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Eight Worlds #3
Blues pour Irontown
Christopher Bach était policier lors de la Grande Panne, ce jour où le Calculateur central, qui contrôle tous les systèmes de survie sur Luna, a connu une défaillance fatale. La vie de Chris a alors irrémédiablement basculé, et il essaie désormais d’être détective privé. Assisté de son chien cybernétiquement augmenté, Sherlock, il tente de résoudre les quelques missions qu’on lui confie en imitant les héros durs à cuire qui peuplent les livres et films noirs qu’il adore.
Lorsqu’une femme entre dans son bureau et prétend avoir été infectée volontairement par une lèpre incurable, Chris est tout disposé à l’aider à retrouver celui qui l’a contaminée. Mais il va vite déchanter en comprenant que son enquête doit le mener là où personne n’a réellement envie d’aller de son plein gré : à Irontown…
Blues pour Irontown est un mélange détonant de roman noir et de science-fiction. Situé dans le même univers que les précédents ouvrages de l’auteur, notamment Gens de la Lune et Le système Valentine, parus aux Éditions Denoël, il marque le retour, tant attendu, de John Varley à son meilleur.
Lorsqu’une femme entre dans son bureau et prétend avoir été infectée volontairement par une lèpre incurable, Chris est tout disposé à l’aider à retrouver celui qui l’a contaminée. Mais il va vite déchanter en comprenant que son enquête doit le mener là où personne n’a réellement envie d’aller de son plein gré : à Irontown…
Blues pour Irontown est un mélange détonant de roman noir et de science-fiction. Situé dans le même univers que les précédents ouvrages de l’auteur, notamment Gens de la Lune et Le système Valentine, parus aux Éditions Denoël, il marque le retour, tant attendu, de John Varley à son meilleur.
336 pages, Pocket Book
First published August 28, 2018
77 people are currently reading
994 people want to read
About the author
John Varley
233 books603 followersFull name: John Herbert Varley.
John Varley was born in Austin, Texas. He grew up in Fort Worth, Texas, moved to Port Arthur in 1957, and graduated from Nederland High School. He went to Michigan State University.
He has written several novels and numerous short stories.He has received both the Hugo and Nebula awards.
John Varley was born in Austin, Texas. He grew up in Fort Worth, Texas, moved to Port Arthur in 1957, and graduated from Nederland High School. He went to Michigan State University.
He has written several novels and numerous short stories.He has received both the Hugo and Nebula awards.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 116 reviews
August 9, 2023
The stark beautiful ugliness of the moon looking down during a warm summer's night it may be a sandy desert nonetheless the image is pleasing. Earth's satellite Luna has now become the main territory of the human population, a few hundred years after Aliens from another star system invaded and conquered our good Terra but not before killing and driving out its people. Author John Varley noted for his weird science-fiction novels is at his best or worse here depending on your view in his 4th , Eight Worlds series Irontown Blues which I read all and enjoyed.These savage creatures, powerful , arrogant, omniscient they never hesitate to kill, refuse to leave causing the Earthlings to become orphans living any place in the solar system that beings can survive from Mercury to Pluto and her moon Charon. A former penal colony where the inhabitants never changed their stripes , striking fear and death wherever they travel in mankind's interminable exile . The domed cities of the Moon feel almost like the surface with air, their gigantic structures miles long the ceiling tower above them with clear skies seemingly showing. Mr. Christopher Bach is a big fan of old detective books and films patterning himself as a new Sam Spade or Philip Marlowe from the 1930's and 1940's but not as tough or resilient when beaten, he bleeds profusely yet his heroes quickly recover but not Chris. He still hurts for a long, long time but the others lacked the bloodhound Sherlock. Adjusted by modern medical devices to be almost as intelligent as his master and often is. The story begins like all classics of the genre always do when a mysterious shady woman Mary Smith asks for help to find a man the lady says gave her a contagious disease...leprosy highly curable in the future. However she's not believable but Mr.Bach takes the money offered by her, he's no fool.This takes him to Irontown a slum in the city and center of the followers of the late Robert Heinlein the great author's nonconformist teachings, libertarians called Heinleiners appropriately. His dog's nose leads him through metal jungles and the curious puzzling maze, dodging the crazed Charonese for same obscure reasoning want to eliminate poor Chris yet Mr. Bach likes breathing. Bombs, shootings, a starship hidden in plain sight as the mystery unfolds will provide entertainment. A couple of women naturally fall for the gentleman's charms, this after all is partly a satire. A good tale for anyone interested in a bizarre land full of kooks which only reveals the truth on the final pages. The relationship between a dog and a man is the heart of this narrative and we are the winners for it.
September 2, 2018
Four big stars, two thumbs way up, two snaps, a circle and a bag of chips.
Great SF from one of the best writers this side of Alpha Centauri.
John Varley, Hugo and Nebula award winning author of the Gaean trilogy, first introduced readers to his Eight Worlds universe in 1977’s The Ophiuchi Hotline. The idea that Earth had been made uninhabitable and Humanity had spread out to the other planets and the Moon must have influenced other writers like Leviathan Wakes writing team and Rhett Bruno.
Varley returns to this idea in his latest novel set in this world building and we find our hero living on Luna working as a private eye. Luna is as Robert A. Heinlein imagined it in The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, full of burrowed habitats and getting along quite nicely thank you very much.
And speaking of Heinlein, Irontown Blues is a homage to the late Grandmaster as Varley explores many RAH themes like libertarianism, a sentient computer and generational ships. There is even a section of Luna called Heinlein Town full of a loss confederacy of Loonies called Heinleiners, free thinking do-it-yourselfers all.
The warrens of Luna can be thematically consistent, such as a habitat devoted to being like Switzerland and others crafted to resemble a time and place. It is in a neighborhood devoted to being like the 1930s, 40s and 50s that we find the protagonist, dressed up like Sam Spade, open for business looking for cheating spouses, lost kids and misplaced Maltese Millennium Falcons. Chris Bach and his intelligence augmented bloodhound Sherlock get mixed up in finding a bad guy, hired by a dame paying cash, and things get very interesting.
Some chapters are taken from his dog Sherlock’s perspective. Like Kevin Hearne’s wildly popular Iron Druid series, Varley gives much of the best narrative space to a dog. In aside paragraphs we get part of the story from Sherlock’s POV, told from an animal interpreter. Sherlock is a dog who has been augmented with special intelligence and his chapters are rare gems and easily steal the show.
This makes me think? What are some of the best animal POV books? Certainly Hearne’s Oberon is a great example of animal perspective writing, but I also very much like Faith Hunter’s chapters about Beast in her Jane Yellowrock series. This is particularly fun because the writer describes the sounds and especially the smells of the predator. Varley may have one upped Hunter as Sherlock has categorized literally hundreds of smells and the translation from his thought to text is all the more entertaining because the interpreter concedes that there is no ready to parlay conversion for the thought expressed. Varley, through the voice of the interpreter, describes the procedure as translating an alien thought process and some of the thoughts and emotions conveyed cannot be accurately nor adequately adopted to our language.
This would be cool if it were just a noir SF book set in the burrowed living spaces of Luna, but this is John Varley after all and things are not always what they seem. Like Philip K. Dick, Varley is able to pack a lot of story and detail in as well as a cornucopia of ins and outs and what haves you. We run into plenty of genetic engineering, some biotech tomfoolery and (reminiscent of his Gaea books) an AI with sanity issues.
A very good book, highly recommended.
** Thanks to Netgalley for a free copy in exchange for an honest review.
Great SF from one of the best writers this side of Alpha Centauri.
John Varley, Hugo and Nebula award winning author of the Gaean trilogy, first introduced readers to his Eight Worlds universe in 1977’s The Ophiuchi Hotline. The idea that Earth had been made uninhabitable and Humanity had spread out to the other planets and the Moon must have influenced other writers like Leviathan Wakes writing team and Rhett Bruno.
Varley returns to this idea in his latest novel set in this world building and we find our hero living on Luna working as a private eye. Luna is as Robert A. Heinlein imagined it in The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, full of burrowed habitats and getting along quite nicely thank you very much.
And speaking of Heinlein, Irontown Blues is a homage to the late Grandmaster as Varley explores many RAH themes like libertarianism, a sentient computer and generational ships. There is even a section of Luna called Heinlein Town full of a loss confederacy of Loonies called Heinleiners, free thinking do-it-yourselfers all.
The warrens of Luna can be thematically consistent, such as a habitat devoted to being like Switzerland and others crafted to resemble a time and place. It is in a neighborhood devoted to being like the 1930s, 40s and 50s that we find the protagonist, dressed up like Sam Spade, open for business looking for cheating spouses, lost kids and misplaced Maltese Millennium Falcons. Chris Bach and his intelligence augmented bloodhound Sherlock get mixed up in finding a bad guy, hired by a dame paying cash, and things get very interesting.
Some chapters are taken from his dog Sherlock’s perspective. Like Kevin Hearne’s wildly popular Iron Druid series, Varley gives much of the best narrative space to a dog. In aside paragraphs we get part of the story from Sherlock’s POV, told from an animal interpreter. Sherlock is a dog who has been augmented with special intelligence and his chapters are rare gems and easily steal the show.
This makes me think? What are some of the best animal POV books? Certainly Hearne’s Oberon is a great example of animal perspective writing, but I also very much like Faith Hunter’s chapters about Beast in her Jane Yellowrock series. This is particularly fun because the writer describes the sounds and especially the smells of the predator. Varley may have one upped Hunter as Sherlock has categorized literally hundreds of smells and the translation from his thought to text is all the more entertaining because the interpreter concedes that there is no ready to parlay conversion for the thought expressed. Varley, through the voice of the interpreter, describes the procedure as translating an alien thought process and some of the thoughts and emotions conveyed cannot be accurately nor adequately adopted to our language.
This would be cool if it were just a noir SF book set in the burrowed living spaces of Luna, but this is John Varley after all and things are not always what they seem. Like Philip K. Dick, Varley is able to pack a lot of story and detail in as well as a cornucopia of ins and outs and what haves you. We run into plenty of genetic engineering, some biotech tomfoolery and (reminiscent of his Gaea books) an AI with sanity issues.
A very good book, highly recommended.
** Thanks to Netgalley for a free copy in exchange for an honest review.
August 24, 2018
Originally posted at https://1000yearplan.com/2018/08/24/i...
In John Varley’s Eight Worlds novels, alien invaders have treated the humans of Earth much like the Europeans treated the First Peoples of North America – after killing most of them off, humankind was allowed to remain on any of the other planets and moons in the solar system, provided they stayed out of the way of Earth’s new masters. The largest of the human settlements is on Luna, where the cradle of humanity remains in sight but depressingly out of reach.
Irontown Blues is the fourth novel Varley has set in the Eight Worlds backdrop, its guiding assessment of humanity’s course – big guy squashes little guy, little guy survives and adapts, bigger guy comes along, repeat and rinse – living at the tortured core of its hero, ex-cop turned private eye Christopher Bach. Like most of human society on Luna, Bach is obsessed with the popular culture of pre-invasion Earth, especially the hard-boiled film noir of the 1940s and 1950s. He self-consciously models his speech patterns after classic noir heroes like Philip Marlowe and Sam Spade, and sometimes other people are amenable enough to play along.
Bach also has a partner: his dog Sherlock, a Cybernetically Enhanced Canine (CEC) who has the intelligence level of a low-IQ human. A CEC’s thoughts can be relayed to human language via computer but are mostly incoherent until interpreted by a human translator, and Bach has neither the cybernetic implants nor the training to do so. Sherlock can only communicate with Bach through arfs and barks and other typical dog noises, though he understands far more human speech, and human behavior, than a non-enhanced dog can, and is often a greater help to Bach than even Bach is aware. Sherlock is no mere sidekick/foil for his nominal master – in many ways he is a co-protagonist. The chapters in Irontown Blues alternate between Bach’s perspective and Sherlock’s, with an interpreter named Penelope editing and providing a meta-commentary on his thoughts.
