Title: The Windup Girl Author: Paolo Baciqalupi Genre: Sci-Fi Read: Jan 5-9, 2011 Summary: Interesting Science, mediocre Fiction. This novel won the 2009 Nebula and tied for the 2010 Hugo. It’s set in an approximately 100-200 years-from-now dystopian future Bangkok ravaged by…
In my pursuit to optimize the blog I’ve created yet more pages: Food Index Fiction Index On Writing Complete Archives Blog navigation is funny because the default themes make it difficult to to lure people into old posts. Given that…
Great read. Reminds me of books I read 30 years ago. It starts off with a bang — given that the first chapter features a naked seventeen year-old girl!
This is a very likable teen romance about an Idaho girl’s first real relationship and of course… how she lost her virginity. It’s sort of like Judy Blume’s Forever, but updated and minus the good sex.
I stumbled upon this independent and self published author who is selling very well (mostly on Amazon) with no prior print history. This is a fun book. But it’s an Indy book. It’s professional, but it’s also the novel equivalent of a B movie. Written quickly, revised quickly, and sold cheaply. The author has enough talent to shoot higher.
Interesting how a good TV writing team can really spruce something up. The book is good — particularly the voice — but the show is amazing.
The Spirit Thief straddles a fairly unique line between totally straight up 80s fantasy and comedic fantasy the likes of River of Dancing Gods or Myth Conceptions. It’s not however as totally comic as those, and somehow seems a bit smaller and lighter (if that’s possible).
Hmmm. The voice is engaging, and it’s certainly easy to read. The idea is great. The characters fine, not good but fine. The writing is stiff, and the plotting… oh the plotting is pretty awful. I really don’t understand why it sold so well.
A bit of a silly high concept dystopian future, where at 16 teenagers get an operation that promotes them from “uglies” (normal people) to super improved “pretties.” However, the voice is solid and captivating and the action well written.
Retarded title aside, this is a pretty good film. Caveats, however, abound. If you haven’t seen all the previous installments or read the books — forget making sense of it. But then again, who hasn’t?
Superficially this book might seem very Hogwarts, a young girl’s parents die suddenly, and then she is bundled by her mysterious grandfather off to a creepy gothic prep school in Maine. But it’s anything but derivative.
This is the sequel to Old Man’s War and The Ghost Brigades. It’s just as easy to read and picks up with the same two main protagonists. John Perry narrates in first person as he did in the first novel.
One wouldn’t have thought it would be possible to capture this novel on film but they did. The same unrelenting hopelessness. Grim everythingness. The terrifying fear of been eaten by cannibals or stepping on a rusty nail and dying of gangrene in a dank muddy ditch. Yep, it’s all there.
I read the book long before the movie came out. There was a lot of buzz about it already and generally, things that are really popular have a kernel of quality about them, and I love vampires and teen heroines. Hmmm. I remain somewhat mystified…
This book lurks in an ill-defined cross-genre like my own novel: Supernatural thriller with realistic style and magic. In fact, in this book it’s not even 100% clear that the magic is intended to have actually happened — but I like to think it did.
This is a vaguely Harry Potter-ish tale of a fifteen-year-old witch who ends up in magical reform school. It was surprisingly decent. Not great, not super innovative, but the first person voice was very enjoyable.
Since I enjoyed Old Man’s War so much I jumped right in and pounded this out. I might have liked it even better. The characters are a tad less likable than the first book, but there is more plot, and more aliens — remember I like aliens.
I don’t read too many Thrillers without a Horror/Sci-fi/Fantasy/Supernatural element, but this is a roller coaster ride I can only describe as Fletch meets James Bond meets The Big Sleep.
This throwback Science Fiction “classic” borrows heavily from classics like Starship Troopers and Forever War, but who cares. It’s great.