I’ve been working through the City States series. Finally, in proper order. Working isn’t the right word, it implies work and this is the opposite of work…fun. There’s something about these books that just really speaks to me.
This one, book two in the series that can technically be read in any order, is considerably more linear and less experimental than its predecessor, which works well for my brain. Though it’s still plenty odd, compellingly so. The plot finds its protagonist, a former anarchist, a digital savant and an addict, a man of many names and a criminal past, trapped in an unenviable position of being something of a collaborator with the very regime he had once fought against, the regime that has cost him so dearly and not just him, but also his two best friends. And so, to quiet his conscience among other things, he stumbles through his days high on synth, the latest in experimental mind altering substances. Until circumstances and revelations I won’t discuss to maintain the suspense force him to make some radical choices and changes. That may sound fairly straight forward, but the world of City States in many things but. It’s a fascinating, complex futuristic composition of intricately developed geopolitics and exciting destinations. The stories of City States are exotic, erotic and extremely entertaining. The author’s narrative has a very specific beat to it, it reads very, very quickly, but skimps on nothing and every so often there’s a turn of phrase that just wows. It’s somewhat erratic, but perfectly coherent. If it were music and I liked jazz, I’d describe it as jazz. It’s inventive, original and very enjoyable. Synth itself is an absolutely fascinating invention, a very elaborate sort of mental elevation that puts conventional methods of getting high to shame and makes you understand the protagonist’s addiction. So yeah, lots of fun, easy one sitting read and (pun or no pun) quite a trip. Recommended.
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If you read popular thrillers (and of course you do, that’s how they got so popular in the first place), sooner or later you’ll stumble upon Moretti. Because everyone’s got their version of women in peril and it seems some excel at it more than others. Mind you, most of the plots are just variations on preset themes…it’s difficult to hit originality when seemingly everyone and their monkey are out writing similar things, so tell me if you heard this one before…
A woman takes in a college friend she hasn’t seen in 20 years who then slowly but surely begins to take over her life. Single White Female and all that. Enough gaslighting to send you back to Victorian times. Is she going mad or it someone out to get her? Is a former friend in need a friend indeed? Is it worth it to trade in some sanity for free mad/cook/driver services? And just what did take place 20 years ago with her old college friends that has scarred them all so? So yes, that sounds very much like great many other plots out there. The question was just of doing it right and, to her credit, Moretti does. She makes up for the dearth of originality with oodles of deliciously stretched out suspense, really good writing and some really fun plot twists. She may not be inventing the wheel here, but she tunes it very nicely. Don’t overanalyze this if you can help it, because obviously taking in someone you haven’t known or been around in two decades without any prior research (or even a brief google search) and then relying on them to help your struggling marriage along is a terrible idea. Just like saying nothing while your spouse gets laid off and decides to waste obscene amounts of money on new age style self improvement is a terrible idea. I mean that leaves Penelope (occasionally known as Pip) and her family with only (gasp) a quarter of a million dollars in income instead of the customary 500K a year. Yes, the struggle is real in white privilege land. The struggle wasn’t real in college either, when five privileged youths graduated and decided to take a fun year off and live in a renovated church as a sort of lovelorn commune/makeshift family, all of them but one completely obsessed with the vaguely charming aspiring writer named Jack. The pretentious five named themselves The Spires, because it was meant to be the highest peak of their lives and, you know, church, and wouldn’t you know it the youth, the drinking, the toxic obsessions, etc. turned out to be a recipe for a proper sh*tshow. Enough to send them all in separate directions for all this time…until now. Anyway, I know I’m making fun of it, it’s easy enough to, but really the book was surprisingly decent despite itself. The dynamics were just right. And the writing was well above average. he author did an excellent job of conveying Penelope's frazzled, disoriented and increasingly frightened state of mind, which is crucial for a psychological thriller.Made for a really decent introduction to a new author, one I wouldn’t be opposed to reading in the future. Recommended. Thanks Netgalley. Some of my favorite stories feature primates, from Planet of the Apes to King Kong. So this book had an immediate appeal. The author it seems has had a long and productive career thus far and this is my first time reading him, though this book served as a most auspicious of introductions. Proper literary fiction and a fascinating concept. Not a new one or unheard of by any means, in fact it’s practically a fictionalized account of Project Nim. Which, for those who don’t know, is a documentary based on the language experiement conducted from the early age with a ridiculously adorable chimp named Nim Chimpsky. Nim also wasn’t the first, best or only simian learner of sign language. There’s a totally awesome gorilla named Koko, who is absolutely worth checking out on Youtube. But Nim, like Sam the protagonist of this novel, are both chimps, the species that share the insane 98.9% of our DNA.
