Book Review: Charles Stross Saturn's Children

I have been planning to read Charles Stross for some time; ever since being told that he includes interesting economics in his novels. Saturn's Children is not supposed to be the best example of this (see this list of SFF books that are supposed to use economics well), but it is the first book in a universe that includes Neptune's Brood which is supposed to better.

The novel follows Freya Nakamichi-47, an android living in a distant future in which humanity is extinct and an almost feudal society of androids and robots has colonized our Solar System. Freya is free from vassalage but, having been designed as a sex-bot, is obsolete and must work menial jobs.

You might think that a book populated by robots and androids would become a bit sterile. To combat this, one of the central conceits of Saturn's Children is that the robot/android neurology is copied from humans' because the humans never figured out how to do it any other way. Thus all of the robots/androids have human personalities allowing the reader to identify with them.

Economics makes an appearance through Stross's study of the costs of interplanetary travel (they are large). When Freya is forced to flee Venus, it comes at the price of accepting a job as a courier for the mysterious Jeeves Corporation ferrying "pink goo" (code for replicating living tissue). In the process, she becomes embroiled in a complex war among factions conspiring against each other for control of society. Among the factions are several of Freya's "sibs"—androids of the same design with similar initial conditioning—with whom Freya can swap "soul chips" and thus adopt aspects of their history and personalities.

Along the way, Stross examines a number of interesting philosophical questions. For example, how much free will does Freya possess given that she was programmed to serve humanity but humanity is extinct? Should Freya be able to give up her free will—through a slave chip—by accepting vassalage? And how much free will do any of us have, when the rich can act to narrow the set of opportunities we face until vassalage seems like the only option?

There is also a lot of sex in the novel. This is perhaps to be expected given that the viewpoint character is a sex-bot. To Freya, phalluses (phalli?) and vaginas are everywhere: buildings look like dildos. And she has been programmed to enjoy sex. A lot. And to crave it.

On the whole, I thought this was a well done piece of fiction. Although the plot meanders and let me down at times (the middle third drags a bit), the depiction of the world, and the philosophical questions the books raised, kept me interested throughout. On my rating scale, that makes it a "good" ...

R⁴ Rating: 7 out of 10.

Book Review: Colson Whitehead The Intuitionist

It has a been a long time since the synopsis of a book got me as excited as the one for The Intuitionist by Colson Whitehead.  Here is one synopsis, which is a medley I put together from several found on Wikipedia, Amazon and Goodreads:

The Intuitionist takes place in a North American city full of skyscrapers prior the Civil Rights movement, in which black people referred to as "colored" and integration a current topic of discussion. Lila Mae Watson, the second black elevator inspector and the first black female inspector in the city, belongs to the "Intuitionist" school who practice an inspecting method by which they ride in an elevator and intuit the state of the elevator and its related systems. The competing school, the "Empiricists", insists upon traditional instrument-based verification of the condition of the elevator.

When the Number Eleven elevator of the newly completed Fanny Briggs Memorial Building goes into deadly free-fall just hours after Lila Mae has signed off on it, the Intuitionists suspect the Empiricists of a set-up, motivated by an upcoming election in the Elevator Inspectors Guild. With the help of the Intuitionist faction, Lila Mae strives to exonerate herself while avoiding underworld hit men and the Guild's internal affairs department. All the while, she also wrestles with the mystery surrounding the existence of heretofore lost writings by James Fulton, the father of Intuitionism, whose own history is itself a mystery.

Sounds pretty amazing, right? I was expecting a book length discussion of the relative merits of deductive and inductive reasoning wrapped up in a noir detective thriller. Turns out, that is not what this book is about. There are elements of a noir detective thriller, but the Intuitionist vs. Empiricist debate is a smokescreen; just labels for the two sides involved in a proxy war on behalf of two elevator companies. The motivating forces are not intellectual at all; corporate greed and racism drive the most of the secondary characters in the book. Indeed, Whitehead seems to be poking fun at academia and the intellectual games academics play, when he shows us the tremendous intellectual effort devoted to Intuitionism and then tells us that Fulton invented it as a joke. Similarly, when Whitehead reveals what Fulton meant by his marginalia "Lila Mae is the one".

