Children of Hurin by JRR Tolkein

CONTAINS SPOILERS!

At the risk of having rotten tomatoes thrown at me, I am going to admit: I find Tolkien tedious. I have read the Hobbit and LOTR trilogy several times now, and you know, I didn't find them all that engaging. I DO think the world Tolkien created is absolutely fascinating, but his writing style leaves so very much to be desired and they are such depressing books

And so it was with Children of Hurin. This was the book groups selection for December.

First - I dislike the use of 3 names (or more) for one person. I'd have to go back and count, but I think Turin had about 10 by the end of the tale. I don't see why character's had to go around re-naming everyone and thing.
Second - I dislike the use of 3 names for one place (see same note as above).
Third - Since I can't pronounce any of the names or places, I have a very difficult time remembering what is what. Most annoying. The names all become "mush" (seriously - I think Ahnon...mush).
Forth - I had a difficult time placing where in Middle Earth all this was taking place. I only read part of the intro, perhaps they elaborated more there.

This book was depressing: Hurin was stupid. Turin was stupid. Nienor was stupid. Morewen was stupid. The ELVES were stupid. Elves to Turin, "Don't do that. It's a bad idea. You are aggravating your curse and becoming arrogant." Turin, "I'm going to do it anyway." Elves to Nienor and Morewen, "Don't go. It's a bad idea. There is a large nasty dragon. Just wait here and we'll go." Morewen to Elves, "I'm going to do it anyway." Repeat several times with Men, Dwarves and a Dragon. Honestly? I was rooting for the dragon to just put everyone out of their misery.

I'm all for a book where main characters die - it adds a sense of realism for me - but this book was just too much. I couldn't even feel sorry for the characters as they died, they were so very two dimensional and had no redeaming qualities that said "Hero".

Lastly, I couldn't help but think this was comparable to the Odyssey (Illiad? I get them confused) but set in Middle-Earth. Main character travels far from home with a grievous curse upon his head. Women are left behind to wait. Then the long journey back to find everything is changed. And it all ends very badly.

If you are an avid Tolkien fan, this might be worth reading just because it IS Tolkien. However, I was an avid Tolkien fan and I was underwhelmed. It will be interesting to see what the book group has to say.

The Call of the Cthulhu and other Wierd Stories

This was my Scifi book group’s selection for October. I was quietly hoping we'd pick Dracula as we read Lovecraft last year for October, but the size of Dracula put some people off.

This anthology was much better than The Thing on the Doorstep and other Weird Stories. Or maybe I was just more open to this genre this year. Whatever the case, I found this selection of short stories to be rather interesting and fascinating. There are always exceptions, of course - a couple of the stories seemed to me more streams of consciousness than an actual story. But out of the 15 or so, it was only a couple so-so ones.

I was especially looking forward to the Call of the Cthulhu and found that one disappointing. But at least now I have educated myself a bit on the whole "Cthulu" cult bit that keeps showing up at various scifi conventions.

I would recommend this short story selection - it's a fascinating look at early horror from a master. And take time to read the notes at the back of the book, I found those just as fascinating as the stories themselves.

Spindrift by Allen Steele

This was August's book group selection. About half the group thought it was a fun little space opera and the other half of thought, well, it had issues. I've read the Coyote series by Steele that was published in Azimov's and didn't care for it, and this just supported my opinions on the author's writing style.

Premise of the story is: a response is received back from a suddenly discovered "large object in space" by the SETI team and a mission is hastily put together and sent out to investigate the source. They find a large floating asteroid next to an alien stargate. A small exploratory team (the dissidents from the mission) are sent down to investigate the asteroid while the ship examines the stargate. The story from here follows the group on the asteroid as the captain of the ship succeeds in blowing the ship up. The small survey team is now stranded.

My issues with this story were many; the main characters, Ted and Emily were supposed be having a "quiet ship affair" but everyone knew about it. Can't be quiet if everyone knows people! Romance does not belong in SF. Jared was a convicted criminal who helped an alien race annihilate 1/3 of the earths population, but only served 10 years of a life sentence because they yanked him out of prison to go on this mission. The protagonists of the book find a “hidden” nuclear warhead on the ship and freak out. Where did it come from? Why is the captian keeping it quiet? HELLO! If I’m going to meet a potentially hostile (or peaceful, you don’t konw but want to be prepared) race I sure as heck want to have some firepower on hand. But the whole premise of keeping it secret was ludicrous and then hiding it in front of the shuttle docking area was absurd. And the "first contact" had me rolling my eyes in disbelief. So overall the plot had issues and was pretty standard - too standard for me.

