wijfr

What I Just Finished Reading

WIJFR: Katabasis

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The death of the fearsome Ögedei Khan has brought the Mongol invasion of the West to an abrupt halt. Exhausted, plagued by uncertainty and self-doubt, and reeling from betrayal by one of their own, the surviving Shield-Brethren struggle across a frozen, shattered wasteland to return home after their desperate battle in Mongolia. Their mission is complete—Christendom has been saved—but new and terrible questions haunt each member of the company: Are they heroes or villains? Or just pawns in a larger game, trapped in a world gone mad in the wake of the unspeakable devastation visited upon it by the Mongol horde?

When I started reading “The Mongoliad” last year I thought it was a trilogy, so I was surprised when I reached the end of Book 3 only to find the story hadn’t wrapped up. In fact, this part of the Foreworld Saga is five books and I just finished “Katabasis” by Joseph Brassey, Mark Teppo, Cooper Moo, and Angus Trim (no Neal Stephenson anymore).

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WIJFR: Year Zero

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Low-level entertainment lawyer Nick Carter thinks it’s a prank, not an alien encounter, when a redheaded mullah and a curvaceous nun show up at his office. But Frampton and Carly are highly advanced (if bumbling) extraterrestrials. The entire cosmos, they tell him, has been hopelessly hooked on American pop songs ever since “Year Zero” (1977 to us), resulting in the biggest copyright violation since the Big Bang and bankrupting the whole universe. Nick has just been tapped to clean up this mess before things get ugly. Thankfully, this unlikely galaxy-hopping hero does know a thing or two about copyright law. Now, with Carly and Frampton as his guides, Nick has forty-eight hours to save humanity – while hoping to wow the hot girl who lives down the hall from him.

If you took Douglas Adams’ “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy,” mixed in a little of Patrick Tilley’s “Mission” and healthy doses of the RIAA, copyright law, and popular music, you’d probably end up with something close to what I just finished reading: “Year Zero” by Rob Reid.

Nick Carter is a New York entertainment lawyer who, when mistaken by visiting aliens for a different Nick Carter, gets pulled into an intergalactic paper chase of epic proportions. The entire universe has been freely copying and enjoying all of the Earth’s music production since it was discovered in 1977 (thanks to an episode of “Welcome Back, Kotter!”). The Refined League’s strict rules state that a culture’s laws pertaining to art are involatile and must be followed. Based on recent legal rulings (like the Jammie Thomas case), the cost for each infringing copy of a song is around $2,000 which means that the population of Earth is owed approximately all of the money in the known universe. Awesome though Earth’s music is, there are some members of the Refined League that aren’t too happy about going completely broke. So, if the human race were to say, accidentally destroy themselves, then how could they collect on what’s owed? It’s up to Nick (the lawyer, not the Backstreet Boy) and his new alien friends to figure out a way to save the Earth and the wealth of the universe.

Filled with comedy, music, technology, law, and pop culture references (from Zork to THX 1138), if you enjoy space/alien comedies (like H2GT2G) and dislike the record labels and overly broad copyright law, you’ll love “Year Zero.” And if you’re an IT geek like me, the Epilogue will be particularly funny.

WIJFR: S.

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One book. Two readers. A world of mystery, menace, and desire.

A young woman picks up a book left behind by a stranger. Inside it are his margin notes, which reveal a reader entranced by the story and by its mysterious author. She responds with notes of her own, leaving the book for the stranger, and so begins an unlikely conversation that plunges them both into the unknown.

The book: Ship of Theseus, the final novel by a prolific but enigmatic writer named V.M. Straka, in which a man with no past is shanghaied onto a strange ship with a monstrous crew and launched onto a disorienting and perilous journey.

The writer: Straka, the incendiary and secretive subject of one of the world’s greatest mysteries, a revolutionary about whom the world knows nothing apart from the words he wrote and the rumors that swirl around him.

