#23-25: The Jump 225 Trilogy (Infoquake, MultiReal and Geosynchron; David Louis Edelman)
This series starts off as a business adventure tale — a young software star rising to the top via dirty tricks! — and then kind of moves sideways into a political thriller — our young entrepreneur stumbles into something he doesn’t really understand and gets caught up in big, weighty affairs!
Unfortunately, then it stumbles. The ideas are still fascinating, but it loses the fun and energy of the first novel to never really find a replacement. Things become quite muddled; too much time is spent with characters it is hard to care about. The big action set-piece at the end of the whole thing is told from the viewpoint of characters we’ve never even met.
The trilogy is named after a throw-away dream sequence in the first book, never really returned to or explored, only referenced sideways with no recognition on anyone’s part. I really had a lot of fun with that first book, and wish I wasn’t so disappointed with where it all wound up. I actually felt a little bit, at the end, like I’d wasted my time.
An It Got Away interlude: Kraken (China Mieville)
I really like China Mieville, I do. But much like King Rat, I just couldn’t find anything to hang on to in this book. Nothing hooked me at all, and I found myself returning to it unable to really remember what had been going on. Plus, the whole “know-nothing chased by two evil supernatural hunters” thing had already been done, much more engagingly, by Neil Gaiman. I hate to give up on a book, but the Eight Deadly Words were clearly in effect.
#26: The Cellar (Richard Laymon)
(Dammit, Ray, this one is all your fault. Why’d you have to do it?) I randomly bought three Laymon novels at Half-Price Books, and wanted popcorn after failing with Kraken. Laymon is popcorn, if predictable and slightly-rancid popcorn. Nothing much of note about this one. Interesting to see the twist endings already firmly in place in his first published novel. Kinda dissapointed nobody got called a woos.
I resisted moving on to The Beast House, the next book in this almost-series, although it’s still riding around in the back of my car…
#27: The Fuller Memorandum (Charles Stross)
Another Laundry novel. While that’s perfectly descriptive, the book probably deserves more than that. Just like the others, it is a highly-enjoyable cross of James Bond, H. P. Lovecraft and The Office. Engaging and well-written enough to let me ignore it’s faults (it succumbs to both beat-the-crap-out-of-the-protagonist-itis and same-plot-syndrome), and I ended actively looking forward to the next one. It’s between this and the Dresden Files books for my favorite urban fantasy series. (Sorry, Charlie, if you’re unhappy with that tag, but I calls ‘em like I see ‘em.)
#28: The Little Stranger (Sarah Waters)
Yet another book recommended in a post on tor.com. A good read, an almost ghost story set in the period just after World War II. A little predictable, maybe, but a fun trip to get there.
#29: Pandemonium (Daryl Gregory)
An alternate universe, where demonic possession becomes commonplace in the late 50s. In current times, psychologists have identified over 100 disorders, or strains of demon; The Truth, the Kamikaze, the Hellion, Smokestack Johnny, the Little Angel. Del was possessed as a child, and has a growing suspicion that his demon may still be hanging around…
An imaginative novel, at its best when dropping little details about how the demons have changed our world, at its worst when giving big broad hints about things it doesn’t want to come right out and say. The ending comes out of left field and explains not much of anything, but as an idea book, it’s fascinating.
(Seven books in one post. Longest article I’ve written here in years.)