Here. To atone for the last several bouts of (to steal Deb's term) batshit insanity, I give you a present.



Inside this box is exactly how it feels to drive home after nightshift. The world is abysmally empty in the small hours of the night, but once in the car, out the building, there is light, there is life. There is that giddy feeling of freedom, of going home, the relief that bed is not so far away. There is a sunrise, sometimes, a glorious sunrise, just like this morning, with high clouds and a faint and distant rain that caught the sun, and the whole sky glowed golden and rich. There is a highway backed up on the inbound, but empty on the outbound, four lanes of 100 km p/h.

This is a secret time. In this time, I forgive nightshift entirely. I tell myself that I don't really want to give this up at all.

You'll notice that there's no way into this box. That's because you are all smart bunnies, and know better than to fall into the trap of shiftwork. Chances are, you'll never know what this feels like.

But I think you should have it anyway.

get down with the geeeeeeeniiiiiiiiiiiieeee



Look at all those people. Each of them discovered that Mr Vandermeer only ever links me when I'm a feral, mangy, moon-mad monkey, and an easily amused one at that. I spent the shift checking my stats. "Aw, lookit! Another one! MAD FOOLS!"

I'd also accuse him of only linking when there's a really bad photo of me on the front page, except the likelihood of there not being a really bad photo present is pretty slim.

Anyway, look at this!



It's an oarfish. When I first saw that photo, my hackles went up. I didn't see an oar, I saw a huge, freaking huge, long razorblade fish just hanging in the water, and I could imagine swimming around happily, unable to see said razorblade fish straight on, and swimming into it, and chopping myself in half. A collision with a swimming samurai sword.

Which isn't how they work, thankfully.

But that would be cool.

I get the impression that they're not particularly bright fishes, having read this account of When Oarfish Attack!

Suddenly and with great vigor, the creature ceased it’s circling and swam rapidly toward us. It was quite a startling movement. One of us had picked up a smooth rock and the rock was used to crush the its head as it approached. It died instantly without any further movement.

They weren't even knee deep in the water then. And oarfish, these super stylin' samurai sword fish, they don't really have angry attack mouths, yanno?

OMG! HAHA! ROCK BEATS SCISSORS SAMURAI SWORD!

Moving right along.

Tourist Attraction Shark Dies, which is sad. It's always sad when a 2 metre shark dies. And yet, and yet.

Biologists captured the 90kg fish on Monday in knee-high water at a beach called Miracle in northeast Tarragona province, grabbing it with their bare hands and dragging it ashore.

Dude. They wrestled a 2 metre shark and won. I lol'd so hard I was in tears. Can you just imagine the poor shark? "HOLY FUCK SOMEONE SAVE ME FROM THESE MONKEYS! THEY'VE GOT MY TAIL! MY TAAAAAAAAIIIIIL!"

No more fishies from here on, I swear.

Irony is decrying how not-a-writer I am, and then having the two stories of mine due for publication both end up in my inbox, requiring editing/proofing/writerly attention immediately. I've broken my cardinal rules of never proofing after midnight and never attempting to be intelligent on nightshift.

The larger story I don't think I've even sniffed at for over a year. It was a relief to find that it didn't suck, but I'm worried by the fact that I like it. I think liking your own work is like putting your newborn baby in the microwave for safe-keeping. No one ever agrees with you.

I had a mighty revelation on the drive to work last night. Oh verily, was it mighty. When Carroll was writing about the white rabbit, he was actually writing about the white lines on the road, and the whole trippy journey through Wonderland, that is actually a metaphour for driving at night when you're delirious. Follow the white rabbit/follow the white line. He knew. The man knew what he was writing about. Something about night driving, all the street lights and car lights and shop lights, and all those lights reflecting and moving, and all the dark spaces, he knew.

Do not point out the logic flaws in that paragraph. Srsly.

Now, in case you were wondering where all these long raving mental dribbles have come from, I shall tell you. One word: procrastination.

I fly out Wednesday afternoon. Therefore, I must pack.

I dun like packing. It makes me want to do procrastinatory things, like give the dogs pedicures. I don't think my relationship with the dogs would survive this activity. I guess I'll just pack.

Someone arrived here by googling the phrase "baby head burning odor".

I can't decide how to respond to that. There are just too many options.

I just spent several minutes of my life, staring at this picture -



- trying to figure out why it was so funny. Then, DING! I was enlightened! IT IS A SERIOUS ISOPODE.



DO YOU NOT SEE THE SIMILARITIES?!?!?!?!?!





Yeah yeah, I know. Don't worry. I'm going to bed now.

I feel like a deep-sea glass squid:



I suspect I look like a Snaggletooth:



I would love to be a Dumbo Octopus:



(That isn't a sense of humor, that's a mind cracking up. My anticipation of discovering a new country is far outstripped by my anticipation of finishing nightshift. Dear higher power, let me keep my shit together for three more nights. Wait, scratch that. Let me not lose my shit any further than I already have, for oh my goodness have I lost my shit, it's on the walls, man, the walls, and I think other people have noticed, and this, this is just ugly, there's only so much damage control I can do, so no more spontaneous, provoked or unprovoked nuclear meltdowns, for three more nights.)

(Deep sea beasties, they're the awesome. I should have stuck with my grade 6 urge, and become a marine biologist. My view of the world would be much nicer if I had more anglerfish in my life.)

(Photos from Bounty Fishing Blog: 27 Aquatic Lifeforms You Never Caught While Fishing, snagged from haha.nu)

ETA: Someone, remind me to buy The Deep when I get back.

let's make out on the balcony

Michael Doughty used to front for Soul Coughing, and if you aren't familiar with the band, amend that right now. That is some good edge rock, that is.

Doughty has released his own album, Haughty Melodic, which contains the song "I Hear the Bells".

I love this song. It puts me in a better mood, triumphant without arrogance, and light without glaring, and great to sing along to. Maybe I sort of put it on repeat in the car, a little bit. Visit the myspace link and have a listen. It'll do your ears some good.

(Rec from Becca)

I got home this morning, and the newspaper horoscope said I had 'cosmic jetlag'. I read that, and my reaction was, "oh, cosmic jetlag, well, that explains everything." Do you think work would take cosmic jetlag as an excuse not to turn up?

Then I ate some toast, and felt much better.

Note to self: you just had a haircut. Stick to towel drying.

i'm a rabbit, i'm a rabbit, i'm a fox

In case you missed it, but your probably didn't, but you might have saved it for later and maybe forgotten bout it, in which case this is a reminder - Jeff Vandermeer's short movie for Shriek is online. Go use up some bandwidth. The voice acting is quite luscious, and it falls half way between being read to, or in the range of a fascinating conversation that isn't yours.

I recently finished reading Ghost in the Shell 2: Man-Machine Interface. It took me about three months to do this, because it was just that bad. I'm not even going to go into it. What struck me though, was the sheer amount of authorial notes scattered through the pages. There are artist notes, about whether or not he should have drawn her nipples (no exaggeration), design notes on why the motor bikes are kind of lame (then why did you put them in?!), and tech notes on exactly what is going on at any given time, because just reading the actual comic won't tell you that. They're everywhere! I could not escape the author tapping me on the shoulder.

