#ej swift

[danaandthebooks]

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[cloudybookash-blog]

Book review: Osiris by E.J Swift.

Genre: Dystopian.

Goodreads ratings: * (1 star.)

Read: 03/03/2017-08/03/2017 DNF'd

 The Review:

Obviously, Osiris wasn't my piece of cake. Which is sad because the premise of this book and its beginning were so inticing. But no, instead I got ¾'s of the way through this book and found myself becoming severly irritated with the characters and their narratives.

 Synopsis:

Adelaide Rechnov – grand-daughter of the architect, one of the few people who created Osiris.

Vikram Bai – founder of a rebellion that led a violent riot three years prior.

And Osiris, bisected into the properous East and the almost drowned, frost bitten West.

 Now, my thoughts: firstly, the cast. Most authors know that to create a good protag(s) one must create sympathetic characters. Swift appears to have missed that lecture. While I take my hat off to Vikram, a very easily likable character, resourceful despite his derelict and damning circumstances with a hint of something dark beneath a calm exterior – Adelaide is another story. One can't even begin to realize how much I hated this character. Privileged white woman syndrome alert. This Eastern princess doesn't even think of the West – your basic third world country. She just parties, and 'rebels' against her family in the pettiest ways possible. She's just all round, not a nice person.

“She [Adelaide] hadn't lock the door. She didn't like locked doors, and she wasn't worried by Vikrams presence. Vikram assumed she thought all westerners were scum, but he didn't know her. If he did, he would know she never though about the west at all.”

 The setting, oh god the setting! Beautiful. Absolutely terrific, the only thing my heart aches for in this book. Osiris is like a glass and steel, water-themed Egypt. Characters awake to mornings filled with mist and walk along bobbing platforms over icy blue waters. They peer up at pyramids made of black tinted glass and framed in steel. One travels on docks to boats, water-buses, and jet-skis. One also travels through either underground stations – tubes wrapped around trains, or higher up tube train systems. The prison system appears at the bottom of the sea. And from horizon to horizon is the endless blue waters of the sea meeting the sky, not a single speck of land in sight.

 The premise of the story was your basic mains get together and over throw the government/ uncover a lie that has been told for generations by the founders to keep the populace under control. So, your average dystopian plot-line. In Osiris, the world as it had been known had fallen into a disarray of violence, natural disasters and war. Refugees piled into Osiris bringing traumatic scenes on their recording devices and in their stories. After meeting both Adelaide and Vikram the reader is thrust into the political world of the East, at first Vikram and Adelaide make a good team – asking for shelters and emergency aid for the West – a valiant approach. And whilst one gets glimpses of Vikram’s darker side the story starts to slip.

 From brimming political warfare and threatening violent revolution to who will Adelaide fuck today? Vikram’s characterization and himself actually, as an entity, are expressed so vaguely into the latter section of the book – as if he's not the most interesting and promising cast member. And soon we simply follow Adelaide and her petty posse drinking, partying, taking drugs and not doing anything for the story except drag it needlessly out.

 I went into this book expecting revolution and got a tabloid. Very disappointing.

 DNF'd, you think I'm going to read the next one? Pfft, as if.

[gmehn]

100 word review: Osiris, by E. J. Swift

I came to this first-in-a-trilogy after reading its sequel Cataveiro – there isn’t much in the way of spoilers and it’s perfectly comprehensible. Osiris is a city at sea, cut off from a world presumed dead. It’s overcrowded but Osiris’ hereditary families live lives of unimaginable luxury whilst the western poor struggle, staying awake at [...] from http://ift.tt/1IUQzKC

[devilgate]

Not-Exactly-Books, 2014, 5: What Has Gone Wrong With Short Stories?

Not-Exactly-Books, 2014, 5: What Has Gone Wrong With Short Stories?

## Preamble

(Is there such a thing as a “postamble”, I wonder?)

After reading the [previous novel](http://devilgate.org/blog/2014/04/14/the-state-of-me-by-nasim-marie-jafry-books-2014-4/) I decided it was high time I caught up on some short-story reading. I had several months of Interzone backlogged, for example.

Trouble is, it seems that short stories have lost their way.

I know, that’s…

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