Reading in November

A very good, but not great, Culture novel. This was my third Banks book, and I’ll happily admit that I’m quite converted, now. Review here.


I was a bit worried going into this one. I’d heard that it was less focused than Thunderer, less plot driven, and I’d already found Thunderer’s pacing and resolutions to be a problem. I needn’t have worried. Gears of the City is an excellent novel with some of the best prose that I’ve ever read. Review on the way.


The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms set itself up as a traditional fantasy, but soon abandoned that and went off to do something far more interesting. I can’t say that it totally succeeds, but I’m glad that it tried, and the read was generally a good one. Review coming.


Though I have yet to review any of his work on the Rack, Martin is one of my absolute favorite authors. Which is probably obvious considering the amount of time I spend on Westeros, but whatever. I’ve been meaning to go through his short story collections for a while now; this is the first one that I’ve gotten to. The stories that were in Dreamsongs were, for the most part, just as good on reread, and several of the new stories were certainly worth the price of the collection. There was a weaker tale or two, but that’s something to expect in every collection.


To me, Year One was a disappointment. It traded depth for style, and what style it had was generally lost due to the artwork. Review here.


The only thing stopping me from making another comics epiphany post about V for Vendetta is that I’d already Watchmen, so it didn’t hit me quite as hard. Still, Moore is absolutely without peer from what I’ve read of the format. I’ll be writing more on this.


Murakami is one of those authors I’ve had on my list to be read someday for a while now, but the Westeros book club helped give me a kick in the ass. I considered a review, but the discussion that was already done on the book covered most of the points I would’ve, so, if you’ve just read the novel, I’ll direct you there instead. As for my own impressions in brief: Murakami conveyed complex and thought provoking ideas with clear and readable prose. I’ll definitely be reading more of his work.


This was an amusing epistolary novella about power and ideology, but it was stopped from being great by the format. Deprived of the space to circle around the events and give them the context that they deserved, the twists were interesting, but not gut wrenching. An enjoyable read, though I don’t know if it’s worth the thirty plus dollars that you’re likely to find it for.


I enjoyed Devices and Desires, but I wasn’t without my reservations. Evil for Evil takes most of my points of contention and rips them to pieces. I think the most remarkable thing about this trilogy is the almost ridiculous degree of plot motion. Each of the two books so far could easily have been multi volume sagas. Review coming after I finish the final volume, The Escapement.


Honestly, I’m underwhelmed, and I’m not sure if it’s a fault in the book that caused it or just that I’ve read so much more (and more widely) since I read the first eleven volumes straight and loved (almost) every word of it. Yes, this book had a lot of plot motion compared to other Wheel of Time books. But Wheel of Time books aren’t the only standard out there, and, compared to much of what I’ve read lately, the plot was bloated beyond comprehension, the characters so plot shielded that danger can’t get within the same zip code, and the pacing so ugly that clusterfuck barely begins to describe it. I didn’t dislike the book, mind you, but I certainly didn’t love it. I ranted about some of my (spoiler filled) thoughts upon finishing it here; there won’t be a review because, really, I think most people have heard of the Wheel of Time by now and have a decent idea where they stand on it.


Cycles was fast paced, decently clever, and good fun. I’m still not wow by Y, but the series has been very enjoyable so far. And the quasi-review of the first volume is coming soon. Really.

Frank Miller - Batman: Year One

So far in comics, I’ve loved Watchmen and V for Vendetta, have been entertained by Y and Hush, thought the Killing Joke was very good, and have pretty much stuck with established opinion for all the Graphic Novels I’ve read. For Batman: Year One, however, it’s time to break out the dissenting opinions. Batman: Year One isn’t a bad story, but it’s not the titan that I’ve heard it was.

Though this story is supposedly the ultimate Batman origin story, the actual Batman origins portion of Year One is fairly weak. We begin as Wayne is returning from his training afar, when he’s on the point of beginning to clean up Gotham. But there’s no motivation. We don’t see Wayne’s parents killed, and we don’t see the resentment he’s built up over the years. Now, everyone obviously knows the basics and details of the origin story, but, without it being featured here, there’s no emotional core to the book. Batman’s here, and he’s pissed. There you go, that’s your character. Take it or leave it.

As for Batman’s martial skills, Miller creates a bizarre contrast between the realistic and the ridiculous. In the opening scenes, Batman kicks down trees. Later, he smashes a stone column. And yet, in his fight scenes, Batman is often in over his head and gets the shit beaten out of him at times. It’s totally fine to have an ungodlike Batman, and it’s (I guess) fine to have a stone smashing one, but, when they’re the same person, it’s just bewildering.

