Caleb James DeLisle on Nostr: Book Review: Theft of Fire So, word of warning, this is going to contain some ...
Book Review: Theft of Fire
So, word of warning, this is going to contain some spoilers. I'm not going to spoil the entire book just for the fun of it, but there are some aspects of the story that are revealed "in due course" and you can't really describe the story without them.
The first thing I'll say is Devon Eriksen is a really smart guy, his posts on twitter are probably the biggest thing I'm missing by not going there.
Secondly, we need more of this type of thing. We're not gonna make it unless we start collectively trying to imagine better futures than "we're all dead".
Third, I need to point out that I'm not a fiction reader. Ever since I was a teenager I found fiction to be fake and over-dramatic and found "dull" non-fiction far preferable. This book has been praised by no less than ESR and John Carmack, so understand that the negative things I have to say are coming from someone who is ... extraordinarily picky.
So since I'm talking about the negatives, I'll go right ahead then: This book is FRUSTRATING to read. It's frustrating in three different phases, starting with the protagonist being too stupid to think of the most simple and obvious way to solve his problem.
Marcus Warnoc, an asteroid miner, gets hijacked by an extremely beautiful and obviously wealthy woman (Miranda Foxgrove) and her two personal bodyguard drones. She buys the debts on his ship (which he is nearly defaulting on) and somehow compromises the ship's computer system to completely lock him out. Then she uses blackmail to make him go along with a mission which she won't even tell him what it is.
The first question I'd be asking is how does he know he's not going to end up dead and kicked out an airlock at the end of this "mission". He kind of just sleepwalks into the mission without so much as a discussion or even a thought.
Then once they're underway, he has run of the ship and she spends a fair amount of time locked in her (his dad's former) cabin. It is immensely frustrating that he never thinks to just weld her door shit with her and the robots inside. That and reinstalling the computers would have put him back in charge and would have ended the story a lot faster.
This is like the frustration of watching a horror movie and shouting "DON'T SPLIT UP" at the screen, and what do they do? Split up.
---
The second phase of the story is less about missing the obvious and more about stupid bickering.
Miranda is SO BEAUTIFUL (she was genetically engineered that way), she is like a Siren. Marc has to psychologically "bind himself to the mast" to avoid falling for her and becoming her simp, as she has obvious sociopathic tendencies and will use whatever power she has to her advantage.
This, combined with the fact that they do start to develop feelings for each other, manifests through endless stupid arguments over nothing. Obviously some amount of awkwardness and bickering is justified by the facts, but the sheer volume of bickering and lack of self-reflection makes for a frustrating read.
All the while, there is this Sword of Damocles hanging over the story. Elements of the story like the fact that their space suits require you to strip naked before getting in, create steamy moments where the whole story threatens to devolve into a $3 Romance Novel, though mercifully it does not.
Ironically, the person with the most relatable emotions in the story is an AI named Leela, she was created by brain-scanning a human and putting a copy of her brain into a simulation. Her donor is a teenage girl, but as an AI she is only a few weeks old. She has to come to terms with not being the girl she remembers, with being an AI, and with being a teenager.
---
The third phase of the story, once they've managed to capture the most valuable artifact in the solar system, becomes frustrating in an entirely new way.
25 years ago there was a film called Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, it was a martial arts film which caught a lot of flack because the fights would escalate with harder kicks, longer jumps, etc, until the point where the characters were just flying.
In Theft of Fire, they don't break the laws of physics, just the laws of probability. Getting chased around the solar system, shot at, losing your fusion thruster, running out of ammo, getting boarded, and ending up in a gun fight... Nobody makes it through all of that. At every turn, they get the worst luck that would be possible, without killing them.
This becomes frustrating in it's own right, like the plot to an Arnold Schwarzenegger movie from the 80s.
---
Apparently I just used 5000 chars, to be continued.
So, word of warning, this is going to contain some spoilers. I'm not going to spoil the entire book just for the fun of it, but there are some aspects of the story that are revealed "in due course" and you can't really describe the story without them.
The first thing I'll say is Devon Eriksen is a really smart guy, his posts on twitter are probably the biggest thing I'm missing by not going there.
Secondly, we need more of this type of thing. We're not gonna make it unless we start collectively trying to imagine better futures than "we're all dead".
Third, I need to point out that I'm not a fiction reader. Ever since I was a teenager I found fiction to be fake and over-dramatic and found "dull" non-fiction far preferable. This book has been praised by no less than ESR and John Carmack, so understand that the negative things I have to say are coming from someone who is ... extraordinarily picky.
So since I'm talking about the negatives, I'll go right ahead then: This book is FRUSTRATING to read. It's frustrating in three different phases, starting with the protagonist being too stupid to think of the most simple and obvious way to solve his problem.
Marcus Warnoc, an asteroid miner, gets hijacked by an extremely beautiful and obviously wealthy woman (Miranda Foxgrove) and her two personal bodyguard drones. She buys the debts on his ship (which he is nearly defaulting on) and somehow compromises the ship's computer system to completely lock him out. Then she uses blackmail to make him go along with a mission which she won't even tell him what it is.
The first question I'd be asking is how does he know he's not going to end up dead and kicked out an airlock at the end of this "mission". He kind of just sleepwalks into the mission without so much as a discussion or even a thought.
Then once they're underway, he has run of the ship and she spends a fair amount of time locked in her (his dad's former) cabin. It is immensely frustrating that he never thinks to just weld her door shit with her and the robots inside. That and reinstalling the computers would have put him back in charge and would have ended the story a lot faster.
This is like the frustration of watching a horror movie and shouting "DON'T SPLIT UP" at the screen, and what do they do? Split up.
---
The second phase of the story is less about missing the obvious and more about stupid bickering.
Miranda is SO BEAUTIFUL (she was genetically engineered that way), she is like a Siren. Marc has to psychologically "bind himself to the mast" to avoid falling for her and becoming her simp, as she has obvious sociopathic tendencies and will use whatever power she has to her advantage.
This, combined with the fact that they do start to develop feelings for each other, manifests through endless stupid arguments over nothing. Obviously some amount of awkwardness and bickering is justified by the facts, but the sheer volume of bickering and lack of self-reflection makes for a frustrating read.
All the while, there is this Sword of Damocles hanging over the story. Elements of the story like the fact that their space suits require you to strip naked before getting in, create steamy moments where the whole story threatens to devolve into a $3 Romance Novel, though mercifully it does not.
Ironically, the person with the most relatable emotions in the story is an AI named Leela, she was created by brain-scanning a human and putting a copy of her brain into a simulation. Her donor is a teenage girl, but as an AI she is only a few weeks old. She has to come to terms with not being the girl she remembers, with being an AI, and with being a teenager.
---
The third phase of the story, once they've managed to capture the most valuable artifact in the solar system, becomes frustrating in an entirely new way.
25 years ago there was a film called Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, it was a martial arts film which caught a lot of flack because the fights would escalate with harder kicks, longer jumps, etc, until the point where the characters were just flying.
In Theft of Fire, they don't break the laws of physics, just the laws of probability. Getting chased around the solar system, shot at, losing your fusion thruster, running out of ammo, getting boarded, and ending up in a gun fight... Nobody makes it through all of that. At every turn, they get the worst luck that would be possible, without killing them.
This becomes frustrating in it's own right, like the plot to an Arnold Schwarzenegger movie from the 80s.
---
Apparently I just used 5000 chars, to be continued.