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First reviews of 2012
Jan. 8th, 2012 11:56 amHappy 2012 everyone!!
The Scar by China Mieville
Oh, the consummate skill! The scope, the depth, the intrigue, the wordplay! The confidence to spend upwards of 250 pages just on build up before the main plot is even really introduced! I love it, but I hate it, because I'll never be able to write like this.
I particularly love the cleverness of how it all gradually fits together and is revealed to answer most questions satisfactorily. However, I also like the fact that some things are left a mystery - there's one character, the depth of whose involvement in the orchestration of events is never fully explained, and I like the ambiguity. It's all so awesomely well done, and continually surprising.
I'm not totally blinded by awe, though. I can see what he's trying to do with the frequent tense changes, but I don't think it wholly works, and I find it really annoying. But then, I'm generally a traditionalist when it comes to narrative, so I don't tend to appreciate writers mucking about with it too much. The ending is also somewhat of an anti-climax, in that things *don't* happen rather than things happening - but that's actually quite clever in and of itself.
The linking themes are really good, too - it took me a why to put it all together, but it's about scars and manipulation, and particularly the manipulation of scars, on several different levels (geographic, physical and emotional).
Overall, I just rejoicing in the fact that there are eight more of his books that I haven't read yet!
Across The Nightingale Floor by Lian Hearn:
I was really intrigued by this book, since I listened to the prequel last year, which ends exactly as this book begins, and contains so much intricate back story that I couldn't see how this could work as the start of a trilogy without providing all the information from the prequel.
It was obvious on starting the book that it was written much earlier than the prequel - it was quite simplistic, with events happening very rapidly and with little embellishment or descriptive detail. The prequel was much more involved and more confident in its style and execution. I think I would have found this book quite mystifying if I hadn't already read the prequel - characters kept turning up with clearly long and involved histories of interaction that were never really explained here - though it's impossible for me to tell if it would have made sense without all the background knowledge.
For the most part, the story was very predictable, with a very overdone 'love at first sight' aspect that left me rather cold. Then, the climax brought many horrific surprises that sealed the fate of my favourite prequel characters in a most unpleasant way. Since they were quite peripheral in this story, I suppose what happened to them wouldn't have been as traumatic if I'd come to this book fresh, but having involved myself very deeply in their histories in the prequel, I was very upset by the conclusion to this book, and I won't be continuing with the series.
Confucius:
This is a game that was given to my brother for Christmas, and which we played between Christmas and New Year. It had a Chinese theme and the aim is to gain points by establishing influence in different government departments (though bribery or placing family members in high positions), exploring new lands, waging war with neighbouring countries, and forcing other players to support you through a complex system of gift giving. It took us a little while to get the hang of it, and I think we would all benefit from playing it more to develop better understanding of its intricacies, but I quite enjoyed it. I won, which was a big surprise, and more down to luck than strategy, I think.
Betrayal at House on the Hill:
I played this at New Year in Edinburgh. It's kind of Cthulhu-esque, in that you have a character with attributes of Speed, Strength, Knowledge and Sanity, which are affected by things that happen to you in the game. It starts off collaborative, with all the players exploring an old house and discovering various types of rooms and experiencing events. At a particular point, though, one of the players is revealed as a traitor and the rest of the game is spent with that player trying to achieve their goal while the others try to stop them. It's well designed, in that the layout of the house is different every time, and there are many scenarios for the betrayal, so it's likely to be a very different game every time you play, at least until you've exhausted all the scenarios. However, I think the timing of the betrayal doesn't work all that well - we only had three turns of exploring the house before it happened, and then I got killed before I even got to have another turn, so it was a pretty short game for me. I guess I could still have involved myself in plotting with the others against the traitor, but it did seem a bit harsh that players could get knocked out well before the game was over.
7 Wonders:
Another game I played for the first time at New Year, and another game I think I would benefit from playing several more times before I really get the hang of it. I like the mechanics, though it took me a while to get my head around the use of the cards, since the collection and expenditure of resources is so different to any other game I've played. I also like the way the range of things you can do is affected by what your immediate neighbours on each side do. However, with seven players, it felt a bit disconnected, because I didn't pay any attention to what the other four players were doing - as far as interaction and game play were concerned, they might as well not have been playing at all. That made adding up the scores a bit odd, since one of them won both times and I had no idea how, since I hadn't been tracking what they were doing at all. I like the game, though, and would like to play it again.
