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Nov. 1st, 2024 02:13 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
evening_tsarNeeding a break from the impressive but lead-heavy Cancer Ward and finding Such is My Beloved intolerably squirmy awkward, I picked up Work Done for Hire by Joe Haldeman, hoping for something more distracting.
Yes and No.
Haldeman is an intelligent writer, whose Forever War is absolutely an SF classic. But I've not been blown away by much else he's done. His concepts are always fascinating, his details are complete, but he always seems to run out of steam toward the end, as if he just wasn't sure how to wrap it all up.
Work Done is a lot like that. The setup is irresistible - struggling author gets too-good-to-be-true miracle offer and of course things go wrong - but the ending feels abrupt and unsatisfying. And I really wasn't happy with the last-minute explanation for the whole scenario, which kinda rendered the whole thing nonsensical. The omniscient bad-guy is a trope I particularly loathe, and Haldeman implies there's a reasonable explanation for it, until he tells us there isn't. That annoyed me.
The book within-a-book approach is kind of abandoned two-thirds through, and ended up feeling pointless - why bother? They don't come together or influence each other at all, except for a rather half-assed analogy at the end.
The book within a book? Nasty serial killer stuff. The sort that certain imaginations glory in coming up with.
Such things often dip into the realm of the impossible - the better to scare people, or shock and disgust them at any rate - Haldeman keeps it almost plausible. Almost. It's as unpleasant as anything I've read, and weirdly morbidly fascinating because of it. Such is the way. I wonder if Haldeman is actually trying to satirize a certain kind of sensationalist paperback that were popular in the 80's and 90's. The book-within-a book conceit would allow him to do so without having to commit to such a work in earnest. It would save him the trouble of figuring out what to do with such a book, where the novelty is likely to wear out after the first few chapters.
Trouble is, there's every indication he had that exact same trouble with the main book.
Oh well.
Yes and No.
Haldeman is an intelligent writer, whose Forever War is absolutely an SF classic. But I've not been blown away by much else he's done. His concepts are always fascinating, his details are complete, but he always seems to run out of steam toward the end, as if he just wasn't sure how to wrap it all up.
Work Done is a lot like that. The setup is irresistible - struggling author gets too-good-to-be-true miracle offer and of course things go wrong - but the ending feels abrupt and unsatisfying. And I really wasn't happy with the last-minute explanation for the whole scenario, which kinda rendered the whole thing nonsensical. The omniscient bad-guy is a trope I particularly loathe, and Haldeman implies there's a reasonable explanation for it, until he tells us there isn't. That annoyed me.
The book within-a-book approach is kind of abandoned two-thirds through, and ended up feeling pointless - why bother? They don't come together or influence each other at all, except for a rather half-assed analogy at the end.
The book within a book? Nasty serial killer stuff. The sort that certain imaginations glory in coming up with.
Such things often dip into the realm of the impossible - the better to scare people, or shock and disgust them at any rate - Haldeman keeps it almost plausible. Almost. It's as unpleasant as anything I've read, and weirdly morbidly fascinating because of it. Such is the way. I wonder if Haldeman is actually trying to satirize a certain kind of sensationalist paperback that were popular in the 80's and 90's. The book-within-a book conceit would allow him to do so without having to commit to such a work in earnest. It would save him the trouble of figuring out what to do with such a book, where the novelty is likely to wear out after the first few chapters.
Trouble is, there's every indication he had that exact same trouble with the main book.
Oh well.
