Bruce Sterling on Invisible Armies: "People who aren't morons and like thriller novels ought to read this."
Invisible Armies by Jon Evans can be read for free on the Harper Collins website. Chairman Bruce says: "That's a pretty good book, actually. It's kind of a tough-as-nails technothriller from a leftie Seattle 99er perspective. People who aren't morons and like thriller novels ought to read this." Invisible Armies at Amazon.com
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One out of two for me! Oh well, let's see what Stephen King's written today....
"People who aren't morons."
Pmps prck.
too bad it require Flash.
They still need to get a clue on how to do things.
Perhaps I'm stupid, but I can't find a link to download in HTML, RTF, PDF, or plain text. In fact, I can't even see the inside of the book because it seems to require a version of Flash that I don't have.
If someone from HarperCollins would like to fix their mistake, I might take a look at it. As it is, tough noogies.
(And what sort of person is going to try out a novel in some stupid proprietary one-page-per-click, fixed-window-size, fixed-font-size format, anyway? (I'm guessing here, but it fits with the general silliness of Flash wielders.) I read etext fiction on a PalmOS cellphone or a Nokia N800, not on a desktop. Sheesh.)
Damn, noisy, bloody Flash. It's a book! It doesn't need sound effects! Ridiculous!
I read the first few pages with much anticipation only to find ignorant nonsense such as all the Bajaj motorcycles being unreliable (did the author flit through India with his eyes and mind closed for his book research?), rural women who have *never* seen a woman on a motorcycle (surely there are many villagers here familiar with those TV advertisements featuring girls in leather on motorycles), and moronic sounding Indian policemen grunting in broken English "Give me passport" (even rural policemen here do know the grammar well enough to say 'Give me your passport".) Ugh.
This is smart writing indeed as he knows his western readers (who are not morons eh) will as always be secretly delighted to find the East painted in such an inferior light.
Obviously I stopped reading after the first few pages and filed Jon Evans away in my little blacklist of authors to avoid. Maybe he should stick to techno-thrillers set solely in the west.
487 pages, and each one of them a single frame of flash video. I was seeing how difficult it would be to download, but from the sound of it, it might not be worth the time anyway.
Being easily plyable for something interesting to read, I immediately followed the link. A flash(tm) 'book' makes me throw up a little in my mouth,
while crying.
On the positive side, the use of flash is reflective of the publisher's judgment and the book is probably junk anyway.
Thanks for saving me the time Harpers-Collins.
I enjoyed this book. Jon Evans is a great writer and a very fine human.
I read this book (in printed form) and really enjoyed this book. I also enjoyed his other book, Dark Places. I've been waiting for that one to be turned into a film.
we're sure you are, Jon....
People who aren't morons like their free books in something other than online only formats.
@buddy66: I know the author, and if he was going pimp his own book in the comments he wouldn't do it anonymously.
It's a good book; shame HarperCollins can't get their heads around online reading models. If this experiment fails to sell more dead tree versions they'll probably conclude that "letting people read it for free doesn't work" rather than "hey, maybe our online publishing model is flawed."
I don't think the intention was to let you read the book for free, so they probably don't care that it's in a format inconvenient for you. That was the point. The "web release" was designed to give you a limited teaser so you have to go buy a dead-tree copy if you want to actually read the book.
Kind of like those shareware softwares that let you run the whole app unencumbered, but only for 20 minutes.
Of course, I don't buy books or software, but I do recommend a lot of both to other people who do buy them. And I don't recommend software I'm not using or books I haven't read. And I can't use software that quits after 20 minutes or read books I have to read online in my browser.
So I don't recommend those. And since I was never in the market for buying them, the author has gained nothing and lost the potential for free advertising in the form of my personal recommendations.
I've come to realise a lot of BBers hate book advertising.
If someone or the company that represents them doesn't get it right then they'll not buy the book or ever read the author.
Which is too bad.
And no I'm not the author. Maybe they don't hate it. Maybe they just bitch a lot.
I read a small portion of this, seems like a good read to me. If I see it at the library I'll pick it up.