Friday, May 6, 2011 | By: Natalie

Review - The Terror, Dan Simmons


This book was *freaking amazing* until about the last quarter, where it just fell apart into a big pile of wtf?.

I spent the whole book battling my crush on Captain Crozier (who, in the movie, is played by Justin Louis.) In the end, it's a battle I won, but only because the author took a jagged, incomprehensible knife to his own plot and stabbed it until it was nothing but a quivering heap of rapidly freezing crap.

For the three quarters of the book that made sense, the suspense was utterly gripping. I hated putting this book down every night. The plight of the men on the HMS Terror and HMS Erebus is vivid and heart-rending. The freezing cold they endure a major character for much of the story. The first hint of the creature is terrifying, its first incursions on the crew blood curdling. And you're desperate to know, What the hell is this thing?! And Simmons teases us for a long time, and the teasing is so good. It makes you gasp and gnash your teeth and beg for more. Unfortunately, when the big reveal comes it's so gigantically retarded and contrived that, were it an actual lover, you would have kicked them out of bed and demanded they change the sheets to remove the taint of what had just happened.

It's a supernatural book and I love supernatural stuff. Maybe the relentless realism of the first three quarters of the book did a grave disservice to the last quarter. Maybe had the first three quarters not been so mind numbingly awesome, the last quarter wouldn't have hurt so much. But it that really something you want to wish for? Can't I have such literally (honestly, I felt physically cold despite it being June) amazing, realistic chills mixed in with my equally chilling monsters? Did the story have to completely derail for me to get my monster? Crozier, the ultimate pragmatist and benign racist, went completely off the rails at the end. His shift was so discombobulating, such a 180 from what he had been, so far adrift from where you'd expect him to be at the "end" of his trials, that I spent all the time I was supposed to be awed at the great history of the monster and those that communed with it, being like, wait, what?

I love this book. The unmitigated tragedy of the last 100 pages can't undo the unmitigated fantasticness of the rest of it. Do I wish it had a different/better ending? OMGYESWITHMYWHOLEBODY. Will it stop me from recommending this book to friends? Probably not, but I'll always have to qualify the recommendation. And that makes me sad, not for the qualification itself, but because this book deserves and unqualified recommendation. It also deserves a decent ending.
Monday, May 2, 2011 | By: Natalie

Review - Dust, Elizabeth Bear

Title: Dust
Author: Elizabeth Bear
Publisher: Spectra
ISBN: 9780553904420
Rating: 3 baseball bats
Favorite thing: Lesbian and genderqueer characters
Least favorite thing: I didn't care about the lesbian and genderqueer characters

On the zombie how-to shelf?: Nu-uh

I got about half way through this book before I realized I actually couldn't care less about the characters. I pondered why, because I found the book interesting and it was filled with queerness, which I love in my sci-fi, and the court intrigue was convoluted, as it should be... but as our heroines found themselves in danger I had no sense of urgency. I just felt ho-hum.

So, as I finished the last bit of the book I tried to decipher why I felt like that. I finally decided that the book is not visceral enough for me. Everything, even our experience of the characters' own emotions seem filtered through the intellect. The language was formal as well, which served to distance me from Rien, Perceval and the rest.

I had been thinking that I wouldn't bother with the rest of the series. I read to live a fantasy life and this book just didn't have an emotional pull, so I was going to move on to something else. Then the last 15 pages or so happened. I couldn't even tell you what it was that changed, but I suddenly found myself considering that I might like to know how this turns out. Those last few pages drew me in, felt urgent, and I'd wished there were a few more to read.

So I probably will read the second book in the series. I can only hope that Bear relaxes into her character and her world a little more.