Forum Overview :: Dead Trees :: Short Reviews, or What I Read on my Summer Vacation

[quote name="junior allen"]I tried to read some sf/fantasy this summer, deciding, for no particular reason, it would be pure space opera. Witches of Karres -- James Schmitz Guy stuck on a space ship with three nubile teenage girls unaccountably has sex with none of them, instead messes around with some boring superpowers and gets involved in some lamely described adventures. 'This is promising material for somebody at alt.sex.stories.moderated, though. Young Miles -- Lois McMaster Bujold Two novels and a novella. THE WARRIOR'S APPRENTICE is pretty good, basically Lawrence of Arabia filtered through a sf lens. I don't really remember much about the novella one way or the other. THE VOR GAME starts out strong with a rewrite of Lawrence's THE MINT, but then Bujold runs out of material to rip off and actually has to plot something out herself, the results, unsurprisingly, are unimpressive. There are apparently fifty gazillion Bujold books out there; I see no reason to bother with anything else. But do check out WARRIOR'S APPRENTICE. I tried to read some of Peter Hamilton's NAKED GOD trilogy, but any book that spends the first two hundred or so pages explaining what the hell's going on is not going to be anything I'm gonna want to stick with. Life is too short, for Chrissakes. Anyone have any suggestions? I want something straightforward and uncomplicated, hopefully with alot of explosions and big tough guys firing laser guns and maybe some sex. Chris Bunch's STEN series looks promising. I read a bunch of hardboiled crime novels and spy novels that none of you will never read, I'm sure, so there's not much point in singing the praises of Michael Collins's NIGHT OF THE TOADS or Eric Ambler's THE LEVANTER, although they both are really fucking excellent, trust me on this. I would like to point out that if Jason Starr's depiction of telemarketing in COLD CALLER is at all realistic, then telemarketing is truly The Worst Job In The World; that despite a lack of heavy-duty Jap action YOUR TURN, MR MOTO was very fine, reinforcing my general opinion that John P. Marquand is an underrated writer; and that Harlan Ellison has really dreadful taste -- NIGHT AND THE CITY, written by his favorite author, Gerald Kersh, is a heavily padded novelette that's alternately preachy and sentimental, actually a lot like Ellison's work, in fact, but not as good. My big summer reading project was the complete Musketeer saga. - The Three Musketeers, Alexander Dumas (Oxford World Classics) Reading it this time through reminded me how good the two movies from the Seventies (<i>Three Musketeers</i> and <i>Four Musketeers</i>) really are. Heston's great and doesn't chew the scenery too much. Oliver Reed's at his best, though he's really a little too tough for Athos, who's kind of a prima donna in the book. Best movie role for Racquel Welch. Faye Dunaway when she was still pretty hot. And Michael York manages not to stink, though he's too faggoty to be a real good D'Artagnan. -- Twenty Years After, Dumas I hadn't read any of the others. This was fantastic, probably the best sustained book in the series. Twenty years later they all team back up to try and save the King of England from losing his head. Probably the first instance of the "I think he's dead no wait he's not" bit, which countless adventure writers after him ran into the ground. -- The Vicomte de Bragelonne The next three have to be read together to make any sense. This one is good, though kind of aimless. Still has D'Artagnan in fine form, running about and changing English history, and a great sequence where Porthos in a hurry manages to run to death four or five horses. That's because he's so massive, see, being about 5'8'' or 9'' and weighing around 200 pounds. The typical Frenchman of that day was, it seems, 5'3'' or so, and maybe 130. A pathetic little twerp. Sort of like now! -- Louise de la Valliere Really slow, Dumas at his worst. He didn't write love stories very well at all, and without a sense of action his pacing went all to hell. -- The Man in the Iron Mask This however, was very very fine, though depressing as all hell. Did anyone see the movie? Without giving anything away, it's kind of hard to imagine the adaptations of this book are very faithful to the source material. Contains some absolutely terrific stretches of writing, however -- Aramis's early encounter with the MITIM being only one. junior allen, currently reading THE PRISONER OF ZENDA, by Anthony Hope [/quote]