relationships Archives

Yzabel / June 16, 2018

Review: I Still Dream

My rating: [rating=3]

Blurb:

1997.

17-year-old Laura Bow has invented a rudimentary artificial intelligence, and named it Organon. At first it’s intended to be a sounding-board for her teenage frustrations, a surrogate best friend; but as she grows older, Organon grows with her.

As the world becomes a very different place, technology changes the way we live, love and die; massive corporations develop rival intelligences to Laura’s, ones without safety barriers or morals; and Laura is forced to decide whether to share her creation with the world. If it falls into the wrong hands, she knows, its power could be abused. But what if Organon is the only thing that can stop humanity from hurting itself irreparably?

I STILL DREAM is a powerful tale of love, loss and hope; a frightening, heartbreakingly human look at who we are now – and who we can be, if we only allow ourselves.

Review:

[I received a copy of this book from NetGalley.]

Although I didn’t adore this book, I found it to be an interesting take on artificial intelligence; on what contributes to developing an AI; on the trials and errors involved, and on how the best intentions can be tainted by poor execution, like what happens with SCION. Because, to paraphrase what Laura says about it in the novel, if you teach a child to fight and retaliate, what does it teach them about life and how to react to whatever comes their way?

The story had its ebb and flow, sometimes a little too slow to my liking, but always intriguing. I usually don’t mind when a story jumps from one time period to another, and/or doesn’t always rely on the same narrator, as long as I can follow it. And here, I didn’t have any trouble following, even when the first person narrator didn’t introduce themselves at first (like what happens with Charlie or Cesar). This approach lets the author play with more than just Laura’s take on both Organon and SCION—which was good, since it’s easily apparent that Organon is built upon all that Laura poured into it, and having only Laura’s POV would have felt, to me, slightly… constricting?

My opinion about the plot remains mixed, though, in that the novel seems to hover between being character-driven and being story-driven, while not fully achieving either. I liked the take on developing artificial intelligence—I don’t know much about coding, and I wouldn’t know how to even start about something so huge, and it felt plausible to me. On the other hand, I kept thinking that I wanted the character development part to go a little further than it did, because I felt that there remained some invisible barrier between me and the characters.

This said, I still got to see enough about Laura and the beings (whether the people or the AIs) surrounding her to get a fairly good idea of the characters, too, and of their struggles through life, especially when it came to dementia and similar memory- and recognition-related troubles. So, I definitely wouldn’t say either that the book was a failure in that regard.

Perhaps the one part that really disappointed me was the last chapter, which dragged on making the same point several times. I think it would’ve been more powerful had it been much shorter.

Nevertheless, I would still recommend the book, for the way it puts AI creation and destruction in parallel with the growing up and the decaying of human minds. (Also, listening to ‘Cloudbusting’ while reading it doesn’t hurt.)

Yzabel / September 25, 2015

Review: The Gap of Time

The Gap of Time: A Novel by Jeanette Winterson

My rating: [rating=4]

Blurb:

The Winter’s Tale is one of Shakespeare’s “late plays.” It tells the story of a king whose jealousy results in the banishment of his baby daughter and the death of his beautiful wife. His daughter is found and brought up by a shepherd on the Bohemian coast, but through a series of extraordinary events, father and daughter, and eventually mother too, are reunited.

In Jeanette Winterson’s retelling of The Winter’s Tale we move from London, a city reeling after the 2008 financial crisis, to a storm-ravaged American city called New Bohemia. Her story is one of childhood friendship, money, status, technology and the elliptical nature of time. Written with energy and wit, this is a story of the consuming power of jealousy on one hand, and redemption and the enduring love of a lost child on the other.

Review:

[I received an advanced copy of this book through Edelweiss, in exchange for an honest review.]

I’m not too familiar with Winterson’s writing—except for a puny page from Sexing the Cherry that I had to translate at uni a some 10 years ago—so I can’t comment on how this adaptation exercise affected her usual writing, or if there’s anything really noteworthy here, in one way or another.

As a retelling of a play I incidentally also had to study, and quite enjoyed, I found it interesting: close enough to Shakespeare’s work in its themes (and names), but different enough as well, in that the modern setting allowed for other ways of dealing with those themes.

I liked this new interpretation of the characters. Hermione’s death, for instance, carried through isolation from the media as well as from her family. What happened to Milo/Mamilius. How exactly Perdita was “lost”. The absent Oracle, replaced by a DNA test. The kingdoms being a corporation and a colony. The Sheperd as a poor musician, Autolycus as a wily car dealer. And, last but not least, the twist on Antigonus’s fate, in a surprising interpretation of the famous “exit, pursued by a bear” stage direction. The Winter’s Tale is not an easy play; retelling it is certainly not easy either; in any case, for me, it worked.