Even in a story I'm not enjoying, this isn't a good thing. Every now and again it is an interesting diversion, but with this concentration, it was nothing but a huge distraction. An obnoxious one at that. Trust your reader, or trust your work. If it's really necessary, end notes are your friend.

Finally, I give you a video of a $40,000,000 US military satellite exploding (filched from haha.nu).



Impressive, no? When I grow up, I want to be a military satellite with a 17 foot crack in my fuel pipe.

I have to wonder how a 17 foot crack goes unnoticed.

Well...I guess cracks go unnoticed in people all the time. They're not always in easy to see places.

Do you think car insurance costs more around Cape Canaveral?

and so she can't complain

Dear the Australian Dollar,

Please stop that shit.

Sincerely,
Sir Tessa.

#

After being certain, and being wrong, I did some not particularly thorough trawling on the subject of certainty. There isn't much to be had. A smattering of philosophy, and articles on physics. Uncertainty, it would seem, is a much more meaty topic. I wanted brain scans, actually. I wanted those funky orange, black and blue photos of brain activity, so I could see what certainty actually looked like. Maybe even what hormones make up certainty. I figure, if i find out where certainty lives, at least I have a target.

Doubt is much easier to pin down. Doubt is everywhere. I am, therefore I doubt.

#

Dear Japan Rail,

The rail passes were supposed to arrive last week. Hint, hint.

Sincerely,
Sir Tessa.

#

Sophie is depressed.

She won't play. She just sits, and whimpers in the most heart-breaking and pathetic manner imaginable. She isn't off her food or drink, she's just miserable. The lead theory is that she misses Dad, but he's gone to Malaysia before without this happening.

You have no idea how upsetting a depressed dog is.

#

Dear Sir Tessa,

You suck.

No love,
Sir Tessa.

#

If I could manufacture certainty, I'd eradicate those oh-so mediocre self-esteem issues. Imagine how much more I could squeeze into a day if I didn't spend so much time and energy on self-loathing. I could create cold fusion. Abolish starvation. Write a fucking book.

Whoa. Delusions of grandure.

#

Dear World,

I'm down, quit kicking.

Even less than no love,
Sir Tessa.

#

But you know, the narrative laws of my life dictate that an injection of certainty would concrete exactly the wrong area. Instead of being pretty sure that I'm a useless sack of meat, I'd be certain of it. That would kill all motivation to roll with the momentum of life, so I'd lose my job pretty fast, wouldn't write, wouldn't get out of bed, probably wouldn't bother waking up, because seriously, when you're a useless sack of meat, there isn't much point with the whole being awake thing.

And then, because the narrative laws of my life dictact that Thou Shalt Not Have Any Excuse To Sleep Like A Lazy Snoring Bear As Thou Doest Desire, my own super-charged-mutated-giant-walrus doubt would come into play, and I wouldn't be certain of my uselessness as a meat sack. This would leave me with no alternative but wakefulness.

Shit. This hypothesis is fucking lame. Where's the reset button?

#

Dear World,

You're also too fat. Please lose some weight, and shrink the distance between this family.

Much Despising,
Sir Tessa.

#

I did a little reading on Descartes, not that he had much to say on the subject of certainty, other than he wasn't certain of much at all. The only thing he really concludes is that his own existence is certain. This is a conclusion that can only be drawn about the concluder, by the concluder. So, I cannot be certain about sun rises, or chairs, or that ever perplexing subject of the colour orange, but I can be certain I exist.

I think life would be ever so much nicer if I could trade that certainty for, say, the certainty that flowers sing only in barbershop quartets.

But I can't be certain of that.

#

Dear Sir Tessa,

Seriously. Shut up.

Much Tolerance,
The World.

...even my spam is telling me to cheer up.

red wine with every meal and absinthe after dinner

• Haha! I'm not hungover!
• There exists no make-up that will stop an asian-blooded monkey from going red when drinking.
• When I make an effort, I am hot. Damn hot. So hot, heads turn and people say, "Wow, Tess, you look hot!" and they all sound surprised.
• This is why I never make an effort. I have to hide my hotness away, or there will conferences and summits about how I contribute to global warming.
• With my bright red face.
• But, you know, if ever Rudolf is retrenched, I could totally take his job. Only his nose was red. I'm a fucking lighthouse.
• Although I don't think I'm all that keen to be harnessed up by a jolly fat man.
• And I'm not that into manual labour.
• He can pull his own sleigh. Would help lower his blood pressure.
• Plus I bet he doesn't pay much for one night of work a year.
• Nah, fuck it. He can install spotlights like all the other rednecks.

PS: T minus 12 days and counting.

and don't bother leaving the light on

I was certain today would be different.

This certainty was unprompted. It wasn't like the certainty that concrete is hard, water is wet, I am a typist, those tried and tested and proved irrefutable facts. It wasn't highly probably either, as there were no plans for today that would alter it significantly from every other day. I just knew today would be different.

But I woke up, and I was still me.

And I stepped out, and the world stayed in character.

I don't know what I was expecting-

(...a sky so green, so lush and verdant, that as we stood in the streets marvelling at it, a hundred thousand dandylions bloomed in the clouds, and showered us in seeds and fluff.)

(...a pink unicorn to come charging into the office, atop Yul Brynner, prancing and dancing, and saying "Dollface, have I got a ride for you.")

(...I would put on my earphones and press play, and instead of music my iPod would tell me, in hushed and fearful tones, the truth about the moon landing.)

(...all the buildings in the city to unhinge and unfold and dance, townhouses gamboling about the feet of the sky scrapers, and no pigeons seen for another hundred years.)

(...no people, only sharks, so many sharks, walking the streets and smiling shark smiles.)

(...a stranger to say, "You know, it's okay.")

-but it hasn't happened. It won't happen. I am as certain of that, as I am certain today will be different. They contradict each other, and they're both true. What a daft, illogical, frustrating thing a mind is. How am I supposed to know where the ground is, carrying around a contradiction like that? How can I trust anything I think when the things I am certain about are wrong, wrong, wrong?

I've been here before.

Today will not be different.

Overclocked: Stories of the Future Present - Cory Doctorow



Hehe. Heh. That was cool.

A collection of not-very-short stories (bar one) which concern the future, but not the distant future. The story Anda's Game could quite possibly be present tense, happening right now, somewhere in the many MMORPGs out there. Shifting the sense of 'possible but not in my lifetime' to 'this could happen far too soon' gives the collection a marvellous frisson. Just as we watch disaster films and true crime shows, a sense of impending doom is disgustingly addictive. There isn't much dignity to be found in the dooms offered here.

When Sysadmins Ruled the Earth made me laugh and groan to begin with; I remember being woken up at obscure hours due to living with an oncall sysadmin. Thankfully, the world didn't end whenever I was trying to get back to sleep. This story seemed to wibble a bit, just as the characters lost their own sense of purpose or direction, but it remains a great piece, and delightfully chewy stuff for the brain.

