By Cory Doctorow

I read this serialised (with each serial announced on Twitter, so often from my mobile) on tor.com, but you can also download it from his site in a variety of formats (as well as, you know, buy a copy).

I’m not sure if this was as a result of the fragmented nature of the format (or the sleep deprived state I often read it in!), but I had trouble liking this book.  Doctorow has spoken and written about how it started life as ‘themepunks’, serialised on Salon.com, and then he stalled and ended up rewriting it.  Don’t know if thats what I’m picking up on, or not, but the plots and characters never really engaged me.  Doctorow did a good job making you warm to Sammy, the disney exec at points, as well as showing things from a lawyers angle, but there were huge areas I wish he’d explored more – the curve of the ‘new work’ rise and fall would have been a worthwhile novelette in itself, for example.  He didn’t dig into the ramifications of what happened to the protagonists often – perhaps this was a literary device meant to show their focus and singleminded-ness, but I felt it came across more that this wasn’t something Doctorow was interested in exploring.

Valid enough choices, but after Little Brother and  ‘After The Siege’, I know he can do excellent work when inspired.  I think that this was actually written before both of those, which may explain something.  I’m hoping that in writing ‘Little Brother’, he’s got a different take and stance on writing, especially with being able to dedicate himself to it full time.  Thinking about that, Little Brother was the first book he wrote when able to do that, if I’m recollecting and piercing together the chronology correctly, which may bode well for future output.

On the subject of Doctorow’s work, I wish he’d publish more about the ongoing progress of ‘with a little help’ – I’m fascinated with the minutiae and ‘new media’ angle of him doing this himself.

By Steven R Boyett

I bought this after John Scalzi’s offhand recomendation of the reprinted edition that had just come out.  In fact, I bought it as an ePub ebook from Fictionwise as they were having a sale, and read it entirely on my Ereader.

Reading the authors afterward, he reveals he wrote it at 19, which comes across in the books style.  There’s lots to recommend it, however, its a nice (if not fully thought out, as the author admits), post apocalyptic setup – the laws of physics change, and a lot of people just vanish.  Magic and wondrous creatures come back into the world.  Boy meets Unicorn.  Boy & Unicorn challenge evil magician, learning truths about themselves (and how to fight with a samurai sword) along the way.  Page turning fantasy, but very enjoyable.

I was left with a number of questions, the most intriguing of which was – where did all the people go, who were not left wandering? The author didn’t deal with this issue at all, which I suspect might have been the most interesting of all.  Little more was made of magic as well, probably due to the authors own fascination with the martial arts, it was little more then a dues ex machina, which none of the heroes used (on-screen as it were, anyway) – I wanted to know more about this.

Overall, I enjoyed it but was left a little unsatisfied – lots of strands begging to be pulled on, both in terms of additional things to cover, and plots to unravel.