Should I finish these?

[cahn]

Inspired partially by sophia_sol (but I might have done this anyway), I'm incorporating a very liberal attitude towards not finishing my Hugo reading.

The Kaiju Preservation Society (Scalzi) - DNF. I'm not actually asking about this one as I've decided I'm not going to finish this. It's not bad, it's light and frothy and fun, but I think I am willing to deal with light and frothy and fun when it's tropes I'm interested in (galactic empires in The Last Emperox) and not when it's not (kaiju).

The Daughter of Doctor Moreau (Moreno-Garcia) - Is there a payoff here for someone who hasn't read Island of Doctor Moreau? I didn't dislike it and am willing to read more if there is a payoff, but I'm worried that it will only be a payoff if you know something about the original. Also, independently of this book, should I read Island? (That is to say, I wouldn't read it just to read Daughter, but if I read it I might read Daughter afterwards.)

A Mirror Mended (Harrow) - is this worth finishing? I read and liked the first of these but I guess I'm not super convinced there's enough more to say in this multiverse... is there? I got far enough in this one to be aware of what the gimmick is likely to be, but I also think I am near saturation on reversed fairy tales. Tanith Lee probably did it better anyway

Comments

[seekingferret]

I haven't read Daughter, but am planning to soon as it's in the packet. But I think Island is really fascinating. Somewhere in my college files I have an essay I wrote digging absurdly deep into the 'scientific basis' for the novel. I did a lot of research into 19th century vivisection and blood science.

Kaiju Preservation Society is fine, and way better than The Last Emperox, but if you weren't excited about reading it, it's not going to get better in the conclusion.

[cahn]

Ah! Okay, I may go at least try to read Island, then, that sounds rather interesting.

Haha, I think I'm just not that into kaiju, despite having managed to get through the entirety of the first Pacific Rim (though I was watching that because a friend asked me to, which is diferent).

[luzula]

Tanith Lee totally did it better. (Which is to say, I haven't read that particular book by Harrow, but I read the previous one in the series for book club, and was not much into it.)

[cahn]

This inspired me to go back and read a couple of the Red As Blood stories. She really did do everything better :P

[leaflemming]

I finished Kaiju & I endorse your DNF -- it's perfectly luke-warm all the way through. It felt like a wannabe screenplay in that it kept seeming to assume all the visual work would be done for it, no descriptive language needed... and yet it's about GIANT MONSTER SET-PIECES.

I always want to like Scalzi and I always seem to land on not actively disliking him; and yet I keep going back. I do not admire this in myself.

[cahn]

Haha this is how I felt about the Last Emperox series! I felt like they were popcorn, only... popcorn gets kind of ugh if you eat too much of it all at once (which is how I mainlined the Emperox series).

(K)

[(Anonymous)]

Oh -- I liked both Kaiju Preservation Society (I listened to Wil Wheaton's narration, which probably helped) and Last Emperox.

But if you didn't like the beginning, there's no reason to finish KPS -- though I might suggest reading the author's note at the end.

In general I'm have a tough time thinking of books that improved because I finished them... It was super-important to get past the first section of Instance of the Fingerpost. The form of mystery stories demands finishing. Tchaikovsky's Children of Time was rather interminable but largely redeemed by its ending.

By contrast, I always regret finishing Neil Stevenson books.

Re: (K)

[cahn]

I liked Last Emperox! Just, I liked it like I like popcorn (in small-to-medium doses, great! in large doses, I start to feel a bit queasy), so by the time I had mainlined the third book it was a bit too much. I think though that kaiju are just not really my thing.

Gideon the Ninth is a book that stands out to me where I had a really really hard time getting through the first few chapters, and then I really enjoyed the rest of it, three books in and counting -- I had to get used to some stylistic choices, and the competition and ensemble and over-the-top loyalty tropes had to be introduced, and then it was fine. (I would not recommend it to you or to B, though, necessarily, because the stylistic choices are rather hard to get through, and I don't think you and B have the kind of overriding love for loyalty tropes that I do.) Oh, and A Wrinkle in Time! That one I actually skipped to the middle because I found the beginning so boring (I remember I was sick and my mom brought it home from the library, and I had run out of other books to read.) But yeah, it's the exception rather than the rule.

Stevenson: heh, yeah.