The readers: Jennifer and Eric, a college senior and a disgraced grad student, both facing crucial decisions about who they are, who they might become, and how much they’re willing to trust another person with their passions, hurts, and fears.

I  just finished reading “S.” created by J. J. Abrams  and written by Doug Dorst. I didn’t know a lot about it other than I had heard someone mention it on a podcast and it sounded intriguing. I received it as a Christmas present, started it in mid-January, and then finished it this past weekend during a trip to the west coast to see my sister.

“S.” is a book inside a book, and it’s a really cool concept. I pretty much do all my reading on my iPhone but this is an experience that would just not translate to an e-book.

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WIJFR: Dodger

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Seventeen-year-old Dodger is content as a sewer scavenger. But he enters a new world when he rescues a young girl from a beating, and her fate impacts some of the most powerful people in England.

From Dodger’s encounter with the mad barber Sweeney Todd, to his meetings with the great writer Charles Dickens and the calculating politician Benjamin Disraeli, history and fantasy intertwine in a breathtaking account of adventure and mystery.

After starting the Audible version of Terry Pratchet’s “Dodger” late last year during a Thanksgiving car trip, we (the family) finally finished listening to it on a weekend roadtrip this past holiday weekend.

The novel is historical fiction, taking place in early Victorian London, and as indicated in the blurb above, you’ll probably be familiar with some of the characters: the titular Dodger (presumably from Fagin’s gang in “Oliver Twist“), Charlie Dickens himself, Sir Robert Peel, Sweeney Todd (my personal favorite), and many others.

Dodger is a tosher and spends his days in the London sewers searching for valuables. After saving a young girl from an apparent kidnapping, he finds himself tangled up in a world of international espionage, foreign assassins, young love, and, of course, the aforementioned Charles Dickens.

The audiobook is wonderfully read by Stephen Briggs and was a lot of fun to listen to during several family car trips over the past two months.

WIJFR: REAMDE

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In 1972, Richard Forthrast, the black sheep of an Iowa farming clan, fled to the mountains of British Columbia to avoid the draft. A skilled hunting guide, he eventually amassed a fortune by smuggling marijuana across the border between Canada and Idaho. As the years passed, Richard went straight and returned to the States after the U.S. government granted amnesty to draft dodgers. He parlayed his wealth into an empire and developed a remote resort in which he lives. He also created T’Rain, a multibillion-dollar, massively multiplayer online role-playing game with millions of fans around the world.

But T’Rain’s success has also made it a target. Hackers have struck gold by unleashing REAMDE, a virus that encrypts all of a player’s electronic files and holds them for ransom. They have also unwittingly triggered a deadly war beyond the boundaries of the game’s virtual universe—and Richard is at ground zero.

Today I finished “REAMDE” by Neal Stephenson. I didn’t know anything about it before starting (other than it was written by Stephenson and I read all of his stuff) and given the capsule description above (and the title, a play on a mistyped filename) you might think it was another techno-thriller like “Snow Crash” with a MMORPG twist, but it’s actually closer to “Cryptonomicon” where the technology plays a lesser role in the story. So where “Cryptonomicon” was about World War II and code-breaking, “REAMDE” is about guns, international terrorists, guns, Chinese hackers, and more guns.

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WIJFR: Ender’s Game

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In order to develop a secure defense against a hostile alien race’s next attack, government agencies breed child geniuses and train them as soldiers. A brilliant young boy, Andrew “Ender” Wiggin is drafted to the orbiting Battle School for rigorous military training. Ender’s skills make him a leader in school and respected in the Battle Room, where children play at mock battles in zero gravity. Yet growing up in an artificial community of young soldiers Ender suffers greatly from isolation, rivalry from his peers, pressure from the adult teachers, and an unsettling fear of the Buggers. This futuristic tale involves aliens, political discourse on the Internet, sophisticated computer games, and an orbiting battle station.

