Occasionally, I run into certain issues with book reviews. I've read a couple of books lately where, due to the unique natures of their books, I just don't feel like I can review them as I would normally, with a token star rating and all that jazz. In the case of these two, I find it really hard to talk about the construction of how a book comes together when these books are done as they are, so I feel like I can't judge them like usual. So these won't have stars or any rankings, but will just be discussed...as best I can, anyway.
First up is Return of the Kings. There's several reasons why I feel weird about reviewing it, even though I wanted to mention it:
Once upon a time, I used to know a lot of the authors because I was in a writing group with them--so I'm biased.
This was a present created for one fellow in writing group's birthday. They wrote a story that imitates his style amazingly well--and I can say that as someone who read enough of his work to get that. They did this REALLY WELL, which is something I can appreciate, but random strangers online will not necessarily get. But hell, I couldn't have copied his style myself, so I'm impressed.
This is a book in which each person wrote a different chapter of it, a la The Floating Admiral. This makes it kind of hard to judge a book by how the story is written and how the author chose to shape it, when, uh, a lot of people shaped it. You can't really say things like, "I liked how this character started out, but then they kind of drift out of focus for the rest of the book," because, well... It's just hard to comment on how "the author" developed the plot in that way, you know?
What I can say about this book is that if you're the sort who likes Cthulhu mythos stories, this will be your jam. This is a world in which corporations are at war, travel is limited, and one of our main characters is friends with a handicapped dragon who's willing to assist her when she finds out that her ex-boyfriend....well, he works under the sea watching squids, and they're Up To Something. Of course, that's Bad News Rising. There's a odd assortment of bad guys, including shapeshifting swinging Tourists, there's alien porn, and, well... Elvis's reanimated singing colon. (Honestly, I somehow always was brushing my teeth when I got to reading about this, and...well, ughhhhhhhhhh, damn.) It's all about the weirdness. If you like weird, this is up your alley. But it's not the usual sort of novel, so read on with a grain of salt.
And then there's Fair Game, by ex-spy Valerie Plame Wilson. Even after getting forcibly outed as a spy, i.e. cat's kinda out of the bag already, the CIA gave her some shit for trying to publish a memoir. Which is to say that they went through the manuscript and bleeped out a lot of it. We're told it's mostly related to her terms of service, which is something that's pretty well discoverable by anyone and everyone by now. But just because someone else outed her doesn't mean that SHE is allowed to out herself on this information, apparently.
The author and the publisher did the best they could with a manuscript in which full on pages are blacked out. They include a 100+ page afterword by another writer in which she recounts what happened to Valerie by using public sources--i.e. all the stuff that we already know and could find out by searching through the media stories. They even include some documentation--the original paperwork saying that she not only can't tell how long she
was in service, she can't refer to personal events like meeting her
husband because they might pinpoint those things in time. paperwork about Valerie's difficulties with getting an annuity (Valerie herself is not allowed to mention that even though she served for 20 years, she's still too young to get her annuity until she's 56 years old. But hey, the paperwork saying so isn't classified....but the Agency bitches anyway....), her lawsuits about this, etc.
In the end after reading it, I'm debating rereading it after having read the afterword, just so I can place things in time better. As well as one can under the circumstances, anyway. The Amazon page says to read the afterword first, and I think I will concur with them on that one.
Here's the thing about reading this: the author is a good writer. She describes her experiences well and I'd love to read more about it, especially the sexism issues she dealt with and juggling life in two worlds. However....there's the deleted scenes. There's some areas where entire pages are deleted--for example, you don't get to hear a lick of how Valerie ended up with Joe Wilson and the narrative now skips from the "Island of Misfit Toys" org she worked at to suddenly having twins. And then there's plenty of moments where only one word is deleted. I understand having paragraphs and pages and the occasional sentence bleeped out. But sometimes whatever they bleeped out just looks...weird. Like, what was so offensive about describing a meal had during training, other than apparently saying it was southern cooking was ok? Then there's the hilarious sentence about one of her potential recruits, Nicholas.
"First of all, his enormous ego, already quite developed--since most ______ males from birth are led to believe by their mothers that they are precious beyond words--needed some ___ stroking."
OH MY. MY BRAIN WENT TO BAD PLACES WITH THAT.
I'm going to take a whopping guess from a later meal mentioning that eating yogurt at it was traditional that Valerie was probably stashed in Greece. And I knew jack shit about any of that. (According to the afterword, I am correct in that guess.)
