so good at.

The Space Society

Now, what makes a lot of the characters in the military so interesting is that they're either very old, or... wait, this is a pretty major spoiler. Highlight the next few paragraphs if you don't mind that.

They're either very old, or very young. You see, there is a special division of the army that is made entirely from modified DNA of dead people. These people are force-grown in a matter of months, and ready for combat two weeks after they're 'born'. They're the ghost brigades, and the second book revolves around them. They are interesting, because they have their own ways of dealing with the world, bred slaves that they basically are, and they are entirely dependant on their modifications, because they never knew anything else. Also, in a way they are still very young. For all these reasons the 'normal' forces don't really like them, and vice versa. This is a little problematic when you compare it to people with developmental disabilities, because there are a few parallels. Fortunately, this book is mostly written from their perspective, and while they may be a little different, they are still people in their own rights.

One thing that is discussed in a rather nice way is the fact that they are trained to be slaves, and don't actually have a lot of own choice. The main character in this book tries to deny this at first, but comes to realise that he has had no choices in any of the important aspects of his short life. Eventually, he starts making his own choices, and I get the feeling this is building towards a deconstruction of the ghost brigades' slavery in a next book. At least, I like to think so, because if we continue the parallel between these people, and people with certain kinds of disabilities, well, they often have to fight to make their own choices too, and I'd like to see these people succeed in gaining autonomy. I'm rooting for them!

What is also a nice change of pace is the way romance is treated in the first book, the main character comes across a ghost brigades member based on the DNA of his deceased wife, but after the initial shock, he accept fully that this person is her own person, with no obligations to him, her own life, experiences, and desires. Thumbs up for that. They end up falling in love anyway, which, well, is kind of understandable. I'm not too happy with that, but at least it's not another storyline that focuses on this guy finding his dead wife again, where she is nothing but a prize for him to win. Bleh.

Edit: I forgot something. One thing I really don't like about this universe, is the way pretty much all the aliens races are described as having two sexes, male and female. What's up with this? They are aliens, not humans. (Even for humans it's not this black and white, but that's a different story.) It's mentioned a grand total of once that some races exist with up to four different sexes, in a reproductive way. Why don't we see those? Why don't the characters have a run-in with a hermaphrodite race? No, they are all described as binary reproductive structures. Yes, this means they all reproduce sexually, which leads to another set of questions, since even on earth, that's not the only option. It's a bit of a narrow view, in a universe where the writer could have really had some fun with alternative structures. Very disappointing.

The Characters

As for individual characters, there are quite a few, and quite a few good ones. I quite like Jane Sagan, one of the main characters, who is straightforward to the point of being blunt, intelligent and a little hot-tempered, but my favourite character was Cainen. Oooh yes! He's an alien scientist, captured by the ghost brigades, and a very moral creature. He is one of the people who makes sure the whole point about making your own choices gets through to our (slightly passive) protagonist.

Speaking about Jared, as much as the book works to get readers to empathise with him... he was a bit of a flat character. This might have something to do with the fact that he was created to house the consciousness of another guy, but still. He had his most personality right at the end. Also, for some reason I found his extreme affection for Zoë really annoying.

Still, there were enough things going on, and people to feel for, that the book didn't fall flat for me just because I wsan't too thrilled about the protagonist, and I have to admit the bit where his partner met her tragic end ('best beloved') really did make me want to cry.

One last thing about the characters in these books. I've run into a few gay and bi characters, but none of them are ever the main character. Sometimes it's only implied in the most casual way, which is nice, it's not really an issue one way or another, but I'd like to see some more major characters (who don't die) in this direction.

Issues Addressed

Funnily enough, this secod book hit on a few issues the first book had for me.

Firstly there is the issue of naming special forces soldiers. It's said they are given a last name of a famous person, and a random common first name. The issues is, all the names are western. Western famous people, western first names. Despite the fact that most of the army comes from rich (= western?) countries, it's troubling. This actually gets addressed in the second book, where one of the important characters describes it as a mechanism the CU uses to preserve the status quo. Waitasec. Are they actually telling us the CU is racist? Yep. They are. The whole issue isn't actually resolved as such, but I'm hopeful this awareness will set things in motion for a next book.

Secondly there is the fact that the CU fights everyone and anyone. In the first book, the main character was doubtful about this, but got convinced it was because everyone and anyone was fighting the CU. In the second book it's brought forward as a problem, and something that was likely to destroy humankind in the long run. There was also a hint of a larger plan in motion that would stop the constant fighting, but again, I'm left hoping this gets solved in a next book...

