GENZARD Blog

The opening chapter of Lady of Mazes by Karl Schroeder is mind-boggling. Not that the rest of book is less so, but that first hit was so unexpected that I was really in a shock. I had to adapt, wrap my mind around the new “reality”, all the new ideas and their implications. And that kind of stuff kept coming at me, page after page, but having experienced that first wave, I’ve braced myself and started enjoying it.

And there’s plenty to enjoy if you’re an SF fan. Because this is hard science fiction at its best. The concept of `Societies` is an excellently extrapolated vision of the social interactions we’re having on the net today. Same goes for the `Inscape` and the `Manifolds` – the idea that your location and actions in the “real” world are almost of no significance and that it’s all about the “virtual” world, takes some time to get used to.

I don’t like too much action in any novel, and this one has just about the right amount of it (e.g. Consider Phlebas by Iain M. Banks has a bit too much for my taste and The Player of Games by the same author is spot on), but you won’t even notice it while you’re reading as the world and the story are overwhelming. There are moments when you realize that a common word does not have the same meaning any more, as the circumstances are quite different from the real world and realizing it only pulls you deeper into this imagined world.

Having said all that, it shouldn’t be surprising that I’ve already downloaded the free Ventus novel from the author’s official site and as I haven’t read Sun of Suns either (downloaded from Tor.com last year), I expect to be having great time submerged into the distant future.

Very soon into Brandon Sanderson‘s Elantris it became clear to me that the book will turn out to be a debugging story – how to fix the bugs that broke the magic. And I suppose maybe that’s why I found the novel a bit disappointing. Don’t get me wrong – there are some great ideas in there and the book is fun to read, but when it came to fixing the magic, I could spot the problem way before Raoden did and I don’t like that. I like to be surprised by the finale, not to have the final chapters of the book “reveal” what I already knew or guessed. Have I expected too much? Or should software developers not read debugging fiction? O;)

I don’t like comparing books and authors, but I remember having the same feeling after closing down  The Pawn of Prophecy by David Eddings. The story was too obvious, unchallenging, shallow… I’ve never picked up another Eddings book. I’m not so sure about Sanderson. I’ve downloaded Mistborn from Tor.com last year and I think I’ll give it a try. If it turns out to be as obvious as Elantris, I’m pretty sure Sanderson will follow in Eddings’ footsteps as far as I’m concerned.

The fair is my “secret” place for finding the books I can’t find anywhere else during the year. Usually, the publishers and bookstore owners bring almost everything they’ve got, including the long forgotten English titles from the murky depths of their cellars. A treasure trove, really

Not this year Looks like they’ve been very busy printing new books to fill their stands. Not necessarily a bad thing, I agree, but that’s not the point. At least not for me. I understand that the fair is their chance to show off their “latest and greatest” and that’s OK, but newly printed books are very easy to find – every bookstore has them and promotes them before, during and after the fair. I thought the whole point was to allow the visitors to see everything you’ve got…

Or maybe it’s only me not understanding what it’s all about and expecting too much.

We’ll see what happens next year. Until then, I suppose I’ll have to find some other place where the forgotten books go for their final reader hunt.

Looking back, it’s been almost 20 years since I first had an Ursula K. Le Guin book in my hands – a set of six books in fact: The Word for World is Forest, Rocannon’s World, Planet of Exile, City of Illusions, The Dispossessed and The Left Hand of Darkness. It was my first taste of science fiction. And I liked it. Very, very much. Some years later I ran into the Earthsea novels and again a whole new world opened before my eyes. I was fascinated. And totally hooked. Science fiction and fantasy novels have been my favorite reads ever since.

Last month I read another of her novels. No, not the latest one. An old one, actually, from the SF Masterworks series – The Lathe of Heaven. A jewel. Takes the concept of dreams and the power they can have on our world and examines it from every angle. What happens when the dreams we have come face to face with reality? Will they just collapse or maybe change the world? Will the change be for the better or for the worse? Will it last? Does joining forces with others help us make it last and not lose the very essence of our being in the process… Very powerful.

I’m looking forward both to her latest book (Lavinia) and to other titles from the SF Masterworks series

P.S. There are also two movies (1980 & 2002) based on the book, but I haven’t seen either of them.