Reviews and Comments

Martin Kopischke

kopischke@bookwyrm.social

Joined 3 years, 6 months ago

Purveyor of finest boredom since 1969. Lost causes catered for. He / him (they / them is fine, too). English / deutsch / français. @kopischke@mastodon.social (@kopischke on BirdSite)

My ratings can look harsh, because they do not reflect how much I enjoyed a book; instead, I try to assess how exceptional a piece of literature I find it. I quite like a lot of books I “only” rate three stars, and I wouldn’t necessarily enjoy re-reading everything I rate above that, but the only service I use which helps me express that kind of nuance is Letterboxd.

For reference: ★★★★★ Flawless 
★★★★☆ Must read 
★★★☆☆ Above average 
★★☆☆☆ Oh, well
 ★☆☆☆☆ Blargh

Avatar by Picrew Shylomaton, courtesy of @Shyle@mastodon.social

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Joe Abercrombie: The Wisdom of Crowds (EBook, Orion) 3 stars

Chaos. Fury. Destruction. The Great Change is upon us...

Some say that to change the …

Polished cynicism

3 stars

Many swear by Abercrombie and his First Law series, which this continues to expand on (set one generation later, it features characters out of the first series, their children, as well as characters from the spinoffs), but I am torn.

On the one hand, there is no doubt Abercrombie is a master storyteller with a far greater claim to “realism” in pseudo-medieval fantasy than, say, G.R.R. Martin, able to conjure up both engrossing landscapes of pre-modern society and attaching characters. That he has a decent understanding of pre-modern warfare also helps his military campaigns plot lines.

On the other hand, Abercrombie’s cynicism (“everybody is either weak or evil in the end”) is a real turn-off. The first series sacrificed all investment your might have made into its protagonists for the sake of an “if magicians existed, they’d be the biggest dicks of all” message (not that I quibble with that …

Becky Chambers: A Psalm for the Wild-Built (EBook, 2021, Tom Doherty Associates) 5 stars

It’s been centuries since the robots of Panga gained self-awareness and laid down their tools; …

Humane sci-fi. With robots.

4 stars

There isn’t much I can add to loppear@bookwyrm.social’s review; once again, Chambers is simply wonderful. Here, she is running with the wholesome if slightly insipid promise for the future Solarpunk holds to explore human condition and (not entirely incidentally, I suspect) thumb a very long nose at the whole “machine uprising” crowd. I don’t know how someone can be so relentlessly, melancholically upbeat, but I do know I had to finish this before work, and that I had a little happy cry when I did.

Micaiah Johnson: The Space Between Worlds (EBook, 2020, Hodder & Stoughton) 4 stars

‘My mother used to say I was born reaching, which is true. She also used …

Watch this space. Not just between worlds.

3 stars

This is a novel of alternates worlds set on post-apocalypse Earth. On Earth Zero, as he calls it, an inventor-entrepreneur safely ensconced in a gated city shielded from the harsh conditions of its planet has found a way to reach alternate versions of the planet. Crossing over is risky, so the task devolves to the expendable: the citizens of the wasteland ruled by warlords outside the city gates. Like Cara.

I’m not sure anyone could care enough for Cara, or her tech megalomaniac boss with a dark past, to carry a novel, were it not for a simple fact: This is not a novel of alternates worlds set on post-apocalypse Earth.

What Micaiah Johnson has created instead is something that takes the form and background of its genres and uses them for a meditation on inequality, violence – carried out on others and self-inflicted –, and all forms of exploitation, …

Edgar P. Jacobs: Le secret de l’Espadon (GraphicNovel, French language, 2010, Les éditions Blake et Mortimer) 3 stars

1947. Alors que dans le monde se multiplient les pactes et les conférences destinées à …

Revisiting childhood classics can be a fraught exercise …

3 stars

… and, coming back too this almost forty years after last reading it, I wasn’t expecting too much. Sure enough, the world view is horrifically dated: white Brit dudes saving the world through süperior technology with the help of other white dudes and some loyal colonial dudes. A cruel, generically ‘yellow’ enemy bent on world domination slash destruction of civilisation. Literally not one woman in sight and a view of non-whites that, at its most kind, can only be called folkloristic – j’en passe et des meilleures. Superficially, there is enough to erase Jacobs’ early work from comics art memory. And yet, I’d argue it very much needs to stay in it.

First, the are some saving graces: in 1950, five years after the conclusion of World War II, the idea of an aggressively imperialistic asian empire wasn’t exactly outlandish (and yes, Jacobs did model his supposedly ‘Tibetan’ military …

P. Djèlí Clark: The Black God’s Drums (EBook, 2018, Tom Doherty Associates) 4 stars

In an alternate New Orleans caught in the tangle of the American Civil War, the …

Wi, cher

3 stars

Clark has a knack for unconventional takes on the speculative genre, no doubt, and his writing is beyond reproach. This alternate New Orleans novella is smart and fun, but overall, it feels very conventionally steampunk-ish, a far cry from the whirlwind experience that is his Djinnpunk stuff .

Tony Cliff: Delilah Dirk and the Turkish Lieutenant (GraphicNovel, 2016, First Second) 4 stars

Lovable ne’er-do-well Delilah Dirk is an adventurer for the 19th century. She has traveled to …

Yes, swashbuckling can be lovely

4 stars

… and Tony Cliff is here to prove it in the first Delilah Dirk instalment. Not only does he manage to create a heroine so compelling you never doubt someone so out of place in the historical era could and would have stood on her own, his tale of a sheltered Ottoman officer discovering a taste for adventure achieves something rare: a tone of tenderness and subdued glee that never turns into something trite or foreseeable. This one really is a rare gem. [review note]

John Scalzi: The Last Emperox (EBook, 2020, Tom Doherty Associates) 3 stars

Entire star systems, and billions of people, are about to be stranded. The pathways that …

One review fits all

3 stars

This is very much just one part of a three-part novel, which I find difficult to review in isolation. Because this site works best when people review the things they read, however, I will be adding the same review to all volumes.

John Scalzi is a nice guy writing nice SF novels.

You could almost leave it at that, really. For the sake of context, I will add a few more details to this assessment. This, like all of his novels I have read, is smoothly plotted and written, entirely unsurprising in its cliffhangers and ultimate resolution, and contains exactly one original idea. This being said, it’s an entertaining read if, at times, a bit too glib to my taste (I don’t think Scalzi has ever seen a witty repartee he didn’t like). If what you want from your SF is what I just described, you could do a lot …

John Scalzi: The Consuming Fire (EBook, 2018, Tom Doherty Associates) 4 stars

The Interdependency, humanity's interstellar empire, is on the verge of collapse. The Flow, the extra-dimensional …

One review fits all

3 stars

This is very much just one part of a three-part novel, which I find difficult to review in isolation. Because this site works best when people review the things they read, however, I will be adding the same review to all volumes.

John Scalzi is a nice guy writing nice SF novels.

You could almost leave it at that, really. For the sake of context, I will add a few more details to this assessment. This, like all of his novels I have read, is smoothly plotted and written, entirely unsurprising in its cliffhangers and ultimate resolution, and contains exactly one original idea. This being said, it’s an entertaining read if, at times, a bit too glib to my taste (I don’t think Scalzi has ever seen a witty repartee he didn’t like). If what you want from your SF is what I just described, you could do a lot …