E. Bear, HAMMERED and SCARDOWN
Aug. 22nd, 2005 07:22 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
desayunoencamaToday I didn't wake up with ecoterrorist nightmares, which is what happened yesterday because of ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
matociquola. I read HAMMERED on Friday and wound up staying up until 4:30 am to finish it, even though it was bleaker than I usually like in my fiction--and especially right now when I'm recovering and am a bit more emotionally sensitive than usual. Then Saturday I read SCARDOWN; started off very slow, nothing much happens for the first hundred pages or so, but then she throws her characters into some really interesting moral dilemmas that made the books worth reading.
They remind me of Chris Moriarity's SPIN STATE, with a lot more violence-- M. John Harrison LIGHT sort of violence, it is part and parcel of the world and worldview and doesn't merit much dwelling on consequences or so on. Very different from the violence in mystery fiction, which is all about the consequences of violences and how to restore the social order.
I found the Quebecois a bit irritating, in part because it wasn't standard French.
(Also, if one extrapolates our current world, I find it hard for Spanish not to have an impact on English as she is spoken in the U.S. Let alone the impact of latinos/latino culture on a global level, which are pretty much ignored in the novels...)
These gripes aside, I was impressed that Bear doesn't pull her punches very much. Her tech is dangerous and complicated and not all the characters embrace it so willingly. People often do bad things for good reasons and good things for bad reasons. The betrayals and backstabbings and respect/loathing and all that make for complex and interesting reading.
I had a personal fondness for the parrots, but that has more to do with my mother raising African Greys and moluccans than anything else.
I'm very curious to see what happens next in WORLDWIRED.
(I hope this isn't too spoiler-y for anyone...)
matociquola. I read HAMMERED on Friday and wound up staying up until 4:30 am to finish it, even though it was bleaker than I usually like in my fiction--and especially right now when I'm recovering and am a bit more emotionally sensitive than usual. Then Saturday I read SCARDOWN; started off very slow, nothing much happens for the first hundred pages or so, but then she throws her characters into some really interesting moral dilemmas that made the books worth reading.They remind me of Chris Moriarity's SPIN STATE, with a lot more violence-- M. John Harrison LIGHT sort of violence, it is part and parcel of the world and worldview and doesn't merit much dwelling on consequences or so on. Very different from the violence in mystery fiction, which is all about the consequences of violences and how to restore the social order.
I found the Quebecois a bit irritating, in part because it wasn't standard French.
(Also, if one extrapolates our current world, I find it hard for Spanish not to have an impact on English as she is spoken in the U.S. Let alone the impact of latinos/latino culture on a global level, which are pretty much ignored in the novels...)
These gripes aside, I was impressed that Bear doesn't pull her punches very much. Her tech is dangerous and complicated and not all the characters embrace it so willingly. People often do bad things for good reasons and good things for bad reasons. The betrayals and backstabbings and respect/loathing and all that make for complex and interesting reading.
I had a personal fondness for the parrots, but that has more to do with my mother raising African Greys and moluccans than anything else.
I'm very curious to see what happens next in WORLDWIRED.
(I hope this isn't too spoiler-y for anyone...)
