![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Having done as much studying and practice test-taking as I can today without my head blowing up, I'm cleaning up my computer in preparation for a Windows reinstall on my primary system. I say primary but in actuality I hardly ever boot the thing up anymore 'cause my server is always on and it's much more convenient to just sit down there and check Livejournal and stuff. My main system, which I built for games with a 2GHZ AMD XP3000 and 512 MB, mainly just sits there because I never feel like I have enough time to play games. *sigh* Need to finish those classes. And get the apartment cleaned up. But ANYWAY...
While cleaing up my desktop, I found a book review I wrote up some time ago and never got around to posting. If I remember correctly, I wrote it over the course of a week or so while sitting in front of my computer at New Horizons before class started. I must have sucked it off my floppy disk when I got home (I didn't have a USB drive yet), plopped it on the desktop, and forgotten about it. So without further ado...
My instructor in Implementing Win2k Pro/Server is a sci-fi reader. I came in to class on Tuesday carrying Orson Scott Card's 'Ender's Game', and he asked me about it. We ended up talking for a while about various sci-fi authors such as Asimov, Bradbury, Crighton, and a few others. We talked about Harry Potter and J.K. Rowling a bit too, though he's not really a fantasy person and had only seen the movies. (I recommended the books highly.) This is all cool.
The next day, he brought a book for me to read (I had just finished mine). Supposedly along the lines of Crighton, it was written by a one-time doctor. It is, I understand, the author's first and only divergance from his usual genre of medical thrillers. Anyone know who I'm talking about?
The book is 'Abduction' by Robin Cook. Honestly, it's awful.
I decided, upon thinking about it, that it must have some redeeming qualities. I really tried to decide what they were. In the end, the best thing I can say about it is that it has a consistent plot. As far as quality of that plot; well that's just another story.
*SPOILER WARNING; (for those of you who wish to actually worry about such things)*
In places it's very like reading a ST:TOS script. From the third year. There's a race of humans who evolved millions of years before the current human race did, entirely separately, who live several miles below the ocean floor in the Mohorovic Discontinuity. Admittedly, I know very little about the field of geophysical science, but I do belive I have heard of such a thing before, so I won't complain about terms. On the other hand, I hold the idea of a pocket of perfectly human-friendly space down there to be largely unbelievable.
These 'primary humans' are down here because a terrible disaster forced them underground and reduced life on earth to the level of blue-green algae (and conveniently destroying all fossil records). The evolutionary cycle began again, eventually producing we 'second generation' humans. Again, rather a stretch, but I will forgive shoddy science in return for other good features.
Such features were sadly lacking. The characters are very shallow. Again, it's like reading a script. There is very little inner monologue or revealed thought of any kind beyond things like fear, confusion, and lust, which there is a lot of in this book, particularly the last. See, everyone in this environment (named, with much originality, InterTerra), is completely sexually open with just about anybody of either sex. Yes, there thus seems to be a lot of related activity going on. No, this is hardly close to enough to redeem the book, especially considering that two of the secondary humans (the ostensible 'bad guys' of the book, to the author's credit) are violently homophobic.
The only character I've found remotely interesting is Donald, an ex submarine officer, mainly because he seems to be the only thing resembling a voice of reason that the protagonal group seems to have. Still, he is as shallow as the rest, with very little revealed about his background, thoughts, or motivations beyond not trusting anybody. He just has a slightly more interesting simplicity than the others.
The only female in the group is presented with interesting moral issues about love and sex in such a freely affectionate society. This might have been interesting. That is, if the author wasn't handling it in a way that I can only describe as heavy-handed and 'clunky'. Any sympathy I have for her situation (and I do have a little) is the result of my own experiences rather than through any well-written prose on the author's part. To cover the first week or so in the love life of the our oceanographeress: 'Hey let's all have wild flings every night with the first person/people who've seemed interested in us! This is great! Wait, you do this with other people too? Oh, you've broken my heart!'
I haven't finished the book yet. Something is going to happen, I'm sure, in relation to the fact that the two homophobes I mentioned have killed two of the InterTerrans: one of them because he gave him a massage, and the other because she found the first one's body (brilliantly hidden in the refrigerator). Maybe they'll be recycled into nutrients like all the InterTerrans who die are. For my part, I can't quite bring myself to care very much about their eventual fate.
I'll leave you with a truly sad scene of wasted opportunity from the book. Michael; or was it Richard? I can't keep them apart in my brain. Let's just say loser #1. Loser #1 and his three new girlfriends retire to his domicile for what turns out to be a surprise orgy. The three women have invited three men to come and join them. Upon realizing that there are *GASP* other men in the room, he smacks one of them and runs everybody out. Admittedly this is not a earth shaking plot development. It's simply one of those things that make me proclaim <Mel Brooks as Dracula voice>"Renfield, you eeeediiiot!!"</Mel Brooks as Dracula voice>.
