Review: Ready Player Two by Ernest Cline

While I loved Ernest Cline’s Ready Player One upon first reading, a subsequent reading didn’t do it any favors.

So, I have to admit I was a bit wary when I heard Cline was headed back to that RP1 universe with Ready Player Two. I wanted to believe that Cline could somehow capture the lightning in the bottle of my first reading of RP1.

Alas, I’m here to report that he couldn’t.

In many respects Ready Player Two is just a retelling of the story from Ready Player One. Yes, the stakes (such as they are) have been raised a bit, but it’s essentially the same story one more time — Wade Watts is given a task in which he must save civilization as we know it, via a contest put in place by Oasis founder, James Halliday. But where the first third of Ready Player One was about world-building and getting us to like Wade, the first third of Ready Player Two is about transforming Wade into an insufferable jerk, who by the time the quest begins I found myself wishing that something terrible would happen to him. Where Wade was relatable in the first book, he becomes unbearable in this one, with long passages that seem simply put in to prove he’s the world’s biggest expert on everything that has ever existed in pop culture.

At several points, I felt like I’d wandered down a bad sub-Reddit or YouTube thread, inhabited by those who believe they know better than the creative people creating content about what a particular franchise needs or wants instead of reading a novel. This may be why it took me so long to wade through the book (pun fully intended here) and why finishing it seemed like such a chore. Look, I wanted to believe in this book and to enjoy it. It just never happened.

This makes two novels in the last few months that I picked up on the basis of the author’s first book and came away disappointed by. At this point, it may be best to relegate Cline and Andy Weir to the status of one-hit wonders and not on the automatic “must-read” lead I placed them on after their first offerings.

Top Ten Tuesday: Looking Forward

Today’s Top Ten Tuesday (hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl) looks ahead to the second half of 2021 and asks us which books are on the horizon that we can’t wait to read.

1. Billy Summers by Stephen King
2. Falling by T.J. Newman
3. Much Ado About Barbecue by Sally Kilpatrick
4. The Pariah by Anthony Ryan
5. The Dark Hours by Michael Connelly
6. The Stowaway by James S. Murray and Darren Wearmouth
7. The Last Shadow by Orson Scott Card
8. Paper & Blood by Kevin Hearne
9. A Splindle Splintered by Alex E. Harrow
10. Doctor Who: Battlefield by Marc Platt (Audiobook release)
11. Star Trek: The Next Generation: Shadows Have Offended by Cassandra Rose Clarke
12. CatKid Comic Club: Perspectives by Dav Pilkey

Robert Holmes Doctor Who Rewatch: “Terror of the Autons”

You have to admire the sheer audacity of Barry Letts and Terrance Dicks. A mere three stories after “Spearhead from Space,” the team not only brings back the Autons to invade Earth yet again, but they’re brought back in virtually the same story as we saw in “Spearhead from Space.” Just substitute the Master in the role of Channing from “Spearhead” and the two serials are remarkably similar.

The Nestene, using the Autons, have decided it’s time to invade Earth again. Though this time, the attempt to take over our world features a different ally and is a bit more subversive. Whereas “Spearhead” is a full fledged frontal assault (complete with the memorable image of the Autons coming to life as shop dummies), this invasion comes more from within with the Master spearheading (pardon fully intended) the wiping out of a great number of the population and then invading in the chaos.

The Nestene appear to have decided — or possibly been persuaded by the Master — that taking over Earth is easier if you plunge the world into chaos by killing off large chunks of the population via plastic chairs or daffodils. The invasion plot continues a theme from Robert Holmes’ “Spearhead from Space” of taking the everyday, mundane, or even safe things of life and making them scary somehow. In this case, you can be killed by authority figures like the police or struck down in the safety of your home by a plastic daffodil cutting off your ability to breathe.

It’s a pretty chilling invasion plot, if you step back and think about it. And the idea of your final moments being given over to fear as you’re attacked by a plastic doll or daffodil is one that’s pretty chilling.

Review: The Impossible Has Happened: The Life and Work of Gene Roddenberry, Creator of Star Trek by Lance Parkin

“When the legend becomes the fact, print the legend.”
— The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance

This famous quote from the iconic John Ford Western could easily apply to Star Trek creator, Gene Roddenberry. Roddenberry was a good storyteller, who rarely (at least according to this book) shied away from an opportunity to present himself as the hero of any particular story — whether it was behind-the-scenes battles to maintain the integrity of his vision of the future or being one to take credit for the successes of Star Trek while finding a scapegoat in others for its shortcomings.

