"Poetic Retribution from Mars" by Sylvester Abanteriba

OK, I really wanted to like this book because it's written by a local author, it's about Mars (and I dig astronomy), and it's also about apartheid South Africa (which I would like to learn more about).

But I really struggled to get through this book.

Like, really really struggled.

For one thing, the author is not a professional writer. He's an aerospace engineer and professor at a local university. I won't go so far as to say he can't write, because that would be unkind and unfair. But the language in this book is simply not natural. I think that's the best way to describe it. The sentences sound funny as you're reading them because you know that writers don't actually write this way, and people don't actually speak this way. The language is stilted. Certain turns of phrases are obviously borrowed from other books -- which is fine, to a certain extent, but there's so much of that here that you get annoyed.

It's weird, because there's a lot of overly simplistic language in this book, but there's also a lot of ridiculously high-flung vocabulary that feels very out of place. (We used to call it "SAT vocabulary" because it's the type of vocab you'd be tested on during the SAT exam. You know what I mean -- words like abstemious, exegesis, quiescence.) The average reader (myself included) wouldn't know most of these words offhand, so seeing heaps of them in a novel like this is a turn-off because you're like, Geez, do I need to have a Funk and Wagnalls sitting next to me while I read this book? This kind of vocabulary in a book that is otherwise very simply written just comes off as pretentious and, again, highly unnatural.

Also, I think this book may have been published by a low-budget publisher, which is fine, but there are a lot of typos -- missing quotation marks, misspellings, incorrect commas, that sort of thing. Maybe I'm being picky because I'm a technical writer/editor by profession, but this kind of thing drives. me. mental. It's very distracting when there are errors all over the place. I couldn't really focus on the story half the time.

And when I could focus, I didn't like it. The story is obviously WAY out there in fantasy-land, which is fine because you know it's a science fiction book, but it turned out to be so absurdly "way out there" that it's almost comical. The basic premise is that South Africa has decided to launch a manned mission to Mars in order to distract the world from its apartheid screw-ups. And essentially they find that Mars is inhabited by a highly advanced civilization of black people who disguise themselves as white people to see whether Earthlings are truly racist. And when these Martians find out how racist the South Africans are, they decide to blow up Planet Earth.

Ummmmmmmmmm..OK.

Look, I am the first person to admit I know nothing about apartheid. Really, very little. As students in America, we didn't learn much about it (and I'm guessing the same is true in Australia). This isn't intentional, I don't think -- it just doesn't play a huge role in our curriculums the way that the Holocaust does, or the Civil War, or the Cold War.

That said, I just found this book's treatment of apartheid to be too...defensive. Radical. Something like that.

In the same way that I have a hard time believing that all slave-owners in the American South were black-hating racist d-bags with horrible evil hearts...well, by the same token, I also have a hard time believing that all white South Africans were black-hating racist d-bags with evil hearts. I mean, obviously not every white person in this book is a hateful racist, but like 98% of them are, and I think that's weird. Yes, again, I don't know much about apartheid, so I could be wrong, but something about this book just comes off as needlessly judgmental. Yes, apartheid was horrific. Yes, unspeakable racism was prevalent during that time. We know this, and it makes us sad and angry to think about how so many people suffered during apartheid. But to go to some of the lengths about "white people hating black people" that this book goes to -- it's just a bit bizarre to me, and wrong.

Basically, the South African astronauts on board the ship to Mars are all whites, and all racist -- save one, who is actually a British scientist who emigrated to South Africa. And I even feel like his "non-racism" is actually just a cop-out, because the author makes a point of this character being really sexually attracted to black women. So it's kind of like, Oh yeah, he's not racist -- but only because he thinks black women are hot. Um, what?

