Michael Corleone

The circumstances under which you read a book are important. A couple of weeks back I wrote about how well When Gravity Fails by George Alec Effinger had aged. In an area of the genre prone to temporal attrition, this book has stood up extremely well and was every bit as enjoyable to read as it was when I first read it.

But When Gravity Fails was the first book of a trilogy. The other two books are A Fire in the Sun and The Exile Kiss. I remembered them as being good but not really at the same level as the first one. A common enough complaint I guess. But this is where circumstance come in. You see I read those books during a weekend at a group outing to a beach house. The organiser of the outing happened to bring them along and I grabbed the chance to read them while they were lying about - I hadn't known they existed until that point. Having a whole bunch of people around with various "weekend away" activities happening is not exactly ideal reading conditions. I re-read those two books yesterday while I was home sick. Lying in bed trying to avoid any sudden movement is brilliant reading time even if you don't feel too great. The quality focus I brought this time reflects in my opinion of the books.

I enjoyed each of the books individually every bit as much as the first one this time. But more than that I realised that as a collected work they are something even better. You can read them as three cyber-noir stories in an interesting setting with a clever protagonist, interesting characters, clever social commentary and good stories. But what I saw this time was the complete character progression across the series. The building of a character and the reforging of a morality that unfolded is perhaps the best thing of all about these books and I just missed out on it all last time because of when and where I read them.