04. Prey, by Michael Crichton.

Prey details what happens when a bunch of unscrupulous scientists accidentally-on-purpose create robotic nanobots that act as a swarm, are able to replicate, and learn from their experiences. Then everything starts going pearshaped when they discover that at least one swarm, and much of the precursor materials, have been vented outside the laboratory. They call in further experts to help reprogram or dissolve the swarm, with mixed results.

I was very hopeful when I read this book. Nanobots, I thought, are sure to be interesting - especially ones that are essentially a new form of consciousness. However, the first hundred or so pages - a good quarter of the book - seem to be mostly the main character moping about how his wife is acting different, and his suspicions about her having an affair. While a lot of this creates backstory for things that happen later, it was laid on quite thick, and got rather boring. I'm not sure if the wife was intentionally two-dimensional, given later developments, but I spent a good deal of the first part of the book being bored by the domestic troubles - something that continued later on, when there were seemingly random calls from people back home about trivial events that served no noticeable purpose within the rest of the story.

The nanobots themselves are quite cool. I liked how they were done for the most part, and my only real complaint about them is that we don't get enough nanobot action. A lot of the book is drama with coworkers or family, and the nanobots - the reason I was reading this book in the first place - seem to be distinctly second fiddle. That was somewhat frustrating, as I was expecting there to be much more action than there actually was, and there was a lot that they could have explored more thoroughly within the nanobot fight scenes, as it were, to flesh them out more thoroughly.

Overall, I was expecting the focus of this book to be substantially different to what it actually was, so I was a little disappointed with it as a whole. I also thought that the ending was annoyingly ambiguous, and left a lot of loose ends that never get cleaned up. But if drama-filled action-ish novels are more your thing, then  give it a whirl and make your own judgement call.

03. Benny and Babe, by Eoin Colfer.

Benny And Babe is another book that was recommended to me by a flatmate. We did a big book-pile swap of things we each thought the other should read, and I've been slotting them in where I have time. It's about a young boy, Bernard (Benny), who is out in the country with his family, visiting his grandfather, when he runs afoul of local tomboy Babe. After a few initial scraps, they come to the conclusion that they could do pretty well together in Babe's scheme of selling washed-up baits back to tourists for spending money. Unfortunately, the duo is challenged by another local for their bait-collecting rights, leading to various comedic mishaps.

Quite a feel-good adventure with a fairly standard plotline. I enjoyed reading it because it reminded me a lot of several of my old kids-adventure style books, but it was one that I hadn't read before - whereas a lot of my own ones have been read and reread multiple times. It was also a nice change to read something non-fantasy. As much as I love my bizarre worlds and extreme changes, it's nice to switch it up a little sometimes, and read something based closer to home.

02: Absolute Sandman vol 2/5, by Neil Gaiman.

Absolute Sandman Volume Two contains issues 21-39, and tells a couple of major stories with a few minor story arcs thrown in between. Season of Mists recounts the story of what happens when Lucifer quits his job as Master of Hell and gives the key to the realm away to Dream, who is then beset by envoys from many different realms, all seeking audience to cajole, demand, threaten, or bribe their way to becoming the new keepers of Hell. Dream is unimpressed by their petty manoeuvring, and awards the key as he sees fit, in a move that dismays almost everyone while still following a fairly prescribed 'right thing to do' path. In A Game Of You, Barbie gets unexpectedly sucked back into the dream-world of her childhood, somewhere that got taken away from her by the Cuckoo without her even realizing it. Her friends and neighbours from the real world become increasingly caught up in her events, leading to the introduction of a new (hopefully) repeat character, Thessaly, and a little more knowledge about what Dream's world contains.

I was very impressed with this collection of Sandman. Volume Two has confirmed for me that it is definitely a series that I very much enjoy, and is one that I'm sure I will continue to very much enjoy for some time. It contains a lot of elements that I enjoy, and it is written in a way that I find fascinating. There's fantasy, violence, whimsy, surreality, mystery, horror, and other bits and pieces that are all twined together and threaded through to make the storylines interesting, unique, and enjoyable. It always feels like they run just a little bit out-of-kilter with reality, and that it'd be easy to just...turn that four or five degrees sideways and find yourself in a whole new reality.

