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Archive for the ‘Books I read’ Category

King, Stephen – Under the Dome

26 Sep

Reading Stephen King’s “Under the Dome“ has been a nice experience. At first you get to know a lot of characters that are living in the unfortunate local town, and this might be a little confusing, at first. However, the author comes back to each character on a somehow regular basis, so that you don’t forget what was that character doing and how he or she relates to the other people involved in the action. Also, all these character get to bring their share of participation and changing in the course of events in a manner that I really got to enjoy.

What got me by surprise in the book is the end of the story. The book has a considerable size, and the action goes in a fast pace. However, the actual explanation for the dome (the reason why the dome is there, who or what is powering it up, why that city and not a different one, perhaps why not a more important one) as well as the end of the entire story happens very fast, in less than 50 pages. You wait the entire book for getting the explanation for it, and when you actually get it you realise it is not quite the one you expected, or the one that you considered as a possible option. Sure, the alien element of the dome is presented to the user at about 1/3 of the book, but I think everyone reading the book expects the dome to have a more earthly nature. However I consider this as a good element of the book, as I was not disappointed by the outcome of the story.

The end of the book also tends to be philosophical and get a 2nd sub-level of interpreting the events, which is something that you don’t encounter in the rest of the book. All in all, though, an excellent reading and some great times that I had with it.

 
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Orson Scott Card, Ender's Game

02 Jun

Somewhere near the end of the last year I rediscovered my passion for SF books, and since I had no author in mind to start with, I searched on Google for top 100 SF books. The search directed me, among other sites, to this one, which is by far one of the best collections of SF media, organized by user votes. I also found this one, but the first one got my attention being much more organized and also providing reviews and book comments.

This way, after finishing Frank Herbert, Dune I started reading “Ender’s Game” (published in 1985), by Orson Scott Card (well not really “after”, since in between them I enjoyed Time out of joint by Philip K. Dick). However, I am planning to devour book by book from the aforementioned top 100 SF book list.

Spoilers ahead, not suited for those that haven’t read the book.

Ender’s Game and Harry Potter

I haven’t read Harry Potter, by J.K. Rowling (first book published in 1997). Not because I didn’t had the time, or because I didn’t had the opportunity to get the books, but simply because I didn’t liked the way the books were written. However I did see the movies, read comments and reviews of the books, so I am aware of the plot and the characters. That’s why when reading Ender’s Game I got the strange feeling that the story is somehow related to the little-wizard books.

The book is full of action, so there isn’t really much time to get bored or to analyze the situation, the characters or the decision taken for various actions. We are introduced in the current situation of the Earth, as it is on the edge of a third attack from an alien race. The army has just lost one of the great generals it had, which defeated the alien army in the second encounter. Now they are looking for a boy to be trained to become the next great general that will lead the human armies against the alien race in the third battle for protecting the blue planet. This way a handful of world’s most talented children are taken from the Earth and transported to the Battle School Space Station in order to train them for the battles with the aliens. Among these children we can find the main character of the book, the six-year old Andrew “Ender” Wiggin.

This little boy proves to be extraordinary, managing to quickly advance the training levels. At the same time, more and more students start to hate him, and the troubles start to appear (as if the training session weren’t exhausting enough and the life without his parents and beloved sister hard and difficult to bare).

After being promoted to the last classes of the Battle School, he meets the retired general that almost defeated the alien race during the second encounter. The general, Mazer Rackham, begins a completely different series of exercises with Ender, in which the boy gets the support of his colleagues and friends from the previous classes that he attended. A very nice first twist of the events happens in the end, when the author reveals the fact that the games that Ender was playing were actually real attacks lead by the human army against the alien race and their space ships. The second twist is plotted by the author just when you think that everything will end in a happy manner, as you discover that the aliens never meant to attack the humans, that the first attack was simply an attempt from their side to discover new civilizations, and that all they wanted was to be left alone.

Therefore, the victory that everyone was fighting for proves to be a genocide, in which all the alien bugs find their end.

As I said in the beginning, this book reminds me of the Harry Potter series (without considering this a bad thing). Here we have the same extraordinary boy, that fights to save the world. The fate is not very gentle with him, and several of his colleagues and teachers are against him. Moreover, we have the Battle School that trains talented children to become capable leaders in the fight against the alien bugs. He proves to be superior to all his colleagues, and in the end he succeeds in accomplish his goal and save the planet.

Overall the book is a pleasure to read, without any difficult or boring moments. As the reader progresses in the book, he or she gets more and more emotionally attached to boy Ender, and there is even a moment in the book when the boy is so tired and exhausted after so many battles and games played in the training rooms, that you could almost feel his desire for a moment of peace, for a complete night of sleep, for a Sunday in the true meaning of the word.

 
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Philip K. Dick, Time out of joint

01 Jun

I finished quite a while ago reading “Time out of joint” by Philip K. Dick. I started reading this book right after finishing Frank Herbert’s Dune series (you can find a review of this series here). The book is ok, being easily included in the category of interesting books.

Spoilers ahead, not suited for those that haven’t read the book.

The first half and the Truman show

The first half of the book is pretty dull as the reader is introduced in the boring and nothing-is-happening-here atmosphere of a small town. The characters are faded, with no elements to really catch the eye (or, that is, the mind of the reader). The book spices up a little bit when the main character (Ragle Gumm) starts having some weird experiences with the time freezing up. However these little weird events are in a small number (like 3 or so) and, what is most interesting, they do not count after the first quarter of the book. This is really strange, it is as if the author wanted to make something out of these events, but then changed his mind and nailed the story to a totally different direction.

