 Ready Player One by Ernest Cline A blast from the past, set in the future. Whoa. I know. You’re mind, is like, totally blown. Here’s most of what you need to know: The author photo on the inside back leaf shows him leaning against a DeLorean. Which he owns. Yeah, that kind of book. This is a debut work for Ernest Cline, and honestly, if it hadn’t been on the New Fiction shelf at my library (and thus, free) I might not have picked it up. It sounds so gimmicky. Granted, it’s a gimmick that appeals to me, so that helped. The set-up goes like this: a computer genius spends his teen years in the 1980s. Due to a complete lack of social skills, he spends all his time writing computer games and playing D&D. This earns him a ton of money. He goes on to create a massively multiplayer online roleplaying environment that begins as a game, but as the world falls apart becomes almost everyones favorite alternative to reality. Kids go to school in this virtual environment, all media and entertainment run through it, etc. The story opens, somewhere in the 2040s, with his death. Having no heirs, he puts up his vast fortune as a prize for the ultimate game. A single clue is given. For five years people try to solve the clue and fail, knowing only that an in-depth knowledge of the 80s, with which the deceased was obsessed, will be necessary. It’s a good set-up, with lots of candy for someone like me, who shares a certain nostalgic fondness for 1980s games and culture. And yet, that wouldn’t be enough. Thankfully, it doesn’t have to be. The story stands alone, and I suspect you could enjoy it without caring about the 1980s, though that’s a hard premise for me to test objectively. I really enjoyed the main characters, and the theme of under-resourced independent freelancers vs. over-wealthy, win-at-all-costs corporate drones fits the story well and is handled more gently than you might expect. Subplots (a romantic line and a reality vs. fantasy line) mesh nicely and fill out the story well. Highly recommended to anyone in my age-bracket, though I’d particularly like to hear from someone who isn’t and read the book anyways. View all my reviews
 The Alloy of Law by Brandon Sanderson I discovered Brandon Sanderson’s work in 2009, and not in the usual way (by reading his postmortem completion of Robert Jordan’s monstrosity). In Elantris, a standalone novel, I found his creativity within the realms of fantasy to be amazing. In his Mistborn: The Final Empire trilogy he proved he could sustain such creativity over an impressive number of pages. Besides his apparently bottomless supply of innovative magical systems, most fascinating to me was the way he completed an entire story in the eponymous first book of the Mistborn trilogy, only to have the entire novel be a kind of subtle critique of storytelling in general. At the end of book one the hero has triumphed, the evil emperor is cast down, and we all realize that the emperor wasn’t that evil and that killing him has just screwed the world big-time. It’s like the Rebel Alliance finally managed to kick Darth Vader and Emperor Palpatine’s asses only to discover that hey, maybe they weren’t doing such a bad job of ruling the universe after all. Oops. Anyhow, I was in Bellevue the other day keeping myself occupied during a snow storm while my lovely wife practiced for an upcoming concert. Wandering the shelves at Barnes & Nobel, I chanced upon the New Fiction shelf and found to my delight that Brandon Sanderson had a new novel out, and that it was set in the world of Mistborn. After choking up an entirely too-large wad of cash (seriously B&N, I like your stores, and you served me well that day, but neither of those things is worth what has essentially become a 50% markup over the now-normal price for a book), I set-to reading the cover materials. It seems that even when returning to one of his already established worlds, Sanderson can’t help getting creativity all over everything. The Alloy of Law indeed takes place in the world of Mistborn, in the very same city in fact, but 300 years have passed since the world-altering events that ended the original trilogy. Some of the magic of that original world remains, but some has been lost. And time marches on, of course, so that what was once a creative re-take on standard sword-and-sorcery fantasy has become a unique mash-up of western and steam-punk settings. It’s not tongue-in-cheek Victoriana by any stretch, and the setting works in support of and service to the story as it should. Still, I like me some railroads and gaslamps and was thrilled to see Sanderson treat the genre to his particular madness. The novel ends satisfactorily, but leaves plenty of room for more in the same vein. Here’s hoping Sanderson taps that vein again soon. View all my reviews