About two-thirds of the way through the book, when I realized I was sold a false bill of goods, I put the book down. It took me some time to let go of what I thought the book was about in order to enjoy the book as it actually was: an exploration of race and social mobility expressed through the metaphor of ascending on an elevator. This book isn't the best I have read that tries to tackle these issues, but it is an interesting one that is further elevated by prose that is at times stunningly beautiful. The depiction of race relations, and the general atmosphere of racism, is striking, while Lila Mae's character is well realized (she appears to lie somewhere pretty far along the spectrum).

Some assorted additional thoughts:

1. Is this book science fiction or fantasy? This book was chosen by the classic science fiction reading group that I belong to. It does have some urban fantasy elements, but it is not what you would typically call science fiction. However, it does share with a lot of the best science fiction a desire to use a technological metaphor to explore important social issues. Some people at the book club emphasized the comic book elements with Intuitionism being a super-power; this connection is strengthened by Whitehead's decision to name the journalist character Ben Urich, a journalist from the Marvel universe (the book clubbers identified an early scene where Urich is tortured as a direct echo of Frank Miller's "Born Again" Daredevil arc).
2. Everybody seems to think that story is set in a version of New York city. Except perhaps me. I envision it in Chicago given that Lila Mae makes a short car trip to the Midwest Institute for Vertical Transport. I think this is also fitting given Chicago's history of skyscapers. 
3. A lot of commentators state that this is the only novel set in the world of elevator inspectors. Note true! Or at least, not precisely true. Friendly Fire by A. B. Yehoshua is about an elevator engineer. From a review on Amazon:

   Ya'ari, who runs a Tel Aviv engineering company, needs to be in control, and his inability to control the vagaries of nature (and other people) frustrates him. In an unforgettably described passage at the outset of the novel, Ya'ari has been summoned to correct the unbearable moaning noises which emanate from an elevator whenever the wind blows, an engineering problem that Yehoshua actually manages to make exciting.

All in all, although the book turned out to be very different than what I had imagined, I thought there was enough in it to make it worth reading. Whitehead has a gift for writing and I will seek out his work in future. On my rating scale, that makes it a "good" ...

R⁴ Rating: 7 out of 10.

Book Review: John Scalzi Lock In

As I have mentioned before, I have found much to like and little to love in John Scalzi's fiction (as opposed to his blog posts which are often entertaining and insightful). Despite this, I was pretty optimistic about his new book, Lock In.

There were two main reasons for my optimism. First, one of my major problems with Scalzi's earlier work has been that it is too derivative of other work. Old Man's War was, to me, too much like a re-telling of Heinlein's Starship Troopers, while Redshirts was too much like Star Trek fan fiction. In contrast, Lock In appears to be something entirely new; a novel set in a world of Scalzi's own invention.

Second, Lock In concerns people with disabilities. As a person with a disability of my own, who has often felt that SFF has neglected to portray people like me, I was excited to see what Scalzi would do.

The premise behind Lock In is that the world has been exposed to a highly contagious virus that comes to be known as "Haden's Syndrome", after its most high-profile victim, the First Lady of the United States. Although most are unaffected, a small fraction of people are "locked in"; fully awake and aware but unable to move or respond to stimuli, in an echo of the real-life "locked-in syndrome."

Another small group of people remain fully able and gain the ability to allow locked in people to ride around in their bodies, becoming what is known as an "Integrator". Others afflicted with Haden's syndrome use humanoid robotic personal transport units controlled by a Haden's brain (nicknamed "Threeps" after C3PO from Star Wars). And some of those afflicted with Haden's syndrome withdraw into a virtual reality world.

The book follows FBI agents Chris Shane (who is a Haden) and Leslie Vann who are assigned to a Haden-related murder with an Integrator suspect. Further Integrator-Haden related murders occur, making the case larger than expected. The result is a science fiction police procedural that touches on issues in disability politics and corporate welfare.

There are a number of things that Lock In gets right. For one, it does a good job conveying the sense in which there is a caste system whereby some disabilities are funded and well-studied while others languish in research backwaters. In the book, Haden's syndrome becomes a cause célèbre and receives vast amounts of government funding. The resulting technologies are reserved exclusively for those afflicted with the syndrome, even though people with other movement disorders, the very old, and the morbidly obese, would plausibly benefit from these technologies, too.