Mostly I found myself being frequently distracted by the bleeping. I found myself playing CIA Mad Libs and making up words that could possibly go in the deleted spots.It kind of made it hard to follow and concentrate on the awesome-to-nightmare story in between awkward bleepings, you know?
Other CIA Mad Libs:
"It was just damn embarrassing to the CIA ______________________________________________"
"Of particular note was Joe's book, The Politics of Truth, published in early 2004 and itself sent through the Agency's PRB process and approved for publication. Joe writes about when we met in 1997 _____________________________________________________________" Uh...seriously, THIS HAS ALREADY BEEN MENTIONED IN A BOOK, YOU GUYS.
So...I don't feel like I can fairly review it, per se, given the issues that this book has had put upon it. One can't comment on how the author chose to shape her tale when you're not allowed to read a good chunk of how she meant to do it. I can understand the CIA wanting to have first bleep on it, but it seems fairly clear that even by 2007, the author is getting weirdly punished on some level for shit that was not her doing whatsoever. Sheesh. What you can find out about her tale is done well, and you feel sorry for her having to go through this shit.
Apparently some author blogged this weekend about the Amazon reviews system, basically saying that anything other than a 4 rating is a NOT RECOMMENDED review and that either you should post a 4-star or no review at all. This made me really glad that I stay the hell away from doing reviews on Amazon. Mostly because I get my review jones out over here under my own control and I can say a lot or a little as I feel like, but also because uh, some things need to be clarified. And I had no idea that giving someone a 3 there might as well be a one star, this is total crap review and I personally am totally sinking your book. Geez, really?
And again, three or 3.5 stars here does NOT mean "NOT RECOMMENDED." It is recommended, but with some reservations, or "this wasn't quite for me but it wasn't bad" qualifications. It's not a 100% yay, but it's usually about a 70-80% yay. "NOT RECOMMENDED" here is 2 or 1.
So, for the record, this is what my star ratings mean:
5 stars = FREAKING EPIC, gigantic story, everything works well, my mind is blown that a human being thought this up.
4 stars = love this book, it's just not as humongous in scope as a 5. But it's totally awesome and everyone should read it, it's a keeper.
3 stars = mixed feelings (this is where the "I think others might like it, it's just not for me" reviews are likely to go). Not that bad, but has some issues, or it's an okay story but nothing really stands out to me as being memorable. It was a pleasant enough read for a few days, but I'll probably just end up giving the book away rather than rereading it again.
2 stars = generally pretty terrible, but not 100% so. There was at least one thing in this book that made it not totally horrible. This book isn't really recommended to all and sundry, but you might get some value out of the one thing if you try.
1 star (rarely seen here): It's a wallbanger. Nothing is redeemable about this book, it's utter crap, and I probably only finished reading it so I could do an awesome bitchrant about it and I can't justify doing that to books I didn't finish.
I like mystery novels and all, but it seems like virtually every modern day mystery has to have: (a) the creepy prologue where a hot young girl gets introduced and then slaughtered by the creepy criminal (see previous rant) (b) frequent chapters narrated (er, in third person) by the creepy pervy serial killer guy.
I'm starting to get REALLY TIRED OF THOSE.
Seriously, this is how every pervy serial killer chapter goes:
"He gazed lovingly at his next target, [heroine of novel]. He gazed at her long legs, her trim body, her nice tits. He thought of how much he'd enjoy fucking her and then killing her, watching the light go out of her eyes as he tortured her mercillessly for hours, because he knew she'd really be enjoying it. How dare she date someone else, she was HIS dammit, and he was getting hard just thinking of her death. The pressure was building inside him, he must fuck and kill, and then it would go away. For awhile. Then he'd fondle her souvenirs [i.e. underwear or body parts]. Then it would come back and he'd have to find another target."
Seriously, all of them, ever. It's creepy, and it's getting ANNOYING. I just want to yell out, "I AM REALLY TIRED OF HEARING ABOUT WHAT GETS YOUR DICK HARD!" It also makes me grateful to be a woman without raging testosterone. And it also makes me feel like all any woman ever boils down to is a hole to shove the dick into (and then kill). Lovely! Yes, I know I'm bringing it on myself to read murder mysteries, but they don't ALL do this. I'm sure it's not helping much that 2 out of 3 books I am reading right now have both the Creepy Serial Killer Prologue and the Creepy Serial Killer Chapters all over the damn place, but... It's unpleasant, and I'm not even sure it really adds to the mystery story other than to creep you out. Which I guess is the point if it's a "thriller," but unless I'm learning clues to the bad guy's existence (Jeffrey Deaver usually does this pretty well), I don't really CARE about reading about how the killer feels. We know bad guys like to fuck and kill. Duh. We get it. But the more you read this crap, it's so damn repetitive!