I think this would be better as young adult fiction.

Odyssey by Jack McDevitt

This was July's book group selection. We've also read Chindi by McDevitt to mixed reviews, so I was surprised when this one made it through our convoluted voting process.

Pricilla Hutchins is still with the Academy, this time as manager of the space research agency, the Academy. The Academy is in trouble, their motives and need being questioned by government and big business alike. Meanwhile, out beyond the immediate boundaries of the solar system, pilots are seeing “moonriders” – big, black, spheroid objects that fly in formation. The people on Earth don’t believe there could possibly be such a thing (despite independent sightings) and the Academy is further ridiculed.

An opportunity presents itself in the way of a partially sponsored mission to drop monitoring boxes to watch for these unbelievable objects in space. Gregory McAllister, news journalist and good friend of Hutch, agrees to go on this mission, along with a Senators daughter and the Academy’s political liaison, Eric. While out in space, Hutch and McAllister, find more than the possibility of “moonriders”, they find asteroids being thrown at Earth projects and a threat to the whole of space itself.

Okay, this ones a bit melodramatic, but it is a sci-fi mystery thriller. This is the third book of McDevitt's I’ve read (the other two being Chindi and Omega) and I found this one to be more interesting. The plot wasn’t the greatest, but the story didn’t seem to drag on as it did in the other two. I found myself interested enough to keep turning those pages. McDevitt seems to have a theme in his books, or at least the three that I’ve read now – big mysterious object in space is threatening humanity (or might threaten humanity) and Hutch and McAllister must save the world. So all in all, I liked this book.

Nebula Awards 2008 ed. Ben Bova

My science fiction book group has been reading the Nebula Award selection since 2003. I'm not entirely certain what made us pick up that first one, or even the second, but it's a given come May, we will be reading the newest one. We don't even have to vote when it's on the table.

I thought this years was the strongest compilation I've read yet. This is not saying I felt that every selection was a knockout, but by and far, most of the stories were engaging, interesting and well written. Of particular note were, Burn by James Patrick Kelly and Two Hearts by Peter S. Beagle. I did find some irony in reading The Listeners by James Gunn, a short about people who work on the SETI project because I just finished Rollback by Robert J. Sawyer which was also on the SETI project.

It dawned on me after I finished Beagles short, that I don't think I've ever read The Last Unicorn by him. Shame on me - it is considered a classic. Once I get through my 2008 Hugo Nominees I'll have to fix that.

I will also admit that I am not a huge fan of short stories, but it's good to challenge ones boundaries every once in a while. I guess that's why I've liked my book group so much, it's broadened my reading circle over the years, introducing me to a whole slew of authors that I other wise wouldn't ever have touched on my own. That and they are a fun group of folks.

I recommend reading this years Nebula Awards Showcase.

Alliance Space by CJ Cherryh

Alliance Space is a re-printing of two of Cherry’s Alliance-Union Stories: Merchanter’s Luck and 40,000 from Gahenna. I’ve already read and reviewed 40,000 from Gahenna so I’m just going to be reviewing Merchanter’s Luck here.

I really enjoyed this book. It was a solid, interesting, space opera. Sandor is the Captian of a small merchanter ship called, at the moment, Lucy. Sandor has not had an easy life, his family killed by pirates while he watched, living on the edge of space since then, he’s known as a “marginer” because he works the margins of legal and illegal trade. Sandor gets himself in a whole universe of trouble by following the ship Dublin Again after a one night fling with Allison Reilly to Pell station - which is in Alliance Space, not Union - with a record three consecutive solo jumps. Allison, in a calculating move, convinces Dublin's Old Man to back her and four of her cousins to change ships and use Sandor as a way for the Dubliners to move into new trading space. This move also happens to save Sandor from a nasty investigation into why he is even in Alliance space.

This story is deftly woven and you are pulled along with Allison and her cousin’s desire to be at the helm of their own ship and Sandor’s downward sprial with long gone ghosts and the potential to loose Lucy. The edginess of Sandor and the ruthlessness of the Dubliner's is plausible and well written. I found this to be a very enjoyable read. I didn’t even mind the occasional odd sentence structure that characterizes Cherryh's books.

Eifelheim by Michael Flynn

My draft of this post got lost in the scheme of things, but we'll fix that today. Eifelheim by Michael Flynn was March’s book group selection that nobody finished, but we all wanted to. The group collectively just ran out of time. It happens. Eifelheim was also a Hugo Nominee in 2007 that didn’t come out in paperback until the end of the year so I didn’t have a chance to read it before the Hugo Awards were announced.

