Ego alert: various reviews and interviews

A link dump of things:

Suvudu has a video interview of me and Todd Lockwood chatting about writing and cover art for books (Todd has done all my covers so far).

At Tor Podcasts I’m interviewed by my editor Paul Stevens about the idea behind Sly Mongoose. It was taken during the Nebulas, when I was horribly, horribly sick. I think I managed to sound coherent though…

Fantasy Cafe reviewed Crystal Rain, and hated it:

Perhaps the patois would not have impacted my reading experience as much if the writing in this book was not terrible to begin with. There were lots of short, choppy sentences and sometimes it seemed as if a thirteen word limit on sentences had been imposed…

and

The characters seemed rather flat and underdeveloped with just a few characteristics to set them apart. John had lost his memory, did not age, and had a hook for a hand (I found myself wondering if this had been added just so the scene on the cover could take place). Dihana was the prime minister who wanted to live up to her father. There was also a token mysterious badass character by the name of Pepper. Oaxyctl was the only personality who had some depth with his conflicted feelings about his god-given task of retrieving the codes from John.

Big Dumb Object didn’t like all the adventure and blimps and steampunk feel of Sly Mongoose:

I think the problem is that I’m much more inclined to be interested in the high tech stuff, rather than the steampunky surface suits or clockwork flying monsters. If you like steampunk, akin to Crystal Rain, then you’ll probably like all this.

The plot continues at quite a pace, there’s plenty of action and a couple of twists. It’s adventure Science Fiction. And I think that’s my problem. I’m beggining to realise that the SF I really love is either the more questioning type, asking deeper searching questions or the emotionally resonant stories. And I’ve read quite a few of these this year (it’s been a good year!). Sly Mongoose is neither of these, and is not supposed to be. So, it’s a fine book, and if you liked Tobias’s other novels then you will no doubt like this too, but for me it was missing that extra special kick.

Book Loons dug on Sly Mongoose, however:

Sly Mongoose is the third (following Crystal Rain and Ragamuffin) in an excellent SF series by Tobias S. Buckell. Though there are references between them, each book stands well on its own. A brief summary of this third adventure might be – the Zombies are coming … through interstellar space! But that would not do justice to this masterful SF novel, which stars one of my favorite characters from Crystal Rain, the indomitable, virtually indestructible Pepper, a centuries-old ‘assassin, spy, and general all-around human weapon’.

My good friend Josh Smith reviews Sly Mongoose here, and after ruminating on the government-as-rape discussion says:

Amazingly Tobias is able to provoke these questions all while providing a race to the end adventure. This is his third book and it is clear that he has further honed his writing chops. If you can’t find anythign deeper than the action in Sly Mongoose, I suggest you avoid the deep end of the swimming pool. Sly Mongoose was able to pull me in much quicker than the first two books and I felt even more connected to Pepper and Timas than I did to John DeBrun in Crystal

And last, but not least, John Markley at FantasyBookSpot reviews Sly Mongoose here:

Buckell’s talent for action scenes is well-demonstrated here, with everything from aerial warfare between dirigibles in Chilo’s skies to desperate mass battle with the relentless hordes of the Swarm. Pepper was a powerful presence in Buckell’s first two novels, but here he really comes into his own, and some of his later scenes are among the most thrilling I’ve read in a while. The action is fast and intense, and visceral without being off-puttingly gruesome.

Sly Mongoose is an outstanding book, and one I’d recommend to any science fiction fan. If you enjoyed Buckell’s previous books, or like stories with a well-realized setting and a lot of action, you won’t be disappointed.

John also has the first part of an interview with me up at Crucial Tuant.

Filed under the topic Journal, My Writing: My Books: Crystal Rain: Reviews, My Writing: My Books: Sly Mongoose: Reviews on August 28th 2008 at 9:12 am. You can subscribe to the RSS feed for this entry to keep track of comments. You can also use to trackback.