Posts Tagged ‘novel’

What a literary feast of science fiction. Isaac Asimov delivers a superb 6th instalment to his Foundation series.

This article contains spoilers.

Prelude to Foundation follows the adventures of the young Hari Seldon from when he first arrives on Trantor. He soon finds himself exploring the various different cultures and sectors of the planet.

It has a wonderful ending. At the back of my mind, there was something wrong with Chetter Hummin as a character. If he was a mere news reporter, how would he have so much power and influence? How could he go so un-noticed? Then, when he turned out to be Eto Demerzel, it all clicked into place beautifully!

If that wasn’t enough, there is then the whole extra layer of him turning out to be Daneel Olivaw as well, who we learned about in Foundation and Earth! A great ending to a great book.

Isaac Asimov’s Foundation series is a masterpiece of science fiction writing. After many years it was followed up by Foundation’s Edge, which was so-so. Then, the year I was born, it was added to with Foundation and Earth, following Golan Trevize’s quest to find the planet from which all live originally came from.

It was heavy on the philosophy. Discussions of morality, ethics, whether robots are human and whether the good of the many outweighs the good of the few. This makes it slow going at the start by picks up as the book moves on.

There is a certain excitement generated on being in on the answer as it were. Obviously, being actually from Earth, and having a basic knowledge of our galaxy, you can feel the rush when you realise that Trevize is getting closer and closer.

The end is quite a nice twist too. It doesn’t throw everything on its head but provides something satisfying different. If you enjoyed the series so far, this is well worth a read.

A Storm of Swords is the third novel in the Song of Ice and Fire series. However, I haven’t actually read it, I have only read part 1 because it is so amazingly long.

Good though. Nothing really happens, it’s just people marrying each other. This is good if you enjoy the chess of politics, though perhaps does not live up to the name – there is no storm of swords. There is quite a detailed description of people dying in gibbet cages if your worries about a lack of gore though.

How exactly it is two separate books is unclear. It ends right in the middle of a story. It feels a lot more like cashing in on having able to sell two products than even a vague attempt at pretending there are two parts.

What was this book even about? I have no idea how this is considered one of the greatest literary works of the twentieth century. Modern Library voted it the second best novel! Better than Brave New World, Catch-22, Nineteen Eighty-Four, The Grapes of Wrath and yes, even Battlefield Earth.

The story follows a young man named Nick and his interactions with his mysterious next-door neighbour Jay Gatsby who throws the best parties in Long Island. However, the story gradually reveals how Gatsby is slightly more than a one dimensional character, but not that much more.

What a novel! Written in 1884, Flatland explores the idea of a 2D and 1D universe and the maths surrounding that, in an engaging and humorous way. It follows the life of the protagonist, a square, as he describes his world and visits others.

How does a 2D world look for example? You can only see in one dimension so how do you tell the difference between different shapes when everything looks like a line? What challenges does that present for society? For building design? For interacting with other people?

The same issues occur when the square visits lineland, a one dimensional universe. As well as the difficulties of trying to explain another dimension to those who live in said worlds. Upwards, not northwards!

Ah, The Great American Novel. Mark Twain chronicles the adventures of Huckleberry Finn and Jim, a runaway slave, as they raft down the Mississippi River. Some would see it as an epic tale of the people the two meet while travelling. I, with my in no way biased brain, saw it as the story of Finn deciding between being racially tolerant or following his religion.

Tom Sawyer is an odd character. He just does stupid stuff so that it can be like the movies. Or at least that is the term he would have used if movies had existed in 1884.

I didn’t have the manga edition. But it looks cool.

John Steinbeck is better known for his serious and deeply-moving novels, notably The Grapes of Wrath. However, he did have a sense of humour too and wrote several darkly satirical novels, one of which was Cannery Row.

Set in a working sea-front town in the Great Depression, Cannery Row reminded me every much of Catch-22. Probably because both of the audiobooks I have had the same author. But Heller and Steinbeck display the same utterly dry sense of humour when it comes to writing about less-than-ideal conditions for humans to live in.

It’s fairly short, especially compared to some of his other works, and wanders around with a much more relaxed feel to the plot line.

Boo, Tiffany Aching novels. They’re good, but they’re not adult Discworld good. The discussion of Tiffany’s life as the local witch was good but I wasn’t even really following the Cunning Man stuff. There was no drama as she was obviously going to beat him and did easily.

A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man is James Joyce’s first novel. As a consequence, his literary style is still developing and as a consequence, large segments of this novel are understandable.

It follows the adventures of Stephen Dedalus, later to appear in Ulysses, throughout his young life.

The best bit is the fire and brimstone preaching. I’ve never heard a preacher having a proper go at it, so the description in this was brilliant. It goes into so much detail about how the tortures are so bad, how the flame never cools and how you never acclimatise to the torment. Scary stuff!

Ah foot the ball. And is there any better place to enjoy the beautiful game than the beautiful city of Ankh-Morpork? Probably, though the idea of the wizards of Unseen University putting together a football team is definitely not one to be missed. That is the narrative of Discworld 37, Unseen Academicials.

It was okay. The Moist von Lipwig novels have been really good and this was not as laugh-out-loud funny as those. Also, there was some Rinsewind, but not enough. It’s like Pratchett was teasing me.