Review: The God Engines

This book - The God Engines by John Scalzi - was intense. Normally, half of my review of a novella or short story is kvetching that the story was too short, the author should have delved deeper, etc, etc. Sure, Scalzi probably could have gone more in depth and revealed more about the world he's built here but I'm not sure I'd want to go any deeper. This is a book about unpleasant people doing unpleasant things. It was intriguing and a good read, but not something I think I'll read again.

Teaser Tuesday: 7/20

Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading. Anyone can play along!

Just do the following:

• Grab your current read
• Open to a random page
• Share two (2) “teaser” sentences from somewhere on that page
• BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS!
• Share the title & author, too, so that others can add the book to their TBR Lists if they like your teaser!

My teaser today is from Old Man's War by John Scalzi. This is a re-read for me but its just a great piece of sci-fi.

"Should your soldier survive, it may keep the knives as a token of its victory," the ambassador said.

"Thanks," I said.

"We would not wish to have them back. They would be unclean," the ambassador said.

Maybe you have get it in context, but I actually found that to be a pretty funny exchange. If you are interested, here is my Old Man's War review.

Out Today - Your Hate Mail Will Be Graded

Just a heads up that Your Hate Mail Will Be Graded by John Scalzi (link goes to my review) is out today in paperback. So now you can read it on the train and not scare whoever is sitting across from you with the weird hardcover cover.

Buy Your Hate Mail Will Be Graded: A Decade of Whatever, 1998-2008.

Review: Your Hate Mail Will be Graded

As regular readers of this blog may already know, I am a big fan of science fiction writer John Scalzi. He even has his own tag here, I write about him so much! His Old Man's War series is just fantastic. I am also a fan and daily reader of Scalzi's blog Whatever. "Whatever" is one of the longest running blogs - the first entry was on September 13, 1998, way back even before the term blog was invented - and has 40k plus readers a day (I can't even imagine having that many readers!). So what is "Whatever" about?

Well, about whatever: Politics, writing, family, war, popular culture and cats (especially with bacon on them). Sometimes he's funny. Sometimes he's serious (mostly he's sarcastic). Sometimes people agree with him. Sometimes they send him hate mail, which he grades on originality and sends back.

Your Hate Mail Will Be Graded is a collection of "Whatever" entries, some dating back to the early days of the site, some from 2008. The topics range from the serious to the ridiculous, and include such topics as September 11th, advice for writers, and fatherhood.

It is apparent what the dominant political topics were during the years Scalzi wrote these essays: gay marriage, George W. Bush, the Iraq War, etc. And some of those essays, in particular, felt a little dated. But many of the other essays, like the one on his childhood hero, Carl Sagan, or the financial advice for writers, felt more timeless.

No surprise, I really like Scalzi's writing. As the blurb points out, there's a lot of sarcasm in the humorous pieces, which I like, though I recognize not everyone will. But Scalzi has, to me, a distinctive voice, that I just love. I think other readers (and not just science fiction fans) will enjoy this book as well.

Buy Your Hate Mail Will Be Graded on Amazon.

A softcover version of this book will be coming out in January from Tor.

Teaser Tuesday 12/8

Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading. Anyone can play along!

Just do the following:

• Grab your current read
• Open to a random page
• Share two (2) “teaser” sentences from somewhere on that page
• BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS!
• Share the title & author, too, so that others can add the book to their TBR Lists if they like your teaser!

From Your Hate Mail Will Be Graded by John Scalzi:

I fell for Carl [Sagan] with the sort of blissful rapture that I strongly suspect is only available to pre-pubescent geeks, a sort of nerd crush that, to be clear, had no sexual component, but had the same sort of swoony intensity. This was the guy I wanted to be when I was age eleven.

If you buy this book through Subterranean Press (the publisher), you also get a little chapter book - a novella, of sorts - by Scalzi, FYI.

