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f18's review
I thought I wanted more female characters in the last book but Dihana was apparently an exception. These are insufferable. Nashara and Pepper strike me as similar character types (of the SO COOL mould) and I only barely tolerated Pepper because he was a side character.
I'm also not interested enough in the Satrapy to stick it out for what reviewers have said amounts to a third of the book to get back to Nanagada.
katfeete's review
4.0
Crystal Rain was good. This was better: a really excellent followup, with all the excellent command of character, aliens, and all-around sf wonderful weirdness, and far less of the plot lags. I ate it rather quickly. :)
allisonthurman's review
4.0
Buckell has this knack for creating memorable worlds - this book includes a tube shaped world manufactured city in which people live on the inside, and if I remember correctly, introduces the "lamina" that projects information on anything the wearer/user sees.
I remember the imagery more than the plot, but it has been a couple of years.
I remember the imagery more than the plot, but it has been a couple of years.
harryr's review
2.0
Ragamuffin is my book from Grenada for the Read The World challenge. It’s a science fiction novel about a universe where humans share space with various other species and can travel from world to world via wormholes. Some of them come from a world which was settled by people from the Caribbean, hence the title and a certain amount of West Indian-inflected dialogue.
It was quite entertaining, I guess; I’m not really much of an SF fan. I read a lot at one stage because my brother used to read them, but since we don’t live in the same house anymore, I’ve largely stopped. I think the most interesting thing about SF is when it’s used to explore ideas: so for example, Iain M Banks’s Culture novels are in a sense a contribution to the Utopian tradition, and among other things, they raise the question of what human society would be like in a situation with limitless material wealth.
Ragamuffin is not really a novel of ideas in that way; it’s inventive enough, but it’s inventive within the standard tropes of science fiction. In a way this kind of space opera is really futuristic fantasy; swords and sorcery, with bionic implants taking the place of magical powers. I always thought it was interesting, incidentally, that two of the most popular works of C20th narrative, Lord of the Rings and Star Wars, have such a medieval shape to them. But maybe that’s too much of a detour for this post.
Anyway, sub-genres of SF aside, what really makes the difference between good novels and bad ones is not the genre, it’s always the quality of the writing. Which in this book was perfectly reasonable but nothing remarkable. Even though it’s not the kind of book I usually read, I picked it up thinking it might be a bit of treat to read some escapist fiction. But it never really grabbed me.
It was quite entertaining, I guess; I’m not really much of an SF fan. I read a lot at one stage because my brother used to read them, but since we don’t live in the same house anymore, I’ve largely stopped. I think the most interesting thing about SF is when it’s used to explore ideas: so for example, Iain M Banks’s Culture novels are in a sense a contribution to the Utopian tradition, and among other things, they raise the question of what human society would be like in a situation with limitless material wealth.
Ragamuffin is not really a novel of ideas in that way; it’s inventive enough, but it’s inventive within the standard tropes of science fiction. In a way this kind of space opera is really futuristic fantasy; swords and sorcery, with bionic implants taking the place of magical powers. I always thought it was interesting, incidentally, that two of the most popular works of C20th narrative, Lord of the Rings and Star Wars, have such a medieval shape to them. But maybe that’s too much of a detour for this post.
Anyway, sub-genres of SF aside, what really makes the difference between good novels and bad ones is not the genre, it’s always the quality of the writing. Which in this book was perfectly reasonable but nothing remarkable. Even though it’s not the kind of book I usually read, I picked it up thinking it might be a bit of treat to read some escapist fiction. But it never really grabbed me.
brownbetty's review
4.0
I found myself wishing someone would make Ragamuffin into a movie. Or rather, a mini-series, because making it a movie would require remove about three quarters of the plot, but I think most of it could fit into a mini-series. It's got a very cinematic quality. Nashara, the protagonist, does not indulge in a lot of introspection. When faced with problems, she generally responds with the extremely precise application of violence, or perhaps more accurately, forcefully applied kinetic energy.
