Book review: Star Guard by Andre Norton
Apr. 22nd, 2011 03:31 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kilroyPrint date: 1955 (20s: 1, 50s: 2, 60s: 4, 70s: 9, 80s: 7, 90s: 6, 00s: 18, 10s: 1)
To give a little context, check out the cover art. This is your archetypal 50s pulp scifi right here. While I was paying my rent this month one of the office workers commented "I didn't know anyone read books like that anymore."
The word that occurred to me while reading was "frictionless"-- there's absolutely nothing getting in the way of this story. It's a lean, mean plot machine. There's just enough description to give you the universe, the absolute bare minimum of characterization, and a pace that would put a marathon runner to shame. Even the story doesn't get in the way of the story-- there are some murky plot points about two-thirds of the way through that you just zip right past as if John Cleese were standing there going "Sorry, sorry, there isn't time!" It's the literary equivalent of being dropped into a greased chute.
And it works. Make no mistake, I wish I could strap every modern science fiction author to a chair and force them to read three or four of these. There's a lot to learn about pacing and audience engagement from the old rockets-and-rayguns books, and I can't think of any genre where the pages fly past faster. Granted, they're about as deep as a piece of paper; but they fill a different niche than literary scifi. These books are the Saturday Matinee-- where you grab some popcorn, cheer and gasp a few times, and then go back to your life. They aren't books that will follow you home in any form other than a general sense of euphoria.
I'm having a hard time explaining why this particular example works as well as it does; I have this urge to just point at the cover as if it was obvious. It works because it's confident without being pretentious and fantastic without being alien. It's simple and self-contained. It doesn't linger on the unnecessary. In other words, it's well-written-- which doesn't sound like a helpful answer, but is really about as good as it's going to get.
Verdict: Worth reading once, will recycle. (30.5/82)
Page count: 224 (16489 total)
Completed: 48 (21 female authors, 25 male authors, 2 anthology)
Rejected: 34 (20 male authors, 14 female authors)
Next book due: Friday, May, 6th
To give a little context, check out the cover art. This is your archetypal 50s pulp scifi right here. While I was paying my rent this month one of the office workers commented "I didn't know anyone read books like that anymore."
The word that occurred to me while reading was "frictionless"-- there's absolutely nothing getting in the way of this story. It's a lean, mean plot machine. There's just enough description to give you the universe, the absolute bare minimum of characterization, and a pace that would put a marathon runner to shame. Even the story doesn't get in the way of the story-- there are some murky plot points about two-thirds of the way through that you just zip right past as if John Cleese were standing there going "Sorry, sorry, there isn't time!" It's the literary equivalent of being dropped into a greased chute.
And it works. Make no mistake, I wish I could strap every modern science fiction author to a chair and force them to read three or four of these. There's a lot to learn about pacing and audience engagement from the old rockets-and-rayguns books, and I can't think of any genre where the pages fly past faster. Granted, they're about as deep as a piece of paper; but they fill a different niche than literary scifi. These books are the Saturday Matinee-- where you grab some popcorn, cheer and gasp a few times, and then go back to your life. They aren't books that will follow you home in any form other than a general sense of euphoria.
I'm having a hard time explaining why this particular example works as well as it does; I have this urge to just point at the cover as if it was obvious. It works because it's confident without being pretentious and fantastic without being alien. It's simple and self-contained. It doesn't linger on the unnecessary. In other words, it's well-written-- which doesn't sound like a helpful answer, but is really about as good as it's going to get.
Verdict: Worth reading once, will recycle. (30.5/82)
Page count: 224 (16489 total)
Completed: 48 (21 female authors, 25 male authors, 2 anthology)
Rejected: 34 (20 male authors, 14 female authors)
Next book due: Friday, May, 6th
(no subject)
Date: 2011-04-22 10:51 pm (UTC)