Re: (K)

[(Anonymous)]

B read Gideon/Harrow/Nona, loved them, and confidently told me I wouldn't like them. So far I've taken him at his word; I really don't do horror/violence. At the same time, sometimes he's wrong about these things; sometimes I'm willing to put up with a lot for a really spectacular book or movie. Mulholland Drive comes to mind as subject matter that I can't stand, but a movie that's just so good I got over it. So I have been contemplating trying out Gideon.

Your point about having to get over the stylistic choices reminds me of The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress. I recall having a tough time adjusting to the spoken language patterns, but ultimately adoring the book. I suspect that putting in the work to absorb Heinlein's vernacular actually led to me being more attached to the book in the end.

Re: (K)

[cahn]

There is rather... a lot... of horror and violence. I don't know if you would find it spectacular enough to make up for it? (I mean, I clearly did! I just don't actually know for you. I'd be very interested to see, if you do end up trying it out!) It's definitely got a LOT of narrative drive and also a LOT of over-the-top loyalty :D But if you're going to try it out, you should try out at least a couple of chapters past where they get out of the Ninth House; I found the Ninth House bits almost unbearable, but the story becomes rather different after that.

The stylistic part that I really had trouble with at the start was actually sort of the opposite of Moon Is a Harsh Mistress (which, btw, I still remember you handing to me and telling me I had to read it, after I'd struck out hard with Stranger in a Strange Land). I was brought up to read SF in a way where word choice is worldbuilding (which is exactly the case in Moon), whereas Muir's got a writing aesthetic where she does not care a whole lot about this (see also here) -- although it does turn out that one can make implicit inferences from the third book that there is more internal logic to the way Muir has set up everything than it seemed in the first book.

[sophia_sol]

I found A Mirror Mended to feel way too light on anything interesting at the beginning but was totally invested by the end, so you might find it gets better too? but don't push yourself if you don't want to! I am perhaps tailor made as the audience for any books that want to say stuff about fairy tales

[cahn]

haha okay! I may give it a shot. That was one where I could see it going either way, but I wasn't particularly struck by the beginning. We'll see how it goes :)

[cenozoicsynapsid]

Totally off-topic, but I got "The Dragon Waiting" and read it--- thanks for the rec! I don't think I had read any John M. Ford before... I thought it demanded a lot from the reader (at times more than I was prepared to give, I'm afraid: Renaissance plotting and backstabbing requires a lot of attention, especially when you're constantly switching between people's family names and noble titles), but it was a really cool and interesting world. (I was a tiny little bit peeved that Ford thinks "ie" is Welsh for "yes"--- it is, sort of, but Welsh is famously more complicated than that, and "ie" is the answer to a very specific set of questions.) But vampire Justinian being the reason the Byzantines didn't lose Italy! I love it!

[cahn]

Oh YAY! I'm always so extremely pleased when I make a rec that works, and also pleased that you enjoyed John M. Ford because he's not for everyone -- he does rather demand a lot from the reader. But YES vampire Justinian leading to Justinian tamping down Christianity, isn't it great??

Haha I feel like anytime I talk to anyone with any language facility (not me, I'm afraid) they have some sort of annoyance with Ford's language use in this book (apparently there are issues with other languages as well) -- I am definitely getting the impression he didn't know nearly as much about languages as he thought he did :)

I did once write a series of posts where I tried to lay out to the best of my understanding what's going on in the books: Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 :)

[cenozoicsynapsid]

Thanks for linking your posts! I am encouraged: I got a lot of what you got, so perhaps I am not just too dumb for the book. It does help that Richard III is one of my father's favorite plays, which I think I had watched three versions of on-screen by the time I was fifteen. I still remember him picking up a telemarketing call and drawling, in his best Laurence Olivier, "I am not in the giving vein today." I have no idea what the poor marketer thought, but I suspect they didn't get it.

To answer a question you asked back then: I think that Colin kills Albany because he wishes to prevent what happened at the end of the Tudor era--- an alliance between Scotland and England turning into a personal union which ended the era of the border reivers. Since the Christians in this AU are one of the raiding groups taking advantage of the ungovernable border zone, Colin naturally doesn't want this to happen.)

Anyway, thanks for the links and for the book rec!

[primeideal]

My friend J. got the sense that "Daughter" and "Island" are fairly different, beyond the "scientist experimenting with human-animal hybrids" premise. He enjoyed "Daughter" despite not having read "Island."

[cahn]

Oh, I'm sure they're very different! OK, maybe I'll give Daughter another shot... :)