July, 9, 2005 archives

does it count as a sex dream if all you do is hold hands?

going postal by terry pratchett is the latest of the discworld books, and it is brilliant, of course. it’s the story of a con man who is is appointed postmaster general instead of being executed, and how he applies his talents to revitalizing the post office even in the face of the signal tower (“clacks”) monopoly. it is very funny, although it doesn’t have quite the heart that monstrous regiment did.

shadow puppets by orson scott card is the penultimate book in the whole ender saga, or so we’ve been led to believe. i think i agree with the reviewer on amazon that calls it a punctuation mark in the series. it’s fairly lackluster, and that makes the biggest flaw of this last part of the series stand out — the geopolitics are absolutely ludicrous.

there’s less of the bean-as-brilliant-mindreader schtick, which is a very good thing, but none of the characters are particularly strong in the book.