I just finished re-reading “Ender’s Game” by Orson Scott Card. I first read this book about 25 years ago when I stumbled across it in my high school library. With the movie coming out next month I recommended it to my daughter, who unbeknownst to me had already read it, so I read it again myself to be prepared for the inevitable letdown of the film version (although maybe I’ll be pleasantly surprised, and I’m looking forward to Harrison Ford’s portrayal of Colonel Graff).

I won’t go into any plot summaries or spoilers here (you can read the wiki entry for that), but even though I still remembered the major elements (and obviously, the ending) of the story it was an enjoyable read. I’ve read a lot of SF novels over the past 25 years and can almost see the influence of “Ender’s Game” (and its sequels) on the genre. For example, the Buggers (or Formics as named later in the series) are a hive-mind species, with all central control being performed by a queen. This, along with their sheer unstoppable numbers reminded me of MorningLightMountain and the Primes from Peter F. Hamilton’s “Pandora’s Star” and Commonwealth Saga novels.

Card’s personal views have been the subject of controversy lately so we’ll have to see what happens once the film is released. I’ll probably still take my daughter to see it, though.

WIJFR: Homeland

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While attending the Burning Man festival, Marcus receives a USB drive from a hacker, Masha, with more than 800,000 incriminating government documents, and she advises Marcus to publish the material if anything happens to her. Meanwhile, a contact at the festival recommends Marcus to California Senate Independent candidate Joe Noss as a webmaster, and he has his first real job, but can he fulfill his promise to Masha and keep his new position? Doctorow sends readers into a world of Darknet secret websites, Occupy protests, kidnapping and interrogation, and hacking.

Clearing out my queue of “young adult” novels, I just finished “Homeland,” Cory Doctorow’s sequel to “Little Brother.”

“Homeland” starts out at Burning Man, which was timely since the festival just ended a few weeks ago while I was reading (you can check out some cool videos here and here). 19-year old Marcus Yallow, the protagonist from “Little Brother” runs into his old nemesis Masha who gives him a thumb drive with over 800,000 incriminating government documents with instructions to publish them everyone if she should disappear. The next day, at the end of the festival, Marcus sees Carrie Johnstone, the former DHS agent who waterboarded him in the previous book, snatching Masha right before an explosion rocks the playa.

Back in San Francisco, Marcus and his girlfriend Ange struggle with how to review and anonymously release the trove of sensitive and controversial documents without being snatched themselves. Marcus finds himself walking a fine line when he gets a job as the technology ninja for the independent Joe Noss Senate campaign, trying to use the documents to further Joe’s campaign against the established parties without implicating himself (or Joe) in their release. Government interests, politics, large corporations, kidnapping goons, occupy-like protests, rootkits, paranoid virtual machines, and cool hackerspace technology all play a role as the story unfolds.

I read “Little Brother” over four years ago, so trying to recall some of the plot lines, characters, and their relationships was difficult. That being said, you don’t have to have read “Little Brother” to enjoy “Homeland.” Having read it right after “Pirate Cinema” I was stuck by the similarities: a male, teenaged first-person narrative involved in somewhat underground and political movements trying to change society for the better with a healthy dose of current events and technology. It’s another timely read, given the recent controversy around the NSA’s PRISM program and other world events.

WIJFR: Pirate Cinema

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Trent McCauley is sixteen, brilliant, and obsessed with one thing: making movies on his computer by reassembling footage from popular films he downloads from the net. In the dystopian near-future Britain where Trent is growing up, this is more illegal than ever; the punishment for being caught three times is that your entire household’s access to the internet is cut off for a year, with no appeal.

Ok, yeah, it’s another “young adult” novel like “Little Brother” but who cares? I just finished Cory Doctorow’s “Pirate Cinema,” which recently won a Promethus Award (along with Neal Stephenson’s “Cryptonomicon,” another personal favorite).

