Rocket Fuel (McGovern, Lough)

Rocket Fuel: Some of the Best of Tor.com Non-Fiction , Bridget McGovern and Chris Lough, ed. (2018)

Even though I'm on the mailing list for Tor.com, probably since the first time I downloaded a copy of 1632 or something else, I rarely check out their website unless I see links to specific articles posted elsewhere on social media. One such link brought me to this ebook.

I didn't know what to expect from the title. Well, that's not exactly true. I know what I expected: non-fiction with a name like "rocket fuel" meant that this should've been a lot of stuff about space and planets and stuff like that. That's not what it was. That's not to say what I got was bad, just unexpected.

Even though this is a work of non-fiction, many of the essays deal with fiction, from the perspective of fandom, or just deep analysis of some facet of the work. I enjoyed some more than others, and some I might've enjoyed more had they been about half the size. Seriously, most of the stuff I read on the site is short by comparison to the pieces included in this book. Again, not a problem, but when I realized just how much was being written about Galadriel, I took a break, moved on, planning to get back to it.

Additionally, two back to back essays about Robert Jordan were interesting, but I haven't read anything of his. No, haven't started Wheel of Time, and I've had friends who have warned me away from it -- even as they are drawn into it.

The most interesting piece, at least for quirkiness, has to do with the anatomy and diet of centaurs, taking a scientific look at a fantasy staple, and pondering just how it gets enough nutrition to survive. Digestion problems abound.

A couple of essays started off too well about things I hadn't read, causing me to stop, lest the books or stories be spoiled. Not that I know if I'll read those any time soon.

On the social justice warrior front, there are important notes from affected folks, but overall, stuff I'd heard or read before and I found myself moving on before getting halfway through many of the entries after the first couple.

I guess I was skipping ahead looking for ice volcanoes of Neptune or realistic flying cars for Mars. Or just notes on rocket fuel.

Clean Room (Simone)

Clean Room,

My review was erased. I'm not re-writing it now. I'll get back to it. (sigh)

Eternals (Gaiman)

Eternals, by Neil Gaiman (2007)

Placeholder for review.

I had two days left on my ComicXology subscription, and I search on Neil Gaiman. I struck pay dirt with Eternals. I didn't really know a lot about the Eternals from Marvel lore, only that they've been around a long time. If I remember an old What If--? correctly, they were created by the Sentinels, which also created Inhumans. Or something like that.

It's a damn shame that I didn't have Neil Gaiman's name listed as a hashtag, before now. That is something that needs to be rectified in 2019.

Rom (comic)

ROM, 2016-2017

About a month ago, I saw a link to download from free digital comics. Found a few that I might read and clicked. When I tried to open them, my iPad brought me to the App Store and the ComicXology app, which I would need to read the comics. Upon opening that, I found that I ha a free week of unlimited comic reading. (Exactly a week, not a minute more.)

The immediate questions were: what do I want to read, and where do I begin?

Many comics have continual story lines that don't seem to have a definite beginning, and some of them never end -- or at least wouldn't within a week. You can't even assume a story starts with issue #1 these days.

In the list of suggestions, I spotted ROM. I read every issue of the original run of ROM: Spaceknight, although I might have missed crossovers when he appeared in other comics. I didn't buy a lot back then. I knew that he was brought back because of a "Free Comic Book Day" comic which amounted to a four or six page preview for the first issue.

ROM and the rest of the spaceknights were re-imagined a bit, but they were still essentially the same. The Dire Wraiths were more the kind from later in the original series, not that original, though somewhat ill-defined, form. The Wraiths have infested Earth on a massive scale. ROM wishes to save the planet while the other knights think it's a lost cause and wish to burn it.

It was enjoyable, even if it was a different take. Likewise, early issues feature other Hasbro toys, namely Transformers and GI Joe. And then there's a problem.

There were other comics, somewhat important to the story line, that happened outside of the main run of ROM. Unfortunately, just because you have "unlimited" access to comics, that doesn't mean that the platform itself has unlimited comics available. I couldn't read these things. (I'm sure I could have bought them however.)

For the fourteen issues that were there, I enjoyed this "alternate" take on ROM.

Pedro & Me (Winick)

Pedro & Me: Friendship, Loss & What I Learned, by Judd Winick (2000)

This edition contains a foreword written in 2008, and was published in 2009.

