beaconatnight's reviews
247 reviews

In anthropology, it is often assumed that you can study the big topics of social theory in small confined places. In a fictional form, this hope is realized here, although the microcosm clearly parallels historical developments of the 20th century, masking communists as animals.

I guess the story is familiar to most people. The animals of a farm in England overtake their human masters (in the so-called Rebellion) after having heard a revolutionary speech of one of their eldest members. At the start of their new venture, they declare Seven Commandments (the principles of Animalism) by which to life, in this way guaranteeing that in the future they will not only be their own masters, living in equality, but that they will also not become as foul as their masters had been. Of course, some of the smarter animals (the pigs, with the help of the dogs) assume somewhat of a leading role, and it's not long before they are establishing more and more privileges for themselves. Of particular interest are the deceptive and propagandious means by which they rule.

It's one of those books that might almost be too smooth. I enjoyed this, but it's so perfectly composed that everything happens exactly as you would expect it to. Anyway, it's really beautifully written and there are some moments that really moved me, most and foremost the fate of the horse Boxer (together with Clover and Benjamin, certain my favorite characters of the book). What a bummer.

Rating: 4/5

This continues to be good, even though I have to admit that I still don't read it as passionately as I've read Vaughan's other works. Yorick and his crew are on their way to California where Dr. Mann has her backup lab. At the same time, this issue focuses much more on Yorick's sister Hero, radicalizing more as part of the Amazons.

Yorick finds himself in a village full of strange women, already leading to the inevitable love-affair sub-plot. I'm not sure about this one. While certainly not the most exciting way to fill the pages, it's handled somewhat okay, and with this out of the way maybe future volumes can focus on something more interesting. There is a little bit of mystery to the village's inhabitants, too, and I did like that it involved a different institution of society in the end.

In the volume's climax, Hero (together with the Amazon's leader and some of her follow cult-members) arrive in the village. To be honest, I felt that this moment could have been a bit more developed, with wider reaching implications. Still cool, though.

Rating: 3/5

After Saga, Runaways and Paper Girls, which I all loved, this is my fourth encounter with Brian K. Vaughan. It's off to a good start, introducing some cool characters and so far I'm really liking how the events are embedded in what is happening on a more political level. I cannot say that I immediately fell in love with Pia Guerra's artwork, but it's growing on me. There are some amazing covers by J.G. Jones (resembling the work of Alex Ross), though it's a bit hit-and-miss for me.

The volume begins with a moment from the everyday life of our protagonist, interspersed with events - in a war zone, a hospital, a political conversations, and a political assassination - whose implications are not immediately clear. At the end of the first issue, for no apparent reason all male members of the human and animal population drop dead - excluding our name-giving Last Man and his monkey. This event obviously is quite unfortunate, especially for life on Earth in the long run, and together with amazingly badass secret agent our protagonist sets out to get some explanation.

There are some great scenes in here already. I loved the brief get-together with his mother, an awesome scene involving a Republican mob of senators' wives. There are also groups of women, particularly a group modeled after the Amazons, starting a hunt on the last survivor of the patriarchy. And something with... cloning? An epidemic? A lot of interesting stuff, so I'm looking forward to the upcoming issues.

Rating: 3.5/5

If you are looking for a perfect thought-experiment, spelled out in the minutest detail, do not look any further. On an intellectual level, this is truly an amazing book. The amount of great ideas in here will make your mind spin. Moreover, this thickly-worded way of describing what is happening to the protagonist, especially what is happening after some big catastrophe had happened, is really quite beautiful.

The story is anchored to a post-apocalyptic present, where we follow the washed-up protagonist Jimmy (here called "Snowman"). Apparently he is the last of his species, though there are other human-like beings that seem unable to conceptualize their surroundings. He moves around collecting the scraps and pieces of a broken world, trying not to be killed by weird animals that are running lose.
The bulk of the story is set in the past, though, with Jimmy remembering how he grew up in the old world. At that point already the world was turning to shit, with environmental catastrophe and huge ghettos interspersed only with small enclaves under corporate control. Among these corporations, the ones working on gene technology are particularly profitable. These structures are the world of our protagonist and his best friend, the eponymous Crake. Crake is of central importance to the plot, because he's somewhat of a genius and, as the reader will very soon realize, one of the key figures in the world's fate.

