Richard Dawkins - The God Delusion

This one took me a while to get in to after reading loads of fiction and if I’m honest, it hasn’t endeared me to non-fiction writing, even if the subject is borderline interesting. The edition I read was the 10^th anniversary edition featuring a new introduction. The introduction takes the interesting step of answering criticism the book has received, not only from religious people but from the non-religious community as well. The tact taken appears to be any criticism of the book, even when not biased or based on counter beliefs, is wrong. Because science. That’s basically the whole book. But what’s wrong with that you say? Well…

Firstly, the God Delusion is a published book. As it is a book, it is designed to be read by other people. If it were me writing a book with the sole purpose of ‘opening people’s eyes’ I wouldn’t do it using obnoxious language and inaccessible words. I don’t claim to be the smartest guy in the world, but I would like to think that I have some semblance of intelligence and I had no idea what Dawkins is banging on about half the time. But I suppose ‘religion bad, science good’ wouldn’t sell a lot of copies.

The second thing is the way in which the book is written. It clocks in at 426 pages including the afterword by Daniel Dennett – which is yet further posturing over the ideas contained within the book and how they are right and anyone that disagrees with them is wrong. The book could have been closer to 200 pages as Dawkins has an overzealous need to repeat the same point over and over again. On several occasions, I had to check that I hadn’t misplaced where I was in the book and that I wasn’t reading the same thing.

Now on to the subject itself. I did think that the book would be more about why God doesn’t exist and here’s proof looking at history, but I didn’t factor in that Dawkins is a biologlist, not a historian so his argument comes from the biological standpoint. There’s just one massive flaw in his main hypothesis. Using evolution as an argument against the existence of God is weak. God is supposed to have created the universe out of nothing. If he has the power and ability to do such a thing, you would also think he has the ability to create life with the ability to evolve and adapt. Almost in the same way as humans can program AI to react to things.

There were also a few terms I didn’t like and an overall hypothesis that feels very contrary to the point. The first point is one I don’t quite understand and revolves around the ‘ultimate bowing 747.’ Why is has to the be ‘the ultimate’ I have no idea. Anyway, the argument goes that if all the parts of a bowing 747 were in a scrap yard and a hurricane blew through it, what is the chance that the hurricane will put the Bowing 747 together? Essentially this boils down to if the universe was created by something, due to the complexity of said universe, its creator must be at least equally as complex. This isn’t an argument for God’s lack of existence – it’s an, ‘I don’t know but God doesn’t exist.’ It’s not so much the argument I don’t like but the term Ultimate Bowing 747.

The second part is where Dawkins goes on to talk about the ‘Mother of all Burkas,’ The idea being that people are blinded from the realities of science by the belief in God. Telling people that their beliefs are wrong is one thing, if backed with evidence, but telling them they are blind to science because they believe in something is total shit. I know that’s not the science way of saying it but who cares.

The last point I didn’t like was the way Dawkins takes credit for converting people to atheism. Converting is an interesting word, isn’t it? And also there are a few instances where he describes people, mostly Americans, of being afraid of coming out of the closet with their atheist beliefs… that’s an oxymoron in itself but it’s the best way of getting my point across. Writing a book called The God Delusion and trying to convince people to think the same way as you, is acting in the same vein as the thing you are trying to dissuade people from doing. It almost makes atheism seem like its own religion, one that we should all believe in.

Now from the start I haven’t been a believer in God. I believe that we don’t know enough about the universe to understand our own creation and we likely never will – in fact we shouldn’t even be contemplating our own existence – but all this book does is say that God isn’t real because you can’t know that he is. It’s not an argument and any evidence we can fathom from our own planet is not a proof of a lack of God.

Also, telling people that are blind and stupid probably isn’t the best way to get them to buy into what you are selling.

That said, I do agree with the concept even if I think the book goes about it in the wrong way. If there is no religion, there would be no religious wars, there would be less barriers towards social interaction and the world would generally be a better place. At least in theory. Personally, I think the human race is so destructive that even if we didn’t believe in a multitude of different things, we would still find other reasons to kill each other. Isn’t that a sad fact of life? And one that Dawkins doesn’t consider. If you succeed in abolishing religion, wouldn’t you be afraid of what might take its place? Food for thought.

The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins was published by Bantam Books in 2006. RRP £9.99 (Paperback)

Steve Alten - The Mayan Prophecy

Firstly I must say that I really enjoyed reading this book. At 629 pages long it’s one of the longest books I’ve read for a while but that’s only because the text is large and well spaced. A testimony to how much I enjoyed it is that it only took me a few days to crank through it and I struggled to put it down most of the time.

