Review: Commonwealth Saga, by Peter F. Hamilton
The Commonwealth Saga is published in two halves, Pandora's Star and Judas Unchained. These two books could be put into several categories, but I think space opera is the most appropriate. If you don't know what space opera is, then these books are probably not for you.
In a nutshell, the Commonwealth Saga is this: In the distant future, humans have proliferated through the galaxy through wormholes when they stumble upon super hostile aliens and then depend mostly on a terrorist group and super old hippies to save civilization.
That might be an oversimplification, but if you're forced to give an elevator pitch to a distracted publishing agent, that's basically what you're left with. If there's one thing I like in this world, it is irony. And oversimplifying an epic like the Commonwealth Saga in 35 words or less, followed by a review in 400 words or less... well, it's ironic and fun. Note: the two books average about 800 pages each - quite large.
The good: This is a big story. I love a big story that I can submerse myself in for a long time, with lots of characters, locales, and plot twists. I also enjoyed some of the sociological implications of having wormholes that allow us to expand to other habitable worlds, only to have each one develop completely differently while still being part of the overall civilization. The ongoing mysteries were fun, the character collisions were amusing and the science part of the fiction was intriguing. Bravo.
The bad: I can totally understand how the anachronisms in the books can be explained, but I still don't like them. I don't like the idea of people driving a '57 Chevy in the year 2380, when they have neural implants, biogenesis, wormholes, hyperspace, robotech suits, etc. And who would still be smoking tobacco? Stop it. Moving on, I would have also preferred better section or chapter breaks. Everything was kinda just jammed together, which didn't accomplish anything good. Lastly, I know it's difficult to really resolve every single thread in a story this complex, but I can still complain that it felt open-ended. See? Just did it.
Bottom line: If you like PFH, or crave space opera, the Commonwealth Saga is worth the slog. Otherwise, tread at your own peril. I myself give it 3 of 5 stars.
Product link: Pandora's Star
Review: In Time (2011)
Since I'm a fan of dystopian sci-fi, and the director Andrew Niccol also directed Gattaca and the Truman Show, I thought I'd go see this movie in the theater. Plus, I enjoyed Logan's Run back in the day. Just to summarize the plot, here's the quote from Twentieth Century Fox:
"Welcome to a world where time has become the ultimate currency. You stop aging at 25, but there's a catch: you're genetically-engineered to live only one more year, unless you can buy your way out of it. The rich "earn" decades at a time (remaining at age 25), becoming essentially immortal, while the rest beg, borrow or steal enough hours to make it through the day. When a man from the wrong side of the tracks is falsely accused of murder, he is forced to go on the run with a beautiful hostage. Living minute to minute, the duo's love becomes a powerful tool in their war against the system."
So, the concept is everything in this movie (much like Gattaca and the Truman Show). The concept is the real meat, in my opinion. Now you just need a great script, decent actors, a talented director and competent crew. These things are your vehicle for delivering the concept; kind of like an ice cream truck bringing you the tastiest, creamiest ice cream you've never had. The problem begins when someone forgot to refrigerate the vehicle. And then they left the windows open for whatever neighborhood insects and critters that wanted to come and sample the sugary treat. By the time the truck arrives at your house, the concept has melted and become fodder for all manner of parasitic vermin.
I'll start with the bad news: Justin Timberlake didn't really get the job done. He's Nicholas Cage all over again, enough said. In fact, many of the actors failed to grab the screen. The only two exceptions were Cillian Murphy (Sunshine, 28 Days Later, Inception) and Vincent Kartheiser (Mad Men, Alpha Dog (funnily enough)), and they were playing the "bad" guys. The director did a passable job of directing, but not so good on the writing (yes, Andrew wrote and directed this). I would actually like to watch this movie again, just for the director's commentary, because I would like to know if he compromised due to the studio, the budget, or if he just failed on his two feet. The dialogue was flat, the pacing bad, the dramatic moments over engineered and the world-building was completely lost in the chase scenes. I'm not saying I could do better, just that I expected better.
