The Fifth Hundred – The Gone-Away World, Nick Harkaway

By now, I expect these posts are getting tiresome. I expect this, because I am not tired of writing them. We have moved into the realm of Gee, wasn’t that a bad idea? and I have learned my lesson. However, since I started these posts I feel the need to stick to them until the very end. Thankfully, that will be very soon. The end of this set of hundred pages marks the steep decline to the very end.

As we begin this set, our nameless narrator is tagging along with a carnival run by a diverse and probably quite insane group of folks, all named K. If you see a pattern of our nameless narrator always running into eccentric people instead of nice, normal ones, then you have likely read the book. I am not sure I have included that in any of the previous posts. Anyway, he does. That is one of the best parts of this book. We are treated to one odd, insane, or purely eccentric character after another. And even as we are introduced to new ones, more of the those we have met in the past make a triumphant return in one way or another to join in the fray. Also in this set: ninjas, mutant bees, and more mimes… sometimes in the same scene.

One thing to note is that I mentioned The Twist happening in the last hundred pages. This is both true and false. While part of the twist did indeed happen there, our nameless narrator is not smacked across the face with the revelation until this hundred pages. And a revelation it is, indeed. That, of course, brings me round to digressions. Those people of the anti-digressional minds have either thrown the book away with a scream or become resigned to the fact that they exist and will persist until the bitter end. Well, or it could just be that they are masochists, which is likely. The digressions have returned and they are important, they are mostly an integral part of the story. The epic tale of Crazy Joe Spork, for instance, is not exactly important, but is one of the more entertaining bits and something spawned of a mind that has gone just a bit crazy itself.

Of course, I cannot discount the brilliant exaggerated insanity of the latter part of the set, when our nameless narrator takes it upon himself to become a man of action and head off to Haviland City to find out who set him up and risked destroying the known world to do so.

These posts seem to keep getting shorter. The book, however, is just as good as the first time I read it. The next one of these will likely be up tonight or tomorrow and I expect my post about the twist to come sometime later.

Adding to the Stack

Nothing quite like feeding my book-buying addiction after a bit of a break.

I must admit that I was put off a bit by the synopsis for this book, but considering all of the praise that it has garnered there was little doubt that I would be buying it.

I have talked more than enough about this book in the past few weeks. The premise of the book is one of the sort that I cannot help but be interested in and love.

I am an Erikson fanboy. The only surprise about this purchase is that I waited so long to order it. One of my favorite epic fantasy series, Malazan Book of the Fallen has yet to let me down. I look forward to reading it more than anything.

Despite having three books out, I had not heard of the author until James, from Speculative Horizons, posted the cover to the latest of Sullivan’s novels, Nyphron Rising. It sounds like a good book and just the thing I need when I get my epic fantasy cravings.

That’s it for now and likely for another month or so. I found that a lot of the books I am interested in are still a few weeks off from being published and there are still more throughout March and April. Time to start reading, need to take down the stack a bit before I build it up too high.

The Fourth Hundred – The Gone-Away World, Nick Harkaway

The fourth set of hundred pages is cut cleanly down the middle in terms of story, which almost made me stop and consider splitting this into two posts. My laziness slapped some sense into me though and I realized that I would rather not write two posts instead of one. The first fifty pages is devoted to finishing our nameless narrator’s life story and the second fifty slides rather nicely into a twist-and-shock-filled conclusion to the first chapter’s story arc.

The first fifty pages of this set is not the action-filled crazy that made the prior hundred pages stand out, but more of a winding down of the narrative. More than anything, these pages show us what life is like after the world has been changed so dramatically about the Go-Away War. It is not just the life of our nameless narrator and his friends that we are shown though, part of the plot of these final fifty pages of back story revolves around a found village and the consequences the find holds.

Of course, that means we are back to a relative slowness. Digressions return, but not in such a way that it should make those of that oft-mentioned mind pull their hair out and scream bloody murder. The one prominent digression of the first fifty pages is a story that is relevant as it shows both our nameless narrator’s way of thinking and plays a small, but ultimately key, role in the events surrounding the aforementioned village. This section also brings one of the most entertaining aspects of the novel to life: The Mimes.

