The BiblioSanctum

Audiobook Review: METAtropolis

Posted on August 30, 2013     1 Comment

Metatropolis by various authors

Genre: Science Fiction, Dystopian Future

METAtropolis is a collection of short stories by several science fiction authors who decided that, rather than simply doing a collection of stories based on a specific theme, they would create a world together, and write stories within that world. I really liked this concept, as well as the fact that three of the audiobook narrators are actors from Battlestar Galactica, one of my favourite television shows.

John Scalzi is the editor of the book and introduces each story. He also wrote the only short story within the book that I truly enjoyed. His story, wonderfully narrated by Alessandro Juliani, employed Scalzi’s usual sense of humour and, as he explains, fills the gap in the METAtropolis left by the other authors because it is a story about people who actually live reasonably happily within the major cities. The story somewhat addresses something that really bothered me when I started reading this. I realized that I couldn’t recall any depiction of humanity’s future that doesn’t feature a dystopia where our flaws and hubris have destroyed everything, or a utopia that is too inhuman to be true and must be destroyed. METAtropolis made me realize just how little we think of humanity and our future.

METAtropolis is a typical world where the less fortunate and the disillusioned live outside the gated communities of the rich, thinking up ways to bring anarchy to the lives of the better off. There is no shortage of lecturing the reader in various ways over how human nature has led to this current state of affairs and, outside of Scalzi’s story, we get to be privy to the greed and desperation of not-quite starving people who seek to survive and to balance the scales through overzealous protests.

As I said, I only found Scalzi’s entry to be interesting, with memorable characters and events. As his story takes place within the same world, he didn’t neglect the anarchists in his account, but he did turn their beliefs upside down a bit by not merely making them the downtrodden who must obviously be good in comparison to the rich people who must obviously be bad because of their blissful ignorance.

Overall, a surprisingly disappointing read, with the other stories being rather uninspiring and sometimes annoying in their preachiness. The narrations were mostly good, but not good enough to elevate the stories.

Audiobook Review: The Atrocity Archives by Charles Stross

Posted on August 29, 2013     Leave a Comment

The Atrocity Archives by Charles Stross

Series: Laundry Files

Genre: Science Fiction, Occult

There is a list floating around Tumblr of Bioware voice actors who have narrated audiobooks. Having fallen in love with Fenris’ voice in Dragon Age II, I decided that The Atrocity Archives, read by Gideon Emery, was a necessary listen from Audible. Not that I blindly listen to an audiobook just because I want to hear sexy sweet nothings in my ear all day. The book’s blurb actually sounded interesting – though it certainly helped my enjoyment to believe that the character of Bob Howard looks exactly like Fenris, if Fenris happened to be moonlighting as a snarky IT guy who works for The Laundry.

Bob.

Bob Howard is an employee at the Laundry Files, a bureaucratic organization that covertly monitors and deals with occult activities and the connections between other dimensions. He normally spends his day doing typical, mundane IT guy things, such as sorting through the messes Fred from accounting has made of his computer. Once or twice, he’s been sent out into the field, but after an unfortunate incident during an IT/Occult training course, Bob’s actions bring him to the attention of the Counter Possession Unit and leads him into doing a lot more out-of-office work.

I really liked that Bob is not a stereotypical, introverted nerd tossed into field work where he can skillfully display his incompetence in a mock attempt at playing a geeky James Bond. Bob might need to brush up on protocol and procedure, such as what not to do when a gorgeous redheaded scientist is kidnapped, but otherwise, Bob is quite capable of handling himself in the field and is a unique character unto himself.

For the first half, both Emery and the story kept me very entertained. Emery did an excellent job of making sure Bob’s attitude didn’t go over the edge and into the realm of unlikable characters and I loved the way Stross seamlessly worked in the occult aspects, solidly grounding them in reality through science and technology. There were a lot of technical references, but they were delivered with wit and sarcasm to make them amusing, and explained succinctly enough to make them accessible to someone as clueless about such technology as I am.

Unfortunately, this changes in the second half, once the Atrocity Archives are discovered and the plot thickens. At this point, explanations start to take over the story as Stross works in all sorts of details about Hitler’s obsession with the occult. It is all relevant to the plot, but where previous explanations were pithy, amusing and interesting, these were tiresome, interruptive wiki entries that slowed down what should have been the action part of the novel.

Because of this, a series that I initially expected to continue with became disappointing, though not so much so that I wouldn’t allow Fenris to seduce me into reading more books in the series.