Not surprisingly, Banks plays a bit with the form of the storytelling in Inversions.  He tells the stories of two people in different kingdoms, alternating between them for each chapter.  Not unique, to be sure, but not a simple, straightforward tale, either.

Honestly, I wasn’t terribly impressed with this one.  The story was average; not one I found immensely gripping.  I did enjoy piecing together the surrounding world from things mentioned in passing by the characters, and figuring out things about Vosill and DeWar via the same methods, but there wasn’t a whole lot of depth the the information derived thereby.  Nor did I really feel the characters were all that interesting.

Banks has certainly written books I liked more.  This was a decent read; not bad, certainly, but nothing special either.

Just a brief note or two below the spoiler barrier.

Spoilers

Well, it’s clear (to me, at least) that this is actually a Culture book, merely told from the other side.  Even so, I don’t think it added much that we couldn’t already have figured out about the Culture.  One could argue that it wasn’t meant to, but I suspect that Banks specifically intended to tell a tale of the Culture’s interference from the point of view of those being interfered with.

As further spoilage, I nailed early on the fact that Oelph’s master was Adlain.  (Despite toying with the thought for a bit that it might be DeWar.)  I wasn’t expecting the narrator of the other half of the story to have been Perrund, though.

Yet another Terry Pratchett book.  Specifically, another City Watch book, though much of this one takes place in Überwald.  No witches are visible, though there are plenty of werewolves, dwarves, vampires, and Igors.

There is, as usual, a good story.  Being a City Watch book, it’s largely a detective story, with the details swirling around the coronation of a new dwarven king, a very revered piece of dwarf bread, and the politics of the region, including the involvement of Sergeant Angua’s parents.  And, of course, plenty of very funny bits; Pratchett has a tendency to make me laugh out loud while on the bus.

I had worried that Terry Pratchett was losing his plain humor in being overly satirical, but The Fifth Elephant is merely a funny, well-told story with satirical elements running through some of the details.  (Well, “politics” is a pretty big detail, but still…)

Yet another Terry Pratchett book I’m happy to add to my collection.

Andrew Lipson’s LEGO Page has some pretty impressive constructions made from LEGO bricks.  The mathematical models are nice, but some of the reproductions of Escher drawings are just amazing.  (Even if he did cheat a little on “Waterfall”.)

Yes, this page is looking pretty ugly at the moment.  Next task is to clean things up and move to a more CSS-based setup.  I can’t guarantee things will come out looking good, but at least it’ll be consistent.

This book forms the third in Sharon Shinn’s Samaria trilogy, being preceeded by Archangel and Jovah's Angel.  I still think Archangel is the best of the set, though The Alleluia Files is a fairly decent book.

The Alleluia Files again contains many trappings of romance, though there are two romances this time, and consequently neither is as well developed as previous books’.  For me, the one in Archangel is still my favorite, which I realized is probably because of the way Shinn weaves music throughout the romance and the rest of the book.  It’s still a very important part of this book, but not to the same degree as in Archangel.

I’m afraid I’ll have to do the majority of my discussion of the book below the spoiler barrier, since I don’t want to spoil either this or Archangel for those that have not read them.

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The development of technology in The Alleluia Files doesn’t feel to me to be completely believable, but Shinn mostly paints it in broad brushes, leaving plenty of room for readers to supply their own details.

Mostly, I continued reading to see how the story developed; to see what would happen.  I did enjoy following the characters, hoping they would be okay and wondering how the world would take the truth of Jehova, but I was more enraptured by the sheer tension of not knowing how the story of Archangel would turn.  I suppose I’m committing the error of not letting a book stand on its own merits, instead comparing it to preceeding works, but for me, Archangel very much overshadows The Alleluia Files.  Well, it’s still a good read.

One thing did bother me, though.  An earlier book claimed that Samaria was uninhabitable by humans in its normal state, and only unceasing care by Jehova kept it livable, with the Gloria serving as a renewal of its instructions.  In that explanation, the thunderbolts that would fall to destroy mountains and cities were natural features of the planet that had to be counteracted by human (well, angel) intervention.  For this book, that somehow turned into Jehova using the Gloria as a metric for the harmony of people, counting their presence on the Plain of Sharon by their Kisses, and firing its weapons on the people if they didn’t behave properly.  There are problems with each explanation, of course, but it’s very disconcerting to have such inconsistencies between books.