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Zuky the BookBum (15 KP) rated A Pleasure and a Calling in Books
Mar 15, 2018
Also read my review here: http://bookbum.weebly.com/book-reviews/a-pleasure-and-a-calling-by-phil-hogan
<b><I>You won’t remember Mr Heming. He showed you round your comfortable home, suggested a sustainable financial package, negotiated a price with the owner and called you with the good news. The less good news is that, all these years later, he still has the key.
That’s absurd, you laugh. Of all the many hundreds of houses he has sold, why would he still have the key to mine?
The answer to that is, he has the keys to them all.</b></i>
This is a truly chilling novel. With such a unique plot line, excellent narration and beautiful descriptions, I’m amazed this hasn’t found itself being more popular. After scanning this books lower reviews, I can understand some people's frustrations with this because they were expecting a thriller, and while this technically does class as a thriller, it’s not what most people associate with thrillers. When you think of a thriller, you think Jason Bourne, fast-paced, exciting, and, of course, thrilling, so when you open this to find it’s slow-paced narration of Heming’s day-to-day life you’re going to be a bit miffed. So don’t go into this thinking your socks are going to be blown off in super fast-paced action.
Heming is a seriously unreliable narrator. Thanks to his wonderful storytelling, we’re drawn into his life, eager to know what happens next with almost no regard to the horrible things he’s actually doing! The narration is amazing at masking the creepiness of the situations Heming puts himself into, making you want to like his character, when really we know we shouldn’t.
Each character in this novel was presented in an excellent way, giving you enough to know about them without things becoming confusing and too heavy. As for the plot, well, what can I say? It was magnificent! It was so well thought out and solidly presented. I had wanted to read this novel for such a long time, I’m remarkably pleased it didn’t let me down, not even in the slightest!
I don’t have a lot more to say about this other than I loved it completely, I don’t think it let itself down at all and I was prepared for it to be a slow moving, almost dream like novel (which is a writing style I personally adore). In many ways, this is a very Lolita-esque novel, the unreliable narrator, the slow moving pace, in-depth and beautiful descriptions, deep infatuation etc etc, so if Lolita was a novel you enjoyed, for all of those reasons, then definitely give this a try.
<b><I>You won’t remember Mr Heming. He showed you round your comfortable home, suggested a sustainable financial package, negotiated a price with the owner and called you with the good news. The less good news is that, all these years later, he still has the key.
That’s absurd, you laugh. Of all the many hundreds of houses he has sold, why would he still have the key to mine?
The answer to that is, he has the keys to them all.</b></i>
This is a truly chilling novel. With such a unique plot line, excellent narration and beautiful descriptions, I’m amazed this hasn’t found itself being more popular. After scanning this books lower reviews, I can understand some people's frustrations with this because they were expecting a thriller, and while this technically does class as a thriller, it’s not what most people associate with thrillers. When you think of a thriller, you think Jason Bourne, fast-paced, exciting, and, of course, thrilling, so when you open this to find it’s slow-paced narration of Heming’s day-to-day life you’re going to be a bit miffed. So don’t go into this thinking your socks are going to be blown off in super fast-paced action.
Heming is a seriously unreliable narrator. Thanks to his wonderful storytelling, we’re drawn into his life, eager to know what happens next with almost no regard to the horrible things he’s actually doing! The narration is amazing at masking the creepiness of the situations Heming puts himself into, making you want to like his character, when really we know we shouldn’t.
Each character in this novel was presented in an excellent way, giving you enough to know about them without things becoming confusing and too heavy. As for the plot, well, what can I say? It was magnificent! It was so well thought out and solidly presented. I had wanted to read this novel for such a long time, I’m remarkably pleased it didn’t let me down, not even in the slightest!
I don’t have a lot more to say about this other than I loved it completely, I don’t think it let itself down at all and I was prepared for it to be a slow moving, almost dream like novel (which is a writing style I personally adore). In many ways, this is a very Lolita-esque novel, the unreliable narrator, the slow moving pace, in-depth and beautiful descriptions, deep infatuation etc etc, so if Lolita was a novel you enjoyed, for all of those reasons, then definitely give this a try.