The Mayan Prophecy follows the story of Dominique Vasquez and, I can only imagine the symbolically named, Michael Gabriel (yes, not one angel reference but two) as they quest to save humanity from the end of the world. The plot goes into the reasons why the Mayan calendar ends in May 2012 and it’s actually quite well constructed in terms of reasoning. The main plot point focuses around the fact that it wasn’t actually an asteroid that killed the dinosaurs. It was actually an alien spaceship that has been lying dormant at the bottom of the ocean. It’s sending out a distress beacon which can only be picked up when the planets line up in a certain way which happens once every several thousand years but is stopped because some other aliens, who helped us build the pyramids and other shit, have prevented them from doing so. Until now.

There are a few popular culture references but because the book was written in 2001 depicting events in 2012, there is some creative license here. For example he writes about a Rolling Stones album called Past Our Prime and Dominique has a car that can test your alcohol level before you drive.

Despite my overall opinion that it’s a good book there were a lot of things that irked me. On page four we kick off with horrendous spelling errors where the non-word ‘qreat’ is used instead of ‘great’. Now, this section of the book is from a journal of one of the characters so it could be argued that this is the portrayal of typed up handwriting. However, even if this is the premise, I don’t agree with it. If you are going to write something for someone else to read, so not a journal, then spell the words right.

On page 56, there is a face scanner which is used to access a health facility as a security precaution. But it’s not referenced again or cleverly bypassed by taking off someone’s face or head to use it so it’s completely redundant in terms of the story. I’m not if this is meant to be another futuristic prediction over security protocols, but I’m sure this could have been less grandiose if so.

Some of the mathematics while fascinating, is not easy on the eyes and at one point, I found myself wondering if what I was reading was actually correct in terms of sentence structure. Unfortunately, Steve Alten doesn’t have a Clive Cussler character around to explain it to the dumbasses like me. One thing I do know though is that light years is a measure of distance, not time. Yet one of the doctor/scientist characters is either making a joke or doesn’t know this when they refer to light years as a measure of time.

There was one more major error I picked up on towards the middle of the book. Michael has magic sneakers that get written off of his feet but then magically get put back on again. And he ends up going barefoot through the alien spaceship. I’m not sure this is the best choice when journeying in to the unknown but to each their own, I guess.

The only other thing I noted was the dialogue kind of falls apart in the second half of the book. It’s almost like the characters stop caring about making sense with their dialogue. That said, it didn’t detract from my enjoyment of the story and I will definitely get the second one to see where it goes.

The Mayan Prophecy by Steve Alten was first published as Domain by Tor in 2001. RRP £6.99  (Paperback)

George R. R. Martin - A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms

With half the world wondering if they will ever see a sixth instalment of A Song of Ice and Fire it seems like a weird idea for an author to write a historic spin off title set in his captivating world of fantasy and sex. But there you go, we can’t access the mind of George and see what his ultimate plan is. I wasn’t really planning on reading this one either but I found myself short on books when going on holiday last year and it was two for one in the airport bookshop. Again.

Anyway, A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms follows the story of Ser Duncan the Tall who isn’t a knight at all. He just lied about it to everyone after the knight he was squiring for dies and didn’t make him a knight. It’s quite hilarious really.

On his way to a tournament to earn some knight points, he comes across a boy at an inn and despite telling him not to, the boy follows him to the tournament. At the tournament, he pisses off one of the Targaryen princes and ends up in a fight for his life which he wins but at the expense of another more favourable Targaryen who fought for Duncan. All the pieces fall quite nicely together as it turns out the little boy from the inn is also a Targaryen; Duncan is tasked with keeping him alive and off they go on an adventure together.

Now, I thought the entire book was going to be short stories about Dunc and Egg as they travel about Westeros as that’s what the blurb led me to believe. As it happens, they go to one keep, Dunc has one fight with a guy and then they go to a tournament and Dunc loses. That’s the entire storyline of the book. It doesn’t have a satisfactory ending and I’m left thinking that dear George simply cannot finish anything. I’m starting to think he watched Lost, saw how that shit ended and thought, ‘fuck this, I’m not ending anything in case in turns out like that.’ It’s the only logical explanation I can think of for writing 355 pages and not reaching a satisfactory conclusion. It’s not even a major cliff-hanger.

After doing a little research, I found out that it’s actually a collection of three short stories written at the same time as George was writing the Song of Ice and Fire series which makes sense in terms of the story breaks.