I've also found out a few things through these books. Firstly is that I really must make more of an effort to get physical copies of books I really enjoy. It's much more gratifying to read a good story when it's well presented, and the copies I have are hardcover, fake-leather-bound, glossy, and really damn heavy, but it makes it a much more tactile pleasure to read, as well as a mental one. Additionally I just really dislike reading comics on a screen, since they're inevitably portrait styled, and landscape size screens make them difficult to work with. My eventual plan is to have a physical library of my favourite books, and electronic copies of a wider range, and I'm going to start trying to add to that collection now, costly or no. As I get more good books, I'll weed out the ones that I don't read or don't like any more.

Secondly is that I should try to divorce my idea of people from my idea of the value of their recommendations. Several times now, I've had a series or TV show or comic or thing recommended to me by someone I don't care for in some fashion, be that their attitude, or appearance, or a facet of their beliefs,  but I let my distaste for them as a person interfere with my idea of the item they are recommending. Doctor Who was first recommended to me by someone I used to be friends with, and subsequently was not, and so I never tried to watch the series, because I thought it would be boring. Turns out I like it a lot. Same thing with Sandman - someone I used to live with was a huge fan, and said I'd like it, but I ignored the recommendation because deep down, I didn't want to think such a jerk could have good taste. And that was even though I knew that we liked several other similar books! It took recommendations from several other, better, friends, and a bored moment where I flicked through the first issue late at night, for me to take the steps to immerse myself in the comic. I'm sure this has happened to me before (but without the qualifying recommendations from more trusted sources) and as such, I've missed out on books or series or movies or shows that I may have really enjoyed. Problem then comes down to how to balance recommendations from others with the things I stumble across myself, and with the things that I want to rewatch or reread, in order to maximise my output of Good Material. Perhaps I'll come across a way to balance these things eventually. For now, I guess I have to acknowledge that I'm missing out on some good things, whilst trying to keep in mind that the time I spend missing out on some good things is almost always spent on other good things, too.

01: A Confusion of Princes, by Garth Nix.

Khemri is a Prince of the Empire, which is to say, part of a self-absorbed, genetically enhanced, internally squabbling upper class that spend most of their time plotting how to assassinate their fellow Princes without detection from the Imperial Mind. He is directed down a pathway Princes aren't normally aware of, and learns some secrets about how the Empire truly functions.

I quite liked this book, but I think it could have been done better than it was. The Empire is ridiculously top-heavy with Princes, which is never really explained - there's no real reason to keep all of them alive, and the amount of resources needed to cater to so many must be simply enormous.

Following section contains major spoilers, continue at own risk. One thing that frustrated me about the storyline was the whole deal with Atalin. The fact that she and Khemri are full siblings is made into a major plot point, as is the fact that the Empire can't breed for native Psitek ability...yet. Implying that it is genetic, but that they haven't isolated the combinations yet. I know that incest is a rather taboo area, but the Empire is huge, obviously fairly corrupt, and gives the distinct impression that they don't give two cents about the wellbeing of any particular Prince or unaugmented human...but the subject is never even brought up at all? They have two full sibling candidates making up 40% of the total number of candidates, and they don't even consider trying to get kids out of them (or for that matter, out of ANY of the candidates?) If they didn't want to breed themselves a reliable source of Emperors, why even mention it at all? It seems ridiculous that it's just totally passed over, especially since the Empire puts so much effort into finding and raising adequate Princes in the first place, and especially since they already have so much Biotek equipment, so they MUST have a decent handle on genetics. This could have been relatively easily cleared up with a few simple statements about how the Psitek ability doesn't appear to be genetically inherited, but instead it's definitely implied that this is the case, and it's a work-in-progress to figure out what the inheritance factors are. That kind of annoyed me, because it felt like Garth Nix looked at that side of the plot, and just went "Nah, I don't feel like addressing any of those loose ends", when further delving into that part of the plot could have made the story awesome.

Other than that, and the Empire generally seeming to be a stupid system of organisation, the basic storyline was reasonably interesting, although the ending was fairly predictable, and far too make-nice to fit well with the rest of the view of the Empire that we've been presented with for the rest of the book. Granted, it's the start of a new Emperor's reign, and she can presumably exert quite a lot of influence over the Mind, but even granting that, she is a product of her upbringing just as much as any other Prince, none of whom seem to be the forgiving/lenient type at all. They're not raised with any concept of family as something that inspires loyalty within themselves, yet this is used as the basis for Atalin-Emperor's exception. It doesn't make sense, and it feels like a cop out ending. Again, could have been awesome, but the flaws detract from it a little too much.