Posts Tagged ‘fiction’

The City & The City is a novel by China Miéville. It’s an alternative history wrapped up in a police procedural. As far as I can tell, it’s very clever. But I found it too hard to keep up with and gave up after the first two chapters.

Red Side Story is the second novel in Jasper Fforde’s Shades of Grey series and follows directly on from it. It’s a great sequel. Sometimes sequels are a bit slow moving, especially the second in a trilogy. But this one has some serious plot. And continues Fforde’s captivating ability to create such cool alternative histories. Well worth a read.

Shades of Grey is a dystopian novel Jasper Fforde. The story revolves around a society that has largely abandoned technology and now lives in a strict hierarchy where your class is determined by your colour perception, which most people have lost.

It is the third Fforde novel I have read, and it is once again excellent. I don’t know if I love it quite as much as Early Riser, but that quickly rocketed up to one of my favourite fiction books, so tough competition. This one is part of a series and I’m going straight on to part two.

Early Riser is a fantasy novel by Jasper Fforde, set in an alternative history where the climate is much colder over winter and humans hibernate. The story follows the protagonist as he joins the Winter Consul Service who stay up through the winter to and keep everyone safe.

This is the second Jasper Fford novel I have read, after The Constant Rabbit, and I enjoyed this one even more. In fact, I think this is pretty high up my all time favourite fiction reads. Great storytelling and great world building in a place that feels very familiar but also intriguing. Well worth a read.

The Castle is a novel by Franz Kafka. It tells of a surveyor known as K. who arrives in a village and finds he was summoned by accident. He finds it impossible to navigate the bureaucracy of the castle’s systems, trying in vein to reach the castle authorities.

I was intrieged to see how Kafka could fill 200,000 words on this, but he does and he does it very well. Unfortunately, the novel was unfinished at the time of Kafka’s death. Usually, I would expect either the editor to add a note at the end or someone else to finish it off. This one just ends mid-sentence without any conclusion.

The Constant Rabbit is a novel by Jasper Fforde. It tells of an alternative reality in which “the event” has transformed rabbits, and a few other animals, into anthropomorphised versions of themselves. It explores the political implications of having what are seen as an under-class of a million rabbits, paralleling fears about immigration, and played out through the love story of the protagonist and the rabbit who moves in next door. Well worth a read.

Bartleby, the Scrivener is a short story by Herman Melville. It tells the story of a lawyer who hires a new member of staff, Bartleby. At first Bartleby works hard but gradually refuses to do any work or even leave the office, answering each request with “I would prefer not do”.

It’s well worth a read. For me, the exploration of the psychological processes the lawyer goes through in responding to such a situation are both relatable and fascinating.

Ruins is the second novel in Orson Scott Card’s Pathfinder series. I went straight from the first book to this one and it is probably even better.

Card gives an introduction in which he says trilogies are often rubbish because the middle book/film is just filler. I think he is spot on: most trilogies would do better as two books. This one is more like an Asimov book. Stuff happens. Interesting stuff. And we get even more into the science fiction that was promised in book one.

Pathfinder is the first novel in Orson Scott Card’s series by the same name.

I loved the Ender’s Game books so I thought I would give this a try. I wasn’t sure at first as I was looking for science fiction and this started out more as a fantasy book. And it is, although it got more science fiction-y as time went on.

I’m glad I stuck with it. It turned out to be a great fusion of fantasy and science fiction involving time trial but with some good twists on the way time travel is usually presented. Rather than getting caught up in ensuring causality loops, Card just tells a great story.

A month ago I read Ender’s Game and it was superb. It sounded too violent for me but it’s actually a brilliant story. Ender’s Shadow is another book by Orson Scott Card that tells the same story from Bean’s point-of-view. It’s equally excellent.