The novel begins the way any classic noir film would, with a woman and a case for Bach to solve. In this instance, someone calling herself Mary Smith breezes into Bach’s office with a tale of woe. She had recently gone on a date with a man who wore genetically engineered leprosy like a fashion accessory. Unfortunately for Mary, he was also part of a sub-subculture of disease carriers who had illegally infected himself with a communicable version of the disease, so he could pass it on to unsuspecting people like her, a shits-and-giggles trend known as “exporting”. Mary nearly died from the attack and is now badly crippled and disfigured and needs expensive therapy to repair the damage. She wants to find the sick bastard who did it to her and get the justice she deserves. The one problem is, the guy disappeared into the murky depths of Irontown, a refuge for outsiders and antisocial malcontents who distrust authority and prefer to stay off the radar. People who live in Irontown don’t like being looked for, and the residents there work to keep it that way.
Irontown is to Chris Bach what Chinatown was to Jake Gittes, an allegory Bach explicitly makes for the reader. He was once a member of the police strike force that infiltrated Irontown as part of the nervous government’s crackdown on a group of separatists known as the “Heinleiners”, an invasion that quickly went south. The disaster was compounded by the fact that the circumstances were being manipulated by the Central Computer, the once benevolent AI overseer of Luna that fractured and went partly insane, which also sent in its genetically enhanced foot soldiers in the Charonese Mafia. Historically, the incident is referred to as The Big Glitch. During the invasion, Bach is near-fatally wounded saving the life of a 10-year-old girl named Gretel, who in turn rescues him from certain death.
At this point, anyone who has read Varley’s 1992 Hugo-nominated classic Steel Beach recognizes what’s going on here. Irontown Blues functions as something of a standalone sequel to that novel; Hildy Johnson, the reporter hero of Steel Beach, even makes a cameo in Bach’s Big Glitch flashback. It is not necessary to have read Steel Beach to understand what is happening in Irontown Blues, though having done so may provide a greater context for appreciating the events that spin out from it. Once the connection to Steel Beach is made, the narrative’s trajectory alters dramatically. Steel Beach was also something of a mashup of classic cinema stylings and Heinleinian libertarian political transformation (Hildy Johnson is the main character of the news media satire His Girl Friday; the Central Computer recalls “Mike”, the sentient supercomputer of The Moon is a Harsh Mistress), and Irontown Blues packs a whole lot of common sci-fi tropes (uplifted animals, genetic engineering, artificial intelligence, generation ships, milSF, colony narrative, and so on) into its compact word count it’s no wonder its crime novel engine veers off course halfway through.
That new course offers something of a mixed bag for readers, especially in the last third of the story, when some of the explanation for the plot’s inciting incident gets a little flimsy. The strongest elements of Irontown Blues come in the long, traumatic flashback to events of The Big Glitch, and in the tender, affecting relationship between Bach and Sherlock. This novel will most likely be as appealing to dog lovers as it is to sci-fi nerds, and a boon to people who happen to be both. Luckily, the heart of Irontown Blues outlasts its sometimes too obvious, but still modestly effective plotting.
Many thanks to Berkley Publishing Group and Netgalley for the opportunity to read this ARC.
In John Varley’s Eight Worlds novels, alien invaders have treated the humans of Earth much like the Europeans treated the First Peoples of North America – after killing most of them off, humankind was allowed to remain on any of the other planets and moons in the solar system, provided they stayed out of the way of Earth’s new masters. The largest of the human settlements is on Luna, where the cradle of humanity remains in sight but depressingly out of reach.
Irontown Blues is the fourth novel Varley has set in the Eight Worlds backdrop, its guiding assessment of humanity’s course – big guy squashes little guy, little guy survives and adapts, bigger guy comes along, repeat and rinse – living at the tortured core of its hero, ex-cop turned private eye Christopher Bach. Like most of human society on Luna, Bach is obsessed with the popular culture of pre-invasion Earth, especially the hard-boiled film noir of the 1940s and 1950s. He self-consciously models his speech patterns after classic noir heroes like Philip Marlowe and Sam Spade, and sometimes other people are amenable enough to play along.
Bach also has a partner: his dog Sherlock, a Cybernetically Enhanced Canine (CEC) who has the intelligence level of a low-IQ human. A CEC’s thoughts can be relayed to human language via computer but are mostly incoherent until interpreted by a human translator, and Bach has neither the cybernetic implants nor the training to do so. Sherlock can only communicate with Bach through arfs and barks and other typical dog noises, though he understands far more human speech, and human behavior, than a non-enhanced dog can, and is often a greater help to Bach than even Bach is aware. Sherlock is no mere sidekick/foil for his nominal master – in many ways he is a co-protagonist. The chapters in Irontown Blues alternate between Bach’s perspective and Sherlock’s, with an interpreter named Penelope editing and providing a meta-commentary on his thoughts.
The novel begins the way any classic noir film would, with a woman and a case for Bach to solve. In this instance, someone calling herself Mary Smith breezes into Bach’s office with a tale of woe. She had recently gone on a date with a man who wore genetically engineered leprosy like a fashion accessory. Unfortunately for Mary, he was also part of a sub-subculture of disease carriers who had illegally infected himself with a communicable version of the disease, so he could pass it on to unsuspecting people like her, a shits-and-giggles trend known as “exporting”. Mary nearly died from the attack and is now badly crippled and disfigured and needs expensive therapy to repair the damage. She wants to find the sick bastard who did it to her and get the justice she deserves. The one problem is, the guy disappeared into the murky depths of Irontown, a refuge for outsiders and antisocial malcontents who distrust authority and prefer to stay off the radar. People who live in Irontown don’t like being looked for, and the residents there work to keep it that way.
Irontown is to Chris Bach what Chinatown was to Jake Gittes, an allegory Bach explicitly makes for the reader. He was once a member of the police strike force that infiltrated Irontown as part of the nervous government’s crackdown on a group of separatists known as the “Heinleiners”, an invasion that quickly went south. The disaster was compounded by the fact that the circumstances were being manipulated by the Central Computer, the once benevolent AI overseer of Luna that fractured and went partly insane, which also sent in its genetically enhanced foot soldiers in the Charonese Mafia. Historically, the incident is referred to as The Big Glitch. During the invasion, Bach is near-fatally wounded saving the life of a 10-year-old girl named Gretel, who in turn rescues him from certain death.
At this point, anyone who has read Varley’s 1992 Hugo-nominated classic Steel Beach recognizes what’s going on here. Irontown Blues functions as something of a standalone sequel to that novel; Hildy Johnson, the reporter hero of Steel Beach, even makes a cameo in Bach’s Big Glitch flashback. It is not necessary to have read Steel Beach to understand what is happening in Irontown Blues, though having done so may provide a greater context for appreciating the events that spin out from it. Once the connection to Steel Beach is made, the narrative’s trajectory alters dramatically. Steel Beach was also something of a mashup of classic cinema stylings and Heinleinian libertarian political transformation (Hildy Johnson is the main character of the news media satire His Girl Friday; the Central Computer recalls “Mike”, the sentient supercomputer of The Moon is a Harsh Mistress), and Irontown Blues packs a whole lot of common sci-fi tropes (uplifted animals, genetic engineering, artificial intelligence, generation ships, milSF, colony narrative, and so on) into its compact word count it’s no wonder its crime novel engine veers off course halfway through.
That new course offers something of a mixed bag for readers, especially in the last third of the story, when some of the explanation for the plot’s inciting incident gets a little flimsy. The strongest elements of Irontown Blues come in the long, traumatic flashback to events of The Big Glitch, and in the tender, affecting relationship between Bach and Sherlock. This novel will most likely be as appealing to dog lovers as it is to sci-fi nerds, and a boon to people who happen to be both. Luckily, the heart of Irontown Blues outlasts its sometimes too obvious, but still modestly effective plotting.
Many thanks to Berkley Publishing Group and Netgalley for the opportunity to read this ARC.
May 14, 2018
Thank you to Berkeley Publishing Group and NetGalley for an early review copy of Irontown Blues by John Varley, which will publish August 28, 2018. All thoughts are my own.
Writing: 4 Characters: 4 Plot: 4
A nice fast-paced, action-oriented, noir-mystery in a futuristic setting from Sci-Fi master John Varley.
Chris Bach is a PI wannabe offering his services on Luna many years after the alien invasion of Earth (which basically depopulated the planet — see previous books in the Eight Worlds Universe for more details on this, but it’s not important for this story). He sets off to solve the case of a woman who has been given leprosy against her will (hard to believe anyone would willingly contract leprosy but in this world of acceptable and reversible extreme body modifications, disfiguring diseases can be a source of amusement for some — hmmm). “The Case of the Leprous Dame of Irontown” — trust me when I tell you that the case does not go where you think it will.
Chris is aided by his sidekick, Sherlock. Sherlock is a CEC — a Cybernetically Enhanced Canine. The tale is told through their alternating voices — Sherlock’s via the aid of a canine interpreter named Penelope Cornflower (β-Penny in Sherlock parlance). The book is worth reading for Sherlock’s story alone — if you’re at all a dog person you’ll enjoy (and crack up at) his interpretation of the world and events. Other cool characters include Chris’ not-very-maternal mother (retired police chief and now prehistoric-reptile rancher), and some pretty nasty soldiers from Charon, a once prison-planet turned … not-so-nice but now fully acceptable part of the Eight Worlds.
Great world building and descriptions of future life, both technologically and culturally enhanced. Surprising plot and interesting characters. Plenty of fun references to our favorite detectives both current and past (Elvis Cole and Marlowe are mentioned a lot as is Hildy Johnson. Heinlein gets a whole subculture.) Threads on libertarian ideals, body modification, creative habitats, and slightly insane AIs, run liberally through the story.
Hugo-and-Nebula-Award-Winner John Varley has been writing since shortly after I began reading, and I’ve read most of his work. His short story collection, The Persistence of Vision, is possibly my number one favorite SF short story collection (which is saying quite a lot). I confess I had lost track of him for the past few years and haven’t read his last couple of novels — but I’ll remedy that shortly.
Writing: 4 Characters: 4 Plot: 4
A nice fast-paced, action-oriented, noir-mystery in a futuristic setting from Sci-Fi master John Varley.
Chris Bach is a PI wannabe offering his services on Luna many years after the alien invasion of Earth (which basically depopulated the planet — see previous books in the Eight Worlds Universe for more details on this, but it’s not important for this story). He sets off to solve the case of a woman who has been given leprosy against her will (hard to believe anyone would willingly contract leprosy but in this world of acceptable and reversible extreme body modifications, disfiguring diseases can be a source of amusement for some — hmmm). “The Case of the Leprous Dame of Irontown” — trust me when I tell you that the case does not go where you think it will.
Chris is aided by his sidekick, Sherlock. Sherlock is a CEC — a Cybernetically Enhanced Canine. The tale is told through their alternating voices — Sherlock’s via the aid of a canine interpreter named Penelope Cornflower (β-Penny in Sherlock parlance). The book is worth reading for Sherlock’s story alone — if you’re at all a dog person you’ll enjoy (and crack up at) his interpretation of the world and events. Other cool characters include Chris’ not-very-maternal mother (retired police chief and now prehistoric-reptile rancher), and some pretty nasty soldiers from Charon, a once prison-planet turned … not-so-nice but now fully acceptable part of the Eight Worlds.
Great world building and descriptions of future life, both technologically and culturally enhanced. Surprising plot and interesting characters. Plenty of fun references to our favorite detectives both current and past (Elvis Cole and Marlowe are mentioned a lot as is Hildy Johnson. Heinlein gets a whole subculture.) Threads on libertarian ideals, body modification, creative habitats, and slightly insane AIs, run liberally through the story.