Overall Rating:
7.5/10
It's a really good book. It's a really good writer, too. There are a few things I want to see resolved, and I'm seeing possibilities for the writer to do just that in a sequel. This book has funny moments, breathless battles, tragic scenes, and moral dilemmas. It's a solid bit of sci-fi, though the skip drive still makes my head hurt. The strong point of this book isn't the characters, though, it's the world, the big picture, the political, moral and military struggles of mankind in a hostile universe. This is exactly why it's a little sad the writer hasn't taken a few more risks with this universe. Even so, I will defenitely be getting part three.

International Day Against Homophobia & Transphobia

Apparently, today is that day. As a friend said, for some people, assuming they even know about it, it's an excuse to go through the movements before going back to life as usual, without too much of a thought about these issues during the remainder of the year.

Rest assured, I won't.

As of this writing, I'm twenty one, and I fully acknowledge that I probably don't know myself all that well yet. Things may change me in the future, or I may change out of myself. In ten, twenty, thirty years I may be a different person altogether. When I look back on the past five years I can see I've changed quite a bit even in that short (if tumultuous) amount of time.

One thing I don't see changing much is my identification on both gender and sexuality spectra. It might become more clear to me, because I'm only just getting through the worst confusion, but I won't do a 180 turn and I'm as confident about that as I possibly can be.

You see, I'm not straight. I'm not gay either. Bi? No, that label never fit me well. I prefer queer or pansexual. Why do I insist on such a specialised term? Don't worry, in daily life I'm not too strict about it. In theoretical terms, however, it's very important to me, as well in a personal sense of identification. It signals how I see gender.

My views on gender are not things I tend to argue about a lot, because I know there are plenty of people who disagree. I don't mind that. Let them disagree, I say, as long as they (in a nutshell) don't hate me for thinking differently. Different opinions are fine, hate and fear and everything that follows doesn't do any of us any good.

My views are, more of less, something like this: Imagine the universe. I know the universe isn't an easy thing to imagine, but bear with me. The universe is huge. For all intents and purposes, it has no beginning or end. You could go in any direction and you could keep on going forever. The universe is filled with big gaps of nothing, but also with planets, stars, clouds of dust, meteors and meteorites, tiny particles and huge chunks of complicated matter. Not imagine one planet in this universe. This planet is a person. This person is female and identifies as a woman, within the current social parameters for 'woman'. It's probably a planet in a decently-sized solar system, because I imagine there are a good number of people who feel more or less this way. A bit of a distance away, there is another cluster (western, modern) society has named 'man'. But these are not the only possibilities. There are dozens, millions, as many other planets and stars and meteors and meteorites in this universe as there are people, and then some.

In other words, each person's individual gender identity is unique. There aren't two genders, just two forms of expression that are agreed to be the two points we use to measure everyone by. There are innumerable genders.

Does that mean people's physical bodies don't matter? Of course they matter. Bodies are actually very important. But to pretend that everyone with breasts or a vagina thinks, looks, acts, wants exactly the same and that everyone with a penis is the opposite of that is, in my mind, at best a cruelly simple view of people. Because people, you see, are complicated. While there may well be differences in the human species dictated by the set of chromosomes someone has, those differences are far outweighed by the differences between each individual person, or the similarities we share as a species.

I myself am only on the fringes of that vast planetary group we call woman, and my tiny little planet is careening wildly through space. My gender is fluid, the exact way I identify or want to express myself changes, depending on a whole host of variables. Usually I'm content with people assuming I'm a woman, maybe a slightly strange one, but definitely a woman. Sometimes I desperately want to look like that other cluster, man. Sometimes I even enjoy digging into femininity. Almost all the time I'm not quite the one, but not really the other. I would like to perfect a look of androgynity, but in the meantime, I'm more or less content here, on my little floating rock, skidding from one end of the universe to the other.

You can probably see how a theory of gender like this one would make labeling sexuality more complicated as well. Most labels for sexuality are based on a binary of genders. Homosexuality, attracted to the same, heterosexuality, attracted to the other, bisexuality, attracted to both. What if there are more than two genders? What if the number of genders is equal to the number of people? These terms would become, not meaningless, per se, but insufficient. What about all those other genders, all those other people, who don't quite fall inside the binary, or are miles outside that?

