Glory Season by David Brin

Rating: WARTY!

This is a seven-hundred sixty-some page tome of a tombstone of a novel, and the reason for that is not that there's a huge story to tell, but that the author is so obsessed with world-building that he forgets to actually tell a story.

It's supposed to be about two sisters: clone-twins in a world where winter twins are nowhere near as appreciated as summer twins - why is never really explained. Rather than stay with their clan as summer clones do, they must leave to seek their fortune. It takes almost a hundred pages - a seventh of the story - before they actually leave the city! Most of those pages are taken up with world building - in a world they're due to leave, so why expend all that time on it?

If it had been done beautifully, that would be one thing. I'd still consider it a senseless waste of time, but it would have been readable. The problem is that it's not done beautifully. The author seems like he's obsessed with tossing in every flitting idea that crosses his transom and creating endless races of people, each of which is given a cursory mention and we move on. It was pointless because none of it stood out, and nothing was memorable or even interesting, nor did it contribute a single thing to the story unless endlessly-waffling confusion was actually the author's intent.

I quickly tired of this and gave up after a hundred pages or so. I have better things to do with my time than read another author's listing of all the alien species he thought up, but had never found a novel to fit them into so he decided to use this one as his waste disposal unit. This is the third Brin I've tried to read. The first, Kiln People, I read a long time ago and really enjoyed, but the last one, and now this I have not, so I guess I'm done with this author now. I can't commend this based on what I read of it.

Infinity's Shore by David Brin

Rating: WARTY!

This really isn't much of a review because this novel wasn't much of a novel - not the slim portion of it I could stand to listen to, anyway. I consider audio books experimental: I take more risks on them than other formats, which is why so many of them fall by the wayside. It's worth it to find a gem here and there, but this was (infinitely) far more a coal in the stocking than ever it could hope to be a diamond in the rough.

I really liked Brin's Kiln People, but this one bored the pants off me right from the start. The writing was pretentious and extravagant, Brin clearly adoring his own voice far more than ever he was interested in entertaining his readers (or listeners in my case). If this book had been submitted by an unknown writer, it would never have got published, and justly so, which only goes to show how stupid and short-sighted Big Publishing&Trade; is: it's not what you write, it's whether you already have your foot in the door.

As if the writing wasn't bad enough, the reader, George Wilson, seemed determined to give Brin's trilogy diarrhea its full due, and he ably discharged tedious torrents of it, so I flushed it. I simply could not stand to listen to him, nor could I stand the thought of getting the print or e-version to read myself after having listened to the first of twenty-two disks. No way I'm going to subject myself to that when other books are calling with sweeter voices!