For another, the book also gets at some of the controversy within groups like the deaf community that must decide whether or not to have surgical intervention that might improve hearing at the cost of driving a wedge between them and the deaf community. It also touches on some interesting related issues. Should threeps be treated legally like motor vehicles? Or like human bodies? Who has the right of way? A car or a threep or a pedestrian? But on the whole, I found the books treatment of these issues unsatisfying. Rather than investigate them deeply, the book seems to simply want to flag them and move on; having ticked a box, the books can turn back to the plot. In sum, I view the book as something of a missed opportunity as regards investigating these issues.

The book is an easy page turning read; Scalzi has mastered the form of the airport paperback thriller. At times, I felt like I could hear Scalzi uttering some of the snarkier and most glib lines delivered by the characters, which was a little disconcerting. But most significantly, as far as whether or not the book works as a police procedural, I was also left unsatisfied. Perhaps its is just me, but I get tired of reading books in which master criminals are tricked into confessing to their crimes.

In sum, although I think it is possible to read and enjoy this book, I was left unsatisfied by the type of ending and the books failure to investigate the issues it raises more deeply. Unlike the Sad and Rabid Puppies, I want more message in my science fiction! Someone with a different background to my own, without the vested interest in these issues, might give this book a decent 6 out of 10. But for me, I can do no better than a "not bad" ...

R⁴ Rating: 5 out of 10.

Book Review: Naomi Novik Uprooted

Naomi Novik is the author of the popular Temeraire series of novels, an alternate history, in which the English and French fight the Napoleonic Wars atop flying and talking dragons. Uprooted, which appears to be a stand alone novel, takes place in a different universe, instead being set in a fantasy version of Eastern Europe. Indeed, it is apparently loosely based on a Polish folk tale.

The protagonist of Uprooted is Agnieszka, a rural peasant girl growing up in a valley next to The Wood, a mysterious and hostile forest. The residents of the valley rely on the local wizard, known as The Dragon, to protect them from The Wood. In payment, the Dragon takes a 17 year old girl once every ten years to live with him. No-one knows what the (very long lived) Dragon does with these girls, except that at the end of their decade with him they do not wish to stay in the valley and return to their old village life.

As we enter the story, the decade is coming to an end and the Dragon will soon choose his next girl. Agnieszka is of the right age but does not expect to be selected due to the presence of her friend Kasia, who is beautiful and talented and has been groomed by expectations of her choosing for many years. To everyone's surprise but the reader the Dragon turns up and chooses Agnieszka who is whisked off to live as part servant, part student in the Dragon's tower. For Agnieszka turns out to have some facility with magic and it is the Dragon's obligation to tutor her in it.

The rest of the book then takes some interesting trails through what is otherwise familiar territory. The Dragon is forced to deal with the young and feisty Agnieszka and must un-learn some of his curmudgeonly ways. Agnieszka must learn to let go of her plans for her life, while fighting to keep intact her ties to the people of her village. The Dragon turns out to be a poor tutor for Agnieszka as her magical powers take a different but complementary form to his own and she must turn instead to a book written by the mysterious Baba Jaga. Together, they must learn to confront the forces that live inside The Wood before those forces overwhelm their entire world.

Novik writes very well which makes for a very brisk read. The Eastern European setting, while not differing tremendously from the standard Western European medieval fantasy, adds an interesting flavor to the mix. I found Agnieszka to be very likeable, and thought the character behaved intelligently and reasonably in light of the information she has available to her. If this sounds like I am damning with faint praise, it is not intended to be that way: far too often I find myself bouncing off a fantasy novel because I do not find the characters' actions believable. That is not a problem here.

As the book reaches its climax, there is a predictable (dare I say clichéd?) digression into a discussion of how humanity's contempt for nature is the root cause (pardon the pun) of evil lurking within The Wood. But just when I was afraid that the book was going to veer off into some sort of environmental screed, the book recovers and ends with the neutral message that nature and humanity need to find a balance, with nature accepting the inevitability of "progress". This is not the sort of heavy handed message fiction complained about by the Sad and Rabid Puppies.

