{"id":2396,"date":"2004-11-04T10:28:58","date_gmt":"2004-11-04T15:28:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.kith.org\/journals\/vardibidian\/2004\/11\/04\/2396.html"},"modified":"2018-03-12T16:46:47","modified_gmt":"2018-03-12T21:46:47","slug":"book-report-the-skinner","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/2004\/11\/04\/book-report-the-skinner\/","title":{"rendered":"Book Report: The Skinner"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>I picked up Neal Asher&#8217;s <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nealasher.com\/page.php?mod=novels&amp;title=the_skinner\"><I>The Skinner<\/I><\/a> (NY: Tor 2004) without having heard anything about it whatsoever, which is just as well. A quick google shows that it was well-reviewed, and if I had high expectations, I would have been even grouchier about it.\n<p>Oh, dear. Look, there were good things. Jaded sf readers looking for novelty will at least find old elements (super-regenerative humans, rapid mutation, planet-warden AI, foul-mouthed military robots, puppet-master evil aliens using human bodies as blanks, half-machine half-sentient transportation, Hive mind, etc) used imaginatively and in interesting combinations. The plot is preposterous, but is timed to come together nicely, even if it&#8217;s pretty obviously forced. Mr. Asher does a good job of creating invulnerable characters with just enough Kryptonite around to make their dangers, um, dangerous. Well, some of the dangers.\n<p>But look, as a general rule, if a writer uses the phrase &#8220;piscine creatures of the sea&#8221;, that writer should be told, gently but firmly, to go and lie down, and let somebody else write the book for a while. There are others, too. At one point a person is knocked unconscious and &#8220;falls ... like a falling door.&#8221; This isn&#8217;t a matter of taste; this is bad writing. It didn&#8217;t smell to me like the occasional slip, either; this appeared to be a book written by a clever, imaginative person who doesn&#8217;t know how to put together a readable sentence. Feh.\n<p>&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;,<br>-Vardibidian.\n<\/p>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I picked up Neal Asher\u2019s The Skinner (NY: Tor 2004) without having heard anything about it whatsoever, which is just as well. A quick google shows that it was well-reviewed, and if I had high expectations, I would have been&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[194],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2396","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-book-report"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2396","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2396"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2396\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17182,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2396\/revisions\/17182"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2396"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2396"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2396"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}