Wonderful Things at Tor.com

I visited Tor.com this weekend, which I'd never done before. I went to read a free short story written by John Scalzi, set in the Old Man's War universe, After the Coup. I poked around a bit, too, and came upon a most amazing little video that I just had to share with you: A Record Of Life from Owen Gatley and Luke Jinks on Vimeo.



This video makes me wish I could draw better. And compose music. Just wonderful!

Review: The Android's Dream

From the back of the book:

A human diplomat kills his alien counterpart. Earth is on the verge of war with a vastly superior alien race. A lone man races against time and a host of enemies to find the one object that can save our planet and our people from alien enslavement... a sheep.

That's right, a sheep. And if you think that's the most surprising thing about this book, wait until you read Chapter One. Welcome to The Android's Dream.

For Harry Creek, it's quickly becoming a nightmare. All he wants is to do his uncomplicated mid-level diplomatic job with Earth's State Department. But his past training and skills get him tapped to save the planet — and to protect pet store owner Robin Baker, whose own past holds the key to the whereabouts of that lost sheep. Doing both will take him from lava-strewn battlefields to alien halls of power. All in a day's work. Maybe it's time for a raise.

This book is so weird. Death by farting. A human/sheep hybrid. An ironic religious cult. There's sci-fi... and then there's Scalzi.

I'll be honest - this was my least favorite of his books that I've read. Old Man's War and the rest were great, though, so maybe it is inevitable that one of his books will fall short for me. Don't get me wrong - I still think he's great writer and I normally really like his tongue-in-cheek sense of humor (really evident on Scalzi's blog). On this one, though, I had a hard time getting past the weirdness. In the moments when I did, there was a lot to like about this book. The rest of the time, though... weird.

Buy The Android's Dream on Amazon.

Review: Agent to the Stars

Agent to the Stars was John Scalzi's first novel. As he explains in the book's introduction, he wrote it in 1997 as a "practice novel," never expecting it to be published. *

The spacefaring Yherajk have come to Earth to meet us and to begin humanity's first interstellar friendship. There's just one problem: they're hideously ugly and they smell like rotting fish.

So getting humanity's trust is a challenge. The Yherajk need someone to help them close the deal.

Enter Thomas Stein, who knows something about closing deals. He's one of Hollywood's hottest young agents. But although Stein may have just concluded the biggest deal of his career, it's quite another thing to negotiate for entire alien race. To earn his percentage this time, he's going to need all the smarts, skills, and wits he can muster.

I thought this was just going to be a funny sci-fi book - which it was, mostly - but then it got all serious and I liked that, too. The first part of the book, the section that introduces Stein to the aliens and us to the problem, is campy and fun, with enough weight to the characters to engage the reader. The latter half of the book is still campy, but deals with some pretty heavy concepts in a somewhat lighthearted manner. I'm not really sure what I think about some of the decisions the characters made, actually, but I still enjoyed the book.

So, is Agent to the Stars worth reading? Yes, but especially for fans of Scalzi's work and anyone who loves a good sci-fi B-movie.

Buy Agent to the Stars on Amazon.

* If you Google around, you can find Agent to the Stars as a free online book, but its not quite the same thing as the published version. Scazi (as he explains in the book's intro) updated the story a bit for this addition.

Review: Zoë's Tale

Zoë's Tale is the fourth book in John Scalzi's Old Man's War series. (Here are the links to my reviews for the previous books in this series: Old Man's War, The Ghost Brigades and The Last Colony.) The events in Zoë's Tale happen in parallel with The Last Colony and, where the previous books are told from John and Jane's points of view, this story is told from their adopted daughter Zoë's viewpoint.

For those of us who have already read The Last Colony, this is great companion piece. The overall plot is the same, so there are no twists and turns, but instead there is depth. For example, I knew when a major character was going to die and was still moved, almost to tears, over that character's death. Scalzi's treatment of that scene was well-written and just seemed spot on for what a teen girl would feel.