In a future where humans can be genetically engineered to have a glowing time bank on their arm, I was expecting a setting that was a little more futuristic. Other than paying and earning in units of time, the whole world seemed very 2007, down to the cars, buildings, clothes, and language. I suppose it's possible that our culture would have stopped progressing at some point and our only advancement is a biological currency. Or not.
Here, I'll just list some gripes:
- Everyone's balance is prominently displayed on their arm? Really?
- There's no low-balance threshold to alert the account holder in advance?
- There's a big board of "money on the grid" but we can't do wireless transfer without touching?
- Will's mom has been living in this particular universe for 50 years and appears to be a noob?
- Will walks into and out of Weis headquarters with a million years, uncontested? Uh...
- The millionyears daughter just happens to be a rebel that attaches herself to Will like velcro? Come on.
- Timekeepers? Are they normal cops, or do they just chase down misuse of time? Like langoliers?
- All expenses are measured in whole units? Really? Even with tax? It's not 1d5h30m for a new suit? Just 2 days? Ok.
- Wouldn't it make more sense (cents) to measure all currency in seconds, or milliseconds? You could still get a translation into years, months, etc.
- I'll stop now - I'm losing faith in storytelling.
The good news: the concept still has potential and it may result in a talented writer out there somewhere getting inspired to write a novel or short story that gives it a fighting chance. I like the capitalism spin on our own lifespan, but it would be more interesting in a format where exposition could come in it's own time.
Anyway, the more I think about it, the concept may have been too big to tackle with this style of movie (thriller) and could have been better delivered as a drama, in the spirit of Brazil (1995).
Bottom line: Wait for a free rental on Netflix. I myself give it 3 of 5 stars.
Review: American Capitalist, by Five Finger Death Punch
So, being a fan of two previous albums by 5FDP, I grabbed this new album right away from the Amazon MP3 store. To be honest, I was worried that it wouldn't be as good as WotF or WitA, mostly due to cynicism I've accumulated over the years with bands putting out great first and second albums only to lose track of who they are and trying to go mainstream. Fortunately, it was not the case with American Capitalist.
I enjoyed all of the tracks, but the title song and The Pride are probably my favorites, followed closely by everything else. I had already bought the single for Under and Over It, so obviously it's high on the list as well.
Quoting another reviewer, they said the album was "...comprised primarily three minute tracks full of bouncy riffs, flailing double kicks and a mixture or hard verses with radio choruses", which is basically true and thankfully it works. If you've heard the other 5FDP works, you probably already get it.
That being said, if you were looking for something that breaks new ground or goes in a new direction from previous work, then you're out of luck. Their formula hasn't been diluted or artificially flavored just yet.
Bottom line: If you're a fan of 5FDP, buy this album. If you've never heard their stuff, but you like Slipknot or Pantera, I bet you'd like this. Otherwise, listen to the samples to make up your mind. I myself give it 4 of 5 stars.
Product link: American Capitalist [Explicit]
Review: Blindfold, by Kevin J. Anderson
I recently listened to the audio book edition of Blindfold, and was both pleased and disappointed, as you'll see in my review. Let me paraphrase the publisher's summary:
"Atlas is a struggling colony on an untamable world, a fragile society held together by the Truthsayers. The Truthsayers are trained from birth as the sole users of Veritas, a telepathy virus that lets them read the souls of the guilty. Truthsayers are Justice—infallible, beyond appeal. Falsely accused of murder, Troy Boren trusts the young Truthsayer Kalliana... until, impossibly, she convicts him. Still shaken from a previous trial, Kalliana doesn't realize her ability is fading. But soon the evidence becomes impossible to ignore. The Truthsayers’ Veritas has been diluted so that Justice is truly blind while someone in the colony is selling smuggled telepathy. From an orbital prison to the buried secrets of a regal fortress, Kalliana and Troy seek to unravel the conspiracy that threatens to destroy their world from within. For without truth and justice, Atlas will certainly fall…."
