Cinnabar
Reviewed date: 2021 Mar 5
176 pages
Overall I wasn't a fan of this. It's too vulgar, too transgressive, too avant garde (or something) for my taste. It's well written and could be the perfect book for some. Not me.
Jade Blue
Incomprehensible and unsatisfactory.
The Road to Cinnabar
Decent gimmick story.
Gray Matters
Endless parties, eternal life, ennui, mindwipe, fake people and artificial love. Inscrutable and unsatisfactory.
The Legend of Cougar Lou Landis
An unhappy woman commits murder by memory theft, imagining herself to be a hero a-la Robin Hood: stealing memories from talented successful people and giving them to poor cripples.
Hayes and the Heterogyne
Harry Vincent Blake is pulled from 1963 to Cinnabar. He learns a great deal about life and love; his mind is opened. He returns to 1963 and makes an impact. A satisfactory story. Good, even, if a bit too focused on sex. And the gender stuff may have seemed exotic at the time, but in the 2020s it feels a little quaint compared to the trans wokeness of American culture.
Years Later
Vile. I’m not in the mood for a sick old man who murders and dismembers for fun and pleasure.
I don’t think I like this book. If I’m going to read shocking perverted filth it should at least be thought-provoking or eye-opening. This is not.
Sharking Down
Timnath Obregon recreates a giant extinct shark (named Sidhe) which attacks his rival Grimdahl. The computer Terminex orders them to settle their feud by combat, so Grimdahl creates a resurrectronic shark (named the Black Avenger) to fight Sidhe. The two sharks circle each other and swim out to sea as friends. I don’t rightly know what to make of this story.
Brain Terminal
Timnath Obregon, Tourmaline, Jade Blue, Torre, and Wylie Cafter journey to city center to confront Terminex, the central computer that is intent to destroying Cinnabar.