Dead Girls

Rating:
Summary: Excelent. Truly Excelent.
Review: I can not begin to express how much I enjoyed this novel. This has to be the most original spin on the Vampyre genere in decades. Well done Richard.

Rating:
Summary: Excelent. Truly Excelent.
Review: I thoroughly enjoyed "Dead Girls", the first original take on the vampire concept in many long years. It's dark, it's sexy, and it's smart without being obnoxiously hip or clever. Also, the author gives a great sense of place and time -- he shows a broad and deep understanding of SE Asian and Thai culture in a hundred throwaway details (I especially loved the CIA agent in a Hash House Harriers t-shirt, and also the beggar-bot). Once you swallow the rather implausible basic premise (nano-engineering produces near-human androids whose programming goes horribly wrong, turning them into alluring but deadly parasites), the rest of the book proceeds pretty logically, if not exactly straightforwardly.

Unfortunately, the two sequels are basically surreal sadomasochistic light shows, with all sorts of wild and awful events occuring without much plot or logical connections. Read this if you want a good, intelligent cyberpunkish thriller, but avoid the other two books ("Dead Boys" and "Dead Things") and hope this author gets his head together with his next one.

Rating:
Summary: Solid first novel (but skip the sequels)
Review: I thoroughly enjoyed "Dead Girls", the first original take on the vampire concept in many long years. It's dark, it's sexy, and it's smart without being obnoxiously hip or clever. Also, the author gives a great sense of place and time -- he shows a broad and deep understanding of SE Asian and Thai culture in a hundred throwaway details (I especially loved the CIA agent in a Hash House Harriers t-shirt, and also the beggar-bot). Once you swallow the rather implausible basic premise (nano-engineering produces near-human androids whose programming goes horribly wrong, turning them into alluring but deadly parasites), the rest of the book proceeds pretty logically, if not exactly straightforwardly.

Unfortunately, the two sequels are basically surreal sadomasochistic light shows, with all sorts of wild and awful events occuring without much plot or logical connections. Read this if you want a good, intelligent cyberpunkish thriller, but avoid the other two books ("Dead Boys" and "Dead Things") and hope this author gets his head together with his next one.

Rating:
Summary: The Saga of Ignatz and Primavera
Review: I was anxious to read this as soon as I bought it but then learned it was part of a trilogy (Dead Boys, Dead Things). Now that I have all three I am reading them. I have to say I was a little disappointed by this first book.

The time is the future. Europe had become the center of luxury goods before the economy collapsed. One of the luxury items were the dolls. Gynoids. Artificial women. But somewhere along the way something happened and a plague struck that could be transmitted between doll and human. The plague created more dolls. Now London is sealed off to try and contain the plague.

Primavera is mostly a doll. Ignatz is in love with her and addicted to her. They have escaped from London (no easy task) and are looking to put their lives together and cure her.

The story follows their quest, jumping between past and present in a manner where you are not always sure where you are. These sudden scene changes added to the new vocabulary and the workings of the future world will make this confusing for many readers.

In the story we find out how they got together, how they escaped, what and who is behind the doll plague, and to what depths some might sink when all is falling apart.

It wasn't a bad book, but it wasn't polished either. It reads like something that slipped into the wrong pile in the editor's office. It really could use a little reformatting (not rewriting) to make the story better.

I hope the other two are better set up.

Rating:
Summary: The Saga of Ignatz and Primavera
Review: I was anxious to read this as soon as I bought it but then learned it was part of a trilogy (Dead Boys, Dead Things). Now that I have all three I am reading them. I have to say I was a little disappointed by this first book.

The time is the future. Europe had become the center of luxury goods before the economy collapsed. One of the luxury items were the dolls. Gynoids. Artificial women. But somewhere along the way something happened and a plague struck that could be transmitted between doll and human. The plague created more dolls. Now London is sealed off to try and contain the plague.

Primavera is mostly a doll. Ignatz is in love with her and addicted to her. They have escaped from London (no easy task) and are looking to put their lives together and cure her.

The story follows their quest, jumping between past and present in a manner where you are not always sure where you are. These sudden scene changes added to the new vocabulary and the workings of the future world will make this confusing for many readers.

In the story we find out how they got together, how they escaped, what and who is behind the doll plague, and to what depths some might sink when all is falling apart.

It wasn't a bad book, but it wasn't polished either. It reads like something that slipped into the wrong pile in the editor's office. It really could use a little reformatting (not rewriting) to make the story better.

I hope the other two are better set up.

Rating:
Summary: ALLURE-ing but chaotic
Review: This book caught my eye on the shelf by virtue of its title alone, but I was very pleased to discover that it was a fantastic read. I've never read anything quite like it before. Reading the book is a linguistically sensual experience, and Calder's prose reflects the chaotic and obsessive mindset of his first-person narrator, a doll-junkie (a human addicted to the narcotic which comes from the bite of a female vampiric android) in "love" with one of the Lilim, an artificial species of vampiric androids who seduce human males with their "allure" in order to propagate their own species, and whose origin is not wholly known (or, if it is, that origin is only theorized about, and not revealed, to the reader). Calder's writing style takes a little getting used to, and reminds me of a 90s Kerouac on speed with a Continental education (he uses a lot of French). Some of his descriptions become so involved with the words being used that they fail to actually communicate what he's trying to describe. At many points it is hard to understand what's actually going on; the writing itself seems to take over. I agree with Doug, above, that the sequels are much harder to stomach. The few things I mentioned which make this book difficult dominate the sequels so much that they aren't nearly as good. Fortunately, this book stands on its own just fine, and is a very original contribution to the genre.

Rating:
Summary: ALLURE-ing but chaotic
Review: This book caught my eye on the shelf by virtue of its title alone, but I was very pleased to discover that it was a fantastic read. I've never read anything quite like it before. Reading the book is a linguistically sensual experience, and Calder's prose reflects the chaotic and obsessive mindset of his first-person narrator, a doll-junkie (a human addicted to the narcotic which comes from the bite of a female vampiric android) in "love" with one of the Lilim, an artificial species of vampiric androids who seduce human males with their "allure" in order to propagate their own species, and whose origin is not wholly known (or, if it is, that origin is only theorized about, and not revealed, to the reader). Calder's writing style takes a little getting used to, and reminds me of a 90s Kerouac on speed with a Continental education (he uses a lot of French). Some of his descriptions become so involved with the words being used that they fail to actually communicate what he's trying to describe. At many points it is hard to understand what's actually going on; the writing itself seems to take over. I agree with Doug, above, that the sequels are much harder to stomach. The few things I mentioned which make this book difficult dominate the sequels so much that they aren't nearly as good. Fortunately, this book stands on its own just fine, and is a very original contribution to the genre.