Scruffy Fiction

The Lies of Locke Lamora Read Along

I’m going to be taking part in The Lies of Locke Lamora read along hosted by The Little Red Reviewer, Dark Cargo, SF Signal and My Awful Reviews. We’re going to be reading the book in small sections and posting thoughts and discussions on our blogs every Saturday for five weeks. If you’d like to take part you can get all the details here.

I’ve never taken part in a read along before so I don’t quite know what to expect from this. I’m looking forward to be getting started though it’s going to be good to get involved  with other bloggers and contribute to the discussion. From what I hear it’s a great book, sounds like the kind of fantasy I like to read so it should be a good choice for my first read along. Thank you to every one for organising this I think it’s going to be lot’s of fun.

My first post will be up on Saturday 10th March. Time to start reading!

Book Review: The Recollection by Gareth L Powell

When arches begin to appear all over the world Ed’s brother falls through one and disappears. Ed and his brother’s wife then set off on an adventure through the arches to track him down. Meanwhile far in the future Katherine is a down on her luck starship captain competing with her former lover and rival trader Victor.

The Recollection is a really great read. Alternating between the two storylines the plot moves along at a really fast pace. The chapters are short often ending on cliff-hangers which gave the book a “just one more chapter” quality and had me finishing it in just a few sittings. We start with a relatively small and personal story but it soon becomes much larger in scope. There are lots of huge ideas explored and I particularly liked how the passage of time was used and the problems this bought up. Gareth L Powell is a very economical writer, he doesn’t waste any time explaining things that aren’t important and he always keeps the plot moving forwards. His writing is accessible and entertaining which makes for a very enjoyable book.

Throughout the book we get flashbacks to earlier points in the character’s lives. They are only brief but very important and really help to flesh out the characters and make us feel for them. In fact by the time I got to the end I was quite surprised how attached I had become to these people in such a small space of time.

I absolutely loved The Recollection, with big ideas, characters I could care about and a real sense of adventure it’s exactly the kind of science fiction story that I like to read.

Book Review: Moxyland by Lauren Beukes

The setting of Moxyland is a near future dystopia. It’s a world that’s very easy to believe because the technology and social trends are so similar to our own. It’s not difficult to imagine advertising or mobile phones being used in the ways described here which makes this at times an uncomfortable read. The story is set in South Africa which I am not familiar with at all so I’m sure there were some cultural references that went over my head but it makes for a much more interesting setting than most standard sci-fi distopias.

Moxyland introduces us to four young characters all rebelling in their own way against the corporate controlled world that they live in. You get the impression that these characters are simply bored and are just playing with the idea of revolution, their motivations are not always clear. None of them are particularly likeable but to the credit of Lauren Beukes’s writing by the end of the relatively short novel I had come to care for all of them.

The story is told through alternating perspectives with short chapters which gives a nice pace to the story and always keeps things moving forward. To start with it’s not easy to pin down what the book is about or where the story is going, it appears to be more interested in using the characters to explore the different aspects of the world. I found the middle section of the story to be a little too slow but as the plot moves on the various stories all draw towards each other and culminate in a very powerful ending. Moxyland raises a lot of questions about how we use technology and the length’s corporations will go to get what they want. Like all good science fiction it doesn’t offer any easy answers, simply asking the questions is more important. This book gave me plenty to think about and will stay with me for a while.

Book Review: In the Mouth of the Whale by Paul McAuley

In the mouth of the Whale follows several offshoots of humanity competing for control of a gas giant. Within the planet is contained a strange and powerful Mind which could change both the future and the past of humanity. I won’t describe the plot any more than this because a lot of the fun of the book comes from getting to grips with the various plot lines.

This is a challenging read. There is a lot of terminology and history to get your head around and it’s not immediately obvious how it all fits together. It’s worth the effort though because as the story goes on we get more and more details which eventually give us a very complete view of this world. Most authors would just give us a big info dump at the start of the novel but I much prefer this method of storytelling because it slowly draws you in and involves you much more in the story.

It’s a standalone novel which is set in the same universe as the Quiet War series. You don’t have to have read those books to enjoy this but I think you’ll get much more out of it if you have. Many of the themes of the previous books are picked up here such as the fracturing of humanity and yet more ideas about the possibilities for our future evolution. There are some really big ideas presented here and it’s very satisfying when the true scope of the story is revealed. If you have read the previous books then this is probably not the book you were expecting. It’s very different from the others in the series which just goes to show the quality of Paul McAuleys writing and the versatility of the world he has created.

Book Review: Shadow of a Dead Star by Michael Shean

Shadow of a dead star is a novel which has elements of crime, cyberpunk, horror and science fiction. Unfortunately it falls back on a lot of clichés from all of these genres.

The characters and plot are all very typical of a detective noir story. The central character Agent Walken is a tough man who has an unshakeable moral code and an ugly past. He predictably finds himself caught in a conspiracy set up by powers larger than he is. We also have familiar characters such as the police chief, the journalist, the gang boss and the head of a corporation all who have questionable motives.

The setting of the story is Seattle, 2078. It’s a very familiar Blade Runner type dystopian future where technology has gotten out of control and corporations hold all the real power. Despite it being quite a familiar environment Michael Shean does a very good job of bringing it all to life. Throughout the book we see people, who have been turned into mindless drones and sex toys and corpses that have been mutilated by technology. The horror of it all is described in vivid detail and is actually very well written.

It’s not a bad book it’s just that some more original characters and a less predictable plot would have gone a long way. To be fair the ending did surprise me as some pretty big science fiction ideas are introduced, but again these ideas were conveyed in a very long monologue typical of detective noir. The ideas are good though so the next book in the series shows a lot of promise. I don’t think I’ll be reading it though since Shadow of a Dead Star was a flawed novel.