For all my recent complaints about graphic novels, I finally found out that was actually what it was supposed to be, and it's been in a "to be read" pile for years now. Pedro & Me came to me from the Port Chester-Rye Brook Public Library, most likely through a nearby science fiction convention. (That would've been the recently departed Lunacon. Sigh.)

Pedro is Pedro Zemora, who along with Judd Winick (the "Me" of the title) and others, was a part of The Real World: San Francisco in 1994. I didn't watch it, and I had no interest in the series or the ones before it. Frankly, I couldn't tell you the difference between the Real World and, say, Big Brother. But Pedro's story is worth reading.

Judd is a cartoonist from Long Island. He applied for the Real World, and when MTV called, one of the questions they asked was if he'd have a problem with a housemate who was HIV positive. That shook his world a little bit. What shook it more was when he was accepted onto the program and that housemate was his roommate.

What follows are some of the struggles Pedro faced as his illness progressed, and the friendship that was forged. It's wonderfully written and illustrated and makes great use of the medium.

How good is it? It's not a book that I thought I'd be interested in. Not something I thought I would pick up. But I sat in an inner tube in the backyard pool reading it morning after morning. (Okay, full disclosure -- I usually only bring things into the pool that I wouldn't mind losing should it get blown or dropped into the drink.) It was worth reading.

Space Team (Hutchison)

Space Team, by Barry Hutchison (2016)

The full title of the book is Space Team: Screwing Up the Galaxy so you don't have to!, and I believe I got the capitalization and punctuation correct. An editor might've suggested different.

This book was downloaded as a freebie. If I remember correctly, it was probably one of those "first book in the series is free" deals, to get you to read one and buy the rest. Nothing wrong with that, so long as the books are good. Wellllllll ....

So how many books are in this series? I just checked, and it seems, as of this writing, that there are 13 of them. In three years.

If they're making money, more power to him. Maybe it's a model to try out for my own writing.

Okay, so the story starts off like some is trying too hard to be Douglas Adams or Terry Pratchet or just, you know, funny. It isn't too clever, but it's what's there, so let's so with it. Cal Carver is a criminal, and he's in prison, but a mistake was made and he's been set to a maximum security facility. His next mistake is ticking off the warden. Because there aren't any buses available to transfer him until the morning, he'll have to stay the night. And because Carver was a pain in the ass, the warden puts him in a cell with an overly-large cannibal, who Hutchison describes in great detail as the man has no pants on. Hutchinson waxes poetic about his member.

Anyway, just about the point where Cal is about to be killed in the cell (which the Warden could have easily have anticipated, so he's a pretty sucky guy himself because Cal wasn't that big a pain in the ass), the prison is attacked and Cal is abducted. By space aliens. Who mistake him for the cannibal. (Yes, I will keep referring to him as "the cannibal" because I'm too lazy to scroll through my kindle to find the name, and despite the number of books in the series, every site I checked has the same stupid two paragraph synopsis of the book.)

Next thing you know, we're in a room with the president of the galaxy and a bunch of other criminals, and we're playing, "I bet you're wondering why I called you all here." Seriously, he says that. Or something just like it.

Out of the entire galaxy, he needs this handful of weird criminals from various planets, to come together to be a team to go on a mission for him. To Hutchinson's credit, he does, at the end, give a rationalization for exactly why these people are here, and what they bring to the secret agenda that the president has.

Oh, and Earth was destroyed, quite by accident really. It wasn't like it was in the way so the Vogons destroyed it or anything. (And I'd already had the Hitchhikers-wannabe comparison in my head before he got around to telling us Earth was killed during the prison break.)

A lot of silliness, some of which isn't as silly as it could or should be, follows. They save the day. And they ride off together because they have no place to go.

Would I read more of this? If someone handed me a stack of books and I knew I was going to be stuck on a subway. Maybe.

In the end, it didn't suck, but it wasn't all that great.

The Alienist (Carr)

The Alienist, by Caleb Carr (1994)

Like many, I saw the series, The Alienist on television, and then decided to find a copy of the novel. Like many, I decided to get it from the library, so there was a wait. Still, I managed to read it earlier in the year (before summer vacation), but I didn't get around to writing it up until the year was almost out. So I don't remember everything about it. That's the main reason I try to write these things in a timely manner.

