Fast Moving: Unreal dialogue.
595859
I found the setting for this novel very interesting from the beginning: a dystopian story of teenagers struggling to survive in Australia. Events occur mainly around the city of Melbourne, but there was not enough description of places in and around Melbourne in order to distinguish the desolation of it from any other place in the world. As a citizen of the UK it would have added something extra to the tale, having never visited Australia.
A (nuclear?) war has wiped out most of the human population from Earth and the survivors are grouped into communities that forage in ruined cities for essential resources, such as metals. The main protagonist is Ethan who leads one of the foraging groups. Ethan has special powers, which, we are led to understand, have come about through genetic mutation. Since mutations within the population are meant to be obliterated by those in authority he has to conceal them even though his powers help him survive all kinds of situations. There are predatory mutants outside the communities who wear human bones as armour and who attack regularly, and are a constant threat to anyone leaving the protective walls of the communities.
I liked the general plot and the main characters of Ethan and Nanako, with their love story providing a sweet side issue to contrast with the tension between the foraging team and the Custodians. The Custodians are the autocratic, pseudo-militaristic police force that appear to behave with impunity. Unfortunately, I did not care very much about any of the characters apart from Ethans younger sister, who was sick, and the long-suffering but feisty Nanako. This was because either they were too thinly drawn or, like Ethan, their dialogue was too unrealistic. This is a novel aimed at young adults and there were too many times when the teenage Ethan spoke like a very staid fifty-year old.
The themes of his super powers, the evil Skel, and the source of authority for the Custodians could have been developed in greater detail. However, I thought the story had pace and demanded that you turned the page for more. I realise that this was the first book in a series but it ended too abruptly for my liking, and the lack of essential detail in the interesting areas described previously was unsatisfying to this reader.
617326
"True names", predates this pseudonymous age, by twenty years, but it seems remarkably current.  Vinge, predicts and anticipates a lot of technology, and I am looking forward to neural browsers!  Perhaps more important, is the ethical question of whether one that avoids the temptation of self interest, should be trusted .. indefinitely, even if in a non-physical form?  There is some talk about making this into a film, so that would be exciting!
The "Apprentice" is perhaps most significant for its collaboration, with then wife, Joan Vinge.  The piece "The Ungoverned", is the connection between "The Peace War" and "Marooned in real time" (the "Across realtime" edition includes that story).  Vinge's introductions are a delight in themselves, and the way he approaches "the singularity" (a particular state of  technological self awareness) from different angles is thought provoking.
3507617
The author paints pictures with words. The characters are well developed, and there is a surprising amount of dry humor in the dialogue. The creative vulgarity is especially delightful.
3733184
Overall, I enjoyed this. It's a fast read, but it's not very deep. The chapters basically alternate between Eli and Harper in 1st POV, but both sound very similar. A problem a find very common to most authors who use this technique. When alternating POVs like this one must change the vocabulary, phrasing, and rhythm in order to change the character's voice. Few authors convincingly do this.

Eli and Harper's on again/off again relationship was convincing until the end. Come on Eli. You're into her. She's getting released from being a cadet soon enough and you brush her off. It's a bit old.

The compound was mostly convincing, but some of the jargon seemed off. These are people who have been locked away for at least 50 years, yet they sound just like the early 21st century. Plus, young adults who've never seen the world prior the war understand pre-war contexts?

Seems like it was easier for the author to write about our present day world in a compound rather than imagine how language and slang would change in 50+ years after being locked away.

I'm reading the second book and I'm thinking what I like about this first book, its quickness, its lightness, its somewhat compelling characters, might be dissipating. Will update soon.

 I forgot to mention how I found the author's tendency to narrate what the other characters were feeling through the POV of Eli and Harper. This wasn't done with a "gee, I wonder how they're feeling" but a certain confidence as if the character knew without doubt how the other people felt without the reader seeing any evidence of it. Don't tell me, show me. With 1st person, there's no way another person can know how another person is feeling or what they are thinking without the other person stating it.
2322605
I don't know how dialogue and acting could be more forced and unnatural than they are in this film. And those scenes where people run into frame, shout something excitedly, and run right back out again! They just had to be the inspiration for that scene in "Airplane!" where Lloyd Bridges gives the first emergency orders to his staff. "The Last Voyage" is no doubt the reason, too, why Robert Stack was cast in the Abrahams/Zucker spoof.
4479893
The book starts off fast and dives into parallel words of real and surreal environments. Unique and intriguing with an original prose of intense imagination.
You know this book will be made into a movie.
1529626
Asa Avdic's extremely clever "The Dying Game" can best be described as a future alt-history locked-room mystery.

The alternate world is quickly established in an encyclopedia article in which we learn that apparently the Berlin Wall did not come down, and that the Soviet's struck back in something called the Wall Coup that eventually resulted in the eastern bloc gaining control of Scandinavia (with the exception of Denmark).

