Books

[Kugelfisch]

Okay, so over the last weeks I have read the Inhibitor trilogy by Alastair Reynolds.
I had read Revelation Space before and really enjoyed it, so I re-read it and then went on with Redemption Ark and Absolution Gap.
Just today, I finished Inhibitor Phase. It's the newest book in the series and supposed to be an additional/supplementary book in some way. It's also supposedly possible to read it without having read the trilogy. Don't do that! In fact, don't read this one at all. It's shit.


I will talk about the trilogy later. All of them are ranking from great to pretty good.
All the more baffling is Inhibitor Phase being really bad. Its like the book was written by a completely different author. It's cartoonish at times and comes off as a young adult novel.

I'll keep this spoiler free.
The basic premise is that automated, self-replicating machines, created by an alien civilisation millions of years ago, kill off star-faring species.
The book starts off already feeling different to the series by being told in first person. Our narrator is a new character we haven't met before. Otherwise, the beginning shows promise.

He gets taken by a mysterious character from his home, a barren, atmosphereless rock planet where people live under the surface to go unnoticed by the Inhibitors, on a journey to get a McGuffin to stop the Inhibitors.

Turns out that our protagonist is not who he thinks he is. He gets taken by force and doesn't believe that he is someone else and here is where the shit begins.
Our protagonist, Miguel, is a sarcastic, bull-headed idiot. His captor and would be partner, Glass, a highly cybernetically enhanced woman, is sadistic and aloof.

This makes for absolutely terrible dialogue. Glass won't tell anything but the bare minimum about the journey. Miguel doesn't ask, because he doesn't want to go anyway and doesn't believe anything Glass does tell him. It's retarded.

We learn that the McGuffin are several alien technology stones but those are only a means to get the real McGuffin. Sounds great.

Next, we get the displeasure to meet two old characters. Both go by different names for no good reason. Both behave entirely different for no reason. It's been 200 years since we've last seen them, sure, but one should absolutely not even be alive by now.
The explanation? None. It's not even brought up.
Instead of Scorpio, he goes by Pinky now. Strike one for cringe names!

To get the magic stones, they have to do a kind of jail break. Off we go into a shitty horror/action scene. It sucks.

Stones acquired, it's off to a planet we know from a previous book. I clapped, I clapped because I know it!
There is a reason but it's stupid.

We get flashbacks from war on Mars. Miguel is starting to remember who he was. He is still obnoxious about it, denying it for as long as possible. Turns out his real name is Warren. But as a kid, they called him War, because he was a naturally born soldier.
Strike two for cringe names!

The stones are basically just to coat the ship in a highly resistant shield to sustain the pressure on the actual target planet. But the crew don't know the planet's location and thus have to get to the planet we know to gain that knowledge.

Finally there, Warren has to meet the Pattern Jugglers. In previous books, they were some kind of algea found on several planet's that form one massive, hive-like but non-sentient life form.
They collect information from other life forms that swim in their waters. They may offer up information if they find the swimmer interesting enough, in a way. Their gifts were mostly temporary and somewhat vague.

Well, fuck that shit! In Inhibitor Phase they are just plain fucking magic and can do what the fuck ever!
Here's your one spoiler, just to hammer home the stupidity of this book:
Warren and Glass both go swimming. Warren to acquire the location of the planet, Glass because she got fucked up in the jail break and needs a factory reset of her brain chip stuff.
Shit doesn't go as planned. Warren drowns and he and Glass get fused mentally. Glass carries parts of Warren in her head now, including the planet location. They start to combine into a single character that is neither Warren, nor Glass but also both. This is our story teller now. Her new name? Warglass. Strike three and out for peak cringe names!


I have spared you a lot of dumb shit. Dialogue is consistently terrible. Characters are plain daft. You can see everything coming from a mile away except for really retarded shit, so any surprise is something you'll roll your eyes about.

They go to the planet, get the plans for the weapon, build it...and that's it. The end.
I'm not joking!
In the timeline at the end it's just explained that it worked, humanity had another Belle Epoche but then some other rogue terraforming self-duplicating robots came and fucked everything up. Fuck you!



It's downright unbelievable that this is the same writer that wrote Revelation Space. That one was great. Perhaps a 9/10. Inhibitor Phase is perhaps a 4 or even 3.
I'm getting fucking Dune flashbacks!

I'll read The Count of Montecristo to cleanse my pallet.

[Complicity]

Our protagonist, Miguel, is a sarcastic, bull-headed idiot. His captor and would be partner, Glass, a highly cybernetically enhanced woman, is sadistic and aloof.

Bodi Lee and Tivia from Photon, then.
Is there also a gay and flamboyant villain, with a nihilistic sense of humor?

[Kugelfisch]

The only villain is the owner of the jail/slaughterhouse. An insane woman that butchers hyperpigs (humanoid pigs) and people to eat them.
Other than that, it's incredibly flat all around.

Guess her name!

