Monday, February 6, 2006
Since I spent two of the days I was on break at IT Kerala, blogging about it wouldn’t hurt. From the outset though, I’ll say that there’s not much to talk about. Like I said earlier, the tone set is more in the vein of a village fair than anything business-oriented or techy.
That being said, all the big names in India had a presence there: Intel had two stalls, though none were manned by the company themselves, and I had an interesting time confusing people by asking about the Core Duo processor. The guys were helpful as much as they were able to, but the information was contradictory. I asked about the Apple switch to Intel, and when the new Apple notebooks would be available and received scant information. In the Microsoft stall too, I could not find a single company representative. There were people manning the stall, but none of them had their hands up when I asked for somebody from Microsoft. They were promoting localization in a big way, showcasing Malayalam inside Office: nothing revolutionary. I was also interested in Project Shiksha, a scheme similar to the one that I earlier hinted at, but as was the rule, there was nobody to dole out more information. I dutifuly left my card in a big glass bowl and went gawking at other sights.
Toonz Animation, a company I’ve admired from afar had a nice stall there and I spent quite a good while watching their in-house productions. Not Pixar, but they’ve certainly come a long way since I first saw their videos. Toonz offers courses in 3D Animation and whatnot, but like many computer coaching classes out to make big bucks, they don’t train module by module. The complete package costs something like 70K. I was interested for my bro, but then thought better of the whole thing.
NeST also had a stall, but they were marketing something exceedingly interesting: spices. Yeah, that’s right, you heard me. Spices. NeST condiments had the best smelling stall out there, with an assortment of their wares on display. I thought my days of sleep deprivation had gotten to me when I saw that stall first, but nope. Spices alright. For a company with 20-ish tech subsidiaries, they certainly picked an amazing one to showcase at an IT fest.
The job fair was a huge affair. 99 in 100 people at IT Kerala seemed to be there just for the job, and there are rumours more than 60K candidates attended. I pity those people at Bigleap who organized the event; I’ve worked with them before when they had a small event at Pankaj around a half-year back, but the scale of this recruitment drive was unbelievable. Debated whether to talk to somebody out there and see familiar faces, but the sheer scale of the event was daunting. Waving my delegate card, I was able to cooly walk into all the restricted zones, and I saw a lot of behind-the-scenes talk. The HR people there became a bit crazy after a while methinks, because some interviews were fun to watch :-). Another small observation: if you don’t get placed in-campus, it’s almost 100x as difficult to walk into an interview like this and get a job.
Again, calling this a business event is a joke. I walked through US Soft, Infy, TCS, IBS, and Wipro with some ideas that we had and couldn’t find a single person who I could talk to directly. Maybe those companies are too big, but if good ideas don’t come from the ground up, how will they grow?
Anyways, enough of that, I’ve updated my photo set at Flickr with way more photos. Enjoy.
Tags: business • review
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Thursday, June 9, 2005
@Amazon
Been ages since I reviewed something; the last book I looked at also turned out to be one of the best I’ve read, so if this post hadn’t come along, it would’ve been a fitting burial. Incidentally, that word could have been used to describe this site till just a month ago, with it’s frequency of updation being somewhere close to zilch, but like this review section getting a new lease of life, I smashed up some revamped kewl links so that even if I’m too lazy to type in huge entries, at least something gets on this site via ze magic of push-button publishing.
I’m deviating. We Few by John Ringo and David Weber is branded Military Scifi. Unlike the earlier books in the series: March Upcountry, March to the Sea and March to the Stars, We Few is not purely mil-fi, it’s more a combo of romance, space fiction, diplomatic theory and like all Ringo books, it force-feeds us a healthy dose of Kipling down our gullets. The story of the series is a pretty formulaic “coming of age” tale. Prince Roger, a sugar dandy and heir tertiary to the Imperial Throne is stranded on a deserted planet, and through a trial of hardships, gore, blood, loss and love becomes the uber king who restores the throne to its former glory. Since I delight in growing up tales, I liked this book the best, because Roger was in his element here. However, because of my immediate dislike of militiary fiction - I’ve read about 9 books of Ringo this past month and still I haven’t gotten over it - I didn’t like this as much.