There is some sexism in this book, too. There are virtually no female characters of any real strength or character here. The astronauts' wives all seem dopey and sentimental and tearfully idiotic. There are a couple of Martian women who seem promising, but their characters are never really developed at all. The worst part is the female robot "sex kitten" types that the Martians send to the astronauts when they first land on Mars. The female robots are disguised as beautiful, young, curvy, real women who show up for the sole purpose of having sex with the South African astronauts, an idea the Martians came up with so as to put the astronauts at ease. I mean, wtf?

And the descriptions of women in this book are all about their appearance and sexuality, or their abilities to be good wives and mothers. Nothing about women being scientists, either in South Africa or on Mars. Nothing about women playing an important role in society, aside from being a sex symbol or a "good wife," in either South Africa or Mars. It's just degrading, and demeaning, and to me it detracted from the message of racism because it was hypocritical -- I mean, we can have sexism but not racism?

Anyway. I do try and give the author credit because, like I said, he's obviously not a professional writer and I do understand that, but this book failed on so many levels that I pretty much read it with my lip curled in disgust half the time. I barely managed to finish this book; it was such a struggle. And really, the only reason I did finish it was because of this blog, and my little project to read through the fiction books at the Melbourne City Library.

"Rivers of London" and "Moon Over Soho" by Ben Aaronovitch

OK. I liked these books, in a super nerdy sort of way. I wouldn't say I loved them, but they are definitely likeable books, and I would probably continue reading the series if given the chance.

Rivers of London and Moon Over Soho were the first two books I got as part of my experiment to read alphabetically through the fiction section of the Melbourne library, and I honestly didn't even look at the book jackets before hauling them off to the checkout counter. When I did get home and read the back cover descriptions, I was like, oh, these look pretttttty geeky.

And they are, but in a cute way.

The back of one of the jackets said, "This is what would happen if Harry Potter grew up and joined the fuzz."

Well, kind of. The main character, Peter, is nothing like Harry Potter in terms of personality -- but the premise of his story is sort of similar. Peter's a detective with the London police force who has recently discovered he has magical powers. Yeah. So basically, he can see ghosts, and he can converse with river gods and goddesses, and he can make flames jump out of his palm at will, and all that other fun magicky stuff. Oh yeah, and he has a Dumbledore-esque magical mentor who's a billion years old and is named Nightingale. (Of course.)

As with Harry Potter, the fun of the series is in how the magical world collides with the ordinary world. The author, Ben Aaronovitch, does a great job of making the fantasy aspect of the series fun and silly and tongue-in-cheek. No, it's not believable, but it's not supposed to be.

The best part about these books is the humor. Aaronovitch has a great sense of humor, and the jokes and one-liners are all over the place. There are some real gems in these books, and definitely places where I did actually laugh out loud. It's the sort of humor I love -- dry, sarcastic, not-very-nice humor, but witty enough that no one cares that it's not very nice. The characterization is great, too -- I love the way he portrays people. Sergeant Stephanopolous, for example -- Peter's no-nonsense, admittedly dyke-y boss on the police force. She's awesome, and original, and very entertaining without really even doing anything, all because of the way Aaronovitch has written her.

Where these books are lacking (in my opinion) is in the plot. They're supposed to be detective novels, but I found myself not caring at all about whether Peter solves the mystery or not. I just didn't get what was going on, except at a very vague, high-level understanding, and I didn't care. I was more interested in the whole, Wow, Peter's discovered he's a wizard. What's he gonna do next, wizard-wise? aspect of the books, rather than the actual solving of the crimes. For one thing, the crimes seemed so bizarrely out-there to me (a woman biting off penises? babies being thrown out of windows?) that I lost interest. I mean, I know it's a weird fantasy-esque novel, but the crimes just seemed unnecessarily bizarre. And the way they unfolded was disconnected and weird, sort of like, hey, here's an interesting scene about Peter learning how to do a spell, and hey, all of a sudden here's a scene about the crime itself, and hey, all of a sudden Peter's hanging out with his parents, just chilling, and hey, all of a sudden Peter's driving around with Nightingale talking about how magic can melt your iPhone. There also seem to be plots buried within plots that didn't make a lot of sense. (I had no real interest in the drama with the river gods, for example -- it just seemed stupid and extraneous to me.)

