Yendi – Steven Brust
209 pages, published in 1984
Entertaining if slight fantasy adventure, Vlad Taltos is a smartass. Recommended if you like first person smartass narration.
Zodiac – Neal Stephenson
308 pages, published in 1988
Why do I think of Stephenson of a science fiction writer when most of his novels, like this, are not science fiction? Zodiac is an ecological technothriller, starring a typical Stephenson protagonist, somewhat geeky, bit of a badass when cornered, not the brightest when it comes to women. Doesn’t feel dated at all though written in 1988. Recommended to anyone if only to show y’all he could write a complete novel in less than 500 pages, with an ending.
Damnation Alley – Roger Zelazny
157 pages, published in 1969
Some time after World War III, “Hell” Tanner is the last remaining Hell’s Angel in California and is drafted to deliver anti-Plague serum to Boston –straight through the most hellish, radioactive densely
populated with mutated monsters barren wasteland most of North America has become. Zelazny goes pulp. I have it on good authority that one should avoid the film that was made of this, but read the book. Later also turned into a Judge Dredd storyline…
Bones of the Earth – Michael Swanwick
383 pages, published in 2002
Couldn’t get into Swanwick’s early novels, but this combined two of my great interests, timetravel and dinosaurs, so I thought I’d give it a try. Glad I did. Best novel of the bunch I’ve reviewed here. Sometime in the 21st century, timetravel is invented, nobody quite knows when, and from 2010 on to about 2100 paleontologists are recruited, first in secret, later openly when the secret breaks, to go back to the Ages of Dinosaurs and study them. Swanwick clearly loves his dinosaurs as he
infodumps all these neat facts about them throughout the book. Costarring one of the more original theories for why the dinosaurs largely (apart from the birds!) died out.
Appleseed – John Clute
337 pages, published in 2001
This is either an incredible tour de force or an incredibly pretentious misheap. Possibly both. The story itself is bog standard space opera, but Clute has hidden it under a fecund compressed crust of baroque
vocabulary; never a decent Anglosaxon word where a compound noun borrowed from German will do. I like wordage, I do, but there is something vaguely irritating about Clute’s wordplay.
Recommended if you want your prejudices against critics confirmed.
More complete reviews are or will be published at my Booklog