Hugo-and-Nebula-Award-Winner John Varley has been writing since shortly after I began reading, and I’ve read most of his work. His short story collection, The Persistence of Vision, is possibly my number one favorite SF short story collection (which is saying quite a lot). I confess I had lost track of him for the past few years and haven’t read his last couple of novels — but I’ll remedy that shortly.
October 27, 2018
Back in the 1970s John Varley – not exactly one of America’s most prolific writers – wrote a novel and a bunch of short stories set in what he called his Eight Worlds, a series in which humanity has been evicted from Earth by the mysterious, all-powerful alien Invaders and left to scrape out a living in the remaining worlds of the solar system. He revisited the series in the 1990s with Steel Beach and The Golden Globe, the latter of which is probably my favourite science fiction novel: a delightfully witty romp around this imagined future society narrated by an actor/conman who’s attempting to get to Luna in time to portray King Lear while being pursued by a nearly unkillable mafia hitman. They’re mostly light-hearted books but they’re creative, engaging and a great amount of fun. Varley spoke for years about wanting to eventually write a third book to finish off what he considered his “metals” trilogy, which would be called Irontown Blues and focus on a cop. Twenty years down the track and he’s finally written it, though protagonist Christopher Bach is actually an ex-cop turned private investigator.
It is, unfortunately, a huge disappointment. I probably look at Varley’s previous novels with a touch of nostalgia, but there’s no denying that they’re objectively very good while Irontown Blues is, if one is being generous, objectively lacking in a lot of ways. Very little happens in this book. It starts off appropriately enough with a mysterious dame entering Bach’s pulpy noir-themed office – a key theme of the Eight Worlds series has always been how humanity, reduced to a stub of its former civilisation, clings onto the various cultures of the past. She claims to have been infected with an engineered disease and hires Bach to find out who did it. Bach watches some CCTV footage, visits his mother, follows one red herring to a Chinese restaurant, goes and inspects a mostly empty room, gets kidnapped, and… that’s basically it. That’s all that happens, aside from a central flashback covering events which already occurred in Steel Beach and then an uncompelling climax which more or less repeats what happened in that flashback. (The book is noticeably only about half the length of Steel Beach or The Golden Globe.) Along the way, the Lunar cities Bach moves through feel empty and under-sketched, in stark contrast to the brilliantly painted society Varley used to give us. Half the novel is narrated by Bach’s cybernetically enhanced canine companion, Sherlock – an interesting enough concept which eventually becomes grating and often leads to the same scene being told twice from two different perspectives in a book which already feels like it’s just playing out the clock.
Varley’s written some bad books before – the Gaea trilogy, for example – but this is really the first piece of his writing which has mostly just bored me. It feels like he’d had the concept of “cop story in the Eight Worlds” kicking around in the back of his head for decades and decided to just finally write it, ignoring the fact that the reason he hadn’t got around to doing so yet was because he hadn’t actually thought of anything interesting to flesh it out with. A very disappointing end to an otherwise great series – read Steel Beach and The Golden Globe and leave it at that.
It is, unfortunately, a huge disappointment. I probably look at Varley’s previous novels with a touch of nostalgia, but there’s no denying that they’re objectively very good while Irontown Blues is, if one is being generous, objectively lacking in a lot of ways. Very little happens in this book. It starts off appropriately enough with a mysterious dame entering Bach’s pulpy noir-themed office – a key theme of the Eight Worlds series has always been how humanity, reduced to a stub of its former civilisation, clings onto the various cultures of the past. She claims to have been infected with an engineered disease and hires Bach to find out who did it. Bach watches some CCTV footage, visits his mother, follows one red herring to a Chinese restaurant, goes and inspects a mostly empty room, gets kidnapped, and… that’s basically it. That’s all that happens, aside from a central flashback covering events which already occurred in Steel Beach and then an uncompelling climax which more or less repeats what happened in that flashback. (The book is noticeably only about half the length of Steel Beach or The Golden Globe.) Along the way, the Lunar cities Bach moves through feel empty and under-sketched, in stark contrast to the brilliantly painted society Varley used to give us. Half the novel is narrated by Bach’s cybernetically enhanced canine companion, Sherlock – an interesting enough concept which eventually becomes grating and often leads to the same scene being told twice from two different perspectives in a book which already feels like it’s just playing out the clock.
Varley’s written some bad books before – the Gaea trilogy, for example – but this is really the first piece of his writing which has mostly just bored me. It feels like he’d had the concept of “cop story in the Eight Worlds” kicking around in the back of his head for decades and decided to just finally write it, ignoring the fact that the reason he hadn’t got around to doing so yet was because he hadn’t actually thought of anything interesting to flesh it out with. A very disappointing end to an otherwise great series – read Steel Beach and The Golden Globe and leave it at that.
August 28, 2018
I received an ARC from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.
Christopher Bach was a cop in one of the largest Lunar cities when the Central Computer suffered the Big Glitch, and became a war larger than anyone expected. Since order has been restored, Bach's life hasn't been the same. Now he is a private detective a la his favorite hard boiled and noir characters and his partner is his dog Sherlock, a genetically enhanced and super smart bloodhound. His newest case will require him to track biohackers to the infamous Irontown, if he wants to catch the people who afflicted his client with an engineered virus. If he can get in and out in one piece that is.
Irontown Blues is my first John Varley book, and I enjoyed it so much that I highly doubt that it will be my last. This new sci-fi noir novel is set in the same universe as his Eight Worlds series, but you don't need to be familiar with it to follow this all new story. Honestly, all I needed to hear was sci-fi noir since I have a soft spot for noir and the right combination of those two genres can be great. I didn't really have any expectations though since I'm not at all familiar with the author, but I thought this was such a cool twisty story. I didn't know exactly how much I needed this book. As much as I liked Chris's story and learning about his background, I have to admit I was the most invested in Sherlock's story and his version of events. It's quite creative how Varely translates the super smart Sherlock's thoughts to the page - and Sherlock gets some of the best moments. Usually I read dogs to sound like either Dug from Up or Manchee from Chaos Walking by Patrick Ness, but for some reason, I totally had Korg from Thor: Ragnarok in in mind when it came comes to Sherlock here. Finally, I have to mention how much I loved all of the references to classic noirish books and movies, especially when it comes to His Girl Friday.
Overall, Irontown Blues by John Varley is a fun genre mashup of a couple of my favorite classic styles. I love that the author is so expertly able to blend key elements of the genre together and still keep it fresh. I don't know about you, but I would love to see more of these characters in the future, particularly Sherlock the bloodhound. If you like classic noir novels and/ or movies adaptations like The Big Sleep, The Maltese Falcon, and Double Indemnity as well as movies like Minority Report and Blade Runner, I have a feeling you'll like Irontown Blues. I'll have to check out more of Varley's work in the future, especially the first story set in the Eight Worlds series, The Ophiuchi Hotline, to see what started everything.
Christopher Bach was a cop in one of the largest Lunar cities when the Central Computer suffered the Big Glitch, and became a war larger than anyone expected. Since order has been restored, Bach's life hasn't been the same. Now he is a private detective a la his favorite hard boiled and noir characters and his partner is his dog Sherlock, a genetically enhanced and super smart bloodhound. His newest case will require him to track biohackers to the infamous Irontown, if he wants to catch the people who afflicted his client with an engineered virus. If he can get in and out in one piece that is.
Irontown Blues is my first John Varley book, and I enjoyed it so much that I highly doubt that it will be my last. This new sci-fi noir novel is set in the same universe as his Eight Worlds series, but you don't need to be familiar with it to follow this all new story. Honestly, all I needed to hear was sci-fi noir since I have a soft spot for noir and the right combination of those two genres can be great. I didn't really have any expectations though since I'm not at all familiar with the author, but I thought this was such a cool twisty story. I didn't know exactly how much I needed this book. As much as I liked Chris's story and learning about his background, I have to admit I was the most invested in Sherlock's story and his version of events. It's quite creative how Varely translates the super smart Sherlock's thoughts to the page - and Sherlock gets some of the best moments. Usually I read dogs to sound like either Dug from Up or Manchee from Chaos Walking by Patrick Ness, but for some reason, I totally had Korg from Thor: Ragnarok in in mind when it came comes to Sherlock here. Finally, I have to mention how much I loved all of the references to classic noirish books and movies, especially when it comes to His Girl Friday.
Overall, Irontown Blues by John Varley is a fun genre mashup of a couple of my favorite classic styles. I love that the author is so expertly able to blend key elements of the genre together and still keep it fresh. I don't know about you, but I would love to see more of these characters in the future, particularly Sherlock the bloodhound. If you like classic noir novels and/ or movies adaptations like The Big Sleep, The Maltese Falcon, and Double Indemnity as well as movies like Minority Report and Blade Runner, I have a feeling you'll like Irontown Blues. I'll have to check out more of Varley's work in the future, especially the first story set in the Eight Worlds series, The Ophiuchi Hotline, to see what started everything.
September 29, 2018
Que rabia... tanto tiempo esperando esta novela y no me ha acabado de convencer. Tiene las cosas buenas de los ocho mundos, pero también algunos de los tics de las últimas obras de Varley.
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September 4, 2021
A dog's view point of detection with many dreadful, but funny puns.
June 4, 2018
Disclosure: Advance reading copy provided by The Berkley Marketing Team and Penguin Random House, via Goodreads.com contest. No money changed hands for this review.
Irontown Blues is a fun romp that moves fast and, in general, has no problems going where anyone has gone before. It is both a critique of and love letter to Robert Heinlein's "The Moon is a Harsh Mistress," and features a noir-obsessed private investigator and his dog (who walks through walls).
4/5 stars
Irontown Blues is a fun romp that moves fast and, in general, has no problems going where anyone has gone before. It is both a critique of and love letter to Robert Heinlein's "The Moon is a Harsh Mistress," and features a noir-obsessed private investigator and his dog (who walks through walls).
4/5 stars
March 14, 2019
Steel Beach by John Varley is one of my favorite books, the book that got me into science fiction, so I am especially disappointed by this follow up. The summary on the jacket is a bait and switch. This is not a detective novel. This entire book is basically an epilogue for Steel Beach. It rehashes old themes, revisits old places, and introduces nothing new or innovative.
I do love John Varley. But I wish he could, for once, write a character with a different personality. All of his characters from the Eight Worlds series are basically the same - people obsessed with movies, slang, and clothing (especially fedoras) from the 20th Century. A narrator who constantly explains to me how things work in the era I live in was charming the first time I read it. By now, it's quite stale, and it makes all of Varley's protagonists indistinguishable from one another.
Chapters alternate between the main character's perspective, who is a human, and the perspective of his intelligent canine partner. An interesting concept if it weren't for the fact that the dog reiterates everything the main character just told us, in simple, stripped-down prose to emulate a dog's lesser intelligence. (Except for one chapter where their experiences deviate.) The dog's narrative is interspersed with jarring interruptions from the "editor" who usually tells us what's going to happen before the dog does. The action scenes in this story flow horribly because of that. This book was badly in need of a real editor to cut some of the content.
The only good thing I can say about the book is that luckily, it wasn't very long. A large font and large margins pushed it to near 300 pages, but in reality it's a very short read that shouldn't take longer than one or two days.
I do love John Varley. But I wish he could, for once, write a character with a different personality. All of his characters from the Eight Worlds series are basically the same - people obsessed with movies, slang, and clothing (especially fedoras) from the 20th Century. A narrator who constantly explains to me how things work in the era I live in was charming the first time I read it. By now, it's quite stale, and it makes all of Varley's protagonists indistinguishable from one another.