 Rule 34 by Charles Stross I looked at the cover of this book a long time, once I'd picked it up off the "new fiction" shelf at the Puyallup Library. I was having cover deja vu—couldn't remember the story when I read the jacket material, but it looked so familiar. I ended up taking it home based mostly on the blurb where the author was praised as a "master of the near-future." Near future sci-fi is very hit-or-miss for me, so I was curious about what mastery in the niche genre read like. I'm recommending this book mostly because I want someone else to read it and tell me what the hell...? I'm a pretty astute reader; I've had lots of practice. This one, however, left my brain spinning, and I can't decide if that was on purpose or not. I enjoyed it. Glad I read it. Still not sure if the author mismanaged his (admittedly) complex plot or if I just couldn't keep up. Someone let me know. Meantime, let me tell you something about this novel that is, in my experience, almost completely unique: this novel is written in the second person. [Technical note, since even my really smart friends are asking: 1st person is the "I" perspective, 3rd person is the "he/she" perspective. Both common in novels. 2nd person is the "you" perspective, as in "You walk into the room and smell blood, which is how most of your Mondays begin, now that you think about it." The only other books I can think of that do this are the Choose Your Own Adventure books I read as a kid. Can you think of another?] Of course I noticed the 2nd person perspective right away, and was aware of it throughout. This isn't a great sign, novelistically speaking; you'd rather people notice your story and not your writing. And yet, is it even possible to write in the 2nd person and not have it be constantly noticed? It's just way too rare. My second concern was that the author had done this just to stand out. I can understand the impulse, having studied the publishing context the past couple years. The more I read though, the more I thought it worked. I'm pretty tolerant of oddity in novels, so your experience may differ, but I liked it, if only for the variety. The author doesn't pull a single punch either. He's already made you uncomfortable by choosing this unusual perspective, but then he piles on by writing multiple points of view. Not only are you being forced to experience the novel as one of the main characters, your are being forced to adopt the perspective of different main characters each chapter as the author rotates through his approximately three POV characters. How can there be approximately three main characters? Damn good question, because he's not done messing with you yet. First you're forced into the odd 2nd person perspective, then you're forced into a multiple POV situation, THEN he makes the characters people you probably can't identify with. First chapter I'm a lesbian cop with career issues, second chapter I'm a bisexual muslim man with a family, third chapter I'm a predatory psychopath on meds. And there is no shortage of graphic scenes to illustrate these different life-choices. Let me tell you, as a Standard White Male, all of this required some serious mind-bending. The approximate part comes in when you realize over the course of the early chapters that there is some kind of maybe-artificial-maybe-guided computer intelligence at work, and occasionally there's a chapter from that perspective that isn't clearly identified. Three main characters? Four? You have to finish the book to find out. There's a lot going on here. It may be that you'll find the novel a failure as a work of literary entertainment, but you've got to appreciate the madness involved in even attempting such a thing. I may buy a copy just so I can have this conversation every time someone stands in front of my bookshelves. View all my reviews
 Un Lun Dun by China Miéville I’ve read two of China Mieville’s novels previously, both from New Crobusan series, set in the world of Bas-Lag. The reviews I penned for those books are on GoodReads: Perdido Street Station and The Scar. With each of these books I was overwhelmed by the weird. Mieville is a member of the informal alliance of New Weird fantasists over in Britain. The appellation is accurate: his work is new, and it is weird. So much so that when I set out to read Un Lun Dun I was prepared for another ride through the possibly drugged haze of Mieville’s imagination. (I am not suggesting that China Mieville takes drugs. Only that his prose invokes in me what I think an opium dream must be like. That said, China Mieville probably takes drugs.) I was also intrigued by the line in the acknowledgements in which Mieville thanks Neil Gaiman for his “indispensable contributions to London phantasmagoria, especially Neverwhere.” I loved Neverwhere, but consider it nothing like what I knew of Mieville’s own writing, thus I was much intrigued. Un Lun Dun is different than the New Crobusan novels. It’s a YA novel for one thing. It still has some of Mieville’s patented weirdness, but the haze seems turned down to a level where the story is more accessible. It felt to me less bleak and more straightforward, though well sprinkled with fun oddities. Two of my favorite characters were 1) a man with a bird’s cage for a head, in which a small songbird is the actual “person” and the strangely headed body is just a vehicle, and 2) a deep sea diving suit complete with brass bathysphere headpiece in which something (I won’t spoil it) lives in the alien environment of the open air. And these are two of the more normal of the supporting cast. Perhaps my favorite thing about the plot was how Mieville continually turned the standard quest story on its head. It felt something like The Incredibles did with respect to superhero stories, except that Mieville took it further. The “Hero” for the prophecy turns out to play a minor role, while the “Funny Sidekick” ends up saving the day. The traditional multi-step quest for items and a magical weapon gets short-circuited, and the all-powerful weapon is both hilarious and effective, but not as expected. Perhaps most fun is the book of prophecy itself, which can speak, and which gets very depressed when it turns out the prophecies are wrong. It’s hard to say much more without ruining some surprises, so I’ll stop here. Highly recommended, especially for those with a sense of humor about traditional fantasies and young adult un-heroes. View all my reviews
