Category Archives: Reviews

I finished my first John Varley book today (Amazon), and I have to say that I quite enjoyed it. Tom Clancy had good things to say about him as an author (as evidenced by the quote on the front cover), and while I wouldn’t go so far as he did, it was a fun read.

The novel as a whole seemed a bit… thin… but that didn’t detract much from the fun involved. After all, this is a novel about time travel and mammoths. It was exciting enough toward the end, and I was caught at Tully’s trying to finish it before I left. Luckily, although our main character is a bit of a “supergenius” when it comes to physics/math, you don’t get bogged down with detailed explanation of the nature of quarks or anything similar. It was a bit of an obvious attempt to dumb it down for the readers by essentially only having our main guy explain such things to his animal-trainer friend, but it’s easily overlooked.

This definitely isn’t one of those books I know I’ll read again, but it’s one I’d suggest to friends for some light, fun reading. I have a hard time ridding myself of my books (not helpfully influenced by Josh), so I doubt I’ll be putting it up on BookMooch anytime soon.

Hey, the return key worked this time! Firefox just barfed on me twice for trying to hit it, heh.

If anyone wants to borrow this book, shoot me an e-mail. If you don’t have my e-mail, ask me in the blog, or give me yours.

I heard about John Varley fairly randomly, browsing the internet learning about various new SciFi authors. He’s supposed to be quite good, and has a decent amount of books out, so lately I’ve been mooching his books through BookMooch and getting the odd one at Half Price Books when Josh and I make our weekly trip. -grin-

This if my first venture into his writing, but so far I really like it. We’re reading about a billionaire of a man who will pay any amount of money to get what he wants, and his team has recently discovered a full, frozen, Mammoth body in the tundra (I think we’re in Canada at this point). Buried with the Mammoth? A man. Wearing a wristwatch.

Ooo, suspense! Haha. Either way, it’s managed to grab my attention so far, and if it weren’t for my marathon knitting sessions as of late, I’m sure I’d have more of it read. I’ll let you know what I think of it when I finish.