I am unable to come up with a single novel I have read other than this one that goes so far as to mention mimes, let alone introduces them by having a company of mimes pick a fight at a seedy bar and quickly diffuse it by performing. The scene is completely random and almost demands a “What the fuck?”, but it is hilarious and manages to introduce us to the likes of Ike Thermite–the head of the company, the only mime allowed to speak, and an interesting character besides. We will see him again.

Zaher Bey, leaves the party on an apt note and the rest of our party gathers up and heads off to hang out around a nameless bar with a pig-powered generator and the uncomfortable notion of spawn born from the coupling of a unique and unlikely pair. We have traveled full circle and are back at the beginning and heading for action.

And those fifty pages are really something. The twist I am always going on about happens and beyond that, our nameless narrator is betrayed more than once and ultimately left for dead. The story arc about the fire that opens the book is done for, now begins another. Unfortunately, for those folks of that oft-mentioned anti-digression mind, they have come back in force. There is, in fact, one that even bothers me–nothing like rambling about Newton and his laws to make the mind go blank.

And that’s it for now, beyond a note:

As mentioned in the comments section from the last one of these, I will be making a post solely for discussion the twist. It will be long, rambling, and so chock full of spoilers that there will be a very large warning on top and the rest of the post will be hidden from the first page. The reason these little commentaries suck is mostly because I am lazy, but also because I do not want to riddle them with spoilers. While it would seem that only people who have read the book might follow this, I do know that there are those reading the posts who have not read the book. You had better believe that I regret not just writing a review for the book.

List! – SFSignal, 40 Books From 2009 You Should Read

SFSignal, has posted a list of forty books from 2009 that you should read. Why not wander over and take a look? Taking a gander at the list myself and this is what I came up with:

Read:

Finch by Jeff VanderMeer – A fine end to Ambergris and one of my favorite novels last year. A drastic change in terms of style from the prior books, but VanderMeer shows he is a talented bastard and makes it work.

Last Days by Brian Evenson – One of the more twisted novels I read last year and, again, one of my favorites.

Own:

The City & the City by China Mieville – A book that I tried to read twice before ultimately giving up. It somehow managed to give me some terrible headaches. A shame, I was looking forward to reading it. Maybe I will have a go again at some point, with a bottle of Excedrin on hand, of course.

Poe ed. Ellen Datlow – Not the biggest fan of short fiction, but I am a fan of Poe, so I had to pick this one up. Unfortunately, I have only managed to read one story out of it.

Conclusion reached:

I suck. Out of forty of these novels released last year, I read and loved two of them and own two, neither of which I have any real plans to read anytime soon. Actually, I have to say that the list marks the first time hearing about quite a few of those books. Some, like Clockwork Phoenix 2, The Little Sleep, The Windup Girl and The Manual of Detection, are books that I have been meaning to read. The Domino Men by Jonathan Barnes sounds good, but I found The Somnambulist to be a savage disappointment and it is very low on my list of books to read.

I am surprised that Songs of the Dying Earth did not get a mention given the love for anthologies on the list.

The Third Hundred – The Gone-Away World, Nick Harkaway

I am slowly coming to the realization that I should not be writing tonight. The ten or so typos over the past few minutes (involving only the title of this post and the first sentence) is more than enough to convince me of that. However, there is the need and desire to get this post done and I have a spell check feature. We’re good.

Those who dislike digressions and yet have managed to make it to this point without destroying their books, throwing them against the wall, or outright declaring the novel utter dreck should be happy. The digressions in the third hundred are few in number and, excluding a couple toward the latter bit of the section, largely short. Those of the digression-loving minds, and I recognize that this may only be myself, will find they do not have the time to even sigh disappointedly. On the up side, the former crowd will find that they have no time to celebrate either.

This is largely because the third hundred pages, when compared to the previous two hundred, appears to have come across a cache of Red Bull and cocaine and is making good use of its find. There is not enough time for our nameless narrator to stand around and digress because, quite simply, hell is breaking loose around him. All of the build up since we switched over to the life and times of Gonzo’s barely-noticed best friend has finally begun to come to fruition. The horror of the Go-Away War begins.