Still, in some ways, I wish I could have read this on its own and I think someone who has not read the rest of the series may actually get more out of it than I did. [If you want a virgin eyes opinion, I suggest you go read this review by Jen of Devourer of Books. (Then come back here!)]

Scalzi has said (on his blog) that he wrote Zoë's Tale to be "young adult" friendly. I think he's pulled it off quite well and that teens would enjoy this book.

Buy Zoe's Tale on Amazon.

We love Young Adult Books

I will never apologize for my unabashed love of young adult books. As Jezebel said in reference to a Publishers Weekly article, We Are All 14-Year-Old Girls. They may have meant it tongue in cheek, but I don't care.

From the PW article:

Another book that has adults happily clutching it is The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins. A real page-turner of a dystopian adventure set in a future society that deals with larger themes that adults are really sinking their teeth into. This is a challenging book to book talk, as on the surface it deals with kids killing kids at the behest of the government. Adults look askance when I say that, but then I put the book in their hands and say, “Read it. It’s so much more than that.” Again, adults are proving to be less patient than kids. I had a woman who was actually whining about the release date of the sequel. “I’ve got to wait until September?!"

I promise, that wasn't me. (Though it could have been!)

Stealing from John Scalzi, I'll also note that this year's Nebula Award winner was a YA-SF book, Powers by Ursula K. Le Guin. Actually, its more than that:

Observers of the science fiction field will note the Nebula Award for Best Novel was won this year by a YA book, that the Tiptree Award is co-shared by a YA novel, and that in the Hugo Best Novel category, two and a half of the books nominated are also YA (the “half” in this case being Zoe’s Tale, written to be YA-friendly but shelved with the adult SF).

Those of us who like YA books are in good company.

On a related note, S. E. Hinton spoke at last weekend's LA Festival of Books and Jacket Copy has a good article summarizing her talk. Hinton wrote The Outsiders* and, for those of you who may not be familiar with her story, is credited with basically inventing the YA genre as it exists today. She was 16 when The Outsiders was published. (This fact makes me feel bad about myself. At 16, I was a miserable human being, not publishing groundbreaking fiction.) Its an interesting article because it raises a question, however briefly: can adults write genuine books for young adults? I think so, but it's worth thinking about.

*The book, not the movie, despite the fact that I used a movie poster to illustrate this post. But how could I resist? Matt Dillon was dreeeaaaamyyy. Unless you were a Ralph Macchio kind of girl.

Review: The Last Colony

The Last Colony is the third book in John Scalzi's Old Man's War series. After first meeting John Perry and Jane Sagan in Old Man's War and meeting their adopted daughter Zoë in The Ghost Brigades, The Last Colony is the story of how they move to a new planet, dubbed Roanoke, to lead settlers from all the major human worlds in the formation of a new colony. What they didn't realize when they accepted the job, though, is that they and the colony are merely pawns in a political game. And while John, Jane and Zoë didn't get themselves into this morass, they can only rely on themselves - and maybe Zoë's devoted Obin followers - to get out of it.

OMW was a real heart-pumping action kind of book. Things slowed down and took a more introspective turn in Ghost Brigades. Last Colony, again, features less action than OMW, but also less philosophy than Ghost Brigades. Instead, we get an intriguing political thriller. I particularly liked the insights this book had into some of the non-human cultures. This is a great book, one that I relished and made me sigh with satisfaction when I put it down.

All in all, I loved this trilogy.* I loved OMW best of the three, but really, these are all marvelous books. I recommend them to everyone, not just regular readers of sci-fi.

Buy The Last Colony on Amazon. And, seriously, do. Have I not hyped John Scalzi enough yet?

*Yes, I know its not a trilogy anymore, with the publication of Zoe's Tale, but it was originally written that way and these three books form a beginning, a middle and an end. I haven't read Zoe's Tale yet, but I get the feeling that it is a special sauce to the trilogy, not a new direction.