Another favourite, I, Row-Boat had me giggling for the whole fifty pages. In a future where the majority of the human race consists not of walking meatbags, but uploaded consciousnessesseses, and conscious sentient intelligent robots exercise free will on the Earth, someone has taken it upon themselves to start awakening and connecting...pretty much everything, from the sound of it. Robbie the Rowboat, whose days normally consist of shuttling out human shells for day dives on the Great Barrier Reef, has to deal with one of these newly awakened consciousnesesesessses, namely, a reef.

The reef is kinda pissy. It is hiiii-larious, in that sad, grieving sort of way. I can't help thinking that in such a world, there are no humans. The homo tree we are a part of is largely defined by physical characteristics; if there is no physical, then is there a species? Does it matter anymore?

Also had a "HEY! I KNOW HER!" moment when Kate's full name was revealed. After which I was unable to see the character the same way again, but oh well.

Favourite, absolutely favourite, is the final story, After the Siege.

...I've deleted about five stalled paragraphs attempting to summarise this story, and how deep it went. I don't think I can do it justice. On the surface, it follows Valentine, a girl becoming a woman whose city is devastated and starved and ground to dust by war, as is her home, her family, everything she knows. They starve. They die. They lose. Yet in the city is one who is well fed, well dressed, has the cure to all the things that kill those who aren't dying on the front lines. Valentine finds that person, and doesn't accept their reasons and excuses, and eventually forces them to stop the slaughter, instead of watching.

The author notes mention AIDS treatment and copyright as a comparison. It is true. This story alone is enough reason to buy the book. It is well bloody brilliant.

There are others I haven't mentioned, all very much tasty and scrumptions, but these three stood out. Most excellent.

Verdict: Totally worth your time and money. The book is available for download under a CC licence, but seriously, just fork out the money and buy it.

i've been thinking about a broken line



I know nothing about Jon Protas, other than what his myspace page says, other than he's a musician. He was recommended by the every funky Martha, and given she's a member of Trocadero, we can only trust her taste in music.

I'm abusing the fuck out of No Buses Leaving. To truly appreciate this song, your headspace should be--

--well, a bit fucking bleak, really.

think i never killed a man
been thinking 'bout the wrong things at the wrong time
turn his hand against himself
and the things he loves

i've been thinking about a broken line
of old connections starting out in springtime
disconnecting on the way
quiet by the road

and i've been thinking where a life should go
and wondering as hard enough to keep myself
from answering

how it is i wound up here

i don't even know this place

i don't know what i'm doing here

and all the empty yards and hollow houses
all arranged in solitary segments

and there's no one in the streets

it shouldn't bother me

but i've been thinking where a life should go
and thinking it should always travel forward
thinking it should never wind up here

i'm thinking i should hop on the next bus heading out of town
but i
i see no buses leaving
i
i see no buses leaving

(Lyrics transcribed by ear and probably wrong, but close enough to be right.)

It's a good song, good piece of music. I can't find any album or such to buy, unfortunately. So I do my part to smear him around the intrawebs a bit.

(Here is a photo of people waiting for trains, waiting to go home, just generally waiting.)

I zoned out.

When I zoned in, I was singing along to Avril Lavigne, and it was good. The end is nigh. Make soylent green out of me now.

Quickies

I stopped writing up the books I've read, for reasons absolutely saturated in self-pity and horseshit. But the write ups are actually the best way of counting up how much I've read in a year, so, sally forth, as they say.



Picture might look funny; the camera on Eddie flips images, and I can't hold books steady. Even with both hands. Fail.

Blindsight - Peter Watts
First ran into this book at worldcon last year, with that most scrumptious woman Nadini. A couple of months later, I picked it up while in Sydney. Many months later, I read it, and loved it. Such a lonely, unfriendly, isolating book. I wasn't in a great headspace at the time (wow, like that's new), and a story set in the emptiness and hostility of space felt entirely right. A crew of specialised freaks is sent out to investigate possible alien contact, which turns out to be this giant thing; Rorschach. In the middle of everything that is threatening and unknown, the question is asked, 'what is self-awareness good for?' and oh, what a good question. I obsess over it still, I chew it over between turning the light out and falling asleep, while on the train, while not working at work. None of the answers I come up with a nice ones. That's okay. Neither was the book. There is a very good reason this is nomianted for a Hugo: it is roxxor.

Natural History - Justina Robson
I've had this book for ages. I don't entirely remember where or when I bought it. But I wasn't done with stories-set-in-the-vast-emptiness-of-space books, so I munched on it. It wasn't quite what I wanted; this space lacked the isolation I was sniffing for, as each character was connected to the rest of the known universe by intrawebs. The characters were nicer, in fact Zephyr was down right likeable. It was largely a story of trascendence, which wasn't as tightly written as I expected. Possibly I was distracted by story elements that were too similar to some in my own WIP. That Westerfeld guy informed that the reason people keep publishing books containing my ideas is that I write too slowly. I prefer to think I'm derivative, like the best of the wannabe writers out there. It was a good read, but not the right book to follow the one before.

Vampire Hunter D: Mysterous Journey to the North Sea (Part One) - Hideyuki Kikuchi
It's D. Doing his thang.
Actually, this book was more interesting than the previous ones, as the heroin isn't some perfectly beautiful little waif. She's quite plain and practical, and not a brat either. You go, girl. We'll see if it lasts into the next volume.

Calling You - Otsu-ichi
Three novellas, each one stark and soft and raw and tear-inducing. The first was a girl who had an imaginary phone in her head, which is far more beautiful than it sounds. The second is a boy who takes the injuries of others onto himself, which isn't a new idea, but is wonderfully drawn out. The third is a sad, sad song of flowers. Each story has a touch of wonder to it, and each deals with loneliness quietly, quietly. This isn't a big read. I ate it in an hour. Investigate. It will surprise you.

Temeraire: His Majesty's Dragon, Throne of Jade, Black Powder War - Naomi Novik
I've had these books for ages. A combination of Justine nagging me and actually having a second Hugo nominated book on my shelves prompted me to hurry up and read them. The first was a delight; like reading the Pern books again, I wanted want my own dragon; like discovering Hornblower again, I want my own square-rigger. What ho! A good frolic in the Napoleonic Wars with big roarming beasties, who could ask for more? Not I. The second book had less shine, but in itself was quite interesting concerning the politics of dragons. The third book felt very much like filler; our heroes must get back from China to England somehow, in order for the rest of the story unfold, and the final defeat of Napoleon to take place. Black Powder War is that getting from A to B. Fun books, yes indeed.

I'm not really a writer. And I'm a lazy reader. All this is just life spent pointlessly.

Japan Sinks - Sakyo Komatsu (or is that Komatsu Sakyo?)



Morris read this and said, "oh yeah, shit like this happened when the dinosaurs were wiped out, YOU'RE SCREWED." I'm inclined to agree with him, from the safety of Australia.

You'll never believe where I found this book. In a second hand book shop in Gardner, the small two saloon town at the entrance of Yellowstone while I was doing my trek last year. It was one of those moments of "o rly? YA RLY!" I wasn't looking for it, and yet there it was.