As with the play, I preferred the first part to the second—darker, edgier, also with a more hateful Leo/Leontes, through his vulgarity and the way he treated MiMi/Hermione, so blinded by his jealousy that he kept refusing the means to actually prove whether he was right or wrong. Mostly the characters evolved in a bleak setting of money and fake smiles, in lieu of a Court, where finding happiness was just impossible as long as Perdita wasn’t fully accepted among them. I can’t exactly explain why such a setting was more interesting to me than the “happy” one of Shep’s and Clo’s life, raising Perdita on the other side of the ocean… it just was. This doesn’t make the novel less good, though—it’s probably more a matter of personal preference.

I liked what became of Leo in the third part, too: repentant yet still himself, amending his ways yet not all of them, which made him… believable? As for the video game… not sure what to make of it, however I found it lending a strange, eerie, haunted quality to the story, a sort of gloomy backdrop to Leo’s and Xeno’s broken relationship, with MiMi as the single unattainable beacon of light in the darkness. Quite powerful imagery.

Although it’s not absolutely necessary to have read the original play, since a summary is provided, I would recommend doing so, if only to be able to properly draw the parallels between both.

Conclusion: with other authors such as Margaret Atwood and Gillian Flynn being involved in this project, on top of that, I think it is definitely worth another check later. Here’s to hope I’ll be able to get copies of these books as well!

Yzabel / July 26, 2015

Review: Pawn Shop

Pawn Shop by Joey Esposito

My rating: [rating=4]

Blurb:

Pawn Shop is an original graphic novel about the intertwining lives of four strangers in the ecosystem of New York City, connected by the streets they walk on and the people they touch. Following a lonely widower, a struggling Long Island Railroad employee, a timid hospice nurse, and a drug-addled punk, Pawn Shop explores the big things that separate us and the little moments that inexplicably unite us.

Written by Joey Esposito (Footprints) and drawn by Sean Von Gorman (Toe Tag Riot), Pawn Shop is a slice-of-life tale that weaves together separate lives to celebrate the ever-changing nature of New York City and the people that make it the greatest city in the world.

Review:

[I received a copy through NetGalley, in exchange for an honest review.]

Four people in New York, whose lives intersect, briefly connect, are more or less related to each other, through a common denominator: a simple pawn shop, in which old memories come to life, long-lost items surface again, from one hand to the other, for various reasons. Some honest, some not. Some out of need, some just by chance.

Harold, Arthur, Jen and Samantha all live different lives, coming from different backgrounds, but all marred with regrets. Regrets about not proposing sooner to a wife who died too soon after the wedding. About not daring confessing to the person who matters most. About letting someone else control your life because of just one bit of leverage. About trying to do what’s best for your family, to the point of neglecting your own life—yet you cannot let go, and if you do, guilt is only waiting at the corner.

I didn’t enjoy the art, I admit, but the stories were interesting, as well as the way they connected: through just enough little coincidences, but not enough to look as if they were too many or too unbelievable. For instance, it wasn’t illogical for Samantha to meet or at least see those people who always travelled the same subway line at the same time every day. For Arthur to see her, since he worked as a nurse to help her ailing brother. Or even for Jen to bump into Harold upon exiting the pawn shop.

I may have liked to see a little more about their lives, especially Jen’s, as her boyfriend implied that one word from him could destroy her life (in the end, we won’t know if he did or not). Or maybe there’ll be a second volume to tell us more about these characters? I don’t know. It both feels pretty complete as is it, with this “want” more a whim on my part than out of any fault of the book.

Fairly interesting, in any case, and very touching when it came to human feelings and how even little things can cause a lot of changes to happen. Changes that are life-altering, though not necessarily in a grand way: subtlety can have just as much weight, after all.

3.5 stars.

Yzabel / April 9, 2015

Review: The Falling Woman

The Falling Woman by Pat Murphy

My rating: [rating=3]

Blurb:

Elizabeth Waters, an archaeologist who abandoned her husband and daughter years ago to pursue her career, can see the shadows of the past. It’s a gift she keeps secret from her colleagues and students, one that often leads her to incredible archaeological discoveries – and the terrible suspicion that she might be going mad.