Review: The Ghost Brigades

The Ghost Brigades is the sequel to Old Man's War. It is, though, a very different book. It is set in the same universe - a dangerous world, where the Colonial Defense Forces have genetically transformed humans into crack soldiers, fighting against alien races for the same planets to colonize. Even better than the regular soldiers are the elite members of the Special Forces, who are grown in a lab, using the DNA from the dead. When military scientist Charles Boutin turns traitor and provokes a war, the CDF needs to find out why. Enter Jared Dirac, created from Boutin's DNA and loaded with his electronic memories.

But when the memory transplant appears to fail, Jared is given over to the Ghost Brigades. At first Jared is a perfect soldier, but as memories surface, he begins to intuit the reasons for Boutin's betrayal. ... Time is running out: the [enemy] alliance is preparing its offensive, and some of them plan worse things than humanity's mere military defeat ....

As I said, The Ghost Brigade is quite different from OMW. While there is action, it's not an action book. There's quite a bit of talking and philosophizing, lot of time spent on the ethics and politics of this society. I read a couple of reviews on Amazon and Librarything by people who disliked that about this book, but I thought it was really interesting. But what really drew me in was Jared. Even in a society that doesn't always regard the Special Forces as human, Jared is an outsider. But I found him to be very sympathetic (especially since we the readers spend much of the book inside his head). At certain points in the story, my heart really went out to Jared.

While it doesn't have quite the same heart-pounding excitement of Old Man's War, The Ghost Brigades is a wonderful book. I highly recommend it. On to the third book in this series, The Last Colony!

Buy The Ghost Brigades on Amazon.

Review: Old Man's War

As I previously mentioned, my husband and I have been tearing through the Old Man's War series by John Scalzi. So I was amused to read, just the other day, a review of Old Man's War by one of my favorite book bloggers, Jen from Devourer of Books. As she makes clear, Jen's not a sci-fi fan, but she enjoyed the book. In contrast, I am a fan of sci-fi and I loved it. My husband? One of the biggest sci-fi fans I know and he adored OMW, calling it one of the best sci-fi books he's read in the past five years, second only to Ender's Game (which he was remiss in not reading until I shoved it into his hands two years ago). All of this is just to say that while Old Man's War is a good read for someone not familiar with the genre, its even better for a reader who is.

So... why? Probably a million reasons, but here's one. Scalzi has done an amazing job of borrowing stealing tropes, characters, scenes, futuristic concepts, you name it, from a dozen or so of the best sci-fi novels (most obviously Starship Troopers by Heinlein, but Heinlein's Time Enough for Love and Friday are in there, too), gutting them, turning them inside out and handing them back to you, saying, yeah, you didn't know it could turn out like this, huh? Which is not to say that this book slaps you upside the head, but its an action book and it moves fast and its making me talk write in run on sentences. I love it when a book does that.

Oh, you want to know what its about? Okay, here's the back of the book blurb:

John Perry did two things on his 75th birthday. First he visited his wife’s grave. Then he joined the army.

The good news is that humanity finally made it into interstellar space. The bad news is that planets fit to live on are scarce—and alien races willing to fight us for them are common. So: we fight. To defend Earth, and to stake our own claim to planetary real estate. Far from Earth, the war has been going on for decades: brutal, bloody, unyielding.

Earth itself is a backwater. The bulk of humanity’s resources are in the hands of the Colonial Defense Force. Everybody knows that when you reach retirement age, you can join the CDF. They don’t want young people; they want people who carry the knowledge and skills of decades of living. You’ll be taken off Earth and never allowed to return. You’ll serve two years at the front. And if you survive, you’ll be given a generous homestead stake of your own, on one of our hard-won colony planets.

John Perry is taking that deal. He has only the vaguest idea what to expect. Because the actual fight, light-years from home, is far, far harder than he can imagine—and what he will become is far stranger.

So, yeah. It's good. Go read it. Or at the very least, go read John Scalzi's blog Whatever, because he's funny. But seriously, read the book.

Buy Old Man's War on Amazon.