Samit Basu

I really expected to love this one and ended up feeling a little indifferent. I did enjoy the setting - a future tech-dystopia version of Earth, set in the middle east. Robots in this world do seem to truly be artificially intelligent, though they aren't fully recognized as people with the same rights.

The characters, however, confused me. Bador is a monkey, which, I'm sorry, but I just don't like monkeys, even robotic ones. He also came off as a bit of an ass for most of the story. His human sister was just as frustrating though, and a hard character to read. I really only liked Moku, the storybot. I just never felt like I knew where any of the characters stood - like they were semi-unreliable characters. They weren't being honest with each other much of the time and it also felt like I couldn't tell their true motivations either. As a result, I just didn't care what happened to either of them. I think maybe there were just too many layers of intrigue for me to ever really feel like I had my footing.

Not for me, but YMMV!… (plus d'informations)

I think I found this book via a Kobo recommendation. Because of course, since I read Murderbot, I must be interested in anything featuring bots. Sigh.

And, well. I loved it! But it has nothing to do with Murderbot except, well, bots.

I have to say that some serious suspension of disbelief is required as regards the world building and plot, but that’s not what I’m interested in. The characters are wonderful. I love how they all grow and evolve, especially the narrator, Moku, a “storybot” who starts as a slightly befuddled but more or less objective observer but grows more and more emotionally involved with the family he met and became a part of.

One thing that I kept reflecting on throughout the book. While everyone in our world seems to be freaking out about AI taking over, I notice that a lot of fiction featuring bots, cyborgs and androids features the one issue that Silicon Valley moguls, commentators and basically everyone who is voicing an opinion in public about this subject is studiously avoiding: slavery.… (plus d'informations)

This has the same problems as the previous book, Turbulence. I did enjoy the first third more than any section of the first novel probably because the returning characters now have a history. However, the action sequences are overlong and get boring quickly, the characters never develop or evolve, and there is still no real atmosphere to speak of. The ending was a true letdown, the mystery of where all these superpowers came from in the first place is never explored but the question is asked quite a few times in the text. The villain, Norio, is characterized fairly well. I did like that Aman had created an island lair for himself, but he spends most of the central part of the novel as someone’s prisoner again, and even the villain from the last book, Jai, appears once again only to make a commitment to the “good guys”.
The gonzo Prague episode was pretty good as giant mutant bugs, human-mutant-bug-hybrids, and brain-eaten zombies overran it and heroes had to blast their way through. Still, it sounds cooler than it was. I cannot recommend this one unless you liked the previous novel. I for one, will not be reading any follow-ups or sequels should they appear.… (plus d'informations)

This book is so-so it has the same problems as the other pair of books I read from this publisher (Titan Books), the Charlie Human authored Apocalypse Now Now and Kill Baxter. There is no subtext to speak of and characters tend to be functions of the plot. The atmosphere is neutral, and the author really sets up no mood but at least there is some descriptive text, spare, but it’s there.
The story concerns the passengers of a flight that now have superpowers, and someone is capturing or killing them so, the protagonist, Aman Sen, joins up with a handful of other super-powered passengers including the patriotic Indian version of Superman, Vir Singh, against the small group of villains led by Jai, an invulnerable, super-strong and fast military man with dreams of world domination. There are some good ideas in here and I enjoyed the setting, and cities in India, but this was effaced by the lack of sensory detail and mood apart from Mumbai smelling like dead fish (apparently).
There are plenty of action scenes and just like in the previously mentioned books, they get to the point of gonzo, but they also share the same weakness, shared by books in the Men’s Adventure genre, they go on too long and the outcome is really too easy to foretell if you’ve read more than a handful of fiction novels. I enjoyed the last third of the book more so than the first two-thirds as it seemed that the story and its author finally found some footing and built some forward momentum. However, the lack of any undercurrent to carry me along through the first two-thirds has shaped my opinion the most.
I did like that Uzma had a character arc influenced by Aman, but I felt the absence of an arc for him and Vir, Vir especially. I think that Uzma's may be the only character arc in this novel. I also enjoyed this:
Aman ignores the usual mountains of random hatespeak, links to porn websites and teenaged Americans yelling at everything and everyone around them[.] [g.280, emphasis mine]
But I am puzzled by this:
At some point of time – Vir is not exactly sure when – he started helping people. He saved a boy from falling off a cliff in Mongolia; he fought off bandits who were invading an old people’s home in New Mexico. [pg.251, emphasis mine]
I also felt that the text was too long, the author should have refined the story and cut it down to probably half its current length of 360 pages. Would I recommend this one? Probably not if you’re not into superhero-type stories otherwise, maybe. I am currently reading its sequel so there’s that. It was just okay.… (plus d'informations)