You can't really go past the title as far as story summaries go. It's about Japan, which sinks into the ocean. YA RLY. Well, no. It's about looking at the possibility of something that catastrophic occurring, and what to do about it. Would you believe it, given all the facts? I can't say I would. Say you accept the inevitability, what then? How do you prepare for the physical loss of a nation, the displacement of millions and millions of people?

How do you deal with the disappearance of your entire civilisation?

That is what the book is really about. It's crushing and devastating. There isn't an enemy to be angry at, it is just the Earth, doing its thing. Unstoppable continental drift, which won't be intimidated or reasoned with. It comes down to getting the population off the islands before its too late.

Australia makes an embarassing appearance, with the Prime Minister being approached by the Japanese ambassador, requesting the immigration of five million japanese workers. About a third of the Australian population at the time, a time which comes shortly after the abolition of the White Australia Policy. I cringed.

One scene that stood out vividly in my mind was a collection of international diplomats leaving a conference to check out the TV, a broadcast of the beginning of Japan's destruction on the tube, and of one man looking back to see the Japanese ambassador remove his glasses, and wipe his eyes, before putting them back on.

Even abridged as it is, this book was a punch in the guts.

Verdict: Depressing and upseting and very, very powerful.

Arthur & George - Julian Barnes



Rav Deeves (that's his name, serious, it was on the box) is all "eh, whatever," about this book. I wouldn't put it like that, but the sentiment is the same.

I first read Barnes in university, and there was much love involved. For years, I'd intended to eat more of his books, but only now got around to it, and I have to confess that the physical beauty of the book was a fair chunk of the motivation. Cloth-bound books are just nice to stroke. No, stroking books is not weird. Shut up. Stop looking at me like that.

This book, well, it didn't trigger the big love boom I was hoping. It is very well written, and an intriguing look at the vastly different lives of Arthur (that's Sir Arthur Conan Doyle to you) and George, who probably would have never met had it not been for whim. Life, you know, she's a whimsical creature. But meet they do, and Arthur is not the gallant knight he wishes to be, although he almost convinces the reader otherwise. George is not a helpless victim of hate, although it is tempting to paint him so.

The England of fiction remains a strange soggy place, and I find that the mental landscape it creates in my head tends to be dreary, bleak, and colourless, and as much as I wanted to enjoy the book, that sort of saturation is a downer.

I guess I'm not academic or intellectual enough, because I reached the end, and after their lives were spent and all had failed and been achieved, I thought to myself, "yes, and?" Perhaps the fact that it reads in a somewhat autobiographical manner brought that on - lives don't have a point, they just happen, and then they end. The last three lines;


What does he see?
What did he see?
What will he see?

and in fact the last scene of Arthur's funeral knocked down the interesting structure of thought I'd built on this story. Perhaps that is the point. What you want to know, what you think you know, all of these things are-

Verdict: Eh. A lot of people loved it, but it didn't rock my world.

Kamakazi Girls - Novala Takemoto



Leonardo totally approves of this book, because Leonardo is in touch with his feminine side.

I agree with Leonardo. I don't remember exactly why I picked up this book, but I'm glad I did. I went through a brief, three book stint of not particularly wanting to read any speculative genres, and I think this was the most fun of those books, and the most surprisingly awesome bestest.

(Disclaimer: I've just come off nightshift and I'm doing my staying up through the day to crash my sleep pattern back to normal. I'm not responsible for anything. At all. Ever. Not even my sentences.)

It is the story of two girls, one a Yanki and the other a Lolita, practically polar opposites when it comes to subcultures. Of course they fall in with each other, they're doomed to from the very beginning.

This is not the story of their growing friendship. Ichigo's impassioned speech at the end summarises precisely why they're not friends, and exactly why they'll always be there for each other. It is a story of being true to yourself, no matter what the cost.

At first, I was appalled at Momoko's first person narration. A Lolita consumed by an intense pursuit for a Rococo spirit and lifestyle, she came across as gobsmackingly selfish, self-aborbed, shallow and callous. It isn't a large book, but after the first chapter I did wonder if I wanted to put up with her the whole way. This wondering happened while I read, and read, and found myself deep in the book. First impressions, you know, they really aren't everything. The selfishness and callousness were the symptoms of a breath-stealing determination to pursue her dream, no matter what the cost. No matter what thet cost. She discard practicality and comfort and friends and company for this dream ofa Rococo lifestyle. Beneath the frills and lace, she's fucking hardcore.

Ichigo initially comes across as a naive fool, striving to be fulfill that Yanki dream of riding around in a biker gang until getting knocked up and having a shotgun wedding and 'graduating', although she failed her motorcycle licence test and only rides a scooter. It's easy to assume she's yet another dumb girl being led astray by falling in with the wrong crowd, but like Momoko, it's a first impression, and like Momoko, she's chasing her dream down, damn the consequences.

"Because Yanki are so uncool."
"Did you just dis my entire life?"
"Well, yeah."
"I'll fucking kick your ass."
"Go ahead, if you want to."
"You ask me, you're the one who's uncool, wearing those frilly-ass outfits when you're in high school already."
"They're not 'frilly-ass', they're Lolita."
"What's the fucking difference?"
"There's a world of difference."
"I'll kill you, I swear."
"Go ahead."

I love it. The book is full of clashes just like that. Neither grasps the other's choice, both thinks the other is just fucking ridiculous, and I want to reach in and tell them they're both daft and brillant.

This book is very well written, and exceptionally well translated. At no point did I feel that I was reading a translation, real care has be put into the english version. It isn't translated, it's written.

I want to say it isn't a girly book, because it isn't...but I think that maybe only girls will really get it.

Verdict: This is not a "heart-warming tale of two girls growing up in the country", it is a brilliant, brilliant, brillant piece of writing about knowing who you are.

That Camera Is Not Neenja

The train pulled into the station, the door opened, he set up his tripod, pointed and clicked.

Apparently he wasn't entirely satisfied with whatever showed up on the screen of his enormous DSLR, because he went for a second shot, and when he looked up, noticed that I'd noticed him photographing me, and was leering in an entirely "Haha, caught ya!" manner.

His smile wasn't entirely comfortable. I think I busted my chance of appearing in a photography exhibition with a caption along the lines of "Unknown Commuter Zombie, 7:08 Glen Waverley, Southern Cross on Spencer Street".

FUCK

I've lost my white hair. It's gone. Almost, ALMOST a year, and it just had to fall out. Now it'll take me another 25 years to grow another.

and the world just happens

A couple of family members who I happen to live with forgot my birthday was imminent. One them only remembered 8 hours before the clock ticked over midnight because the one family member that did remember asked if they remembered.

The fact that I forgot my birthday was coming too is quite irrelevent.

The only way to sing in such a birthday is to go and harass online roleplayers while in a mildly intoxicated state until 3 in the morning. Far more entertaining than it sounds.

Last year, I was proud to turn 25. It's a nice shiny number, 25, and a big number at that. Look how long I've hung around this Earth, 25 years, remarkable!

This year, not so much.

I am 26 years old and I still live with my parents, in the same room I spent the first 18 years of my life. I have a university degree that is useless, and a job that does nothing, goes nowhere, provides me with no skills I can apply elsewhere, and is neither challenging or stimulating. I don't have a significant other of any description, or children, or the potential for either on the horizon. I haven't seen the world, I haven't changed the world, I have achieved nothing of significance and I STILL HAVEN'T FINISHED WRITING A BOOK. ANY FUCKING BOOK.

