The Rise and Fall of D.O.D.O. by Neal Stephenson , Nicole Galland
This is a
mess of a book. An interesting idea stymied time and time again by
format, long pointless interludes and weird, uncomfortable sexual
undertones, overtones, midtones, deftones, acetones, just all the tones.
I hated this book.
The main characters are criminally dull, you
expect them to grow and change as the book goes on and if anything they
regress. Every other character will remark on the sparking sexual
tension that exists between these characters but absolutely none of this
is apparent. The only real reason you would want to see these two
blocks of wood hook up is to see if the friction between them would
cause a fire.
The wrong Dodo went extinct.
The tone of the book is all over the place,
initially seeming to be a somewhat whimsical adventure and then taking a
rather sharp turn into some genuinely uncomfortable stuff. I don't know
if I've ever read a book that felt more like it was written by two
people, it being so difficult to reconcile the start of the book with
what comes later. It gets caught between wanting to be a carefree time
travelling romp and being a somewhat gritty, hard hitting time travel
story and we just end up with the worst of both possible worlds.
The
book is written in the form of letters, audio logs, reports, online
chats, and at one stage a powerpoint presentation. While this initially
seems like an interesting idea it just doesn't work, if anything it's to
the books detriment. The pretense of "Oh I'm writing down the stuff
that happened" is incredibly flimsy and tends to be forgotten most of
the time. It also lends itself to painful, unending corporate culture
jokes that you think might be funny but slowly sap away your will to
live as you realise there's only one joke and the joke is "Haha, sure is
a lot of bureaucracy in stuff right? Imagine having to use words like
“synergy” and wacky business acronyms about time travel and witches?
Unbelieeeevable!"
By 8 hours in I was done with this book but I
foolishly thought I was too invested to give up on. I wasn't, there was
nothing to invest in. I listened at double speed to finish the book and
that's when the final twist happens. The book, The Rise and Fall of
DODO, doesn't have a real ending and instead seems to be setting up a
series. I foolishly assumed the "Rise and Fall" implied that the book
would be self contained, it would do an arc and wrap up. No. It doesn't.
It barely even ends, it wraps up the one major plot thread from the
book in a really underwhelming offhand manner, and then essentially
tells us we'll have to wait for another book to find out what happens.
Yeah, I’ll pass thanks.
The narration is fine, some of the
accents were annoying but that may be personal. There were maybe 3 or 4
good parts in the book that I enjoyed before they had whatever joy and
life they contained completely stomped out of them. It's a book that's
too long, too tedious and one that seems to forget books have plots and
goals for a vast section of the book. The history may be accurate or
enjoyable to others but I have no idea, I don't know enough about the
periods visited to get any sort of enjoyment or thrill out of it. I'd
like to say there's some potential in the book but it's like a needle in
a haystack, you could dedicate hours to finding it amid the mass of
pointless, bloated, unfunny hay or maybe you could just go get a
different needle. Get five. Needles are everywhere. Don’t waste your
time.
The premise of The Rise and Fall of DODO is that magic was
slowly drained from the world until it is eventually snuffed out.
Replace "magic" with "joy" and you have a pretty accurate representation
of what reading The Rise and Fall of DODO feels like.
The Collapsing Empire by John Scalzi
This is a spoiler free review of the Audible Audiobook version of The Collapsing Empire by John Scalzi
The only context I could consider this to be a good book is if it's some kind of clever allegory. If the story itself is meant to mirror the universe it describes then it makes perfect sense that it's a small number of interesting things separated by vast, intractable distances of pure nothingness.
The cover art for The Collapsing Empire is pretty misleading. It doesn't bother me that this scene doesn't happen in the book, it bothers me because this picture not representative of the book as it has been drawn in such a way to create the illusion of depth.
The book feels like a prologue that has been stretched out to make an entire book. The premise of the book, all the significant players and the end goal are all set out at the start of the book and these are pretty much set in concrete. That's perhaps the weirdest part of the book because the story could have been greatly improved by keeping some information back from the reader and then revealing it at critical points but instead of this we know all the key points at the start of the book. There's nothing new introduced and there's no exciting twist, the only real surprise in the book being just how little actually happens.
The characters are flat and lifeless, with maybe the exception of one major character who I initially disliked but came to like as they appeared to be the person with actual characteristics on the book. I don't know what anyone looks like, I don't know where anywhere in the Interdependecy is like beyond the most superficial level and I feel no connection to anything in this book. I really didn't like the politics in this book as conversations with political maneuvering in it essentially boil down to "But if you do that then I'll do that which will make you do that but I will in turn will do that" and it's not hard to seem like a canny political genius when seem to know the impact of anything anyone may ever think about doing.
