A complex, tangled masterpiece. Really this is probably closer to four stars but I can’t bear to give it less than five. Difficult in theme and subjecA complex, tangled masterpiece. Really this is probably closer to four stars but I can’t bear to give it less than five. Difficult in theme and subject but radiant in language—the writing sings, it wails. Characters are deep and intricate and the world through which they move pushes up against them at every turn, the way the world pushes up against all of us, the way we have to steel ourselves just to be people in this world, like walking in the wind.
Here’s a twenty-point Scrabble word for you: steganography.
I’d give you the dictionary definition but perhaps it’s better to start off with an exampleHere’s a twenty-point Scrabble word for you: steganography.
I’d give you the dictionary definition but perhaps it’s better to start off with an example. Say your friend tells you she’s going to send you a secret message. What you receive isn’t a coded letter or a note written in invisible ink—it’s an email, and it only contains a single attachment: a photo of a landscape. Huh.
You examine it closely, trying to figure out what the message is. It’s just a picture of some trees on a grassy hill against a blue sky, painfully screensaver-esque. You magnify it to see if there are words carved into the bark of the trees, you mess around with image editing to see if there are any symbols of a slightly different green hidden in the grass. Nothing! You’re at a loss. It seems like a normal picture!
But to see the message, you need to go deeper still, down to the colour values of each pixel, and in those minute strands of numbers a pattern begins to form. With a little computer wizardry, you’re able to detect which of the pixels have been modified, what has been added or removed, and from there it’s not hard to figure out your friend’s message by stringing together the modified sequences into letters and words. This is, in essence, steganography.
My analogy is wearing on you, I can tell. The point of this exercise is that, in the above scenario, the message was in front of you all along, just hidden in a seemingly much blander and more boring format. Extraordinarily simple packages can contain massive amounts of data far more interesting than their disguise. And such is the case with The Three-Body Program.
On its face, the premise is simple. The story doesn’t pull many punches. Everything is kind of, well, bland, but that’s because there’s a far more fascinating story unfolding behind the one the synopsis tells you about—this is why NPR called it (accurately) “mind-unfolding.” This book can knock your socks off if you’re willing to look a bit further, peel back the banal interactions of characters and plot and recognise that the really good stuff lurking just behind.
So here’s the thing: as a book, as a story, The Three Body Problem fails on almost every level. The prose is dry. The characters are two-dimensional and all very similar. The dialogue reads like an essay. The plot moves glacially, if at all. Sometimes the scientific segments (which read like textbook excerpts and make up much of the book) are so densely written you wind up with sentences like these, which are far from being even remotely readable:
“The principles governing micro-scale integrated circuits were completely different from those of conventional circuits, as the base material wasn’t made of atoms, but matter from a single proton. The ‘p-n junctions’ of the circuits were formed by twisting the strong nuclear forces locally on the surface of the proton plane, and the conducting lines were made of mesons that could transmit the nuclear force.”
What? I mean... who is that for? Who enjoys that?
And yet! And yet! I loved every minute of it.
Liu Cixin takes an often painfully scientific view of the universe, everything backed by data and laws, but that doesn’t mean there’s no room for adventure. In fact, Liu’s view of the universe, cold though it may seem at first, reveals itself to be a veritable wonderland of sheer possibility. The fact that everything he describes could potentially be real only adds to the excitement. In denying wonder and thrill in the fabric of the story and the characters themselves, Liu shifts the reader’s mind so the excitement comes from the science, the numbers, the scale of it all. The vastness of space is the true setting here; the players, two distant yet all-too-close planets, and their inhabitants, shaped and moulded by their environments. The plot that unfolds doesn’t do so on the individual level—it’s galactic in scale, a march toward contact thousands of years in the making. It’s all so HUGE it’s almost easy to miss, but I really do believe that the story of Three Body lies not in the exploits of Ye Wenjie and Wang Miao and Da Shi and the ETO, but in the quiet, persistent orbit of the planets, in the speed of light, in the burning heat of an alien sun.
You’ve got to have patience with a story this cosmic, but it’s worth it. Trust me....more
A witty, fun, swashbuckling confection of a story that was much better than it had any right to be. I was thiiiis close to giving it five stars based A witty, fun, swashbuckling confection of a story that was much better than it had any right to be. I was thiiiis close to giving it five stars based on enjoyability alone, but I’m not feeling generous enough today. Review coming soon, probably....more
This book feels, for lack of a better word, classic. Not classic as in Frankenstein or Beowulf or To Kill a Mockingbird, but classic as in timelessThis book feels, for lack of a better word, classic. Not classic as in Frankenstein or Beowulf or To Kill a Mockingbird, but classic as in timeless. Now, don't get me wrong, I like innovative literary devices as much as the next girl. I've read short stories from the perspective of feet. Hell, I read The Road (in which there is barely a plot to speak of) and loved it.
