Excession by Iain M. Banks

Another Culture book. I interrupted my reading of Palimpsest because at least the Culture books aren't completely depressing/desperate stories, but more on Palimpsest later.

The main thing that struck me about Excession is how the Culture novels tend to use the story premise that a ship (fully sentient) decides that it will only talk to one person. The rest of the Culture always needs information or some action from that particular ship for some reason, so everything comes down to one person agreeing to go do some random thing, usually just for about a week. It seems a bit much that this giant society depends on specific individuals for anything, particularly given that it is a decentralized society. But the book was still fairly enjoyable.

Pages: 499

Boneshaker by Cherie Priest

So this year I decided that I wanted to vote for the Hugos. Also, at $50 for a supporting membership, I am able to read all the Hugo nominees at a slightly reduced rate. I think I got about 6 books and 2-3 more books worth of material. Given that some of the books are still out in hardcover, it seems like a good deal.

The first one I read is Boneshaker. I was relieved that the steampunk aspect of the book was not overpowering. Yes, the characters wear goggle and gas masks (a major part of steampunk, going by what people wear to cons), but there was a reason and though the masks were often mentioned, the descriptions didn't belabor how neat people looked with masks. In the end, this book was pretty good. It wasn't amazing. I don't think Boneshaker will get my vote because it doesn't leave me desperately wanting more, which should be a characteristic of Hugo winners.

Pages: 416

Use of Weapons by Iain M. Banks

The third Culture novel. I didn't care for this one nearly as much for a few reasons. First, the novel dealt mostly with non-Culture people, so it wasn't about the differences between how people normally think and how people in Culture think. Second, I didn't enjoy the split way the story was told, jumping between things that happened in the past (where generally bad things were happening) and things that happen now in a way that didn't explain anything until the end of the book. Then, when I got to the end of the book, I found that I actually didn't want to know anything about the scenes from the past. Third, I did not like the main character, a feeling that was strongly amplified by the ending of the book. I am glad that I read this book because I expect some of the later books to reference Use of Weapons, but this was not a particularly enjoyable read itself.

Pages: 512

Frederick by Leo Lionni

This is the second picture book I'm reading between the Culture novels. After this, it gets a lot harder.


Frederick was slightly more interesting than the previous Leo Lionni book because Fredrick has an implied "and then everyone died because talking cannot substitute for food for the last month of winter."

Pages: 32

The Player of Games by Iain M. Banks

Second book in the Culture series. Two things particularly interested me in this story. The first was an interesting ecosystem of one of the worlds. Jupiter has the storms that never end, the great red eye; this plant has a single band of land around the equator and there is a fire that moves around the plant on a yearly basis. I enjoyed that Banks wrote out some of the ecosystem instead of leaving all the background just in his head. The second interesting part was the plot itself. Banks told the old story of  "outsider comes in, beats everyone at some game, and wins the kingdom/empire" from the perspective of the gamer. He made the empire a horrible place, but didn't try to lecture me about it. The story was a story, with only enough didactic overtones to build a better understanding of the culture the outsider came from for the rest of the books in the series.

Pages: 416

Alexander and the Wind-Up Mouse by Leo Lionni

 I'm reading the Culture books by Ian M. Banks right now. I figured out that there were eight books in the series and rushed out to the library almost immediately. While I am enjoying the stories, I do feel like I should take some sort of break. I asked Clay to pick out books of his to read between the Culture books. Alexander and the Wind-Up Mouse was the first. Certainly I would not normally read a child's book of this level, it does seem like the sort of thing I would read to my nephew if I weren't already reading him The Nation by Terry Pratchett. These pages should hardly count, but I'm going by Amazon.com pagecount instead of trying to find an e-book and determining the word count.

Pages: 32