That’s not to say the content is bad. The book is actually quite funny. Duncan is an endearing character and happens to be one of the worst knights ever. It seems to be pure luck and sheer brute strength that keeps him and egg alive most of the time. Egg is also hilarious whenever he watches Dunc fight, shouting,’ Kill him! Get him! He’s right there! Kill him!’ exactly the kind of things you want to hear a young child shouting.

A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms is a very good and enjoyable read, it’s just the lack of any further developments that’s the disappointment. I’ll keep an eye out for other spin offs in the future but I’m not going to hold my breath while the television series is still going strong.

A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms by George R.R. Martin was published by HarperCollinsPublishers in 2015. RRP £8.99 (Paperback)

Legends I originally published by Tor Books in 1998.

Legends II originally published by Del Ray in 2004.

Warriors originally published by Tor Books in 2010.

Clive Cussler - Iceberg

After reading The Storm, I really wanted to give another Clive Cussler book a go. Iceberg takes us all the way back to 1976 in terms of publication and based on my experiences with more recent novels the 1970s seemed to be a much richer and exciting time for books.

Iceberg sees us following the trail of enigmatic airman, Dirk Pitt as he goes investigating a strange iceberg with a ship lodged in it. It transpires that the ship in the iceberg is just the start of a conspiracy which threatens to have him killed at every turn. Despite this, he continues his investigations against the wishes of his superiors and nearly gets killed a lot more. It’s fun romp from start to finish as well as being a page turner which I found difficult to put down.

My favourite part of reading this was being able to look back in time at what used to be acceptable language. There is one point in the story where Dirk pretends to be gay in order to throw off the main antagonist. While being ridiculously funny, this part is also very un-PC in that Dirk is referenced as a faggot on more than one occasion. If you try to put that in speech and narrative in this day and age, you’ll be screamed at by everyone.

Also, there appears to be some borderline misogynistic points towards some of the women but there is also a balance between this and the woman in question being strong and able to handle themselves. It’s weirdly ahead of its time in that regard.

It terms of writing errors, they are hard to spot when the writing is enjoyable, but one did stand out quite clearly. On page 308 a character is talking but the narrative says it’s a different character. Once again, I had to read the paragraph several times to work out what was going on which broke flow somewhat.

Dirk as a character is almost overpowered in terms of his abilities. He basically has the conditioning of a rhino and no amount of savage beatings can stop him climbing sheer cliffs and running for miles. Another thing that Dirk Pitt has is a superhuman ability to work stuff out. He’s no Jack Reacher by any means but he still manages to reach correct, and bizarre, conclusions with seemingly very little information. I suppose it’s all part of the allure of America’s answer to James Bond.

Another thing worth pointing out is that Cussler really knows his stuff. He has a clearly advanced knowledge of aircraft, how they work and the art of the possible and has a skill of explaining this to a dumbass like me in a way that makes the writing accessible rather than overloading it with jargon. He also has a knack of not taking shortcuts with his characters in this regard. If a character is very knowledgeable about a subject, there will be a character on hand who isn’t, who then says something like, ‘can you say that again in English please?’ It’s a device that works well throughout the book.

Iceberg is a really enjoyable 394 page read that I managed to smash through in just a couple of hours. I would recommend it to any fans of the action adventure genre.

Iceberg by Clive Cussler was published by Sphere Books in 1976. RRP £6.99 (Paperback)

Alyson Noël – Blue Moon

I bought this one with the first book in the series, Evermore, which I read several years ago. I didn’t read this second one in the series straight away and after about three pages of Blue Moon, I remembered why.

Before I go on to that though, there is something very puzzling about the start of the book. There’s no catch up on what happened last time at the start of the book – very strange for a second book in a series. This is even more dumbfounding when the book isn’t written in a way that recaps as you go along. I had to spend the first 50 pages of the 362 page book trying to remember who the fuck everyone was. And then I remembered. Twilight.

I was also tempted just to cut and paste my review of Evermore as I really doubt there is anything majorly different to say, but I did find myself laughing at some points simply because of the ridiculous language choices.

The first one I came across was on page 14. I’m not really sure what happens in this universe but apparently a party on a Friday night means the entire weekend is taken over and no other plans can be made. I get that Ever is trying to get out of doing something but she’s supposed to be a teenager with more than one brain cell so making an excuse for one out of three days seems pretty fucking stupid. But also how stupid is her aunt for not questioning it?!

Now I’ll move on to language choice. ‘Telepathically IM’ is phrase I never want to see used in a book again. It’s not just the way it looks on a page that bugs me but it feels like a tact-in attempt at being modern and relevant, however it’s only used once so what’s the point?

Also the word, if you can call it that, ‘omigod’ appears a few times in many different guises throughout. I don’t think I need to say anything more about this. Other than it nearly made me throw up in my mouth when I read it.

