Hugo 2013 Reviews: 2013 by Kim Stanley Robinson

The last of the Hugo-nominated books that I read, and in many ways one of the largest.  I haven’t read any of Kim Stanley Robinson’s other books, so I don’t know how common this style is for his writing, but I gather that they generally span quite a range of places and people.  What I would call epics, though the term is usually used more with fantasy than with sci-fi.

The world-building was far and away the strongest part of this book, in my opinion.  The many ways that people might adapt things in space to allow humans to live there (and adapt humans as well) were considered, and by the end of the story large amounts of them had been shown.  So far as I could follow it the science (of the parts we can know right now) was accurate, and I trust that people who can follow more than me probably verified it as well.  It’s that kind of story.

What it isn’t, as much — again, in my opinion — is anything much of an actual story.  To me, it read a lot more like “stuff happened” than “connected events leading to a revelation or change.”  As presented, changes happened aplenty, and the POV characters may even have been integral in some of them happening, but for the majority of the novel the POV characters weren’t acting toward causing many of those things to happen.

Analyzed from a promises/resolutions point of view, the novel started with Swan’s life disrupted from losing a family member, and you could say that the rest of the novel was her gaining a new one, forging a new connection in the world.  On the other hand, you could say the inciting incident was Swan’s grandma dying, and the resolution being the fruition of her plans.  So far as I recall, neither was given much prominence by Swan herself, which means that neither played strongly.  It might have been a novel of Swan finding herself, or finding her way, but again Swan doesn’t appear to be dissatisfied with much that gets resolved by the end of the story.  She doesn’t appear to change, and with the majority of the book from her POV, that gets rough for me.

Other side characters, and even POVs, eventually get woven into the end of the book, but I will admit to heightened expectations after seeing the good reviews the book had received, and so I was kind of expecting a bigger bang of colliding plot-lines at the end.

In the end, 2312 reads more like “a year in the life” book, with a few other POVs thrown in and some pastiche material added from the world-building notebook, than it does a story with a defined beginning and end.  There must be people that this appeals to, but I am guessing I’m not one of them.  The ideas were grand, but the story did nothing special for me, so in the end it falls to the bottom of my rankings.

1: Redshirts
2: Blackout
3: Captain Vorpatril’s Alliance
4: Throne of the Crescent Moon
5: 2312

Hugo 2013 Reviews: Blackout by Mira Grant

Blackout is another of the Hugo nominated novels that is one book in an ongoing series -- this time, the culminating novel of the Newsflesh trilogy, one of my favorite settings since I read Feed as a nominated  story a couple years ago.

Like the other two, the use of blog updates (published and private) add good texture and additional viewpoints to what is happening in the story.  Having tried blogging myself (this is my third? fourth? attempt at blogging), I do have a bit of difficulty in suspending my disbelief that everybody seems to blog -- from the vice president to random scientists, not just those making their living from it.  That aside, though, the world continues to be richly detailed and this book exposes even more natural consequences and developments in the world it has created as events continue.

In Feed, the story was first-person POV until [redacted for spoiler], at which point another first-person POV took over (not counting the alternate viewpoints shown in the various blog entries).  In Deadline, that POV was continued (to the best of my knowledge, and I haven't double-checked), except for one twist at the end.  In Blackout, the story alternates first-person POVs between the two POVs from the first two books.  This could be confusing, and indeed it was a bit difficult for me to get used to at first, but the strict alternation of viewpoint chapters helps keep everything sorted out, as well as the fact that the two storylines are unrelated for the majority of the novel.  This also allows more tension to be introduced as, when the storylines were drawing together, one POV would show actions that would unknowingly affect the other POV, and vice-versa.

I would generally classify the novels as horror, and though I don't usually claim to read horror, some of the recent items I've read in the genre have been pretty good, and not at all what I would expect.  That said, there is still a quotient of horror that must be had, a minimum level, as it were, and in a book and trilogy dealing so closely with the zombie uprising, it almost had to end with a fight against hordes of zombies, and with some characters dying.  It seems a necessity of the genre to do so, and although I have no objections to how the novel ended, to me the need to include those elements made the ending less memorable, rather than more.  The reveals were great, but rather than face down the (face of the) smart enemy, the good guys had to face mindless zombie hordes instead.