The cake was nice though.

Warm-blooded Sunshine Batteries

I don't think I get much physical contact. The other day, someone put their hand on my arm, and my brain went "Oh!" It was the sort of "Oh!" that happens when you rediscover something that you hadn't realised you'd forgotten, like the smell of pine trees, or the taste really good cheese.

Wow. Other people are so warm.

It was exactly like sunshine, that perfect snuggly sunshine in Spring that I go nuts about. And I'm going nuts now. It isn't about sex, or affection, or raffirming my existence as a human being, but just how deliciously warm it was. I need to find someone who won't be freaked out if I say, "er, can I, like, maybe, sorta hold your hand for a bit?"

(I daresay this has been brought on by the fact that Melbourne just faceplanted into Winter in true Melbourne fashion, and I'm cold all the time. That said, if you can't find another human being to warm your bed for you, I can confirm that two dogs and a hot water bottle do an adequate job.)

Trailers - Mark Kneece & Julie Collins-Rousseau



The Other Alien is all messiah about this book. I agree with the Other Alien.

This was an impulse buy. I went shopping looking specifically for a one shot comic that wasn't about superheros, or great epic battles, or anything that wasn't the norm of life. I wanted a story that might have mabye reflected this pointless struggle I have with the mediocre humdrum of life, a story that wouldn't patronise me and wouldn't offer false hope or comfort, an ordinary story about ordinary people who don't have happy endings.

This isn't quite what I was looking for, it was better.

Josh has a shit life. He lives in a trailer with his no-good mother and three younger siblings of different fathers, and does most of the parenting, and has to deal with school, you know, school...and then his mother goes and kills her current squeeze, and he's left to deal with the body. Unfortunately, the body just won't stay buried, neither will any of the secrets, and what little control he had over his life is slipping away.

And Josh is just a teenage kid in over his head, and he doesn't have special friends, lucky breaks, convenient powers, a place to retreat to, and he isn't coping, it isn't fair, and he's angry.

And that was refreshing.

Maybe I'm looking in all the wrong places, listening to the wrong conversations, but lately, all I've seen is people doing their best to cheer others up, insist that the person in strife look on the bright side, and be grateful for what they have. Perhaps. In time, maybe.

It's not my approach, mostly because it shits me to tears when someone tries that on me. It's as though there is some unspoken rule that anger is bad. It is, but it isn't wrong. None of us like being powerless, and most of us don't accept that politely. If you want to be angry, then go, be angry. And when you've ranted and yelled and spent it all, then you can go on with life, pick up the pieces, and start again.

This is a very well written book. It's solid, full of real people who say real and stupid things, do real and stupid things, and don't cope with life. There are no clever answers, easy solutions and neat resolutions. There isn't a happy ending. But, the end is a better place than the beginning, and I think that's all we can really hope for.

Verdict: Excellent. Good, good stuff. Well crafted, in terms of writing and art. Muchly worth your time.

The Adventures of Johnny Vermillion - Loren D. Estleman



The Alien is trying to eat this lump of dead tree matter. I agree with the Alien.

This isn't a book trying to be a movie. This isn't a movie pretending to be a book. This IS a movie. It doesn't want to be a book, and it's thrashing and screaming and in rank bloody denial about the fact that there are no moving pictures involved.

You've seen it before: a succession of stoked boilers streaking towards the screen, intercut with close-ups of charging wheels and plunging drive rods. On the soundtrack, short cello strokes imitate the chomping of pistons and steam whistles blast from the brass. Depot signs loom at us from the far perspective...

And so on. And so forth. That is one of the tamer passages. I stopped before it got to the montage of robberies. There's even a travel montage in this book, you know, when there's an overlay of the map with a line moving across it to indicate the movement of characters from one place to another. Yeah. One of them. In a book.

I know I've harped on about respecting the medium you use and all that, but this just stumped me. I think I was too shocked at just how brazenly "THIS IS A MOVIE" the book was to be affronted. If you're going to do something, then do it properly, and this is a movie in an all balls out sort of way.

Still. It's a book. Not a great one at that. The title indicates that Johnny Vermillion is the centre role, but he isn't. Far more POV time is spent on his accomplices, who are far more interesting than he is. Vermillion has Mary Sue stamped all over his face. The others, while skirting the realms of cliche, are quite well drawn and the dynamic between them is terribly amusing. Together, they form a travelling theatre troupe which is really just a cover for the fact that they're bank robbers, and good at being both.

The story isn't much to speak of; they're criminals, they're in danger of getting caught by either the law or the other criminals whose toes they're stepping on. Nothing particularly new is attempted with the story, or the characters, and it rolls on pretending to be a movie so there's pretty much sweet fanny all in terms of proper climax and resolution. Mildly intriguing character conflicts are seeded, and then entirely ignored and forgotten.

It could be said that Estleman is deliberately playing with the great many cliches that Westerns are open to, but he fails to then do anything new with them. He fails to do anything with them at all. The story just...stops. There are plenty of nice elements, but they don't gel together as a whole.

Which isn't to say it wasn't fun, but...fuck. It isn't a movie, it's a book.

Verdict: You know, I can't recommend this as fluff, because it's just...wrong.

Music = Mountains

I went to the Nine Inch Nails concert alone. Some people flip out when they discover that I willingly go to movies on my own, so I didn't advertise this. It doesn't faze me, and I've never been able to explain how experiencing something alone makes it purer.

It was brilliant. I stood in a crowd of total strangers, strangers who ignored me and expected nothing from me, totally incognito, and loved it. There was nothing for me to do, nothing to fill up my head except a gazillion decibles of industrial rage.

For some people, music is a social thing. They get together over it, talk about it, share it.

For me, it's ridiculously intensely personal, and I don't want to share it with anyone, because if they judge it, they're judging me.

Being swallowed up and made insignificant by loud music had the same calming, clensing, euphoric affect as standing alone in the mountains. I'm at my highest when the world around me makes me so small, I cease to exist, even to myself.

Curse of the Golden Flower

Pretty, and lacking a point. The lessons I took away from the cinema were: "when families go bad, they go BAD" and "it's GOOD to be king".

Overwhelming colour though. That palace! In the first five minutes I was saturated. How can you live in such a palace and not go insane?

Also: asian women have boobs. This film is proof.

See Trumpet, Blow Trumpet

I have sold Bitter Elsie Mae to Andromeda Spaceways Inflight Magazine. Bitter Elsie Mae was my week three Clarion South story, so a big shout out to my class mates and Ellen Datlow for helping me fix it. The story (containing pirates and ghost ships and bad grammar), will be in issue #34, due February 2008.

I have also received word that One Night on Tidal Rig #13, which was originally slated to be released this coming June in one of the Daikaiju! sequels, has been delayed till October. Le sigh. I won't be in the country, alas. Oh well. I've already waited over two years, I can wait a bit longer.

Finally, that fine young lady Deb just announced that she sold a story to POSTSCRIPTS, and that, my friends, is AWESOME with a capital HELL YEAH. Go over and tell her to write the sequel congratulate her.

