I managed to read three books while I was down in Belize. Ahh, the joys of vacation 😉

First up was Startide Rising by David Brin. This was a hugo and nebula award winning science fiction novel. It’s an action adventure set in a universe where all intelligent life has come into it’s own under the tutelage of ‘sponsor’ species, except for the original and long lost ‘pregenitors.’ All species aside from the humans that is. A crew of humans and recently raised into sentience dolphins stumble across a cache of pregenitor spaceships, the first encounter with the pregenitors in galactic history, and the earthship is running for it’s life from a host of alien species all dedicated to capturing the earthlings and discovering the location of the hidden pregenitor ships.

It all sounds great, and the overarching story is ok, but the book falls apart in the details. The character interactions are contrived, there is a completely impossible to swallow ‘rebellion’ brewing amongst the dolphin crew, and the characters are cardboard archetypes, not actual folks you believe in. Plus the writing suffers from a lack of logic at times (best example I can think of: james bond type character encounters alien, thinks to himself that he’s only seen this species once before, then manages to read the alien’s facial expressions and deduce he is lying. Umm, riiiiight. Was it the frown that gave it away? What’s an alien frown look like anyway?).

Anyway despite all the problems the book is still ok, it’s a fast paced space opera and if you can look past the thin characters and plot problems it’s still a fun read. I would give it a c+.

Next up, I read David Sedaris’s ‘Holidays on Ice. I had heard Sedaris a few times on NPR and liked what I heard, so I brought this along. It turned out to be devastatingly funny, especially the story about santa’s elves at Macy’s. Sedaris writes semi-autobiographical stories filled with caustic sarcasm. It’s a quick read, I finished it in the 6 or so hours of fly time between Belize City and Boston, and it’s cheap as well. Highly recommended, I give it an A.

I’ll have to post on the third book (best of the bunch btw) until I get home since I cannot recall the author’s name. Spy novel stuff along the lines of John Le Carre, set in WWII france. It was perfect, best book I have read in quite a while. More later on this one.