There are also several narrative repetitions throughout the book. The most prevalent ones are referring to hairstyles as ‘bangs’ to the point where I wasn’t sure there was another hairstyle in the universe. The other is Ever constantly pressing her lips together. She does it so much, they are probably white from the pressure.

As a side note, Damen is a blatant rip-off of Edward from Twilight. I’m not saying that’s a good thing but what’s most certainly not a good thing is the copying of the exact way in which Edward drives - unnaturally fast with ridiculous reflexes. What I also don’t like about this is the fact that it’s driving. You are limited by the car, you can have all the reflexes in the world but you can’t be psychic and your physical abilities don’t really impact on car brakes, tyre grip and suspension impact so it’s pretty much a load of crap.

Also, by Chapter 19 it seemed pretty obvious what was going to happen and this is probably my biggest criticism of the story itself. The whole thing is driven by Ever’s terrible decisions which, based on what happens, are almost carried out for the sake of creating a story. It feels very forced a lot of time and the way the character has been developed, I don’t believe she would make some of the choices she makes.

There are two other things that pissed me off, the first being Ever’s teachers. There is no way in hell that if teachers caught wind of a student stalking another student to the point where they commit the crime of breaking and entering that they would not call the police or at least call their guardian. This conveniently doesn’t happen for no other reason than to allow the story to continue.

There is a time travel element which had me wetting myself down to the lack of thought that was put into it. In this world, you can travel back in time and change events that happened, as well as carrying notes (this is just fucking stupid because it’s a mental time travel rather than a physical one) and effecting a change in character in a past self for no reason that can be explained in a way that makes sense.

In summary, and this is quite harsh, it feels like the book has been written from a sixteen year old’s perspective almost because it’s the easy option and less thought needs to go in to the writing because a sixteen year old may not necessarily think of certain things. But that’s no excuse for lazy juxtaposition, poor character development and writing about things like time travel without understanding the art of the possible. This last one, I wouldn’t have a problem with if it was explainable in its own context but it isn’t.

Blue Moon by Alyson Noel was published by St Martin’s Press in 2009. RRP £6.99 (Paperback)

Clive Cussler and Graham Brown - The Storm

After reading Runemarks anything would have been an improvement in terms of reading pleasure. I had read some Clive Cussler before but this one was written a long time after the first book I read; and with a co-author which wasn’t something I’d seen before.

The Storm follows, for the most part, the story of Kurt Austin as he investigates the mysterious death of some of his NUMA colleagues. His search eventually leads him to face off against Jinn al-Khalif, a crazy but somehow intelligent terrorist on a quest to control Asia’s water supply using tiny robots to dictate the sea temperatures and thus the direction of rain clouds. Seriously.

All in all it’s very enjoyable book if not slightly disconnected from the title. There is one storm that takes place during the prologue and the mysterious connection between the prologue and the main story is not revealed until the very of end of the 424 page book.

One thing I spend time fussing over right from the beginning was exactly how old Jinn is. In 1967 he is old or strong enough to be able to shoot a revolver at a man. Later in the book this age is revealed as 4. But what I still don’t get is the point of having these scenes happen this long ago. There is another character, Sabah, who was friends with Jinn’s father. Even assuming that Sabah is 20 in 1967, that makes him 69 in 2012. For me, this felt a little too old for the region and the type of jobs this guy was doing in order to assist Jinn in carrying out his mental plan.

I didn’t have any major issues with the story other than this. My biggest criticism of the book is the use of perspective. A lot of the time, perspectives will shift back and forth over the course of pages, and sometimes even within the same paragraph. This makes it hard to follow what’s going on in places when the story is coming at you from multiple directions.

There was one instance of using a ‘/’ in a character’s dialogue and I couldn’t get on board with this. I mean, how would you say what you were saying with a slash in the middle? If it were me, I would actually say the word ‘slash’ but I’m not particularly normal. The sentence in question would be better suited with a comma.

There’s one other small bit of story that I raised my eyebrows over. At one point, Kurt sneaks on to a plane and hides in the toilet. No one knows he’s on board but he still puts his feet up on the toilet. It doesn’t really make sense. If no one knows he is there, he has no reason to hide. It’s not like someone is going to look under the door to see if the toilet is occupied. Unless these guards check under toilets doors on a plane looking for people that they don’t know are there? But as I said, it’s minor.

I enjoyed The Storm and it will definitely encourage me to pick up a few more Cussler books in the future.

The Storm by Clive Cussler was published by G. P. Putnam’s Sons in 2012. RRP £7.99 (Paperback)