vaughnmac

I read The Sign of the Book right after reading ROCKETS IN URSA MAJOR and exactly like ROCKETS IN URSA MAJOR it feels as if the book was written more than twenty years earlier. There's nothing wrong with releasing now a book that was written back then. But in the first chapters the author, as character and narrator, thinks back on how things have changed with the ubiquitous presence of the Web. That places us in the late 90s or early 21st century, right? The trouble here is that all through the novel many of the sub-plots depend on things like the absence of cell phones. Oopsie! Cell phones became ubiquitous pretty much in step with Web ubiquity. If you tell me that there's one in this universe and then present me with the absolute absence of the other, then you've lost me. I'm too busy finding odd things as I read, to get really absorbed by the plot or the characters. Then, like many a good detective fic writer the author creates nice "atmosphere" details at a certain technological level. But that level has changed in the last twenty years all across the USA. People in remote Colorado communities have cable TV or satellite TV now. They also have GPS systems. All that nice "atmosphere" seems mind-bogglingly fake now.

2023-02-23 12:20