A Life Spent Reading

This is the sequel to Nalini’s debut single title, Slave to Sensation, which BTW was excellent. I was fortunate enough to get an ARC.

Blurb:

Go deeper into the world of the Psy and the changelings, where a gifted woman sees passion in her future — a passion that is absolutely forbidden by her kind…

Used to cold silence, Faith NightStar is suddenly being tormented by dark visions of blood and murder. A bad sign for anyone, but worse for Faith, an F-Psy with the highly sought after ability to predict the future. Then the visions show her something even more dangerous — aching need…exquisite pleasure. But so powerful is her sight, so fragile the state of her mind, that the very emotions she yearns to embrace could be the end of her.

Changeling Vaughn D’Angelo can take either man or jaguar form, but it is his animal side that is overwhelmingly drawn to Faith. The jaguar’s instinct is to claim this woman it finds so utterly fascinating and the man has no argument. But while Vaughn craves sensation and hungers to pleasure Faith in every way, desire is a danger that could snap the last threads of her sanity. And there are Psy who need Faith’s sight for their own purposes. They must keep her silenced — and keep her from Vaughn…

What worked for me:

Prose reads easily and seamlessly. And lovable characters (except for the yucky Council people) made it a joy to read and get to know more about them.

Faith was an intriguing character (more so than Vaughn) and I was really rooting for her from the first page. I also like the little surprise with her family and the mystery of the NetMind.

Furthermore, Nalini really knows how to handle the couple and characters from the previous book so that they don’t overwhelm the current couple. You get just enough glimpse of Sascha and Lucas to make you feel reassured in their happiness, nothing more.

What didn’t work so well for me:

These are really minor points, but I figured I should be more balanced in my review instead of going rah-rah-rah a la Klausner.

1. I thought the ending dragged a bit with a couple of minor scenes that I didn’t think really added to the conflict or anything, but that was okay since I was very reluctant to see the story end.
2. One thing I really didn’t like is the way the killer subplot was resolved. I was hoping for something more dramatic. (Okay I like violence in my books, the evil twisted kind done to the bad guys.) But still, Faith and Vaughn got to make their point to the Council with the serial killer. And Nalini leaves you with enough clues to let you know what that dark swarmy thing really is, which in neat.

Overall: A-. What are you waiting for? Go pre-order your copy now!

I’m an author reader. If I find an author I like, I read everything I can of his or hers. Some of my favorites are Scott Turow, Iain Banks (with or without the middle “M”), Margaret Atwood, John Sandford and C. S. Friedman. They write in many different genres, but all of them are consistently excellent. Past authors include Trevanian and John D. MacDonald; they’ve passed on, but if they came back I’d pick up whatever they wrote in a heartbeat.

So whenever I try out someone new, there’s always the hope that this new writer will become a favorite. Especially if they seem to be reasonably prolific; in that case, I can look forward to weeks and months of reading pleasure. The name Neil Gaiman has been on everyone’s lips for quite a while now, and I finally got around to trying him out. But I don’t know if he’s going to become a favorite or not. I found Anansi Boys a mixed bag.

Gaiman can certainly write; he’s is full of imagination and clever one-liners, and parts of the book are handled in ways that are only attempted by authors who are very self-assured. But the story itself I found lacking; it rambled along a bit too much and seemed somehow out of focus. I kept thinking how cool it would be if he set his talents to producing something a little more linear and to-the-point. But for all that, the book is enjoyable and worth the price. If you like a whimsical story and have a taste for folktales, it should be right up your alley. If you want a full-blown fantasy adventure, well, maybe not.

Writers who are brilliant in comic books (Gaiman has done several very well-received graphic novels in addition to regular comics) and try to go the novel route seem to fail as often as not. Anansi Boys isn’t a hit or a miss, particularly, so I plan on picking up American Gods sometime soon and giving Gaiman another shot.

Jack M. Bickham studied with Dwight Swain and wrote several very good how-to books on creative writing. Some people dislike Bickham because his advice can be a bit dense, but that doesn’t mean he gives terrible advice.

He tells you that it may take a while before you finally understand some concepts and ideas. Of course. But most people will chalk that up to them being too difficult to understand. I find that as I grow as a writer those concepts, etc. seem to make more sense. It’s like having that “a-ha” moment.

Back to the book — It has a series of short articles on what not to do. At the same time Bickham tells you how to do something right. Some may find his advice old-fashioned, but I think it’s worth listening to.

If you’re like me, a lot of the claims that are in this book will initially sound incredibly far-fetched…but then you start looking around online and see that you can actually find much of it already happening. Also, Bill Gates once said that co-author Ray Kurzweil is “the best at predicting the future of artificial intelligence.” Not a bad recommendation.

The basic thesis of the book is that there are three “bridges” that we can (or will be able to) make use of to keep ourselves alive and healthy for a very long time. Bridge One is various supplementation therapies that are available today. Stuff like taking leucine to help prevent macular degeneration. Bridge Two, still mostly in the (very near) future, are biotech therapies that allow people to directly combat disease and aging. We can already do some of this today, but technologies like implanting a rice grain-sized sensor into a patient’s heart are still very much in their infancy. Finally, Brdge Three is still in the future, about twenty years out, according to Kurzweil, and consists of using nanotechnology to do things like replace (and improve) bloodcells, skin tissue, take over liver function, etc.

The idea is to use Bridges One and Two to keep yourself in one piece long enough to stay alive to see Bridge Three therapies become commonly available. Once this happens, the human lifespan will be dramatically lengthened, to the point that the subtitle of the book is “Live long enough to live forever”.

Again, some radical ideas floating around in there, but – also again – Kurzweil has an impressive history of being right about this sort of thing. On a slightly more mundane level, it was refreshing to see not one but two authors (M.D. Terry Grossman co-wrote the book) who managed to get pretty much everything about hormone cascades, exercise and supplementation correct. (Even if they did give ten times as many pages to aerobic exercise as they did to weight training.) How often does that happen in a mainstream book?

For those who are interested in reading more about the future of technology (not just limited to health-related fields) there is a Ray Kurzweil reader available online for free. It is “a collection of essays by Ray Kurzweil on virtual reality, artificial intelligence, radical life extension, conscious machines, the promise and peril of technology, and other aspects of our future world… The 30 essays, organized in seven memes (such as “How to Build a Brain”), cover subjects ranging from a review of Matrix Reloaded to “The Coming Merging of Mind and Machine” and “Human Body Version 2.0.” It’s available here.