Alif the Unseen

I liked Alif the Unseen.  A bit slow in places, but an interesting mix of middle eastern mythology and technology.  My primary complain would be that G. Willow Wilson went a bit light on the mythology, and even lighter on the technology.  It was a good book.  It could have been absolutely exceptional.  When I was at Code Freeze, there were discussions about the misuses of big data and the algorithms that could be generated from using it inappropriately.  Wilson talks about the use of some of those algorithms, but didn't seem to do the research to fully explore it.  Perhaps that's valid.  You wouldn't expect a script kiddy to necessarily know the terminology, even if he had the skills.  But a book demands a bit more in my opinion.

Alif also suffered a bit in my opinion because it's in the same style as Emma Bull's War for the Oaks, set in Minneapolis in the Prince era.  Rather than a mix of tech and mythology, War for the Oaks is a mix of funk and technology.  While that might not sound appealing to some, to me it is - and it's wonderful.  Alif doesn't hold up in comparsion.  I also liked King Rat by China Mieville better - same style.  Not as good as War for the Oaks, but solid.  Here's an old, lengthier, post on the two.  And of course there's Gaiman's American Gods which is right up there with War for the Oaks.  So there are three books you should read first.

Where it didn't suffer, despite what some Amazon commentators state, is in its use of Arabic terms and social practices.  It's not anything that isn't easily discoverable with the internet (and it's not the end of the world to set down the book for a moment and look up a term - no one reads end-to-end anyway - at least no one I know).  And the practices, such as female circumcision being referenced, while potentially upsetting, aren't there to endorse the practices.  They're a way to stress the difference of the culture involved in the fantasy.  I can see that using that as a way to enhance the theme might seem unacceptable, but glossing over cultural differences doesn't strike me as necessarily better. In conjunction with how the characters acted, the mythology, and the general tone, it served to really give the book a different feel from the other books listed above.  I'd recommend the book, but primarily as an interesting addendum to a history of worlds-along-side-our-own-and-within-our-own.

Zombie, Ohio and Mieville's Kraken

I took Scott Kenemore's book (yes, book, not eBook) Zombie, Ohio, along on the Bike the Border ride Ming and I went on last weekend around Minot, ND.  Ming grabbed it to read as I was also reading China Mieville's Kraken and he hadn't brought anything.  Which turned out to be a wise decision as nowhere within 30 miles of Minot, ND, was there a book to be purchased.  Most of the towns we were in a.) didn't have a bookstore, b.) didn't have a gas station that had books, unless they were Christian, and c.) didn't have a gas station that had a magazine.  Seriously, several Cenex's and not a magazine between them.  Everyone in North Dakota obviously uses an eReader and purchases their books in digital format or has them delivered directly to the front door via Amazon.com.  I strongly recommend Zombie, Ohio.  A very solid book in the Zombie genre.  At times it's like The Road.  At other times it's like The Postman.  And in places it's sort of a mystery novel and love story.  Without ruining it, the plot revolves around a zombie who finds that he's not your average dumb, slow zombie, but a one in a million/billion smart zombie who can talk, reason, plan, and emote.  You can do the math from there.  What does he do about his penchant for eating brains?  Is he a good zombie, a bad zombie, or both?  Definitely a clever twist.

Which is more than I could say about Kraken.  I really liked Perdido Street Station, The Scar, and even Iron Council, which was a bit more ponderous than the other two.  King Rat, which was sort of same genre of urban magic, although sans giant squid, was thoroughly enjoyable, particularly if you'd read any Gaiman or Emma Bull (you can read my lengthy post about King Rat and War for the Oaks here).  Kraken was not. It sort of hopped all over the place.  And at times, Mieville came back to the thread of the story with references to things that had happened that he hadn't covered in text.  Which was damn strange given Kraken was over 500 pages.  He could have written the same story, with just as much depth, in 200-300 pages.  The last 40 or so had the most interesting aspects of the story and I shouldn't have had to breathe deep and utter, "Finally."  I'll channel one of the folks on Amazon who sums it up well, although I'd push the % down to about 30%, "The characters are flat. 75% of the way through the novel I realized I really did not care what happened to these characters and I only finished to see how the mystery was resolved."