Friday, February 09, 2007

Redemption Ark & Other Books

I finsihed Alastair Reynold's sequel to Revelation Space. It's a better book and you can tell that he's had some salting since RS. However, there's still a bit of something not quite right. The characters fekt 'better', but something abotu the story telling didn't gel for me. I'm going to sit down and read that Clarke I picked up to be able to contrast. Then I'll go pick up Absolution Gap after reading Accelerando to see if I can place my finger on the differences. It'll hold for a bit though.

I had started Horns and Beaks, but put it aside for the moment. I have realized that I am still intersted in dinosaurs and such, but more interesting in the paleoecology and paleoclimatology of said critters and their time. I think it's because the world reconstruction aspect is close to world building in some senses. It gives me that moment of 'oh-wow' that studying the slight twists in bone and differences in temporal fenstra, frankly, does not. It's probably a good thing that I gave up on being a paleo-type at age 14. I don't find that sort of minutae that interesting. I'll return to Horns and BEaks, and even pick up the rest in the series, but I'll keep this in mind for future purchases.

I'm continuing to read the book on foundations. I'm finally past the basic stuff and into the 'how do we design this' bit. That's helping the interest level some.

I also started reading Dawn of the Dinosaurs. I'm only a chapter in, but this is already going to be interesting. Fraser has come out and stated - already - that a lot of preconceptions about the Triassic climate are, well, wrong. It has a plausible mechanism for the speciation and experimentation that took place in the Triassic that runs rather contrary to his thesis. I'll reserve judgement until I'm done, but this could be very, very interesting.

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