But I’m not sure it’s mil-fi I hate, or Ringo’s writing, because just as the action seems to heat up, he breaks it up with military/diplomacy theory, and why this plan works or should work, and why something else shouldn’t or didn’t. Or why this situation turned out to be like this. Too much analysis is grating. I have to say though that Weber and Ringo write well together, they are very compatible authors. Perhaps this is too harsh, but I also find them decidedly mediocre. It’s okayish writing, but definitely not a cover-to-cover read.
There are definitely other niggles too: weak female characters, unfunny humor, dragging sub-plots, and some really convoluted name creation that takes some “Oh, this is that guy!” moments to get used to. And when you see “scholar”, “non-combatants” and “Imperial throne” in the same sentence and think nothing of it, you know it’s time to get up and take a long break before you come back to read.
Tags: reading • review
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Tuesday, October 19, 2004
@Amazon
I’ve been reading so many books nowadays, on and off, that I even forget the good ones I read. For example, it required a google search to bring back the name of the title (and the author!) of Oracle Night. The only thing I could remember was that the cover featured a blue notebook, and that the first name of the author was Paul. Amazingly, ‘paul blue notebook’ returned the book title, and another search for that led me to the Amazon page. Google is magic in such cases, and to think our children will take this for granted :-).
Well, now on to the book… ;-). As a rule, I don’t like surrealism in writing… it looks okay when you see it in art (and even then you have to squint and so on) but in a book I can barely stand the layer within layer of meaning that every word seemingly implies. So to pull such a thing off without coming across as ‘intellectual’ is a fine art for any author and Auster does that well.
What is surreal in a book? Well in this case, it’s the technique of a story within a story. The protoganist, a struggling novelist Sidney Orr buys a blue notebook and immediately, seemingly bewitched by it, begins a story about a man who after a near-death experience walks out on his old life and starts anew. Orr’s wife Grace however, starts acting strangely after Orr commences his story. The novel is a fine interplay between the novel within the novel, the menage a trois of Grace, Sidney, and his mentor Trause, and between it all the small blue notebook that so enigmatically shapes the events inside it, and even many things in the real world that Orr lives in. And to add to that, Auster’s book has a very familiar blue cover 
Like all such books ought to be, it’s an experiment in collating unrelated things and finding a larger and deeper whole from it. Surrealism in art works because it’s theorized that that’s how the mind works… the few small flashes of insight that we get everyday (and which allows us to learn… anything) are from unconnected things, and most often such works are trying to explore the essence of intuition. Auster succeeds because he doesn’t delve too deeply into it. He takes a very simple situation, introduces a few random variables, and lets the story evolve. The sudden insight that Orr has in the end about his wife (which interestingly he does not validate) is perhaps due to the story that he evolves in the blue notebook. The reader is led through his process of discovery, and after that, when Orr is free of the spell of the notebook, we are free as well… to imagine what will happen in the delicious open ending that Auster provides.
This book is a decidedly special one. I like.