The third section is all about atmosphere and Harkaway manages to pull it off excellently–from the outright dejectedness of the troops to the hellish, bullet-strewn, chaos that blows in with the wind. The pacing matches the story here, lingering occasionally, but is more often a frantic headlong rush either to somewhere or escaping from something. Any notions of slowness have now been cast out a window and run over by a speeding semi. This seems to me the exact point people would start to claim, “Yeah, it was pretty slow going there for a while, but has really started to pick up.” And this is one hundred percent true.

Now, unlike my prior two posts, which have both had not a single negative to them… bum bum bum… I do have a complaint. This section of the book is understandably a mess. I mean, it is a frantic hell that consists of a lot of running the fuck away from weird things so that one might survive. It is the survivors that I have a bit of an issue with. We are never really given a total of how many survived and many of the survivors, if not part of the main cast, are not even mentioned as being around (even as a random stand-in). When I read the book the first time, I gave this little thought, but reading it again, it makes me think that really no more than maybe ten people make up our band of survivors. But this cannot be, even if it seems to be the case. More and more characters spring up as if from out of nowhere as the pages advance and there is no other way for them to be there unless they were part of the band.  This bothers me. By not mentioning how many people actually survived, Harkaway gives himself room to spawn characters when needed and that is okay, but with each character he adds, certain events start to become downright silly. Of course, other things in this book are silly, but they are silly in a good way and the vaguely aforementioned events are not.

Still going good.

Adding to the Stack

It has been a tight month or so, which means I have not been buying books and making better use of my local library. Of course, given that I am lacking in funds, there are several releases that I would love to get my hands on. Alas, they will have to wait, but I do foresee a rather large order being placed in the near future.

Though I have not been able to buy books, one did recently arrive in the mail–much to my surprise and pleasure, since it is one of the books I have been looking forward to reading. In the interest of disclosure, Angry Robot Books has sent me:

Purchase – The Book Depository

I look forward to reading it, but I have to finish Nick Harkaway’s The Gone-Away World (my next post on that will likely be up tonight, if you want to know which blog to avoid like the plague over the next few hours) and read William Hope Hodgson’s The House on the Borderland first. I will likely start reading the book and posting more about it by the beginning of next week.

The Second Hundred – The Gone-Away World, Nick Harkaway

The first part of this is here.

If I were of that aforementioned mind, the one that detests digressions in favor of getting on with things, then I would have not only thrown this book against a wall in anger, but may have gone so far as to toss it in the bin or on a fire while shouting a chorus of curses. Quite simply, the digressions of the previous hundred pages were a benign thing that could, if of that mind, be a tad annoying. The digressions of the second hundred pages follow the Spinal Tap amplifier range–in other words, this is Harkaway saying, “But you see, my digressions go to eleven.” Of course, we have already established that I am not of that mind. So while some may want to chuck the book with all their strength into the nearest solid plane, I clutch it mightily and chuckle to myself because the digressions are interesting, entertaining, and sometimes so damned rambling that it is practically assured that I will admire them.

The college backdrop for these hundred pages sees our nameless narrator being trotted off to college, falling with with a group of political radicals by means of sexual transmission, and generally setting him up as the character we will see becoming more prominent further in the book. There is also a matter of one of my favorite scenes in the novel, which is a critical scene and therefore cannot be gone into due to spoilerish reasons, but involves Gong Fu, Tupperware, and Ninjas. It is an early hint at what is to come and things bode well.

As the second hundred pages moves along, the slowness that dominated the first hundred becomes little more than an unpleasant memory in the mind of those who would prefer faster pacing. The college years breeze by in a flurry of scenes  and events and then comes brisk, hilarious end. The action then starts. If the book hasn’t been thrown across the room by the reader, then that unpleasant memory is now forgotten, because this is where things pick up. By way of outrageous characters and events we are introduced to the horrible things, but it is damned well hilarious.

The second hundred is just more back story, like the first hundred, but it benefits from a faster pace and if not more humor, than an abundance of an all-together different sort. A lot of what happens within these pages, from the very start to the very last, is rather important. Most of it is set up for the latter events of the novel and some of it is the catalyst that sets everything off. That said, it also offers up some confusion to those of us in the know concerning the twist.