The Scar by China Mieville
Oh, the consummate skill! The scope, the depth, the intrigue, the wordplay! The confidence to spend upwards of 250 pages just on build up before the main plot is even really introduced! I love it, but I hate it, because I'll never be able to write like this.
I particularly love the cleverness of how it all gradually fits together and is revealed to answer most questions satisfactorily. However, I also like the fact that some things are left a mystery - there's one character, the depth of whose involvement in the orchestration of events is never fully explained, and I like the ambiguity. It's all so awesomely well done, and continually surprising.
I'm not totally blinded by awe, though. I can see what he's trying to do with the frequent tense changes, but I don't think it wholly works, and I find it really annoying. But then, I'm generally a traditionalist when it comes to narrative, so I don't tend to appreciate writers mucking about with it too much. The ending is also somewhat of an anti-climax, in that things *don't* happen rather than things happening - but that's actually quite clever in and of itself.
The linking themes are really good, too - it took me a why to put it all together, but it's about scars and manipulation, and particularly the manipulation of scars, on several different levels (geographic, physical and emotional).
Overall, I just rejoicing in the fact that there are eight more of his books that I haven't read yet!
Across The Nightingale Floor by Lian Hearn:
I was really intrigued by this book, since I listened to the prequel last year, which ends exactly as this book begins, and contains so much intricate back story that I couldn't see how this could work as the start of a trilogy without providing all the information from the prequel.
It was obvious on starting the book that it was written much earlier than the prequel - it was quite simplistic, with events happening very rapidly and with little embellishment or descriptive detail. The prequel was much more involved and more confident in its style and execution. I think I would have found this book quite mystifying if I hadn't already read the prequel - characters kept turning up with clearly long and involved histories of interaction that were never really explained here - though it's impossible for me to tell if it would have made sense without all the background knowledge.
For the most part, the story was very predictable, with a very overdone 'love at first sight' aspect that left me rather cold. Then, the climax brought many horrific surprises that sealed the fate of my favourite prequel characters in a most unpleasant way. Since they were quite peripheral in this story, I suppose what happened to them wouldn't have been as traumatic if I'd come to this book fresh, but having involved myself very deeply in their histories in the prequel, I was very upset by the conclusion to this book, and I won't be continuing with the series.
Confucius:
This is a game that was given to my brother for Christmas, and which we played between Christmas and New Year. It had a Chinese theme and the aim is to gain points by establishing influence in different government departments (though bribery or placing family members in high positions), exploring new lands, waging war with neighbouring countries, and forcing other players to support you through a complex system of gift giving. It took us a little while to get the hang of it, and I think we would all benefit from playing it more to develop better understanding of its intricacies, but I quite enjoyed it. I won, which was a big surprise, and more down to luck than strategy, I think.
Betrayal at House on the Hill:
I played this at New Year in Edinburgh. It's kind of Cthulhu-esque, in that you have a character with attributes of Speed, Strength, Knowledge and Sanity, which are affected by things that happen to you in the game. It starts off collaborative, with all the players exploring an old house and discovering various types of rooms and experiencing events. At a particular point, though, one of the players is revealed as a traitor and the rest of the game is spent with that player trying to achieve their goal while the others try to stop them. It's well designed, in that the layout of the house is different every time, and there are many scenarios for the betrayal, so it's likely to be a very different game every time you play, at least until you've exhausted all the scenarios. However, I think the timing of the betrayal doesn't work all that well - we only had three turns of exploring the house before it happened, and then I got killed before I even got to have another turn, so it was a pretty short game for me. I guess I could still have involved myself in plotting with the others against the traitor, but it did seem a bit harsh that players could get knocked out well before the game was over.
7 Wonders:
Another game I played for the first time at New Year, and another game I think I would benefit from playing several more times before I really get the hang of it. I like the mechanics, though it took me a while to get my head around the use of the cards, since the collection and expenditure of resources is so different to any other game I've played. I also like the way the range of things you can do is affected by what your immediate neighbours on each side do. However, with seven players, it felt a bit disconnected, because I didn't pay any attention to what the other four players were doing - as far as interaction and game play were concerned, they might as well not have been playing at all. That made adding up the scores a bit odd, since one of them won both times and I had no idea how, since I hadn't been tracking what they were doing at all. I like the game, though, and would like to play it again.