Chapters alternate between the main character's perspective, who is a human, and the perspective of his intelligent canine partner. An interesting concept if it weren't for the fact that the dog reiterates everything the main character just told us, in simple, stripped-down prose to emulate a dog's lesser intelligence. (Except for one chapter where their experiences deviate.) The dog's narrative is interspersed with jarring interruptions from the "editor" who usually tells us what's going to happen before the dog does. The action scenes in this story flow horribly because of that. This book was badly in need of a real editor to cut some of the content.
The only good thing I can say about the book is that luckily, it wasn't very long. A large font and large margins pushed it to near 300 pages, but in reality it's a very short read that shouldn't take longer than one or two days.
July 19, 2018
This review originally published in Looking For a Good Book. Rated 4.25 of 5
I have been reading (and enjoying) the works of John Varley since the mid 1970's. He is one of the very small handful of authors whose books I will purchase as soon as they come out because a) I want to encourage more books from the author and paying cash for the books is my way to let the author and publisher know that, and b) I can be pretty sure that I will get a quality, entertaining story.
Forty years later and that still holds true!
In Irontown Blues, Varley blends genres as this sci-fi story of a detective has a very classic noir feel to it. The story center around Christopher Bach, a former police officer now working for himself as a private detective. Being a PI and living in a world where you can manipulate things around you, he sets up his office to resemble the world of the tough PI's from the old movies.
Keeping Bach company, and working alongside of him, is his dog, Sherlock. Sherlock is a CEC — a Cybernetically Enhanced Canine. He is enhanced enough that part of this story is narrated by Sherlock (though transcribed by someone else). Bach doesn't seem to realize just how smart Sherlock is, though that will change over the course of the investigation.
At the start of the story, Bach (and Sherlock) are visited by a woman...er...a dame...who is asking for the PI help to track down a man who gave her an unwanted case of leprosy. The leprosy itself is not that big a problem - she'll regenerate new limbs as necessary, of course. But Bach's investigation into finding the bio-hackers takes an unexpected turn and Bach - and Sherlock - will need to take advantage of every possible resource to get out of trouble. But then...will they really want to...?
One of the things I love so much about Varley's writing is that it is extremely accessible and yet there are layers that are surprising upon reflection. On the surface this reads like a fun sci-fi mystery in noir fashion. And that's what it's supposed to read like. And there are the CTPP (Cool Things Per Page) items that make you nod and think 'ah, that's pretty cool' and then there's the real story that surfaces the closer you get to the end.
Varley creates interesting, real, dynamic characters (even dog characters) that you can easily rally behind and care about. His world building is, as it has been in every work of his I've read, tremendous - again, it might appear simple on the surface, but scratch that surface and you will come to see the depth that Varley works in.
Fans of the genres will get a kick out of his homages to some of the legends in the business.
I am thrilled that John Varley is still writing and thankful to Ace for publishing this.
Looking for a good book? Irontown Blues by John Varley is a book you will feel good about reading and you'll likely want to recommend it to everyone you know. If you've never read Varley before, this is a great place to start. If you are already familiar with Varley's work you know that you're in for a good time.
I received a digital copy of this book from the publisher, through Netgalley, in exchange for an honest review.
I have been reading (and enjoying) the works of John Varley since the mid 1970's. He is one of the very small handful of authors whose books I will purchase as soon as they come out because a) I want to encourage more books from the author and paying cash for the books is my way to let the author and publisher know that, and b) I can be pretty sure that I will get a quality, entertaining story.
Forty years later and that still holds true!
In Irontown Blues, Varley blends genres as this sci-fi story of a detective has a very classic noir feel to it. The story center around Christopher Bach, a former police officer now working for himself as a private detective. Being a PI and living in a world where you can manipulate things around you, he sets up his office to resemble the world of the tough PI's from the old movies.
Keeping Bach company, and working alongside of him, is his dog, Sherlock. Sherlock is a CEC — a Cybernetically Enhanced Canine. He is enhanced enough that part of this story is narrated by Sherlock (though transcribed by someone else). Bach doesn't seem to realize just how smart Sherlock is, though that will change over the course of the investigation.
At the start of the story, Bach (and Sherlock) are visited by a woman...er...a dame...who is asking for the PI help to track down a man who gave her an unwanted case of leprosy. The leprosy itself is not that big a problem - she'll regenerate new limbs as necessary, of course. But Bach's investigation into finding the bio-hackers takes an unexpected turn and Bach - and Sherlock - will need to take advantage of every possible resource to get out of trouble. But then...will they really want to...?
One of the things I love so much about Varley's writing is that it is extremely accessible and yet there are layers that are surprising upon reflection. On the surface this reads like a fun sci-fi mystery in noir fashion. And that's what it's supposed to read like. And there are the CTPP (Cool Things Per Page) items that make you nod and think 'ah, that's pretty cool' and then there's the real story that surfaces the closer you get to the end.
Varley creates interesting, real, dynamic characters (even dog characters) that you can easily rally behind and care about. His world building is, as it has been in every work of his I've read, tremendous - again, it might appear simple on the surface, but scratch that surface and you will come to see the depth that Varley works in.
Fans of the genres will get a kick out of his homages to some of the legends in the business.
I am thrilled that John Varley is still writing and thankful to Ace for publishing this.
Looking for a good book? Irontown Blues by John Varley is a book you will feel good about reading and you'll likely want to recommend it to everyone you know. If you've never read Varley before, this is a great place to start. If you are already familiar with Varley's work you know that you're in for a good time.
I received a digital copy of this book from the publisher, through Netgalley, in exchange for an honest review.
September 9, 2018
3 stars, Metaphorosis Reviews
Summary:
Review:
I received a free copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.
Summary:
On the moon, a
hard-boiled detective and his dog are hired to find justice for a mysterious woman nefariously infected with a virus. Naturally, they find more than they anticipated.
Review:
I’m a fan of some of John Varley’s work. The Gaea Trilogy was an eye opener for me, but I also loved The Golden Globe. I liked The Ophiuchi Hotline and the Thunder and Lightning series but wasn’t bowled over by them. Still, Varley doesn’t write a lot, so when I saw this on NetGalley, I picked it up. It fits fairly well in the ‘liked, but didn’t love’ box.
Irontown is listed as an Eight Worlds novel, which is apparently a shared universe including The Golden Globe and Steel Beach, though I hadn’t known it. Despite having read one (perhaps both) of those books, this felt very much like a sequel – heavy on references to the backstory. It was well presented and not confusing, but it often felt like an inside joke.
The story is told in part from the viewpoint of the dog, and, rather to my surprise, that worked fairly well, as does the narrator’s own self-deprecating humor. The society is reasonably credible, if thinly sketched. Unfortunately, the plot is just as thin. A good part of it is told in flashbacks, and significant portions are told only by implication. There’s quite a bit of reliance on happy coincidence. Overall, it was mildly amusing, but I didn’t really come away with anything. It was effective time filler, but a story that will vanish from memory almost immediately.
I received a free copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.
October 11, 2018
It looks like John Varley wrote "Irontown Blues (Eight Worlds Book 4)" to tie up some of the loose ends from "Steel Beach (Eight Worlds Book 2)" and "The Golden Globe (Eight Worlds Book 3)." Unfortunately, he decided to write the wrong story instead of the story about those loose ends. In general, this book has none of the length, depth, or complexity of those earlier books. Where those books did wonderful jobs of exploring the society as the characters went through their actions, this book is almost entirely focused on the characters' few actions. There's almost no feeling for what's going on around them. Also, the "gumshoe" voice Varley uses just doesn't belong in an "Eight Worlds" novel and is done poorly enough to come across as being a kid's book (which it is NOT). Worse still, at the 85% point, we're shown that what we've been reading until then is really not what's going on (I had guessed that, myself, and dismissed the thought as being too ridiculous). At the same time, it becomes obvious that something bad will result from what just happened (which it does almost immediately, though the mechanism is never formally explained). Plus, once that happens, the story basically breaks down. I'm definitely not happy with this book and I'm rating it at a Pretty Bad 2 stars out of 5 (though I'd really like to drop it another half a star to a mere 1-1/2 stars).
June 28, 2025
Irontown Blues è un romanzo che fa parte della serie degli Otto Mondi, un universo in cui l’autore ha immaginato un’invasione aliena che ha sterminato la razza umana sulla Terra, e i superstiti, rifugiatisi nelle colonie spaziali del nostro sistema solare, hanno dovuto adattarsi e costruire una nuova civiltà.
La storia segue le vicende di un investigatore privato, Christian Bach, e del suo fedele assistente Sherlock, un cane geneticamente modificato e super-intelligente. I due vivono sulla Luna, ormai completamente colonizzata e resa abitabile. Il romanzo si presenta come un noir, con il classico espediente della donna misteriosa che si presenta all’ufficio di Bach chiedendogli di indagare su una malattia geneticamente creata e iniettata di proposito. Il detective, pur diffidando della donna, accetta l’incarico, che lo porterà ad affrontare i demoni del suo passato nel quartiere pseudo-anarchico di Irontown.
Il libro, a mio avviso, ha delle grosse potenzialità che non sono state sfruttate al meglio. In primis, il worldbuilding è molto interessante: la Luna è diventata un habitat capace di ospitare l’umanità, con una civiltà che si sviluppa attraverso la costruzione di città tecnologicamente avanzate all’interno dei canyon. La morte è stata sconfitta, e la scienza è avanzata al punto da permettere di modificare il proprio corpo a piacimento. Interessante anche il particolare delle malattie auto-generate, una sorta di trend che spopola tra i teppisti del pianeta. Essendo possibile modificare ogni parte del proprio corpo, infatti, molto spesso la popolazione tende a risultare simile esteticamente, e dunque la moda alternativa di generare malattie estetiche come la lebbra o la psoriasi si diffonde tra i più ribelli.
Purtroppo, però, il resto fa acqua da tutte le parti. La storia ha due narratori: uno è il nostro Christopher Bach, ex poliziotto con la fissa per i vecchi romanzi noir, che ha combattuto durante il Grande Guasto, quando l’intelligenza artificiale che controllava la tecnologia genetica e funzionale del mondo decise di “suicidarsi”, organizzando un attacco contro gli abitanti di Irontown con l’aiuto dei Carontesi, un’organizzazione mafiosa composta da criminali spediti sul pianeta Caronte, colonia penale. L’altro narratore è il cane Sherlock, anche se in realtà c’è una traduttrice che decodifica i pensieri del segugio attraverso degli impianti cibernetici innestati nella sua mente.
Bach risulta volgare, con un’ironia imbarazzante e assolutamente piatto. Sherlock, invece, per quanto interessante e affascinante sia l’idea di renderlo un narratore, a volte finisce per essere soltanto un secondo punto di vista di un evento a cui già abbiamo assistito.
La storia è troppo didascalica. Le prime cento pagine sono composte da infodump e flashback, abbandonando la trama principale, che viene ripresa solo verso la fine. Il romanzo viene etichettato come noir, ma di noir ha ben poco. È piuttosto un omaggio a Heinlein, a cui l’autore dedica numerose citazioni, oltre a una nave spaziale e un intero quartiere annesso a Irontown. È vero, ci sono diversi richiami ai romanzi noir di Chandler, e lo stesso protagonista vive in un habitat che simula la Los Angeles noir, ma per me è soltanto citazionismo fine a se stesso. Inoltre, il romanzo è pro alla pena di morte, o almeno i personaggi lo sono, e questo per me è il più grande difetto — ma riconosco che è una questione personale.
Non so niente dell’autore, né delle altre opere dello stesso universo narrativo, ma spero che abbia sfruttato meglio le potenzialità negli altri libri, perché Irontown Blues è una storia che cerca di essere brillante, ma che personalmente risulta banale e noiosa.