And that is why I prefer a term for my sexuality that doesn't presume two genders, like queer or pansexual. Because I'm not straight, and I'm not gay, and I'm not bi.

I am pansexual, and I am queergender.

http://www.dayagainsthomophobia.org/

NOTE: This is my own, personal blog, and if anyone feels the need to tell me how wrong/filthy/unnatural/disgusting/strange/queer I am, well... have fun! I appreciate your opinion, but you're probably not going to change mine. I also reserve the right to delete comments that I think cross a line. ...that is, if anyone's even bothered enough to leave a comment in the first place. Hah!

Book Review: The Court of the Air

The Court of the Air, Stephen Hunt. 2007, Tor Fantasy, New York.
"A fantastical tale of high adventure, low-life rogues, and orphans on the run."

First off, let me just say something about the cover. I know you should never judge a book by its cover, but from a commercial point of view, covers are immensely important. People are more likely to pick up a book with a cover that appeals to them, so it's important to try and match covers with target audiences. This... does not always work. I've seen books with awesome covers which were, frankly, crap. I've also seem awesome books with covers that were just plain ugly.

As for this book? I love that cover. It reminds me of Jules Verne, and with that parchment colour I think that's exactly the type of thing they were going for. You see, this book is steampunk fantasy.

In short: I don't even know where to start.

Honestly. I don't know where to start. This is a good book. There are no obvious flaws, if anything, it could stand to be a little more of what it was. There are things in there I really would like to read more about, bits of background, details of daily like. Luckily for me, there's a part two. It was also rather obvious in some places where the writer got his inspiration, but as a mythology fan, I was more excited to recognise the elements than annoyed at the fact that I could see them.

Worldbuilding

This seems like a good place to mention worldbuilding. Worldbuilding is the creating of a world around the story, the larger picture, the background for the characters to play out on. A writer can go about it in a lot of different ways, but the important part is that the reader gets the feeling that there is more than the characters' immediate surrounding, that things are not just there to accomodate the story. Which they really are, but if that's obvious it gets a little boring. Unless you're writing a-- but that's a different story!

All narratives need a little or a lot of worldbuilding, even non-fiction ones. Most of the work's already done for the writer, in that case, but they still need to make sure it reads as a larger world. In fantasy and sci-fi, it's especially important, because you're working with a world that is not our own, and the differences are what make it interesting.

This book has heaps and mountains of the stuff. Fortunately, the writer doesn't insist on describing all of it, which also gets boring real fast, but gives the reader a little glimpse of these strange and fascinating things, moving the story along with just enough information to make the reader curious, but not really enough to satisfy that curiosity. That really made me want to keep reading, to figure out more about this world.

For example, this world has a history that comes across as centuries of events, of which the reader only gets little bite-sized chunks, which is good when it comes to history. There is a race of steam-powered robots, or steammen, with an ancient civilisation, an own State, a King, a pantheon of Steamo Loas, etiquette and political alliances. The navy of Jackals is a fleet of airships, blimps and zeppelins, the gas for which is mined by creatures called graspers. Debates in the political system of Jackals work by the politicians hitting eachother with sticks.

I could go on for a while. The best thing is, all of these things seem right and logical. They are in context with the rest of the story.

Characters

There are so many characters I'd like to talk about. Let's start with our two main characters. As an aside, these two do not develop a romantic relationship, despite being of opposite genders. This is a plus in my book, because all too often writers stuff in a romantic subplot which really doesn't work with the rest of the story and just annoys me. It's nice to see a thoughtful, deep and action-filled book without too much romance.

The character the readers are introduced to first is Molly Templar. She's an orphan, loving in a poorhouse, only just come of age, and with a strange affinity for mechanical engineering and steammen. The poorhouse is a pretty miserable place, considering she rather read than spend her days being hired out as laundry maid. Her salvation comes when a wealthy aristocratic woman buys her out, except that this madam turns out to be a madam, and Molly to be educated as a whore. Her first customer gets assasinated right in front of her and she flees, only to find the entire poorhouse has been massacred. It gets worse for her, though. All through her tribulations, she's a consistently level-headed young woman with a dreamer's streak. Her ambitions are not very high, but they are higher than what's expected of her, as a Sun Gate Poorhouse girl. This makes her a little rebellious. All considered, she takes her world being turned upside-down pretty well.

