trike's review against another edition
3.0
This is a tough one to review. The problem is that the book is sort of neither here nor there.
It's satirical, but not quite satirical enough. It's very funny in spots (the reveal with the dogs made me laugh out loud), but the tone is uneven. There are a lot of interesting ideas in it, but it feels slight. It's well-written for the most part, but there are weird lapses in proofreading and editing, such as when pronouns switch genders.
As a first effort, I quite liked it. I'm not a fan of the whole Texan state of mind thing, even if politically I don't think there's much here that most Americans disagree with. No matter which part of the political spectrum you find yourself in, we pretty much all agree that the government in general and Congress in particular is doing a pretty bad job.
There are some things I didn't think needed to be in the story since there wasn't a big rationale for them. The biggest one was why the people of Omertà were vampires. They aren't traditional vampires, of course, but rather science fictional ones, but if there was an underlying point to that other than to hook it into the whole biopunk thing, I missed it. If Staub had used them to make a point about Canadian health care versus American health care, I could see their inclusion, but that aspect was left alone. And really, any number of medical conditions could be a stand-in to highlight those differences.
Given all the anti-government rhetoric in the story, I'm actually kind of surprised health care wasn't underscored more. After all, late in the book she comes down pretty definitively against torture of suspected terrorists (or any enemies of the state, really) along with programs like Extraordinary Rendition, even if she does handle them humorously. Which I applaud, don't get me wrong -- these are difficult subjects to handle without going off on a screed, and even here she gets a little ranty for a couple pages. I happen to agree with her that torture is bad, and seeing as how this book was written probably sometime in 2010-2011, it's still relevant here in early 2015 with the recent US government report detailing how none of the torture the US engaged in actually achieved the result of garnering actionable intelligence. That's what those in the know have been saying all along, so it's a solid win for Staub here.
The problem is, at the same time she's undercutting that whole ultrapatriotic "let's do things the way Jack Bauer does it in the TV series 24" stuff, she's substituting the Libertarian-slash-Tea Party ethos for it, which we've seen is also a failed method for doing things. Witness uninspected Texas refineries exploding to see the ultimate outcome of those sorts of policies.
So on the one hand I liked the book, it had funny parts, but other aspects left me wanting a second rewrite to flesh some aspects out and punch up the humor. I'm not cool with Monsanto, either, nor the collusion between corporations and the government, but simply renaming them "Malsanto" and having DARPA be the jackbooted thugs of the piece was a bit too on the nose.
But it's an easy read and there are enough good bits to hold your interest.
It's satirical, but not quite satirical enough. It's very funny in spots (the reveal with the dogs made me laugh out loud), but the tone is uneven. There are a lot of interesting ideas in it, but it feels slight. It's well-written for the most part, but there are weird lapses in proofreading and editing, such as when pronouns switch genders.
As a first effort, I quite liked it. I'm not a fan of the whole Texan state of mind thing, even if politically I don't think there's much here that most Americans disagree with. No matter which part of the political spectrum you find yourself in, we pretty much all agree that the government in general and Congress in particular is doing a pretty bad job.
There are some things I didn't think needed to be in the story since there wasn't a big rationale for them. The biggest one was why the people of Omertà were vampires. They aren't traditional vampires, of course, but rather science fictional ones, but if there was an underlying point to that other than to hook it into the whole biopunk thing, I missed it. If Staub had used them to make a point about Canadian health care versus American health care, I could see their inclusion, but that aspect was left alone. And really, any number of medical conditions could be a stand-in to highlight those differences.
Given all the anti-government rhetoric in the story, I'm actually kind of surprised health care wasn't underscored more. After all, late in the book she comes down pretty definitively against torture of suspected terrorists (or any enemies of the state, really) along with programs like Extraordinary Rendition, even if she does handle them humorously. Which I applaud, don't get me wrong -- these are difficult subjects to handle without going off on a screed, and even here she gets a little ranty for a couple pages. I happen to agree with her that torture is bad, and seeing as how this book was written probably sometime in 2010-2011, it's still relevant here in early 2015 with the recent US government report detailing how none of the torture the US engaged in actually achieved the result of garnering actionable intelligence. That's what those in the know have been saying all along, so it's a solid win for Staub here.
The problem is, at the same time she's undercutting that whole ultrapatriotic "let's do things the way Jack Bauer does it in the TV series 24" stuff, she's substituting the Libertarian-slash-Tea Party ethos for it, which we've seen is also a failed method for doing things. Witness uninspected Texas refineries exploding to see the ultimate outcome of those sorts of policies.
So on the one hand I liked the book, it had funny parts, but other aspects left me wanting a second rewrite to flesh some aspects out and punch up the humor. I'm not cool with Monsanto, either, nor the collusion between corporations and the government, but simply renaming them "Malsanto" and having DARPA be the jackbooted thugs of the piece was a bit too on the nose.
But it's an easy read and there are enough good bits to hold your interest.
engelsigh's review against another edition
3.0
This is a book my boyfriend bought, read and loved and has been trying to get me to read it for a very long time. I put it off as long as I could...but then it happened to fit for a challenge, and I liked it well enough. The major thing that annoyed me was all the editing issues. I know it's not really fair to judge a book by those, but this wasn't a review copy and it's published by Night Shade Books. The amount of errors in words being flat out wrong, randoms words not deleted and a part of the story where they called characters by the wrong name - someone who in the set up of the scene was not present - just really annoyed me.
Other than that it's kind of a cute romances meets video game geeks meets resistance to the corrupt post apocalyptic government meets Texas meets bioenginered animals. I really did like the Ninja Pomeranians and wish I could have a group of them for myself. The giant fanged bunnies were disturbing. And there is also fire breathing cows. Those are all the main reasons my boyfriend picked it up. And there's also a vampire element. So if this is the kind of thing you dig, it is a quick fun read, and would be a great beach book.
Other than that it's kind of a cute romances meets video game geeks meets resistance to the corrupt post apocalyptic government meets Texas meets bioenginered animals. I really did like the Ninja Pomeranians and wish I could have a group of them for myself. The giant fanged bunnies were disturbing. And there is also fire breathing cows. Those are all the main reasons my boyfriend picked it up. And there's also a vampire element. So if this is the kind of thing you dig, it is a quick fun read, and would be a great beach book.
monicajosephine's review
4.0
I was skeptical about this book, but wound up finding it totally delightful. The copy I have is edited poorly, but I thought that the whole story was fresh and funny, while raising a lot of critical issues that we're facing right now.
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