It could be a bit like the BSG mini-series: a cast of about a dozen, spanning several planets, rebellion, aliens with foreign agendas, humans with sketchy ethics, and the future of the human race in the balance.
I don't usually read books and think "someone should make this into a movie!" I once read, and google is unhelpful in determining the source, a quote the effect of "Having one's book made into a movie is like having one's oxen made into bullion cubes." This seems about right to me; generally speaking, I like the book better than any movie made of it. And anyway, movies are very limiting: they have something like ninety minutes to capture 500 pages, and inevitably, much is lost. All the quite bits, the bits that aren't really about plot, just about story, the slow building of characters, all that is sacrificed to get in a coherent plot squeezed into the timeframe.
Ragamuffin, however, is missing a lot of that in the first place: at one point, Nashara locks herself in the cabin of a spaceship with a captain she mistrusts, and holds her at gunpoint for a week while they travel through space. If I had written that scene, it would take three chapters, and be fraught with sublimated sexual tension even if they never said a word; Buckell deals with the intervening week in a paragraph.
That isn't necessarily a criticism, since obviously I didn't write the book, so I can't exactly complain that it's different than I would have done, but I prefer slightly more in the way of exploring interpersonal dynamics of relationships. But I think it would make a rip-roaring offering on the SF channel.
Of course, trying to put this book on screen would mutilate it beyond recognition since almost no characters in the book are white. There's no way that would survive the transition.
(Re: the cover, it's actually a recognizable scene from the book, and Nashara is easily recognizable! (I do feel it was unnecessary to both portray her with D-cups and leave her jumpsuit unzipped to the navel.))
It could be a bit like the BSG mini-series: a cast of about a dozen, spanning several planets, rebellion, aliens with foreign agendas, humans with sketchy ethics, and the future of the human race in the balance.
I don't usually read books and think "someone should make this into a movie!" I once read, and google is unhelpful in determining the source, a quote the effect of "Having one's book made into a movie is like having one's oxen made into bullion cubes." This seems about right to me; generally speaking, I like the book better than any movie made of it. And anyway, movies are very limiting: they have something like ninety minutes to capture 500 pages, and inevitably, much is lost. All the quite bits, the bits that aren't really about plot, just about story, the slow building of characters, all that is sacrificed to get in a coherent plot squeezed into the timeframe.
Ragamuffin, however, is missing a lot of that in the first place: at one point, Nashara locks herself in the cabin of a spaceship with a captain she mistrusts, and holds her at gunpoint for a week while they travel through space. If I had written that scene, it would take three chapters, and be fraught with sublimated sexual tension even if they never said a word; Buckell deals with the intervening week in a paragraph.
That isn't necessarily a criticism, since obviously I didn't write the book, so I can't exactly complain that it's different than I would have done, but I prefer slightly more in the way of exploring interpersonal dynamics of relationships. But I think it would make a rip-roaring offering on the SF channel.
Of course, trying to put this book on screen would mutilate it beyond recognition since almost no characters in the book are white. There's no way that would survive the transition.
(Re: the cover, it's actually a recognizable scene from the book, and Nashara is easily recognizable! (I do feel it was unnecessary to both portray her with D-cups and leave her jumpsuit unzipped to the navel.))
wayfarer's review
3.0
I didn't lik this one as much as the first one; I started to wonder if anyone was worth sympathizing with. I grew up on a steady diet of Asian classics, anime, and cyberpunk, so it's not like I require unambiguously good heroes and mustache-twirling villains, but I felt uncomfortable with the violence of all sides here. It's well written overall, and the world is well constructed. At some point I'll probably pick up the third one to see if I'll keep going ot not.
jetamors's review
3.0
I think I wanted to like this more than I actually liked it. The worldbuilding is awesome and I liked a lot of the characters, but the first 2/3rds of it felt like an endless infodump of telling and barely showing.
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