3.5 stars Altered Carbon is a technically great book that I liked, but didn’t completely click for me in a way that I expected it to. Its premise drew me in, and the stylistic excellence of Richard K. Morgan’s prose lends itself equally well to technobabble, gritty noir dialogue, and surrealism. He’s also created a compelling, hyper-competent lead character in Takeshi Kovacs, who plays up the strong and silent thing to great effect but also employs cutting, dark humor with aplomb. The idea is this: […]
When the movie is made, I hope they get Abbi Jacobsen (Broad City) to star.
Futuristic Violence and Fancy Suits by David Wong
I can’t stress how much I loved this book. In many ways, it serves as a companion to Ready Player One. It follows Zoe Ashe from a life of poverty in a suburban trailer park through a terrifying hunt to an inheritance she didn’t know awaited her. It has the same basic plot as the aforementioned book (which I reviewed earlier in the year), but diverges in a number of distinct ways. For starters, the protagonist here is a woman. I don’t think that’s a […]
This book is the oil; I’m the water. No mixy good together.
Straight up, I did not like this book. It’s not quite worthy of the one star treatment, though, for a couple of reasons. Firstly, because the actual construction of his sentences, the literal writing, is not bad. Second, because the underlying story remains one I think interesting to explore in book form. And third, because I truly believe that one star ratings should be reserved for books that really go beyond the pale in their awfulness, not just slapping that on there because I didn’t happen […]
A scary, political, techno-thrilling ride of a book.
I think I might be too stupid to write this review. Long story short: This book was a hell of a ride. It was slightly problematic as a novel, but damn if it wasn’t powerful anyway. It should probably be required reading. Long story long? Weeeeeellll. That’s when my brain starts to make whirring and booping noises and then I want to put my laptop away and go to sleep. Or eat a milkshake. Either one of those things, really. Marcus Yallow is a seventeen […]
Mindbending
So I finally read Alif the Unseen. Wow — what a genre-bender. So many questions about belief, ideology, loyalty, technology, humanity, and identity are explored across multiple metaphysical planes and in achingly familiar real-world contexts. To back up to a plot summary, which I’ll ape from Goodreads: “In an unnamed Middle Eastern security state, a young Arab-Indian hacker shields his clients—dissidents, outlaws, Islamists, and other watched groups—from surveillance and tries to stay out of trouble. He goes by Alif—the first letter of the Arabic alphabet, and […]
Tell Me, Princess, Now When Did You Last Clean off Your Hard Drive
Alif the Unseen is a mess of a book, but in a good way. There is elements of cyberpunk, graciously borrowed from Neuromancer. There’s revolutionaries straight from today’s news stories. There’s teenager drama that would be right at home at Degrassi High. And underneath all of that is the Quran. Alif is a “grey hat”, which is what H4X0rz (sorry, I’m from the 90s, I had to) are calling themselves now, I guess. Alif’s clients needs to keep their sites of objectionable content up and out […]