Overall, I enjoyed this book a lot.  It was a fun read populated with compelling characters, with enough differences from the typical fantasy to make it seem fresh. On my patented rating scale, that makes it a "very good" ...

R⁴ Rating: 8 out of 10.

Book Review: Marge Piercy Woman on the Edge of Time

Marge Piercy is a poet and novelist whose work often addresses feminist and social issues. By all accounts, she is "kind of a big deal" which is why I am a little embarrassed to admit that I had never heard of her until a local book group selected Woman on the Edge of Time for its monthly read. Only then did I find out that this book, first published in 1976, is regarded as both a feminist classic as well as a classic of utopian science fiction. To top it all off, William Gibson credits it as the birthplace of Cyberpunk.

Woman on the Edge of Time follows Conseulo "Connie" Ramos, a 37 year-old Hispanic woman previously committed to a mental institution for the drug-fueled abuse of her own child, and soon recommitted after attacking her niece's pimp. At around about the same time that she is recommitted, she starts to communicate with Luciente, an androgynous woman living in a future utopian socialist world. Although Luciente is reluctant to directly discuss Connie's pivotal role in history, as the doctors at the institution begin to experiment with mind control and mood alteration via both pharmaceuticals and surgical intervention, Connie is drawn into an alternative future in which a wealthy elite uses these techniques to control the population (this is the birth of Cyberpunk). The tension ratchets up as Connie fights to escape or undermine these experiments and also considers striking back at the doctors directly.

The first 100-150 pages of the book are brutal. Littered with depictions of domestic abuse, Connie's abuse of her own child, as well as the abuse of the mentally ill, it is a very challenging read that I had to break into pieces. This part of the book is also hard to read because, for the most part, Connie is quite passive. The book begins to pick up steam when Connie starts planning her escape from the institution.

Like many authors who only occasionally dabble in SFF, Piercy at times struggles to find the right balance between moving the story forward and pausing the action to exposit aspects of the alternative futures. She does much better showing (and not telling) us about the dystopian future than she does with the utopian one where the action pauses for long stretches.

The utopian future has a lot of elements that will be familiar to the modern reader, but which probably appeared fresher when the book was written. Conflict in this future has been reduced by eliminating many of the differences between people. Differences between the sexes have been minimized: women have been emancipated from childbirth by the use of artificial wombs and childcare is shared between three adults with men being modified so as to be able to breastfeed. The gender neutral pronoun 'per' short for 'person' is used exclusively. Differences between the races have been reduced by deliberate inter-breeding. Even cultural differences have been reduced while still being celebrated: different villages adopt a cultural identity, but people are free to move between them in a fluid dance of appropriation and repudiation of culture. Hierarchies have been limited through fixed term limits for leadership positions followed by mandatory service in less prestigious/powerful jobs. Much effort is devoted to keeping humanity in balance with the environment. Direct democracy seems to be the rule and population growth is tightly restricted.

I had a bit of trouble suspending my disbelief about the utopian future. Somehow, this future possesses a highly advanced society despite living a very decentralized agrarian lifestyle. Science appears to have progressed even as the arts have somewhat atrophied (Connie describes some of the public art as childlike). Medicine has gone backwards: the residents of this future are supposed to be content to live shortened lifespans. Direct democracy seems to be effective in spite of lengthy meetings to debate even relatively modest decisions. And the people are supposed to have won a war against the wealthy industrialized corporations of the potentially dystopian future despite what appears to be limited resources and the absence of a professional army.

I wonder a little about the reaction of a modern audience to this book written as it is by a white and presumably affluent woman about a poor Hispanic woman who is a bit of a negative stereotype. I thought the depiction was well realized and in no-way voyeuristic, but would someone from that background agree? I also wonder about the response to the books apparent advocacy of cultural appropriation as not just acceptable but in fact necessary for the promotion of harmony between different people. For myself, I thought the idea was interesting and worth thinking more about, although I suspect some people might be hostile.

A question that naturally arises is whether or not Connie's contact with the future is real, or delusional. In one of her trips to the future, she sees the doctors from her institution fighting against her utopian socialist allies, suggesting that this vision at least is a delusion. But are the others? Connie sees her own daughter in Luciente's child suggesting it might also be a delusion. She is also able to interact with people from the future when she travels to their time, but they rarely come to her time and do not interact with anyone there. I kind of like the idea that it is all in her head, but I think we are meant to believe that it is real. The book works either way.

