FACT SF Reading Group

October 2004

October 5: Chasm City by Alastair Reynolds

We moved this extremely long, complex space opera up in the queue 2 weeks early so only 5 people of the 7 who showed up at the meeting had read any of it. No one had finished. Four people had read Reynolds previously.

This book is set in the same universe as Reynolds's first book, Revelation Space, which we read earlier. Although Chasm City covers some backstory about the universe, the book can be read as a stand-alone novel. In it a bodyguard, Tanner Mirabel, searches for the murderer of his boss. Along the way he becomes infected by a religious cult's virus and ends up in Chasm City, where he becomes caught up in the game of nano-plague mutants while at the same time wondering who he really is.

Most of us thought the book should have been broken up into separate volumes and that it probably did not need the level of detail and complexity it has. With such a long book, the author needs to give the reader a major payoff at the end. The reader who read the farthest said that the book did get more interesting later on, but most of the rest of us did not think we would finish.

October 19: Lost in a Good Book by Jasper Fforde

Eight out of 10 people who showed up for this discussion managed to lose themselves in this book of British nonsense, and 6 of them found their way to the end. Four had read Fforde before.

This is the second book in the Thursday Next series. Four have been published so far and a fifth is due out the summer of 2005. The first book, The Eyre Affair, which we read last year, is a stand-alone book. This second book, however, is part of a continuing series in which Literary Detective Thursday tries to retrieve her husband after the evil Goliath Corporation eradicated him from time.

Many of us liked this book better than the first one because it had more plot. Those of us who had read the first book were used to the overwhelming number of elements Fforde crams into his world (time travel, alternate history, puns on names, Suckers and Biters, dodos, and romps through literature), and were happy to revisit them, but at the same time relieved he hadn't added more. Two of our favorite spots in this book were Kafka's The Trial and Poe's "The Raven."

We found a good balance of satire and silliness in this book and would recommend it to fans of British whimsy.

-- Sandy Kayser