Where Bruno Can't Be Left in Peace on his Private Planet

The Collapsium by Wil McCarthy
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This is a clever and entertaining SF novel. 4 stars.

The science is hard, or where it isn't really, it looks like it is, because it's realistic-sounding for a non-scientist. (Me thinking: is that how that would work? That would erase inertia? Why wouldn't everything crash together? I don't get it. I guess that's possible...) :) Lots of really big ideas here about how to use mini-black holes in a matrix to achieve pretty much anything you can imagine.

The characters are interesting and, in places, surprisingly well-developed, though the book has a very narrow cast of characters. That made it feel a little underbaked, but also makes it read in a very breezy way, so I guess I prefer it to novels that are overwritten and too long. It's episodic, and really is constructed like three short stories (or two short stories and a novella) stitched together. In each episode, our heroic and brilliant main character is called in when a partially-built invention is being sabotaged in a way that would imperil the sun itself, meaning that he has to solve the problem quickly or humanity is doomed. That's fun. And thematically, that is a very traditional SF kind of story, where we look at the tension between the wonder of new technologies and the damage they might or do cause. He makes it work.

The pacing is great, and the story is cool, but I found the tone a little odd. Some readers talk about how witty and funny it is, but it just seemed a bit off-kilter to me. I love humorous SF, like John Scalzi, but this hit more like a work of pulp fiction or a comic book in tone. That's okay; I like those things. I found it strangely whimsical, I guess, except where it took on a serious tone.

YMMV.

So--pretty fun to read, and successful enough overall to encourage me seek out other books by the author. Nice.

Sure, recommended.

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Where Edward III Has Some Folks to Fight

King Edward III by William Shakespeare
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Hey, this was a good read. (No pun intended.) Elizabethan plays can be tough, but this was not that bad, and very entertaining. I liked it. 5 stars.

It's one of those "Did Shakespeare write this?" plays that has more recently been a "How much of this did Shakespeare write?" play. Something like half, maybe. Hard to tell at this point. But in my head, and according to educated critics who have used a lot of methods to analyze the language and style, this is essentially a Shakespeare play. With assistants.

Being a history, the play is pretty episodic. It starts with Edward putting down a rebellion on the Scottish border, where he pressures a beautiful countess to sleep with him until she shames him enough he apologizes. Then, we pass to France, where he is pushing his claim to the throne. There are a couple battles--Crécy and Poitiers--where his son the prince survives and succeeds against great odds a couple times. He takes Calais [historical spoilers!], where he really wants to commit some atrocities but gets talked out of it. The captured French king is brought to him as they enter the city.

I found it fun to read and imagine it would be pretty great to watch. It's too bad it mocks Scottish people in the beginning, because that made it unpopular when James I became king a few years after it was written and first performed.

As history, this has flaws. Events are moved around and historical figures invented. Some of it's true, but it isn't very accurate. And some critics say it isn't up to Shakespeare's standards (for reasons that don't trouble me). But it is a play meant for spectacle, for patriotic fervor, for emotional reveals (like when the prince survives one more tough spot, even though the people already know he survives) and that would make it a high-energy play to see. It's very dramatic.

Seriously--go to school or read a history book for history. Go to the theater for drama. And this is good drama--IMO, always.

Recommended.

Oh--the notes and helps in the front and back of the Melchiori edition from Cambridge are very good. That's a bonus.

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Where Carl Has a Long Road Ahead

Dungeon Crawler Carl by Matt Dinniman
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

It was really good. Just like they said.

I have kind of a distrust for highly-recommended books on TikTok. I find my tastes and the tastes of most reviewers--even in the genres I like--are usually so different that we just aren't compatible. Except we agree here. Well done, booktok.

The premise of this book and series, that the MC and many, many others are trapped in a Dungeons & Dragons live action to-the-death reality show is pretty funny to begin with. And there is lots of humor, lots of tongue-in-cheek dialogue, lots of comic book-style action. But it's also all real, at least in the universe of the book, and the people really are living and dying based on how they react to the dangers in this manufactured arena.

Without belaboring the details of a much-reviewed book, I'll just say it was almost exactly as entertaining as I hoped. I hoped it would have interesting action; it does. I hoped for humor; it's 21st century funny; I hoped for characters to care about; they're here, and they're quirky, and they don't just grow on the reader but they develop over the course of the plot.

The odd characters that somehow become very real reminds me of 60s and 70s and 80s-era Clifford Simak. He always had goblins and robots and neanderthals and ghosts in his science fiction and fantasy, and they were strangely compelling and sympathetic. It should have felt bizarre, but but somehow it works. There's a lot of that here. And the blend of action plot and ironic humor puts me in the mind of John Scalzi's science fiction. It's a very close match, with LOL dialogue and snark mixed with earnest, working-together-to-stay-alive action. So my guess is that you will like this if you like Scalzi. And if you don't like Scalzi--what's the matter with you?

JK. To each their own.

I'm gonna get the next one pretty quick. I read this faster by far than I usually read a book. That's my testimonial. Recommended.