As last time, I am happy to report that the book is holding up excellently for this reread, even if these posts are absolute crap.

This is Rambling – Electronic Edition

I hate the title for these posts. It has been a while since I did one of these posts and that can be put down to my mind not being in a cooperative mood. This one is shorter than the others, the product of having only one subject to talk about. It is somewhat relevant though. I hoped to do one of these posts a week, but that does not seem to be working out for me. I might try to attempt a few more over the following few weeks though.

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Note: If you expect logical reasoning in the following topic, you are delusional. Thank you for stopping by though.

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E-books

I guess you can call me the old fashion sort, a curmudgeonly fellow, who happens to enjoy the heft, smell, and sight of a book. To gaze upon books stacked haphazardly on every flat surface or shelved properly is simply one of the greatest joys life has to offer for a book lover such as myself. Indeed, my chest swells with pride to view my collection, to know that I worked half-assedly to pay for almost every book therein.

So, it should come as no surprise that when I encounter this odd thing called an e-reader, I test the waters in the only way I know how. A quick sniff sends me reeling away and though I look, I see no pages to turn. And the price! How can I fill my shelves with these electronic books when they cost so much? If the time comes and I am stuck in some freezing wintry hell with nothing more than a chair and my books for firewood (though I would be loathe to lose them in such a manner, I would rather survive, likely ensuring my status as a bibliophile shall be revoked), the e-reader would not come to my rescue. Even if I manage to afford enough to fill my shelves and place upon my flat surfaces, I have the feeling that they will not provide the adequate fuel. The side of me that loves technology pines away from the box I have locked him away inside and only manages a simple, hey, that’s kind of neat, before he is brutally beaten into silence.

All silliness aside, I can see what people like about e-readers. There are no embarrassing covers on display to scare off all the attractive women (or men, because I like to think that occasionally member of the superior sex actually wanders over to this here blog and I want to be fair), a person can carry around their entire collection wherever they go without having to bring along a cart or rental truck, there is no risk of breaking one’s wrists attempting to hold the latest epic fantasy tome aloft, and the books are cheaper, too. All wonderful points, of course, which cater to those who have embraced the tech with open arms and credit cards. However, I would list them all as negative, but then that is what makes an e-reader “not for me”.

This is not to say that I am incapable of viewing the little buggers in a positive light. Though my bookish needs are tended to by the real deal, an e-reader would come in handy for, say, Project Gutenberg. It does not stop there, either. While I do so love holding a book and viewing it on laying about wherever it manages to end up, there is a certain matter of the wallet. If I am going to pay for a book, then it surely must be a real, physical object that I can hold and smell and dance naked with by the firelight under a full moon. There is the matter of free—legal—e-books though and again, this is where an e-reader would come in handy. Unfortunately, this is the extent of my desire to have an e-reader and the extent of my use. At the price they are going for now, I can safely say that it is not worth it.

This is no knock against those who use or prefer the e-reader, of course. The medium in which we prefer to read our books is purely subjective and though I much prefer to have a real book, there is certainly someone on the other side of the card.

And that, the knowledge that there is someone else on the other side of the card, is what makes it hard to view the whole e-book concern with the amount of apathy as I would prefer. I posted earlier this evening about Amazon and the reaction they had towards Macmillan wanting a new pricing plan for e-books. As a person with so little interest in the electronic medium that it may as well be described as none, this is a matter that should not affect me. Yet, in a show of power, Amazon pulled the print and electronic titles for all of Macmillan’s books and thereby affected me—the lowly buyer of non-electronic, tree-killing books. It also affected a good many innocent authors and I find I am a lot more likely to side with the publisher, the authors under said publisher, and my fellow geeky consumers with nothing better to do on a weekend night than buy books, than to side with Amazon over the matter.

I am inclined to leave the matter of e-book pricing to those who care and are affected by it. I fall into neither category and yet when word finally came around that Amazon had given in, I was happy that Macmillan won, though I certainly had no reason to be. I sided with the publisher because of the stunt that Amazon pulled, but, in the end, the decision to go with Macmillan’s pricing plan has no affect on my wallet. At the moment I am left feeling mixed emotions. Happy that Amazon lost and sorry that those folks who prefer e-books will now be paying more for them. Something tells me it will not stop there either. Macmillan won through… which publisher is next?