I don't know, it just seemed like these books would have been a lot better if there had been sort of a heart-pounding, intensity-building progression of the crime scenes to a satisfying resolution at the very end. Instead, the plot was all over the place. And look, I have no problem with subplots and digressions, but I think they do need to have at least some meaning to them. Otherwise you lose focus. And that's what happened: I lost focus on the "mystery" side of the plot. I didn't even care to go back and figure out what I'd miss when I did miss something -- I just kept plowing right on ahead. The saving grace of these books is that they are funny and well-written and breezy, which is what kept me reading.

The other thing is, I don't think I really like Peter. He seems shallow to me. Number one, he seems like he could be a womanizer -- he treats Lesley (his love interest of sorts) like crap in the second book, and number two, while I like his humor, it's almost so glib and flippant that it starts to grate on your nerves. I don't think I'd enjoy hanging out with Peter in real life. (Except for the flame-creating thing, which would make for a pretty sweet party trick.)

All in all, though, I did like this series. I think the good points outweigh the bad. If you like British humor and Harry Potter and fantasy-but-not-too-fantastical-fantasy, you'll probably enjoy this series quite a lot. Worth a read.

Intro

So, OK. I live in Melbourne, Australia, and lately I've been kinda bored here. Not crazy bored, just like oh-wow-I-need-a-new-project-because-I'm-feeling-restless-and-I-have-no-money kind of bored. And one day I was at the Melbourne City Library, trying to decide what books to check out and feeling very meh about the whole thing. I realized I was just feeling a little underwhelmed about reading lately. It had been awhile since I'd discovered a really good book or author. So, I thought to myself, Effit, just go and pick up the very first book on the fiction shelf, just to see if it's any good. It'll be an experiment, no biggie.

So I went to the very first shelf in the fiction section and picked up the very first book, which happened to be Ben Aaronovitch's Rivers of London. I checked it out, took it home, read it, liked it, returned it, and picked up the next one over on the shelf, which was the sequel to Rivers of London.

And then it hit me:

I could, like, keep doing this!

I could read my way through the entire Melbourne City Library, book-by-book, in order, and see how far I got! It would be a great way to gain exposure to new authors and series and maybe even whole genres.

Then some other stuff hit me:

• I'm not a fan of non-fiction.
• I'm only literate in one language, Engrish.
• A lot of the books in the library are unreadable books, like cookbooks and thesauruses (thesauri?) and stuff like that.
•  Kids' books can be super lame and I would feel weird bringing Everybody Poops to the check-out counter anyway.

So I decided my goal instead would be to read my way through the entire adult fiction section of the Melbourne City Library, and see how far I got.

Before I reached my goal, I'll either: a) Give up, or b) Move away from Melbourne. But let's just see. I'm leaning toward b). I'm pretty stubborn with these kinds of things when I start them.

I also set myself some ground rules:
1) Write a book review of every book I read on this blog, and copy that review onto Goodreads. I want a record of what books I liked and didn't. And Goodreads is the beesknees. Maybe my reviews will actually help other people decide what they should check out at their library. Or maybe I'm just being a self-important schmuck.

2) Read the books in order as they appear on the shelf. Don't worry about books that are missing from the shelf because they're checked out by someone else. Just move on to the next book that's physically there, and don't go back later on trying to figure out if you missed some that had gotten checked back in. Just keep plowing forward.

3) Skip books I've previously read, if I remember them pretty well. I've read Jane Eyre eighteen million times, so if I see it on the shelf (which I better, or Melbourne City Library isn't much of a library) -- I'll pass it over. If I think I mayyyyyy have read a book, but can't really remember it that well, I need to go ahead and check it out and read it again.

That's it. Simples!