So I finally finished reading Worm, a massive web serial that clocks in at over 1.6 million words. That’s easily over a dozen regular books. Like many others, I was drawn in by Eliezer Yudkowsky’s recommendation. It’s a superhero story with a teen-aged girl as its protagonist. It starts out on a small scale in a high school setting and could easily be dismissed as yet another Young Adult story. But as you read on, the camera pulls back and you realize what a massive and well-developed world this story is set in, with tons of characters each with intriguing side stories of their own.

Soon enough our protagonist becomes embroiled in ever greater and more earth-shaking events and the whole thing ends with a massive battle that redefines what it means to be epic in the superhero genre. This story pretty much has everything that any fan of superheroes could want: inventive superpowers and more importantly, creative uses of said superpowers, superb character development and very satisfying inter-character interaction, masterful handling of tension and cliffhangers, a rich setting with mysteries such as the origin of superpowers that are slowly explained over the course of the story, giant kaiju-style threats that all characters must team up together to drive back, and a fantastically written overall arc that must have been planned right from the beginning.

Perhaps more impressive than all that is that the author apparently managed to finish all this in about two and a half years of work, cranking out chapters twice every week like clockwork. Later he used bonus interlude chapters as incentives to drum up donations, so many weeks had three chapters. Early chapters were pretty short in the 3,000 to 4,000 word range, but chapters grew in length over time so by the end 8,000 word chapters were the norm and 10,000 word chapters were not unheard of. That is an inhuman level of dedication and hard work over such an extended period of time.

I do have plenty of complaints and nits to pick but I would like to make it clear that this is a fantastic piece of literature and I don’t want my negative comments to discourage readers from reading it so I’ll refrain from listing them here. It still needs editing and some revision but I sincerely believe that this epic deserves to be published and sold alongside A Song of Ice and Fire, the Harry Potter series and works of similar stature. If we’re very lucky, very lucky, we might even see movies or television shows based on this many, many years down the road (though given the scope of some of the fights, I find it hard to imagine how one would go about filming the scenes).

Now go and read it. You’ll be enthralled.

I’ve heard of China Miéville from his work in other genres but this is, I believe, his first science-fiction novel, and the first book of his that I’ve read. Embassytown received some very impressive reviews so I delved into it with plenty of anticipation and not a little bit of trepidation. As it turned out, the novel is less ambitious and more traditional than I expected so I needn’t have worried myself.

As its title implies, the book is about a city called Embassytown, the sole human settlement on the alien planet of Arieka. In the universe created by Miéville, humans traverse interstellar space by going through something called the immer, while hinting that some aliens, called exots, have wholly incompatible forms of FTL technology. It so happens that Arieka is located just about at the edge of explored space in the immer. This means that while Embassytown is formally a colony of a human empire known as Bremen, it is de facto semi-autonomous due to its remote location so visits from spacecraft crossing interstellar distances, called voidcraft, are both rare and the occasion for grand celebration.

Continue reading Embassytown →

The Books of the South is an omnibus collection of the next three novels of the Black Company series, consisting of Shadow Games, Dreams of Steel and The Silver Spike. The former two novels cover the adventures of what remains of the Black Company, now led by Croaker, as they venture southwards in search of the mercenary company’s origins. The latter novel covers the splinter rebel band led by the White Rose and various free agents as well as the remains of the empire under new leadership as all factions squabble in the fallout of the huge battle against the Dominator.

Of the three books, The Silver Spike is perhaps the most satisfying as it at least brings the story of several key characters to a definitive close whereas the other two end on a “to be continued” note. Following the devastation of the epic Battle of the Barrowland depicted in The White Rose, the White Rose herself, Silent and a small group of survivors become embroiled in a conflict around the silver spike used to trap the essence of the Dominator. A band of rogues realize that the spike is immensely valuable and concoct a plan to steal it. Meanwhile, the remnants of the Lady’s Empire tries to restore order.

Continue reading The Books of the South →

So I’m finally done with the fifth book in the Song of Ice and Fire series. It’s a monster of a novel at well over 1,000 pages and has been nearly six years in the making. It’s impossible to talk about it without tramping into spoilers so here are a few short spoiler-free comments about it before going into full-on analysis mode. Does stuff actually happen in this book, as opposed to say, A Feast for Crows? Well, yes, but less than you might expect from a novel of this length. Is it good? It’s decent but falls markedly short of the first three books due to lack of focus and poor prose. Does it finally tie things up? Not really.

Spoilers start here

Continue reading A Dance with Dragons →