The Sword and Laser discussion

This is the first s&l book I've picked up for a while, and by the end of the first page I was horrified. I hated the writing, the sentence fragments, the false tone. By the end of the first chapter or so I hated the characters.

Only, somewhere, somehow, I fell in love. with the writing, the tone, with Patricia and Laurence with a U.

If this book doesn't have a happy ending I'll throw it at a wall. Then cry, because I'm reading it on my phone and I need that.

Tell me I'm not the only one who feels this way?

well it was good enough to pull me along from the first page to the last in a single sitting. reminded me a lot of The Long Earth actually. I wasn't sure if I loved that at the end either, even though I sort of did. Either way it's late and I'm tired. maybe I'll sleep on it and have an epiphany in the morning

I'm still torn on how I feel about it. I liked the second half a lot more than the first half, but hard pressed to pin down a rating.

My reaction is different in detail but the book shows to me why a single star rating is kind of useless.. there are some things I like. Some I really didn't. Some things she did well... some things I thought were done poorly.

I should write all that up...

See, I liked the middle of the first half best. Or, maybe just the middle. I did like the end though.

I am also so confused! I started out loving it, and then suddenly began to loathe it. I gritted my teeth and soldiered through, and in the end decided it was just OK.

The weird thing is I can't put my finger on why my opinion shifted so drastically. My best guess is that when I thought it was a young adult novel, I found it surprising and delightful. Then, when it abruptly shifted into a different kind of story, I was left hanging. Plus, it kept ramping up the "oncoming apocalypse" plot, which just left me feeling worried and anxious. But that's just a guess; I don't really know.

Should make for good discussion, because like some of the rest of you I can't even agree with myself about whether I liked the book! I ended up splitting the difference and rating it a somewhat disappointed 3 stars.

There was loads that I did like. I thought the writing was clever with the whimsical, childlike opening and the story telling maturing as the characters did. There were certainly more than enough inventive elements for one book.

What ruined it for me was the characterisation. The people in the story just didn't act like real people. I found it impossible to identify with or sympathise with either Laurence or Patricia, despite the hard lives that they suffered through, because they in turn made the people around them suffer unnecessarily.

Speaking as a real person, I spent a lot of time in my all-too-close-for-comfort teen years making the lives of friends awful. Laurence and Patricia might have acted at times like dicks, but realistic dicks, for their age.

Kids are dumb. Good people are flawed. Characters grow up.

I was ambivalent towards the book. I liked the start but cared less when they were in middle school and cared less and less as they got older/the book went on. Other than knowing that a lot of people liked it, I had no particular background on the book when I started reading it, and I was disappointed overall, especially after the strong start. I didn't find the "story" to be particularly engaging...it was more a string of scenes and ideas than story, at least to me. I guess I don't really get the love but different strokes for different folks. This has been an off year for me with S&L picks so far (generally).

yeah, string of ideas I can see. I'm OK with that though, it's a different format but not a bad one, for me.

I found it to be both compulsively readable and totally annoying. EVERYTHING about the story and characters grated on me, but Anders is a good enough writer that it took me awhile to notice.

I liked it, but not loved it. I was hooked at the beginning by the fairy tale vibe I was getting.. How they both had crappy home lives and were misunderstood by everyone else for being different-but had that connection to each other. I loved how she introduced the assassin guy in the mall scene and how he was meddling in their lives. I feel like it totally lost steam in the middle and that the end didn't really deliver. Like it had a chance for some really cool stuff, but then just kinda flopped along and then hurried up and got it over with.

I really wanted to like this book, but it just wasn't my jam. Maybe I had to high of expectations. I didn't care for the writing style or the overall plot.

I also had moments while reading where I loved it, and then didn't. They were some wonderful parts, and I liked the way things were just introduced as normal, like the two second time machine or the assassin. There was a light, airy feel that I enjoyed, but I don't think that sit well with a serious struggle the book was trying to demonstrate, so when things were more on the doom and gloom side, I didn't care, because it felt like someone had smashed candy floss, which might be a little sad, but not that big a deal. It was a problem of tone, I think, for me, that meant it ultimately didn't connect.

I have mixed feelings about this book as well as the story is both unique and fantastic, but I find myself disliking the characters as they move through that story. Although, the situations they end up in are humorous enough to keep me reading. Still, I see why the interconnections lead to comparisons with Cloud Atlas.

I really enjoyed this book - the writing style, world building and characters all made for a quick read with good flow. I hope there is a sequel that will give more details about both the tech and magic worlds that were introduced - more backstory of the secondary characters and more about the assassins' guild as well would be interesting. I have not been to San Fran but want to go someday - the descriptions by Anders really made me feel like I was there. Anders only wrote a small segment about Cambridge and was spot on about the Legal's and Au Bon Pain near the east end of the MIT campus.

Minsta wrote: "I have not been to San Fran but want to go someday - the descriptions by Anders really made me feel like I was there. Anders only wrote a small segment about Cambridge and was spot on about the Legal's and Au Bon Pain near the east end of the MIT campus."

I've spent about the same amount of time in both Boston and San Francisco. I've eaten at the very Au Bon Pain next to MIT she describes. The thing that struck me about the descriptions of each city is that Boston felt like CJA was describing a photograph while San Francisco felt like she was describing the neighborhood she lives in.

Ruth (tilltab) wrote: "There was a light, airy feel that I enjoyed, but I don't think that sit well with a serious struggle the book was trying to demonstrate, so when things were more on the doom and gloom side, I didn't care, because it felt like someone had smashed candy floss, which might be a little sad, but not that big a deal. It was a problem of tone, I think, for me, that meant it ultimately didn't connect."

Screenwriter Charles Randolph (The Big Short, The Life of David Gale) says he thinks drama writers want people to respect them while comedy writers want people to love them.

I think this is part of what we're seeing in this book, these two competing desires warring for supremacy within Anders, which is why there's a somewhat uncomfortable pairing of the silly and serious. A lot of this stuff feels one step away from autobiographical, both of Charlie Jane and her significant other, Annalee Newitz. As a result, it's almost as if she's afraid to plumb those depths, because every time we start getting dark, she pulls up and delivers a joke or some bit of distracting shininess or a deus ex machina to get a character out of a jam.

"Here I am, all of my faults on display, and I've gleaned a bit of wisdom from my tribulations, but you know the worst part about being alone? Playing Frisbee."

I'm about half of the way through it. I'm enjoying it quite a bit. It's got a couple of different tones in it that took awhile to get used to. I keep wanting to know more about parts of the story but it changes scenes before it delves to deep into something new. Overall it's pretty fun if a little light.

Minsta wrote: "...more backstory of the secondary characters and more about the assassins' guild as well would be interesting."

I'm frankly not sure the assassin guild exists as much more than a figment of the imagination of the assassin character, who I suspect is merely a cracked wizard. All of the signs he talks about sounds like total overactive pattern recognition stuff.

That's an interesting theory. We just had our local meetup discussion yesterday and were talking about how that subplot just felt abandoned.

Rob wrote: "That's an interesting theory. We just had our local meetup discussion yesterday and were talking about how that subplot just felt abandoned."

I'd go back and look for supporting evidence, but I didn't actually like that character at all. But yeah, by the end of the book I had the idea that he had been a magician of not a lot of talent, had broken his brain somehow, dreamed up the super secret guild which gives him secret messages in the litter on the street. He had a vision which frankly almost came true. Or maybe the vision was the brain-breaking incident.

Geez, I never even considered that as a possibility. It does kind of fit as the narrator gets kind of goofy and silly when explaining his motives and actions. I will need to think that through a bit if it fits the rest of the narrative.