For some modern readers, the long pauses in the narrative for exposition purposes will be frustrating, and what was fresh about the book in 1976 will appear far less fresh now, suggesting the book deserves a "good" 7 out of 10. As for me, I was less bothered by the expositional pauses and thought the character of Connie was compelling and the brutality of her life exceptionally well realized. Most importantly, the book made me think. In any case, I think a book should be judged in the context of the time it was published. If I had read this back in 1976, I expect I would be rating it a "brilliant" ...

R⁴ Rating: 9 out of 10.

Next year will mark the 40th anniversary of the publication of Piercy's brilliant book. I presume there are plans to celebrate it. If not, if anyone is interested in putting something together, I would be happy to help.

Book Review: John Scalzi Old Man's War

Few authors in SFF are as polarizing as John Scalzi. Probably best known for his Hugo Award winning novel Redshirts and his popular Whatever blog, Scalzi is a prominent champion of social justice causes in SFF with his blog post "Straight White Male: The Lowest Difficulty Setting There Is" justly attracting a great deal of attention. He recently signed a ten year, thirteen book, $3.4 million deal with Tor. Add to this the potential adaptation of his work for the screen and it is fair to say that he is, quite simply, very successful.

He also has many critics. As Scalzi himself concedes, he dropped the ball when, as president of the Science Fiction Writers Association, he signed off on an issue of the SFWA Bulletin which many found offensive. His most vocal critics argue that he has overstated the popularity of his blog and shamelessly campaigned for awards. He has also caught a great deal of flak from his social justice allies ("How John Scalzi pissed me off" is far from the only example). The Sad and Rabid Puppies often cite Redshirts as an example of all that is wrong with the Hugo Awards.

For my part, I have to concede that as a fellow alumnus of the University of Chicago, I might be a little predisposed towards liking Scalzi. I have often enjoyed reading Scalzi's blog and find myself in agreement with him on most issues; in addition to the above mentioned "Straight White Male" post, I also especially enjoyed his "Apologies: What, When and How" blog post. Our college experiences also seem to have been quite similar. The few times I have been turned off by the blog (or his twitter feed) is when he turns up the snark to eleven and/or comes across as a little too smug and condescending.

As for his fiction, I have found much to like but little to love. Scalzi writes well in a breezy style that makes for a quick "page turning" read (I finished this book in two days). His fiction often dances around important social issues, but rarely investigates them deeply; this is not, ironically, the kind of "message fiction" that the Puppies have been complaining about. As a result, while I enjoy reading the books, they do not leave a lasting impression.

Old Man's War, which I believe was Scalzi's first published novel, is no exception. Part of a long line of imitators of Heinlein's Starship Troopers, which includes Joe Haldeman's The Forever War, and John Steakley's Armor and many others, Old Man's War follows John Perry one of the newest recruits in the Colonial Defense Forces. Scalzi departs from his progenitors by imagining a world in which the old enlist to fight in return for being given new younger genetically enhanced bodies supplemented by nanotechnology. Other than this, the first half of the book is basically a retelling of Heinlein's Starship Troopers: Perry's raid on the Whaidian's home world is reminiscent of Rico's raid on the Skinnies, while Perry's first experience on Coral is akin to Rico's in the first Battle of Klendathu. The second half of the book gets a bit more interesting as Perry is confronted with the clone of his long dead wife, and there is an interesting discussion of the ways in which combat would differ if soldiers could withstand damage that would be catastrophic to a human body. The books ends in a reasonably satisfying way that is (slightly) reminiscent of the ending of The Forever War.

As for its discussions of deeper social issues, there is not much there. The by-now typical debate about whether or not their society should be at war (as opposed to negotiating with the alien races) occurs, but any serious discussion is curtailed with the deaths of the two main advocates for diplomacy. Perry has a psychological breakdown after participating in one massacre, but this is quickly dismissed as simply a phase all the soldiers go through; the discussion of the psychological effects of violence is considerably shallower than the one that redeems the otherwise pedestrian Armor by Steakley. There is nothing equivalent to Heinlein's ruminations on how best to govern society, or Haldeman's use of the time distorting effects of relativity to draw attention to the alienating impact of being sent off to war.