The novel is fascinating, yet terrifying, because it starts almost exactly where we are today. By now we are used to headlines telling us that by July we've already used up the planet's resources for the entire year and that the extremes in the spectrum of weather phenomena are reached more and more frequently. Cases make the news in which parents try their best to guarantee certain traits in their children, including intelligence, athletic capabilities, a certain height, or even deafness. Advances in genetic engineering now make possible the commercial cloning of cats, and dogs will follow soon. Some countries do no longer ban the growing of human organs in animals. And (last, but certainly not least) we are now in the middle of a global epidemic that already cost almost 900.000 lives and will take years to be overcome (with the next deadly viruses probably around the corner). If you want some spoilers in where these developments lead to, read the book.

My biggest reservation about the book is the fact (if it is one) that it's just not very entertaining or thrilling to read (contrary to what the back of the book might say). It's really a shame that there is so little in regard to actual plot development. There are hints to something of a love triangle involving Jimmy, Crake and the second titular character, Oryx. Unfortunately, while there is a backstory to Oryx, it's a bit cliché and really not all that exciting.

Jimmy himself is something a tragic character, struggling very hard to find his feet in the world. He's certainly made more interesting by the role he plays after the big catastrophe (something I hadn't realized before watching this video, highly recommended!), and you have to see this when trying to understand earlier developments. But of course you won't know that when reading the book for the first time. For Jimmy, the world is just to bleak to find much motivation for anything, which makes it was very difficult for me to read about him with any excitement. Personally, I felt much more interested in Crake; so for me, the book got much more exciting towards the end. Unfortunately, this means that there were about 250 pages that felt a bit like a drag. A very interesting drag, yes, but a drag, nonetheless.

Rating: 4/5

I found myself slightly more excited by this book than by its predecessor. Again there were parts, especially in the beginning, when the book really does feel like floating in space, and (just as the characters in the book are saying) space of course really is a sheer inconceivable cause for awe; yet, while its vastness will make you feel a bit lost, the story does a good job to give structure to space. In fact, when finishing it, I felt quite eager to get into the third book very soon (something I did not expect).

In this Space Odyssey we follow a Russian ship, the Leonov, that is sent into space with an array of objects (of varying priority): (i) It is to gather information on what happened to the Discovery, the ship from the first book and that had been abandoned when David Bowman approached the mysterious monolith on Jupiter (or Saturn, as it was originally) and never came back. (ii) If possible, they are to bring the Discovery back to Earth. (iii) They are to explore Jupiter, and, if possible, (iv) find out more about the "monolith" and about what happened to Bowman. There is some back-story to the Russian and American members of the crew, though (as it is common in these kinds of stories) nothing overly interesting. Towards the end there are some things happening that actually add a bit of tension, too, something that will probably be appreciated.

Since some the events that are particularly hard to comprehend are depicted from a different perspective, things become slightly easier to accept this time around. I have to admit that I'm still not entirely sure if I really like the ending of 2001 (spoiler alert for the first book).
It's kind of cool to discover how other intelligent species have established some sort of a universe-spanning network and that they interfere in what is happening on many planets (an idea we find in Clarke's other novels as well). But bodiless substances that float through space? I know that it's a science-fiction topos by now, and I realize that we do approach this ideas of uploading consciousness, but it still feels too fantasy and I'm not sure if I want those ghosts in my fictional universe.
What I do find interesting, though, is the fact that these beings are not always successful. We get to know that they are conducting experiments (of whose nature we get to know very little and that might be incomprehensible for us) and from what we gather success isn't guaranteed. Also, the fact that, in this universe, minds can be extracted from bodies and re-enter other beings (like the computer HAL 9000) gives an interesting twist to Ryle's idea of a Ghost in the Machine (actually hinted at in the novel itself). So yes, I guess I'm finding some peace with this aspect of the story.

I was also amazed by how much this actually feels like a follow-up. Many topics of the first book - such as the characters, the events, the monoliths, HAL 9000 - reappear in a surprisingly natural way. Moreover, there are some gentle reminders to what actually happened in 2001, highly appreciated since it's been almost a year since I've read the first book (and for many readers it has been 12 years when the book first came out).

Some interesting developments here. While everything went all too smoothly in volume 1, now hints of danger are introduced and there is a lurking fear that our main protagonists only scratched the surface of what is going on. So there is at least some degree of the mystery that I was hoping for.