 Factotum by D.M. Cornish I took twenty-five pages of Hannah’s Tale, a novel project I’ve been working on this year, to the PNWA Conference this past August. Actually, I sent the pages ahead of me, to Book Doctor Jason Black. I’d used Jason’s services before and found them invaluable. While twenty-five pages isn’t a full doctoring, I hoped it would be enough to get me thinking in new ways about a novel I was a little sideways on. Hannah’s Tale is set in a fantasy world, and part of what Jason and I ended up talking about during our session was the use of fantasy words to replace regular words in an effort to preserve the illusion. For example, I had described something as being “a foot and a half long”. The use of an English measurement tends to draw you out of the story, causing thoughts of comparison that maybe you didn’t intend. Better to have said that it was “three handspans across” or something like that. Of course, you can go too far. Then, and this part alone was worth the price of admission, Jason recommended D. M. Cornish’s Monster Blood Tattoo series, as an example of well done language and word creation to build a fantasy world. By the way, that previous sentence is a massive understatement. I immediately enjoyed Foundling, the first book in the series. From the beginning, Cornish’s word-building was apparent. Mashing together latin-esque sounds with Germanic accumulations and covering the result in straight-up fantasy sauce, these new words are dropped into the story so smoothly that you’re never left wondering about these new words; they just fit, and you are compelled to accept them, their meanings and permutations creeping into your brain through an odd osmosis of the subconscious membrane. In addition to these subtle insertions, the author begins each chapter with an entry from an almanac that the main character carries with him through most of Lamplighter, the second novel of the trilogy. These entries both serve to expand the world and to teach you new words, while also foreshadowing the events and actions of the chapters to come. I had two frustrations with the series, both due to my own linguaphile obsessions. First, in reading a copy of Foundling borrowed from the library, I was brought up short by the one-hundred-plus-page appendix. I thought I had enough reading material to last the day, and I was instead almost done. Of course, I got to spend several hours perusing the maps, diagrams, drawings, and definitions of the extensive end material. Second, because I read Lamplighter on an eReader (again a library copy) and had access to a lookup feature, I was constantly being fooled by the author into looking up words that didn’t exist. Or did they? Cornish would occasionally drop a word into the manuscript that was a real word, in the real English language, but of such obscurity that the built in dictionary didn’t suffice. This constant doubting of my own ability to distinguish English from Nonsense was a bit troubling to my ego. That said, I so very much recommend you try these books out. In the author bio printed on the inside dust jacket (I eventually bought copies of all three novels for my collection) Cornish claims to have spent the past seventeen years creating the world in which this story takes place. I believe it, and further, I believe it to have been time well spent. View all my reviews
 Appaloosa by Robert B. Parker Growing up in a region where actual cowboys did not exist (nor had they ever, really), and yet where the “cool kids” liked to wear western boots and drive stupidly oversized vehicles loosely based on trucks, I have a long nurtured aversion to all things “Western.” Western needs to be in quotes there, because I realize the word has other meanings, some of which I’m very fond of. I think you know what I mean by those quotes. (Punctuation Nerd Sidebar: remember when quotes meant dialogue? Or that you were quoting something? Now they mean irony. I’m cool with that, but then I’m not an English major). So I ran into my neighbor Matt at the library last week, and he was checking out a couple books by Robert B. Parker. The covers had unsmiling men standing near rustic buildings wearing period clothing including hats. “Are you reading Westerns?” I asked (Ooh look! quotes for dialogue!). He was. He recommended. I picked up Appaloosa. Chances are not great that I will become a huge fan of westerns. I like my cowboys battling steampunk zombies rather than punching cows. I raced through this novel though, and plan to read the next couple in the series as well. Western may only ever be a secondary genre that feeds into my first love, but I recognize good stuff when I see it. The best thing about Appaloosa was the dialogue, and how that shaped the two main characters. One reason the book read so fast was that much of it was dialogue, and most of the lines of said dialogue were one word long. Maybe three, if the guys were feeling loquacious. The incredibly sparse conversations nevertheless carved the characters in sharp relief. It was a masterful depiction of two men, both reticent and showing close to zero emotion, yet very different from each other and not hard to feel connected to. Part of what I’m experiencing is probably the difference in conventions from one genre to another, but at least some of it transfers I’m sure. I’ll be reading more of Robert Parker in an effort to abscond with some of his dialogue skillz. View all my reviews