When our powers combine, we are Captain Planet. No wait, Voltron. Voltron is much cooler.

Ghost in the Shell 2: Innocence 'After The Long Goodbye' - by Masaki Yamada, trans by Yuji Oniki and Carl Custav Horn



ANIME TIE-IN! ANIME TIE-IN!

Summary: Batou lost his dog. Batou looks for his dog.

I picked this up because it was by a different author than this tie-in, the amazon reviews actually sounded interesting, and, er, it was a pretty book. Shuddup.

And this book blindsided me. It's heart-breaking and thought-provoking and well-written, and not at all what I was expecting. The translation was excellent. Everything was good quality. Whe the...?

There was a bit of character suicide going on - Batou is a mopey bastard through the whole thing. He has his emo ON. This is not a happy, chipper, feel good sort of book. It's what you read when you're feeling lonely and miserable, so you can be lonely and miserable with a lonely and miserable book. Part of me wanted to mock him for having his whole life revolve around his dog, but then, pot, kettle, black.

The dog, the absence of dog, is almost incidental to what the book is actually about, which is consciousness. Memories. What it is to be aware. Aware, within a synthetic environment, and everything that is gained and lost. That he can program himself to release endorphins when accessing a certain memory - does that mean the memory makes him happy, or he makes the memory happy? What is happy?

There is a fair whack of giant tanks and super-cyborg gun fight spectacular-a-rama, but such things in no way subtract from the gravitas of the underlying themes.

I was surprised, and lonely and miserable, and this book rang true.

Strange thing, fiction.

Verdict: knowledge of the GIS universe will help, but this remains a startlingly good book regardless.

Snake Agent & The Demon & The City - Liz Williams



This might be cheating, lumping the two books together, but my thoughts on each are pretty much the same.

Williams has created a very tasty work, set in future Singapore Three, in which technology has eased the communication between Hell and Heaven, and people such as Detective Inspector Chen exist to investigate crimes of the celestial sort. It's a textured world, full of flavour, and left me with severe cravings for congee and noodles.

In Snake Agent, Chen is called in to investigate some soul-smuggling, runs into the demon Zhu Izrh (who is terribly easy to crush on), and generally discovers that Terrible Things Are Afoot In Hell, and must save the day.

In The Demon and The City, Zhu Irzh is not requested to investigate the murder of a socialite, but does so anyway, and eventually he and Chen uncover a plot that will shake the earth, Heaven and Hell, and must save the day. Again. Clearly they don't get paid enough.

Both books are brilliant, juicy, cop stories, with characters that I just adore (I have a great fondness for the badger-teakettle), and I can't help feel sorry for everything Singapore gets put through.

That said, I found that both books started as one thing, and transformed greatly, ending as an almost entirely different book. This in itself wasn't a problem, except that I didn't get a feel that the transition was acknowledged, when reading the final pages. What happened to so and so, and what about such and such? Life doesn't tend to tie itself up in neat little packages, but I like some balance in my books.

Also....damn, most beautiful covers EVAH.

There's a third book in the works, and I will most definitely be acquiring it. You know how it is. Find a food you like; eat it.

Verdict: Well worth checking out, especially if you'd like a taste of something different.

(I know these write ups are short and crappy. I am hungover and have a sore throat. Just think of all the whinging I'm NOT doing.)

The Ticking - Reneé French



Just look at how beautiful that book is. Cloth-bound and embossed. I'm a shallow, shallow person, and I admit, I bought it just because it was lovely. I pick it up every now and then, just to hold it, and touch the cover.

This is not a graphic novel.



It's a picture book.

Edison Steelhead was born looking like his father, and so his father takes him away to live on an island, where no one can see them. Edison grows up as all children do, curious and questioning, and not entirely accepting of his father's own issues. Their ability and inability to be ashamed, unashamed of their appearance draws them further apart, in this quiet, soft, greylead world.

There is so much space on the pages, each picture a little window surrounded by white, as if I was only getting the slightest, cropped glimpse of the world they inhabit. I couldn't help feeling each picture was being forced to sit in the corner, ashamed of the attention it gained by being present.

All that soft pencil is marvellously printed, to the point I was afraid of brushing my fingers across each page, lest I accidently smudge the art.

I understand Edison. I understand Edison's father too. The story should make you cringe, want to turn away, but you won't.

Verdict: Yes.

Ribofunk - Paul Di Filippo



I have had this sitting on my shelf for years. You see what treasure I have just lying around in my room, and I don't even know it? Who's the ijit? ME.

I chose it as I'm still on this run of "small and easy to carry", which isn't the greatest reason to pick up a book, but didn't fail me this time.

Ribofunk is awesome. AWE-SOME. It isn't cyberpunk, not in the traditional sense. There's a lot more funk, for starters. Oodles more funk. So much funk it's off the funkitude scale.

While there is a sort-of over-arching story to the book, it presents as a collection of short stories, sometimes related, sometimes not. I suppose you could read them at random, but the information presented in one lays the groundwork for the next, so perhaps it would be better to treat them as chapters that aren't closely related. Sort of second-cousins meeting at the family christmas dinner.

Di Filippo has created a world which...

...kinda defies summary.

It's a future in which the focus is less on computers, and more on body manipulation. Tropes and splices, anything can be injected now, from moods to knowledge to horns. I didn't pick up much body horror, but some of the modifications were confronting, to say the least. People chosing to augment their bodies to become more like cockroaches, or cliched chain-mail bikini-clad barbarian women, and splices themselves, part human, part anything else you want DNA. What does it mean to be human? Does it matter?

But Di Filippo doesn't just create a funkified future, or rewrite the syntax of science-fiction (I can't say that without cackling), he makes his own genre and language, and leaves the rest of us staring in puzzlement at his frollicks. I admit, I read the first page about five times before giving up trying to decipher the lingo and just running with it. It's a great, great language. Read it, and learn.

My favourite chapter/story has to be Big Eater, a story told entirely from the point of view of a man who had a broadcasting accident, and when stressed, sick, or having just woken up, can only express himself in rhymes.

The wordbird woke me at seven out of my heaven. Not at all synthetic, just the old deltawave-syncretic. Rem-memories hazed my gaze. Just like a screamcurse, I seemed stuck in my dreamverse. Though it wasn't so bad, maybe even triple-gonad. Something about drifting forever down a river of feathers. On my back, I was catching up on my slack. Coasting along just humming a song. Mighty nice change from my strife-life brain-drain. Which the nerdbird was still harp-harp-hopping on.

You know. The sort of thing that makes me grin because it's silly and awesome.

Verdict: If you're serious about writing, and the techniques of writing, you don't have an excuse not to read this. If you like reading good books, you have even less excuse not to read this. Does not make a good hat. Wrong shape. Great cover though.

Company - Max Barry



Read this a couple of months ago. Yeah, you'd think I'd have learned not to leave it so long by now.

Jennifer Government had me in stitches with it's bleak, absurd and dark humour, and so I had the same expectations of Company. I wasn't disappointed.

