SciFi and Fantasy Book Club discussion

Tell us what you thought, good or bad. Will you read the sequel?

I thought this worked very well as a noir/sf hybrid in a unique setting. I'm not racing to find the sequel right away, but will probably get to it at some point. Overall, pretty entertaining.

It's always interesting to go back a few decades and look at how sf writers did with their predictions for the near future. In this case, one of the most striking things to me was the prediction of both the USSR and USA driving each other to extinction through the cold war, fracturing and Balkanizing. He was half right of course, with communist Eastern Europe beginning to distintegrate just two years after this book was published.

Up until the end of the book, I thought Effinger had also failed by seeming to predict a Middle East that was becoming more open, or at least partially tolerant, to secularism and Westerners. In the end, of course we find there are those committing violence in the name of jihad in Effinger's world too.

I think this is one a fantastic example of Tech Noir. I can't wait to read the other books in the series. But is it me or does this book remind others of The Dresden File series? Maybe its just the speculative fiction/noir mix

I enjoy reading "whodunit" novels and hoped that I would be able to guess "whodunit" - but I didn't. I read this on my kindle and suddenly the story was wrapping up - I wasn't ready for it to finish (maybe I'm still getting used to the percentage rather then the visual clues of where you are in the book)- I knew that Friedlander Bey was probably the puppet master in most things, and that at some stage Marid would "plug-in" and things would not be nice afterwards.

I'm not going to rush out and read the other books in the series. Perhaps Tech Noir is not my preferred reading (will have to try another author).

I would have liked to have known more about Marid and why he dreaded using the "plug" in his head - the story definitely wrapped up too quickly for me.

I read this book very quickly at the beginning of this month. In this case that's a sign as to how much I enjoyed it.

Although I managed to predict the "whodunit" before the end, I was kept amused and intrigued by the culture/characters until that point was reached.

I really enjoyed this book, but mainly for the atmosphere and culture that the author built up. The actual detective story was slightly irritating.

The thing I liked most was probably that Effinger wasn't heavy-handed with the info-dumping. He did slide some exposition in a few times but ... so many authors these days seem to just dump big chunks of information for the reader, in a thinly disguised way.

It was interesting to read, but I felt like it started to slow down around the middle. The setting was interesting but the story itself didn't grab me that much.

I liked it. It's a fun read but, as Xeni said, more for the atmosphere and culture than for the story itself. I particularly found the ending to be disappointing, not that Marid started working for Papa, that's okay, but how he managed to kill Hassan and escape. That seemed like a contrivance.

I sort of felt the same way at first, Melanie — that it was just maneuvering him into a position of being an outsider — but there was some foreshadowing of it, too. The doctor warning him about side effects, and the observation that the guy he tried to get to wear the Archie Goodwin mod was much more used to wearing mods and transitioning between them.

I really liked it. One of my favorite things was that I thought it felt pretty timeless, not like reading a 25 year-old book. Gritty noir has been old-fashioned for decades, but it's still so fun when it's well done, and I thought this was. And he was smart not to use almost any tech other than his original daddies and moddies, phones and cars, so nothing stood out as being outdated. He even guessed well about portable phones and voice dialing. It just struck me as really impressive, especially because I read another noir mystery sci-fI series recently where the books were outdated as soon as they were written because the author loves to put in tons of details about (then) current computer technology (The Laundry series by Charles Stross). it's fun in its way to have a lot of real science and technology included, but it's a risk because the references to old versions of Palm Pilots and many other outdated items is actually really jarring.

If I analyze my reaction, I probably loved the culture and the style a bit more than the plot, but I really like the whole package. And yes, I can definitively say that I'll read the next book because I started it yesterday. I love my library!

♥Xeni♥ wrote: "I really enjoyed this book, but mainly for the atmosphere and culture that the author built up. The actual detective story was slightly irritating."

100% in agreement with that. this book was one of the very few times I thoroughly didn't care what was going on, I was so busy enjoying wallowing in this trashy, gritty, foreign slum, hanging out with characters more colorful than the teletubbies. they mystery itself was just a way to structure Audran's meandering through the bad part of town, and by the end, yes, it was slightly irritating. nobody else in his world cared that there were two killers, and I didn't really, either.

this city, though, is amazing. though the Wikipedia tells me that Effinger wrote the Budayeen as a version of the French Quarter that he lived in, it feels wholly non-western to me. most cyberpunk feels like it's set in a future bad part of NYC or LA, this was a deeply investing & unique setting.

It's not something I would have picked up on my own, and while I thought it was mildly interesting, I'm not going to read the later books. I just didn't get that engaged in the world.

Interesting.
I will try to read sequel.
I want to know if Marid can renew his relationship (love) with his girlfriend. :o)

I'm reading the second one now. So far it's pretty similar to the first book. I liked the first one, but didn't love it.

Melanie wrote: "I liked it. It's a fun read but, as Xeni said, more for the atmosphere and culture than for the story itself. I particularly found the ending to be disappointing, not that Marid started working for Papa, that's okay, but how he managed to kill Hassan and escape. That seemed like a contrivance."

I didn't mind the Hassan scene so much, as how he found the other killer, Khan. Well, he didn't find Khan. Instead Marid walked to another section of town, paid a guy to let him stay at his house for a couple days -- surely he looked around to make sure he wasn't being followed? A few minutes later he exited the house and Khan approached him. That was the letdown for me. I would have liked some more detective work to hunt down the killer.

Did enjoy Marid's sardonic sense of humor, the city of Budayeen, the atmosphere and culture.