The Long Run (Book Club)

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dwndrgn

dwndrgn

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I'm posting this a bit early just as a reminder to those folks who would like to join in on next month's discussion that February's book is The Long Run by Daniel Keys Moran.

This book is over 20 years old so we'll have similar problems to Scar Night. So, I've taken a quick look around the internet for some ideas on where to possibly get your copy. By no means is this an exhaustive list. You also may want to consider both your local library and your local used book stores. It seems that Amazon (US) currently only has used versions at high prices on sale.
But, half.com has this:
Half.com / Books / The Long Run

powells.com has copies at a bit higher price:
Half.com / Books / The Long Run

That's all I've found so far. There are other places you may want to search, sites where people trade books, etc.
 
I'm a bit worried, I ordered my copy AGES ago, and it still hasn't arrived :( I'm wondering whether it's close to arriving or whether I've been screwed over and need to order another.. grrr..
 
Has everyone who wants to participate found their book? I have 2 copies, one kind of rough. If you live in the states (sorry overseas post too rich for my blood) you can have my extra, just pm me with yuor info and I'll send it.
 
I ordered my copy through amazon last night.

We'll see how long it takes to get here from Texas ...
 
Ditto, Brown Rat.

I am not sure how to proceed because Scar Night did not provoke any real discussion IMHO. In order to feel a part of the universe, I read Emerald Eyes (the first of the "series"). I was very happy with it. Did you by chance read Emerald Eyes as well? We could talk about that without spoiling for all of those who seem to be having difficulty obtaining the book.
 
Go ahead and talk about it. You can put any serious spoilers in a lighter colored font, so that the rest of us have to highlight to read, and everything else you say may spur us on to read it.
 
I'm starting The Long Run today - hopefully I'll have it read in a day or two. I also have Emerald Eyes at home. He wrote a couple more books, but their titles escape me at the moment.
 
Okay, just to get the ball rolling I’ll don my fireproof cassock and say this: I believe that Emerald Eyes was by far the superior novel. I thought Emerald Eyes was much less predictable and I cared for the characters much more. I identified much more with Carl Castanaveras then I ever did with Trent Castanaveras.

Spoiler up coming: Highlight to see.

Trent seems to me to be too Teflon. I never thought he was in any real danger you always knew he’d win through with his obvious advantages. I think it would have been a far better book if Moran had written about Trent’s adventures immediately after the destruction of almost all the world’s telepaths. Then his youth and lack of physical size would have been the chinks in his now all to obvious armor.
 
I'm not very far into the story yet, but I think
Trent is a little cliche; the thief who is really the hero with a heart of gold, which is ok with me as I enjoy charcters like that(Mal-Firefly;Han-StarWars) and don't really expect any real danger to effect them. I see what you mean about wanting to know more about Trent's earlier years. I didn't read Emerald Eyes, so I don't know a everything about Trent's childhood, but I think the author does a pretty good job giving us enough detail about his childhood to get the gist. I would like to know a little more about the Fringe though.

I would've thought it would bother me that Trent and Denice are sleeping together considering Trent calls her his sister , but they do so in such a way where neither one questions the morality of it, so it doesn't really freak me out at all.

Off to read more!
 
I'm at work right now, so I don't have the book in front of me, but I'll post a few thoughts anyway. (The spoiler font is hard for me to read, so I'm going to post in regular font and use a warning, just in case I might spoil something.)


****spoiler****

The Long Run is the kind of book that neither truly engages me nor truly bores me. After a few months have passed, I will have forgotten most of it. I love science fiction, and I appreciate (and in other books have mightily enjoyed) many of the tropes in The Long Run--such as the genius hacker, the body-modification surgery, the brain-implant connection to the computer web, the oppressive government versus struggling individual, the misunderstood telepaths, and the heart-of-gold thief that Bookstop has mentioned. But there isn't much about Moran's execution of those tropes that thrills me. Trent is an adequately interesting character, but nothing more than that.

It doesn't bother me that we're always fairly certain that Trent will escape his current dilemma. That's pretty standard in SFF. What I read for is to see how a character escapes, and Trent's methods are--again--adequately inventive.

One thing that did interest me is Trent's insistence that killing under any circumstance is wrong. That belief makes it harder for him to escape, sort of like the weakness that an author will give a character who uses magic or a character who has a superpower (Kryptonite, say). Without that weakness, there'd be little suspense; the character could just blow everyone away.

Which is not to say that I consider Trent's anti-killing belief a weakness. I find that belief appealing.

Hmmmm. Let's see . . . what else? Oh. Trent's final adversary (the head of the police who chase Trent after he leaves Earth) was refreshingly quick on the uptake and relatively unstoppable--at least, throughout most of the book. Up until the end, he didn't make it easy for Trent to escape or to carry out his schemes, and I was glad to see that. But wasn't he a bit dimwitted about Trent's plan to launch himself without a pod (or whatever it's called) in the mass driver?
 
Reply to Brown Rat Spoiler Alert:

Well said Brown Rat! You put your finger right on the heart of it. There were plenty of things that were said and done that I've liked more before, but less in this book.

I agree that it was an interesting and nice touch that he had a moral, so many stories don't. But he played his moral right up to the edge. He often depended upon people to take him at his word and get out of the way. And his actions certainly led others to die as his nemisis attempted to take him out.
 
My copy never did arrive, I'm pretty bummed about that. I ordered it just after the three books were announced, so I think it's safe to say that since it hasn't come by now, it isn't going to! I will check out the used book stores around where I'm staying here in Sydney, but otherwise I'm probably not going to make this months discussion :( Next month, definitely, because I've already got the Sara Douglass book.
 
Well, no sooner did I write the above message than my sister called after collecting my mail to say the book arrived! She is sending it on to me on Monday, so I will be able to participate after all!
 
The book arrived today and I've read a few chapters. Moran spends so much time bringing the reader up to speed on previous events, it's rather heavy going, and I still have only the vaguest idea of what it's all about. But that may just be me being painfully slow when it comes to comprehending computer technology.

Although I do think I might be more interested if I'd been given any reason to care about Trent or what happens to him. Perhaps that's still to come.
 
Spoilers ahead

Trent remains cliche through the whole book, and while his moral 'killing bad' thing was kind of intriguing at first, he never showed enough emotion for me to believe he actually meant it. Yes, his actions did prove it I suppose, but where was the outrage and pain when people died anyway?

Most of the characters, with the exception of ES Garon, had hidden emotions. Denice should've been devastated when Trent left; she had been searching for her one true love for 7 years, found him, and lost him again. I wonder if the author meant for his characters to be so emotionally disabled to show the differences in society since unification - were emotions hidden because of necessity or were they naturally suppressed over time as the book takes place int he future? Garon was the only character who seemed human and because of it he was my fav. So what if he was a little crazy, that's reality. I really sympathized with him.
 
Great insight bookstop. You said what I felt but could not express well enough. Thanks :)
 
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