Category: Books

What do you read, my lord?

Book review: Burning Chrome

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Burning Chrome.Burning Chrome by William Gibson
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

If you wanted to only read one ‘cyberpunk’ Gibson book and still take away the nut graf of his world, this would probably be it. Burning Chrome is a collection of shorter fiction: ten stories, three co-written with others. The title story is where the term cyberspace – so ubiquitous these days – first appeared.

It’s likely that I should’ve read this book before I embarked on Gibson’s Sprawl trilogy, but there’s something neat about discovering these stories after the fact. It’s almost as if they’re a crib sheet for what’s to come in the trilogy. These are the seeds that grew, equally informative as they show Gibson’s talent for creating meaningful, engaging stories in shorter spaces. That, and his ability to invent junky dolphins. Continue reading “Book review: Burning Chrome” →

Book review: Mona Lisa Overdrive

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Mona Lisa Overdrive.Mona Lisa Overdrive by William Gibson
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This is the third (and final) entry in Gibson’s Sprawl trilogy, the books which established the appearance of cyberspace. Really, however the internet is imagined, the roots of pop-culture’s interpretation are here. What I’ve found interesting reading these years later is how unimportant the cyberspace part of the stories are. Well, perhaps not unimportant – but less central than the rep would have you believe.

What’s important in these stories? People. Sure, information, hacking, breaking ice, constructed personalities and visualisation is a key draw – this is science fiction after all – but what pulls the attention is the personal side of the tale. Nowhere is Gibson’s portraiture more profound Continue reading “Book review: Mona Lisa Overdrive” →

Book review: Count Zero

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Count Zero.Count Zero by William Gibson
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This is the second of Gibson’s ‘Sprawl trilogy’, and while it exists in the same world as Neuromancer, Count Zero has no compunction about shedding characters from the author’s breakthrough novel. Sure, there’s a couple of familiar faces, but the main players – a back-from-the-dead electro-merc and his target, a disgraced art dealer and her vat-dwelling Howard Hughes-alike boss, and a young-gun hacker – are new, and just as striking as any who’ve come before.

The snapping tension generated by Gibson’s shift of viewpoint between mission operatives in his first novel has flowered here into a tripartite narrative. There’s three stories braiding together through the novel. Obviously, we figure they’ll come together by book’s end, but watching how Continue reading “Book review: Count Zero” →

Book review: Neuromancer

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Neuromancer.Neuromancer by William Gibson
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I’ve had this book since 1989. I’d heard it was cool and, impressionable 13-year-old that I was, I snaffled a copy and was immediately confused by it. I couldn’t get into it, didn’t know what to make of it. I couldn’t go on, and it sat on the shelf since then, occasionally daring me to give it a go, but mostly biding its time.

Here we are, some 16 years later and I’ve finally finished. And my first thought on reaching its conclusion is that if I can ever jack in and meet some representation of 13-year-old me, I’m gonna smack him in the head.

It’s difficult to write about the experience of reading this novel as it’s so hard to separate it from everything that came afterwards. Continue reading “Book review: Neuromancer” →

Book review: Uzumaki (volume 3)

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Uzumaki (volume 3)Uzumaki (volume 3) by Junji Ito
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This, the final volume of Junji Ito’s coiling narrative, is perhaps the most consistent, storywise. It’s just a shame it’s also the least satisfying.

The previous two collections shocked, either from the gore or the nerve-jangling weirdness. This one shocks to a certain extent, but it also rides over into silliness territory. That whole whirlwind gang thread? The bullying children? Oh, come on. Continue reading “Book review: Uzumaki (volume 3)” →

Book review: Climbers: A Novel

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Climbers: A Novel.Climbers: A Novel by M. John Harrison
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

If you were a climber and were expecting this to be some kind of literary version of The Eiger Sanction, then you’d probably be disappointed. But then, I don’t think M. John Harrison would care too much, given that many of the readers of this book were probably expecting it to be a sci-fi masterpiece, rather than some kind of Mike Leigh nightmare.

Out of print until recently (it was reissued in 2004) this 1989 novel is less about climbing and its community and more about growth – or the lack of it. Continue reading “Book review: Climbers: A Novel” →

Book review: The Sea

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The Sea.The Sea by John Banville
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Banville’s Booker-winner is a novel which, like the tide, reveals itself by degrees. At once a recollection and a meditation, it’s a journal-styled examination of life after the loss of a partner.

Not a lot goes on in the novel in a narrative sense, but a lot is revealed about its focal character. Following his wife’s death, Max Morden revisits the location of childhood holidays – a seaside town not out of place in a Morrissey Every Day Is Like Sunday Continue reading “Book review: The Sea” →

Book review: Uzumaki (volume 2)

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Uzumaki (volume 2).Uzumaki (volume 2) by Junji Ito
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

The second volume of Ito’s spiral-obsessed work is wilder, less controlled than the first. It’s not as tightly wound or slow-burning as the first collection, relying instead on gross-outs and increasingly frenetic artwork to communicate the smalltown weirdness within.

There’s an overall story – that Kurôzu-cho is in the thrall of a spiral-natured curse – but it’s really only loosely addressed in this collection of relatively unrelated tales. We see what’s going on mostly from the viewpoint of the already-seen-some-shit Kirie, Continue reading “Book review: Uzumaki (volume 2)” →

Book review: Uzumaki (volume 1)

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Uzumaki (volume 1).Uzumaki (volume 1) by Junji Ito
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I’d heard about Ito’s manga a long time before I saw any of it. But from what I’d read – once you bypass the “hey, Japan is crazy weird, right?” stuff, I knew it was for me. Finally reading has confirmed this: Uzumaki is a small-town world of strange fixations, a la Twin Peaks, except it’s the spirals that aren’t what they seem, not the owls. Continue reading “Book review: Uzumaki (volume 1)” →

Book review: Restoration

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Restoration.Restoration by Rose Tremain
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

A Booker Prize contender, Restoration follows the journey of Robert Merivel, a medical student-cum-lord who is made useful to Charles II of England – first for his spaniel-saving qualities, and then for his buffoonery and willingness to provide extramarital cover.

The world of court is recreated extremely well. Continue reading “Book review: Restoration” →