This book follows Jones, a graduate just starting a job in Zephyr, and the differences encountered between what is taught in business school, and what actually goes on in the work place, among a myraid of other things. It focuses on the mundane, ordinary, trivial things that nevertheless become great drama in the work place. If you've worked in an office, you know what I mean. I consider my own office pretty tame, and still this book resonated strongly.

Despite being pretty much non-stop giggles, it is a disturbing book, precisely because it resonates. You know, truth, and all that. The potrayal of Senior Management in particular (being representative for all upper echelons of management in every company anywhere) was frighteningly close to the bone, and highlights, quite starkly, the distance between those who make the decisions, and those who do the work.

I would love to go into more detail, as Company provided all sorts of food for pondering, but there are things that I just don't want to spoil.

That said, this book won't be a laugh for everyone. I pushed this on mum, as her office is being 'reorganised', figuring she'd need to laugh at the situation. Unfortunately, her reaction was the opposite; she couldn't read it because it was ridiculous and unfunnily true. Art mirroring life mirroring stupidity.

Verdict: Terribly funny stuff. If you are in a management position of any sort, you should read this. It will make your staff like you more. Also, it makes a good hat.

When I woke up half-way through the afternoon, I was crying. I can't remember the dream, but I know it wasn't the cause.

NIGHTSHIFT.

JUST SAY NO.

Aiiiiyaaaah. If you're going to leave narky comments, at least have the decency to wear your name. Don't be ashamed of your narkiness, revel in it! Be grown-up about being a bitch! It's too fucking early in the morning for me not to get my nark on. Get me some fucking orange juice.

Someone Comes To Town, Someone Leaves Town - Cory Doctorow



I read this cover to cover. Got terrible involved in it. I can tell you what happens, but I can't tell you what it's about.

What happens is a couple of guys start up free wireless for the community/the son of a mountain and a washing machine has some serious family issues, and deals with them. Somewhere between those two plot lines is what this book is about, and I haven't quite pinned it down yet.

It is something, my gut has decided, to do with freedom. Not necessarily freedom of speech, with all the politics the phrase is loaded with. Possibly just the freedom to be what and who you are, which is something you can only decide for yourself.

Which of course can only be done after you've finished your family feud in a violent and bloody manner, but oh well.

But that doesn't seem quite satisfactory, and I think I'll have to muddle this book over some more before I come to a conclusion that I am happy with.

It is about peculiar people. They're called 'monsters' at various points in the narrative, but that's just a word to mean 'other'. They're not human in the biological sense of the word, but they have minds and hearts that seem perfect capable of fucking things up like the rest of us. They are not, or feel they are not, free to say what they think.

Mimi, part-time heroin of the story, sporting a very fetching set of functional bat wings, is perhaps the most sympathetic of this motely cast. Her thought process and her emotional reactions are nothing but raw human, and her wings a physical manifestation of that wall we all carry within us. That which renders us incapable of expressing ourselves to others, that which disconnects us from the world around us. Her moment of battered house wife syndrome cut me, and her decision to run elevated me. I've read too many family violence reports where that last decision never happens.

Adam, Alan, Andy, the main protagonist, is an odd bird. Human, and passing for human, and going so human he's popped out the otherside into oddness. His carefully moulded house, full of the trophies that signify what it is to be human, the book he never writes, his endless fascination with other people...and his family.

The war between his brothers fuels the larger part of the story, and I admit I haven't sorted it out in my head yet. There was a twist at the end that I didn't see, and while it didn't throw me, it hasn't settled comfortably either. Families are strange creatures. Strange, strange creatures. I think it might be better if I accepted, without attempting to understand. Somethings aren't meant to be understood; family is one of them.

(Especially given the conversation I just had with my brother.)

It's also a really nice book to hold. I nabbed the hardcover at worldcon, and it's just a nice size, with nice heft, and nice paper, and a really nice cover. Ahh. Purdy.

A strange book that curls and meanders and drinks too much coffee and geeks out and gets brutal and bloody. A book that you will have to chew over and take what you choose from it, because it won't tell you want to think.

Verdict: Challenging, bizarrely so. Dangerous for trains.

I am a migraine.

Fucking WARPATH

Someone just tried to get into our backyard.

My brother heard the gate open. All I heard was him thumping around as he turned on all the outside lights, threw open the back door and grabbed his cricket bat. Then he came and got me and we both went tearing out the front door, torch and bat in hand. If we had hackles they'd be all the way up.

I've processed too many police reports to tolerate some lowlife lazy fucker on MY territory.

Excuse me while I go prowl around in a seething miasma of pissed-off-ed-ness.

XD


Guys, guys, okay, guys, ready? Guys, okay? Guys. Okay. Total moment of Dumb.

I missed my stop.

I was reading (my inner ear is behaving itself again), and you know how it is when you get to the end of the book, and everything's getting really intense, and I kinda missed three stops and when I looked up there were bushes. Me, I was "the hell? What bushes? Oh. OH!" And yes, I couldn't even just wait for the next train going in the other direction, because there was no next train, being after midnight.

I got the giggles so bad.

To top it off, while loitering around suspiciously waiting for my brother to pick me up, the cops drove past, and drove past again, and pulled up right by me to make sure I was okay. Which gave me bigger giggles.

So, Cory Doctorow's Someone Comes To Town, Someone Leaves Town is NOT fit for train-travelling consumption.

I'm going to finish it RIGHT NOW so the same thing doesn't happen tomorrow.

Wintersmith - Terry Pratchett

It's Terry Pratchett. You've already made up your minds.

(I think he's worn himself a deep grove with the Discworld books, and now that he knows how to write a Discworld story, he can't not write it that way. I've read this before. It's still a good book, and Tiffany Aching brings all sorts of New and Refreshing to the witches. Me & sensible 13 year old witches = <3)

The Devil in Amber - Mark Gatiss



Yes! That dashing artist/secret agent is back! Lucifer Box!

Alas...this story just doesn't hold a candle to The Vesuvius Club, which is a right shame. The first book was a great big wad of ridiculous fun. This book is in that murky region of ridiculous where it isn't quite good ridiculous, but very close to lame ridiculous.

Times are hard for Box; he's getting old, there are younger and nastier agents trying to usurp his position as The Best, and now his own agency is out to get him! What's a poor secret agent to do? Why, get the girl, uncover the secret devil-worshipping society, and save the world, of course.

Except it's not just devil worship. There's actual devil. Actual and active devil pouncing through the plot and inserting all sorts of infernal intervention when Box requires a Get Out Of Jail Free card, which shat me to tears. That's cheating. Chea. Ting. Having the devil as the great world-threatening menace also felt like cheating. No, it felt cheap.

This isn't to say the book wasn't fun. It was great rollicking promiscuous fun. It was just a bit dumb too.

Verdict: The first book is better. This one, not so better. Regardless, I won't hesitate to snap up the next when it comes. Lucifer Box is just good like that.

Howl's Moving Castle - Diana Wynne Jones



I've been meaning to read this ever since the movie came out and made me fall in love with it. It's not particularly common in mainstream Aussie bookstores, which surprised me. I eventually bought it from Minotaur, because Dymocks just refused to stock it.

