Trying to Finish What I Started
While technically my NaBloPoMo quota was fulfilled yesterday, that was a timestamp technicality and I wanted to get at least one honest Wednesday post in. [Edit: Dammit. Missed it. I do the GMT timestamp kludge thing to show up properly in the DC Blogs Live feed. Oh well -- at least the Blogger FTP upload problems seem to be resolved.]
I couldn't get to sleep last night -- I blame a late day large coffee -- so I did some more reading. I started and finished Edenborn, the second book in a sci-fi trilogy by Nick Sagan.
To be honest, I wasn't really a big fan of the first one (Idlewild) -- books that start out using amnesia as a primary plot driver get hit with penalty points -- but I read it and it was okay, so I figured I might as well finish the trilogy.
At this point it's kind of like Kid Nation (I assume, never watched it), only the kids are all genetically engineered geniuses and everyone else on Earth is dead.
His depictions of the thoughts of the batshit crazy are also unsettling, although well done.
I finished it in a few hours, then I started in on an impulse borrow from the New Fiction section -- One Day on Mars, by Travis Taylor. I borrowed it on the strength of the breathless back cover blurbs, which pitched it as a Heinlein-esque hard science/military SF thrill ride, etc. etc.
I made it two chapters in -- 28 pages -- and honestly, I don't think I can finish it. Military/hard science is my preferred genre, but the writing is just awful. The dialogue is crushingly bad, and I lost count of the sci-fi cliches in just the first 10% of the book.
Look, I know I personally can't do dialogue or characters -- that's why I would be an essayist, if I could. But I don't know if I can even find it in me to skip ahead to the space and mecha battles. It's just bad.
I rarely abandon books (I may not start them for... years, but I don't abandon them), so this is pretty significant for me.
I couldn't get to sleep last night -- I blame a late day large coffee -- so I did some more reading. I started and finished Edenborn, the second book in a sci-fi trilogy by Nick Sagan.
To be honest, I wasn't really a big fan of the first one (Idlewild) -- books that start out using amnesia as a primary plot driver get hit with penalty points -- but I read it and it was okay, so I figured I might as well finish the trilogy.
At this point it's kind of like Kid Nation (I assume, never watched it), only the kids are all genetically engineered geniuses and everyone else on Earth is dead.
His depictions of the thoughts of the batshit crazy are also unsettling, although well done.
I finished it in a few hours, then I started in on an impulse borrow from the New Fiction section -- One Day on Mars, by Travis Taylor. I borrowed it on the strength of the breathless back cover blurbs, which pitched it as a Heinlein-esque hard science/military SF thrill ride, etc. etc.
I made it two chapters in -- 28 pages -- and honestly, I don't think I can finish it. Military/hard science is my preferred genre, but the writing is just awful. The dialogue is crushingly bad, and I lost count of the sci-fi cliches in just the first 10% of the book.
Look, I know I personally can't do dialogue or characters -- that's why I would be an essayist, if I could. But I don't know if I can even find it in me to skip ahead to the space and mecha battles. It's just bad.
I rarely abandon books (I may not start them for... years, but I don't abandon them), so this is pretty significant for me.
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posted by Joelogon at
11/07/2007
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