5/10 ★★
La storia segue le vicende di un investigatore privato, Christian Bach, e del suo fedele assistente Sherlock, un cane geneticamente modificato e super-intelligente. I due vivono sulla Luna, ormai completamente colonizzata e resa abitabile. Il romanzo si presenta come un noir, con il classico espediente della donna misteriosa che si presenta all’ufficio di Bach chiedendogli di indagare su una malattia geneticamente creata e iniettata di proposito. Il detective, pur diffidando della donna, accetta l’incarico, che lo porterà ad affrontare i demoni del suo passato nel quartiere pseudo-anarchico di Irontown.
Il libro, a mio avviso, ha delle grosse potenzialità che non sono state sfruttate al meglio. In primis, il worldbuilding è molto interessante: la Luna è diventata un habitat capace di ospitare l’umanità, con una civiltà che si sviluppa attraverso la costruzione di città tecnologicamente avanzate all’interno dei canyon. La morte è stata sconfitta, e la scienza è avanzata al punto da permettere di modificare il proprio corpo a piacimento. Interessante anche il particolare delle malattie auto-generate, una sorta di trend che spopola tra i teppisti del pianeta. Essendo possibile modificare ogni parte del proprio corpo, infatti, molto spesso la popolazione tende a risultare simile esteticamente, e dunque la moda alternativa di generare malattie estetiche come la lebbra o la psoriasi si diffonde tra i più ribelli.
Purtroppo, però, il resto fa acqua da tutte le parti. La storia ha due narratori: uno è il nostro Christopher Bach, ex poliziotto con la fissa per i vecchi romanzi noir, che ha combattuto durante il Grande Guasto, quando l’intelligenza artificiale che controllava la tecnologia genetica e funzionale del mondo decise di “suicidarsi”, organizzando un attacco contro gli abitanti di Irontown con l’aiuto dei Carontesi, un’organizzazione mafiosa composta da criminali spediti sul pianeta Caronte, colonia penale. L’altro narratore è il cane Sherlock, anche se in realtà c’è una traduttrice che decodifica i pensieri del segugio attraverso degli impianti cibernetici innestati nella sua mente.
Bach risulta volgare, con un’ironia imbarazzante e assolutamente piatto. Sherlock, invece, per quanto interessante e affascinante sia l’idea di renderlo un narratore, a volte finisce per essere soltanto un secondo punto di vista di un evento a cui già abbiamo assistito.
La storia è troppo didascalica. Le prime cento pagine sono composte da infodump e flashback, abbandonando la trama principale, che viene ripresa solo verso la fine. Il romanzo viene etichettato come noir, ma di noir ha ben poco. È piuttosto un omaggio a Heinlein, a cui l’autore dedica numerose citazioni, oltre a una nave spaziale e un intero quartiere annesso a Irontown. È vero, ci sono diversi richiami ai romanzi noir di Chandler, e lo stesso protagonista vive in un habitat che simula la Los Angeles noir, ma per me è soltanto citazionismo fine a se stesso. Inoltre, il romanzo è pro alla pena di morte, o almeno i personaggi lo sono, e questo per me è il più grande difetto — ma riconosco che è una questione personale.
Non so niente dell’autore, né delle altre opere dello stesso universo narrativo, ma spero che abbia sfruttato meglio le potenzialità negli altri libri, perché Irontown Blues è una storia che cerca di essere brillante, ma che personalmente risulta banale e noiosa.
5/10 ★★
November 25, 2018
Here we have Varley playing in his Eight Worlds series, featuring a private detective named Chris Bach and his cybernetically enhanced bloodhound companion living a 1940s hardboiled detective life on the moon. (Rest easy, fellow dog lovers: Sherlock the bloodhound doesn’t die.)
The Eight Worlds series is a loosely connected series of short stories and four novels that Varley has been writing for some 45 years now. (ISFDB link: http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pe.cgi?567) I love the series because it is ineffably cool, lots of fun with rollicking adventure, and plenty of social commentary along the way.
This particular installment is not nearly as complex or deep as the three previous books, but that’s okay. There’s no need to do a deep dive into the backstory because that’s been covered. This sits comfortably between the simpler short stories and the more intricate novels Steel Beach and Golden Globe, and that’s fine by me. Many of the tales in the 8W feature mysteries and/or cops, and this is right in line with that. I don’t recall talking dogs before, though, so that’s new. (Or my memory is lapsing; it has been 20 years since the previous installment.)
You can get the plot from the synopsis and other reviews, but suffice to say that Varley follows the structure of typical films noir and hardboiled detective fiction faithfully... with the addition of Sherlock the smart dog. Along with the usual Heinlein and Elvis Presley stuff which feature in the 8W, there’s even a touch of Jack London as we get flashes of Call of the Wild, White Fang and even The Sea Wolf as we follow Sherlock’s story.
Here’s hoping the next 8W book comes sooner, because I’m down to revisit this universe any time Varley cares to take us there.
The Eight Worlds series is a loosely connected series of short stories and four novels that Varley has been writing for some 45 years now. (ISFDB link: http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pe.cgi?567) I love the series because it is ineffably cool, lots of fun with rollicking adventure, and plenty of social commentary along the way.
This particular installment is not nearly as complex or deep as the three previous books, but that’s okay. There’s no need to do a deep dive into the backstory because that’s been covered. This sits comfortably between the simpler short stories and the more intricate novels Steel Beach and Golden Globe, and that’s fine by me. Many of the tales in the 8W feature mysteries and/or cops, and this is right in line with that. I don’t recall talking dogs before, though, so that’s new. (Or my memory is lapsing; it has been 20 years since the previous installment.)
You can get the plot from the synopsis and other reviews, but suffice to say that Varley follows the structure of typical films noir and hardboiled detective fiction faithfully... with the addition of Sherlock the smart dog. Along with the usual Heinlein and Elvis Presley stuff which feature in the 8W, there’s even a touch of Jack London as we get flashes of Call of the Wild, White Fang and even The Sea Wolf as we follow Sherlock’s story.
Here’s hoping the next 8W book comes sooner, because I’m down to revisit this universe any time Varley cares to take us there.
September 28, 2019
Shaggy Dog Tail
John Varley's later novels have lacked the originality of his earlier ones.He's never been adverse to creatively referencing other artists, everybody from L. Frank Baum to John Phillip Sousa to Walt Disney. In his latest novel however, Varley mines Robert Heinlein in a way that reminds me in tone of Spider Robinson's Heinlein mashup 'Variable Star ' ( not a good thing). When the genre turns into a re-circulating fountain of plot and characterization it is again, imho, not a good thing.
The story begins as good old noir space opera, with two fisted sci-fi private eye Chris Bach (in the vein of Dixon Hill or Joe Miller) getting a visit from a mysterious dame. Bach's partner is his uplifted bloodhound, Sherlock, from whose point of view half the story is told.
Believe it or not *nothing is as it appears.* But in the best Heinlein tradition the day is saved by the secret band of rugged individualists and a last minute escape.
There is a conceit that the right wing of science fiction holds that a society without the death penalty is soft and stupid. That's on display here with a colony of the solar system's worst criminals dumped without supervision but with the technology to survive, become super villains, build its own spaceships and then demand to be readmitted into society. Which it immediately is. I'm as willing as the next guy to suspend disbelief, but give me a break. I'm disappointed that Varley, who let's his characters change gender at the flick of a switch, has adopted "the best justice is swift, lethal justice" attitude (not for the first time, sigh).
Given all that I gave it 3 stars, as it kept my interest to the end (partly due to the break-neck pacing in the last half) and the noir bits were decent -I love sci-fi private eyes - and loved that Sherlock wants to meet Nero the wolf (he has problems with the concept of fiction, you see). But I thought the data dumps by the dog translator presenting Sherlock's narration were mostly padding that didnt add much to the story.
Even though it was one of his lesser efforts, it was still Varley and I would read a sequel (and will definitely read the author's next novel, sequel or not).
John Varley's later novels have lacked the originality of his earlier ones.He's never been adverse to creatively referencing other artists, everybody from L. Frank Baum to John Phillip Sousa to Walt Disney. In his latest novel however, Varley mines Robert Heinlein in a way that reminds me in tone of Spider Robinson's Heinlein mashup 'Variable Star ' ( not a good thing). When the genre turns into a re-circulating fountain of plot and characterization it is again, imho, not a good thing.
The story begins as good old noir space opera, with two fisted sci-fi private eye Chris Bach (in the vein of Dixon Hill or Joe Miller) getting a visit from a mysterious dame. Bach's partner is his uplifted bloodhound, Sherlock, from whose point of view half the story is told.
Believe it or not *nothing is as it appears.* But in the best Heinlein tradition the day is saved by the secret band of rugged individualists and a last minute escape.
There is a conceit that the right wing of science fiction holds that a society without the death penalty is soft and stupid. That's on display here with a colony of the solar system's worst criminals dumped without supervision but with the technology to survive, become super villains, build its own spaceships and then demand to be readmitted into society. Which it immediately is. I'm as willing as the next guy to suspend disbelief, but give me a break. I'm disappointed that Varley, who let's his characters change gender at the flick of a switch, has adopted "the best justice is swift, lethal justice" attitude (not for the first time, sigh).
Given all that I gave it 3 stars, as it kept my interest to the end (partly due to the break-neck pacing in the last half) and the noir bits were decent -I love sci-fi private eyes - and loved that Sherlock wants to meet Nero the wolf (he has problems with the concept of fiction, you see). But I thought the data dumps by the dog translator presenting Sherlock's narration were mostly padding that didnt add much to the story.
Even though it was one of his lesser efforts, it was still Varley and I would read a sequel (and will definitely read the author's next novel, sequel or not).
June 13, 2018
IRONTOWN BLUES, by John Varney, is a noir story set in the distant future, about a PI named Christopher Bach, who feels more comfortable operating his business and life as much as he can as if he lives in the 20th century. Bach has a new case, a mysterious woman, who's strange affliction and stranger story leads Bach and his genetically and technologically modified dog, Sherlock, on a case that ends up being so much more than Bach or Sherlock every thought it would.
Bach, embracing the simpler life of yesteryear instead of indulging in the technology of the future immediately appeals to the reader. The case brought to Bach is interesting, as is the backstory of Bach that is doled out in pieces over the course of the book. My favorite part of the book, though, are the sections written (through a human interpreter of dog language) by Sherlock the dog. Genetically enhanced to understand language and technologically enhanced to provide talents like access to maps and electronic locks, Sherlock's way of speaking on all matters from emotional connections, to smells, to the plot of the story from his perspective was so unique and fresh and fun to read. Disappointing a me little was the actual plot, which while being enhanced with the post modern world and the unique storytelling style, was a little sparse and underdeveloped to me. When I got to the end of the book I wanted more to have happened.
A unique world and an endearing hero and his trusty sidekick make IRONTOWN BLUES a book you want to curl up on the couch and read.
I received this book as part of the Goodreads Giveaway program.
Bach, embracing the simpler life of yesteryear instead of indulging in the technology of the future immediately appeals to the reader. The case brought to Bach is interesting, as is the backstory of Bach that is doled out in pieces over the course of the book. My favorite part of the book, though, are the sections written (through a human interpreter of dog language) by Sherlock the dog. Genetically enhanced to understand language and technologically enhanced to provide talents like access to maps and electronic locks, Sherlock's way of speaking on all matters from emotional connections, to smells, to the plot of the story from his perspective was so unique and fresh and fun to read. Disappointing a me little was the actual plot, which while being enhanced with the post modern world and the unique storytelling style, was a little sparse and underdeveloped to me. When I got to the end of the book I wanted more to have happened.
A unique world and an endearing hero and his trusty sidekick make IRONTOWN BLUES a book you want to curl up on the couch and read.
I received this book as part of the Goodreads Giveaway program.
