J-Sun
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- Joined
- Oct 23, 2008
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Spoilers for The Line of Polity (2009 Tor (UK) trade paper), which I finished today (and eventually minor ones for Cowl). First, some small negatives: as with seemingly all books these days, it was too long - after the 50,000th evisceration, they start to lose their impact - the chapters were too long, as well, yet
(agreed) there were too many of them to have the fairy tale start each of the twenty - I was sort of into it at first but then it, too, began to pale. And, given this length, it seemed sort of like somebody said, "663 pages - time's up!" and the story was brought to a fairly abrupt end, epilogue notwithstanding. For instance, the Ian/Cormac last segment without John/Jarv didn't seem sufficient and I'm not sure we got back to all the main characters at all.
Also, one really weird complaint - after Molat got clobbered the second time, I started laughing and was anticipating either a third clobbering or some especially brutal twisty end in the same chapter but, instead, he stopped getting beat up so much and just sort of persisted for awhile. So by the time he finally does get wasted, it seemed inappropriate, like he almost should have survived by that point, with some sort of thematic/ironic point. I dunno - I just felt like there was a great, but missed, opportunity for a little inset piece of comedy or theme or something.
Also, I'll probably feel like Mika for asking, but what's up with "Ramus" (when obviously the character knew it should be Remus but changed it for some reason)? In hopefully proofreading-land, I didn't know Dick van Patten had made General (many references to the ship General Patten which, at least as an American, doesn't look right). Also, struck by the grayish slaughter from bears ("bodies were strewn everywhere like some new and grizzly harvest" (p.410)). And a couple of not-so-felicitous descriptions, with the sharp obsidian bananas (p.577) and "satanic fuchsias" (p.611)
But, given the bulk of the book - except for the already-mentioned end/denouement - it was well-paced and the first 49,999 eviscerations were great. Skellor could have used some more in-depth psychology or personalization (a better "before" picture to go with the "during" and "after" ones) but was a heck of a villain (though he got a little excessively dumb at the end). I liked the depiction of Masada and the whole structure of the Theocracy and thought Eldene made a good viewpoint character and Fethan was interesting. Ironically, this felt more like an Agent Thorn book than an Agent Cormac book for a lot of it and his storyline (mingling with Gant - and Cormac - eventually) was particularly good. The bit with him and Stanton dealing with Brom was one of the better action sequences, especially.
Yeah, my only problems were that, by the time Thorn's line was introduced it was starting to seem like it was taking too long to get them all started but that was the last major one. But then he did keep dropping in new minor ones to the point that they started to seem like excess (various Carl/Molat/Dorth cannon-fodder type lines). And all were fairly short within long chapters so you could never really settle in to any of them. But the thing itself isn't anything I have a problem with and was necessary to the story and, except for those "matter of degree" sorts of problems, was very well done. Ah - one more small problem was that I could occasionally read an entire paragraph or two - for instance, when most of the storylines had converged on Masada's surface and the first paragraph or two was just a description of surface conditions before signalling who the viewpoint character was - before I could figure out which storyline I was in. It might have been better to have those descriptions be rendered initially more from observing the character's perceptions rather than a detached omniscient view from over that character's shoulder, sort of. "Bob looked over the still grass of Masada with relief" rather than "The grass of Masada was still. Bob was relieved."
Oh, and to return to the point about Skellor getting stupid - ironically, right before the first time he "cursed his stupidity", I thought of one reason that I seem to prefer Asher novels over Reynolds novels so far (besides Reynolds' being even longer) is that Reynolds often has characters who are very stupid/obtuse or petty or have otherwise needlessly negative aspects when it runs contrary to any need unless that of plot and not usually even that. Asher seems to relish smart capable characters who may not have any other virtues (but often do) and this isn't restricted to the "good guys" (or less bad guys). More like Greek arete or maybe Latin potestas vs. English "virtue". And certainly not plain incompetent stupidity.
My view is divided in one. I read Cowl as my third Asher just after Christmas when I was sick as a dog so I don't entirely trust my memory or judgment but I was loving it to start with despite my delirium but, again, the first few trips through time and the first few dinosaurs were very cool and then by the sixth dinosaur or whatever, it paled and sort of dragged in the middle. And there were places of outright "wow!" relatively early on (I think) such as in describing some of the Heliothane future stuff but it didn't seem to sustain that. But I don't ordinarily like time travel stories much - I got it only because it was a non-series book and I wanted to read an Asher solo novel - and I agree with Coolhand - it was well done and didn't give me any more of headache than I already had, which time travel stories usually do. And I liked, if that's the word, Tack and Polly. And I loved the decidedly realistic and unromantic and non-fantasy take of Polly's trip to the middle ages.