Having seen the show, I put faces to many of the characters in advance, which is usually helpful (except in those instances where someone is woefully miscast). The story tells the tale of a serial killer in 19th century New York City, during Teddy Roosevelt's tenure as Police Commissioner. He charges Dr. Lazlo Kreizler with solving a set of grisly murders involving a disaffected portion of the underclass of society. Namely, poor immigrant boys that dress up like girls for the benefit of "gentlemen" of lower Manhattan.

Anyway, the first impression from the book was that I was glad that it started in the middle of things. The book opens with the third murder, with the reader being informed of the two prior. The show started with the first (although it was the same one depicted at the start of the book), and this dragged out the story a bit. Then again, they had ten or twelve episodes to fill.

The book also allows us to read, and reread, if necessary, things, like jargon or science explanations, that might've gone by too fast on TV. And you got a better handle on the characters.

This was the first work of Carr's I've read, and I wouldn't be opposed to reading more. And then possibly writing them up in a more timely manner.

(Note for anyone finding this page through a search engine: this blog isn't really meant to be a review page. More of a reading log for myself so I can keep track of things that I've read and maybe a few details besides. Comments are welcome, but please be polite.)

The Great Passage (Miura)

The Great Passage, by Shiwon Miura (2011)

This was another of the books that Amazon allowed to download that time when they had 12 world books available for free.

The story was a little confusing at first. In the beginning, we are introduced to Kohei Araki, who as a boy was fascinated with words and loved the dictionary. Next thing we know, he's close to retirement after having worked on dictionaries for Gembu Books for thirty-seven years. Although we begin with him, it isn't his story.

Araki needs to find a replacement who can continue his work, and bring his dream project, The Great Passage, to publication. Thanks to Nishioka, one of the few employees in the dictionary department of Gembu, Araki finds Mitsuya Majime, an odd fellow who works in the sales department. After an interview, they discover that they are kindred spirits in the love of and fascination with words, and how to define them precisely.

Majime is introverted and awkward, which makes it difficult to approach Kaguya Hayashi, his landlady's granddaughter. The awkward love letter he writes her becomes a running gag of sorts. There is even a version of it appended to the end of the book, but it, thankfully, doesn't run the fifteen pages it's supposed to. (It always includes a running commentary by Nishioka and Midori Kishibe, a character that seems oddly inserted into the drama after an equally odd time-skip).

I also want to mention Professor Tomosuke Matsumoto, just so I don't forget the name. He also consults on the dictionary, even after Araki retires, during the time jump between chapters, which shows you what a labor of love this project is. It also shows that while dictionaries are important projects, they are also money sinks and often get put on the back burner for other projects. (These other projects help to fund the dictionary, so they do what they have to.)

I did enjoy the book, although it probably isn't something I would have sought out on my own. In preparing to write this, I discovered that there was both an anime version and a movie that was submitted, but not nominated, for the Oscar for Best Foreign Film.

If I had any problems with it, it would be the shift in focus and the weird time skipping. Possibly the addition of the new primary character halfway through the book to replace a different character, who is still there, but moved to a different department. Worth reading.

The Black Tides of Heaven (Yang)

The Black Tides of Heave, by Jy Yang (2017)

The Black Tides of Heaven was a free ebook from the Tor.com Book of the Month Club. It amounts to one of two twin novellas, which establish the world of the Tensorate series, by Jy Yang.

I was drawn to it because it seemed different, and, yes, because it was free. Likewise, as part of a "book club", I thought it might lead to a discussion, either now or when I see some like-minded friends at a up-coming convention. That's not likely to happen at this point.

While I'm glad I read it, I had a problem immersing myself into the fantasy world being created. On the very first page, we encounter the word "slackcraft" as something not to be used by the Great Abbot Sung to climb the 800 steps of the Great High Palace. I let this slip by in the first instance, not knowing whether that was some kind of magical incantation or transport. Later uses of the term "craft" also left me wondering if they were talking about an actual vehicle or crafting some kind of energy, which comes from the Slack. Only the basics were covered, but I went with it as much as I could.

However, what probably would've had me put the book aside if I hadn't been predisposed to reading it, was the overuse of the singular "they" in the first few chapters. The reason behind it made a compelling case, but the execution was maddening.