You know what? I miss the days when the focus was on the mystery, and the people trying to solve it. I'm tired of the serial killer chapters.
I think I'm going to be doing some off-topic rants here, because I am just feeling annoyed with my reading material and want to gripe.
I don't have a problem with epilogues, but I strongly dislike prologues, and would ban them. Here's why:
A prologue, as I define it, is a first chapter of a book that starts out with a different story (different time and place, at least Distant Prologue) than where the actual story is going to start in the official Chapter One. It is usually either:
tangentially related to the main story, and won't be picked up again for the most part after the prologue ends, or
it cuts ahead in the main story, showing either a chase scene, a murder, or the narrator/hero/ine in massive danger.
Let's group them, shall we?
The tangentally related ones usually feature a random woman being murdered. You meet her, then she dies. Or once in awhile it's a guy. Sometimes it's narrated in the most vague sort of way by the killer itself. If it's not a murder, it's a chase scene or some vague bad guys are doing something you can't figure out. Frequently, the main character or characters in the prologue are nameless. The key thing is that you probably won't have ANY idea what this has to do with the main plot of the book until the book is about 3/4 of the way through. It's pretty much a strange fragmented story tacked on to the front of the book.
So why is this bad? Because the reader (a) is getting a whopping dose of false advertising when they pick up the book, because your prologue isn't at all what the story is about, and they may or may not buy/like the rest of the book based on that, and (b) THE READER HAS NO EFFING CLUE, FOR MOST OF THE BOOK, WHAT THE PROLOGUE HAS TO DO WITH GODDAMNED ANYTHING. Why are you starting out a book with the reader doing a whopping, "Huh?!?!" It's irritating. I do not like it. This is the number one reason I usually hate prologues.
Then there's the flash forward, or Action Prologue. Usually this one is done because the actual story starts out slow and non-action-y, and someone (maybe the publisher for all I know) wants it to start with a bang, so thus we have this fast-forward scene that starts out with thrilling action... and then you cut the tension immediately by starting the actual story where it starts, unexcitedly, two days earlier. To some degree there is also some "uh, what the fuck just happened?" going on, but since the flash forwards usually start out with the narrator/hero/ine, at least you know who one or more characters are going in. It's not quite as baffllng on the reader as the tangentials.
To be fair, some stories actually work well starting out with the main character dead/in jeopardy and then we roll back, but a good chunk of the time it just feels like they needed to start out less boring, rather than telling the damn story as it should go. (Battlestar Galactica did this a LOT.) For example, Private Scandals starts out like this, as did many 1980's romance books just like this, but does it really add to the story to know that Angela is going to end up dead? Do you wonder why? No, because Angela is awful and clearly deserves it. Do you wonder whodunit? No, because once you find out Deanna has a stalker it's pretty obvious. It's just there to get someone to read the book. Hope you like where it really stars...
I think I've mentioned before that I think the worst prologue I have ever seen is in Crystal Dragon. I went into great whopping detail about why over there, so I won't do it again.
The best (which is what prompted me to write this rant) prologue I have ever seen? Running Hot by Jayne Ann Krentz.
This book starts out with many of the tropes I've mentioned above: there's action, someone gets killed, and the featured character is nameless. However... within a few chapters of the original story, you actually find out WHY and HOW this prologue fits into the book. You don't wait until 3/4 of the book is done to find out the nameless woman's name. Hell, you hear a name for her, but find out that after the events of the prologue, she needed to change it. Which makes sense (though you never do hear her original name, which is odd). You figure out very early on that what happened to the bad guy in the prologue will tie in to this overall story. And suddenly, a prologue makes sense! And works! Who woulda thunk it?
You must listen to this story. I'll probably get around to reviewing Clash Of The Geeks at some point, but dear god, Wil Wheaton's story in it was awesome.