But every once in a while I feel the need to shake off all those new bells and whistles and just get back to basics. I want to lie back and have the author tell me a story, one where I can fall headfirst into the world it describes and be completely under the spell of its colourful characters. I want to feel like a child, sitting at the knee of a loved one, listening to wild fancies and wondrous tales. I want my stories vast and I want them sprawling- I want journeys, fights, backstories, villains, heroes, daring escapes, vows of revenge. The Shadow of the Wind, The Hobbit, The Princess Bride- books like these are my comfort food. Books that are classic and familiar but still feel special; books that are heartfelt but thrilling; books that have the Holy Trinity of plot, characters, and style, and that marry them all together to create a world, a time, or a moment that I'll never want to leave.
The Lies of Locke Lamora delivers all of these things splendidly: a provocative, edgy setting; well thought-out cultural and religious customs that weren't a bore to read; a hero to root for; a villain that's bad but oh so good, evil of the proper, moustache-twirling sort. Usually, I revel in the grey areas- antiheroes, punch clock villains, semi-antagonists, man vs. self- I love the interplay of elements of light and dark. But every now and again I want clean cut, I want good and evil battling it out on a grand, dramatic stage, but I still want it nuanced and unpredictable, which Scott Lynch covers beautifully.
The writing, too, was gorgeous, the kind you can slip into and pass hours reading, totally and utterly immersed. The Duchy of Camorr is a deliciously dangerous and delightfully corrupt city of olde- with shades of Riften, Renaissance Venice, Red London, and Florin City*. I felt like I was being guided through the winding alleys, taverns, holes-in-the-wall, and mansions of Camorr by a funny, knowledgeable guide who showed me all the facets (good and bad, seedy and sumptuous) of the city. I watched women battling gigantic sharks, I saw bloodbaths, I experienced massive floating markets, lavish skyscraping terraces, dank dens of villainy. Corridors of razor-sharp roses, thieving cellars below temples, shifting docks- all described so clearly that you'd swear you've actually been there.
And, in a way, you have.
Because, in reading The Lies of Locke Lamora, you become a citizen of the crazy city of Camorr- you're party to all sorts of schemes, swindles, and plots, standing in the corner and watching the lives of a vast array of characters unfold and tangle in the most spectacular of ways.
I smiled so many times while reading this book, and I broke down into tears too, but they never felt like the cheap heartstring-pulls so many contemporary novels use today in lieu of genuine emotion. This book kept me guessing, laughing, wondering, and- above all- craving more. I won't say much about the plot or characters specifically (it's so much more magical when you read it yourself) but it involved theft, revenge, fighting, comradery, tricks, secrets- all the good stuff- and doctors, alchemists, nobles, priests, assassins, gangs, and, of course, bands of thieves.
[image] Gentlemen Bastards!
If I may point out a few details I loved, I thought the "fantasy" elements were woven in artfully. There's alchemy, but I really liked how it was talked about in more scientific terms rather than magic. There are people called Bondsmages who are basically the Siths of wizards- they cause pain, control animals, do mind tricks, all that sort of thing, but they never seemed gimmicky or too much "ye olde magicka." The format of the story was lovely- a main storyline with several well-placed interludes about Locke's childhood, certain colourful events in Camorr's history, the working of the city's underworld, or even spending a little time inside the head of a secondary character. Also, let it be known that this has the greatest ending to anything I have ever read, ever, so don't worry about being disappointed by a lackluster finish- I thought it was brilliant.
All in all, a richly told, wonderfully executed, positively delightful tale. It was just... charming. It just made me happy in so many ways, and it felt new despite the fact that it really is a return to the tried-and-true aspects of sprawling fantasy, done marvellously well. Like I said above, classic but fresh, drawing from its predecessors but still special in its own right, which I think is an especially difficult thing to master.
