RE: Eagle Time Reading List
11-17-2015, 06:33 AM
Ok so I read an actual book for the first time in months and it was Snow Crash. It's been a while since I managed to sit down for five+ hours and just, devour a book, I'm not even sure if this is an objectively good book but WHATEVS MOTHERFOLKERS I'M STUCK AT MY DESK WITH A WRITING ITCH AND NO BATTLE IDEAS SO I'M GONNA HEREBY BLATHER
So the setting: is the kind of beautiful fuckery we could've lingered upon for sessions and sessions in the QDB campaign if it were a worldbuilding jam instead of a tabletop campaign where we got shit done. The United States ceded most of North America to corporations, whose territories are functionally countries what with visas and their own laws and border enforcement and whatever else the heck. The US still exists, but as this tiny grey bureaucratic tangle quietly-fitfully extricating its way up its own orifices. It's so utterly detached from Reality the few chapters set in it feel like a complete non-sequitr, or like the author got sick of writing about the neo-neongrime cybershitpunk corporate dystopia and tried some Straight Paranoia on for kicks instead.
The physical setting is super-great, and shown off to great effect in the opening chapters as the Deliverator tears up the streets in his Douchemobile on a life-or-death mission to deliver a pizza for the Mafia. Yeah, the Mafia is also a corporation. Pizza delivery is but one branch of their extensive business portfolio. Anyway, the Deliverator probably thinks he's a fucking badass as he's doing this, because he's the kind of loser who answers to Hiro Protagonist and unironically wields dual Japanese swords. He's the protagonist, obviously, and I despise him even though this whole book is a pisstake of cyberpunk.
Anyway, he fucks up his pizza delivery and we meet Y.T, peppy action girl + capital-k Kourier, who bails his ass out (and the Mafia's.) There's a bunch of stuff that waves vaguely toward her as the protagonist but idk. Hiro and Y.T aren't overwhelmingly unlikeable but they're pretty boring compared to other characters. Ng is top-tier. Juanita needed more screentime instead of just being Hiro's unattainable object of affection. The Librarian is by design a very two-dimensional character, but plays within those boundaries well and makes the whole plot's unfolding somewhat entertaining. Uncle Enzo is Extremely Important.
The ideas and setting behind this book are pretty great, which is a shame because there's, like... very little emotional investment between characters, other than everyone acting various degrees of paternal toward Y.T. God. This book made me miss QDB, right down to the sense of "a bunch of assholes working to save the world because they all kind of got roped into it, this is fine I guess." Human connections definitely took a backseat in this. Maybe that's a commentary or something?????
The central plot kind of gets the same treatment from the characters of "welp this is sure happening." I may have been soured on it though because of how narratively horrendous the unveiling of the villain's grand plan was. I'm typically awful at joining narrative dots, and even I saw the climaxes coming a mile off (in part because of the narrative framing of scenes with the Librarian).
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tl;dr this was a goofy romp through a good aesthetic and I guess a plot happened somewhere? I would happily lend my hard copy out to folks if they want to check it out. There are a couple problematic elements that I can PM folks for sensibilities' sakes if they're still interested in reading. I'd especially recommend it to the QDB crew but will happily lend it out to anyone who's looking for a digestible 600-page read with an ending worth complaining about.
So the setting: is the kind of beautiful fuckery we could've lingered upon for sessions and sessions in the QDB campaign if it were a worldbuilding jam instead of a tabletop campaign where we got shit done. The United States ceded most of North America to corporations, whose territories are functionally countries what with visas and their own laws and border enforcement and whatever else the heck. The US still exists, but as this tiny grey bureaucratic tangle quietly-fitfully extricating its way up its own orifices. It's so utterly detached from Reality the few chapters set in it feel like a complete non-sequitr, or like the author got sick of writing about the neo-neongrime cybershitpunk corporate dystopia and tried some Straight Paranoia on for kicks instead.
The physical setting is super-great, and shown off to great effect in the opening chapters as the Deliverator tears up the streets in his Douchemobile on a life-or-death mission to deliver a pizza for the Mafia. Yeah, the Mafia is also a corporation. Pizza delivery is but one branch of their extensive business portfolio. Anyway, the Deliverator probably thinks he's a fucking badass as he's doing this, because he's the kind of loser who answers to Hiro Protagonist and unironically wields dual Japanese swords. He's the protagonist, obviously, and I despise him even though this whole book is a pisstake of cyberpunk.
Anyway, he fucks up his pizza delivery and we meet Y.T, peppy action girl + capital-k Kourier, who bails his ass out (and the Mafia's.) There's a bunch of stuff that waves vaguely toward her as the protagonist but idk. Hiro and Y.T aren't overwhelmingly unlikeable but they're pretty boring compared to other characters. Ng is top-tier. Juanita needed more screentime instead of just being Hiro's unattainable object of affection. The Librarian is by design a very two-dimensional character, but plays within those boundaries well and makes the whole plot's unfolding somewhat entertaining. Uncle Enzo is Extremely Important.
The ideas and setting behind this book are pretty great, which is a shame because there's, like... very little emotional investment between characters, other than everyone acting various degrees of paternal toward Y.T. God. This book made me miss QDB, right down to the sense of "a bunch of assholes working to save the world because they all kind of got roped into it, this is fine I guess." Human connections definitely took a backseat in this. Maybe that's a commentary or something?????
The central plot kind of gets the same treatment from the characters of "welp this is sure happening." I may have been soured on it though because of how narratively horrendous the unveiling of the villain's grand plan was. I'm typically awful at joining narrative dots, and even I saw the climaxes coming a mile off (in part because of the narrative framing of scenes with the Librarian).
---
tl;dr this was a goofy romp through a good aesthetic and I guess a plot happened somewhere? I would happily lend my hard copy out to folks if they want to check it out. There are a couple problematic elements that I can PM folks for sensibilities' sakes if they're still interested in reading. I'd especially recommend it to the QDB crew but will happily lend it out to anyone who's looking for a digestible 600-page read with an ending worth complaining about.
peace to the unsung peace to the martyrs | i'm johnny rotten appleseed
clouds is shaky love | broke as hell but i got a bunch of ringtones
eyes blood red bruise aubergine | Sue took something now Sue doesn't sleep | saint average, day in the life of
woke up in the noon smelling doom and death | out the house, great outdoors
staying warm in arctic blizzard | that's my battle 'til I get inanimate | still up in the same clothes living like a gameshow
clouds is shaky love | broke as hell but i got a bunch of ringtones
eyes blood red bruise aubergine | Sue took something now Sue doesn't sleep | saint average, day in the life of
woke up in the noon smelling doom and death | out the house, great outdoors
staying warm in arctic blizzard | that's my battle 'til I get inanimate | still up in the same clothes living like a gameshow