Sam is a bright precocious youngster when we meet him, too much to handle for Guy Schermerhorn, the professor experimentally raising him and when the existing assistants prove insufficient, he hires new ones, Enter Aimee, a shy but intrigued 21 year old college girl with zero experience. But then again, none is needed, because from the instance they meet, Sam and Aimee share a connection. They become inseparable. Even when the circumstances conspire to separate them. And thus unfolds the story of the talking ape. And a woman who loves him. While definitely no Planet of the Apes, this novel does echo King Kong in a way. It is a love story, unorthodox as it is. In fact, at times it’s positively a love triangle between Guy, Aimee and Sam. It isn’t a simple kind of love, more of a potent brew of romantic, parental/childlike, caretaker/cared for, etc. Two outcasts who don’t really belong with their own kind and find a strange codependency with each other. It’s desperate, tragic and can’t possibly end well, but it isn’t so much the beauty that kills the beast here as it is the hubristically mismanaged expectations of others. In having been raised as a person, Sam was brought up against his very nature and he ends up belonging to no world. A tragic character, really. Aimee is tragic too, but in a different way, the obsessiveness of her love and devotion is her Sisyphean boulder. She can’t walk away, doesn’t have Guy’s calculating pragmatism to guide her. Or Sam’s legal owner, Guy’s own professor’s sheer evil practicality. Evil’s apt here actually, the guy is fictionally rendered as a comic book antagonist, appearance to attitude. It stands to mention that the novel takes place about four decades ago before animal rights (apes and otherwise) became a thing, so Sam is pretty much at mercy or whoever owns him and their designs on him. As are all the other apes in this book. So yes, it’s very sad, very disturbing and might be too much for some readers. Readers seem to have gotten more dainty these days, so yeah, consider this to be a warning for animal abuse. But seriously, shouldn’t people try to read challenging things…something that stretches their emotional boundaries as much as the intellectual ones? I believe so. And this book certainly does that. It posits large questions about the meaning of language and sentience and faith and ability to genuinely communicate and, of course, love…and it also absolutely guts you emotionally. There, you’ve been warned. It isn’t so much a question of do we strive to communicate with other species beyond natural means, it’s question of should we. But then again you meet a cute chimp in overalls who knows sign language and you just go…talk to me. Can’t help it. It’s too fascinating. Though, of course, words or no words, so often our interactions (with animals or people) say more about us than them. Either way…talk to me will speak to you. It’s just that different readers might hear different things. I enjoyed it very much. Terrific writing and themes of great interest to me. Great read. Recommended. Thanks Netgalley. I’m a serious reader, but not a series reader. Not traditionally. But that being said, if I find one worth the time, the completist in me kicks in and wants to read all of them. So when I discovered the bizarre delight that is The City States series, I’ve determined them to be absolutely worth it. The determination was made solely based on the appeal of the latest books in the cycle, The Invisible and The Paperclip, though the fact that the author seems like a genuinely nice person appreciative of his fans certainly helped.
Normally it would be difficult to impossible to get into a series began so out of order, but alas these novels are all created as standalones. There is a sequential order, but you can read out of it without too much disorientation. And so this is how it all begun, with this collection, comprising three novellas that introduce you to the strange world of the author’s imagination. Conceptually intriguing as always, but very different beasts, each one. Both from each other and from the later novels I’ve read. Specifically…the first novella is really out there, this is the author as his most abstract and experimental. For my linear narrative craving brain, it was interesting but not necessarily engaging. The second novella was much more in line with what was expected, featuring Detective Ratner in his first crime solving outing. Yey, said my brain, that’s more like it. And the third novella was somewhere in between, thematically and stylistically. But the overall effect is definitely fascinating and I love the way all these stories interlock together, directly or tangentially. I’m also a fan of the spareness of the narrative, I can barely streamline my reviews, so I really appreciate succinctness done right. And Doubinsky’s books got this really excellent dynamic to them, there is a singular sort of word economy, spare brushstrokes and all that but it manages to render the entire picture perfectly. They also speed by like bullet trains. Quickest reads for the page count, easily. It’s difficult to judge this as a series introduction having the prior knowledge of/experience with the books, but then again having read the more recent books it is fascinating to witness the author’s evolution. So far from the empirical evidence gathered, I’d say he certainly evolved stylistically into a more easily digestible less abstract sort of storyteller. Which works for me. Though who knows what the other books hold. And only one way to find out…Onward. It is my distinct pleasure to be the first to rate and review this book. An unusual but an inspired choice for this reader who has long made it a rule to stay away from movie/tv tie in novels, game to book adaptations, etc. It’s a sound rule, usually, but this time the siren song of Mars was just too much to resist. Who says sound doesn’t travel in space. So does a seemingly elaborate board game require a novel tie in? Yes, yes, it does. Because, you know, it’s Mars, people…how can a mere earthling say no to an armchair trip to the red planet. Who has that kind of restraint? And why would you want to? It’s a dream destination.
And thus my reading of this book. And the bulk of enjoyment of it. Because…Mars. But to be fair it’s also a perfectly good read. It isn’t a great work of literary science fiction, but it isn’t trying or meant to be that. The author has dabbled in her own original sci fi serials and nonfiction sci fi tv guides, etc. and her narrative style has that slick pro, paid per word, write by numbers thing going for it with minimal internalization and maximum action, but it actually works really well here. Not sure if it’s because the world has already been staged and precreated through the game (I’ve never even heard of the game until finding this book), but this mystery set on a newly colonized Mars was well imagined, vividly rendered and, most of all and best of all, genuinely exciting. It read very much like a fun science fiction movie would. It had suspense, sabotage and some serious science…which is as far as I can stretch that alliteration. There was an elaborate plot, featuring a fresh arrival who stumbles into a clandestine plot conceived by rival Martian companies, all striving to commercialize the colonization of Mars. The end goal is making it habitable through (obviously, title) terraforming, but everyone has different ideas on how to go about it and are willing to do whatever it takes to get their way. Even on Mars business and politics rule. Because, of course, wherever people go…there they are, in all their greedy manipulative lying cheating stealing splendor. Can an honest person survive on this terraforming Mars and maintain their integrity? Can Deimos? Well, read and find out. So yeah, this book…so much more than Elon Musk’s wet dream. By now you should be interested in checking this out, ideally, I suppose, depending on my powers of persuasion. But anyway, I enjoyed it very much, it was hugely entertaining and read very quickly for the age count. Overall a very fun space adventure. Recommended. Thanks Netgalley. |
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