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kilroyPrint date: 2008 (20s: 1, 50s: 2, 60s: 4, 70s: 9, 80s: 7, 90s: 7, 00s: 19, 10s: 1)
Roger Ebert has a zero-star rating that he reserves for films that are not merely terrible but he also considers offenses against humanity-- films that he would actually un-make as opposed to ignore. My personal worst is when I literally throw a book across a room, which has happened I think twice. This book doesn't inspire that kind of anger, but it fills me with a loathing that's pretty unique in my experience. I want to shower this book off, but I can't. This review is the best chance I get.
Let's start with the minor offenses. It's structured as noir, and it has the same flaws that noir always does: the plot is intentionally convoluted to the point of incomprehension, violence is depersonalized to the point of being set dressing, all the characters are flat, and there's no satisfactory conclusion. A bunch of stuff happens and we don't care. In films you can get away with this by filling the gaps with good actors and stylish scenery-- and ending after 90 minutes. Even ignoring all the other issues, I was tired of this book after 150 pages. And I love noir.
(And while we're talking about boredom: ye gods and little fishes, this story did not need that much scientific explication. It's interesting on one level, but that level is nowhere near where the story actually lives.)
Then there's the tone. The absurdist comedy got a few laughs from me at the beginning, but it became increasingly out of place as the book got darker and darker. It went from "Ha ha! Robots are having sex! Adapter jokes!" to "Wait... did they just paralyze and gang rape a self-aware robot with the mind of an 11-year-old girl?" Take a second to let that one sink in. It's a plot point. So is slave chipping, which takes a normally autonomous robot and completely strips them of any independent thought. We get to see this from an inside perspective at one point, where the narrator is truly okay with being slave chipped because her mistress told her to be okay with it after the fact. And all of this in the same sassy tone as the rest of the book.
It creeped the hell out of me, and not in a thought-provoking socially-useful way. The juxtapositions made me think about robots in new ways, but I feel like the author violated my trust as a reader by not setting it up properly. The book takes rape and violence against women; puts it in a noir context, where by genre convention that kind of thing is practically expected; makes the targets robots instead of humans, which puts us at a remove from events; and laces the whole thing with comedy. Just... no.
I'm sure some people read the book and said, "Wow, I've never seen that in science fiction before!" But I'm not sure it's worth it, and that certainly doesn't make it good.
Verdict: Recycle. (31.5/84)
Page count: 321 (17153 total)
Completed: 50! (22 female authors, 26 male authors, 2 anthology)
Rejected: 34 (20 male authors, 14 female authors)
Next book due: Thursday, May 26th
Roger Ebert has a zero-star rating that he reserves for films that are not merely terrible but he also considers offenses against humanity-- films that he would actually un-make as opposed to ignore. My personal worst is when I literally throw a book across a room, which has happened I think twice. This book doesn't inspire that kind of anger, but it fills me with a loathing that's pretty unique in my experience. I want to shower this book off, but I can't. This review is the best chance I get.
Let's start with the minor offenses. It's structured as noir, and it has the same flaws that noir always does: the plot is intentionally convoluted to the point of incomprehension, violence is depersonalized to the point of being set dressing, all the characters are flat, and there's no satisfactory conclusion. A bunch of stuff happens and we don't care. In films you can get away with this by filling the gaps with good actors and stylish scenery-- and ending after 90 minutes. Even ignoring all the other issues, I was tired of this book after 150 pages. And I love noir.
(And while we're talking about boredom: ye gods and little fishes, this story did not need that much scientific explication. It's interesting on one level, but that level is nowhere near where the story actually lives.)
Then there's the tone. The absurdist comedy got a few laughs from me at the beginning, but it became increasingly out of place as the book got darker and darker. It went from "Ha ha! Robots are having sex! Adapter jokes!" to "Wait... did they just paralyze and gang rape a self-aware robot with the mind of an 11-year-old girl?" Take a second to let that one sink in. It's a plot point. So is slave chipping, which takes a normally autonomous robot and completely strips them of any independent thought. We get to see this from an inside perspective at one point, where the narrator is truly okay with being slave chipped because her mistress told her to be okay with it after the fact. And all of this in the same sassy tone as the rest of the book.
It creeped the hell out of me, and not in a thought-provoking socially-useful way. The juxtapositions made me think about robots in new ways, but I feel like the author violated my trust as a reader by not setting it up properly. The book takes rape and violence against women; puts it in a noir context, where by genre convention that kind of thing is practically expected; makes the targets robots instead of humans, which puts us at a remove from events; and laces the whole thing with comedy. Just... no.
I'm sure some people read the book and said, "Wow, I've never seen that in science fiction before!" But I'm not sure it's worth it, and that certainly doesn't make it good.
Verdict: Recycle. (31.5/84)
Page count: 321 (17153 total)
Completed: 50! (22 female authors, 26 male authors, 2 anthology)
Rejected: 34 (20 male authors, 14 female authors)
Next book due: Thursday, May 26th