Next the reader in introduced in the weird and silly game that Ragle Gumm is playing (and out of which he makes a living). Up to the end of the first half of the book you get the feeling of what is actually happening, at least partially. If you have seen Peter Weir’s Truman Show movie, you will surely think that the movie is some kind of remake after this book (the book appeared in 1959, and the movie in 1998). The main character starts to notice that something is wrong around him, that some people are acting strange and that some kind of plot is clearly going on behind him. Just like in the movie, he starts to suspect everyone, and begins his numerous attempts to escape the town. Of course, all his efforts are without results, as weird people from the army are struggling to keep him inside the town.

The nice finale

Raggle Gumm finally manages to escape the town and get to the outside world. He realizes that what he has suspected is true, the current date is not 1959 as people from the town believe, but 1997. However, he also finds out very soon that the real world is actually in the middle of a war with the people that built an establishment on the Moon, that periodically these people are launching atomic rockets towards the Earth and that the game he was playing was actually used by the army to discover where the next atomic rocket will hit the earth.

While living in the 1959-town without knowing what was actually happening, he was able to guess each day the correct solution of the game in the newspaper. The newspaper was presenting the readers with a board of 1208 cells, and the readers were asked to guess where a little green man will appear in the next day. Raggle Gumm was able to guess each day the exact position of the little green man. The solutions that he was sending to the newspaper were used by the army to launch the anti-missile projectiles that were keeping the Earth safe from the atomic offensive.

The book’s ending could have been better, since it is really not clear why the lunatics (the people that escaped the Earth and established on the Moon) are those that stand for the correct concepts and why Raggle Gumm runns away from the Earth, and to the Moon. You can only guess or, better said, assume that this will help ending the war and resolve the crisis between the lunatics and the Earth-inhabitants. Nevertheless the book was ok, and it was clearly something totally different than the political-philosophical atmosphere of Dune.

 
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Frank Herbert, Dune

13 Apr

A couple of days ago I just finished reading Frank Herbert’s masterpiece, Dune (all 6 volumes). After several months of intense reading (well not that intense, since I also had the job to handle and some trips inside Romania and also outside) I finished the 6th book from the Dune series (Dune – Chapter House Dune). I have to mention that if you read this article, you can be assured that no spoilers or events mentioning will occur in this article. Even if you haven’t finish the book series yet, you can safely read the article.

First of all I have to say that with this book series I had the same impression as with James Clavel, Noble House: a very large composition, something really hard to believe someone was able to conceive and put together. Besides the fact that there are many characters and a lot of events that are taking place, the Dune books cover a large period of time, and in the end you have the nice feeling that you witnessed a fragment of history.

The Dune series, written by Frank Herbert is composed of 6 books:

  • Dune 1 – Dune
  • Dune 2 – Dune Messiah
  • Dune 3 – Children of Dune
  • Dune 4 – God-Emperor of Dune
  • Dune 5 – Heretics of Dune
  • Dune 6 – Chapter House Dune

Starting with the first 2 books, the taste of the lecture is really great. The author introduces you in the warm (and sandy :-) ) and fascinating world of Dune/Arrakis and their inhabitants. You also make a first contact with the particular style in which the Dune books were written: fragments of 10-15 pages, interwined with philosophical excerpts. In the first books, these excerpts are not really connected to the action that takes place at that moment, but more with the general world, cultures and practices involved in the books.

As the reader progresses, and especially starting from the 5th book of Dune (Heretics of Dune), the philosophical excerpts tend to become really complex, but at the same time more tied to the actual events that you read about, and less to the general elements of the involved entities. Depending on what you expect to find and what you are really looking for, the last 2 (or even 3) books of Dune might become boring or at least very slow-progressing. There is a lot of politics and strategy planning and in most cases, the author has a interesting passion for analyzing the effects of various actions on people’s minds, souls and reactions.

As a general observation, each of the 6 books can be divided in the following parts:

  • the description: a fast-paced introduction to the current state of events, as well as a recapitulation of events that took place in the previous book (of course, starting from the 2nd book)
  • the fermentation: this part covers approximately half of book. It is the time of analyzing the characters, planning various actions or just expressing the flow of time and the effect that this flow has on the main characters.
  • the ending: again a fast-paced part of the book, where the events are taking place really fast (especially if you compare this part with the previous one) and most of the questions and the dilemmas that the reader has acquired are solved and given the long awaited answer.

Although at the end (last 2 books) I got a little bit bored with the whole Dune composition (probably I was just looking for some more SF action and mind-blewing future-crazy devices, technologies, and so on), I must admit that it was great reading these books, and I completely recommend these books to any SF-fan wannabe (as I am) (because if you are more than a wannabe SF-fan, then you already have these books in your trophy room :-) ).

Dune – the movies

Before ending this post, I want to say some things about Dune – the movies. I am not sure I watched the proper movies (I saw Dune (2000) (mini) and Children of Dune (2003) (mini) ) but the I must say I was impressed with the fidelity of the movies for the actual events described in the book. My strong advice is to first read the books and then see the movies, because both mini series try to cover as many details as possible, and if you haven’t already read the book, then it is more likely that you will understand only half of the movies. Otherwise, it is great to see how the people that made the movie imagined and created all the costumes, and buildings and make-ups, and so on. In many cases I had a reaction like “Oh, so this is how that thing looks like…”.

 
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