Matthew's Journal

I have (probably) done all the reading I'm going to do for this category, and propose to vote thus:

1) Ancillary Justice [excellent book, I loved this]
2) Neptune's Brood [good fun, compelling story, interesting economics]
3) Parasite [enjoyable, but terribly predictable]
4) No Award
The Wheel of Time
Warbound [I got 11% of the way through. Terrible.]


Ancillary Justice reminds me somewhat of Iain M. Banks, though without quite the large-scale space battles. I really enjoy this ~human protagonist in a world of high tech and strong AI style, and the plot is twisty and interesting, and the politics engaging. I loved this book so much that I immediately bought it for my Dad. Really, read it.

Neptune's Brood was good, but not excellent. The protagonist is a specialist in faster-than-light-travel scams in a universe where the economy has evolved to transmit debt across vast distance, and it rapidly becomes clear that someone wants them to stop what they're investigating. This has some lovely parts (communist squid, goth spaceship morgue-cum-chapel, an interlude on the effects of vast pressure on a body), though I wonder if was originally serialised, as some points get repeated often enough for it to grate at times.

I saw through the main plot point of Parasite within about the first two chapters; so while I kept reading because it was engaging, I felt it lacked a bit of narrative tension. It's the first of a trilogy, and has set up an interesting premise, so perhaps the next two books will be better.

Warbound was awful. You know how you sometimes go to the cinema to see a stupid blockbuster? Where the White American Dude will save the world, get the girl, and shoot a bunch of baddies? Where there will be only about 2 characters, no moral nuance, and a pile of prolematic imagery? But you switch your brain off for a couple of hours and watch the crazy stunts and massive explosions, and that's quite good fun? This book was like that, but without any of the fun bits, and the prose was dreadfully pedestrian. I got about 11% of the way through before giving up.

I'm not going to have time to read the entire Wheel of Time before the voting deadline, so I've moved on to the novellas. I think voters should have a chance to read/watch a work before voting on it, so I don't think a 13-large-book epic is really fair to nominate. If I have time, I may read the first book, and if I love it I might reconsider not voting for it, but really I'd have rather the first book had been nominated when it came out.