Two piles of pulp

I’ve been reading a lot lately. And no, it hasn’t been deep, or particularly intelligent, or dinner party bragworthy reading. I’ve been on a shameless sci-fi pulp binge that I can only explain by saying “it’s summer, I read what I want.”

Here’s what I’ve eaten through in the last couple of weeks:

1. Orson Scott Card’s Empire :

I’ve never read any of Card’s Ender series, but I’ve heard talk. This guy has fans. Very loyal and excited fans. So when I saw his name on the cover, and read the promising summary on the back, I bought the book. Then I read the book.

Then I regretted it.

Apparently, this is the bad apple in Card’s otherwise shiny applecart. A few minutes reading Amazon reviews confirmed that many folks felt the way I did about this book. It’s a cartoonish, simplistic, thin, unrealistic, and generally ridiculous blending of politics and sci-fi. The two can go together beautifully, a-la Heinlein’s The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, but Card bungles the whole concept and this novel falls flat on its face. Disappointing.

2. Karpyshin’s Mass Effect: Revelation:

Ok. I have never, repeat, never read a videogame novel before. I think I bought this because the game looks incredible, but I currently lack the dollars to ahem buy a 360 and the game itself. Since I have an overactive imagination anyway, I figured reading a book about an alternate universe was probably as interesting as gaming in one.

I think I was right. This book is undeniably fluff, but it’s interesting fluff. It’s exciting fluff. It’s also fairly convincing fluff. I enjoyed the characters, the universe, and the story presented in Revelation and I know that the back story presented will be very interesting to be aware of, should I ever end up playing the game. At any rate, the quality of this book has convinced me that I should stop pretending like I’m such a snob and go try out some other books of the same sort. I’m considering the Halo trilogy…

Enough! I’m off to eat lunch.