Books: Iron Man, PS238, Incandescence, Transition, Morgue

[woodwardiocom]

Iron Man: World's Most Wanted by Fraction, Larroca

In the wake of the Secret Invasion, Tony Stark is discredited, and Norman Osborn (the former Green Goblin) is now in charge of the Avengers and SHIELD. Osborn forces Stark to hand over his keys, escorts him out of the building, and immediately tries to access the Superhuman Registration database. However, Tony, not being an idiot, erased every copy but the one in his nanite-enhanced brain.

Problem is, he needs to erase that one, too. The rest of the book is Tony on the run from the US Government, as he voluntarily gives himself brain damage, and is forced to rely on ever-simpler and more-primitive armor as he loses the ability to handle more advanced suits. Recommended. (Plus, bonus points for providing a usable way to use GMail as a dropsite for covert communications.)

PS238: Daughters, Sons, and Shrink-Ray Guns by Aaron Williams

The continuing adventures of the superhuman elementary school students of PS238. This volume has two major plots, one about the school's rival with Praetorian Academy, the nefarious private school across town, and the second a time-traveling crossover with Nodwick. Really good writing, recommended.

Incandescence by Greg Egan

As Egan novels go, this one is kind of light. It presents two plots, one about some far-future descendents of humanity looking for a lost civilization in the galactic core, the other about a preindustrial insectile race deducing the laws of gravity, orbital mechanics, and eventually relativity without advanced scientific instruments or even the ability to observe the outside world. The latter plot has a lot of lectures in it, many of them hard to follow, but is still entertaining.

When you have a book with two plots, the question is always when are they going to dovetail, and how? The default is that the characters from each plot simply meet, but the popular alternatives are to have the reader discover that one plotline or the other is taking place in the distant past. The end of this book requires you to piece together some hints, but is actually pretty satisfying. Recommended.

Transition by Iain M. Banks

Wow, Banks dropped the ball on this one. In the wake of 9/11, it appears Banks wanted to say some things about terrorism, torture, and how people in power tend to be untrustworthy. He wrapped up a few lectures on that topic in this thinly plotted novel about alternate Earths and the organization that nudges them in the desired direction. The nominal lead character never really does anything, the deus ex machina is not in any way foreshadowed, and there are a lot of pointless and/or unpleasant sex and/or torture scenes. Truly not recommended.

The Jennifer Morgue by Charles Stross

Sequel to The Atrocity Archives, this is another novel in the geek culture/spy novel/Cthulhu mythos/Dilbert office politics picogenre. The cover is remarkably apt: Our nebbish hero is dressed up like James Bond, and then thrown in over his head. Both literally and metaphorically. Gotta love a novel where the equivalent of Q Branch fits the hero out with a cummerbund that conceals a keyboard, and USB drives in his bowtie. Highly recommended.

Comments

[rickj.livejournal.com]

Thanks for mentioning there was a new PS238 trade out.

[tactical-grace.livejournal.com]

OK, so I finished reading Transition myself, and I don't totally agree with your viewpoint.

It reads a lot more like an 'Iain Banks' book than an 'Iain M. Banks' in terms plot and pacing. This is not a terrible thing in and of itself, but I do vastly prefer his sci-fi storytelling voice to this.

Banks' non-SF books tend to have a leisurely pace for most of the book followed by a fairly frenetic ending.

And I think you may have dozed off during some of the exposition, because I was expecting the deus ex machina for most of the book and thought it was well-foreshadowed.

That said, I didn't greatly care for the book. I thought that the lectures on morality and torture didn't really have a place in the story, and while I found the religious switcheroo in one of the dominant realities slightly interesting, I didn't actually need as much of it as I had to read through.

I give it a 'blah' on a scale of 'suck' to 'awesome'. Not as bad as I expected from reading your comments, a good bit worse than I was hoping for from this particular author.