Tags: reading • review
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Friday, June 25, 2004
@Amazon
Jaishree “Janu” Misra writes a simple, spellbinding tale of love and loss, of pain and deserved happiness which simply rings aloud through and through with bitter experience. Once in a while, I read a book that stays with me for a long, long time. Something inside me takes notice, and I think on the sentences, the words and the characters in the book when I’m doing very different things. Usually, it’s because I identify with some of the characters in the book, and usually, if the protagonist is male, I tend to step into their shoes. But Janu at a lively, imaginative and wonderful 18 years of age, and Arjun a boyish teenager (who loves cricket) that she falls in love with - both of em, can’t be more unlike me. I regret to inform you that it’s her Malayalee husband Suresh I found a kindred spirit in, the Suresh that Janu is forced to marry after abandoning her first love. And Suresh is what I fear I will become 
The story, for an Indian author, is refreshingly simple. By that I mean, there aren’t any connivings with the language that both Roy and Rushdie seem to tinker with. Nor is there (despite the name) any deep-rooted mysticism; Janu is human and approachable and her problems are real and vivid and so hard to solve. I can’t draw any parallels with more complicated tales that other Indian authors tend to write nowadays either, but neither is it a return to the ‘before Rushdie’ age with it’s desi tinge; it’s what I feel Indian writing should be - true to the heart, direct, and definitely Indian. Rushdie has said something though that I remember: you have to be an insider and an outsider to see the whole picture. Janu definitely fits the bill, and it’s her unique blend of Delhi-traits and upbringing and her decidedly Malayalee roots that give this story life. I won’t paraphrase the story here because I’m cheating you of a good read, and neither will I give out the many gems of observations that Janu makes about life in Kerala. But if you do get the time, pick up this book; if you’re a Malayalee, don’t miss this.
Tags: reading • review
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Monday, May 31, 2004
@ Amazon | @ YetAnotherBookReview
I’m sure someone must have mentioned this before, but there is a giant power-sucking-vortex when you are dealing with sequels to an excellent story. The nicer the orginal story, the more your readers want a sequel, and the nicer the sequel, the more your readers want another one. Since there is something called the Law of Diminishing Returns, you can only write so many sequels before it starts to taste like dried orange. The rule therefore, if you are an author, is to plan your sequels and to write them well.
The Recluse series doesn’t have many true sequels. It is a large series, but they are more books set in the same universe than continuations of the same plot line. While it helps to read all interconnected books in a series to know everything about everybody, every book stands alone, and that’s pretty wonderful for new readers.
Well, what can I say about this book which is actually the 5th book in the Recluse series and the sequel to The Magic of Recluse? The Law of Diminishing Returns do apply ;-). Lerris returns, but this time as a mage with growing powers. He truly doesn’t understand his powers yet, but as it grows, it changes him in ways that he doesn’t expect. The Recluse series shows why it’s one of the better fantasy sagas out there in this book because it doesn’t repeat or rehash the material of the earlier book. Lerris is much different than what we found in the first book and though his modesty is grating after a while, he does have a few endearing qualities too. Krystal - his consort - is likable, so is Tamra, and so is Justen and Gunnar, and when you’ve read the earlier four books, all these make the story a cohesive unit that’s pretty impressive.
What’s not that impressive is the plot. While it’s fittingly gargantuan and epic, it also has so many ups and downs and twists and turns and confusing details everywhere that it becomes a tough read. The ending is worth it, and is not a let down, however the book is much more long winded than the first one, which is saying something. Recluse is not an easy series to read, and this book proves that too.
For people who like sequels however, this is a good story and one that should not be missed. I for one, liked it more than the first book.
Tags: reading • review
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Monday, May 31, 2004
@Amazon | @ SFFWorld
The Recluse fantasy series is another epic saga of 12 books (and counting?) that along with the much longer and more popular Sword of Truth series and the Wheel of Time compendium make me think that fantasy sagas have to be long to be read :-). While there are a few exceptions to the rule, most notably The RiddleMaster books, even that is a trilogy (or is it four books?) and length seems to be the measuring rod of popularity for this genre. The Recluse books however do not continue the same story unlike the two sagas mentioned above, they are but books set in the same universe.
However, length is not a measure for quality. The SoT and WoT series of books are apt examples on what not to do with a fantasy series. While the Wheel of Time dragged on and on and on until lovely characters became caricatures of themselves, the Sword of Truth series became so idealistic and objectivistic so as to make me puke. There were a few excellent books in both the series, but every time the authors came up with additions to an already long story, rehashes of the same theme became more commonplace, and the story seemed to be going nowhere. There is nothing that can disillusion fantasy fans more than a still story, and both these very promising universes seemed to have stood stock-still for some time now. The Recluse series, as I mentioned above, does not fall into this trap, and since it does not have the same characters for every book, there is an element of fresh air that makes some quirks palatable. There are still rehashes of the same plot, but it is much more bearable.