The stakes are getting more personal this time around. The reverend is lead to question the success of his past exorcism and his power against the forces of evil in general. Kyle Barnes puts his priorities into finding some answers as to what his own role in all of this is (particularly, in what it means to be an "outcast"). In a moment of weakness he also visits his former wife and child, and (in what might very well be the best scene in this volume) we get to know more about their struggle to come to terms about what exactly has happened. Finally, for brief moments we also follow two other characters now: Kyle's sister is taking some action of her own, and we see Satan meet up with some of his demons.

What bothered me quite a bit is how stiff the faces of the characters looked, especially in more dynamic scenes. Maybe this way of drawing is a "thing" (it reminded me of the comic book panels in the 'Max Payne'-videogames, for instance), but it made the faces weirdly stand out. Kyle Barnes and his daughter looked particularly peculiar.

Apart from this issue I again totally loved this volume. I'm slightly afraid that it will somewhat tread water in later issues, but as it stands now I'm really eager to see how the series continues.

While I have to admit that I didn't like this book much for the first 40 pages or so, it gets much better from then on. Call me a wimp if you like, but I enjoyed the book afterwards, because there was then some warmth to contrast with the bleakness and horror.

What I did not like in the beginning was how distantly the story was narrated at that point. Moreover, I thought the scientific articles interpolated in the narrative were kind of dull and didn't add much. A friend of mine told me that, upon reading this first part of the book, he wondered whether King felt unable to put himself in a teenage girl's shoes and therefore, unlike the later parts of the book, did not give us inside into what was going on in her mind. That explanation made a lot of sense to me. Incidentally, this stylistic device of interweaving descriptions of the events with the subjective perspective of its protagonists was used quiteeffectively in later party of the book.

This big scene in the shower room (people who have read the book will know what I mean) certainly did have an effect on me (how could it not). There obviously is a tendency to feel some sort of disturbance or disgust towards bodily excretions, and blood in general. (In fact, this is another one of those topics on which, according to the anthropologist Clifford Geertz, we find very different "common-sensical" stands in different cultures.) But I think for me the scene was more powerful because it so vividly and believably exemplified the sheer evilness to which human beings are possible. Horror that stems from human nature might be even the more frightening.

The book had some characters that I liked. The most interesting character is certainly Carrie herself. She has telekinetic abilities first triggered by very strong emotional outbursts. The ground for these outbursts is laid by her terrible social surroundings of religious fanatism and ideas of guilt and submissiveness, while in school she is that victim of bullying that probably most of us have seen in their own days of school. This becomes particularly painful when, towards the middle of the book, people are genuinely more friendly towards her and she develops hope and opens up. This made the big climax - the catastrophe that is hinted at pretty much from page one - really just so very sad and tragic. Of course I knew that there wouldn't be a happy ending... yet, I so much wanted there to be one.
That being said, I'm not sure if I liked the ending per se. I'm usually all for the over-the-top-ness of 80s action and I liked how the different strands come together.
However, it was very long and to a certain extent a bit too silly. Less might have been a bit more here.

There are some other interesting characters, too. I thought the rough PE teacher, especially after furiously kicking around that one particularly horrible student, was quite interesting and her conversation with the principal was the first scene that actually made me warm up to the book. We also follow a student, Sue Snell, who was involved in the bullying, but who later has feelings of guilt and wants to somewhat make up for that by convincing her boyfriend to invite Carrie to go to prom with him. Finally, there is Chris Hargensen, the popular girl who took particular pride in being the bully and who starts some sort of a vendetta against Carrie when she is punished for her part in the shower room scene.

Rating: 3/5

I don't know anything about 'The Walking Dead', and Robert Kirkman certainly wasn't on top of my list of comic book writers I was eager to check out. But the first couple of volumes of the trade paperbacks of the 'Outcast'-series somehow fell into my lab, so I thought why not give it a try.

I was immediately drawn to the book's expressionistic color scheme, and how the colors starkly contrast in certain key scenes. What surprised me, though, was how much I felt sucked into the plot pretty much from the start. I mean, it's not overly original, but it's just done in a very cool way.