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Where I Liked Some Things More Than Others

The Serpent's Tale by Ariana Franklin
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

It's good, but annoying. 4 stars.

I find this whole series entertaining, for reasons I can't clarify in my own mind, and I'd almost give this book a 5 for that, but I'm frustrated by some things and it lowers my estimation of the book overall.

Mostly, it succeeds. We're in the 1400's in England, and Adelia is an educated woman--a kind of doctor, though more like a coroner or a forensic scientist--who serves the king by solving important mysteries. The setting is used well in this and the other books in the series, with a clear indication of deep research by the author. There's lots of good action, from sleuthing and fighting to passionate love scenes and man-versus-nature battles through dangerous landscapes--though we do sometimes slow down more than is really fun. Overall, though, it's about as thoroughly entertaining as genre fiction can be.

As a mystery, it's a bit disappointing, because most of the work is done in tiny obscure passages that only pay off at the very end. There's very little collecting of clues, really just hints of it, as if the author wants to keep the facts of the crimes a secret until the end, à la Sherlock Holmes (who is also fun and also annoying). Too much of the time, our main characters are kept powerless, useless to achieve anything, pushed around by circumstance--locked up, tied up, watched, trapped--so that they are inactive and passive for long parts of the book. Don't love that.

And Adelia is frustrating, making herself almost always disagreeable, being argumentative and insulting and rude with everyone on almost every page, including the people she likes as well as people she needs favors from. She's honorable and highly moral, doing good work, but she is so disagreeable that I find her a drag to hang out with.

So I like the books and the story pretty well, but I wish the main character's crankiness was turned down by about a half and her affability at least occasionally turned up a little. But that's just my opinion. Others may find her perfectly pleasant, and that would be fine. In any case, most mystery readers should enjoy the series and this book.

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Where Devlin Puts His Foot in It

Remember Love by Mary Balogh
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Another satisfying and entertaining book by an author I really enjoy. It didn't have quite as much closure as I would have liked, but I think some of that is coming in the sequels.

[Some minor spoilers. Probably none are surprising.]

I enjoyed the whole thing, but I especially liked it from about a third of the way in, part 2 of the book, where the story really begins. The first part is more like an extended prologue, with the characters half-formed and their relationships murky. This leads to the huge scene at the end of part 1, when Devlin blows up his family, his love life, his future, and the whole community by publicly revealing his father's infidelity. Very quickly, he finds himself pushed out, and goes straight into an officer's position in Spain against Napoleon. And we jump ahead six years.

I find all of Balogh's books have a somewhat awkward setup. It's like those chess puzzles in the newspaper where the pieces have been put in odd positions and the reader is supposed to put the black king in check mate in so many moves. It doesn't really matter how we got to that point, or if such a starting position is realistic or not. Just accept it and move on. That's how the author's plots are constructed--usually starting in a rather odd place that doesn't feel exactly organic, but that works its way through in a realistic way after that to a satisfying conclusion. The sudden emergence of love or revelation of love between young Devlin and even younger Gwyneth, occurring on the same day that he sabotages his future by acting in the most astonishing, foolish way, getting himself kicked out of the house and disappearing for six years, is a bit awkward. But the rest of the story, IMO, makes up for it, progressing in a much more believable way.

And all her stories (that I've read) are kinda similar. I think she dreams up the setup and has to work backwards to explain how they got there, then go forwards again. This is my theory. Ahem.

Anyway, the rest of the book works well, leading the protagonists towards each other once again in a slow, choppy, seemingly-hopeless but ultimately inevitable way. What I like is how so much of the story is taken up with all the other relationships that need repair, like that between Devlin and his younger sisters, his brothers, his friends, and between him and the community. Nothing is simple, but there is growth and forgiveness and healing in all of these areas that makes good sense. The fact that some of the repairs are not absolutely completed by the end of the book but are hinted at works well enough, and that includes Devlin's somewhat muted emotions. It's a curious deviation from genre norms, I think, a bending of the rules even, but nothing broken.

I was sad that his sister Pippa still seems broken by the events early in the book and isn't exactly herself by the end, but I think that may be resolved, as I said, in the sequels. And his half-brother is still not quite there. Same answer, I guess.

Anyway, I liked it. It's supposedly the first in the series, though I don't think they have to be read in order.

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Where McWhorter Steps in a Controversy

Word on the Street: Debunking the Myth of "Pure" Standard English by John McWhorter
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I've read books by John McWhorter that are more entertaining than this one, which is still pretty entertaining, but it's excellent information well-presented and worth a read.

The main idea behind the book, or the unifying principle, is language change--how and why it happens--and how to categorize, compare, and evaluate the resulting variants. Most of the beginning section is dedicated to giving a framework for understanding what we mean by an accent, a pidgin, a creole, and other terms describing a language undergoing change. Useful.

I liked the bit about Shakespeare and his refreshing personal opinion about how his plays should be studied in the present. Maybe I like it because I agree with it. Having taught both English as a second language and mainstream high school literature, my opinion is that there is very little utility in teaching Shakespeare in the original. Beyond giving students cultural knowledge and the sense of accomplishment of going through a whole play, which are probably good enough reasons to justify doing one Shakespeare play at some point, there is very little learned by struggling to make sense of language that even educated adults only half comprehend.

