FACT SF Reading Group

September 2005

September 6: Hammered by Elizabeth Bear

Eight people attended this book discussion. Six people started the book with five finishing it. This was the author's first book.

Hammered in this case is the name of a lethal street drug. Although the novel starts at the urban street level it soon leads out to the world and beyond. The obvious connection with Elizabeth Moon's "kick-ass women in military SF" books was made and we felt the author was up to the challenge and handled the hard-boiled aspects quite well.

We felt the writing showed experience but still suffered from first novel-itis. A little surgery to remove excess prose was suggested but there were sections in which the writing was quite clever. Some readers disliked the constant switch of voices through the book and for some, a character based on physicist Richard Feynman was more interesting than the main character, a woman retired from Canadian special forces with a cybernetic arm. One person described the heroine as "her best side was her tough side."

Small spoiler: the book ends with a cliffhanger. Reportedly the 2nd book in the series does as well. Only one reader was ok with this; everyone else felt cheated. We discussed whether the cliffhanger was the author's idea or the publisher's.

Hurricane Katrina dominated the discussion for the evening. One RG member, a Red Cross volunteer asked for book donations to give to people waiting in the long lines. In the next few days several boxes of books went downtown with her and which were reportedly snatched up in minutes.

September 20: Pandora's Star by Peter Hamilton

Eight attendees with six people starting the book but only two finished.

Five people had read Hamilton before and quite enjoyed the experience. This book was not counted among his best, however. Comments like "1,000 pages of small print" and "He could teach Umberto Eco how to do description," dominated the discussion. At one point, struggling to find some good, a reader brightly pointed out "At least it didn't involve a lot of torture like in Reality Dysfunction." "Just for the reader" another reader grumbled.

This book is a sprawling space opera involving wormholes, aliens, and immortality. There were a lot of characters and a lot of ideas, and a lot of plot. One person felt a full third of the book could have been cut without harm. Another thought long books were what Hamilton was all about. If you wanted a book to really chew on, this was the ticket.

Spoiler: this book features a classic cliffhanger ending, just like the book we read last time. Two books in a row with annoying finishes make us very leery of series books.

Again, hurricanes were really the dominant part of the discussion, this time with the threat of Rita visiting Houston.

-- Judy Strange