As far as I can tell this flick is getting NO PUBLICITY WHATSOBLOODYEVER, which is a real shame. But Rob Reiner made a movie of Flipped. I just saw it. It is the best and most accurate of an adaptation of a book I have ever seen in my life. Very few changes, book dialogue is used throughout, plot is 99% the same. The only "major" difference is that the movie is set (mostly) in 1963, but considering how the book was pretty timeless (everybody isn't on the computer 24-7, the most "modern" aspect is that the twins are in a punk band), it really works. It also makes the "box lunch" scene make a lot more sense in context.
So, if it's playing anywhere near you, go see it. It's a sweet movie.
Books that are hard to review
First up is Return of the Kings. There's several reasons why I feel weird about reviewing it, even though I wanted to mention it:
What I can say about this book is that if you're the sort who likes Cthulhu mythos stories, this will be your jam. This is a world in which corporations are at war, travel is limited, and one of our main characters is friends with a handicapped dragon who's willing to assist her when she finds out that her ex-boyfriend....well, he works under the sea watching squids, and they're Up To Something. Of course, that's Bad News Rising. There's a odd assortment of bad guys, including shapeshifting swinging Tourists, there's alien porn, and, well... Elvis's reanimated singing colon. (Honestly, I somehow always was brushing my teeth when I got to reading about this, and...well, ughhhhhhhhhh, damn.) It's all about the weirdness. If you like weird, this is up your alley. But it's not the usual sort of novel, so read on with a grain of salt.
And then there's Fair Game, by ex-spy Valerie Plame Wilson. Even after getting forcibly outed as a spy, i.e. cat's kinda out of the bag already, the CIA gave her some shit for trying to publish a memoir. Which is to say that they went through the manuscript and bleeped out a lot of it. We're told it's mostly related to her terms of service, which is something that's pretty well discoverable by anyone and everyone by now. But just because someone else outed her doesn't mean that SHE is allowed to out herself on this information, apparently.
The author and the publisher did the best they could with a manuscript in which full on pages are blacked out. They include a 100+ page afterword by another writer in which she recounts what happened to Valerie by using public sources--i.e. all the stuff that we already know and could find out by searching through the media stories. They even include some documentation--the original paperwork saying that she not only can't tell how long she was in service, she can't refer to personal events like meeting her husband because they might pinpoint those things in time. paperwork about Valerie's difficulties with getting an annuity (Valerie herself is not allowed to mention that even though she served for 20 years, she's still too young to get her annuity until she's 56 years old. But hey, the paperwork saying so isn't classified....but the Agency bitches anyway....), her lawsuits about this, etc.
In the end after reading it, I'm debating rereading it after having read the afterword, just so I can place things in time better. As well as one can under the circumstances, anyway. The Amazon page says to read the afterword first, and I think I will concur with them on that one.
Here's the thing about reading this: the author is a good writer. She describes her experiences well and I'd love to read more about it, especially the sexism issues she dealt with and juggling life in two worlds. However....there's the deleted scenes. There's some areas where entire pages are deleted--for example, you don't get to hear a lick of how Valerie ended up with Joe Wilson and the narrative now skips from the "Island of Misfit Toys" org she worked at to suddenly having twins. And then there's plenty of moments where only one word is deleted. I understand having paragraphs and pages and the occasional sentence bleeped out. But sometimes whatever they bleeped out just looks...weird. Like, what was so offensive about describing a meal had during training, other than apparently saying it was southern cooking was ok? Then there's the hilarious sentence about one of her potential recruits, Nicholas.
OH MY. MY BRAIN WENT TO BAD PLACES WITH THAT.
I'm going to take a whopping guess from a later meal mentioning that eating yogurt at it was traditional that Valerie was probably stashed in Greece. And I knew jack shit about any of that. (According to the afterword, I am correct in that guess.)
Mostly I found myself being frequently distracted by the bleeping. I found myself playing CIA Mad Libs and making up words that could possibly go in the deleted spots.It kind of made it hard to follow and concentrate on the awesome-to-nightmare story in between awkward bleepings, you know?
Other CIA Mad Libs:
So...I don't feel like I can fairly review it, per se, given the issues that this book has had put upon it. One can't comment on how the author chose to shape her tale when you're not allowed to read a good chunk of how she meant to do it. I can understand the CIA wanting to have first bleep on it, but it seems fairly clear that even by 2007, the author is getting weirdly punished on some level for shit that was not her doing whatsoever. Sheesh. What you can find out about her tale is done well, and you feel sorry for her having to go through this shit.
Posted on April 03, 2013 at 10:05 AM in Non-Review Commentary, Nonfiction, Science Fiction/Fantasy | Permalink | Comments (0)