The Aerie
Ah, there's nothing like a trip to Uncle Hugo's, only the best Science Fiction store in the entire world. I received a gift card for Father's Day, which I finally grabbed a moment to use.
Picked up five books. "Adulthood Rites" and "Imago" by Octavia Butler. I just finished re-reading her first in this series, "Dawn".
I enjoyed "Dawn", give it maybe eight out of ten stars. One phenomenon I've noticed in writing is that if you have a protagonist who becomes extremely powerful and skilled, the protagonist tends to "drift away" from the reader. Butler does a good job in "Dawn" of avoiding that situation - not perfect, but good. As the protagonist becomes more and more powerful, she remains accessible and even helpless in the face of some events.
Also picked up "Revelation Space" and "Redemption Ark" by Alastair Reynolds. I have no idea about these books, but they look like (i.e. the first few pages read like) some nice crisp space opera, and that suits me just fine.
I'm fairly rigorous about how I select books. First, I go by the cover. Sorry if that sounds appalling, but cover art for books is more than just a pretty illustration. It has evolved into a complex iconography that tells you pretty clearly what you're getting inside. Both the Reynolds books feature gleaming chrome spaceships in front of planetary arcs against the black backdrop of space. That says "Space Adventure" in the language of cover art.
Butler's books, on the other hand, show various nudes in attitudes of contemplation or grief, overlaid with eerie floating spheres and stylized DNA strands. This tells you quite clearly that it's going to be an Examination of the Human Condition against a backdrop of genetic engineering.
Those are the flowers that draw one in. Having been attracted to the book sufficiently well to pick it up, I then read the first few pages. I don't read anything else: I don't read the back cover blurb or any little preview page, I read the first few pages. This, in my estimation, is actually how books are meant to be evaluated. Having caught my eye with the cover - a necessary evil when there are so many books on the shelves - I then read the first few pages. If they work, I buy the book. If they don't, I don't.
The final book I grabbed was "A Fistful of Sky" by Nina Kiriki Hoffman. I picked this one up because the cover art said "mystical exploration of otherworldly events". It reminded me of the cover to "What Dreams May Come", which in the edition that I own uses the art from the movie (hence the link to the DVD). Also I have to admit that the a cover blurb read "This generation's Ray Bradbury", which was sufficiently intriguing as this generation has needed a Bradbury for a long time.
So with almost half a dozen books to read, I hope that I can nonetheless continue to get other things accomplished. But I must say that it's been so long since I had something new to read that I'm really looking forward to diving into these works...
Posted by Albatross at July 3, 2004 12:25 PM