The dialogue isn't terrible and if it were in service to a book where things of note actually happened then I might have liked it. While I initially had misgivings about Will Wheaton he does a very good job of narrating and I'd happily listen to another book he narrated. Apart from that there's not much positive I can say about the Collapsing Empire, the writing is competent but saying that is like saying "Man, someone did a good jobs making these sandpaper socks!"
When will they kiss - Eternity's Mind by Kevin J Anderson
I don't want to start this by saying that Kevin J Anderson is a bad author because once I say that the camera will slowly pull back to reveal 10 of his 600+ page books neatly arranged in a line behind me.
Regretfully none of those books will have this cover as I have never bought the Saga of the Seven Suns graphic novel prequel and thus I am ill equipped to recount the tale of Windswept Hydrogen Forehead, Purple Space Wizard King and Perfectly Normal Woman with a Headband and their struggle against White Lightning Sun and the Clatter Moth.
However, I also don't want to say it because I think Kevin J Anderson is probably a pretty good author, he seems to publish regularly and despite everything I’m going to complain about there is something oddly compelling about his books. Sometimes a story is described as having been “weaved”, many disparate threads having been brought together to create something unique and beautiful, and I think that could be said of the works of Kevin J Anderson. Well, it can be said if you assume the existence of some kind of terrifying steam loom that has killed artistry and craftsmanship and it’s just blindly following some predetermined pattern that if you attempt to influence you’ll end up getting your hand cut off and then foreman will just chastise you for interfering before putting you back to work in the exact same spot you were previously except now you're missing a hand.
I recently finished Eternity’s Mind the final book in the Saga of Shadows Trilogy and I can confidently say that if you told me it was the midpoint of the series I would have had no trouble believing that. This is not because it does a lot of setup sequels, though I suppose you could argue the several seemingly pointless plotlines that had no resolutions may in fact be setting the scene for new books in Kevin J Anderson Saga of the Thing universe, but because the story didn’t really build to any sort of satisfying conclusion and then suddenly the major plots just seemed to resolve themselves because the book was running out of pages so it was decided to knock over the series of dominoes that had been set up over the course of three books.
Now, just to clarify, that last point seems like it’d be good right? Building stuff up over a long period of time and then pulling that all together at the end in a satisfying manner. Except many of those plotlines literally had no reason to exist across three books, they just did. They just existed, we checked in on them occasionally and they wasted our time. They had no reason to exist until they resolved the book, they just existed. Before I give some examples let me give you a spoiler warning.
The spoiler is none of the stuff I am about to list really matters much to the story.
The Big Ring Project - Celebrated scientist Koto Okiah is building a giant experiment that’s basically the Large Hadron Collider but if it were in space and people went to much less effort to try and explain why anyone would ever build it (Exotic particles?). Anyways, this blows up and creates a rip in space that’s used in the end of the book to sneak attack the bad guys. It blows up at the end of the second book, up until that point it’s just “Man, I hope this doesn’t blow up.” and then when it does blow up “Man, I wonder where that gash in space leads?”. Also, just in case you thought this may be important at some later book or something the hole in the universe is closed so stop thinking about it.
Super Disease - Zoe Elakis has a secret disease research compound on a planet. They figure out diseases, cure them and then horde all the cures. In Book Three the main bad guys attack and try to steal the diseases, it doesn’t work. Zoe gets infected, her final chapter is her going “After I die share my research”. This is not a gradual change in character, this change occurs in the previous chapter and doesn’t really make sense.
Big Trees - Two giant world trees, part of a great interconnected Verdani plant mind, are growing in a greenhouse in Fireheart station. They’ve too big now. They’re gonna break the glass dome and die. After three books we get some magic water to make them into spaceships and then they straight up leave and don’t play a part in the final battle.
Space Greed is Space Good - The best business man keeps having people die but it’s not his fault (It’s his fault). Also his number 1 employee is a lunatic who killed some folks because she believed business man implied that would be a neat thing to do. At one stage the murder employee is banished and we get a utterly perplexing series of chapters where she flies around space and tries to get jobs and is constantly met with people saying “We all know you killed those people” because she is a wanted criminal who introduces herself by her real name to people who already know her and what she'd done. This plot doesn’t really resolve and I don’t know why it was there.
THE MIND OF ETERNITY - The titular mind is a great consciousness that… I don’t know. It does some occasional stuff, like fighting the bad guys once or twice, but generally does nothing and I have no idea why it’s there.