In sum, reading Scalzi's Old Man's War is like eating a meal saturated with MSG: it tastes pretty good as you are eating it, but you are left feeling hungry soon afterwards and worried about the long-term consequences for your health. All in all, on the R⁴ ratings scale, it is a perfectly decent ...

R⁴ Rating: 6 out of 10.

Book Review: Kameron Hurley The Mirror Empire

Kameron Hurley is the author of the soon to be published Geek Feminist Revolution and a prominent social justice activist who uses both her blog and twitter as a platform. Her new series, The Worldbreaker Saga, of which this is the first volume, has been cited as an exemplar of “diverse” science fiction and fantasy and so I thought it a reasonable window through which to view the current state of SFF as it related to the Hugo Controversy.

The conceit of this epic fantasy is that there exist a series of parallel worlds. A person can travel between these worlds only if the version of themselves in the other world is dead. With one of these worlds on the brink of collapse, and with a large number of people eager to escape the catastrophe, a lot of people in a neighboring world are going to have to die to make this happen. Plans to make them die are already quite advanced when we join the story.

Given what I knew of Hurley, I was expecting something a little bit different. I was not disappointed: this is not your run-of-the-mill fantasy set in some version of medieval Europe. There are walking trees and carnivorous plants. People ride bears and dogs (no horses appear) and live in dwellings made from crafted plants. At least one culture practices ritual cannibalism. Magical powers derive from satellites whose presence in the sky waxes and wanes. And the social structure ticks all of the social justice boxes: most characters appear to be black or brown of skin; there are multiple genders with their own pronouns and some characters can transition between genders; polygamous and polygynous relationships are common; many possible sexualities are represented; at least one culture (the Dhai) requires explicit consent before any physical touching.

Into this rich and complex environment are thrown a large cast of viewpoint characters. There is Lilia, born in the collapsing world, and sent to the other by her mother for reasons not initially clear. There is Zezili, a half-Dhai general charged overseeing the murder of large numbers of Dhai slaves. There is Ahkio, brother to the ruler of the Dhai. And Roh, a friend of Lilia. There is Maralah, a warrior in service to the Patron of the country of Saiduan, and Taigan whose similar service post-dates some earlier disgrace. There is Anavha, Zezili’s husband/sex-slave. And then there are Kalinda, Ghrasia, and others I am probably forgetting.

If all of that sounds overwhelming, that is because it is. Trying to keep all the details of this world in my head, wondering which, if any, were going to be essential to the story down the line, I struggled to get into the story for the first 75% of the book. The process of immersing myself in the book was further frustrated by some issues of craft. There is an old rule of thumb for science and fantasy writing that when you are inventing terms and names you should try to make them distinctive; one way to do this is to have names start with a different letter. Hurley, unfortunately, seems to be obsessed with the letter ‘d’: there are the country and people of Dhai, who are called Daijin when enslaved in the country of Dorinah whose empress is Daorian. One of the clans in the country of Dhai is Daora and another is Dasina. Roh falls under the influence of a character named Dasai. Ahkio ascends to the position of Kai (OK, it doesn’t start with ‘d’ but it appears to rhyme with ‘Dhai’), head of the Dhai nation. Zezili owns a slave named Daolyn and rides a dog named Dakar. Another character is called Driaa. The prose is also lacking in sparkle. In fact, reading it can be slog, as in the opening to chapter 17 “The churning mud sucked at Zezili’s boots as she slogged across the remains of the camp.”

I also struggled to suspend my disbelief about the world. There is a reason why carnivores are not used as beasts of burden in our world: the economics of feeding them would make it prohibitively expensive. The dogs in Hurley's world eat meat, but where does it come from? Where are the large herds of herbivores that would need to be slaughtered to keep the bears and dogs that carry everything around fed?

I kept plugging away at this book hoping that it would get better ... and it did ... significantly in the last 50 pages. Finally, I was able to keep all of the characters and places straight in my head (it helped that the focus narrowed to a smaller number of viewpoints). And the book ended with some hints at exciting developments in the next book. Since this means I will probably give the sequel a try, it elevates the rating from 4 out of 10 ("bad") to a "not bad" ...

