Review of All Tomorrow's Parties

Book #16. All Tomorrow’s Parties, by William Gibson. Unabridged audio.

On a recent episode of my solo podcast, I commented about how hard it is to convincingly write about future technology. It is extremely difficult to project technology into the future, and when it is done badly, it can be laughable. William Gibson knows how to write the future convincingly. The book was written more than 15 years ago,

Before starting this book, I knew that it was third in a series, but was convinced by online reviews that I could read this as a stand-alone. Now, I was not always sure what was going on in the story all the time, but I don’t know if that was due to picking up the series here. My recollection of the prior Gibson novels I read was that they were also a bit hard to follow on occasion. 

The book is made up of three overlapping main plot threads, with shared characters and a shared location for the novel’s conclusion. Despite the narrowness of this focus, Gibson manages to tell a story with an epic sweep. We have a hacker who lives in a cardboard box in Tokyo. We have a bicycle messenger in San Francisco. We have a virtual reality pop singer. And all of these characters (and many more) are involved in a story involving pharmaceutical trials gone wrong, the ubiquity of the net, and the consequences of technology on humanity. 

Gibson’s strength as a novelist lay in his ability to express his themes, and to create compelling worlds and interesting characters. This novel marks a move away from his hard science-fiction “cyber-punk” roots, into a more mainstream form, albeit one still informed by technology.

Source: received from Brilliance Audio, for discussion on the Book Guys Show podcast.

Teaser Tuesday

Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of A Daily Rhythm. Anyone can play along!

Just do the following:

Grab your current read.

Open to a random page.

Share two (2) “teaser” sentences from somewhere on that page.

BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS! (make sure that what you share doesn’t give too much away! You don’t want to ruin the book for others!)

From Page 3 of  Rumours of Glory: A Memoir, by the wonderful Canadian musician Bruce Cockburn:

" ... my songs are multifaceted. They are not just about war, injustice, and exploitation, though these subjects are well represented. They are certainly not just about Jesus, though faith and grace frequently find a place in the lyrics and in the tunes themselves. Mystery, beauty, love, pain joy ... the power of a wild place ... the power of people to rise above oppression, above pettiness: these are the things I have worked to portray.”

This Week in Reading

BOOKS: 
Rumours of Glory (hc), by Bruce Cockburn, pages 1 - 42.
All Tomorrow’s Parties (ua), by William Gibson, pages 1 – 231.
Paul & The Faithfulness of God (pb), by N.T. Wright, pages 290 - 321.


COMICS:
Back Issue Magazine 75
Convergence Action Comics 1
Convergence Blue Beetle 1
Convergence Detective Comics 1
Convergence Infinity Inc 1
Convergence Justice Society of America 1
Convergence Plastic Man & the Freedom Fighters 1
Convergence Shazam 1
Convergence World’s Finest 1
Justice League Dark 19 - 29
Micronauts (Devil’s Due) 1 - 5
Micronauts (Marvel) 3 - 5

Review of 24 Declassified: Death Angel

Book #15.24 Declassified: Death Angel , by David Jacobs. Paperback. 

This is a prequel series, set before the first season of the TV show – and have since been “declassified.” In the mythology of the 24-verse, the counter-terrorism agency CTU was established after the 1993 World Trade Center attack. My understanding is that some of the novels take place before 9/11, although references to the Patriot Act place this one after those attacks.

Jack Bauer is investigating a potential spy at an atomic research labs in New Mexico. An international assassin called Annihilax has been linked to previous deaths in the area. The assassin was supposedly killed years before, but Jack believes the man’s signature on a number of deaths means that he is alive and active again. Bauer’s CTU superiors, as well as the FBI agents he is working with in New Mexico, don’t want to hear of any of his crazy theories. SO he works his case the way he wants to, leaving him on his own most of the time, and working against his colleagues some of the time.

The story is exciting and well-paced. A few terrific set pieces include a gunfight in a laser laboratory, and an attack on Bauer by a hotel maid. The eventual revelation of the identity of Annihilax was surprising to me, and interestingly enough, it was also a surprise to the characters in the book. And that is always a nice touch.