Our second protagonist is Oliver Brooks. He's also an orphan, living with his uncle, and he's a fey child. There is a thing in Jackals called the fey curtain, a sort of veil across the world. It's described as mist, shifting and creeping into people's homes. The thing is, any person that comes in contact with this curtain mutates in some way or other. Many die horribly, but especially children survive and develop strange powers. People are, unsurprisingly, horribly afraid of these children, and often have them put into magical torcs which can kill them with a single word.

Anyway. Oliver is suspected to be fey, so he's watched closely. He can't do much of anything, he's kicked out of school and the only job he can get is running errands for his uncle. One day he comes home to find his uncle assassinated. He runs to the police, who don't believe them. They die soon after. He's saved by a mysterious associate of his uncle's, and taken on a cross-country trek to the celgas mines. For him, too, things get worse. He's decidedly less stable than Molly, and doesn't take to his responsibilities well. When he is given a magical set of rifles, his instability only gets worse. At some point in the story, something in him seems to snap and his cruel side comes to the surface. He is honestly a little frightening sometimes.

One of my favourite characters was King Steam, the sovereign of the Steamman Free State. He is incredibly, incredibly old, very wise, and really a little tragic. He's single-handedly build up the steamman race after some dark disaster in the past, drawing the designs for every single one of his people. He is also a slipthinker, a type of steamman who can spread their consciousness over several mechanical bodies, or mu-bodies. Slipthinkers can control several bodies at once like this, and are powerful, held in high esteem, and very rare. Unfortunately for me, King Steam ends up dying n the final grand battle of the book, but I have to say, it was appropriate in the narrative. And anyway, the steamman believe he reincarnates, so he never really dies.

Another of my favourite characters is a spry old lady, and when I say old I do mean old, damson Loade. Her friends call her Mother Loade, which makes me giggle. She and her late husband Locke set up the greatest, best, and most successful gun manufacturing and selling business, Locke and Loade. This makes me giggle too, because I like puns. She end up going out in a blaze of glory. Literally.

Did I mention the writer isn't afraid to kill his characters off? I always admire that in writers. It's a difficult balance to strike, between unfairly and unsatisfactorily letting everyone die, and playing god just to keep the nice people alive against all odds.

I think this is a decent place to wrap up, so here we go:

Overall rating:
8.5/10
I. Love. This. Book. I really do. I mean, steampunk Loa! It's a really good blend of fantasy, the steampunk oil and grime, and nods to our own history and mythologies. The world is fantastic, and I'm glad there are at least two more books set in it, and the characters are engaging, each with their own pasts and issues and strong points.

Book Review: The Magician's Apprentice

The Magician's Apprentice, Trudi Canavan, 2010, Orbit, Great Britian.

I bought this book in the UK. The girl in the shop told me it was a good one when I came up to pay, and I had a short conversation with an acquaintance about how nice it was.

Yeah. No.

In short? Meh.

The longer story? I've got this great big 700 page fantasy story lying on my desk, and it feels like I just read a 5000 word short story. And not in a good way, believe me. Now, I'm not saying it's a bad book, really, but it's not a good one, and this is why.

Characterisation

I didn't want to know the characters. The main character, Tessia, has about as much depth as a pond, and her biggest development is falling in love with the man she hated at the beginning of the book. The fact that she's to become a magician doesn't do much to her. She isn't sad about losing her old life, apart from some mild anxiety about moving out of her parent' home, she isn't ecstatic about getting to be a powerful magician, which will probably give her the opportunity to carry out her dream to be a healer. She's just sort of... content. When her parents die, we are told she's broken up, but we see her getting over it in a space of a few pages. When she's in the middle of a war she seems a little subdued at all the death and horror around her, as if she just discovered the milk's gone sour. When she discovers how to heal with magic, which is a huge achievement, something she's been hoping to figure out ever since she started her apprenticeship, she... well, she seems pleased, I guess. When she and her twoo lurve get together, she... seems a little smug, at most. Yeah. I did not really feel compelled to root for her, considering she has the personality of a spoon.

Her fellow apprentice, Jayan, is little better. He goes through a development from jealous and aloof to... hopelessly in love yet still jealous and aloof. To be fair, I liked his practical view on the romantic subplot. Sadly, I hated the romantic subplot.

Our third major character is Stara, a woman in the very restrictive neighbouring country. She was the only reason I kept reading. Oh yes, I liked Stara. She starts out as a rather naive little girl, come to live with her father. When it turns out he only wants to marry her out, she starts hating him, which is only made worse when he forcibly reads her mind. She then goes on to become a major player in the underground slave resistance. This character has the best motivation, the most interesting character, and evokes the most empathy with the reader. Sadly, she also gets the least screentime.