September 2, 2018
John Varley's books have been hit-or-miss over the past several years. You'll get the great "Red Thunder" and then the forgettable "Mammoth," "Rolling Thunder" and the unreadable "Slow Apocalypse." Unfortunately, "Irontown Blues" is in the "miss" category, imo.
I wouldn't recommend "Irontown Blues" as a reader's introduction to John Varley... there are many other, better, books from the author including any of the Gaea trilogy or, more recently, the "Thunder & Lightning" series, or any of his short story collections. Fans of Varley, like me, or going to buy IB irregardless of reviews, and like me, are probably going to be very disappointed with it. The plot is, well, pretty much aimless, and the inner dialogue of one of the main characters, a genetically enhanced dog, can border on cringe-worthy at times. Having said that, Varley is such a good storyteller that the chances are you'll stay with and finish the book, and there are germs of ideas such as a pack of genetically enhanced dogs on the loose, that you wish Varley had spent more time running with.
Rumor has it that Varley dawdled on delivering the book because he wasn't particularly happy with it until his publisher forced him to a final deadline or lose his publication contact. Unfortunately, the rumor, if true, explains a lot.
I wouldn't recommend "Irontown Blues" as a reader's introduction to John Varley... there are many other, better, books from the author including any of the Gaea trilogy or, more recently, the "Thunder & Lightning" series, or any of his short story collections. Fans of Varley, like me, or going to buy IB irregardless of reviews, and like me, are probably going to be very disappointed with it. The plot is, well, pretty much aimless, and the inner dialogue of one of the main characters, a genetically enhanced dog, can border on cringe-worthy at times. Having said that, Varley is such a good storyteller that the chances are you'll stay with and finish the book, and there are germs of ideas such as a pack of genetically enhanced dogs on the loose, that you wish Varley had spent more time running with.
Rumor has it that Varley dawdled on delivering the book because he wasn't particularly happy with it until his publisher forced him to a final deadline or lose his publication contact. Unfortunately, the rumor, if true, explains a lot.
June 5, 2022
The author of the Valentine System and the Ophite Channel returns with a fourth part of his lunar universe, in which humans have been ejected from the earth by aliens about whom we will probably never know anything.
Twenty years after the events of Stell Beach (People of the moon), we meet Cris, a character tortured by his past, who lives as a 1930s private detective under the surface of a moon in which humanity has resumed its march forward. Technology allows everything, or almost, which allows Varley to express all his verve and all his imagination. We also meet Cris' dog, Sherlock, a hilarious animal with artificial intelligence, which allows us to have his point of view on the adventure thanks to a "translator" of dogs. It's the best idea of the book, even if it's not the only one, far from it. References to Heinlein and his masterpiece The Moon is a harsh mistress are once again very present.
I would like to write that this book is perfect, but it is not. The first half is great, but the second is less rhythmic, more disjointed. the end is a bit rushed, but particularly successful.
Despite these few flaws, I loved immersing myself in the universe of "eight worlds".
John Varley is one of my favorite writers, and the Eight Worlds are a wonderful universe.
Twenty years after the events of Stell Beach (People of the moon), we meet Cris, a character tortured by his past, who lives as a 1930s private detective under the surface of a moon in which humanity has resumed its march forward. Technology allows everything, or almost, which allows Varley to express all his verve and all his imagination. We also meet Cris' dog, Sherlock, a hilarious animal with artificial intelligence, which allows us to have his point of view on the adventure thanks to a "translator" of dogs. It's the best idea of the book, even if it's not the only one, far from it. References to Heinlein and his masterpiece The Moon is a harsh mistress are once again very present.
I would like to write that this book is perfect, but it is not. The first half is great, but the second is less rhythmic, more disjointed. the end is a bit rushed, but particularly successful.
Despite these few flaws, I loved immersing myself in the universe of "eight worlds".
John Varley is one of my favorite writers, and the Eight Worlds are a wonderful universe.
November 18, 2021
J'aime beaucoup John Varley.
Et si j'ai lu Le système Valentine et Gens de la Lune il y a un bon moment, je garde le souvenir d'un auteur sacrément intéressant, avec un un humour assez iconoclaste (qui se révèle pleinement dans la trilogie Gaïa).
Dans ce roman-ci, qui se passe assez longtemps après l'action de Gens de la Lune, on suit les pas d'un nostalgique des films noirs américains des années 50 (ambiance détective privée, femme fatale et mafieux terriblement méchant) qui se prend pour un détective privé, accompagné de son chien super-intelligent. Et évidement, il recevra la visite d'une femme nécessitant son aide. Et évidement, cette enquête l'emmènera, avec son chien, dans une direction tout-à-fait inattendue.
On retrouve dans ce roman ce qui fait le talent de Varley : un humour parfois un peu leste, mais toujours bien trouvé (surtout quand le chien Sherlock porte le récit), une lune complètement transformée, remplie des fameux disneylands qui étaient un des éléments magiques des précédents romans, et puis des personnages impeccablement dressés. Parce que ce roman est en fait un portrait psychologique intéressant, ou plutôt un double personnage. Evidement, Bach, le personnage principal, est torturé à souhait (à cause précisément de Gens de la Lune), et on plonge au cours de cette histoire dans ses côtés les plus sombres. Et c'est une exploration vraiment intéressante. A côté de ça, Sherlock, comme tous les personnages de chiens (sauf Gaspode dans les romans de Terry Pratchett) est magnifiquement et superbement gentil, et bon. On a vraiment envie d'aider ce chien qui veut aider ce maître. Et la complémentarité entre l'humain qui a besoin d'aide, et le chien qui a envie de l'aider.
Malheureusement, un défaut sévère vient pour moi diminuer grandement l'intérêt de ce roman. En effet, si cette enquête démarre bien, le passage dans Irontown, et en particulier le fait de rejouer les événements de Gens de la Lune sous un autre angle pour en tirer une autre conclusion, m'a paru souligner de façon flagrante un des défauts de l'auteur : ce côté un poil nonchalant, qui utilise une intrigue un peu trop simple, ou déjà trop utilisée, pour éviter d'avoir à y réfléchir et faire à la place des blagues un peu lestes. Autrement dit, John Varley pèche par facilité.
L'inconvénient, c'est que si vous n'êtes pas fan de cet auteur, comme moi, vous risquez de trouver ce roman trop léger, trop superficiel pour être réellement intéressant. Et ça malgré cette intéressante relation entre l'homme et son chien.
Et si j'ai lu Le système Valentine et Gens de la Lune il y a un bon moment, je garde le souvenir d'un auteur sacrément intéressant, avec un un humour assez iconoclaste (qui se révèle pleinement dans la trilogie Gaïa).
Dans ce roman-ci, qui se passe assez longtemps après l'action de Gens de la Lune, on suit les pas d'un nostalgique des films noirs américains des années 50 (ambiance détective privée, femme fatale et mafieux terriblement méchant) qui se prend pour un détective privé, accompagné de son chien super-intelligent. Et évidement, il recevra la visite d'une femme nécessitant son aide. Et évidement, cette enquête l'emmènera, avec son chien, dans une direction tout-à-fait inattendue.
On retrouve dans ce roman ce qui fait le talent de Varley : un humour parfois un peu leste, mais toujours bien trouvé (surtout quand le chien Sherlock porte le récit), une lune complètement transformée, remplie des fameux disneylands qui étaient un des éléments magiques des précédents romans, et puis des personnages impeccablement dressés. Parce que ce roman est en fait un portrait psychologique intéressant, ou plutôt un double personnage. Evidement, Bach, le personnage principal, est torturé à souhait (à cause précisément de Gens de la Lune), et on plonge au cours de cette histoire dans ses côtés les plus sombres. Et c'est une exploration vraiment intéressante. A côté de ça, Sherlock, comme tous les personnages de chiens (sauf Gaspode dans les romans de Terry Pratchett) est magnifiquement et superbement gentil, et bon. On a vraiment envie d'aider ce chien qui veut aider ce maître. Et la complémentarité entre l'humain qui a besoin d'aide, et le chien qui a envie de l'aider.
Malheureusement, un défaut sévère vient pour moi diminuer grandement l'intérêt de ce roman. En effet, si cette enquête démarre bien, le passage dans Irontown, et en particulier le fait de rejouer les événements de Gens de la Lune sous un autre angle pour en tirer une autre conclusion, m'a paru souligner de façon flagrante un des défauts de l'auteur : ce côté un poil nonchalant, qui utilise une intrigue un peu trop simple, ou déjà trop utilisée, pour éviter d'avoir à y réfléchir et faire à la place des blagues un peu lestes. Autrement dit, John Varley pèche par facilité.
L'inconvénient, c'est que si vous n'êtes pas fan de cet auteur, comme moi, vous risquez de trouver ce roman trop léger, trop superficiel pour être réellement intéressant. Et ça malgré cette intéressante relation entre l'homme et son chien.
Read
April 26, 2019A noir pastiche set on the Moon, where one man, Bach, more-or-less holds his fragile mental health together by cosplaying an old-school gumshoe and living in Noirtown, the sort of repro district which has dummy vintage cars on the streets even though cars are obsolete, and where Bach heads down the Nighthawk Diner to meet his informant Hopper, before venturing out into proper lunar society with all its cloned dino-meat, neural implants, and practically unlimited body modification. And even if that were all this had to offer, it would be a good read, in a daft crossover sort of way. But Bach unwittingly shares narratorial duties with Sherlock, his bloodhound, a canine everyone knows is enhanced, but nobody knows quite how enhanced. And oh, Sherlock is a delight! His brilliance in some areas, his enthusiastic idiocy in others, and his general right angle to human concerns all make for one of the most thoroughly doggish dogs I've encountered in fiction, even as he's hacking the system and bemoaning his owner's uselessness. Hell, he even canonically has a "mighty snoot", which comes in useful when the pair moonlight as low-level cops, arresting people for smelling too bad – which I think might be meant to suggest Lunar society is a little over-regimented, but fuck it, I commute in London and would wholeheartedly welcome this initiative.
The story proper begins, of course, with a dame walking into Bach's office. She's infected with a variant strain of leprosy. Something which ought not to be possible, because disease is a thing of the past, except for cosmetic purposes (as with Otto Sump in Mega-City One, when everyone can be beautiful, ugliness can develop its own attraction), and even those are meant to be curable and non-communicable. But, again inevitably, Bach suspects she's not telling him the whole story...and the trail on which this sets him will lead via the bits of Bach's past about which he'd rather not be reminded. There are tie-ins here to previous Varley stories, most noticeably the stories in Picnic on Nearside and the novel Steel Beach, but nothing you need to have read to get what's going on. Not least because, for saying he's the only person working in it, Varley's Eight Worlds setting is riddled with the sorts of internal contradictions and inconsistencies which normally require dozens of writers and a couple of corporate-mandated reboots to create. But you can see the appeal of playing fast and loose; if you've created a future setting in the late seventies, and you're still working within it forty years later, then not only will the underlying science have moved on, but so will your own mood, and why feel obliged rigidly to stick with worldbuilding you did decades earlier? In particular, I noticed that humanity's eviction from Earth (by vastly more powerful aliens, in order to save the rest of the planet) now seems to have happened on a far less forgiving timescale. And when you look at our failure to sort our act out over the period of writing, well, that feels like a perfectly understandable tweak.
None of which should suggest this is perfect: the answer is less exciting than the mystery, though isn't that so often the way, and the final act is big and explode-y in ways far less interesting than what's gone before. Indeed, the sudden Hollywood turn extends even to one detail which manages at to be implausible, icky, and pretty much irrelevant all at once. But even that is not enough to spoil what's gone before, and in particular the pleasure of spending time with a very good dog.