 Sons of the Profits by William Speidel You know how, generally about the middle of one project, you start daydreaming about the next project? That’s where I was when I decided to read a little Seattle history. I’m about three-quarters of the way through the first draft of the novel I’m working on, so naturally I’m already thinking about the next writing project, for which I need some inspiration/research about my chosen setting. I have this thing about reading history: I really enjoy reading history, but only if the book is quite good. History for the sake of history feels like the parts of school I didn’t like. Creatively written and interestingly presented history (Two favorites are Salt: A World History and The Big Oyster: History on the Half Shell by Mark Kurlansky) I can devour. Which makes me dependent on good recommendations if I’m going to read me some historicals. So when I decided I needed a good history of the city of Seattle, who did I ask for a recommendations? Cherie Priest, of course! Via Twitter, mind you, and very respectfully and not at all in a creepy, stalkerish kind of way. Once she replied, and I calmed down, I ordered up Sons of the Profits. The book is fun, but don’t come into it expecting highly polished prose. William Speidel has a very colloquial, informal style that other reviewers have often disliked. It’s clear he isn’t writing because he wants to be a great writer, but just because he loves Seattle, and its past, and wants to share. He’s got a couple of authorial ticks that can get on a nerve if you let them, but I had no problems forgiving him because I was otherwise occupied enjoying his stories. In terms of the information shared, it seemed to me (from an admittedly uneducated perspective) that he had done his research. He certainly doesn’t spare the reader the seedier bits of Seattle’s past, which I enjoyed. Speaking of which, the book was published in 1967, which was occasionally jarring: the author was often disparaging of earlier attitudes towards women while simultaneously espousing attitudes towards women that are no longer acceptable. Half the time I couldn’t tell when he was being tongue-in-cheek and when he was being a chauvinist. Oh well. If you’re interested in the history of Seattle, I’d highly recommend the book, not least because the book and its author have nearly become a necessary chapter in that history. By the way, if you’re in Seattle, the best way to buy the book is at the authors eponymously named World-Famous Underground Tour. Cheers, Ben. View all my reviews
 Freighter Captain by Max Hardberger What the hell? I have never read a book so poorly written that I just couldn’t stop reading. I learned a great deal from this book, not only about what it’s like to captain a tramp trader in the Caribbean but also about what truly awful writing looks like. I hope Max Hardberger never reads this review (I am, in fact, a little bit terrified of Max Hardberger at this point) and if he does, I hope he understands where I’m coming from. I don’t get the impression Mr. Hardberger is trying to write fine prose, but rather to tell an amazing story from a fascinating perspective. So first, the problems: this whole book reads like terse entries in some scruffy log book. That rule about “show, don’t tell?” The author has not only ignored that advice, but consigned it to the dark and sulfurous depths of hell. It is so close to 100% telling that on the rare occasions when he tries to toss in a little showing the sentence jars me out of my seat. Then, the narrative flow was extremely odd. He would mention things that had almost no impact on the story (“I got some of the spare parts at the store, but had to track down the others through a guy named Lucky”) in one sentence, then use the next sentence to yank the story a hundred miles down the timeline. As someone who reads a lot of novels, I was constantly saying to myself, “Oh hey, that’s odd, I bet that will come back into the story later.” Only it never did. It was like he was constantly foreshadowing some other story that I didn’t get to read. Then, and this seems pretty petty compared to the other violations of story-law, he almost never explained anything. This happened a lot with nautical terms. I’ve taken 3 different American Sailing Association courses; I know me some nautical terms, though not all of them. Yet I seldom had any idea what he was talking about. He’d throw down abbreviations and technical jargon all over the place and just expect you to tag along. Or not. I don’t think he cared. OK, so given these complaints, why read the book at all? I’m not the kind to be squeamish about chucking a book that I’m not enjoying. But I couldn’t stop reading this one. For some reason, completely unconnected to the prose on the page, this story was utterly compelling. A big part of it, I think, was the insider’s perspective on an industry that is ubiquitous but hidden from most of us. Many of the goods we eat, buy, and use travel around the world on shipping vessels, yet for the most part we are ignorant of how this system works. Even those of us who like boating and boats may never see this aspect of the waterborne