Enough of the introduction ;-). Recluse is a world based on Chaos and Order. Chaos is white - since it’s a chaotic mixture of all colours, and Order is black - since it doesn’t have any impurity at all. There are wizards - Chaos masters and Order masters who wield these opposites and fight each other until someone comes on top. At least, that’s the basic premise. One of the interesting things about this series is the “science” in it. Chaos and Order are very strongly explained in the context of the series, so much so that the rules in this universe become believable. While it is slow going, particularly at first, slowly as Recluse becomes clearer, we can understand the workings of order and chaos much more clearly as well. This much of a strong explanation for magic is one of the best things about Recluse. If you can get through the first few hundred pages of the book, you’ll soon find the characters very interesting.
Our hero is Lerris, a boy from the island of Recluse in this world who has been rejected by the people on the island because he thinks Order is too “boring”. Recluse is built on Order, and since it does not allow a foothold to chaos, Lerris has to undergo a dangergeld - a sort of trial - so that he can prove himself and come back to the island. It seems a straight-forward story when I tell it like that, but the plot thickens from the very beginning, and it is a confusing read if you’re a speed-reader and looking just to finish this book. This is a book that must be taken slow and slowly dissected. Lerris has many adventures, and the book has a satisfying ending, but even the first few pages would tell us that the world of Recluse has enough material in it for a hundred books or more, and a few sequels bunched in :-). I liked this book.
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Wednesday, May 26, 2004
It’s not often that I can exactly say how I stumbled across a particular site or a webpage that interests me. Most of the kewl links that you see here are like that, their history forgotten the instant I found them interesting. But it’s often very interesting in itself to know how I stumbled on some of them, for a geneology of interesting things will lead me to a place which points me to interesting things often - and that is a very good thing to know.
Off-topic: The XML specification by the W3C aims to make what I described above easier. Although it has not been implemented yet, the Xlink specification contains a feature known as back-links or bi-directional links - every hyperlink is “aware” about its referers, so when you ask a page to translate how exactly you came to be there, it’ll tell you that. It’s much more complicated than a back-button because information can be passed both ways through such a hyperlink whereas now it just moves forward. It’s one of the things in the spec that might change “browsing” the net forever.
Well, all that was because I stumbled on a most interesting story today in a very roundabout manner. You would have to be dead to not know that the Alfonso Cuarón directed Potter movie - The Prisoner of Azkaban is to very shortly hit the big screen. Cuarón also directed another movie called the Little Princess, and it was largely because of it that he was chosen for this one. And that is how I stumbled upon A Little Princess by Frances Hodgson Burnett.
If you like Anne of the Green Gables by L.M Montgomery, you’ll like this book. It’s an adorable fairy tale that is written so wonderfully that you’ll empathize with Sara - a little princess who goes from riches to rags and back - so much that the book will keep you mesmerized. I loved this.
You can read A Little Princess online thanks to the Electronic Text Center of the Univeristy of Virginia Library.
Tags: reading • review
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Monday, April 5, 2004
As a rule, I don’t like fanfic. If the fanfic happens to be anime derived (as most fanfics on the net are) I avoid it. Drunkard’s Walk is an exception to that rule. It has excellently crafted characters, a wry sense of humor, cute tall Japansese girls (who for once appear to be real people rather than manga material) and good quotes at the beginning of every chapter. I liked Douglas Sangnoir. In fact, I’ll recommend this series to anybody who asks. Sadly, only Part II is available on the net right now 
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Tuesday, February 24, 2004
[Slashdot | Amazon | Neal Stephenson]
I’ve mentioned Neal Stephenson before, he’s the guy who brought cyberpunk fiction into the mainstream, and even though the furor of the immersive web has died down a lot, he still wears the cyberpunk crown. Whatever anyone says about the genre as a whole (drivellish teenage hormone infection may come to your mind), Snow Crash is a literary classic in its own right.
