Science - Victor J. Stenger - The Fallacy of Fine-Tuning (2011)

You know that stupid thing that comes up on your ignorant relative's Facebook statues where they assert that if the Earth were ten feet closer to the sun we would all burn up? And then you try to explain to them that our orbit isn't a perfect circle and we often drift both closer and farther from the sun throughout the year, and then they accuse you of either not taking a joke or picking on them? (Unless they are truly lost, which is when they say, "Duh! How else would we have summer or winter? Stupid!")

That Facebook argument has taken form.

It is this book.

I told Steve (Sorry Steve!) That The Name of the Wind was going to be the next book I read, but I decided to get this one done and over with. I don't really know the circumstances it entered our library. Most of the science books in our possession (and we have quite a few) are Bryan's, and this one is definitely no exception. It's primarily his because it has been sitting on his nightstand for as long as we've had nightstands, and by the bed before that. It always frustrated me that he wasn't making any progress on it, but he said that it was a snorefest and riddled with too-hard math. I'm here to tell you that he is 100% not wrong when it comes to that.

I don't have any problems with you believing what you want, as long as it doesn't harm anyone else, physically or emotionally. I'm an atheist. I come from Christian stock. I married into a Jewish family. One of my best friends is Catholic. I don't care. Don't proselytize, don't hurt anyone, and I don't care. I will admit that I get frustrated by some of the ladies in group therapy that talk about praying and mantras and reiki, but I don't care, really. My frustration stems from them wasting our valuable time with their bullshit. But I don't go around arguing with people.

This guy not only doesn't believe in a higher power, but he is dedicated to proving that believing, and specifically believing that science has proven the existence of one, is bullshit. Whatever. That's fine.

Apparently, the idea surrounding "science has found God" is that the numbers in physics have been "fine-tuned" by some designer entity to make our universe perfect for life to grow. This book is intending to disprove all of that.

Unfortunately, it is very dull.

What could be an infinitely interesting book is bogged down with all of the math and none of the explanation of what a lot of the holy math even means. He gets so caught up in his equations and constants that the layman's mind reels, and when Stenger finally comes up for air, ages after the reader has already pantingly done so, he speaks in vague terms that he asserts are proved by the math, repeats word-for-word assertions made in the preface, and claims we will understand better in a later chapter.

The whole thing flows more like a textbook that a book for the regular populace. That isn't because it's a science book. There are plenty of science books that still have the ability to hold the interest of the reader. But not this one.

Did some supernatural entity fine-tune the numbers in our physics models for life? Probably not. Would life have been able to form without fine-tuning? Probably. Is there any life to speak of between the covers of this tome?

Absolutely not.

2.5/10

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Thriller - S.J. Watson - Before I Go To Sleep (2011)

This one I borrowed from my friend Nadia, along with a few others. To paraphrase her selling of it to me, it's basically a thriller version of the movie Fifty First Dates.

If you've never seen that particular Adam Sandler movie, allow me to elaborate further. The main character of this book has a mental condition that does not allow her to transfer the day's short-term memories into long-term memory. As a result, every day she wakes up not knowing what happened the day before, or even in the years since she developed this condition, or (since memory is a tricky thing) who she is.

Upon sneaking to see a doctor about her condition years after it has developed, she has begun writing a journal about her day, including things that she has found out about herself and her long-suffering husband. But things are starting to come back to her, and they are not fitting up with what her husband is telling her. So she is beginning to wonder what else he is lying about, especially since he seems to be the only source of information for her.

I have a few problems with this book, but unfortunately time has given me an opportunity to become kinder towards it.

First off, this book is touted as a debut novel, and it shows; the dialogue-based explanation in the prologue and the Bond-villain style speech by the Big Bad at the end is amateur hour through and through. Even the assurances constantly of when the main character is writing in her journal are unnecessary; we get she's hiding it from her husband. You don't have to keep fucking telling us what she's doing to hide it from him.

The reviews coating the cover put its fast pace on a pedestal, and honestly it's because it's the only thing it really has going for it. The pages really do flip quick, but the coincidences required for this story to work out really challenge a reader's ability to suspend disbelief. It feels written, and everyone knows that writing that feels like writing is garbage sauce. It needed a few more rewrites before it went out to public eyes, but it didn't get that. So we have a lacking novel with a fast pace that is good only because it's stay will not be long.

Sorry, Nadia.

5.0/10

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Fantasy - George R.R. Martin - A Dance with Dragons (2011)

Jesus, I am terrible at this write-the-review-when-you-finish-the-book shit. Fuck. Anyway.

I picked this up the same time I did A Feast for Crows, but just didn't get off my ass to read it until now. Now I'm all caught up on Mr. Martin's Song, and now I understand a little better how the HBO show is going to handle it.

It's hard to talk about this book because even the mention of certain characters may result in spoilers, depending on what book of this series you're on or how far into the show you are. But, how Feast was about half of the characters, this book is primarily about the other half of the characters: what is going on with them concurrently with the events in Feast and their own reactions to events from that book. But that all goes out the window at about the halfway point of this titanic tome. At that point, the two spreads have met back up and you begin to see characters from the other book pop up more as they becoming interspersed with the characters this book was purported to focus on. So you will see a Jaime chapter. You will see some Cersei. And you will see some [REDACTED].

Damn it George, why did you have to make it seem like so many characters are dead while others are actually dead? You make it difficult to talk about your work without bringing down the wrath of the internets.

The moral of most of this story is that if the economy has been gutted for whatever reason, shit gets fucked real quick.

I can't even really tell you whether or not you should read it or buy it though. This being Book 5, you either are dedicated to the series at this point, or it's not what you want, or you feel it's too long to get into now.

