femtoreviews

John Crowley, Engine Summer, 1979.

What shall I say about this book? It's set in the far future, and revolves around the far future's past; it hits on a point about the telephone which has always bothered me; it's small, and simpler than Crowley's later work. I don't know if I like it. I was quite disturbed by his derailing the narrative arc; his concept has been used before, but nowhere have I seen it used so effectively. A second reading is quite different from the first.

eub 9/96

When I went through Brunner in high school, the town library didn't have this one, which is often called his best. It's more fun to read than, say, The Sheep Look Up. It's got some interesting happenings and ideas, despite the musty odor of the late 60s. (Reading dated millenarianism is like talking with a solipsist.) I like Brunner's musical scene, but he must have underestimated the backward-compatibility motivation for three-chord and four-on-the-floor. The AI assumed for Shalmaneser is pretty funny; the secret behind the what's-their-names is implausible enough that it rather annoyed me.

eub 6/96

Apparently the author wanted to push all of the usual genre buttons, and to be coy about it too. Give you a fresh look at the genre, maybe, but it irritated me. This mood was aggravated by the cast of characters, whom I found variously shallow and annoying. Now I'm making this sound like a really lousy book, which it wasn't -- I'm sure there are people would enjoy it: it was competently written and reasonably stylish. I'm told that this is not necessarily the place to start with Brust, so maybe I'll look elsewhere.

I figured this would fit in between Crowley's Love and Sleep and Demonomania. It's a short book, centered on the relationship between a girl who is imprisoned as demonically possessed and the priest who is assigned to her. Worth reading. Worthless review.

eub 9/96