Mirroring the episodic structure of the TV show, the novel is broken up into 24 chapters, which is easier to maintain than 24 hours of TV. Some of the chapters did not include Jack Bauer at all, which is something that an episode of the show would never do. Some of the chapters only had one scene, again something the show would never do. Reading this, realizing that NOT every minute of every hour was covered in the novel, I realized what a writing accomplishment the show was. Of course, shortcuts were taken on the TV show, but the multiple story arcs and POV characters gave the illusion that the show was taking place in real time. The book does not make the same claim.

There were nice “Easter eggs” for fans of the TV show, including mentions of Kim, Nina, George Mason, and Ryan, as well as an appearance by Tony Almeida. The inclusion of these characters and other aspects of the “world” of 24 made the book stand out as not just another action-adventure novel, which other than that, it really was.

Source: purchased from Goodwill.

This Week in Reading

BOOKS: 
Insatiable Appetites (ua), by Stuart Woods, COMPLETED. Reviewed here.
24 Declassified: Death Angel (pb), by David Jacobs, COMPLETED.
Paul & The Faithfulness of God (pb), by N.T. Wright, pages 272 - 298.

COMICS:
Avengers 200
Convergence Adventures of Superman 1
Convergence Justice League of America 1
Convergence New Teen Titans 1
Convergence Swamp Thing1
Convergence Wonder Woman 1
Image Firsts: Youngblood 1
Ms. Marvel 1 - 5
The New Deadwardians 1 – 8
New Mutants 31, 50
Solo Avengers 1
Unity 5
West Coast Avengers 14

Expanding Holmes: Sherlock Bones, Vol 2

Sherlock Bones, volume 2, story by Yuma Ando and Art by Yuki Sato. Graphic novel.

As I wrote when I reviewed volume 1, there is a high level of “buy-in” required to enjoy this series. First, you have to be willing to read a book with the storytelling and art style common in manga. And second, you have to be willing to accept the premise that a sixteen-year-old schoolboy (Takeru) has adopted a dog who is the reincarnation of Sherlock Holmes, who can communicate with Takeru whenever he smokes the father’s pipe. 

The bulk of volume 2 is made up by the 6-part story “A Script for Death.” In it, Sherdog witnesses an actual murder on the set of a murder movie. He is able to lead his Watson (Takeru) through the string of clues, including paw prints and spilled cocoa, to the killer. It is a story that does what I want a Holmes story (of any variety) to do. It relies on observation, logic, and deduction to solve the crime and catch the culprit.

The volume actually begins with a fun one-part story about Sherdog making bad deductions, but still saving the day – well, after making a complete mess of the house, because … you know, he’s a dog. There are also two brief “coffee time” features that round out the volume. These features add a needed humorous touch to a volume involving murder mysteries.

Sherdog’s insistence that he is a Victorian gentleman is one of the funnier running jokes in the volume, as is his enduring love for Irene Adler, who in this volume is represented by Takeru’s sister Airin. In this version, Airin is a police detective, so their paths cross regularly.

I have found the first two volumes of this series delightful, and look forward to reading more.

Source: public library

Review of Insatiable Appetites

Book 14: Insatiable Appetites, by Stuart Woods. Unabridged audio.

With this novel, I am almost finally caught up with my Stuart Woods reading. The problem is that he has become very prolific in the last few years, as he as at least two more novels coming out in 2015. I suspect that he has done what many popular novelists have done, and brought in a ghost-writer (or two), although a second name does not appear on the book covers.

Whatever the case, as the quantity of his books has increased dramatically over the last few years, the quality has become less consistent. When these books are good, they are still very good, but not every single one reaches those heights. This one falls somewhere in the middle, leaning more towards the “clunker” side of the scale.

After the election of Kate Lee to the presidency, Stone Barrington finds himself distributing the estate of a longtime supporting character. This brings an old flame back into his life, and even Stone has trouble keeping up with the combined pressure of these events.

He has written political books in this series before, and I have found some of them to be quite entertaining. But Woods just doesn’t know enough about the topic to write convincingly. I made that complaint about a recent book, and do so again here. The “scandalous” plot by one of the parties, which literally leads to the murder of a House member, is both small potatoes and common practice for both parties. Besides the bold-faced partisanship on display, this plotline represents a fundamental misunderstanding of how Washington works.

Fortunately, this is not the main plot of the novel. The main plot is mostly solid, the action exciting and the character growth reasonable. Of course, more unbelievably good luck happens to a supporting character, but as a reader I’ve become used to that over the last dozen novels or so.

Source: public library