I’ve been remiss with my reviews, so I thought I’d play a little catch-up.

Kings of Infinite Space - 3/5.
Starts off well, fades badly. Goes from creepy Lovecraftian/Wellsian to Carroll-esque plus cheese.

The Golden Compass - Philip Pullman - 4/5.
Excellent surrealish British fantasy/adolescent novel. There are two more in the series, which I hear turns more into some Manichean religious end times type deal, but the first book was just fine. The Golden Compass is a charming book, though not nearly so excellent as Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell (admittedly, they are aiming at different audiences), which I link in my head because they both have that indefinable fantasy Britishosity, or at least what I consider to be the archetypical examples of such.

Memories of Ice - Steven Erikson - 5/5.
With this book, Erikson passes George Martin as the best hard fantasy series ever. A world so detailed, so incredibly well envisioned by the author that it requires no extemporaneous explanations. Erikson (a pseudonym) is the Salman Rushdie of the fantasy authors - complex, rich works that require investment on the part of the reader to complete, but are well worth it nonetheless. Like Rushdie, you need a break after one of these novels before you can go on to his next one

The Little Sister - Raymond Chandler - 3/5.
My first Chandler book. The misogyny that comes through so well in the movies is definitely present, but the movies miss the misanthropy, alienation, dissociation, and depression of the novels. It’s a good, quick read with lots of active verbs and not a lot of fluff in the prose… but the plot is as disjointed and jumpy as the worst of the movies, like say The Big Sleep. You want deus ex machina and massive leaps of logic? Chandler’s your guy. On the plus side, he doesn’t laboriously paint every step in the ladder, which is a nice change of pace.

Amnesia Moon - Jonathan Lethem - 3/5.
I loved Lethem’s Gun with Occasional Music, and this was his followup novel. They are completely unrelated. Amnesia Moon deals with the subjective nature of reality, dreams, human society, and forms of dominance. It feels incomplete.

Blood Music - Greg Bear - 3/5.
Greg Bear’s first book, and you can see why he became a successful author and one of my favorites (at least up until Dinosaur Summer, but there are at least 4 of his early works that I call great without hesitation). This one is the biological version of the nanotech nightmare of a grey goo planet. It feels somewhat like a bastard child of To Marry Medusa with an update written in the 80’s by a scientist.

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