[VoiceOfReasonPast]

Bonesaw? Butch?

We learn that the McGuffin are several alien technology stones but those are only a means to get the real McGuffin. Sounds great.

>find the McGuffin that helps you find the other McGuffin
What is this? Rise of Skywalker?

[rabidtictac]

Parts of that story sound like a straight ripoff of notorious weebshit gurren lagann. Which is to say it sounds bad.

I've been reading a lot of sword and sorcery stuff, mostly. I started on this sword and sorcery trip because I remembered how cool A Princess of Mars was. So I followed the thread. Read some Solomon Kane, read some Conan (I had already read some of those stories before,) then moved to some Elric and Corum. Finished up the first Corum book not long ago and thoroughly enjoyed it. I think I prefer Corum to Elric, actually. Prose in the first book was consistently excellent. Solomon Kane was fun too. I know Kugel would enjoy the hell out of it. Everything about Kane is politically incorrect if not outright racist.

I still have yet to read Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser or Jack Vance's The Dying Earth. There's also Imaro aka We Wuz Swords 'n' Sorcery, Nigga.

I read one of the licensed Dark Sun novels. It was pretty bad, honestly. Licensed fantasy novels aren't always terrible. I frequently point to Gaunt's Ghosts and Eisenhorn as examples of quality licensed work. They're not an oil painting or anything, but stories like Malus Darkblade or the Night Lords omnibus can provide some solid action. But the prose in these dark sun novels is not good. The primary goal of the author seems to have been to explain the Dark Sun world in as much detail as possible, frequently to the detriment of storytelling. Page after page is completely wasted-having no purpose except to expound in detail about races, animals or worldviews which have no impact whatsoever on the plot. The plot is painfully thin and characters explain their motivations to the reader like teenage fanfic. There's a love triangle (square) in the story which is hilariously cringe. This is supposed to be a grim world where people use and betray each other, not the week before high school prom.

The only good character in the story was the evil lich who wants to kill everyone and become a dragon. After reading the entire novel, I wanted to kill those characters too. Shame he dies in the end.

[VoiceOfReasonPast]

The Dork Sun novels are kinda weird in that over its course, the protagonist basically started killing all the interesting villains and fixing the setting, which made the RPG setting itself boring since they had yet to figure out the Eberron school of "These novels aren't canon".
I blame the success of those Dragonlance novels.

[Kugelfisch]

Bonesaw? Butch?

Not bad but you're thinking too much of an actual name.
She wears a pig mask and her slaughterhouse/prison/stronghold is called the Swinehouse.

We learn that the McGuffin are several alien technology stones but those are only a means to get the real McGuffin. Sounds great.

>find the McGuffin that helps you find the other McGuffin
What is this? Rise of Skywalker?

It's unbelievable is what it is.
Revelation Space is really good hard sci-fi. An interesting universe, interesting groups, political intrigues, several mysteries, twists and turns, several stories culminating in a memorable ending.

There's not a single McGuffin, no deus ex machina, no bullshit that might as well be magic. No cringeworthy dialogue or character names either.
It's like Alastair had several strokes in between the books. I am utterly dumbfounded by the discrepancy in quality. Its like going from a classic Disney masterpiece to some direct to VHS bootleg made in Bangladesh.

Revelation Space is in my top ten sci-fi novels. Inhibitor Phase is tripe garbage on its own and an insult for being kinda part of the series.

It would take me well over an hour to write a thorough synopsis of RS. I could do the same for IP in ten minutes, easy.
All of RS is good, all of IP is shit except for the very beginning.

Last time I was so upset about a novel was House of Leafs. Its still the worst piece of shit I've ever read. But IP doesn't come much after it.

Revelation Space came out in 2000. Alastair just fucking lost it. Perhaps it was a cash grab, set in a universe he really had no interest anymore.
Again, I'm getting Dune vibes. I was halfway expecting it to drift off into softcore pornography, like a horny, old Frank Herbert did to Dune with his insane ramblings about deep space witches that enslave the universe by making people coom real hard.

[VoiceOfReasonPast]

Not bad but you're thinking too much of an actual name.
She wears a pig mask and her slaughterhouse/prison/stronghold is called the Swinehouse.

SwineMask.
It's hard to resist turning this into a tokushit name, but I somehow succeeded.

[Kugelfisch]

Not bad but you're thinking too much of an actual name.
She wears a pig mask and her slaughterhouse/prison/stronghold is called the Swinehouse.

SwineMask.
It's hard to resist turning this into a tokushit name, but I somehow succeeded.

Very close. It's Swinequeen. Her motivation is that she's crazy. She just wants to sit in the ruins of a city surrounded by dormant Inhibitors, content with torturing and eating hyperpigs and the occasional human.

Why is she the leader? How does she maintain her power, despite several other gangs of survivors being around?
Nobody knows.

[VoiceOfReasonPast]

I could see other gangs leaving her alone if she is Lupa's final form.