Style

The style was, truth to be told, easy to read. It read quickly, even though there were a few consistent bumps in the road that kept slinging me out of the carriage.

One of these is the writer's insistance on making long, strung-together sentences every now and then, in which it isn't really clear anymore who was doing what, and I had to read them three times just to get what was going on. The writer also has a tendency to chance perfectly good english words for more 'exotic' sounding ones. This is a common problem with fantasy (and sometimes sci-fi) as a genre. There are no hours, for example, and none of the animals and plants are familiar. For some reason, there is an animal that's described as having wool, which pretty much makes it a sheep to me, but which is called a reber. If this animal is notable different from a sheep, I didn't notice it and it should've been explained. Otherwise, it's a sheep, dammit.

Speaking about animals, there's a little glossary of words in the back of the book, three pages long. Half of these words are made-up fantasy words, about ten of which actually figure in the book. The discriptions are a little redundant:

Squimp - squirrell-like creature that steals food

Alright, so we have a non-squirrell that wasn't even in the story. The rest of the glossary consists of the relevant definitions of tribes of people, titles and a few misc. words. Although it's more interesting to read what exactly the characters mean when they address someone by 'Lord' than the fascinating bit about the squimp, (Try saying that out loud. Squimpppp.) this is all something that isn't really necessary. Readers will figure it out as they go, because it's not like any of the terms are that different to require extra explanation:

Lady - wife of a Kyralian landowner

Oh my squimp!

Magic

One of the nice things of fantasy as a genre is the mucking about with magic. No, wait, I take that back.

Magic, when done right, is pretty awesome and I personally can't get enough of it. I have a few conditions, though. Among these are my hate of magic as deus ex machina, demand that the magic is, if not logical, at least intelligent or too complicated or mysterious for anyone to understand, and magic being part of the world as a whole instead of just thrown in for giggles somewhere.

The Apprentice does one of these things right.

The magic is part of the larger world, and it seems pretty firmly embedded. The only armies that are important are armies of magicians, most important people/men have some magical training, natural talents have special laws.

Unfortunately, this means that magic is used for everything. How shall we light the fire? Magic. Why does Sachaka fear Kyralia? Magic. How will we fight these people? Magic. How can we cross this river? Magic. This doesn't mix well with the story's view of the lower classes, who still toil in the fields and do their labour-intensive jobs at their own cost. Is every single magician really so ignorant? It's something that haunts me throughout the story, grating.

Worst of all, however, is the way magic is explained. Now, magic comes in two forms; regular and high magic. High magic is awe-inspiring and only for the best, it's dangerous and very important. According to the book, it takes a lot of practice to use magic properly, but what we see is Tessia visualising her magic, and that's all the theory we get. Further exploits in magic work like this: Jayan wants someting to be so, and it is so. Higher magic? It's the art of transferring someone else's magical energy into yourself, like a battery. How's it done? You cut the other person's skin to break the natural barrier, you reach inside them, take it, and make sure to tuck it in with your own neatly. Done! The reader gets treated to another secret in the course of the story, how to kill someone while sleeping with them. Basically, you wait until they orgasm, because the natural barrier breaks down at that point, reach inside them, take... I think you get the rest.

How is all of this such a great secret? Magic's given this world the wheel, but they can't figure out how to make it roll. Up until the discovery of healing through magic, the difficulty level is about at knee-height. There's an initial threshold, and a lot of practise, but that doesn't explain why everyone seems so... well, so stupid. These people do not come across as smart magicians, at least, not once you know the whole secret of their magic. I really expected a little more.

Overall Rating:
5.5/10
It's a little boring and unchallenging, the system of magic is unimaginative and simple and most of the characters are flat. Still, it's a quick read and it's not nearly the worst I've read.

I Buy Books

I buy books.

To help myself get a handle on my book-buying habits I've decided to start reviewing books. For every new book I start, I have to review one first. This is meant to reduce The Pile a little. What is The Pile? Allow me to illustrate:


These are my unread books as of today. There are a few half-finished ones missing from the picture. So yes, The Pile needs to be reduced.

=>Click here for the reviews.

P.S.
That whole regular creative writing thing? Yeah. I'm writing, but most is too long, too unfinished, or just too plain bad to see the light of day.