A while back I solicited recommendations for some new reading material. I'd just finished reading Thomas Pynchon's V, which was difficult and, I thought, pretentious, and ultimately unsatisfying, so I asked for something fun and easy to read, preferably science fiction, since I hadn't read anything in that genre in a while. Several people recommended Bujold's Vorkosigan saga, with this book as a good starting point. I looked into it a bit, finding that the series is well-regarded--indeed, various stories in its collection have won four Hugos and two Nebulas--as well as quite extended. I then more or less forgot about it for the next year and a half.

Earlier this month, as so often happens around this time of year, I found myself with some Borders gift cards that I'd received for Christmas and a reading list that had inexplicably grown over the past year. (I read 14 books in 2009, and probably heard about 20 or so that caught my interest.) Consequently, my nightstand got more cluttered and my lunchbreaks got more interesting. Also a little longer. Anyway, one of the books I picked up this year was, as you might guess, this one. Cordelia's Honor comprises the first book in the Vorkosigan series, Shards of Honor, and its sequel, Barrayar, which were, somewhat interestingly, not written consecutively--Barrayar was, from what I can tell, actually the eighth book written in the series. It's actually a little surprising to me that the two novels were written so far apart, because there's such a strong continuity between the two, and the style seems identical. Reading them together it feels almost more like one continuous novel than two separate works.

I'm getting a bit ahead of myself, though. What did I actually think of these books? Well, they were easy to read and fun, so on that level they were successful. But I can't quite decide whether or not I thought they were good. I found myself a little... annoyed isn't quite the right word, but perhaps a little disbelieving at some of the characters' motivations and behaviors--people kept having personal interludes at what seemed like really inappropriate times, and often the characters just didn't feel very natural to me. And there was a lot of what felt like social commentary from the author, but presented in a way that felt kind of clumsy to me. On the other hand, I found the story compelling enough that I finished it in just over a week and a half, and am finding myself very much interested in continuing the series. And although it struck me as a bit silly at times, the setting and characters seem to resonate with me in ways similar to the way that David Eddings' Belgariad did when I was a kid or the way the Horatio Hornblower books did more recently.

In a lot of ways, reading this series was like slipping into a well-worn pair of jeans or some nicely broken-in sneakers. It was comfortable and maybe kind of comforting. So I guess I'll be picking up the next omnibus, Young Miles, at some point. I have to chip away a bit at that stack on my nightstand first, though.

Started: 1/4/2010 | Finished: 1/15/2010

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After finishing my second series by Dan Simmons, I seem to be noticing a pattern. The first book has an interesting premise, is tightly plotted, and seems to be going somewhere good, but ultimately the series ends up being kind of disappointing. That was true of the Hyperion series, and I think it's even more true of Ilium and Olympos.

This duology is set a few thousand years in the future, when some humans have engineered themselves into god-like beings, others are living a life of ease and ignorance, and there are sentient robots living among the asteroids and gas giants of the outer solar system. There are a number of intertwining storylines--one involving a 20th-century classics scholar who is resurrected by what appear to be Greek gods who task him with observing their recreation of the Trojan war, another involving a group of the post-civilized humans on Earth questioning their existence, and a third involving a group of robots from Jupiter setting out on a mission to find out what's going on back on Earth and Mars. It sounds confusing, and it kind of is, but it starts off really well. And it's really smart when it starts, too, with both oblique and explicit references to literature from the Iliad to Shakespeare to Proust to Nabokov.

Unfortunately, the second book doesn't deliver on the promise of the first. It's just kind of all over the place--a bunch of stuff happens, but it all feels unfocused and scattered, like Simmons had loaded a bunch of ideas into a shotgun and let it spray. Every chapter ends in a cliffhanger, only to leave you to go back to a different plotline. It got kind of aggravating after a while, and the resolution left a lot to be desired.

I think that this is probably worth reading for the first book, but try not to let your hopes ride too high as you go into the second.

Started: 3/13/2009 | Finished: 4/3/2009

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It may not be completely legit to review all four of Dan Simmons' Hyperion novels in the same article--it's questionable whether the series functions as a single, cohesive whole, or two parts, or four. One review is less work for me, though, which makes me considerably less likely to quit. (Please, don't hurt me.)

The four novels of the Hyperion series--Hyperion, The Fall of Hyperion, Endymion, and The Rise of Endymion--easily split into two parts. The first two books follow a group of characters on a pilgramage to a planet on the edge of a huge interstellar empire--each one hoping to find the answers to the mysterious events of his life, while the rest of humanity is on the brink of war. The second two books are set several hundred years later, showing the aftermath and resolution of the events in the first half of the series.

The first book is just fantastic. Structurally, Hyperion resembles The Canterbury Tales--each of the pilgrims telling his own story to the rest as they move toward their uncertain destination--and it's very well done. Each story is distinct in style and memorable in its own right, and Simmons weaves them together wonderfully. In fact, if the series had ended with the first book, I think I wouldn't have minded, despite the fact that it ends in a cliffhanger.

The second book wasn't quite as interesting from a writing standpoint as the first, but the ideas presented were interesting and it provided what I thought was a very satisfying resolution to the action in the first. Several mysteries remain by the end of Fall, but somehow they seemed to be the sort that didn't need explaining.

Unfortunately, the third and fourth novels didn't really live up to the first two. That's not to say that I didn't enjoy them at all, but big chunks of the text got bogged down in discussions about human history and the nature of the universe. Even when there was action taking place, I often found myself skimming over the scenes, just trying to see what happens next.

Overall, I'd say that this series was worth the read, but I most likely won't come back to it.

