Luis Gallardo > Recent Status Updates

So Hallucigenia has been the best one so far, although I was expecting something different from the title, but I guess that's nitpicking. Still didn't much cared for any of the characters, well, for any of the male characters, the female one barely exists.

Wow. Bulldozer was a complete waste of time. Again, very well written and a nice time loop thing, but there was just nothing fresh about it. Hallucigenia, which I'm about a third into, is looking more promising, at the very least I don't loathe the protagonist. Oh, right, there was Proboscis, just read it and had already forgotten about it, more or less pointless, read like filler.

So far I not really feeling this one. It's not scary and not even really creepy, just nonsensical, which can be good sometimes, but this is not one of those times. I'm not hating it, it's entertaining, just not delivering on the creepiness department. All right, it's the whole gas thing, it just makes me giggle.

I just realized something, one of the reasons I love Welcome to Night Vale, it tells the stories of the NPCs, the characters which would be on the background while the hero finds himself in this weird town, the people he would notice, the colorful ones, or the disturbing ones. It's what happens when the cameras are not rolling, the keyboard not typing, when no "normal" person is on sight to be our proxy.

Ah! Now I remember the notion that came to me while reading Annihilation! Because it's back in here, in the First Breach: Living things growing out of words, words as substrate and sustenance for living things. Words as compost, and somehow that makes you feel the novels themselves are much deeper, or rather, growing out of old half decayed words.

Is it just me or does the narration becomes less dream like as the biologist approaches the lighthouse?
So far it's been good, but besides the clear VanderMeerian motifs, I have to say most of the setting seems quite familiar- all right, it seems like the Island from Lost. The style is near perfect, it's VanderMeer after all. I just hope down the line events get weirder and less reminiscent of similar works.

¡Carajo, con la edición de EMU mes estaba perdiendo de todo!

Very oneiric beginning. Like finding yourself in a dream. You have a very clear sense of purpose and an adequate past for the current circumstances, and yet there are holes, but you're quick to rationalize over them. You know the people there with you, but you also don't. And you know what things are, even if that knowledge clashes with what things clearly look like. A hole in the ground is a tower, dream logic.

Pues lo tuve que volver a empezar, porque la edición de Editores Mexicanos Unidos (EMU), en la colección Rubí, es una absoluta porquería. Si al menos dijera en algún lado que se trata de un resumen, otra cosa sería, pero no.
Lo conseguí, ahora sí al parecer completo, en Amazon por 88 centavos de dolar (para kindle, claro). Y si no me equivoco, en papel la edición más completa sería la de Porrúa.
¡Eviten EMU!

All right, Goldilocks Zone was much better than the ones preceding it. The premise is good ("we made the hard places soft") and was well executed. At times it reminded me of an episode of Invader ZIM, the Halloween episode to be precise, but since I love Invader ZIM that was a plus.
They Wait Below was well written, but again I'm afraid suffers from being very generic. So in all, the anthology seems to be improving.

So far, from the first three stories only the second was somewhat original. Parasitic Embrace was frankly disappointing, indistinguishable from dozens of other similar stories. A Withering of Sorts had a bit more meat than Parasitic Embrace, but was likewise very generic. The Equivalence Principle wins points for the premise, which I will not spoil here.