Eifelheim is set in Southern Germany in the late 1300's. The Black Plague has begun it’s death march farther north, but to the small village of Oppenheim it is a distant threat. The main character, Dietrich is the spiritual leader of the village and friend to Manfred, the Herr of the lands. It is Dietrich who discovers the Krencken, a strange group of men which resemble large grasshoppers, who have taken up illegal residence in the Herr’s forest. The Herr wants them expelled and it’s Dietrich who persuades him that they have no place to go. It is through Dietrich’s eyes that we watch the metamorphosis of the village attitudes towards these strange men from afar.

There is a second storyline surrounding Tom and Sharon, an historian and a, well, I’m going to call her an astrophysist. Tom has taken an interest in why a small German village named Eifelheim was never repopulated when according to all his charts and modules it should have been. Sharon is exploring the space between space. This second story line wasn’t nearly as interesting as the one with Dietrich, but it had it’s place.

I really enjoyed this book. The nuances of medieval village life that Flynn incorporated added a subtle depth to not only the characters but the world they lived in. It made the appearance of the aliens and the villages acceptance (or not in some instances) plausible and believable. Flynn also hinted at a richer past to Dietrich, an almost “Brother Cadfael” background if you will, which elevated his character from that of a bumbling village priest to someone you wanted to sit down and get to know over a cup of mead.

I recommend this book. Well written and interesting.

Farthing by Jo Walton

This was a March book group selection. Again, it's one of those that succeeded in surviving our convoluted voting process. This is also an alternate history, set in England in 1949. What this isn't is science fiction.

The Farthing refers to a local in England and in particular are a group of English elite who helped persuade Hitler to come to some kind of peace agreement. Hitler rules the "Continent" and the English are still intact. The story is told from the point of view of two people: Mrs. Lucy Kahn, an Eversely heiress disowned because she married a Jew, and Peter Carmichael, the Scotland Yard investigator.

In the tradition of Agatha Christie, a murder has occured. Lady Eversley has thrown a grand party for the Farthing politicians. In the morning a high ranking politician and lord has been found murdered in his bed, his breast painted red and a Jewish star pinned to his chest with a dagger. Carmichael is called in to solve the murder and all the evidence points to Lady Lucy's husband, a Jew.

Jo Walton weaves an interesting tale, Jews are still being persecuted on the Continent while England says they are more open minded - but in reality they are only steps away from segregation themselves. Her writing drew me in and I honestly read this in a day. The subject was disquieting. I thought the alternate history part interesting, but she had a subtle underplot that discussed homosexuality. It was as if every other character had an alternate lover that was the same sex. It was a strange combination.

The strongest part of the book was the ending. It left the reader wondering and it wasn't, shall we say, a "stock" conclusion. I'm torn - I liked the authors style enough that I would read her again, but I'm not sure that I want to. It will be interesting to see what we have to say about it at book group.

WE by Yevgeny Zamyatin

January’s book group selection.

This book is considered a classic science fiction book. In fact, on the cover it is touted as "The most influential science fiction novel of the 20th century". Up until we picked this for book group, I had never heard of this selection, keeping in mind that I’m sure there are many "classical scifi" books I have never heard of.

Welcome to the One State. The Great Benefactor sees all, controls all. D-503 rises when the bell rings, chews his breakfast exactly 50 times before swallowing, don’s his unif for the day and is the Builder of the spaceship Integral. He takes his exercise in his allotted time. He walks four abreast in step during the daily walks. When the bell rings, he lies down and sleeps a dreamless sleep. His world is one of logarithms and mathematical problems. His world is the One State.

Then he meets I-330 and falls madly in love. But there is no place in the One State for love. His pleasant feelings for the other two partners in his triumvirate evaporates as we watch D-503 shoves aside the pleasant O-90 and turn on his freind R-14. As D-503 discovers he has a "soul" he also feels the ravaging effects infatuation and intense jealousy. D-503 discovers there is more to life than the glass walls, the chiming of the bell, the marching four abreast during walks. D-503 discovers emotions and it is the inability to deal with these emotions that eventually bring about his, and the ones he loves, downfall.

This is a dark book. The prose and mental reasoning the main character move through is amazing. It is a look at a different kind of utopian society, where even happiness is dictated and defined by those in charge. I found it to be a fascinating tirade against communism and I wondered if most readers in another 20 years would even understand the passion and conflict that brought about such a story. I now feel and urge to go out and read Brave New World and 1984 - which I confess I have not yet read. Sometimes one just needs a little push to read some of the classics.