BOOK REVIEW: THE CUCKOO'S CALLING by ROBERT GALBRAITH (2013)

Yes, I confess that I was one of the many thousands of suckers who, on learning that an obscure novice crime writer who had written a decent first novel was actually none other than the legend in her own lifetime J. K. Rowling, went out and ordered it. Alas not quickly enough to get a last copy of the first edition but instead the reprint which acknowledged the author's true identity.

And now I've read it. 

And if anyone comes up to me and says that Rowling is a crap writer who got lucky I will be tempted to punch them in their stupid face. This novel proves beyond all doubt that Joanne Rowling is a very good writer who got lucky. I bought her previous post-Potter novel but it's sitting on the shelf albeit not for much longer than it takes to write this review.

I don't really want to regurgitate a plot summary which you can easily find elsewhere (like Amazon) so I won't. I'll tell you what Rowling does instead. Her characters are vivid and interesting and if at first sometimes appearing as stereotypes are gradually revealed as having hidden depths and as fully believable people. The protagonist in particular is a vividly realised creation. Her descriptive abilities are superb as she creates a particular milieu and involves the reader in it. Rowling writes in a very dense style by crime novel standards -a fast and racy read this isn't- but her prose is so good that you can't stop reading.

This has to be one of the best crime novels of the year and it's definitely one of the best I've read in some considerable time. Another in the series is completed for publication next year and I hope there'll be more after that.

BOOK REVIEW: THE WORLD OF POO by TERRY PRATCHETT (2012)

"Shit, glorious shit!
There nothing more fun
than rolling in it!"

Terry has managed to get the publishing rights to Felicity Beedle's excellent short novel which has previously only been published in Ankh-Morpork (and territories). Terry, has, as is his wont, annotated it for our benefit. It tells the tale of young Geoffrey sent to live for a short period (for reasons later revealed) with his influential grand-mama in the great city itself and how he develops a passion for collecting all different kinds of poo and meets many kind people from all walks of life who assist him.

It goes without saying that this is also an informative work which provides the reader with information about the biological necessity for poo and the many uses it can be turned to to enhance the lives of Ankh-Morporkians (and indeed ourselves). 

We must also thank Mr Peter Dennis for his excellent illustrations.

Given the success of this tome, we can only hope that Terry can gain the rights to other of Miss Beedle's work (listed in the book) such as Melvin and the Enormous Boil, War with the Snot Goblins, and, of course, Geoffrey and the Land of Poo.

BOOK REVIEW: FURTHER-BEYOND THE THRESHOLD by CHRIS ROBERSON

This is an expanded review which recently appeared on Amazon that, at the time of writing (30^th May, 2012) earned 28 positive votes out of 30 (28/30) which is quite a large number by my usual standards –anything over 10 votes is exceptional. Mind you, it was the first Amazon UK review of the book and being the first gets more attention. (The book itself I got for free, a proof copy for review without the snazzy cover shown above.) I think it’s possibly because, having seen a specific criticism on amazon.com, I opened the review with my argument against said criticism. I’ve revised it for this blog because I wanted to go into a little more detail.

The 4 star review’s title is: Enjoyable far future adventure.

That's 12,000 years plus in the future without any back to the Stone Age disasters in between. This immediately sets up the argument that such a period of development would create a society incomprehensible to modern man. I disagree for a couple of reasons. The first is that we are already technologically advanced and just because we can't understand how something futuristic works doesn't mean we don't recognise it for what it is i.e. the product of science. 

Arthur C. Clarke once wrote, or in words to this effect, that any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. This sounds a clever thing to say when he said it decades ago but looking at it now it just sounds glib. It doesn't look like magic to our eyes, it just looks like technology. Having second thoughts, I don’t think it was a clever thing to say even then, it just sounded clever and, coming from the great man himself, it gained a lot of attention. I’m not being facetious here. Clarke is important in the history of science fiction and in populist writing about science. He was a genuinely creative thinker. But in this case he was wrong by, at the very least, a couple of hundred years and probably more.

The Renaissance brought about a great change in the way we saw the world, in particular that we are just a part of the universe and not the centre. For the next few hundred years, we saw the evolution in thinking about what call Science which exploded with the Industrial Revolution. A reasonably educated mid-Victorian would not be shocked or overwhelmed by contemporary technology once s/he’d had a change to take it all in. The changes in society would be far more overwhelming. 

The second reason is that, while it goes without saying that society will be vastly different in the future, it's unlikely that our basic intelligence will have changed much. 12,000 years is a blink on the evolutionary scale and I don’t think that it’s altered significantly since the invention of writing and probably longer. Of course there’s always the possibility our intelligence could be enhanced by genetic advances but I’m not going to go there. My argument is that society a few thousand years in the future may be strange to our eyes but it won’t be incomprehensible.

What Roberson does is to create and deftly portray to the reader just such an advanced society as seen through the eyes of an astronaut born a couple of centuries hence. The first half is concerned with our hero RJ finding his way in the new world and the second with his command of the first ever FTL spaceship. I should note that thousands of worlds have been populated by means of (wormhole powered gates and getting from one world to another is as easy as walking through a door. There's a varied collection of supporting characters, some human, some A1, some enhanced animals (including cats, dogs, chimpanzees and killer whales), but all intelligences are considered by society to be human. Except by...

Which is where the conflict comes in and the novel climaxes with an encounter with the 'except by'. It's all very readable and a promising start to this new trilogy. I'm looking forward to getting my hands on the next one.

An Amazon 5-star review.

Get yourself fit the DC way.

Simply buy a copy of this book but don't remove it from its case. Now, with the book flat on the ground, slide your hands underneath until the full width of the book is flat against your arms. Now lift until the book is on a level with your chest and hold the position until your arms feel as if they're about to drop off -trust me, it won't take long. Repeat until you realise there is a much better use for this book, open the case, now enjoy the wonderful contents.

There has never been a book like this about the comics industry and probably won't be again, at least not for a long time (unless Marvel, not untypically, follow DC). It is huge -not a coffee table book, a dinner-table-for-eight book- and extremely heavy. Whatever you do, don't drop it on your foot or you could easily break a toe. This is not a joke as the size and weight of it makes it impossible to hold on your lap. The production values (publisher Taschen is known for this) and the contents are magnificent. It is, obviously, an authorised (and no doubt sanitised) history of DC comics but that's fair enough. Although the copious and beautifully reprinted illustrations almost swamp the text, a reviewer at Amazon.com reckoned the word count to be around 100,000 (a conservative estimate?) so there is plenty of text to read.

Although expensive, and the most expensive book I've ever bought, it's worth every penny to anyone interested in DC Comics or the history of comics in general. I've read that some people consider this to be an investment as it's bound to be a collector's item once it goes out of print; which is something I've considered. If you're thinking of buying it for that alone, here's a word of warning. It is almost impossible to open the case the first time without damaging it slightly and the case is also easy to scuff. Bearing that in mind, I suggest ordering two copies, one to enjoy and the other to keep in pristine condition. (Sorry, this is what's called winding up the opportunists).

Gorgous book. I love it. Comics-related book of the Decade, no question.