Month: April 2018

OK, this is one from the metaphorical archives, but if there’s ever a place to let fly about it, this is it.

Let’s be clear about one thing – I actually enjoyed this book. It’s surreal enough to be engrossing, and it’s as well written as a Booker winner should be. (It is, and always will be the Booker. Fuck the Man)

However, and I say this as a born and raised Canuck, it is so. fucking. Canadian.

You can tell in every page he was paid by the Canada Council for the Arts. It’s so egalitarian and plain fucking nicethat it almost detracts from the story. It certainly broke my immersion when Pi went on asides about how much he loved Toronto (Torontonians don’t like Toronto. There is nothing to like about Toronto. See the Arrogant Worms’ Toronto Song for more reasons.

OK, I just looked at Yann Martel. He is living Saskachewan. He should know better than to promote Toronto. There’s a reason Rob Ford got elected.

Anyway, the book. Lovely fantasy story spoiled by the fact that the protagonist is the nicest, most balanced person ever to have lived. This is probably why the tiger didn’t eat him, as he’s got no flavour. Despite wonderful descriptions like “speaking like he had a mouth full of warm marbles,” the whole thing becomes flat.

On the whole, reading Life of Pi was like being obliged to listen to Alanis all through the nineties. While enjoyable in its way, you’re left with the feeling that if it wasn’t for CanCon it wouldn’t be a hit, and for fuck’s sake ironic doesn’t mean what she thinks it does.

Original here

The Fearful Summons. I confess, I have a soft spot for pulp popcorn sci-fi. I can usually read a book like this in an hour or two, without paying much attention. They’re usually predictable, adequately written and fun, for what they are.

But not this time. Oh no. This book was written by a guy named Denny Martin Flinn, and while normally I’d call a writer of his skills a hack – but not this time.

You see, Denny-boy is an artiste. A visionary. An innovator. Despite writing one of the innumerable Star Trek derivatives, with what could best be described as an iconic cast of characters, he needed to change… everything.

Set after Undiscovered Country, Kirk is a sedate, morose old fart who’s only consolation is banging young cadets. Sulu is a moron who gets himself into ridiculous trouble (even by Trek standards) and none of the old crew are really like themselves.

There’s an improbable new alien species with different names on the blurb and in the text, that despite being multi-limbed, snaggle-toothed and crablike, it is a major plot point that they had managed to interbreed consensually and successfully with humans.

Let that sink in for a second.

This book sat next to my toilet for months it’s so bad. Normally I’m a fan of some leisurely shitter reading, and usually I can finish any book I leave in the bog, but this one? Nothing cures constipation and encourages a quick nip and tuck like The Fearful Summons.

It’s not Brian Herbert bad, simply because TOS doesn’t have the gravitas of Dune. It doesn’t offend, it bores. It stultifies. It is pure, distilled essence of mediocrity, made so much worse by the fact that Denny very obviously tried so hard.

What he didn’t realize that like a drunken streaker at a soccer match, all he succeeded in doing was showcasing his shortcomings to a wider audience. To carry that analogy farther to it’s unpleasantly accurate conclusion, reading The Fearful Summons is like inviting the herpetic micropenis and sagging, warty ballsack of the Star Trek universe to be gyrated aggressively in your face.

I really don’t recommend it.

Original here

Time Bandits.

I love that film, I really do. And while it is an adaptation for children, this book is an accurate retelling of it.

That’s about all I can say about it. It wasn’t even really a standalone book as far as I could tell… it reminded me of a description read for the blind. Dry, exact, devoid of character or adult innuendo which made the film so charming.

So that’s all I can say about it. It did have a quaint inscription in the cover reminding the original owner (an Adrian Firth) that rounders practice was at 9.

I know. That’s a pretty shit review, so I have add some context. I read this in its entirety during the most hilarious preflight chaos I’ve ever witnessed outside of rural China. I’m writing this on my phone on a Air Malta flight to Valletta that is about 30 min late.

The delay was caused by the fact that this is a replacement aircraft, and nobody informed the crew that it didn’t have a row 13, and that the emergency exits were at 14 and 15, not the 12 and 13 noted in the check in diagram. There also seemed to be two, slightly competing flight crews, neither of whom new what to do. In the end they stuck the people who paid for legroom anywhere they could find and we got off the ground late.

So the moral of this somewhat rambling story is that Time Bandits is a bad retelling, but apparently reading it is a talisman for unexpected free legroom.

Original here

I just finished listening through the radio plays of HHGTTG. They started out so wonderfully – anarchic, irreverent, chaotic and fun. You could almost hear the cocaine and whisky through the headphones. Then, as the series wore on and the plays caught up with the books, suddenly the joy began to wither.

Where before there was mayhem and anarchy, now there was a looming sense of grey suited editors, nagging about deadlines and plot holes and keeping it tidy. Suddenly, the humour became cliché. The originality became derivative. And the joy died, not with a bang, nor even a whimper, but a sad sigh of resignation.

Douglas Adams is one of my inspirations. Next to Spike Milligan and the Pythons, he did so much to fuck up the BBC and the Brit literary establishment. He just let it rip, when he was young and the world was beautiful… but later it faded to grey.

Listening to those plays on the bad side of forty, working a job where I write for money and not for fun, gave me a new perspective on things. It’s a sad metaphor for our lives, that the joy flees, and one day we wake up and realize it’s all just a job.

We want to be Ford Prefect.

We worry we’re Arthur Dent.

But in the end, we’re all Marvin, burned out on the plains of before the Quentulus Quazgar Mountains chuckling at the knowledge that it’s all been for naught.

Original here

I wrote a little nastygram about Brian Herbert and Kevin J. Anderson’s terrible Dune novels, and low and behold someone started a subreddit for more reviews… so I’s only fair that I republish them here.

You can find them in situ at r/proxeusdavereviews. If you’re a redditor stop on by and show some love.