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S - Science Fiction
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Adams, Douglas (S)
Asher, Neal (S)
Aylett, Steve (S)
Banks, Iain M (S)
Barclay, James (F)
Barker, Clive (H)
Baxter, Stephen (S)
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Williams, Tad (S/F)
Collections (S/F)
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| The Classics |
Bradbury, Ray (S/H)
Burgess, Anthony (S)
Tolkien, JRR (F) |
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| Jon Courtenay Grimwood |
| Author Information |
Reviewed Books |
Other Books |
| Notes: (A) - The Arabesk Series |
reMix |
redRobe
Pashazade (A)
Effendi (A)
Felaheen (A) |
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 Our
Ranking I'd been eyeing reMix, and most of Grimwood's
books for a while. I think it was because of the unique cover -it always caught
my attention, and seemed interesting. So finally, after passing on it several
times, I grabbed it while I was at Heathrow. Looking back I should have been a
little nervous about the "William Gibson meets Quentin Tarantino" quote on the
front cover. Generally, with Only Forward being the only exception I can think
of, quotes like this, especially on the front cover, do not bode well for the
book. (the source of the quote, New Woman, should have been the next giveaway,
but admittedly I didn't do my research ahead of time). reMix reminded me a lot
of Neuromancer and not just because it is a cyberpunk story. It had the same dark
attitude to the world and the same, "no good guy" kind of feel to it. The problem
is, Gibson managed to pull off this, where despite the fact that Case was utterly
self-destructive you still wound up liking him. Grimwood attempts the same feat
but instead gives you a set of main characters that are truly unlikable. LizAlec,
the young teenage rebellious child of an extremely rich and powerful European
family basically is just an incredible brat. I found myself completely not caring
what became of her. Fixx, the other main character is a little better in that
at least he is fairly interesting. Grimwood gives you a good and rich past for
Fixx, but he too is very tough to like and worst of all, his motivations were
somewhat shoddy and pretty unconvincing. And then, simply said, Shiori is almost
a complete rip off of Molly from Neuromancer which aggravated me a bit. Surrounding
the weak cast of characters is actually a pretty engaging setting though. This
and Grimwood's writing style are really what managed to save this book from dropping
to 2 stars. The setting is dark, and describes a world that really just seems
to be breaking apart at the seems. He mostly focuses on Paris which is under siege
not only from a massive army but also from a nanotech virus that has ravaged all
of the Middle East and Europe. The virus basically eats steel, destroying anything
made of it. The effects of this, and the world's (and the moon colonies especially)
attempts at preventing the further spread of this were pretty wild. Also, Grimwood
did a good job of describing a very realistic space/moon colony and the affects
on people living there and how their cities and such would evolve. Unfortunately,
the plot itself couldn't feed off the terrific setting, and wound up mired down
with the characters. The first third of the book is pretty interesting and moves
at a good pace but then everything just seemed to grind to a halt. About half
way I realized that nothing was really happening except for characters moving
around a bit. There was no real suspense, and add the fact that you don't care
about the characters and you have no real drama either. What's worse, is it almost
seemed like Grimwood sort of realized it and where he was stuck, he'd just throw
in a sex scene or two that honestly were pretty bad. Overall, I think the 3 star
rating says it all though. Not a bad book, but not a good book. Grimwood certainly
does have ability though, so I might give him another shot. His writing and setting
were very good but the story and cast were just not there at all. If you are a
big cyberpunk fan, this isn't a bad one to read, but don't let this be the first
into the genre for you. Neuromancer or Snow Crash or even Vurt are way ahead of
this. |
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