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Gah.
I just finished reading a book to review for a magazine. It's cyberpunk, which isn't my usual subgenre. The last cyberpunk I read was Snow Crash, I think, though it's possible I read whichever William Gibson it was (I don't remember if I read Idoru, Neuromancer, or both) after that, but neither of them is particularly recent.
So when the book starts out on the first page using jargon and whatnot, I had NO idea what they were talking about (and the EPITHETS! Just use his/her freaking NAME, not "the blond pilot" or whatever) and felt like I was missing half the conversation. I have no idea if these are terms used generally in the current cyberpunk scene and I just don't know them, or if this book is entwined in an existing world of the writer's so people already know them, or if it's just something the writer made up for this book.
Leaving aside that the book wasn't generally my cup of tea, there were serious flaws in it. Like, 3/4 of the way through, there's something that looks like it's a remnant of a previous draft (actually, two somethings) that didn't get cut out or properly revised. The romance feels pastede on. The politics feel pastede on. It's about the singularity, I guess? And the evils of capitalism (which I generally approve of)?
I have to figure out how to write a review of this book without just waving my arms around and going "GAH!" a lot. Also without being scathing, because it wasn't as bad as Darkship Thieves (which was HORRIBLE OH GOD FUCK THAT BOOK), and the underlying idea was pretty cool, but the execution was lacking. I was frustrated SO much reading this book. I got a Kindle version, and my notes are "wasn't this copyedited???" and "WTF?" and also "come on, you can't use the singular Latin word for house to mean both house AND houses... it doesn't work that way!"
I just finished reading a book to review for a magazine. It's cyberpunk, which isn't my usual subgenre. The last cyberpunk I read was Snow Crash, I think, though it's possible I read whichever William Gibson it was (I don't remember if I read Idoru, Neuromancer, or both) after that, but neither of them is particularly recent.
So when the book starts out on the first page using jargon and whatnot, I had NO idea what they were talking about (and the EPITHETS! Just use his/her freaking NAME, not "the blond pilot" or whatever) and felt like I was missing half the conversation. I have no idea if these are terms used generally in the current cyberpunk scene and I just don't know them, or if this book is entwined in an existing world of the writer's so people already know them, or if it's just something the writer made up for this book.
Leaving aside that the book wasn't generally my cup of tea, there were serious flaws in it. Like, 3/4 of the way through, there's something that looks like it's a remnant of a previous draft (actually, two somethings) that didn't get cut out or properly revised. The romance feels pastede on. The politics feel pastede on. It's about the singularity, I guess? And the evils of capitalism (which I generally approve of)?
I have to figure out how to write a review of this book without just waving my arms around and going "GAH!" a lot. Also without being scathing, because it wasn't as bad as Darkship Thieves (which was HORRIBLE OH GOD FUCK THAT BOOK), and the underlying idea was pretty cool, but the execution was lacking. I was frustrated SO much reading this book. I got a Kindle version, and my notes are "wasn't this copyedited???" and "WTF?" and also "come on, you can't use the singular Latin word for house to mean both house AND houses... it doesn't work that way!"