In the thirty years since Roddenberry’s death, fandom has been given the opportunity to examine the Roddenberry legacy and to wonder just how much of the success of Star Trek could or should be laid at his feet. Lance Parkin’s The Impossible Has Happened attempts to distill multiple narratives into a single cohesive portrait of the man who created Star Trek and his legacy. Parkin’s assessment is an honest one — probably somewhere in middle between the official Roddenberry biography and the unauthorized one. Parkin throws in details from various other cast and crew members behind-the-scenes looks at the Trek phenomenon to give us his assessment and view of the man and his franchise.

Audiobook Review: Early Morning Riser by Katherine Heiny

Locking herself out of her home, new-in-town second-grade-teacher Jane calls for a locksmith. When Duncan shows up, he not only finds a quick and easy way into Jane’s house but also her life.

From their first weekend together, Katherine Heiny’s Early Morning Riser chronicles the ups, downs, and everything in between Jane and Duncan’s relationship and the community they build in the small town of Boyne City, Michigan. Checking in and out every few years, Heiny gives us brief insights into Jane’s world and the changes (or lack thereof) within it.

The novel is a remarkably low stake one in the best possible way. While the decisions Jane faces are momentous ones, often brought about by the slings and arrows of life, there aren’t any stakes like saving all of civilization as we know it. Instead, there’s Jane’s coming to grips with just who Duncan and is what he brings to the table as a romantic partner and friend. (At one point, Jane dumps Duncan because she realizes he has little interest in getting married again).

And yet, I couldn’t help but become invested in Jane and the cast around her over the course of this novel. The episodic nature helps a great deal and Heiny rarely leaves out detail for too long when jumping from one episode to the next. An early episode finds Jane ready to marry someone else until a tragedy strikes her community and we jump forward in time. Heiny teases the reader just long enough about whether or not Jane went through the wedding without feeling like she’s withholding for the sake of withholding.

Over the course of this story, it’s easy to become invested in Jane, Duncan, and the quirky cast surrounding them. Late in the story, when Jane worries that Duncan might be getting too close to his ex-wife while attending a funeral and their high school reunion, I couldn’t help but feel angry at Duncan for his possible betrayal and hopeful that he wouldn’t or couldn’t be doing what Jane suspects of him. Again, it’s low stakes (unless you’re Jane, and then it’s a hugely emotional stake!) but by this point, I was so invested in Jane and company that I found myself caring about them as if they were real people instead of characters in a novel.

In fact, the last episode finds Jane and company in 2019 and I’ve spent a couple of days since then wondering how Jane and her crew responded to the pandemic and what impact it had on their lives.

This is the best endorsement for Early Morning Riser that I can think of — the wanting to spend more time and see what the characters are still doing today. And yet, I didn’t walk away feeling like the book was unsatisfying. It just creates such a relationship with these characters that you wouldn’t mind spending a few more pages with them.

A favorite novel I’ve read this year.

Review: Later by Stephen King

There are plenty of drawbacks to being a kid; check it out. Zits, the agony of choosing the right clothes to wear to school so you don’t get laughed at, and the mystery of girls are only three of them.

While it may be part of the Hard Case Crime series, Stephen King’s narrator Jamie keeps reminding us that it’s really a horror story.

Take Jamie at his word.

Jamie sees dead people — not like the kid in The Sixth Sense mind you. In Jamie’s case most of the people he sees know they’re dead and gradually begin to fade away. Jamie’s has this gift since he was a young boy, using it to help a woman tell her husband where to find her misplaced jewelry and talking to the spirit of a dead author her mother works with to get the details on the final book in a best-selling series that the author died before finishing.

Those things may seem a bit tame in the world of ghost stories. But, again, Jamie keeps reminding us that bad things happen Later.

Top Ten Tuesday: Summer TBR 2021

Time again for the Top Ten Tuesday, a weekly book-related meme. This week’s prompt is what do we have on our summer to-be-read list. Here are some of the books I hope to read this summer (this could change, based on my mood, how my holds list at the library goes, etc.)