industrial complex. Then there’s the more than passing similarity between the stories Max Hardberger has to tell and the pirate stories that are so popular these days. I often had the impression that Captain Jack Sparrow would have very little to teach Captain Hardberger, besides maybe how to apply eyeliner. So maybe this book is the exception that proves the rule. In general, you can’t write a book like this and expect anyone to read it. Yet with this particular book, I guess maybe if your story is so utterly engaging you can drag readers along for the ride, nearly against their will. Who should read this book? I don’t know. Maybe English majors or editors looking for an example? Maybe the curious and open-minded with a tolerance for crippled prose? Maybe you? I can’t say it’s a good book, but I can say I’m damn glad I read it. View all my reviews
 Side Jobs: Stories From the Dresden Files by Jim Butcher I’ve never enjoyed short stories as much as novels, though I couldn’t give you any rational explanation of that. I bought Jim Butcher's Side Jobs: Stories From the Dresden Files as soon as it was available, promptly read the last story in the collection (which occurs immediately after the stunning event that ends Changes) to see what new would be revealed, then put the book on the shelf and ignored it. Over the next couple months my neighbor, also a Harry Dresden fan, kept asking if I’d read any more of the stories. I always said no, that there were other things I’d prefer to read; I don’t really like short stories that much. Recently I’ve decided I need to try my hand (fingers?) at writing a few short stories. The motivation is purely self-promotional: I want to give people a taste of the world I’ve created in my novel, but I don’t want to self-publish the novel. I also want to give people a reason to come back to my website: not just to support me or to hear about what I’m doing, but to get something for their time. Short stories, being by definition short, can be written faster than a novel. My plan is to write a story a month, posting it in weekly installments. In order to get my short story on, I figured I better read some of them. Just because they’re shorter, doesn’t mean it’s easier to write them. So I picked Side Jobs up off the shelf and gave it a try, figuring I already knew and liked Butcher’s style. I really enjoyed the collection. It was particularly interesting for me to read the first story, a project he assembled for an MFA program, showing an early piece of writing by an author who has come a long way commercially. The rest of the stories were very enjoyable, each one giving me a dip into Harry’s world and lasting just long enough to be satisfying. I’d still take a Dresden Files novel over more short stories, but if you are, like I am, waiting for the next novel to drop, I would highly recommend you give yourself a booster-shot of magical ass-kicking in short story format in the meantime. View all my reviews
 City of Bones by Cassandra Clare So there I was, reading a lot (and I mean, a lot) of steampunk novels, and amazon.com says, “yo, you’re reading a lot (and I mean, a lot) of steampunk novels. Wanna read Clockwork Angel by Cassandra Clare?” And I say, “Huh, that sounds like a steampunk novel. Perhaps I should read it.” So I download a sample, and the sample is nice, so I decide to get the book, only a hardcover edition is within a few bucks of the Kindle edition price, and since I’m a tactile kinda guy, I order the hardcover. It comes. It sits on my shelf even now. I notice that Ms. Clare has other books, published earlier, so I hit the library and check them out. City of Bones and City of Ashes, books #1 and #2 in the “Mortal Instruments” series. Here are my two cents: Cassandra Clare can write good well. The books are good. The characters are interesting and three dimensional, the action is fun, the world building intriguingly done and carefully revealed. This is YA fiction, though not steampunk--more of a paranormal/urban fantasy thing. Not an issue, since I like that genre just as much. Here’s my problem. The teenagers in these books are too teenager for me. This is not a knock against the author. Indeed, as far as I can tell (from the vantage point of a 36 y/o), the teenage characters act, speak, and are authentically teenage. I’ve read lots of YA fiction and not had this reaction, so I don’t know exactly what Clare is tapping into here that I don’t like. Essentially, I didn’t care about the interpersonal problems these kids were having. I liked the supernatural problems they were having, but there was less of that and more of the other. Frankly, I didn’t give a damn which teenager was kissing which teenager while wishing they were kissing which other teenager. Teenagers making out and the ‘dating’ drama that goes along with that is something I didn’t really enjoy when I was a teenager, and it hasn’t gotten any more interesting with time. Again, this is not a negative review. Cassandra Clare can write, and I’m still very much looking forward to reading Clockwork Angel. If you like YA and you like urban paranormal or contemporary fantasy, I suggest you check these books out. Tell me what your reaction to the characters was. I can’t quite put my finger on what is causing this reaction in my brain, when I’ll happily put up with less well-drawn characters in other situations. Any thoughts? View all my reviews
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