Oh, Amazon…

There would be a wistful sigh there, but I decided to forgo that bit. As none of you are likely aware, because I doubt I have mentioned it thus far, I do most of my book shopping exclusively online. It is not just a matter of being a cheap bastard, but a matter of living in the middle of nowhere and having to drive forty minutes to get to the closest B&N. I have nothing against brick and mortar stores and if there was a good one close to me, I would probably head on over and take a gander, but alas.

Since I do most of my book shopping online and prefer to buy them cheaply, it should come as no surprise that Amazon was my go to source for book buying. Well, if you have managed to not hear about the latest shitstorm brewing, then you may be interested to know that Amazon threw an epic hissy fit and pulled all print and electronic books from Macmillan, of which Tor is an imprint. Why? Well, it seems that Macmillan wants a dynamic pricing method for e-books and Amazon wants to cap them at the existing $9.99 price point.

Personally, I am disgusted by this. If they had chosen to withdraw only the electronic formats of the books, then I would be less bothered by this. After all, that is what the entire argument was about. But they did not limit themselves to the electronic versions, they had to throw their weight around and try to teach Macmillan a lesson by pulling all of their books. Unfortunately for them, the puerile schoolyard threat, which must have appeared to be a good idea to someone, turned out to appear more like an extended middle finger to both consumers and authors–the only two parties who truly suffer from Amazon’s ploy.

I will not be so melodramatic and say that I will never be buying from Amazon again or that I will never link to them from here. Yes, what they did disgusts me, but my wallet is not bottomless and, as I mentioned at the beginning of this post, I am a cheap bastard. What I will be doing is only linking to Amazon when I absolutely have to. I have been a supporter of The Book Depository since I discovered them and though I tend to link their site more and more often, I have yet to fully throw the support of this blog behind them. I will be doing so now. With the opening of a US branch, The Book Depository has managed to become a plausible alternative to Amazon when it comes to book buying and so, my links will now, for the most part, lead to them.

Ahem… no, I will not be going back and changing my previous posts to reflect this change. I am far too lazy for that.

And because Jay Lake has done a bang up job in following the issue, I will refer you to his site, where you can find his opinion on the matter and links to various other opinions.

The First Hundred – The Gone-Away World, Nick Harkaway

As much as I would love to write a review for this book, I already know that the review will amount to little more than hundreds of words of me gushing like the fan I am. In lieu of writing a review–and in a desperate ploy to not appear lazy–I have decided instead to comment a hundred pages at a time. This, of course, neglects the fact that it would be easier to just write a review when I am done. Oh well, always do things the hard way.

Out of all the comments I have read about this book, easily one of the most common negative attributes ascribed to it is the slowness of the first few hundred pages–or however long the life story part of it is. I certainly agree with this… to a point. The book is slow going and that is part of the reason why I have been unable to manage more than a hundred pages over the past few days, but this is not a negative aspect of The Gone-Away World and at no point has the book felt like a slog. If anything, I would describe it as a comfortable stroll with the crazy friend who has a habit of telling wild, random, stories.

One of the things I have noticed this time around is the sheer number of digressions. Now, if I were of another mind, the sort of mind that liked to keep on track in a story and never take a sudden turn to get lost in a meandering warren, then I would not only find this distracting and therefore a drain on the readability of the novel, but also a considerably negative aspect. However, since I am not of that mind and happen to love digressions in just about all novels, this only leads to a greater enjoyment. At the very least, the digressions are always either interesting or humorous and quite often, they are also relevant to events later in the story (huzzah, hindsight).

What strikes me on this reread, is that a lot of the scenes that could be dismissed as relatively minor or even unimportant to the story suddenly have relevancy. The simple matter of a confused name, little more than a mistake in my first read through of the novel, now has weight and becomes something to note. It is quite nice to pick up on things I missed before, especially when they are relevant to the big damn twist.

I think it is obvious by the above, but yes, so far the book is just as good the second time around.