“Little Brother” tells the story of Trent McCauley, a British teenager whose obsession with making mash-ups using commercial movies gets his family cut off from the internet for a year. This turns out to be a bigger punishment than Trent anticipated, however, as his sister needs the internet for her school studies and his parents need it for work. The strain Trent has caused on his family is too much for him to bear so he runs away to live in London on his own.

What follows is a tale of being homeless, squatting in abandoned buildings, making new friends, showing movies in the sewers and cemeteries, politics, government, lawsuits, intellectual property, art, and copyright law. It’s a lot of heavy (and topical) subjects, but Doctorow does a good job of making the content accessible (and exciting) to younger (and, ahem, older) readers, all in a sort of Londoner writ and tone I haven’t seen him use in previous novels (the book definitely has its own “voice”).

If you’ve followed the news around SOPA and PIPA recently, or enjoy watching mash-ups on YouTube, you” probably enjoy “Pirate Cinema.”

WIJFR: Kill Decision

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Linda McKinney is a myrmecologist, a scientist who studies the social structure of ants. Her academic career has left her entirely unprepared for the day her sophisticated research is conscripted by unknown forces to help run an unmanned – and thanks to her research, automated – drone army. Odin is the secretive Special Ops soldier with a unique insight into the faceless enemy who has begun to attack the American homeland with drones programmed to seek, identify, and execute targets without human intervention.

Together, McKinney and Odin must slow this advance long enough for the world to recognize its destructive power, because for thousands of years the “kill decision” during battle has remained in the hands of humans – and off-loading that responsibility to machines will bring unintended, possibly irreversible, consequences. But as forces even McKinney and Odin don’t understand begin to gather, and death rains down from above, it may already be too late to save humankind from destruction at the hands of our own technology.

Today I finished reading “Kill Decision” by Daniel Suarez, the author of “Daemon” and “FreedomTM.”

A series of terrorist bombings has put the United States on high alert. A secret Special Ops group knows, however, that the bombings are actually drone strikes, aimed at very specific human targets, and are desperately trying to find (and stop) the source of the drones. Professor Linda McKinney, an ant specialist who has developed a software model of how ant colonies swarm and attack, is suddenly swept up into the world of Special Ops as Odin and his crew rescue her from a drone strike and inform her that her software model is being used to control the behavior of autonomous killing machines.

What follows is a fast-paced, technological thriller on par with Suarez’s previous books. At one point, the swarm of thousands of drones intent on killing the team reminded me of scenes from “Matrix Revolutions” (think about the machines invading Zion, or the machine city near the end). As usual, Suarez is able to take real-world existing technology and push it just into the realm of science fiction (or is it?), but not enough to make it completely unbelievable, just scary.

In what seems to be a recent pattern, my reading has coincided with real world events, including a recent unmanned drone landing on a Navy aircraft carrier and a Colorado town passing a law to allow drone hunting!

WIJFR: The Mongoliad: Book Three

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The shadow of Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II hangs over the shattered Holy Roman Church as the cardinals remain deadlocked, unable to choose a new pope. Only the Binders and a mad priest have a hope of uniting the Church against the invading Mongol host. An untested band of young warriors stands against the dissolute Khan, fighting for glory and freedom in the Khan’s sadistic circus of swords, and the brave band of Shield-Brethren who set out to stop the Mongol threat single-handedly race against their nemesis before he can raise the entire empire against them. Veteran knight Feronantus, haunted by his life in exile, leads the dwindling company of Shield-Brethren to their final battle, molding them into a team that will outlast him. No good hero lives forever. Or fights alone.

I’ve finally finished “The Mongoliad: Book Three“, the collaborative effort by Neal Stephenson, Erik Bear, Greg Bear, Joseph Brassey, Nicole Galland, Mark Teppo, and Cooper Moo, and (what I thought was) the last book of the Foreworld Saga. At the end of my last post I was hoping that the myriad of storylines of “The Mongoliad” would start to come together. In some ways I was rewarded, but in others left wanting.

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