8.5/10

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Fantasy - Anne Bishop - Twilight's Dawn (2011)

Before I begin, please understand: I love the Black Jewels series. For that reason alone, Anne Bishop is my favorite author. I don't particularly care for the Tir Alainn trilogy that much, I haven't read the Ephemera duology yet. But this is my favorite book series. So this book was a shoe-in for a ten... if it hadn't been for that last story.

I got the first Black Jewels book, Daughter of the Blood at a used bookstore. I read it in a day, and later got the rest of the trilogy and Dreams Made Flesh. After Dreams, I got every subsequent book in hardcover for my birthday, because the books would always come out in March, and my birthday's in April. In fact, it was a couple of days ago. So when I got this one, which I understand is the last one, because of that last novella, I dropped the book I was reading and read this one, in proper Black Jewels tradition, in a day. Yesterday, even. I used it as a reward for myself in cleaning the house and doing stuff. Awesome, right?

There are a lot of things I love about Black Jewels that I want to get into before I tell you about this book, mostly because then I can reference it. The series is, and has always been, unapologetically violent. That isn't to say that I need a story to be steeped in gore for me to love it, but I would much prefer truthful violence to vague squeamishness in a story. If that's what really happened, then just say it. Don't beat around the bush. And the imagery included in it... you can believe that a man's skeleton can be pulled out of him and lit ablaze while he is still alive. You can believe that a man can be magically exploded so the largest bit of him left are globules of frozen blood on the walls. It has its own beauty.

Related to that is another aspect of these books I love. They go whole-hog with their magic. I know that some people shy away from making a person powerful in their stories out of fear of people saying the person is a Mary-Sue, but why have magic if you can't really show what it does. Black Jewels isn't afraid to have an all-powerful being that is still fragile. It isn't afraid to show you what can really, really do with magic. It isn't afraid to show you illusions, storms that destroy populations, the ability to remove from existence an entire land.

But with that comes a rigid society that I love. Primarily because it doesn't pretend that the Blood are no different from everyone else. They have their own castes and have to be ruled in layers of courts and Queens. And when that society extends in Heir to the Shadows to include kindred, magic-using animals, the politics involved are just delicious.

But what I love most about the Black Jewels series is the relationships between the characters. The trust that is built, crushed, and rebuilt, the interactions that just show how much they have all become an amalgam of relations and family... Even if there were no underlying conflict like an enemy and such, if there was a book of just these characters that I love going about their lives and visiting each other, and threatening each other while declaring that they would guard that person with their life, I would read the shit out of it, and love it forever.

All of that said, Twilight's Dawn. I'm going to do my best to not give away things, but it's probably only going to be a problem when I get to the last story.

Winsol Gifts is the first, and relates the story of Daemon and Jaenelle's first real Winsol. I say real, because it's their third, but during the first, Daemon was too far gone, and the second, Jaenelle was too far gone. In this one, they have to deal with parties, planning, family, and a hectic holiday season. It is essentially all that I want, relationship-wise. It sets a great precedent for the rest of the book, because it is, as I said before, delicious.

Shades of Honor is the second, and probably my favorite. It explores Falonar's chafing in his role as Lucivar's second-in-command, and the results thereafter. Falonar is super dumb. Lucivar was placed as the Warlord Prince of Ebon Rih by the Queen of Ebon Askavi. Just rallying a bunch of like-minded Eyrien's isn't going to depose him. It also allows for more resolution after the events of Tangled Webs than the actual book allowed for.

Family is the third, and takes place ten years after Shalador's Lady, but does not include any of the Terreille cast from that book. It primarily closes the book on Queen Sylvia of Halaway and her family. I'm guessing it was also an indulgence to fans, especially those of the relationship between Sylvia and Saetan.

The High Lord's Daughter is the last. And this is where my review falls apart. Up until this story, I loved it. Ten out of ten. This story explores what happens after Jaenelle dies at nearly a hundred years old. But not in any way that I was hoping. If you intend on reading this book and series, which I still highly recommend, I would suggest not reading the next paragraph. After the bold you can read again.

The last story was not very good. It felt rushed, and the way it spanned a lot of time without really acknowledging how much time between chapters was confusing. It was also confusing because they kept naming their kids after established characters. I didn't know if Titian in that story meant the Queen of the Harpies or the little Eyrien girl. And that shit with Jaenelle Satien and Twilight's Dawn? What horseshit. Trying to make her more than she could be. She's not Jaenelle reincarnated, for fuck's sake. But the primary shittery was how Daemon fell in love with Surreal. No. Wrong. It felt like an exercise to satisfy shippers, much like the epilogue to Harry Potter. Daemon waited hundreds of years for Jaenelle. He's not suddenly going to start boning other girls just so Surreal could get jealous and he's not going to love Surreal. At least it acknowledged how Daemon could never love anyone like Jaenelle. But that whole last story should have been more than an exercise for shippers. It should have explored immediately after Jaenelle passed. The scene in Queen of the Darkness when Daemon breaks down after the witch storm was the most powerful scene in a series full of powerful scenes. We could have had more of that. And what about Kaeleer without its Heart? More times should have been spent on that.

Spoilers over, sorry guys.

Don't get me wrong. I still love the characters and the series. I put it on the same mental shelf as Final Fantasy X and Watchmen. But that last story left a bad taste in my mouth, and the fact that this was what I assume the last book in the series makes me wish the last story wasn't included, for the same reason I hated the epilogue in Harry Potter.

Again, don't take my hating one story as a reason to not get it, or to not dive into the series. I still love it. I occasionally even reread it, and I've tried to lend out Daughter of the Blood many times. Buy it, read it. After all, this book is still going to score high, and I am super glad I got it, if only for Shades of Honor.

9.5/10