(I have read all of Shakespeare's plays in the original, and I have enjoyed the process, but even now I find the very best way to read a play, even one I know pretty well, is to read a portion in modern English, as in "No-Fear Shakespeare," and then read the corresponding section in the original, back and forth. I'm far from a Shakespeare scholar, but compared to every other adult in my life I might as well be. And compared to 15-year-old students, I'm a master of Shakespeare. And it's still hard.)

The point is that while Shakespeare is still recognizably English, easier to understand than, say, Chaucer, and much nearer our own language than the Anglo-Saxon of a thousand years ago, it is very different from modern English and is only diverging more and more over time. English from the year 1600 is not a foreign language, but maybe halfway? (My words, not his.) And our modern English is just as beautiful as Elizabethan English. We're not speaking a debased version or anything. No reason to genuflect to Shakespeare's version of the language.

The main discussion here is about Black English, and it's a difficult conversation, even for the author, who is himself Black. His thinking emerged from the situation in the 90s when "ebonics" was being discussed. I remember the controversy pretty well, because I was teaching ESL at that time and the idea was that Black English should be considered a different language so that the schools could use additional resources to better transition them to standard English. And the point of that was to improve overall achievement, helping them succeed in all of their classes. I supported their goals at the time, but I wasn't well enough informed in the matter to have a strong opinion about whether it would work or not.

There were several responses to this movement. One was to mock it, and with it Black English. McWhorter does an excellent job of responding to this, as it is the central idea of the book still--showing how language changes over time and under certain conditions, producing different varieties within a language and even new languages. He gives Black English the respect that detractors will not, showing how it is systematic, following rules in pronunciation and sentence formation that are as regular as any other language variety, and just as flexible and expressive as any other form of language. (He gives many examples from around the world of similar bundles of varieties, such as forms of German and types of Finnish, that have survived alongside the standard form, which is, after all, just one among many.)

However, he also shows that the evidence doesn't support treating Black English like a second language, disputing some of the claims made by ebonics supporters about how different it is. This put him on the outs with many black scholars, but I found his arguments persuasive. Teaching teachers that Black English is not substandard or something to be despised is useful, elevating the prestige of the home language to the place it should be, helping students avoid the stigma to often placed on such varieties, which does great harm to those students and those communities. But mainstreaming instruction in standard English appears to be the most efficient way to achieve proficiency in that variety, based on studies in many countries, and I am inclined too agree at this point.

In any case, it's an interesting debate, and I feel like he treats all aspects of it with respect and integrity.

I recommend the book for those interested in the topic or in language in general, especially if you enjoy his distinctive style and voice, which I do.

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Where Cool Stuff Happened Real Slow

Sorcerer's Moon by Julian May
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This series wore me out, but I win. Finished. At f'ing last.

I love Julian May. The Saga of the Pliocene Exile is so cool--a long-time favorite. (I loaned the books to a friend and never saw them again....) And I loved the idea of this series so much--more than I loved the actual books, by a lot.

The first one I gave a 5, but I think that was mostly hopeful. It was good, but it cost so much energy to read that I didn't start the sequel for two years. That one was even harder to get through, and though I gave it a 4 back at the start of Covid, that was still more sentimental than real. I wanted to finish the trilogy, but it took me more than five years to work up the strength to pull out the last book and start reading. And even then it took me months, a small piece at a time, reading some every third or fourth or fifth day. Maybe skipping a week or two here and there.

It's not that there isn't some good stuff there, especially near the end. But the overall pacing was brutal. So dull. So little of note happening. There is a great deal of amazing creativity in the series, with cool magic and wild monsters and many excellent characters, but none of it (IMO) is used well. It goes from a setting-the-scene crawl in book one (I forgave the pacing) to a bridging-the-middle crawl in book two (wore me out) to a just nothing-is-happening-that-anyone-cares-about crawl in book three. You know, up until about 460 or 470 pages in, when stuff started to happen.

Many of the characters become a muddle, impossible to remember or tell apart or know what they're trying to accomplish. There are several kingdoms, all with factions and parties, and they're all scheming and meeting and trudging from here to there to do more scheming, and I gave up caring who was who or which side they were on. Halfway through book three, I was still trying to figure out what the author meant for the main conflict to be. Ultimately, it's the human fight against the huge amphibious Salka, but that is buried under so much chit chat and pointless maneuvering that I thought it was just the fight for the throne. Or maybe the weird battle going on between supernatural creatures in the sky.

I should have DNF'ed. My long love for the author made me stick it out, but the dreadful pace and strange resolution in the last 20 pages left me with little to say that's positive. The overall score of 3 for this book is for imagination and creativity and old time's sake. Otherwise--it was a 2. I couldn't do that to the author, though.

Not really recommended. Read her much better book The Many Colored Land and its sequels. Those I highly recommend.

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