The story proper begins, of course, with a dame walking into Bach's office. She's infected with a variant strain of leprosy. Something which ought not to be possible, because disease is a thing of the past, except for cosmetic purposes (as with Otto Sump in Mega-City One, when everyone can be beautiful, ugliness can develop its own attraction), and even those are meant to be curable and non-communicable. But, again inevitably, Bach suspects she's not telling him the whole story...and the trail on which this sets him will lead via the bits of Bach's past about which he'd rather not be reminded. There are tie-ins here to previous Varley stories, most noticeably the stories in Picnic on Nearside and the novel Steel Beach, but nothing you need to have read to get what's going on. Not least because, for saying he's the only person working in it, Varley's Eight Worlds setting is riddled with the sorts of internal contradictions and inconsistencies which normally require dozens of writers and a couple of corporate-mandated reboots to create. But you can see the appeal of playing fast and loose; if you've created a future setting in the late seventies, and you're still working within it forty years later, then not only will the underlying science have moved on, but so will your own mood, and why feel obliged rigidly to stick with worldbuilding you did decades earlier? In particular, I noticed that humanity's eviction from Earth (by vastly more powerful aliens, in order to save the rest of the planet) now seems to have happened on a far less forgiving timescale. And when you look at our failure to sort our act out over the period of writing, well, that feels like a perfectly understandable tweak.
None of which should suggest this is perfect: the answer is less exciting than the mystery, though isn't that so often the way, and the final act is big and explode-y in ways far less interesting than what's gone before. Indeed, the sudden Hollywood turn extends even to one detail which manages at to be implausible, icky, and pretty much irrelevant all at once. But even that is not enough to spoil what's gone before, and in particular the pleasure of spending time with a very good dog.
May 23, 2019
De temps en temps, j’aime faire une petite incursion dans des romans fantastiques. Ces univers différents sont en réalité pour moi et certainement pour les auteurs dans une moindre mesure, un moyen de parler plus librement de problèmes bien de chez nous, de notre monde. Parfois, c’est clair comme de l’eau de roche, parfois, c’est plus obscur, moins accessible. On est plutôt dans ce dernier cas de figure.
C’est en tout cas mon ressenti après cette lecture de « Blue pour Irontown », mais c’est mon premier John Varley qui lui n’est pas un débutant. D’ailleurs après m’être un peu documentée, je pense surtout qu’il m’a manqué des références présentes dans ses autres écrits.
« Blues pour Irontown », comme beaucoup de saga aujourd’hui, peut se lire indépendamment (comme un one shot) du reste de l’œuvre, mais parfois le goût du manque, de l’inachevé est plus présent.
L’intrigue est plutôt linéaire, le rythme pas haletant ou tout au moins je n’ai pas perdu mon souffle. Limite j’ai frôlé l’ennui et je n’aime pas cela.
Les personnages sont un peu mieux et j’ai beaucoup aimé Sherlock. Alors oui, mon côté « j’aime les animaux bientôt plus que mes congénères » a joué indéniablement, mais voilà… Les autres n’étaient pas mal, mais pas de coup de foudre non plus. Compliqué de trouver une réelle affinité.
L’écriture n’est pas mauvaise en soi. Juste il m’a manqué l’étincelle, le petit plus qui fait que le livre ne quitte pas mes mains. Trop de redondances avec le choix stylistique de la narration. C’était le risque.
Un roman qui n’est pas mauvais, mais qui reste trop en surface pour moi ou bien je n’ai pas su saisir les perches tendues. Possible aussi. Une lecture est une rencontre et parfois, on rate le rendez-vous ou bien on est en retard ce qui peut avoir un impact sur le ressenti final.
Bref, j’ai bien eu un peu le blues….
C’est en tout cas mon ressenti après cette lecture de « Blue pour Irontown », mais c’est mon premier John Varley qui lui n’est pas un débutant. D’ailleurs après m’être un peu documentée, je pense surtout qu’il m’a manqué des références présentes dans ses autres écrits.
« Blues pour Irontown », comme beaucoup de saga aujourd’hui, peut se lire indépendamment (comme un one shot) du reste de l’œuvre, mais parfois le goût du manque, de l’inachevé est plus présent.
L’intrigue est plutôt linéaire, le rythme pas haletant ou tout au moins je n’ai pas perdu mon souffle. Limite j’ai frôlé l’ennui et je n’aime pas cela.
Les personnages sont un peu mieux et j’ai beaucoup aimé Sherlock. Alors oui, mon côté « j’aime les animaux bientôt plus que mes congénères » a joué indéniablement, mais voilà… Les autres n’étaient pas mal, mais pas de coup de foudre non plus. Compliqué de trouver une réelle affinité.
L’écriture n’est pas mauvaise en soi. Juste il m’a manqué l’étincelle, le petit plus qui fait que le livre ne quitte pas mes mains. Trop de redondances avec le choix stylistique de la narration. C’était le risque.
Un roman qui n’est pas mauvais, mais qui reste trop en surface pour moi ou bien je n’ai pas su saisir les perches tendues. Possible aussi. Une lecture est une rencontre et parfois, on rate le rendez-vous ou bien on est en retard ce qui peut avoir un impact sur le ressenti final.
Bref, j’ai bien eu un peu le blues….
August 26, 2022
I highly recommend this book. A very enjoyable read.
But bear with me because this will be more than a simple review. First, I was exploring Neighborhood Books on South Street in Philadelphia. This book was not on my radar nor my To Read List; what with online browsing, it's been a long time since I discovered my next read browsing a physical store.
Next I noticed this is Book 4 in Varley's Eight World universe, and I had not read any others. Blurbs by Gibson and Doctorow were highly favorable for Irontown Blues, but when I returned to Neighborhood Books, they didn't have the other books in the series. Reviews on Goodreads for the first in the series often were not positive, so I decided to go ahead and read Irontown Blues as a standalone. I'm glad I did.
Now to the book itself. A noir , but a science fiction noir, with a Private Investigator narrator, Chris, and his partner, Sherlock, an enhanced intelligence bloodhound. The narrator alternates between the two. Similar in part to the non-sci fi Chet and Bernie series by Spencer Quinn, where Chet the dog does all the narration. Unlike Chet, who can only count to 2, Sherlock can count to 10.
Great references to historical noir like author Raymond Chandler and Robert Crais' Elvis Cole, and a big shout out to Robert Heinlein. I had previously only read Varley's short stories, such as The Barbie Murders collection. This book is tremendous fun, and I will go back to other books in this series.
But bear with me because this will be more than a simple review. First, I was exploring Neighborhood Books on South Street in Philadelphia. This book was not on my radar nor my To Read List; what with online browsing, it's been a long time since I discovered my next read browsing a physical store.
Next I noticed this is Book 4 in Varley's Eight World universe, and I had not read any others. Blurbs by Gibson and Doctorow were highly favorable for Irontown Blues, but when I returned to Neighborhood Books, they didn't have the other books in the series. Reviews on Goodreads for the first in the series often were not positive, so I decided to go ahead and read Irontown Blues as a standalone. I'm glad I did.
Now to the book itself. A noir , but a science fiction noir, with a Private Investigator narrator, Chris, and his partner, Sherlock, an enhanced intelligence bloodhound. The narrator alternates between the two. Similar in part to the non-sci fi Chet and Bernie series by Spencer Quinn, where Chet the dog does all the narration. Unlike Chet, who can only count to 2, Sherlock can count to 10.
Great references to historical noir like author Raymond Chandler and Robert Crais' Elvis Cole, and a big shout out to Robert Heinlein. I had previously only read Varley's short stories, such as The Barbie Murders collection. This book is tremendous fun, and I will go back to other books in this series.
January 26, 2021
I have never read a bad Varley book. I do not really believe there IS a bad Varley book; there are merely greater Varleys and lesser Varleys. This is assuredly a Lesser Varley, but it's still delightful in a variety of ways. For one, it's a return to his Eight Worlds series, a loosely-constructed shared universe whose layout is best described as non-Euclidean, but it's the setting of some of his very best books (Steel Beach, The Golden Globe) and short stories ("The Barbie Murders,""Options"). It features cameos by several of the characters from those works, not to mention links to a number of the events from them (especially the Big Glitch), but it's basically self-contained. It also features a genetically and cybernetically enhanced bloodhound, whose personality is a cross between Pogo's Beauregard Bugleboy and Get Fuzzy's Satchel. All of this makes for a breezy, diverting read, and if you're a fan of Varley's style, you'll enjoy the ride.
If you're not, however, you may not find a lot of meat here; deep questions are not really considered, characters' depths are not plumbed, and the noir trappings don't really amount to much but window-dressing. If you want to feast on Greater Varley, read the Gaean Trilogy or "Press ENTER" or "The Persistence of Vision," but if you're in a snacking mood, this might be a trifle worth sampling.
If you're not, however, you may not find a lot of meat here; deep questions are not really considered, characters' depths are not plumbed, and the noir trappings don't really amount to much but window-dressing. If you want to feast on Greater Varley, read the Gaean Trilogy or "Press ENTER" or "The Persistence of Vision," but if you're in a snacking mood, this might be a trifle worth sampling.
August 21, 2018
Mr. Varley is new to me; I hadn’t even heard of him until I saw this book. So, I had zero expectations going into this book. I am not sure how to review this book. The book was well-written, intriguing, and had a very interesting plot. At first, I was confused as to why we had Chris’ dog’s point of view as well as his, but I went with it figuring the author was going somewhere with it. We did, but we didn’t find out until the very end. I really liked the noir feel of the book, and Chris’ love of the time period. Going into this book, I did expect an urban fantasy, but the genre kinda took a left-hand turn at the end which is why I’m not sure how to review this book: the genre change at the end (don’t want to give away much as I don’t want to spoil it) threw me for a loop. All-in-all, I really did enjoy this book, and I am intrigued enough with the ending (wow, what a fascinating ending) to read more in the series. If you like urban fantasy/sci-fi/tech genres, give this a try! Highly recommend! I was provided a complimentary copy of the e-book which I reviewed voluntarily.
June 13, 2019
Varley, John. Irontown Blues. Eight Worlds No. 4. Ace, 2018.
There are two science fiction authors who can legitimately claim to have channeled the spirit of Robert Heinlein. One is Spider Robinson and the other is John Varley. Even in a universe where the Earth has been conquered by aliens we can’t talk to and the survivors have been forced to live on the Moon and other uncomfortable places, where our own AIs have gone out of control and have it in for us, and where bioengineering has created a disease that may make us extinct—even in this noir environment—there is a sense of Heinleinian optimism. It is just the place for an ex-cop with suffering from traumatic stress to put on a 1940s fedora and find missing persons with a very smart dog named Sherlock. Sherlock narrates a lot of the story and tells us that there is no such thing as a bad smell, even if some of them knock you out and others make you anxious. I love this series. Every novel is different and original in ways you did not expect.
There are two science fiction authors who can legitimately claim to have channeled the spirit of Robert Heinlein. One is Spider Robinson and the other is John Varley. Even in a universe where the Earth has been conquered by aliens we can’t talk to and the survivors have been forced to live on the Moon and other uncomfortable places, where our own AIs have gone out of control and have it in for us, and where bioengineering has created a disease that may make us extinct—even in this noir environment—there is a sense of Heinleinian optimism. It is just the place for an ex-cop with suffering from traumatic stress to put on a 1940s fedora and find missing persons with a very smart dog named Sherlock. Sherlock narrates a lot of the story and tells us that there is no such thing as a bad smell, even if some of them knock you out and others make you anxious. I love this series. Every novel is different and original in ways you did not expect.
December 22, 2023
I was a little disappointed with this final Eight Worlds story because it was less developed than the other ones in the series. Some things felt a bit thrown together and the magic I experienced reading The Golden Globe wasn't here. Maybe the intervening years between the two took some of the edge off of Varley's writing? Too bad, because the other books in this universe are classics!