R⁴ Rating: 5 out of 10.

Book Review: Patrick Rothfuss The Slow Regard of Silent Things

One of these days, I will write a review of the first two volumes in Patrick Rothfuss's Kingkiller Chronicles. When I do, I will explain how I avoided reading these books for a long time and how, when I finally committed to reading them, I hardened my heart and determined to hate them. I will also explain how, despite having many problems with the books, through the sheer power of Rothfuss's beautiful writing---that at times verges on poetic---and skill at drawing characters, I came to love them.

For now, it is enough to note that I am pre-disposed to enjoy anything Rothfuss writes, especially if it is set within the Kingkiller Universe. Which is a good thing, in this case, because The Slow Regard of Silent Things is a weird little book. You know you are in for something weird when the book begins with a Foreword from the author that starts: "You might not want to buy this book."

Rather than telling a traditional story, the book is more of a vignette; a week in the life of a (more or less minor) character named Auri in the Kingkiller Chronicles told from her perspective so that it provides insight into her mind.

And what a mind! As readers of the novels will know, Auri is mad. I am not a psychiatrist or a psychologist and I do not have a copy of the DSM to hand, but it seems to me that Auri displays obsessive-compulsive tendencies, has a tendency to catastrophize and hence may be prone to depression, as well as a bread basket of other emotional and psychological problems. It may be that these problems are also the source of her genius, or the result of them.

Despite the fact that nothing really happens, this short book is beautifully written with all of Rothfuss's trademark skill. I thought that Rothfuss's attempts to describe the mind of Auri were, on the whole, quite believable, and hence that it made a very interesting character study. And for readers of the novels, there are hints at the importance Auri will play in the concluding book of the trilogy, and new glimpses of the world that Rothfuss has created.

If you have never read anything else by Rothfuss, this is not the place to start, but for fans of the books it is a must read. On my patented ratings scale, for a non-reader of the novels I would give this 6 out of 10 as the beauty of the prose is offset by the unconventional structure; but for readers and fans like me ...

R⁴ Rating: 8 out of 10.

Ratings Key

Since I am going to be posting reviews, and since it is convenient to reduce reviews to a single number (I look forward to the day that we have a Metacritic for books), I thought I should clearly state my ratings system. Each book gets a rating from 1 to 10, to be interpreted as follows:

10. This book will change your life. Drop everything you are doing and read it now.
9. Brilliant. A thoroughly enjoyable book that I look forward to returning to, and will give out as a holiday present to friends.
8. Very good. Something about the plot, characterization, or craft makes this book stand out. Worth seeking out.
7. Good. Reasonably strong plot, characterization, or craft sufficient to elevate this book above most of the competition.
6. Decent. Perfectly fine piece of fiction with nothing special to elevate it. OR, its good points are roughly offset by its problems.
5. Not bad. Some good points, some bad points. I struggled to finish it, but finish it I did.
4. Bad. Some redeemable features more than offset by weaknesses of plot, characterization, or craft.
3. Very bad. Weaknesses of plot, characterization, or craft without some redeeming feature. I almost certainly did not finish it.
2. Awful. As in William McGonagall. I almost certainly did not finish it.
1. Not just awful, but pernicious in some way. Possibly plagiarized. If I finished the book, it was only because I was fueled by hate.

When mapping these ratings into a scale of 1 to 5 stars, I simply divide by two and round up or down depending on my mood.

I don't expect to give out many ratings less than four, as I will typically not be drawn to such books (or will filter them out based on negative reviews from others). However, a couple might slip through given my penchant for violently disagreeing with the Amazon and Goodreads cheer-leading crowds (and let's be honest, even the Hugo voters have made some whopping errors over the years).

I am also opposed to grade inflation and am determined not to become the typical Amazon or Goodreads cheerleader. Hence, you will typically not see many 9 or 10 ratings (although, at least initially, I will go out of my way to review some of my most beloved pieces of fiction, and so there may be a temporary spike of 9 or 10 reviews).

In sum, expect a lot of reviews with ratings between 4 and 8, and keep in mind the above before throwing a fit when a book you love receives less than a 10.