Book Review: Dust of Dreams

Dust of Dreams by Steven Erikson
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

It took me over a year of chipping away at this book to finally finish . Having spent the the past 7-8 years reading this series now I need to get through to the end. I would have to say that I do enjoy this series on the whole, but this book is the prime example of what is wrong with the series. This book clocks in at over eight hundred pages. We are 90% of our way through this series and Erickson continues to layer on an endless number of new characters and story arcs.

The book's structure is also quintessential of the series thus far, where the reader is dragged along for hundreds of pages with little concrete happening in terms of the story, only for a very impressive climax to finally occur in the last 150 pages or so. This book did have a fantastic ending battle, of which Erikson is known for, and I found myself emotionally distraught as we once again watched characters we came to love and enjoy get torn apart by the horrors of war. Truthfully, I don't know of many authors who can write large battle scenes as well as Erickson can. 

The difference for me this time around though is that the final battle felt a bit too "Deus Ex Machina". The enemy that our main characters encountered came from nowhere, and I did not have any pretense, as a reader, as to where they came from, why they were there or why they were attacking the Bonehunters. Because of this the weight of the scene was largely lost. To add to that whole feeling of "huh?", was the fact that Erikson threw another "Deus Ex Machina" element into the final scenes during a battle with the sky keeps. When we thought our heroe to be lost, a new player enters the field, seemingly out of nowhere. It all felt just a bit too convenient of a story telling mechanism for me with out the necessary guiding motivation for it to actually occur.

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Ridelog: 10-27-18


Probably the last ride of 2018. A nice long one up to the Galena are for lunch in New Diggings. Quite the offroad area up there. Lunch was at the Saloon. Basic brat burger with a can of coke. The parking lot was filled with ATV and offload vehicles. Weather was on the chilly side, but overall a good time. 

Ridelog: Colorado and the Million Dollar Highway


Day 1 and Day 2 - Travel Across Iowa and Nebraska

Day one of our second trip to Colorado. I-88 was under a lot of construction so we held onto Route 30 through most of Illinois. We then jumped onto I-80 and stayed on that to Nebraska. The temperature was hot, in the upper 80's. Around 488 miles on day one. 

Day two was another long haul on the highway. Lunch was at a truck stop, always a good choice in my book. 

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Music Listening: AAC - Paul Oakenfold: Mount Everest

I haven't picked up a "DJ" mix album in years. In fact the last one I picked up was Oakenfold's live from Oslo. I can't recall how I came across this album, but this has been on my play rotation for the past couple of months now. This is another great DJ mix that mixes Oakenfold's classic "Chill" sort of vibe along with the deep electronic beats. 

The construction of this album is what it really makes it such a unique experience. The album not only has the traditional live DJ mix, but it also has all of the individual songs in their "original" format, which includes several non-electronic songs. This allows you to listen to all of the songs individually. The album ends with two one hour live mixes which were performed by Oakenfold on Mount Everest 

Overall a great album of you are looking for some of that classic Oakenfold chill/dance vibe. 


Ridelog: 07-29-18


Playing some catch up on posting some summer rides. This was a solo ride up to Wisconsin. I was intending to test out a route and I definitely need to tweak it a bit. The ride up through Illinois around Johnsburg and Fox Lake was fully of stop and go traffic. Things didn't open up to an enjoyable ride until I actually got into Wisconsin, so it may make more sense to just slab it up to there and then enjoy the ride from there on out. 

Videogaming: Quantum Break

Xbox Game Pass has been a really cool service that I have been taking advantage of lately. It is sort of like a Netflix type service for Xbox, where a library of games is available for you to play for $10 a month. One of my most recent plays was Quantum Break. This game really surprised me. At the time of its release it caught a lot of flak and didn't seem to get very good reviews. 

Microsoft tried to do something interesting with the game, mixing live action "TV Episodes" that aired on a weekly basis to build upon the story. The idea is that decisions in the game would influence the live episode the next week. I'm well past that point, but the overall execution worked out pretty well in my opinion. 

What really blew me away though in Quantum Break was how well they told a time travel story. The logic and science behind their methods to tell the story made complete sense and didn't cause any sort of paradox problems within the story. In fact, if you think about how they executed the ending, the whole foreshadowing throughout the entire game continues to be consistent, even if you did "defeat the bad guy". It has to be one of the better sci-fi uses of time travel that I have ever seen. 

Italy

Back in June and July Megan and I visited Italy for my brother's wedding. The trip was a two week adventure visiting Milan, Bergamo, Verona and Lake Maggiore. The idea was to vacation with our family the week prior to the wedding and then spend about a week in Lake Maggiore for the wedding itself. 

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Book Review: The Fifth Season

The Fifth Season by N.K. Jemisin
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Wow!!!! How do I describe this book? This was simply fantastic and ranks up there with one of the best books I have ever read.

The world building here is superbly done, bringing in just enough that is familiar to us, while also being strange and fantastic at the same time. Jemisin brings a lot to this book to discuss race, racism, social caste systems and more. It is all done in such a way that makes you repulsed by it, but at the same time understanding of it, at least in the context of this world. It is complex and multifaceted. Her writing style is extremely eloquent as well. While my previous read (Norse Mythology - Neil Gaiman) talked about how he is the quintessential "storyteller" by the way he writes and talks. Jemisin immediately comes across in an almost scholarly fashion in her style.

The topics of love, acceptance and family are also explored in a deep and unconventional way here. Watching our main character, Essun, rise and fall in her emotional relationships was exhilarating and devastating at the same time. The moments near the last third of the book with Innon, and her family are something that was truly touching, even if they don't fall into what our traditional social context of a family may be.

The characters are also truly engaging. Alabaster, Hoa, Innon, Tonkee. All were deep and diverse in their own respective ways. They were dimensional, having motivations that were both internal and external to their character arcs. They were interesting, each with their own goals in life.

My only really gripe about the whole book, and the only reason it doesn't get a full five stars from me, is one of Essun's character traits. Throughout the book she is persistently negative about every situation presented to her. I understand that of her character profile, but her negatively is so aggressive and outwardly projected that I lost that "suspension of disbelief" with her character at times. Even when circumstances in her life changed, even for the good, she is shown as chronically negative about every situation and environment around her. At times it is used as a motivating factor for her character. Her, "It's not right", stance makes sense, but other times she seemed to resist and challenge the other characters in a scene for no apparent gain, only to give in for what was obviously the only course of action.

Despite all of that though, this book was riveting from beginning to end and I immediately want to read the sequel.

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Book Review - Night's Master

Night's Master by Tanith Lee
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I really enjoyed what this book had to offer. Its format and overt sexuality might take some readers by surprise, but if you think of this as written like a book of mythology, it works perfectly well. The chapters in the book are each a stand alone story. Some of them build upon previous chapters with events or characters, but not all.

What we get here is a fantastic crafting of a world and all of its myth. The place setting was mostly in the dessert, almost an Arabic sort of description. It all game across as wonderfully exotic and mysterious. I really enjoyed this and definitely would read more.

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