Zuky the BookBum (15 KP) rated Two Days Gone (Ryan DeMarco Mystery #1) in Books
Mar 15, 2018
Also read my review here: http://bookbum.weebly.com/book-reviews/two-days-gone-by-randall-silvis
NOW AVAILABLE!
<i><b>But doesnt every guilty man hide his deeds behind his words and hide his thoughts behind his smile?</i></b>
This was perfectly set up to be a great novel, but unfortunately, like so many novel nowadays, it instead failed to excite and thrill me, and in the end, turned into an extremely mediocre read.
It wasnt until around 70% of the way through this book that I realised how dislikable DeMarco, our supposed hero, was. His anger and grief was completely understandable after the loss of his wife and child, but I felt he was unnecessarily unkind to his peers and overly passive aggressive in general. <spoiler>Plus can we talk about how much of a shitty cop he was? Getting into a car with a bleeding out dead body to chase an armed, highly fragile man and not alerting anyone? <b>Murdering</b> the main suspect on a case just because he could? Only in fiction.</spoiler>However, out of our two main characters, I was happy to read more about DeMarco than Thomas. I found Thomas PoV to be slow and a little pointless. Again, I understood his anguish and shame etc, but I guess I just couldnt connect to his character and summon up the right emotions to care about his story that much.
This was a slow read for me, but I kept pushing through it because: 1) it wasnt <i>that</i> bad and 2) I was led to believe, by some other reviews, that an amazing twist was going to be revealed. <i>Unfortunately,</i> we got the amazing twist and my reaction was more of an oh than a whoa!! <spoiler>I guess I wanted to the book to feel more realistic, I wanted some innate human darkness to be the cause of the murders, I didnt want a book about revenge.</spoiler> The plot, overall, wasnt too bad, there were some exciting moments, but for the most part this could only just hold my interest.
<i>Two Days Gone</i> didnt grab my attention well enough for me to rate it anything higher than 3 stars. It was an average story, with average characters and an average plot twist. Its a shame because had high hopes for this one, but nevermind, you win some, you lose some. I see Amazon have specified this as a Ryan DeMarco novel so Im assuming we may be seeing a series come out from Silvis, but I wont be keeping up with it.
Thanks to Netgalley and Sourcebooks Landmark for giving me the opportunity to read this in exchange for an honest review.
NOW AVAILABLE!
<i><b>But doesnt every guilty man hide his deeds behind his words and hide his thoughts behind his smile?</i></b>
This was perfectly set up to be a great novel, but unfortunately, like so many novel nowadays, it instead failed to excite and thrill me, and in the end, turned into an extremely mediocre read.
It wasnt until around 70% of the way through this book that I realised how dislikable DeMarco, our supposed hero, was. His anger and grief was completely understandable after the loss of his wife and child, but I felt he was unnecessarily unkind to his peers and overly passive aggressive in general. <spoiler>Plus can we talk about how much of a shitty cop he was? Getting into a car with a bleeding out dead body to chase an armed, highly fragile man and not alerting anyone? <b>Murdering</b> the main suspect on a case just because he could? Only in fiction.</spoiler>However, out of our two main characters, I was happy to read more about DeMarco than Thomas. I found Thomas PoV to be slow and a little pointless. Again, I understood his anguish and shame etc, but I guess I just couldnt connect to his character and summon up the right emotions to care about his story that much.
This was a slow read for me, but I kept pushing through it because: 1) it wasnt <i>that</i> bad and 2) I was led to believe, by some other reviews, that an amazing twist was going to be revealed. <i>Unfortunately,</i> we got the amazing twist and my reaction was more of an oh than a whoa!! <spoiler>I guess I wanted to the book to feel more realistic, I wanted some innate human darkness to be the cause of the murders, I didnt want a book about revenge.</spoiler> The plot, overall, wasnt too bad, there were some exciting moments, but for the most part this could only just hold my interest.
<i>Two Days Gone</i> didnt grab my attention well enough for me to rate it anything higher than 3 stars. It was an average story, with average characters and an average plot twist. Its a shame because had high hopes for this one, but nevermind, you win some, you lose some. I see Amazon have specified this as a Ryan DeMarco novel so Im assuming we may be seeing a series come out from Silvis, but I wont be keeping up with it.