Unfortunately, Batman is a paragon of characterization when compared to Selina, catwoman. Selina is a whore who decides to leave her occupation and become Catwoman. Right there, you have the whole arc. There is simply no depth or motivation to the character at all. Worse, there’s no closure and no point to her existence. Alright, this is an origin story, so I suppose I should have expected some set up and all, but she quite literally affects the main plot in no way.

The best developed character – and, thankfully, the one Miller spends the most time on – is Jim Gordon. Gordon is the one straight cop in a city of criminals and crooked cop, and, to make matters worse, he’s held down by his wife’s pregnancy and his slowly developing affair with another officer. Gordon’s moral dilemma, and the odds stacked against him, draw the reader in more than Wayne’s bound-to-succeed struggles.

Still, there are some weaknesses here, too. The affair felt like it was taking us into interesting places, but when Gordon confesses the whole thing to his wife, we’re not even shown the following conversation. The overall plot, too, is both familiar and predictable, remarkable only for it’s over the top nature. Finally, Gordon is a martial arts master that makes Wayne look like a fool in tights. Not that this is necessarily a problem, but it’s just odd that the policeman is always much more confident in his fights than the super hero (not to mention that, as far as I’m aware, Gordon’s kung fu skills never come up again in the mythos).

Despite difficulties with character, Miller can get your blood pounding. The first portions of the book are more concerned with set up and detached stories than a building arc, but, later, things do kick into gear. When Miller brings his threads together, playing Batman off against the police, we are treated to some incredibly tense sequences. The ending, unfortunately, goes back to the model of the early stories, and, while it’s no doubt very traumatic for Gordon, it’s hard to even consider the possibility of a negative result.

A very large part of the story comes through thought. There’s generally nothing wrong with that, though it’s odd when the characters are narrating something incredibly obvious, such as when Gordon informs us he spilled his coffee a panel after he does so. The real annoyance with the style, however, comes when we’re hearing Wayne’s thoughts, which are, for some reason, written in a hard to decipher script.

The artwork has a rough feel that sacrifices detail for mood, or at least tries to. Ironically for something that, in its introduction, claims to be a far darker Batman, the artwork feels cheesy and cartoonish throughout:



This was a pretty negative review, I realize, and I should point out that Batman: Year One isn’t bad. It’s just that I was led to expect Watchmen, or at least The Killing Joke, and I got a basic origins story instead. Perhaps a large part of the appeal to hardcore comics fans is the difference in tone from other Batman works (which I’m just assuming there is from what I’ve heard, because compared to some of the other comics I’ve read – V for Vendetta, say – this was a walk through a sunny meadow). Billed as incredible, this isn’t so much bad as eh.

Graphic Novels

[This is a Breaking New Ground post]

Graphic novels are a bit different from Urban Fantasy in that, if I’ve ever truly looked down upon them, that period ended long ago. Still, for the longest time, they just didn’t seem like something I’d be interested in. Why would I want to read a book where half the imagining was done for me? It almost seemed like a worst-of-both-worlds between books and movies, where the images hamstring your own mental picture, while the lack of motion leaves said images static and unimmersive. Besides which, I just wasn’t sure that there were any stories told in Graphic Novels that I would actually want to read. From my ignorant outsider’s perspective, all I could see was pretty much super heroes. Now, I used to love super heroes – and perhaps I still do, because I think that The Dark Knight was several hours of sheer perfection – but I wasn’t convinced that you could make a convincing book out of a guy who beats people up while wearing tights and a cape.

Then, back in April, I read Watchmen. Well, that was the end of any real prejudice on my part. The story was excellent, and the super hero framework made it quite plain that it would never have succeeded in another form. At the time, I said (in my Reading in April post) that Graphic Novels were: “something I’m going to definitely try and do more of, now.” Months later, I’ve read followed that initial success with…nothing.

So, unlike the Urban Fantasy challenge where I’m trying to go from distaste to some degree of enjoyment or at least a position of knowledge, here I’m just trying to read some fun stuff. But, seeing as this was a challenge, I did decide to jump in at the deep end of my old apprehensions about Graphic Novels. It is, it seems, superhero time.

Now, I originally did the same thing as I did for the other Breaking New Ground post. The problem is, there I actually researched the books. Here, knowing nothing about the field, I figured out what to read by the highly scientific method of emailing someone I’d seen reading a book with pictures in it, specifying that at least some of the five had to involve super heroes. In the end, I decided that writing several hundred variants of she said to read this one. And this one! would get sickeningly old, so just pretend it says that under the pictures if you want.

Anyway, the five lucky novels are:



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Seeing as I doubt I’m going to really hate any of these, I’m not going to bother with the Breaking New Ground posts that are following the Urban Fantasy reviews and just stick to the tried and true schedule of reviews broken up by random musings.

And yes, I’m aware there are seven titles here. Blame the person who picked them.