I am not one of those who pines for those particular "good old days".
(agreed) there were too many of them to have the fairy tale start each of the twenty - I was sort of into it at first but then it, too, began to pale. And, given this length, it seemed sort of like somebody said, "663 pages - time's up!" and the story was brought to a fairly abrupt end, epilogue notwithstanding. For instance, the Ian/Cormac last segment without John/Jarv didn't seem sufficient and I'm not sure we got back to all the main characters at all.
Also, one really weird complaint - after Molat got clobbered the second time, I started laughing and was anticipating either a third clobbering or some especially brutal twisty end in the same chapter but, instead, he stopped getting beat up so much and just sort of persisted for awhile. So by the time he finally does get wasted, it seemed inappropriate, like he almost should have survived by that point, with some sort of thematic/ironic point. I dunno - I just felt like there was a great, but missed, opportunity for a little inset piece of comedy or theme or something.
Also, I'll probably feel like Mika for asking, but what's up with "Ramus" (when obviously the character knew it should be Remus but changed it for some reason)? In hopefully proofreading-land, I didn't know Dick van Patten had made General (many references to the ship General Patten which, at least as an American, doesn't look right). Also, struck by the grayish slaughter from bears ("bodies were strewn everywhere like some new and grizzly harvest" (p.410)). And a couple of not-so-felicitous descriptions, with the sharp obsidian bananas (p.577) and "satanic fuchsias" (p.611)
But, given the bulk of the book - except for the already-mentioned end/denouement - it was well-paced and the first 49,999 eviscerations were great. Skellor could have used some more in-depth psychology or personalization (a better "before" picture to go with the "during" and "after" ones) but was a heck of a villain (though he got a little excessively dumb at the end). I liked the depiction of Masada and the whole structure of the Theocracy and thought Eldene made a good viewpoint character and Fethan was interesting. Ironically, this felt more like an Agent Thorn book than an Agent Cormac book for a lot of it and his storyline (mingling with Gant - and Cormac - eventually) was particularly good. The bit with him and Stanton dealing with Brom was one of the better action sequences, especially.
Yeah, my only problems were that, by the time Thorn's line was introduced it was starting to seem like it was taking too long to get them all started but that was the last major one. But then he did keep dropping in new minor ones to the point that they started to seem like excess (various Carl/Molat/Dorth cannon-fodder type lines). And all were fairly short within long chapters so you could never really settle in to any of them. But the thing itself isn't anything I have a problem with and was necessary to the story and, except for those "matter of degree" sorts of problems, was very well done. Ah - one more small problem was that I could occasionally read an entire paragraph or two - for instance, when most of the storylines had converged on Masada's surface and the first paragraph or two was just a description of surface conditions before signalling who the viewpoint character was - before I could figure out which storyline I was in. It might have been better to have those descriptions be rendered initially more from observing the character's perceptions rather than a detached omniscient view from over that character's shoulder, sort of. "Bob looked over the still grass of Masada with relief" rather than "The grass of Masada was still. Bob was relieved."
Oh, and to return to the point about Skellor getting stupid - ironically, right before the first time he "cursed his stupidity", I thought of one reason that I seem to prefer Asher novels over Reynolds novels so far (besides Reynolds' being even longer) is that Reynolds often has characters who are very stupid/obtuse or petty or have otherwise needlessly negative aspects when it runs contrary to any need unless that of plot and not usually even that. Asher seems to relish smart capable characters who may not have any other virtues (but often do) and this isn't restricted to the "good guys" (or less bad guys). More like Greek arete or maybe Latin potestas vs. English "virtue". And certainly not plain incompetent stupidity.
My view is divided in one. I read Cowl as my third Asher just after Christmas when I was sick as a dog so I don't entirely trust my memory or judgment but I was loving it to start with despite my delirium but, again, the first few trips through time and the first few dinosaurs were very cool and then by the sixth dinosaur or whatever, it paled and sort of dragged in the middle. And there were places of outright "wow!" relatively early on (I think) such as in describing some of the Heliothane future stuff but it didn't seem to sustain that. But I don't ordinarily like time travel stories much - I got it only because it was a non-series book and I wanted to read an Asher solo novel - and I agree with Coolhand - it was well done and didn't give me any more of headache than I already had, which time travel stories usually do. And I liked, if that's the word, Tack and Polly. And I loved the decidedly realistic and unromantic and non-fantasy take of Polly's trip to the middle ages.
I am not one of those who pines for those particular "good old days".