It is as full of love as the movie, so I fell in love with it too.

There are significant plot depatures between the two, and while the movie cut a lot out, I believe it remained true to the story (which for all you book purists out there who go one about how the last two Harry Potter films were crap because they didn't stick word by word to the books, is MORE IMPORTANT, my goodness, they're two different mediums, they work stories differently! Ahem).

Sophie is possibly an even better pushy old lady than she was in the film, which made me all sorts of delighted. Marcl being Michael, who wasn't a boy but a sensible young man, took very little to adjust to. The dog, being not the dog, was a tad transparent, but a lot of fun. And Wales. Wales! That threw me, I admit, but not for long. There's something very tongue in cheek about a someone from a magical kingdom escaping to this world. Usually it's the otherway around.

What I loved most was how this book is unashamedly happy. It's joy and delight and sunshine, and totally unrepentant about it. It doesn't feint sour endings, not in the least. You know there's a happy ending, and there damn well will be one!

Here I thought most young adult stuff was gritty and hard hitting. Boy, was I wrong. How come the young adults get all the fun?

I'm not too old for happy endings. I don't think anyone is.

Verdict: It'll warm you up on the inside. I can see this being a great comfort book. I love. You love. We all love! NOW GO BUY.

Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex - The Lost Memory, Volume 1 - by Junichi Fujisaku, trans Camellia Nieh



Cheap. Easy. REALLY REALLY REALLY SMALL. You're sensing a pattern, right?

Recently finished watching the for SAC series, and it worked for me. I know tie ins generally suck, but eh. My inner rabid fangirl fails to give a rats.

According to the bio, the writer is one of the episode writers from the anime series, so he knows his material. He's not writing fanfiction because what he writes is canon. Yep. This turns out to be the books undoing, as it reads not just like an episode, but like a tv script. There's the big print at the beginning (a laborous description of the physical setting), character placement (exactly what it says), and then dialogue. And monologue. All those voice overs. It would work just fine on a screen, but in dead tree format, it reads like a dead, dead, dead fish.

It particularly suffers from telling, given that information cannot be shown as easily as on a screen, and even though it's only 210 really small double spaced pages, it took a long time for me to read it. Bleeeeah.

Respect the mediums you work in, and the ones you don't, please.

Verdict: It's a tie-in. You get what you expect.

Chain Mail: Addicted to You - by Hiroshi Ishizaki, trans Richard Kim, adapt Rachel Manija Brown



After the last book, I had a hissy fit, and went and read all the Harry Potter books, which you don't need to hear about. Then I had another hissy fit, got mad at books at general, and didn't read anything for a month. When I finally got over that, the memory of lugging around those Harry Potter books was still raw (those lumps are heavy), and so I picked this up because a) it was cheap, b) a really light read, and c) REALLY REALLY REALLY SMALL.

On my own, I represent a new trend that publishers should consider - I don't want more book for my money. I want you to drop the prices of books and make them not nearly as heavy as they are. My wrists can't take this crap.

End tangent.

The story is very straight foward; four high school girls, all unknown to each other, get involved in a little message board online role-playing, and of course the fictional world and the real world start to reflect each other, and weird scary stuff starts to happen, and oooh, who knows how it will end?

I do! Because it's very straight forward. So straight forward, I'd assumed the writer would have known this and made an attempt to obscure the ending or provide a new and interesting twist, but they didn't. Oh well.

Despite the predictability, this is a decent read. The fact that there's a translator and an english adaptor indicates to me that they didn't leave it all to the translator to actually write the story, and gave that task to someone with the know how. It reads smoothly, if simply. The role-play sections themselves possess distinct voices, which most real online RP fails at.

Ultimately, it comes down to the fact that everyone wants friends. And will be weird, creepy, and stalkery to get some.

Verdict: This book doesn't do anything new, but at least it doesn't do anything new badly. A quick and easy way to kill half a day.

The Voyage of Sable Keech - Neal Asher

Because the last book I'd read was unbelievably awesome and still had its claws in me, I picked this book up next specifically because it was totally different.

Which means it sucked.

I know Asher gets a lot of love, and I'm sure somewhere out there are works of his that deserve it, but this isn't it. If you're first time to Asher's universe, like I was, stay away from this one. It's a bit of an in-crowd thing.

The story is about....hell, I don't know. A bunch of stuff happens, and I was waiting for a point to be made, but there wasn't one. Just stuff. A lot of characters feature, all of whom appear to have length backgrounds and significant history in other books, which I haven't read and don't know about, and the right information wasn't given at the right time so in the end I didn't care either, and it feels like all these characters are brought together because Asher likes them, and can't leave them alone, and they must all have last hurrahs. "Here, your beloved friends return again, isn't that awesome?" From my point of view, no. Not to mention that all the characters seemed to possess the same voice, with the same amout of smartarsery which got annoying after a while.

I mean, was there a point to the whole giant whelk thing? Giant whelks are cool, but unless they serve a purpose other than being big and squishing things for the convenience of the plot, I don't want them.

There wasn't even a something about the dead not being dead and la di da.

So much telling, not much showing.

So much technobabble.

In a weird way, I saw this book as a warning to myself, as all the flaws I see in it, I'm guilty of. Plenty of cool shit and cool stuff for no point whatsoever. If I write like that, with that many pages involved, stop me, please.

Very glad I read this after my giant crab story was picked up. There's even a character called Thirteen. I know, I know!

Verdict: If you like Asher's stuff and want more, here's more. If you don't know Asher's stuff, go start at the beginning. If you want. No pressure.

Bold as Love - Gwyneth Jones



There are many reasons that I am a bad, bad person. One of them is the fact that I read this in September, and it's taken me this long to get off my arse and write about it. It deserves better attention than that. I'm a bad person. Ai.

I mean, I can barely remember what I was going to say about it. Other than "OMG, THIS IS TEH ROXOR!!11!!"

It was one of my targets for worldcon, and is a dangerous book to take to work. Far too addictive. I kept taking little nips, every couple of minutes, because I couldn't let it go. It was almost a relief to finish it.

A sort of near-future modern-world apocalypse turning post-apocalyptic world, the events of which are set in the UK, and seen through the perspective of rockstars. It's a brilliant piece of work, strange and familiar and new and true all at once. I couldn't tell you what the message is, and I don't think that it's necessary to know. I don't need to know.

I had a moment of idiot though, upon finishing and seeing 'to be continued in doodidoodidoo' and then waiting patiently for Nightshade to announce this new title, only to discovere that about six books in the series have been released under various other publishers and are actually available in normal bookshops here. Not that I've seen book 2 on the shelves yet. Don't make the same idiot moment I did.

I found it particularly interesting to dissect as a buddy story. Although world-breaking events happen, the story is mostly about the Trio of Ultimate Cool, and how these events bleed into their lives, or how they don't. There's time for that special close and stupid chatter between really close friends, all the time, and I got a kick out of seeing the balance at work.

I'm all for slash. *cough*

Anyway, I know this write up sucks, and I'm very sorry, because this book deserves much better treatment. It received a lot of hype a couple of years back, and you should believe it. It's fresh and full of awesome.

Verdict: This book is fantastic. I am not.