Tags: ya john scalzi sf 2008 books books david almond
Published : 3 months, 2 weeks ago (Tue, 01 Jul 2008 04:27:23 PDT)
Searched:
http://ninebelow.livejournal.com/401226.html 0 links
Related posts
#48 Skellig by David Almond
A yong boy finds an angel in his garage. Slightly overdoes the William Blake references but otherwise perfectly and tenderly balances the fantastic and the prosaic. Possibly only Northerners should be allowed to write fables.
#49 Old Man's War by John Scalzi
Incredibly tedious Heinlein parody-cum-homage. I've not read Starship Troopers so I'm not sure how much of the shitness is Heinlein's and how much of the shitness is Scalzi's but suffice to say it is all siht.
/>The first chapter consists of the main character explaining the way the world works. The second chapter consists of more of the same with the additional of Bible Studies and high school physics lessons. And so on and so on. To pick a random paragraph from the third
chapter: He pointed to the Henry Hudson. "Look, there's a shuttle next to the Hudson. Using that as a scale, I'm guessing the Hudson is 800 feet long, 200 feet wide and about 150 feet deep. Creating a single artificial gravity field around that baby would definitely dim the lights in San Antonio. Even multiple fields would be an amazing
drain on power. So either they have a power source that can keep the gravity on and still run all the ship's other systems, like propulsion and life support, or they've found a new, low-energy way to create gravity." It is all like this: lecturing, old fashioned and interminable.
Although we never get any characterisation we do get some semblance of a plot but this is nonsensical and is further undermined by stupid battles, implausible worldbuilding and dubious and confused politics (This is all apparently misdirection for later books but this doesn't help me reading this book now. Nor does it explain why the narrator buys into it so readily.)
It is narrated in a psuedo-jokey way that most of the other characters don't get, presumably because it isn't funny. There are few things worse than reading a book which thinks it is witty when it isn't. The excess of italics for emphasis is a tell-tale sign...
![[info]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) coalescent noted that the narrator's voice is indistinguishable from Scalzi's blogging voice. He is a pretty popular writer and blogger so I was suprised to discover just how bad this novel is. His latest one is apparently a YA novel set in the same universe which is weird because Old Man's War already reads like a juvenile. |