Still, a smart book and a good end to a well-done trilogy.

My current ranking:

1) Redshirts

2) Blackout

3) Captain Vorpatril

4) Crescent Moon

Hugo 2013 Reviews: Captain Vorpatril’s Alliance by Lois McMaster Bujold

I've been reading Bujold's Vorkosigan saga for years, and at it's best it is some of the very best speculative fiction I've read, let alone some of the best space opera I've read.

Unfortunately, this isn't one of the best entries in the series.  However, given where the series has been and how Bujold has expressed the desire to show growth and change in her characters, it is inevitable that the focus had to move to other characters, and Ivan ended up being a nice choice for it.  It gives a breath of fresh air to the series, and even though it's inherently more lighthearted, this hearkens back to some of the origins of the Vorkosigan saga, before Miles had kids and responsibilities (and, dare I say it, a bit of restraint).

So, how does it hold up on it's own merits?

Bujold is one of the best writers I've read lately in multiple aspect of the craft, and I can't do much but pick nits here.  Here, due to the light-heartedness and the POV character (and somewhat due to the genre), we have another episode of plots threads that are driven in large part via external conflicts and circumstances.  Both Ivan and Tej do have their own internal conflicts, but while they struggle with the internal ones, there really isn't much in try-fail cycles for them.  Instead, we have a good rom-com in space, with events conspiring to alternately drive the couple together and then try to keep them apart.

The technical skill in the writing is excellent, and the characters are well-drawn and properly hit the right emotional notes.  The circumstances flow well, and actions have consequences.  Basically, all the ingredients are there... but this still falls short for me.  Maybe it's overshadowed by it's more prestigious previous books (definitely true, IMO), but I also think that, considered on it's own merits, it ranks as a good story but not a great one.  And, in continuing my reviews, what is needed to rank on top is a great story.

Current rankings:

1) Redshirts

2) Captain Vorpatril's Alliance

3) Crescent Moon

Hugo 2013 Reviews: Throne of the Crescent Moon by Saladin Ahmed

Of the five nominees, this is the novel I have read (completely) most recently.  I finished it a little under a week ago, but have been waiting a bit to give the novel time to percolate before I review it.

Throne of the Crescent Moon is Saladin Ahmed's first published novel, though he has had multiple shorter works published, and overall I thought it was very polished for a debut novel, though in a couple of places I thought it could have used a touch of improvement -- mostly in POV clarity.  I recall two or three times when I got confused about exactly who the POV is, which isn't exactly good in a strict 3rd-person limited story.  At least one of those I can blame on the book's layout, as what appears to have been a space break in a chapter happened to fall at the end of a page and was lost to the margins, but others happened as well.  Every time I got confused I went back and reviewed the section and realized that it was still in a particular person's POV, but not so firmly that it was unambiguous to me without double-checking.  In particular, I think that a couple times started by mentioning the POV character's names and one thought on what was happening, followed by paragraphs of other people's actions and reactions -- oftentimes, one main actor, who I would start to think was the POV character, until a thought was presented from the original POV character once more.  My takeaway from this is to always make sure I have the POV character firmly established, and possibly default to too much reminder rather than too little, even if occasionally I need to wedge a reference to the POV character in among other character's actions.

There is also common advice to limit the POV characters, especially as beginning authors writing a novel, and that might have helped here as well.  I believe there were at least 5 POVs -- 6, counting the guard's POV in the prologue -- and I'm not convinced that we were always, to use the often-given advice, following the POV of the character who was in the most pain.  (Of course, there are other valid reasons to choose a POV character, one of which is to remind the reader of that POV's plot thread, but since this book followed one main plot thread from multiple POVs, that doesn't apply as strongly here.)

So far as the plot goes, it was very externally-heavy in conflict, or at least in progress during the conflicts.  Each main character seems to have been given one (1) internal conflict to deal with, or possibly 2 for some of them if you count "I'm getting too old for this" to be an internal conflict.  Most of the internal conflicts were introduced and stayed constant until the end, after the external conflict was resolved, whereas the external one had them doing the try-fail cycles.  This isn't necessarily a bad thing, and so far as I understand it is more of the norm for the sword-and-sourcery subgenre, but it still makes for a work that is less engaging to me.  I want the characters run through an internal-conflict mangler as well as the external-conflict one.