After some boy starts to act completely out of character, completely unrecognizable and prone to extreme violence, the local minister is contacted (because, in the past, he had warned the mother that something like that might happen). To the minister's mind, what is going on is a war between Heaven and Hell, and the forces of evil take possession of innocent people, using them for an (as off yet) unknown purpose. So, he resorts to exorcism as a means to expel the demons from their human hosts.
At the same time, there is this other guy, certainly deeply troubled (as the reader will figure out in an instant) and living in this complete mess of a house. At the begin of the story, he is visited by his sister, who seems to be the only person who still cares about him. The reader soon gets to know that there were other demonic possessions of the people close to him, but he seems to have certain powers by which he can defy the demons. Eventually, he teams up with the minister to help people in need.

I thought the action scenes here were very exciting, the dialogues gave me the vibe of some awesome movie from the 80s (name your favorite), and it certainly made me eager to find out more of what is going on. Actually, it's the latter aspect that I hope will be explored more in later volumes. It would be great if the mystery takes center stage in what is to come. Looking forward to more!

Rating: 3.5/5

What an amazing opener! The first issue starts with the Harvesters, huge robots of planet-size proportions, invading the nine planets forming the United Galactic Council. After a ten year leap in time, a so-called boy-bot, Tim-21, suddenly awakens after being turned off pretty much since the invasion. He is soon established as the potential missing link in robot DNA to the Harvesters - and hunted down for that by different fractions.

It's been a while since I've enjoyed a comic this much. There is something about Dustin Nguyen's amazing artwork that resonates with me a lot, and I immediately found myself attached to its characters. As Brian K. Vaughan says in a quote on the back of the trade: I cannot wait to see where the group is headed to next! So far it's space opera in its finest form.

Maybe similar a fate as that Star Wars has for movies, many aspects of the Hitchhiker's Guide became so familiar in pop culture that it's now almost impossible to read this properly for the first time. What still impressed me very much, though, was how witty it really is.

This first novel feels like the pilot to a series, which I suppose it is in fact. One of the heroes of the book is Earthman Arthur Dent, who in the beginning of the story loses his house because local politics decided that it is to make way for a bypass, right before going through all this again with his home in a wider sense, Earth in general. Lucky for him, he is good friends with Ford Prefect, who actually turns out to be from outer space and who is able to hitch them an intergalactic ride right before the destruction of Earth. Their new situation is only moderately better than the one they just escaped from, but by a stroke of luck of cosmic improbability they soon find themselves on The Heart of Gold, a spaceship powered by an Infinite Improbability Drive and captained by Zaphod Beeblebrox, who is not only the President of the Galaxy, but who coincidentally also turns out to be Ford's cousin. They become part of his crew, which so far included Trillian (a woman that Arthur coincidentally had met at a party some years earlier) and the famous Paranoid Android Marvin, and soon find themselves on the journey to some legendary planet of planet-builders.

The novel hits the perfect balance of racket and wit and there are too many memorable moments and gags to mention. The way that Ford tricks Arthur to come with him and have a couple of pints, the tragically short existence of a very contemplative whale, science-fiction's answer to Eeyore, the proper distribution of intelligence among Earth's species, or "42", to reiterate only the most famous examples. While most of these jests will be familiar to most people, familiar with the book or not, I was surprised by some of their depths.

Take the latter, for instance, the Answer to the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe, and Everything. Of course, the answer itself is totally bonkers. But there is some undeniable wit to how the gag actually plays out. It's not only because of the possibilities they consider, even though "How many roads must a man walk down?" is beautifully poetic. Great philosophers have given answers to questions that generations of later thinkers were struggling to actually define in the first place. For instance, what question do solutions to the Problem of Free Will actually answer? Moreover, the way the story goes on also hints at a fascinating theme of hard science-fiction. The supercomputer promises to build an even more intelligent computer who is supposed to calculate an exact formulation of the question. This implies an explosion of intelligence, now frequently called the "singularity".

In fact, the entire novel is often, and quite rightly, regarded as an honest-to-God contribution to the science-fiction genre. There are elaborately worked out alien races, space travel, foreign technology (if you look at the hardware common in the late 1970s, touchscreens really are a cutting-edge idea), highbrow concepts (such as the consequences of probability), and thorough rethinking of familiar things and ideas. Unlike many other works of humorous fiction, It creates a world I felt honestly interested in.

While the humor had me constantly chuckle throughout the entire thing, the entire thing was over in what felt like the blink of an eye. I was just beginning to feel for its characters and started to wonder where they would end up next, when it was suddenly already over. Maybe this is another proof for successful world-building. Luckily, there are more than enough follow-ups to have me sorted for the months to come.

Rating: 4.5/5