Whatta Fiasco

I seem to have passed a minor threshhold this weekend. I checked out an audio book written by an author I’ve never read (Robin Cook) in a genre that isn’t my usual thing (medical thriller). Instead I picked it up solely based upon the reader. The reader really can make all the difference.

While driving home from the library, I idly mused on what legal technicalities might be involved in hiring someone to record themselves reading books for you. There are all sorts of books I’d enjoy listening to while commuting to work that aren’t available as audiobooks. And then I realized that if I had enough money that I could spend it hiring someone the caliber of George Guidall to read for me, then I probably wouldn’t need to commute to work and thus wouldn’t have need of the audiobooks. The world is not fair.

Sorry to say, this is not my favorite neal Asher novel. This one feels broken in a couple of ways. The plot has some major holes not hidden by massive explosions and the characters tend toward cardboard and cliche. There are some potentially interesting characters here, but we’re too busy blowing stuff up to get a good look at them. Focus. This books needs more focus on several levels. Less fizzle. More pop.

Ah well, I hear rumor of a new one coming out later this year. He hasn’t lost me yet.

I was both delighted and slightly aghast to find this volume in my local library. I snatched it up before anyone else saw it and devoured it in short order. What an utterly gorgeous story and print edition. The larger format makes it a little awkward to hold on your lap for reading, but it also shows off the artwork tremendously. Big, beautiful, dark. I want more. And I want my own copy.

ETA: This also marks a new entry into the list of literature that has invaded my dreams. It joins Cities of the Red Night, by William S. Burroughs.

Charming. Utterly charming, with enough gore and consequences to keep it far and away from treacle. Add multiple instances of laugh out loud funny and you’ve got a light but satisfying entertainment. Very well done. I had a moment of doubt when I tought I had figured out a central mystery in the plot much too soon, but that was intentional and well handled. I can’t wait to find out what Jig the Goblin gets up to next.

If you took my advice and tracked down a copy of his more recent Blindsight, this book will feel familiar to you. Once again (or rather, once before) we have a flawed group of people isolated in life-threatening circumstances. This time we have a collection of psychologically broken people living deep in the ocean by Juan de Fuca. In the process of adapting to their circumstances, they discover an extrasensory method of communication, and some of them go native. In the meantime, a decision by society above to place greater and greater reliance on artificial intelligences has brought things to a breaking point.

My biggest complaint about this book is that it is so very much like Blindsight. The good news is that I find the latter a better written book, even while this one is enjoyable. If you’re looking for hard sf populated by psychopaths, this is definately a source. Now I just need to get the rest of this set and see where he takes it.

This weekend was the Icicle fencing tournament in Lincoln, Nebraska. It’s one of the better run and higher quality local tournaments and it’s one I always look forward to. This year there were 41 people registered for mixed epee, including 6 As. And then a front was scheduled to come through Saturday evening and dump buckets of snow all over everything. Four of us piled into my car immediately after Saturday morning’s practice and headed out. We pulled into the hotel parking lot just before five without seeing any snow falling from the sky. That didn’t start until about half an hour later.

We were going to order pizza for dinner, but the delivery time was running up to two hours. Ugh. So we braved the weather and found a stand-alone food court just two blocks down the road from the hotel. Hungry crankiness averted. Much silliness ensued. All returned safely back to the hotel to finish lastminute weapons repair.

In the morning I had to dig the car out of the snow with an icescraper, and the lanes on the highway were entirely fictional, but we made it to the venue without incident. And then discovered that our field of 41 had been whittled down by the weather to a field of 24. But almost all the A and B rated fencers showed, so the quality of the tournament was still high and us poor suckers at the bottom of the food chain were going to have a rough day of it.

In the end, two of our seven epeeists finished in the top eight, and another finished tenth, moving from a U rating to a D. And there was much rejoicing. Personally, I had a very good day of fencing. I won two of my six pool bouts, and a 5-3 loss to the A in pool was the best result I’ve ever had against him. I’d had a lousy practice on Friday, ith very little point control. But you can’t complain too much about point control hen you get hand touches against an A. My DE was against a tall fencer closer to my age and it was a fun bout for both of us. It was 6-5, my favor, at the end of the first period. Then it was 14-11 at the end of the second period, his favor. I ran the time out at the end of that period, hoping to get him feeling over-eager to finish things off in the last period. I did manage to get one more touch on him before he finished things off. I ended the event tied for 20th place and very happy with my fencing. That was the best fencing I’ve had since Summer Nationals.

The women’s event was another story entirely. First, there were only five of us in the event. Second, three of us were from my club. Third, I just couldn’t get in the mind set to take it seriously. The end result was that I blew every bout. The only good fencing I did in the women’s event was against the left-hander who ended up taking first in the event. We had an extremely athletic bout that was very much about absence of steel. It’s not normally my game of choice, but it was a lot of fun and went to 4-4 before she got the last touch. I finished fifth out of five, but that reflected my performance in the event, so I wasn’t upset.

All in all, it was a very good tournament. We had a lot of fun both on and off the strip and maanged to avoid the worst of the weather. Next up: the Jayhawk Open in February.

The animals talk and people die, with a heavy overtone of romance. Other than the animal voices, it feels like pretty standard mystery fare. Mind you, the animal voices are well done, but it does get a bit treacly at times. Still, a pleasant bit of commute time listening.

Moreof the usual, but nowthere are two siamese cats to accompany Jim Qwilleran. It’s a little annoying to find that he’s inherited enough money to make plot points all too easy, but there’s plenty of the annoying repetition more suited to a book much longer than this one. But the entertainment value is decent.

The Cat Who Moved a Mountain (Cat Who… (Audio))

This one had been on my to read list for some time. I was very happy to find a copy in the local library and it was great fun. How could you not like a demonic badger teapot as a sidekick?

Deeply creepy and a sensory ride. A young Parisian follows his preternatural nose to the grisly end of making an ultimate perfume. Beautiful with something corrupt underneath, much like a fine perfume. With a bonus of Alan Rickman.

[imdb]