Then on a dig in the Yucatan, the shadow of a Mayan priestess speaks to her. Suddenly Elizabeth’s daughter Diane arrives, hoping to reconnect with her mother. As Elizabeth, her daughter and the priestess fall into the mysterious world of Mayan magic, it is clear one of them will be asked to make the ultimate sacrifice…

Review:

Quite a strange read. Interesting concepts and description of Mayan culture (I won’t comment about whether it’s exact or not, as I don’t know enough about it as of yet), seen through both the prisms of archaeology and of visions of “shadows of the past”. Interesting mother/daughter relationship, too, since Elizabeth and Diane have been estranged from years, and neither does know how to take the right steps to mend the gap.

In general, I liked how human relationships were portrayed in this novel. There is not totally right or totally wrong, and even the people who behave as assholes aren’t shown as a surprise: other characters aren’t stupid, they kind of expect the outcome they may (and will) get, and while it’s somewhat bleak, at least the author dosn’t come up with excuses (the characters’ “excuses” are feeble and shown as such).

Interesting as well was the depiction of how society reacts to “strong women”. Zuhuy-kak was a strong-willed priestess, and her enemies deemed her as mad. Elizabeth wanted to have a life of her own, something that clashed with her husband’s expectations of her, and so she was deemed as unstable. Perhaps that theme felt stronger in the 1980s-early 1990s, when the book was first published, but I think it still hits home today—society has changed… but not so much.

On the other hand, I felt let down by the high stakes the blurb led me to expect: more danger, more drastic choices… that never really took place, or not in a dramatic enough fashion as to really make me feel that Elizabeth and/or Diane was threatened. I would’ve liked to see something closer to a resolution when it came to the mother-daughter relationship, too. The novel’s too open-ended, leaving room for more, when part of that “more” should’ve been included in it.

Yzabel / November 22, 2012

Review: I Hunt Killers

I Hunt Killers by Barry Lyga

My rating: [rating=5]

Summary:

What if the world’s worst serial killer…was your dad?
Jasper (Jazz) Dent is a likable teenager. A charmer, one might say.
But he’s also the son of the world’s most infamous serial killer, and for Dear Old Dad, Take Your Son to Work Day was year-round. Jazz has witnessed crime scenes the way cops wish they could–from the criminal’s point of view.
And now bodies are piling up in Lobo’s Nod.
In an effort to clear his name, Jazz joins the police in a hunt for a new serial killer. But Jazz has a secret–could he be more like his father than anyone knows?

Review:

I picked the ebook version, and now I deeply regret not having bought the paper one. Which I’ll buy when the second book is out. Because I’ll definitely read the second installment.

This novel was a terrific surprise: gripping and entertaining at once, although the themes tackled, and some gory scenes, probably wouldn’t be deemed as ‘entertaining’ by everyone. (I suppose you may say that gory doesn’t go well with YA, but I didn’t find them too graphic, so I guess they were alright in that regard.) The plot itself is fast-paced, not too complex, yet still intriguing enough, with a few potential culprits. But what I particularly liked, was that the most important point is Jasper’s psyche. Throughout the whole story, he has to fight his father’s influence, live with his always-present shadow, come to terms with his inheritance, with what he may or may not become, and this raises a lot of questions regarding nature vs. nurture. If your own father had from the start raised you to become a serial killer, would you necessarily become one too? Would your own sense of good and evil be so thwarted, forever, that you’d be fated to kill too? Or would you be able, if surrounded with ‘good’ people, to overcome such an education, and choose your own path in life?

Jazz is an interesting character, constantly questioning himself, his motives, and whether he will end up becoming a second Billy Dent. And there are occasions for him to become just that, when faced with choices to make, choices that may not seem such dilemmas to any other person but him; more than once, his thoughts carry him along dangerous paths, poising him on the verge of swinging one way or the other. His relationship with his crazy grandmother particularly reflects this: was what he choose for him, for her, the ‘proper’, humane choices to make? And what about the way he envisions his relationships with others, the way he always tends to resort to manipulating them, because ‘blending in’ is one of the first things his father taught him to do?

Barry Lyga was able to portray this young man without resorting to purely whiny, angsty writing, and in a way that makes it possible to relate to him whether you’re a boy or a girl, a teenager or an adult. Jasper is 17, and although he tends to delve into his problems a lot, life has also made him more mature in many ways, and he approaches his situation with a dark kind of humour that makes it all the more enjoyable. His best friend, Howie, also displays a sense of humour, and his funny retorts made me smile more than once; he too is a character that brings a lot to the novel, thanks to his touching relationship with Jazz. Another pillar of humanity in Jasper’s life is his girlfriend, Connie, who’s brave, independent, makes her own decisions, and doesn’t let him wallow in self-pity, constantly giving support while reminding him that he can fight his inner darkness if he wants to.

This book would have been interesting to me if only thanks to his theme; the relationships depicted in it really make it shine.