The book

[StellarJetman]

I saw it at Barnes & Noble yesterday and took a quick look at it.

 

The prologue was really annoying. Basically "Headlong Flight", but in prose and with lots of intrusive lyrical references that destroyed the suspension of disbelief. First page of the book proper was the main character as a teenager talking about clouds with his girlfriend. Skipped forward a bit and ran into a big, ugly paragraph explaining how airships worked ("alchemical pistons" or something like that) without any effort made to integrate it into the actual narrative - it was like a footnote, but in the middle of the page, interrupting the story. Illustrations (by Hugh Syme!) were cool; they were all Photoshop collages and had kind of a surreal look to them. But the book itself, like everything else of Anderson's that I've read, was just too hackish to enjoy, at least from my brief experience with it.

 

I'll give it another crack at some point (it's gotten some positive reviews, if my two minutes of Google research is worth anything), but it doesn't look too promising at the moment.

Edited August 27, 2012 by StellarJetman

[rushfanforever!]

QUOTE (StellarJetman @ Aug 26 2012, 07:36 PM)

I saw it at Barnes & Noble yesterday and took a quick look at it. The prologue was really annoying. Basically "Headlong Flight", but in prose and with lots of intrusive lyrical references that destroyed the suspension of disbelief. First page of the book proper was the main character as a teenager talking about clouds with his girlfriend. Skipped forward a bit and ran into a big, ugly paragraph explaining how airships worked ("alchemical pistons" or something like that) without any effort made to integrate it into the actual narrative - it was like a footnote, but in the middle of the page, interrupting the story. Illustrations (by Hugh Syme!) were cool; they were all Photoshop collages and had kind of a surreal look to them. But the book itself, like everything else of Anderson's that I've read, was just too hackish to enjoy, at least from my brief experience with it. I'll give it another crack at some point (it's gotten some positive reviews, if my two minutes of Google research is worth anything), but it doesn't look too promising at the moment.

Humm, didn't realize that it was available yet... Will

pick up a copy regardless for my collection.