Thanks to Netgalley and Sourcebooks Landmark for giving me the opportunity to read this in exchange for an honest review.
Goddess in the Stacks (553 KP) rated Autonomous: A Novel in Books
Dec 22, 2018
Autonomous is an interesting story that poses a lot of moral questions. It doesn't really take sides; both the pharmaceutical pirate and the agents tracking her down are painted in sympathetic ways, as if we're meant to like them all. We see why Jack is a pharmaceutical pirate; medicine is only available to those rich enough to pay for it, so the poor stay poor and sick and short-lived. She wants to change that. She reverse-engineers drugs, manufactures them, and distributes them to the needy through her associates.
Meanwhile, Eliasz is a conflicted military agent who is sexually attracted to robots. Or at least to his partner, Paladin, though a flashback shows what might have been the start of his attraction to robots. Paladin is probably the single most interesting character in the entire book, as she muses on the nature of being indentured, and searches through her memories and the internet for information about her situation.
The book does have LGBT content - Jack is bisexual, and Eliasz is - robosexual? Is that a thing? Paladin could be called nonbinary or trans; she repeatedly mentions that gender isn't a thing to robots, but because she's a military robot, most people call her a he at the beginning of the book. She learns the brain inside her is female, and to make Eliasz more comfortable with his attraction, she decides to use female pronouns. Eliasz does use the F word to refer to himself being attracted to the robot at the beginning, when they were using male pronouns. This puzzles Paladin for a while, causing her to search the term and figure out what Eliasz meant by its use.
There's a lot of complex world-building in this book that is barely brushed past. From the corporations who own patents covering everything, to the system of indenture that covers humans as well as robots, to the bio-domes that cover cities (but it's livable outside the biodomes, so why are they needed?), to the new federations that cover continents that used to be divided into several countries - there's a LOT going on. And there's not just robots, but also some pretty advanced cybernetics implanted in humans as well as an everpresent network of data that can be tapped into with implants that everyone has.
Ultimately, for as complex as the world is, and cohesive as the plot is, I'm left wondering who, if anyone, was in the right in this story. I'm not sure if we're supposed to be happy with the ending or not. I've seen other reviews saying Neuromancer was a way better book in a similar vein, and I actually have copy of that waiting to be read. So we'll see.
You can find all my reviews at http://goddessinthestacks.com
Meanwhile, Eliasz is a conflicted military agent who is sexually attracted to robots. Or at least to his partner, Paladin, though a flashback shows what might have been the start of his attraction to robots. Paladin is probably the single most interesting character in the entire book, as she muses on the nature of being indentured, and searches through her memories and the internet for information about her situation.
The book does have LGBT content - Jack is bisexual, and Eliasz is - robosexual? Is that a thing? Paladin could be called nonbinary or trans; she repeatedly mentions that gender isn't a thing to robots, but because she's a military robot, most people call her a he at the beginning of the book. She learns the brain inside her is female, and to make Eliasz more comfortable with his attraction, she decides to use female pronouns. Eliasz does use the F word to refer to himself being attracted to the robot at the beginning, when they were using male pronouns. This puzzles Paladin for a while, causing her to search the term and figure out what Eliasz meant by its use.
There's a lot of complex world-building in this book that is barely brushed past. From the corporations who own patents covering everything, to the system of indenture that covers humans as well as robots, to the bio-domes that cover cities (but it's livable outside the biodomes, so why are they needed?), to the new federations that cover continents that used to be divided into several countries - there's a LOT going on. And there's not just robots, but also some pretty advanced cybernetics implanted in humans as well as an everpresent network of data that can be tapped into with implants that everyone has.
Ultimately, for as complex as the world is, and cohesive as the plot is, I'm left wondering who, if anyone, was in the right in this story. I'm not sure if we're supposed to be happy with the ending or not. I've seen other reviews saying Neuromancer was a way better book in a similar vein, and I actually have copy of that waiting to be read. So we'll see.
You can find all my reviews at http://goddessinthestacks.com
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