Quote:
Originally Posted by Jadon
I checked these out, and am about halfway through the first volume, and impressed. Yes, there's some unlikely wish fulfillment (some characters are unpleasant, but not half as bad as I suspect they'd be), but I'm interested in how things play out.
I haven't gotten to the second volume, so have yet to see another cycle, but that aspect makes me think of the Never Again series by R.J. Rummel, where characters keep going back in time to change history by trying to head off wars and make undemocratic regimes less likely. |
I'll check that series out once I have my ereader back (they had to replace the motherboard to make it work again
)
Hmm. Yeah, I read the first half years ago, but the site I was reading it on didn't have any more. I was quite surprised when I stumbled across the rest of the series.
Well, for the most part the annoying thing about the iterations is that the same themes keep coming back. Reagan, AIDS/HIV, being gay in the eighties,... They're pretty consistent. The reasons of the iterations always make me roll my eyes as well, but that's probably because I'm Belgian and don't think that highly of patriotism.
But: the beauty of the series is... Well. You get to know the characters very well in that first story - where you're at. And you think: okay, that's just the way they are - some annoying, some kind of over the top. Then you read the next story in the series and you're presented with an entirely different side of the characters - and it works. It kind of really pushes through the 'fact' that anybody can be anybody and that every person has their vices and virtues.
(And yes, I can hear some saying 'Back to the future' did that as well, but not this up close and personal.)
Anyhow, I'm going to stop now. Never actually talked about the reading experience, you might notice.
Oh yeah, I know this is generally intended as a place to recommend books, but if there is one historical book I really wouldn't (recommend, that is) it's
Peter Tremayne's
The Subtle Serpent (part of the Sister Fidelma series). I doubt it was just the translation, but I found that to be the most boring book I've ever tried to read. (Notwithstanding a Flash XML handbook.)