Basically, children are born of neutral gender and stay this way until they declare themselves (or are declared, in the case of a three-year old?) to be either male or female. This is done well enough in the case of the first such character introduced, Sonami, the youngest of the Protector's children, was wearing the gender-neutral colors of a child, without overtly stating that the character itself had no gender. I believe I had assumed in my mind that the character was female, and, in fact, a chapter later was. From my reading, it seems that choosing a gender also includes the ability to bear children.

My problem came from the twin babies that are introduced. I just used "it" to refer to a "character". The novella choose to use the singular "they", which is something that is gaining popularity in English. This was fine (though initially odd) when used with Sonami. But here's the rub, there are two twins, each referred to, individually and collectively, as "they". And since "they" are usually together during this period of "their" lives, it bogged down my reading.

Seriously, I haven't been that confused since I first read Ayn Rand's Anthem the summer before high school. (Note: this book is in no way similar to Ayn Rand's Anthem!)

The novella spans 35 years and feels too short, as if important parts have been left out. The Venerable One, the Great Abbot, had gone to the Palace to settle a debt. The Protector owed him one of her children for the Monastery in payment for his help during an uprising the year before. He expected to get Sonami, the only child whose future hadn't yet been spoken for. He hadn't counted on the Protector bearing extra children, specifically, a pair of twins. She gives him both as she has no need for the spare. The Abbott is forced to accept this arrangement, as well as leave them in her care for the next six years because the Monastery has facilities for babies. (And the Protector would not allow any children of hers to be raised in any home below their station in life.)

The children, Mokoya and Akeha, finally move into the monastery but it is a temporary situation. Within a few years, it is discovered that Mokoya's dreams about the future, like a prophet, and the dreams will come to be. Once this is learned, the Protector wants the child back, allowing the Abbot to keep Akeha as payment for the debt. High Abbot Sung sends both children back, bringing their time at the monastery to a close.

Next thing you know, they are adults, declaring their genders and parting ways pursuing their destinies, which, when it comes to the Slack, may already be laid out before them.

I didn't know when I started reading it that it was one of two twin novellas, and I don't know if this accounts for the gaps. The first chapter of the other book was included at the end of this one, but I declined to read it. Well, not true, I did skim it and discovered a little more background about the five aspects of Slack.

The resolution seemed too quick and easy to have been a final resolution.

At some point I might revisit the series when there's more to it available, and if I have more friends who have read it and want to talk about it. Maybe I'll have them explain to me how the magic works first.

* * *

Note: I previously left the following review on GoodReads when I had finished the book:

Felt incomplete, parts left out, like it was the trailer for a longer novel. Then at the end is the first chapter for another novella—I skimmed it for a little more background on how the magic worked. I stuck with it longer than I might have were it a different book, openly because it was recommended to me, and I wanted to read something different.

P Is For Peril (Grafton)

P is for Peril, by Sue Grafton (2001)

The sixteenth installment of the Kinsey Milhone series finds Kinsey mixed up in two mysteries, as the background 'B' story takes up a good portion of the book.

The main mystery involves a missing persons case. Dr. Dowan Purcell disappeared nine weeks earlier and hasn't been located yet. His first wife is started to get worried now because he had gone missing once before but eventually returned. Kinsey briefly ponders if he'd faked his own death, as happened in an earlier case of hers. But Fiona, the first wife, believes that he may still be alive because his passport is missing, along with a bit of money.

Add in possible trouble at home with wife number two, Crystal, and mounting evidence of medical billing fraud, and it doesn't look good.

While all this is going on, Kinsey is once again looking for a new office. She's been renting space from Lonnie Kingman, but they are relocating. She finds a space at a reasonable rate nearby -- she can literally see it from her current office building -- and agrees to lease it from two brothers. They turn out to be bad news, as they were suspected in the fiery death of their parents. Investigators have been watching them as they blew through their insurance settlement to see if they'll fence any of the jewelry believed to be in their possession that would provide the evidence linking them to the crime. One of the brothers takes a liking to Kinsey and tries to attach himself in a way that a soon-to-be abusive boyfriend might, despite the difference in their ages.

Of the two plot lines, the main one wraps up neatly enough, although not spectacularly, with answers to the location of Dr. Purcell, the missing money, billing fraud, and, without saying too much, "who did it" and why. The other involving the sons along with a woman who is trying to use Kinsey to investigate them is a little underwhelming.