Because nowadays I believe we value writing far more than storytelling, and every now and then I need a charming thief (Locke), an unwittingly brave hobbit (Bilbo), or a suave bookseller (Fermín) to comfort me. Sometimes (but certainly not all the time) I want a clear hero and a clear villain- because in a world where so much is mired in the grey, a little bit of black and white can go a long way. These books, for me, are the equivalent of a favourite armchair. They may not be of the very highest quality, but they are warm, cosy, incredibly enjoyable and with the perfect, comfortable mixture of firmness and fluff. Everybody needs books like these, the ones we can fall back on time and time again and never get tired of, books that feel very much like the emotional equivalent of peeling your socks (or pants) off after a long day of work. Many people find that fluffy, cute romances do the job for them, and that's just fine. But me?
Well, I'll take a rakish thief any day of the week.
*I might have made a status update saying this (I have a feeling I did), and I loathe being redundant, but as of right now I can't see my status updates. It happens sometimes, especially as of late, but eventually it resolves somehow. Ah, Goodreads- the site with more bugs than an overzealous entomologist.
Read for the 2016 Popsugar Reading Challenge: "A book that's more than 600 pages."
Wow! If the books I've read so far this year have taught me anything, it's that sequels can definitely be better than their prequels. (Cough, cough, ThWow! If the books I've read so far this year have taught me anything, it's that sequels can definitely be better than their prequels. (Cough, cough, The Ask and the Answer.)
I enjoyed the first installment of this series, Katya's World, but not enough to seriously search for the sequel. Flash forward about a year, when I found myself at Powell's City of Books in Portland, Oregon. (Side note: It was huge! It was magnificent! The place took up an entire city block and is practically made of books! Do yourself a favour and go- it's a pilgrimage every booklover should make.)
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While perusing the massive shelves, I stumbled upon Katya's War. The title sounded familiar, so I picked it up and soon realized that I'd read the first book in the series. Why not? It was a $10 paperback, and I needed a good novel to ward away the growing feeling of summer laziness. Once back home, I checked Katya's World out from the library. I reread it and liked it much more than the first time around, then got started on this little gem.
And, again, if I may, wow. It takes place six months or so from the events of the first book, giving our protagonist, Katya Kuriakova, some time to cool off. During this time, she's matured, become the captain of her uncle's ship, received the coveted Hero of Russalka Award... and a war has started. This conflict between the Federal Maritime Authority and the Yagizba Enclaves seems finite and somewhat inconsequential, until, that is, someone else enters the picture. That would be, of course, Havilland Kane, the not-so-bloodthirsty, eccentric Terran pirate. And he is, of course, accompanied by the actually bloodthirsty, stone-cold killer Tasya Morevna, A.K.A. The Chertovka or She-Devil. And what they have travelled the world to say to Katya will change her life, and the trajectory of the war, forever.
We are thrown back into the hardy, unforgiving world of Russalka and the cast we met in the first installment. The plot develops at breakneck speed as dark secrets about the FMA and the truth about the war against Earth surfaces. The characterization is this book is spot-on: Katya matures and wrestles with the idea of martyrdom and her loyalty to the Federal Maritime Authority, we see deeper into Tasya's personality, revealing that she might just have a conscience, and Kane... Well, Kane is absolutely terrific, as usual. Case in point: "'I like the sound of a groaning hull. Don't you, Katya?' he asked. 'Makes you feel alive, when you think of all those millions of tonnes of water just out there, and how narrow a rope we walk in this life. Just one silly, inconsequential thing- seemingly,' he corrected himself, 'seemingly inconsequential thing could kill us all in a tenth of the time it takes to think, Well, gosh, that's a lot of water.'" But he isn't all philosophical and cheery as aspects of his past and his place in the Terran war are examined. He reminds me of the eleventh doctor!
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I feel the writing style itself has elevated as well. Despite the same typos and editing mistakes that pocked the first novel, this was quality writing, a solid plot that takes unexpected twists and turns, and characters that are put through hell and back but actually evolve and are built up through their experiences and pasts. It was highly enjoyable and I am REALLY hoping there is a third installment in the Russalka Chronicles. I can hardly wait! This series seems to be a hidden gem in the world of sappy, romance-driven YA and predictable science fiction. I loved it so far, and if the improvement between Katya's World and Katya's War is anything to go by, the next Russalka Chronicles should be amazing....more
I read this book, absolutely loved it (according to my shelves, I cried?) and then I gave it away (as I do with most books once I've read them) and noI read this book, absolutely loved it (according to my shelves, I cried?) and then I gave it away (as I do with most books once I've read them) and now I remember absolutely nothing at all about it. This is pretty unprecedented for books I've given five stars to, for them to be wiped from my mind so completely—I'm not sure if I need to reread this, rate it lower, or just be at peace with its lack of staying power....more