The Prince is Nearly Dead - Prince Reynad has a mysterious illness and is dying. For three books. That’s it. They cure him in the final chapters. Also, he’s constantly accompanied by the Osirah who is the daughter of the leader of the Illdirans, another sentient alien race, and she doesn’t do much in the book at all and just hangs around with the Prince. She was important in the last book series but in this trilogy I’d say she was relegated to playing second fiddle but the prince was at best playing 12th fiddle and I don’t know enough about fiddle hierarchy to place her (I mean it could be 13th but I’m worried it’d be 12 to the power of 12 or something)
Earth - It gets destroyed. No one really cares and despite it being a big deal it’s never a big deal and no one seems to care all that much. There is oddly little consequence to the home planet of humans being totally destroyed. There is a wonderful exchange at the end of the book where a massively sidelined unimportant character meets his girlfriend's family and after speaking for a while they’re like“Oh didn’t you family die on earth?” and he responds by saying oh no, they moved and everyone just is just relieved and moves on.
There are more, there are so much more, but this isn’t really about the mechanical and pointless nature of the Saga of Shadows and more about how for the last book I was just waiting for two dudes to kiss.
Xander Brindle and Terry Handon are pilots. They pilot about for Rlinda Kett, a character who constantly talks about the fact she has the ashes of her ex-husband who died between book series in a little silver capsule she has on her at all times, and they’re best friends. Terry has a condition with his nervous system that means he’s unable to use his legs and he’s accepted this and can move around zero gravity alright. Essentially their plot is they fly around a lot and then in book two Terry is left a massive fortune by his adoptive mother and the third book is he and Xander trying to decide what to spend it on, a decision being made while the earth is being destroyed and the whole universe is in peril. They decide to build a new space station and with that decision main the plot switches to focus on Xander trying to find a cure for Terry. He does this in secret because he wants it to be a nice surprise and it’s pretty much all these characters do for the rest of the book and they’re not even tangentially involved in defeating the major threat of the book.
Anyway, the book is very prone to explaining that every man and woman in regular contact are romantically involved. Like almost without fail, everyone hooks up because the original architect of the Steam Loom's infernal pattern decided that was a satisfying character arc. This is a problem for character who hooked up in the last book series as they pretty much become joined at the hip and become one character but also a problem in general as characters who hook up stop developing as characters and stall out entirely. Still, it’s a definite theme and it’s better than nothing so I patiently waited for Xander and Terry to kiss.
They don’t kiss.
There is even a scene where they’re supposed to kiss. Xander eventually tells Terry he found a procedure that would allow him use his legs and Terry doesn’t want to do it because of side effects. Terry says he’s happy with how he is and doesn’t want to risk it… but… does his condition bother Xander? Xander says no, no, of course not. I just want you to be happy and then…
They warmly embrace.
Best friends! Nothing romantic here, ha ha. I’d say if one of these characters had been a woman they would have kiss at this point but to be honest they’d already have hooked up by book one so there’d have been no opportunity. It’s so peculiar as I felt this was what their entire plot was about. Instead they’re best friend who over time realse that they are in fact bester friends.The bestest best friends. Had they just shook hands at the climactic scene it probably wouldn’t have surprised me because this book is insistent in taking the blandest, most inoffensive and uninteresting routes it can. It was wrong of me to think the pattern could be altered even slightly, I realise that now. Take my hand oh loom of steam, the lesson is well learned.
The Saga of Shadows is a long meandering story that eventually gets to where it was going and yet when you gets there you’ve no idea why it’d even want to be there and it all feels pointless. The book gives you nothing you want, there’s no great triumph or turning point or dudes kissing, and because of that I'm really gonna be disappointed when there’s another Saga series and I buy it and read it.
Very disappointed.
Irish Proverbs
It is not a secret if it's known by three people
May 9th
That seems more like a definition than a proverb. Surely it depends on the quality of the people involved. What if one of the people is dead? Dead man tell no tales. If there was a robot who operated solely on proverbs I think I could cause it to malfunction, like if I get transported into some really bad parody book where that exists I will heavy handedly come out on top.
I like this entry cause it's short.
Irish-American Religion
By the late nineteenth century the Irish had become very prominent in the American Catholic Church's leadership, with 7.3 million Catholics in the United States and the majority of Bishops being of Irish descent. At the end of the twentieth century, Irish-Americans comprised 35 percent of Catholic Priests, although only 17 percent of American Catholics were of Irish descent.
May 8th
Did you know Irish people are super Catholic? It's true! We have twice as many Bishops as anyone else because we are the best at it. Don't be jealous, that's a sin. Not that I am proud of this fact, that is also a sin. Anyways, lets check wikipedia to see just how Catholic Ireland is.
Ireland 83.63% Catholic.
That's pretty good. We are the tenth most Catholic. But what's the most Catholic country? The answer may surprise you!
Vatican City 100% Catholic.
It shouldn't though. Keep an eye on this page the next time a new Pope is picked, if it drops to 99% we'll know a mistake was made.