January 11, 2019
I need to say, right off the bat, that I am a massive Varley fan. I own and have reread every single thing he’s written multiple times.
However....it pains me greatly to say that I fear Varley has lost “it”. Whatever makes a writer great might be tapped out.
Dark Lightning was a dreadful fourth in the Thunder series and Slow Apocalypse was awful.
And this book...oh dear. As excited as I was to start it...that’s how sad I am about it.
The same elements that made Steel Beach, Golden Globe, The Ophiuchi Hotline and all the short stories and the fantastic novella Tango Charlie and Foxtrot Romeo so very amazing to read were all present but so very very watered down and scattered. The world-building details, the background, the humor, the social commentary, the sheer imagination of the previous books were so powerful you didn’t even care if nothing actually happened...yet stuff did happen and you were even more delighted! In Irontown Blues, nothing much happened and you noticed. Acutely. Because all the rest of it was such weak repetitive chaff.
For example, the description of Mozartplatz barely scratched the surface compared to the description given in Tango Charlie and Foxtrot Romeo. Instead of adding more detail and dimension to, what has got to be an astonishing sight, he perfunctorily sketched it out and left it. The habitat of the 20’s, 30’s and 40’s where Chris lived was new information but aside from mentioning a couple other kinds of themed habitats, he glossed over any fantastical details and gave us only bare bones.
The other new bit was the people who like diseases but that was not explored in any detail...and thank god, actually. And that whole plot line was dropped in two sentences from Gretel! Frankly, the whole beginning of the book made no sense. We weren’t really told what a damaged traumatized mess Chris was yet, but we have to swallow that he sat around watching videos for four days before he thought to track the mystery broad with the dog? Frankly, Chris detective skills were appalling.
The whole Irontown as a place was fairly unbelievable. I just don’t see this highly computerized society allowing a whole area to fall off the maps. In addition, there’s no way Irontown could connect by walkable tunnels ALL the way out to Delambre trash crater where the Heinlein was! Also, the Heinlein wasn’t IN the crater, it sat on the rim, not covered in trash!
All this little nit-picking I’m doing can be summed up with the totally unnecessary mention of how tall Anna-Louise Bach was. For no good reason, Varley makes a point of saying she’s barely 5ft tall! Which can’t possibly be true. She’s a character in a number of the stories and is described as tall and big-boned. On top of which, it felt like sheer laziness to make her a dinosaur breeder since that’s been thoroughly covered by having Hildy’s mom Callie be a Dino breeder in Steel Beach. Come ON!! And the dimensions of her little habitat were ridiculous if you’re gonna ask me to believe she’s got the biggest dinosaur ever...for NO GOOD REASON!!
I know I sound like some crazed fanboy, arguing fictional stuff but this is the difference between great writing and sloppy nonsense.
Sigh. My towering disappointment has exhausted me. I’m not even going to address the dog. Which could have been charming as hell but instead was tedious and annoying.
John Varley, I still love you but damn, man!
However....it pains me greatly to say that I fear Varley has lost “it”. Whatever makes a writer great might be tapped out.
Dark Lightning was a dreadful fourth in the Thunder series and Slow Apocalypse was awful.
And this book...oh dear. As excited as I was to start it...that’s how sad I am about it.
The same elements that made Steel Beach, Golden Globe, The Ophiuchi Hotline and all the short stories and the fantastic novella Tango Charlie and Foxtrot Romeo so very amazing to read were all present but so very very watered down and scattered. The world-building details, the background, the humor, the social commentary, the sheer imagination of the previous books were so powerful you didn’t even care if nothing actually happened...yet stuff did happen and you were even more delighted! In Irontown Blues, nothing much happened and you noticed. Acutely. Because all the rest of it was such weak repetitive chaff.
For example, the description of Mozartplatz barely scratched the surface compared to the description given in Tango Charlie and Foxtrot Romeo. Instead of adding more detail and dimension to, what has got to be an astonishing sight, he perfunctorily sketched it out and left it. The habitat of the 20’s, 30’s and 40’s where Chris lived was new information but aside from mentioning a couple other kinds of themed habitats, he glossed over any fantastical details and gave us only bare bones.
The other new bit was the people who like diseases but that was not explored in any detail...and thank god, actually. And that whole plot line was dropped in two sentences from Gretel! Frankly, the whole beginning of the book made no sense. We weren’t really told what a damaged traumatized mess Chris was yet, but we have to swallow that he sat around watching videos for four days before he thought to track the mystery broad with the dog? Frankly, Chris detective skills were appalling.
The whole Irontown as a place was fairly unbelievable. I just don’t see this highly computerized society allowing a whole area to fall off the maps. In addition, there’s no way Irontown could connect by walkable tunnels ALL the way out to Delambre trash crater where the Heinlein was! Also, the Heinlein wasn’t IN the crater, it sat on the rim, not covered in trash!
All this little nit-picking I’m doing can be summed up with the totally unnecessary mention of how tall Anna-Louise Bach was. For no good reason, Varley makes a point of saying she’s barely 5ft tall! Which can’t possibly be true. She’s a character in a number of the stories and is described as tall and big-boned. On top of which, it felt like sheer laziness to make her a dinosaur breeder since that’s been thoroughly covered by having Hildy’s mom Callie be a Dino breeder in Steel Beach. Come ON!! And the dimensions of her little habitat were ridiculous if you’re gonna ask me to believe she’s got the biggest dinosaur ever...for NO GOOD REASON!!
I know I sound like some crazed fanboy, arguing fictional stuff but this is the difference between great writing and sloppy nonsense.
Sigh. My towering disappointment has exhausted me. I’m not even going to address the dog. Which could have been charming as hell but instead was tedious and annoying.
John Varley, I still love you but damn, man!
August 28, 2018
Disclosure: I received a review copy from the publisher in exchange for a honest review.
2 1/2 stars.
I wasn’t aware that Irontown Blues was part of a series that started back in the 70’s and 90’s. However, it can be read as a standalone as there is a new character narrating. The book follows P.I Bach and his trusty companion Sherlock, a genetically altered bloodhound as they investigate a potential disease outbreak leading to the notorious zone of Irontown, a place filled with criminals and the unsavory sorts.
I thought the synopsis sounded interesting: a private detective, dangerous diseases and a corrupted city all sounded right up my alley. But unfortunately it fell short of my expectations. Let me start with what I liked. Irontown Blues had this old style noir sci-fi we don’t see in most sci-fi today, which I appreciated. The overall writing was also well done. But that’s pretty much it. I thought the plot was weak and a bit silly. The gist is Bach is chasing a person that is manufacturing type of diseases (found on old earth). Just the overall topic was a little too weird for me, and I normally can handle weird. The first half of the book went into detail how some folks on Lunar were obsessed with certain disgusting smells like; sweat socks, rotting food and vaginal yeast infection. Yeah, no. And how some people would purposely get diseases like psoriasis (because you can’t let alone get sick nowadays)...it was just topics I didn’t want to read about.
Another issues I had was the narration. The book is not only narrated by Bach but there were some chapters where Bach’s bloodhound, Sherlock was narrating. I didn’t like or care for Sherlock’s chapters. Sherlock’s chapters were boring and the writing stilted, which I get because it’s from a canine’s perspective. There was a reason why Varley incorporated Sherlock’s POV. But like I said I didn’t like reading his chapters. Anyone seen the Pixar's UP? Well Sherlock’s chapters reminded of me of the dog Doug in that movie. Some people may find it funny and entertaining or annoying. I’m with the later. I also felt that Sherlock’s chapters were filled with nothing but info-dumping, a big turnoff in any book.
I honestly would have not picked up Irontown Blues if I knew it was part of a series. I’m not the type to start a series mid-book rithei. While this book wasn’t for me I’m sure longtime Varley/Eight Worlds fans will be excited to learn that he written another novel in the Eight Worlds series and more likely find enjoyment in reading Irontown Blues after so many years between the last novel.
2 1/2 stars.
I wasn’t aware that Irontown Blues was part of a series that started back in the 70’s and 90’s. However, it can be read as a standalone as there is a new character narrating. The book follows P.I Bach and his trusty companion Sherlock, a genetically altered bloodhound as they investigate a potential disease outbreak leading to the notorious zone of Irontown, a place filled with criminals and the unsavory sorts.
I thought the synopsis sounded interesting: a private detective, dangerous diseases and a corrupted city all sounded right up my alley. But unfortunately it fell short of my expectations. Let me start with what I liked. Irontown Blues had this old style noir sci-fi we don’t see in most sci-fi today, which I appreciated. The overall writing was also well done. But that’s pretty much it. I thought the plot was weak and a bit silly. The gist is Bach is chasing a person that is manufacturing type of diseases (found on old earth). Just the overall topic was a little too weird for me, and I normally can handle weird. The first half of the book went into detail how some folks on Lunar were obsessed with certain disgusting smells like; sweat socks, rotting food and vaginal yeast infection. Yeah, no. And how some people would purposely get diseases like psoriasis (because you can’t let alone get sick nowadays)...it was just topics I didn’t want to read about.
Another issues I had was the narration. The book is not only narrated by Bach but there were some chapters where Bach’s bloodhound, Sherlock was narrating. I didn’t like or care for Sherlock’s chapters. Sherlock’s chapters were boring and the writing stilted, which I get because it’s from a canine’s perspective. There was a reason why Varley incorporated Sherlock’s POV. But like I said I didn’t like reading his chapters. Anyone seen the Pixar's UP? Well Sherlock’s chapters reminded of me of the dog Doug in that movie. Some people may find it funny and entertaining or annoying. I’m with the later. I also felt that Sherlock’s chapters were filled with nothing but info-dumping, a big turnoff in any book.
I honestly would have not picked up Irontown Blues if I knew it was part of a series. I’m not the type to start a series mid-book rithei. While this book wasn’t for me I’m sure longtime Varley/Eight Worlds fans will be excited to learn that he written another novel in the Eight Worlds series and more likely find enjoyment in reading Irontown Blues after so many years between the last novel.
September 13, 2018
I've been waiting 20 years for Irontown Blues, ever since I devoured The Golden Globe.
I can't really complain at all about it, I thought it was a great read, and the character of Sherlock was worth the price of admission alone.
My only complaint, though, was in the length. Steel Beach and The Golden Globe were both around 600 pages; Irontown was roughly half that length. It made the book feel somewhat rushed, and certain plot points went nowhere or were hastily resolved.
It's a tribute to Varley's writing prowess that a 300-page book could feel like an appetizer rather than a full meal. But what made the earlier novels so great was Varley's leisurely exploration of the milieu of the 8 Worlds.
While Irontown was in some ways an attempt to resolve the story lines introduced in the prior two novels, I found myself wanting more. Sherlock himself could have been an entire 300 pages. I wanted to know more from Gretel's perspective. And what happened to Sparky? Is he still floating around in his trillion dollar spaceship? Did he join up with the Heinlein? What of his plans for the Charonese?
My only hope is that Varley has a couple more novels in him.
I can't really complain at all about it, I thought it was a great read, and the character of Sherlock was worth the price of admission alone.
My only complaint, though, was in the length. Steel Beach and The Golden Globe were both around 600 pages; Irontown was roughly half that length. It made the book feel somewhat rushed, and certain plot points went nowhere or were hastily resolved.
It's a tribute to Varley's writing prowess that a 300-page book could feel like an appetizer rather than a full meal. But what made the earlier novels so great was Varley's leisurely exploration of the milieu of the 8 Worlds.
While Irontown was in some ways an attempt to resolve the story lines introduced in the prior two novels, I found myself wanting more. Sherlock himself could have been an entire 300 pages. I wanted to know more from Gretel's perspective. And what happened to Sparky? Is he still floating around in his trillion dollar spaceship? Did he join up with the Heinlein? What of his plans for the Charonese?
My only hope is that Varley has a couple more novels in him.
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