Before I go further, what is cyberpunk fiction? I can’t give you traditional examples, because there is no precedent for this sort of writing. The closest in mainstream media nowadays is the Kill Bill movie by Tarantino. Snow Crash plays with many streams (as diverse as Sumerian history and hacker lingo), new and unique words (like the ‘Metaverse’, ‘Avatars’ and the ‘Deliverator’), interesting unique characters (like Hiro, Y.T, and Raven), and troubling undertones of the difference between a utopian cyber-netherworld and the reality of the mudworld. Cyberpunk fiction is about the ever-cool fuzion, bringing together diverse elements from everywhere into a coherent (and sometimes not so) plot.
Like many online works (which it has decidedly influenced) Snow Crash doesn’t read like a conventional book. It breaks rules and makes reading and understanding it harder, and many sections of the book (including references to binary and hex) would be indicipherable to anyone not familiar with computer lingo. It also has a very abrupt ending and if you don’t follow the story very well (and appreciate the nuances of the plot and puns that are littered everywhere) it will be a very bad read.
But for anyone who aspires to understand the hacker, the script kiddie, the kewlness of code, the relationship that true koders have with the ninja and the art of war, the fascination that many hackers have with the weirdest of alternate lifestyles, Snow Crash is a must read.
Related links:
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Saturday, December 27, 2003
If only great movies could be great books! Granted, Taken isn’t an epic movie by any stretch of imagination, but it is one of the major Scifi dramas to hit Television recently, and it could have been a great book. But this, the novel by Thomas H. Cook isn’t what you’re looking for. Perhaps I was unfavorably biased (because I knew the story almost word for word coz I saw the series) but the writing is drab with words and dialogues copied from on screen, and there is hardly any extra material. This is boring, mostly because the whole point of writing a companion book should have beeen to give us something more than the stuff in the series. But this just doesn’t cut it.
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Saturday, December 27, 2003
This is the first of the Anne McCaffrey books that I’ve read; I wanted to start with the Dragonriders, but there are more than 10 books in that series, so I decided to let it lie for another day. This book is the second in the Pegasus series, and usually I’m very reluctant to begin with a later book, because then I won’t ever read the earlier books. So two firsts for me with this one; make that three: the first time I’ve read about Mind-Powers (aside from punk literature, but that doesn’t count, usually) I’ll place this book as a tentative liker, I think I recognize this book and it’s writing as that of one which grows on you, as you advance within the series, you’ll learn to love the characters and cry and laugh with them. I also got a very skewed opinion about McCaffrey (regrettably) because this isn’t the best of her writing. That is not to say I didn’t like this book, but I’ve read much better ones (even in the so called punk-genre of Ereading). I’ll place the Pegasus series in a Must-read slot though, since it deals with the Mind, and that I like. Psychohistory anyone?
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Saturday, December 27, 2003
Anne Rice is delightfully Victorian in this Vampire drama, and it’s one of the few books in this style that I like - that of a flashback novel. Most of the story is a single person narrative, and every other paragraph starts with a quote, so it’s in no way an easy style to engage readers in, but Rice is wonderful here. I learned to re-love Lestat (pronounced Lesdot, with an emphasis on the second syllable) and the new Vampire introduced: Quinn Blackwood, is unique and infinitely enjoyable. Rice does create great characters. The only flaw perhaps in the novel is the enormous narration throughout the text, however great a writer Rice is, she isn’t able to pull it off quite that effectively; writing this as first person singular could have been much more effective. I liked this.
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Thursday, December 18, 2003
@Amazon | @SFReviews | @Heinlein Book Bin
Lazarus is an old man now, old enough that he wants to die. Well, who can blame him, he’s lived many a millenia too much. And yet, there are many people who have vested interests in his living - after all, the oldest man on Earth should have much to teach his children (many, literally his children since he’s spawned his seed throughout the breathing universe) When he does manage to convince himself to live (with some help from a beautiful woman computer, a seedy rejuvinist, and his diploid twin sisters) the fun begins.