Overall, it was a fun, fairly quick read, with a handful of problems I can hopefully take and learn something from.  I wouldn't rank it the best story I've read that was published last year, but it was by no means a bad story either, and not disappointing as a Hugo nominee.

Current ballot rankings:
1) Redshirts
2) Throne

Hugo 2013 Reviews: Redshirts: A Novel with Three Codas by John Scalzi

I think this is the first novel of this year's nominees that I read, which means it's been sitting my my memory and fading the longest, and yet I can still remember large parts of what I felt.  The plot, yes, if I concentrate, but especially what I felt while reading it.

To begin with, the only other Scalzi fiction I'd read was Old Man's War -- a nice little tale, though given all the praise I'd heard of it, I thought it fell a bit short.  I had been meaning to pick up more of his works since then, to see if they improved and how much, when Redshirts came out.  I requested it from the library, got it a few weeks later, and settled in to read one night.

In the first part of the novel, I remember being surprised and amazed that such cheesy writing had been published, honestly.  Still, there was something about it -- Scalzi walked a fine line there, since for the novel to work it had to be cheesy, and yet keep the reader going.  In retrospect, the prose must have been nicely crafted for that effect, but at the time I was almost on the border of giving up on the novel.  (Sidenote -- the name, cover, and blurb all helped as well.  They pointed out that this was not a novel that was taking itself seriously, so I could sit back and go along for the ride a bit more than I might otherwise.)

The next part I remember was that same night, as I got to the part where the Narrative was introduced, and having some strong disbelief -- again, not that it was wrong for the story, but that an author could get away with something so meta.

By then I was hooked, though I had to stop for the night.  I picked it up again the next night, a Friday, and devoured the rest of the story.  Really, once I got to the audacious plan to fix things, there was no stopping me.  Sure, the novel was cheesy and meta, and still felt a bit like a popcorn-flick, but it gloried in being so, and I gloried with it.  Then it's characters started struggling even more, and I cared about them, and even as the cheese faded away and it actually became a (kind of) serious novel, I enjoyed it.

The story came to an end, and it was satisfying.  It worked, and tied everything together, and it was a nice little story.  I was satisfied, and considered stopping there, but I had time before bed and there were the three codas remaining.

The first one intrigued me, spinning a new perspective on the story's events.  It was plausible enough to wonder if the whole thing was in fact the writer's delusions causing him problems.  It added some interesting ambiguity to the novel, which I appreciated.

The second coda started slow, but hit me hard.  I've not exactly flitted from thing to thing (heck, I've been programming computers for more than 20 years now, and over 15 of that professionally, which is almost the opposite of flitting), but some of my hobbies feel that way.  I pick something up, then drop it.  Pick up another, and drop it.  At the time, I had been considering if writing was going to be that way or not -- because let's face it, writing can be hard sometimes, and when things get hard, a big part of my subconscious thinks I've been doing something wrong, because how hard can it be to sit down and produce professional-quality output, right?  I mean, I do it at work all the time (nevermind those 20 years of practice -- those aren't the reasons you're looking for, my subconscious says while waving a hand).  So I felt somewhat indicted by the end of that coda, even though it was a story and fictional character who had been doing something wrong.

As an author, I'd also note that this coda was another extremely effective use of second-person writing. Either these are getting more common, or I'm just noticing them more, but either way I should pay attention to when they are used and why.

So, thus set up and already somewhat reeling from the second coda, I read the third one.

Look, I'm a guy, and talking about emotions is sometimes hard for me.  Also, I don't analyze them much or spend time thinking about the hows and whys of them -- quite possibly to my overall detriment, I'll admit.  However, I'm not ashamed to admit this coda nearly brought me to tears.  I was, frankly, shocked at how much it affected me.  I was moved to send @scalzi a tweet about it, something I'd never done about a story before (or since, so far).  I had to, quite literally, sit on the couch with the closed book in my hand for fifteen minutes or more before I could get my mental and emotional balance enough to do anything else -- like remove my bookmark and put the book in the "return to library" pile.

So, you might say that I have a high opinion of this book, and you'd be right.  I liked it enough I actually made a note to nominate it for a Hugo when the nominations opened, and followed through on that.  Will it get my final vote?  I haven't finished two of the novels yet, so I can't be sure, but it is certainly a very strong contender.