1. Day Zero by C. Robert Cargill
2. Gideon the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir
3. Doctor Who: Dalek by Robert Shearman
4. Foundation and Empire by Issac Asimov
5. Dune by Frank Herbert
6. Rabbits by Terry Miles
7. Memory by Lois McMaster Bujold
8. Billy Summers by Stephen King
9. Malibu Rising by Taylor Reid Jenkins
10. Star Trek: The Next Generation: Shadows Have Offended by Cassandra Rose Clarke

Reading With Shortcake

Pete the Cat and the Tip-Top Tree House by James Dean

If you notice a lot of five-star reads in the children’s book category, this is only because Shortcake loves reading as many of the selections on Kindle Unlimited as we can and she’s very generous with her ratings. In fact, she questioned me for hours after I gave a book three stars.

I tend to go in and edit the ratings later when she’s not looking.

We both love the Pete the Cat series — and this one may be one of the best we’ve read together, so far. Pete wants to invite all his friends over to hang out in his new treehouse. In order to entice them over, he adds on a wave-pool, a bowling alley, and several other large room items to make his friends happy. The sheer absurdity of Pete adding all these rooms and things to the treehouse just amused me no end.

As Pete would say, “Groovy.”

Never Let a Unicorn Wear a Tutu! by Diane Alber

Shortcake loves unicorns, and she loves dancing. So, a story that promises both — much less that a unicorn might wear a tutu can only be a good thing.

Luckily, Never Let a Unicorn Wear a Tutu! is just as much fun as the title promises — and there’s even a lesson lurking in there. The illustrations are what really people this one over the top, though. Colorful an fun, they helped elevate this story to one of our new favorites and sent us down the rabbit hole to read as many other books from this series as possible.

The Cat Who Wanted To Be A Princess: A Children’s Book About Manners, Empathy, and Kindness by Sonica Ellis

“Daddy, we have to read this one about a princess kitty cat,” Shortcake exclaimed upon seeing this cover in my Kindle Unlimited suggestions.

So, we did.

It’s a cute story about (wait for it) a cat who wants to be a princess. She asks her grandmother about how she can become one and her grandmother offers various behaviors that might help. This doesn’t end with the cat in question, Sophia, become a princess. But what she does learn is how to be kind and empathetic to your friends and neighbors. Not necessarily a terrible lesson and something I feel like I (and a lot of people in the world today) need to be reminded every once in a while.

Review: Marvel-Verse: Venom

I should preface this review by saying I’ve never been the biggest fan of Venom. The character is an interesting idea, but I honestly think he’s been overused and overexposed by Marvel since his creation.

So why, then, would I pick up this collection of stories focusing on Venom?

Call it an impulse check-out from my local library.

After reading this collection of five comics, I find myself wondering just who the target audience is for this collection. Is it young readers to introduce them to the character of Venom (in case you’ve just discovered comic books, I guess)? Or is it older readers to give a quick overview of Venom’s origin? I don’t necessarily think it’s anyone who has only seen the big-screen, live-action version of Venom with Tom Hardy because that storyline doesn’t include Spider-Man as part of Venom’s origin.

Audiobook Review: Doctor Who: Time-Flight by Peter Grimwade

Nostalgically, “Time-Flight” holds a special place in my heart as the first Doctor Who serial I watched one warm summer evening on San Jose’s KTEH. The story of a Concorde vanishing into pre-historical times hooked me on Doctor Who for life. And since I didn’t have much to compare it to, I thought it was one of the best things I’d ever seen.

It didn’t take me long to realize that “Time-Flight” wasn’t necessarily the best offering for not just the Peter Davison era but also Doctor Who as a whole. That’s probably why I skipped the Target book during my teenage years.

Forty years later, I’ve finally experienced the Target version of the story in audiobook form. And it was about as disappointing as I thought it might be forty or so years ago.

Freed of the limitations of an overstretched budget, I’d hoped that author Peter Grimwade might use the printed page to enhance and expand the story a bit. Instead, Grimwade seems to follow the Terrance Dicks of the Tom Baker era model and just translate the script to the page with a few descriptions of items, sets, and characters thrown in for good measure. The story of a Concorde being stolen down a time corridor in order to help out the Master’s latest nefarious scheme doesn’t even come close to making one lick more of sense on the printed page. It really does make one yearn for the days of Roger Delgado as the Master when the villain’s schemes felt like they had a bit more planning behind them.

The audio version of this one tries its best with Peter Davison in there giving it his all and the story full of sound effects that try their darnedest to make it all a bit more palatable. Alas, it never quite all gels and I can’t help but feel that this one was a bit of a disappointment.