Time Enough for Love has also time enough for the umpteen lives of Lazarus - a person who’s older than anyone should be. It describes how he grows from one culture to another, how he reluctantly shrugs off his Old-Earth education that had till then sexually-repressed him, it talks about the difference between love and sex - Eros and Agape - and it tells how even his lengthened life is not enough for love. The last few hundred pages of this book deal with difficult to resolve issues, incest for one, and multiple loves for another and Heinlein brings about a harmonic fusion of love and sex and everything in between -of morality and of licentiousness - and detailed definitions of ‘incest’, ‘life’, ‘mere sex’, and ‘fun’ that I never expected in a book of this kind. This is an epic, and for all people, this is a must-read. I loved this.
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Thursday, December 18, 2003
@Amazon | @Heinlein Book Bin
Woodrow Wilson Smith, a.k.a Lazarus Long, the oldest man on Earth, a ‘Howard’ - a family of people long-lived by heriditary selective breeding, zooms into this tale and is a character that I’ll not forget soon. Heinlein’s story-telling is impressive as he manages to do so much - interwine a strong character-driven plot with science fiction - with so little talk. The pace of the story is fast - perhaps too fast - and it compresses seventy odd years of his life into extremely enlivening pages. This is not ‘hard’ scifi, so die-hard fans of the genre can look elsewhere, but Heinlein is impressive in the people that he creates. It’s astounding the amount of work that has gone into making Lazarus beleivable, and it’s even more impressive in this book’s sequel, Time Enough for Love. This book ends well, and although the second (and way better) book can be read separately, this serves as a very good launch-pad into this universe.
I liked this.
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Monday, December 15, 2003
@Amazon | @SFReviews
Marooned in Realtime is certainly a refreshing change from the other Scifi that I’ve read. Vinge provides a way to skirt around what he calls a Singularity, and the implications and reponses of people jumping across millenia in a time bubble only to return and find that the entire civilization has been abandoned. It’s not an enviable plot by any means, but Vinge makes gigantic issues seem smaller, and the whole story is told from the PoV of an old-fashioned detective, W.W. Brierson, who eventually manages to solve a mystery (though not the mystery that we want him to solve)
The fact that the greatest mystery of them all is still unresolved (how the world got abandoned) is overshadowed by a genuine resolution that the story brings about, quite astonishingly simple and satisfying in that respect. I liked this.
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Friday, December 12, 2003
Still reading, see my comments for book 1. This seems to continue in the same vein, with something that troubles me lurking inside it.
Edit: 12 December 2003 - Well I’ve finished this, and I’ve deduced an interesting fact about Martin and the way he writes. In any fantasy story, there should be a semblance of balance between good and evil - Martin is very harsh when it comes to destroying the hopes of the good, but the way he destroys evil is particularly cruel, he makes the reader see that there is some good even in a bad person and then when we start to empathize with them - whack! - a head goes off. I don’t like this kind of writing, but Martin keeps me holding on to the series in the hope that there will be an eventual (good) resolution.
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Thursday, December 11, 2003
@Amazon | @All Consuming
Memory is an enjoyable read that marks a turning point in the saga. Miles Vorkosigan, our lovable mutie, grows into the person that he really is. And it’s done so convincingly that we rarely even think that Admiral Naismith will forever be no more. I read this after the later books in the series, but I have to say that this is one of the best books ever - it doesn’t have the fast-paced action of the earlier books nor the romantic slower-paced drama of the later books, but it’s a classic all by it’s own. I love this.
