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12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Novel About Connectivity Needs More Connectivity, July 23, 2006
This review is from: Someone Comes to Town, Someone Leaves Town (Paperback)
Cory Doctorow really has his finger on today's high-tech pulse, leading to great sci-fi ideas. I have read one of his earlier efforts, "Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom," and that novel was damaged by too much reliance on techno geekery and not enough story. In this book, Doctorow has endeavored more to construct an engaging plot and more interesting characters, with the high-tech acting as more of a backdrop. This book is fun to read and even suspenseful, and the reading experience is an overall success. However, there are some glaring gaps here. The lead character (usually known as Alan) and his brothers are weird extra-human constructs, with a mountain for a father and a washing machine for a mother, and come from a supernatural cave looked over by golems. Alan enters the world of average humans, trying to escape his one evil brother, and protect his other brothers, while meeting a winged woman named Mimi who may or may not come from the same extra-human realm.
This may all sound eccentrically creative on Doctorow's part, but the problem is that these weird characters and bizarre backgrounds are simply presented as a given, and never actually explained. Are they supernatural demigods, weird mutant freaks, aliens, or what? Their function in the world of regular humans is never explored, nor is there any explanation for the supporting characters who know their secrets (Krishna) or can accept them without judgment or questioning (Kurt). Also, the characters go about their actions with no underlying motives or motivations being made clear to the reader. This problem applies especially to Mimi and the evil brother. And finally, Doctorow was obviously trying to tie the main storyline, of Alan trying to integrate into regular society while fixing his extra-human family's problems, to the secondary storyline of a community effort to build a free wireless network. But these two plotlines never find true connectivity, and with many loose ends all around, the book sometimes feels like a jumble of loose ideas. Granted, this novel earns its props for being fun to read and for making you care what happens to the characters. But Doctorow needs more practice in fleshing out his unique ideas into a truly integrated and empathetic story. [~doomsdayer520~]
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17 of 20 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
story story story lecture story lecture story story plot coupon lecture story the end, July 15, 2005
I want to say I loved this book. I really dig urban fantasies, especially ones that stay away from the tired tropes of the form, which this book managed to do with great form. Unfortunately the story never really came together for me. Yes, parallel plots and timelines and narratives but even in its resolution I felt it lacking.
Part of it was the feeling that the book was padded by lectures on the viability of wireless networks or the internet v. cell phones inserted solely to pad out the work and give Doctorow an opportunity to share his thoughts on the subject at hand. Which is fine when I'm reading an article or his posts on his blog or at BoingBoing, but in the novel they brought the story to a screeching halt. One moment I'm reading two characters discussing coffee, the next is a three page Socratic dialogue on the nautre of some gadget somewhere.
But mostly I never really felt that I was reading characters, just mannequins who were constructed and (barely) fleshed out so Doctorow could put them through their paces as he needed them. That's the nature of fiction, of course, but the characters that grip me have more to offer the story than the necessary plot coupons or Maguffins. These were mannequinsm artlessly brought into and out of the story as required. I never felt they had any inner life or any glimmer of personality that I would want to read about outside of the story.
The one exception was Mimi, who had a particularly juicy series of secrets to tell, but even she came and went seemingly at the author's whims.
I finished the book to finish it, not because I really cared. Much like Doctorow's other work, it had a strong start that was lost in the face of its own cleverness. I'd suggest giving this one a miss.
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9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
I couldn't stop reading, October 17, 2006
The first thing I read by Cory Doctorow was a short story called "Nimby and the Dimension Hoppers." I loved that story's confrontation between an anti-technology deep green society and a technocratic world. I haven't read much from the cyberpunk wing of the sci-fi genre but I get the idea that Doctorow enjoys playing with some of its conventions. He really seems to enjoy it in Someone Comes to Town, Someone Leaves Town. The book weaves two stories together, one of them concerning the main character's involvement with a bunch of punks and anarchists working together on a free WiFi project. That sounds cyberpunky, but he subverts the usual conventions in a few key ways, one being that there isn't any discussion of a virtual world. It's set in the real world with elements of fantasy. Another is that the main character is not an anarchist or a punk. He doesn't have a mohawk, facial piercings, or tattoos. He also doesn't have a belly button. Because even though he seems to be an almost too-normal middle-aged man, the main character isn't even human. This brings us to the other main thread of the novel: the story of the main character's family. His name is Alan, but he'll answer to anything that starts with "A." Doctorow refers to him using several different "A" names. His father is a mountain and his mother is a washing machine. For Doctorow this isn't just a dry metaphor for fatherhood and motherhood, though it humorously works on that level. (The mountain stands in for the larger-than-life yet aloof father and the washing machine plays the part of the dependent wife-maid). An even greater achievement is how real Doctorow makes this ridiculous premise seem. (I almost cried for the mother who was unable to truly nurture her children). The story of Alan's family is filled with rich and recognizable feeling, despite the absolute fantasy of the surface. Alan's been trying to fit in his entire life, but it's impossible. He was born in a washing machine, grew up in a cave, and is being stalked by his dead zombie-brother! Normality is most definitely unattainable. I'm not going to give anything else away. I ate this book up and highly recommend it. If I had to compare it to something, I'd call it a sci-fi version of Geek Love. The only thing that sucks about the book is the cover. The character on the cover is supposed to be Mimi, a young winged woman who lives in the house next to Alan's. Doctorow specifically describes Mimi as fat and sexy and this gal on the cover is in no way fat. The cover is annoying and if I'd seen it I probably wouldn't have read it. It looks like a Francesca Lia Block book, and her covers always suck, particularly the headless naked torsos of Violet and Claire. So anyway, definitely don't judge this book by its cover. It's much better than Down and Out...
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