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woahno's review against another edition
3.0
My father-in-law gave me this book to read after we had a conversation about some of the sci-fi books I had been reading. So a shout out to him for putting this book in my hands.
This is one of those mass market paperbacks that was published before I was born. It has plenty of creases and yellowed pages and a light musty smell to it. I feel like that in itself is a large part of the experience. I find that to be a really cool aspect of reading and the shared experience we readers partake in.
Things that I liked.
The concept of this novel was the reason I read it and it turned out to be the main draw as well. I probably spent more time thinking about how this book was written and edited than I did about the actual story it was telling. I even threw together a quick spreadsheet to see which author wrote which chapters and who wrote the most pages for this story. It is Edward Bryant for the record. He takes up 69 pages of this edition and sit atop the page count.
For those unfamiliar, the Berserker series is Fred Saberhagen's brain child and this book is the ninth installment. He wrote the opening chapter and the closing chapter and then he wrote short chapters in between each of the short stories the other authors wrote. These interlude chapters serve to tie everything together and grant some kind of coherent story line. He is also credited as an editor which makes me assume that he had some interesting conversations with these other authors. In today's world I would expect some kind of podcast or mini documentary to go with the book. Especially considering the star studded cast of writers.
On the actual content of the book, it has a great and consistent atmosphere and theme. While many of the stories are rather different they all give you a sense of large scale space exploration and the terror and somewhat helplessness of facing down a berserker. I especially enjoyed the chapters by Roger Zelazny and Edward Bryant.
Things that I did not like.
As you would think based on the concept, this book is a bit up and down. Some chapters I liked, others I did not. It can be jarring at times jumping from one story to the next. Adding to that, for about the first half of the novel I felt like this was a hopeless endeavor. The bleak outlook and shear dominance of the berserkers did not hook me right away. Maybe this was because I haven't read any of the other books in the series and I was not familiar with anything going into it but it was hard to get into at the start. I did get into eventually and then it was smooth sailing from then on.
Altogether, I liked this book. It wasn't great to me. The concept outweighed the execution but it can serve as a good conversation starter because of it.
This is one of those mass market paperbacks that was published before I was born. It has plenty of creases and yellowed pages and a light musty smell to it. I feel like that in itself is a large part of the experience. I find that to be a really cool aspect of reading and the shared experience we readers partake in.
Things that I liked.
The concept of this novel was the reason I read it and it turned out to be the main draw as well. I probably spent more time thinking about how this book was written and edited than I did about the actual story it was telling. I even threw together a quick spreadsheet to see which author wrote which chapters and who wrote the most pages for this story. It is Edward Bryant for the record. He takes up 69 pages of this edition and sit atop the page count.
For those unfamiliar, the Berserker series is Fred Saberhagen's brain child and this book is the ninth installment. He wrote the opening chapter and the closing chapter and then he wrote short chapters in between each of the short stories the other authors wrote. These interlude chapters serve to tie everything together and grant some kind of coherent story line. He is also credited as an editor which makes me assume that he had some interesting conversations with these other authors. In today's world I would expect some kind of podcast or mini documentary to go with the book. Especially considering the star studded cast of writers.
On the actual content of the book, it has a great and consistent atmosphere and theme. While many of the stories are rather different they all give you a sense of large scale space exploration and the terror and somewhat helplessness of facing down a berserker. I especially enjoyed the chapters by Roger Zelazny and Edward Bryant.
Things that I did not like.
As you would think based on the concept, this book is a bit up and down. Some chapters I liked, others I did not. It can be jarring at times jumping from one story to the next. Adding to that, for about the first half of the novel I felt like this was a hopeless endeavor. The bleak outlook and shear dominance of the berserkers did not hook me right away. Maybe this was because I haven't read any of the other books in the series and I was not familiar with anything going into it but it was hard to get into at the start. I did get into eventually and then it was smooth sailing from then on.
Altogether, I liked this book. It wasn't great to me. The concept outweighed the execution but it can serve as a good conversation starter because of it.
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