Sci-fi and Heroic Fantasy discussion

This is the discussion topic for our chosen November, 2013, Contemporary SF/F Novel discussion:


Io Deceneus - Journal of a Time Traveler by Florian Armas

G33z3r menaced me with exile if I don't write something :)
The real action starts in chapter four. Those who want a fast immersion will have to survive the first three chapters.
Chapter three is a bit strange, has almost no links with the rest, can be read like a standalone short, and now that I think back of it, there is some action here too.
I had some problems with the style first (a lot of inner thinking and many short paragraphs that you have to link in a kind of puzzle), but after I got accustomed it was an interesting add-on (mixing action with what the main character is thinking at the same time).
There is a discreet self deprecating humor, mostly in chapter 3.
The strangest thing is that I am one third in chapter four already and I don't know the name of the main character. I have no idea why.
The book starts with two names Delena and Duras but they simply vanish. The main character in chapter three also has no name.

I was a bit chary about buying and reading a book I had never heard of. When I looked at the reviews i saw it has only 3 reviews all of which 5 star and probably few of which are genuine.

I tend to avoid anything to do with time travel anyway (over used and under interesting). Still I will read a sample and see.

So far having read a couple of paragraphs it seems to be a bit over written and under grammar checked but will make it through the sample and comment in more depth once I have given the book something closer to a fair chance.

It is good as a group that we are including books that are self published and there are a lot of great books with the first couple of paragraphs a bit overwritten (many authors feel they have to show they are great writers with their use of imagery etc before they actually show us they are good writers by abandoning flowery prose and writing well) so I will see how it goes.

I am a bit unsure of the etiquette of reviewing and commenting on self published works. I checked some of the other threads discussing the book and the author seems a decent guy, fairly humble and aware that this is not the best book ever and open and interested to feedback.

He even has done stuff like email digital copies to people in book groups when they have been considering his book.

Yet if I was to treat this the way I would a published book I might say things that could be deemed overly cruel as it does not seem of a publishable standard.

The most interesting thing in this book is the universe it creates. It is borrowed from Teilhard De Chardin hypothesis of humans able to evolve at "God" level and noosphere. The difference here is that universe here uses human evolution (experiments) to help "his" own evolution and has many avatars (Gates, The Field - noosphere, Time) to interact with humans. There is even a Galactic Council where one of his avatars is the "chief".
The second one the "truth" about some myths as angels, hell, and the "truth" about some historical events and people, Dacians, Akhenaten and Nefertiti, Boskop race.

As the book is quite complex (I am on chapter 6) I am not yet able to understand what the author really want to say with his "universe".

Ben wrote: "I am a bit unsure of the etiquette of reviewing and commenting on self published works...."

I didn't know there was a difference.

I can appreciate that an author has an emotional investment in his or her book. One can only hope they don't take a bad review personally. But hey, they're competing with the big boys (for my time, if nothing else.) (I do have a regrettable tendency to rant overlong if I really don't like something, listing far too many reasons why. But then, maybe I'm overlong with everything I say here. :)

In this case, I picked up the e-book when it was an Amazon freebie sometime last month, so I can't have any complaints about accessibility. On the other hand, the first chapter didn't leave me wanting more, and since reading time is scarce this time year, I put it aside. It was this or PK Dick.

Well, I wanted to add something more. From the mood here doesn't make sense, and is a pity as there are rare the books to come with something completely new as this book does. If I want to talk alone I can do it better in the front of a mirror. At least I can see some reactions there.
Case closed.

It is maybe worth mentioning that there are different versions of this floating around on the internet and the latest version was uploaded about a month or so ago - as the author drew my attention to. So those like me with low levels of tolerance of grammar errors in books might want to make sure they are reading the latest edition.

Stef its only 10 days into the book and not many of the 7 or so people who voted for Io may have read enough of it to want to join in the conversation yet. I know the author monitors what people say about the book on Goodreads so anything you post he is likely to read and there is a decent chance he will respond to any questions you ask.

I will still give this a bit more of a try but given my fatigue has been pretty bad the last few days and I have been given an unexpectedly large amount of advance copies of new titles to read and review I am not sure exactly when I will get round to it. It does seem from what you are saying that there are some pretty complex ideas in it. For me that is a bad thing - I regularly struggle to understand stuff without really focusing hard. With books that have been more widely read I can just look at what other people say about the book or wikipedia etc. to clarify plot points and a book generally needs to completely draw me in if I am going to battle with my focus levels to try to make sense of it.

This led for instance to me struggling somewhat with Ancillary Justice which I am also trying to read at present.

Stef wrote: "I had some problems with the style first (a lot of inner thinking and many short paragraphs that you have to link in a kind of puzzle), but after I got accustomed it was an interesting add-on ..."

I remember some texts the author posted in another group (I did not have time to read the book, pre Christmas is the worst period in my job). The style was not so easy, but the overall effect was interesting.