While cleaing up my desktop, I found a book review I wrote up some time ago and never got around to posting. If I remember correctly, I wrote it over the course of a week or so while sitting in front of my computer at New Horizons before class started. I must have sucked it off my floppy disk when I got home (I didn't have a USB drive yet), plopped it on the desktop, and forgotten about it. So without further ado...
My instructor in Implementing Win2k Pro/Server is a sci-fi reader. I came in to class on Tuesday carrying Orson Scott Card's 'Ender's Game', and he asked me about it. We ended up talking for a while about various sci-fi authors such as Asimov, Bradbury, Crighton, and a few others. We talked about Harry Potter and J.K. Rowling a bit too, though he's not really a fantasy person and had only seen the movies. (I recommended the books highly.) This is all cool.
The next day, he brought a book for me to read (I had just finished mine). Supposedly along the lines of Crighton, it was written by a one-time doctor. It is, I understand, the author's first and only divergance from his usual genre of medical thrillers. Anyone know who I'm talking about?
The book is 'Abduction' by Robin Cook. Honestly, it's awful.
I decided, upon thinking about it, that it must have some redeeming qualities. I really tried to decide what they were. In the end, the best thing I can say about it is that it has a consistent plot. As far as quality of that plot; well that's just another story.
*SPOILER WARNING; (for those of you who wish to actually worry about such things)*
In places it's very like reading a ST:TOS script. From the third year. There's a race of humans who evolved millions of years before the current human race did, entirely separately, who live several miles below the ocean floor in the Mohorovic Discontinuity. Admittedly, I know very little about the field of geophysical science, but I do belive I have heard of such a thing before, so I won't complain about terms. On the other hand, I hold the idea of a pocket of perfectly human-friendly space down there to be largely unbelievable.
These 'primary humans' are down here because a terrible disaster forced them underground and reduced life on earth to the level of blue-green algae (and conveniently destroying all fossil records). The evolutionary cycle began again, eventually producing we 'second generation' humans. Again, rather a stretch, but I will forgive shoddy science in return for other good features.
Such features were sadly lacking. The characters are very shallow. Again, it's like reading a script. There is very little inner monologue or revealed thought of any kind beyond things like fear, confusion, and lust, which there is a lot of in this book, particularly the last. See, everyone in this environment (named, with much originality, InterTerra), is completely sexually open with just about anybody of either sex. Yes, there thus seems to be a lot of related activity going on. No, this is hardly close to enough to redeem the book, especially considering that two of the secondary humans (the ostensible 'bad guys' of the book, to the author's credit) are violently homophobic.
The only character I've found remotely interesting is Donald, an ex submarine officer, mainly because he seems to be the only thing resembling a voice of reason that the protagonal group seems to have. Still, he is as shallow as the rest, with very little revealed about his background, thoughts, or motivations beyond not trusting anybody. He just has a slightly more interesting simplicity than the others.
The only female in the group is presented with interesting moral issues about love and sex in such a freely affectionate society. This might have been interesting. That is, if the author wasn't handling it in a way that I can only describe as heavy-handed and 'clunky'. Any sympathy I have for her situation (and I do have a little) is the result of my own experiences rather than through any well-written prose on the author's part. To cover the first week or so in the love life of the our oceanographeress: 'Hey let's all have wild flings every night with the first person/people who've seemed interested in us! This is great! Wait, you do this with other people too? Oh, you've broken my heart!'
I haven't finished the book yet. Something is going to happen, I'm sure, in relation to the fact that the two homophobes I mentioned have killed two of the InterTerrans: one of them because he gave him a massage, and the other because she found the first one's body (brilliantly hidden in the refrigerator). Maybe they'll be recycled into nutrients like all the InterTerrans who die are. For my part, I can't quite bring myself to care very much about their eventual fate.
I'll leave you with a truly sad scene of wasted opportunity from the book. Michael; or was it Richard? I can't keep them apart in my brain. Let's just say loser #1. Loser #1 and his three new girlfriends retire to his domicile for what turns out to be a surprise orgy. The three women have invited three men to come and join them. Upon realizing that there are *GASP* other men in the room, he smacks one of them and runs everybody out. Admittedly this is not a earth shaking plot development. It's simply one of those things that make me proclaim <Mel Brooks as Dracula voice>"Renfield, you eeeediiiot!!"</Mel Brooks as Dracula voice>.