I am really waffling on giving this a 2 or 3 out of 5. I’d give it a 2 just cause I was glad when it was done, and parts of it I little said (out loud even) “now this is just dumb.” I’ll give it a 3 though just out of charity. I’m amazed that the movie Blade Runner came out of this book, though now I have a greater understanding of why the films script was a tad muddled.
While I understand what the author was going for with the whole future folks’ obsession with living animals, it just seemed so silly to me. The whole android psychology aspect was fairly interesting, but Mercerism didn’t do anything for me at all. In the end it was hard to care about any of the books characters, and I always see that as the worst mark any story can have against it.
Oh and one final thing that bugged me the entire time. Why would the android producing corporation be hell bent on making replicants that are indistinguishable from normal humans? Would it be so much easier to just make all androids so they have an easily distinguishable feature to show they aren’t a normal human? I’m thinking no belly button.
Then instead of making everyone take a stupid question and answer game, the cops just say show me the belly button. Quick, simple, and there ya go. Besides I never really got the point of hunting down the androids in the first place. Not like they’re going to live very long anyway, just leave them be. Granted if they killed someone you’d just treat them like any normal crook.
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The 2nd book in the A Song of Ice and Fire series by George R. R. Martin continues with more misery for house Stark. Kings and their attempts at conquest fill the pages of this novel, with no less that 4 contesting each other. I’m still greatly enjoying the way Martin jumps perspectives between the various characters of the book. Feeling the events from different points of view gives the story a little more life than if it was constrained to only one character.
I’m eager to get started with the next book in the series just to see what happens the the Stark children. That and the dwarf of Lannister is becoming a favorite too. Plenty of books left in the series, so who knows where it’ll all end up.
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I really enjoy the Discworld series. I’m slowly working through the series, with the help of the library next door to my office. This book has more fun with the magic of Discworld, and the gender politics of its magic users.
The ending was a bit of a jumbled mess, but that was probably the point. I can see this as setting up people, places, and events for use in the future books. The humor was as sharp and witty as ever.
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I bought this book for my wife after hearing the author on a podcast, Dragon Page: Cover to Cover. After having just finished reading Soon I Will Be Invincible by Austin Grossman, I was still in the superhero genre mode so I thought I’d give Karma Girl a try. There’s a lot of tongue in cheek going on in this book both figuratively and literally. Let’s not delude ourselves, this is a romance novel… just with superpowers thrown in.
Now I’m not one for trashy romance novels, but there’s more than that to this book. My best summation is that it’s a fun ride. The twists and secrets revealed are fairly easy to pick out along the way, but that’s half the fun. I thought this book was a blast to read, and as long as you know what type of book you’re getting into… anyone should enjoy it.
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I just finished listening to the audio version of this book. It was read by the author, but dialog was performed by actors. An amazing performance all around. I’m going to go ahead and give this one a rating of 5. I loved it on a Harry Potter level, but we’ll have to see how the rest of the series plays out.
The story takes place in England in 19th century-ish time period, but in a slightly different parallel world to our own. There’s talking polar bears after all. That and every human has a spirit extension of themselves called a daemon. Each daemon takes the form of an animal that in some way represents the personality of the person they’re attached to. Hurt the critter and it hurts the person, and vice versus. Did I mention the daemons can talk?
Anyway, the story follows the adventures of a girl name Lyra and her daemon Pantalaimon. Character development is wonderful, and the action moves along at a quick tempo. This is the first of a trilogy, so even though some of the conflict is resolved by the end of the book it doesn’t finish with a conclusive way. Unfortunately, the library doesn’t have the audio version of the next book. I’ll have to either pester them to purchase it, or clear some books out of the way to make room for the dead tree version.
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