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Wednesday, December 10, 2003
View the story at Harriet’s Place
‘The Seduction of Simone’ provided a welcome break from the other book that I’m reading (Clash of Kings by George R.R. Martin), this is a light novella, written in a style both fluttery and vivid and one that I found pretty engaging. The story itself is pretty good, and the telling is nice as it is so clearly told by a woman. Scott diverges entirely from modern female writers (who tend to be sexless and hence boring (an exception to this is probably Love Again by Doris Lessing) and writes in a style which seems overly blithe at first but which quickly converges into a tempo that is fascinating. Margaret is a thirty-something woman, and she sees Simone, a pretty twenty year old in a bar one day and falls in love with her. Like I said, clich�. Except maybe for Margaret’s and Simone’s bisexuality, but that is glossed over in this story, and somehow that makes what happens between them more an act between people falling in love than an examination of a peculiar kind of love - this is most refreshing among online writers. I liked this. Another tinge of vivid color in this book is the Modern Britishness of it all - how Margaret frames her personality to suit the younger crowd that Simone hangs around with and how she describes Britan in a trip that she and Simone goes on. In fact, I think I’ll quote something:
Whatever you may have read about the London Eye, it is a truly spectacular sight, a marvel of our times. The overriding culture in Britain at the start of the millennium is one of laboured and unpleasant cynicism, a sour refusal to look at anything in a positive light, but the Wheel is a true triumph, an aesthetic delight, a cultural treasure and a shared experience which can unite a nation riven by self-made divisions. It is, simply, beautiful.
Simone and I stood on the steps beneath Westminster Bridge, looking over the Thames at its splendid steel frame, glinting proudly in the emerging sun, with the grandly functional County Hall forming a sober backdrop. It was so big. No matter how many times one hears how big it is, the first sighting is always a shock.
“It’s fantastic,” Simone said, unable to tear her eyes from it. “Stunning. I had no idea it would be that good.” She turned and looked at me, and for the first time her cool demeanour slipped and a look of unrestrained excitement invaded her features. [..]
Link to an eBook version of ‘The Seduction of Simone’
As an aside, this is the first time that I’m featuring online writing at Vysnu. Scott seems to be an apt author to feature since she provides a good median among the writers that I’ve read - readily flippant and serious, and an easy read to the eye. With no offense to Ms. Scott, there are better undiscovered writers out there, and I’ll feature some of them when I get to them.
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Monday, December 1, 2003
Liked it, but the huge plot makes me wonder who the good and the bad guys are and I’m hating this delineation. I have also some issues with the characters, and it’s not something that I can easily resolve. Reading Book 2 of the series will be hard but irresistible.
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Monday, December 1, 2003
Komarr introduces a healthily enjoyable female character to the saga, and Ekaterin satisfies as well as arouses curiosity. I like this book.
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Monday, November 24, 2003
Wonderful. It’s not that wonderful that I’m gaga over it, but McKillip is one of the better wielders of fantasy out there. I loved elements like “land-law” and “mind-shout” and I loved Morgon. If I’m not way off the mark, the trilogy is still unresolved, especially the romance of Morgan and Raederle.
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Tuesday, November 18, 2003
Bujold’s third book in the saga, this is the most interesting of them all. Told from the PoV of a mutilated imageless boy who aspires to be a war hero like his father, it spins more stories than it can hope to resolve, but that’s a thing I like. Miles is an interesting hero, and his traits from his mother and his father are remarkably (yet subtly) enhanced in him. I liked this book, the best of the series so far.
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Tuesday, November 18, 2003
Miles returns in the 4th book of the saga, and though it’s not as good as the 3rd, character explorations are in plenty. His love for Elena is particularly interesting, so is the ‘Botharism’ in the whole story. I like this.
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Tuesday, November 18, 2003
Part of the Barrayar saga, but better than the previous book, the story is angled from the PoV of the lady, something I found appealing. There is humor (Victorianish, nevertheless) but it is essentially a very readable and enjoyable (though I say this grudgingly) book.
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Sunday, November 16, 2003
Too much of a medical-biased scifi for me to really enjoy this, but Bear has a strong and vivid enough writing style for people to be immersed in. And of course, the core idea that the story revolves on is eniviably good. Would like to read the sequel.
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Saturday, November 15, 2003
Interesting book, threeD characters, and a simple enough plot means that I can digest this. It’s a Victorian romance translated to the space age. Nothing wonderful, just subtle enough to be enjoyable.
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