Norwescon discussion

Have you read or are you reading Life on the Preservation? What did you think?

It's been a couple of days since I finished Life on the Preservation, and it's still percolating around in my head, which is always a good sign. I wrote in my review that it defied categorization, there were enough unique touches to make the tech feel truly alien, and fresh.

*Love* that it took place in a distinctly genuine Seattle.

Ok I read the short fiction version in the 2007 Years best anthology. I enjoyed it and I didn't enjoy much else in the anthology, so I think I will have to give this one a read.

My review: Funny to see that two of my friends gave this one four stars, because it just did not work for me. It's obvious the author is a Seattle local, and it was fun to be able to visualize many of the places where the book sets it's action. Unfortunately, that's as interesting as this one got for me. The main character was entirely unsympathetic, the villains (the Curator and Uncle Jim) just kind of petered out, and the dual stories featured a post-apocalyptic world (and, admittedly, I'm a bit over-post-apocalyptic-ed right now) and a depressing take on Groundhog Day. I can see the appeal of some of the concepts that are played with, even if they didn't gell for me. Plus, even though it's not the author's fault, I kept getting distracted by the many typos (including one "rhe" instead of "the", which any spell checker should have flagged).