Started: 7/21/2008 | Finished: 9/24/2008

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It was interesting to see the differences between this story and it's movie adaptation, Blade Runner. If anything, the future painted in the novel is even more bleak and unfamiliar than the one in the film. That makes it, to me, both more difficult and more compelling. I'm not sure that I'll be rushing out to get my hands on Philip K. Dick's complete works--his style and vision are a little too harsh and discomfiting for me, but I'd still say that this one was well worth the read.

Started: 8/20/2007 | Finished: 8/30/2007

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I'd never heard of Blindsight or Peter Watts before Raja (writer of the Strobelight Review here at Sakeriver) posted his review of the novel in the forum. Like him, I found this book engaging and the ideas in it intriguing, but at the same time I also found it kind of disturbing. Watts presents some very interesting ideas about the nature and function of human consciousness--indeed, he says in the endnotes that the book is really a thought experiment on that topic--but the conclusions he presents are the sort that tend to push me into the kind of existential introspection that I really don't enjoy. Still, Watts is a good enough writer that he does make a real novel out of Blindsight, with rich characterization and a fascinating, if--to my mind, at least--bleak milieu, rather than the mere veneer of a story that is all many hard SF writers can manage. If you're a fan of hard SF I'd recommend this one. It's a little hard to keep up at times but it's good enough to be worth it.

Started: 1/8/2007 | Finished: 1/29/2007

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If you caught the previews for this one, the first thing you probably noticed was the fact that it's animated. More specifically, it's rotoscoped--live actors were filmed and then each frame was drawn over by a computer. And unlike other, older rotoscoped films, the animation in this one was highly stylized, using thick lines and very odd shading and colors. If you're anything like me, the idea would make you immediately skeptical. It works, though. The film, as well as the Philip K. Dick novel on which it's based, is set in a not-too-distant future in which a new narcotic called "Substance D" has escalated the war on drugs to truly dystopian proportions. The story is told from the perspective of an undercover narcotics officer--played by Keanu Reeves--who, in the course of his investigation, becomes addicted to Substance D. A good deal of the film is taken up with depictions of the drug culture, from the paranoia and inanity of the characters' conversations to the hallucinations brought on by the deterioration of the protagonist's brain. This is where the animation comes in so beautifully: the comic-book coloring and the constantly shifting lines produce a very unsettling feeling. Combined with the spot-on dialogue and performances--especially from Robert Downey Jr. and Woody Harrelson--makes the film feel quite authentic while still being intensely surreal. I might have wished that Reeves' and Winona Ryder's characters had been cast differently, but they didn't really do all that badly. I think I'm definitely going to have to check out the book.

Viewed: 7/22/2006 | Released: 7/6/2006 | Score: B

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The main downside, in my experience, to the military SF genre is that it doesn't really give you much to think about. The novels are fun, but for the most part they tend to focus on the action. That's not a bad thing if that's what you're looking for--indeed, I quite often find myself in the mood for that sort of story. Still, it's nice to find a member of the genre that isn't just a less-philosophical rehash of Starship Troopers. (By the way, I do quite like most of the Heinlein I've read, including Starship Troopers. I just like a little variety now and then.) This one is right up there with Armor and Ender's Game as one of the best examples of the genre. It might even be better. The writing style is just as good, but where those other two stories operate on a bit more of a fairy-tale-ish level, The Forever War has a much grittier realism to it--not surprising from an author who is also a Vietnam veteran. I guess whether or not that makes it "better" is open to interpretation--all I know is that I really liked it.

Started: 6/29/2006 | Finished: 7/3/2006

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I had a really hard time finding free moments in which to read this book, which was a real shame because it grabbed me from the start. When I finally got a chance to really sit and read it, I ended up staying awake until three in the morning to finish it. This was my first time reading Ishiguro and, despite what I had heard, I found his writing to be very accessible. More to the point, I found it to be beautiful, the sort of haunting beauty that is all the more powerful for its seeming simplicity. My one regret about the book is that the review that led me to read it gave too much away. I think the book would have been even more effective if I hadn't known the twist ahead of time. That's why I'm not going to tell you much about the story itself. (And, by the way, if you happen to follow the Barnes & Noble link above, don't read the School Library Journal review.) What I will say is that the blurb on the jacket cover is a bit deceptive--the book goes in a very different direction from the normal lit-fic stuff you'd expect. In fact, if it weren't for the fact that it's by such a recognized literary author, I imagine a lot of those snooty lit-fic readers out there would turn up their noses at it. Trust me, though, it's good.

Started: 11/10/2005 | Finished: 11/27/2005

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If you're a fan of Orson Scott Card, this collection is worth your time. Consisting of nearly all of Card's short stories (notably missing are those stories already released in other collections), it is great for seeing how Card's work progressed over his career. I can't say that I liked every story--especially those where his politics or taste in literature come out--but some of them were particularly moving.

Started: 11/15/2004 | Finished: 12/19/2004

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It's a little hard to describe The Time Traveler's Wife. It is, obviously, a story about time travel. One of the two main characters, Henry, is a time traveler. It's a little different from your average science fiction story, though. You see, he can't control when he disappears, nor can he control when or where he goes. The other main character, Clare, is Henry's wife, who is not a time traveler. Clare first meets Henry in 1971; she is six, but he is in his thirties. Henry first meets Clare in 1991; she is twenty and he is twenty-eight. Is that confusing enough for you? The Time Traveler's Wife is the often confusing, very disjointed, quite circular, but exceptionally beautiful story of the love between Henry and Clare, and the way their lives intertwine and shape each other. Much like other time travel stories, it investigates questions of predestination, free will, and the nature of time. But above all that, it is a highly character-driven story about the unique relationship that develops between the main characters. I'm not sure what I could say to really capture the feeling of the book, but if my reaction is any measure of the story's quality then let me tell you this: it's one of the only books--possibly the only book--I've ever read that has made me cry.

Started: 11/4/2004 | Finished: 11/10/2004

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