This book was less than I expected from this author, as I was a fan of The Saga of Seven Suns. But in this particular case, the more intriguing ideas were glazed over in the spirit of space opera. I enjoy both hard sci-fi and space opera for what they are, but I want my space opera to only gloss over non-important or staple aspects of the genre in the interest of focusing on character, drama and plot. A few concepts addressed in the book that should have been given a more hard sci-fi treatment: rejuvenation process that allows someone to live for centuries, colony ships that travel for decades from Earth to Atlas, and the Veritas drug itself.
The narrator was excellent. I'm the first to criticize a mediocre narrator but this Jim Meskimen was a pro at attaching distinct voices to the characters so they could be recognized even without the author's help in identifying the speaker. His pacing and inflection were right on target, though there were some rare moments when he seemed to think the sentence was over prematurely. Not a big deal.
The characters were somewhat flat, with the most interesting ones being given secondary roles. There are basically four "main" characters who advance through the plot independently for the most part, and none of which deserve to be picked up for a sequel, if that were to ever happen. I won't call them out specifically, because that might be considered a spoiler.
The world was also not very alive. There was plenty of anecdotal descriptions of random aspects of the new world but they seemed to have been inserted as an afterthought. Perhaps after the editor pointed out the world could have been another major character and was being completely ignored.
I know believability can be a silly thing to criticize in this genre, but there were several occasions where I found myself asking "Really? Come on, now..." Like when the Truthsayers bite a Veritas capsule, they get an immediate rush and they turn into telepathic sponges, but I'm somewhat disbelieving that a virus-induced surge of neural activity can take effect that fast. The fast-acting viruses known to man take hours to really have an effect. I realize this is an alien virus, but human biology still has it's place. I would have liked the author to at least acknowledge this anomaly or better yet, explain it.
Bottom line: If you lean more heavily towards space opera than hard sci-fi, the book might appeal to you a great deal more. I myself give it 3 of 5 stars.
Product link: Blindfold
Review: The Telara Chronicles – Series Compilation
After playing Rift for about six months, I started getting more interested in the story and fluff behind the characters and events in the game. I thought surely there are some novels planned, since other popular games support their own novel lines (Starcraft, WoW, Warhammer, D&D, etc). After searching around for a bit, I found that a limited series of comics had indeed been published prior to the release of the game, as a prequel. And with a little more digging, I found that the entire limited series had been repackaged later as a single compilation, which made it easier for me to get the whole thing (I hate tracking down individual issues of comics). Here is my review.
Before we get to the style or substance, let's review the physical aspects: it's 128 glossy pages, full-color, 10 x 6.5 inches, with a soft cover. What's great about it being a compilation is that they've included the last 14 pages as appendices providing more background on Telara, Regulos, planar invasions, the Guardians and Defiant, as well as the video game itself. Overall, it's well made.
The main meat of the book is the story of a prominent NPC in the game, Asha Catari and her fate to lead an army of Ascended against the outer planes. The drawing and coloring is good, but not great. Some people may feel that it's better than just good, but once you've been spoiled by great art in the comic world, it's hard to be impressed. I did enjoy the layout quite a bit, though. They used appropriate panel shapes and sizes to help accentuate and control the flow of the action, instead of the rigid unimaginative layout you see in some mainstream titles. I was pleased with the style, for the most part.
I'll go ahead and tell you now that the story is only likely to appeal to someone who plays Rift, or is interested in potentially playing. There is plenty of unspoken/unwritten background about the various characters and the world that will only be gleaned by jumping into Rift and leveling a character to max and exploring the world, dungeons, raids and all. However, for the slice of history and universe that this book covers, the exposition is sufficient and I don't foresee the reader getting lost as long as they are paying attention. I was constantly putting things together and getting more involved in the game world, which was my goal.
Bottom line: high production quality, better than average art, cool concepts, possibly relevant only to fans of Rift. It's an excellent way to get more into the world and understand the big picture of Telara.
Product link: The Telara Chronicles