In this future alt-hist Sweden in  March 2037,  the heroine, Anna Francis, is given a mission. In an isolated secure safehouse on a nonexistent island called Isola, Anna is to evaluate candidates for a triple-secret intelligence agency called RAN.

Her mission, which is to last 48 hours, requires her to fake her own death. This she does. Naturally there's a spanner in the works: a storm cuts them off from the mainland, because the boat that will come to pick them up won't be able to dock.

The setup is long, and maybe just when you think "get on with it already" it does. And that happens when an old colleague of Anna's appears on the island as one of the candidates. Quickly, you're introduced to the other candidates at a dinner. And then Anna gets ready to be "murdered" and the story finally takes off. Bit by bit the puzzle is revealed. Bit by bit you realize why that setup was so long. A subplot about Anna's relationship with her mother, who takes care of Anna's daughter, looks like it's going to keep getting in the way, but that, too, becomes part of the entanglement. My advice is to be patient.

So all in all, it's clever, it's noirish, the characters are interesting, and the Soviet-style setting with its bureaucrats all covering for each other gives it some frissons of LeCarr&eacute;.

It's told mostly by Anna in the first person, although there is another narrator and some third-person narrative at the end. And the ending is logical. The translation by Rachel Willson-Broyles is amazingly good. There were maybe three or four, but no more, places where she encountered some untranslatable Swedish term and threw up something clunky. That's remarkable.

NOTES AND ASIDES: Discrete physical violence; major psychological violence. This is complete in itself--with no setup for the next book in the series, although if Ms. Avdic wants to write one, she's left room for it. I appreciate the publisher's attempt to attract readers by claiming it's for readers of "The Handmaid's Tale," but not necessarily.
3553222
Using vivid descriptions and remarkable imaginative effort, Matt Thomas has created a startling alternate reality to provide the narrative framework for this engaging story.  The action is fast-paced, and the dialogue often entertainingly snappy, making for a fun read.  But it may be superficial to focus only on the blow-by-blow, exciting though it is.  What is most impressive--and most rewarding for this reader--is that Thomas has artfully invented a world that differs from our own in a truly fundamental way; it is a fantastical world that should defy belief, and yet Thomas makes it both plausible and intriguing.  I thoroughly enjoyed this book.
3281059
I am surprised, every time, by the dialogue. it is brusque, and witty - like real interactions between people who know one another
3431833
This was a fast moving story with very good dialogue.  The humor was thrown in to give you some smiles and laughs and it worked well.  The plot is good with twists and turns to keep you interested.
3391152
The dialogue is brisk, full of intrigue, wryly humorous, and moving.  The parallels between life below stairs and above stairs is deeply compelling.
3088678
This book without a doubt takes readers along an unconventional narrative-joy-ride at breakneck speed. By overlapping multiple narratives, clues and peripheral characters' stories, Corpse's pace moves a lot like a screenplay, dropping readers in and out of simultaneous scenes and unexpected dream sequences, bouncing back and forth through what feels like a ping-pong game of fun house mirrors complete with car chases, house parties and sex scenes. Maybe it was intended to be a teen-read, but the underlying message ups the ante from intelligent young-adult level to adult-level.

  On one hand we have a story about teenaged existential conflict.  On the other hand, (if the first isn't full enough for you) we have the exhumation of a corpse.  But, instead of reburying him, Ryan chooses (against his friends' pleas) to keep his new "friend" Jeffrey, taking him home, to the park, or along for nights out on the town.  Ryan finds Jeffrey's online journal entries written just before his mysterious death and finds himself drawn to their wisdom in a way that has heretofore escaped him in empathizing with the living. Ryan has grown up in this suburban American town whose atmosphere is literally browned by the mundane and confined lifestyles of its dwellers, where colorless corporations are fast taking over. Escape from "Everdale, USA" has been Ryan's only hope in amounting to someone distinctive but before "meeting" Jeffrey, all these hopes and ideas had been buried and unarticulated.

  But how long can Ryan hang onto this corpse when a tattooed mystery-man in a devilish souped-up Buick Riviera is after him to claim it?  Ryan's life and everyone else's around him is quickly spiraling out of control. Is this corpse cursed?

  This book reads like a verbal rock 'n roll video, fast paced and hilariously strange but has a much deeper statement to make that shines through.  While wholly unreasonable in reality, in the world Dax and Lloyd Garner create, this story totally works.  Of course, we need to forgo our qualms with carrying decayed bodies around, talking to them, partying with them, for the length of two hundred seven pages.  Normality doesn't apply here.  Irony does.  Which is exactly the stuff that keeps you thinking after the book's been set down. It is bold and intense, rooted in what one can only describe as a seriously original way of tackling the subject of existentialism and teenage-angst. It will leave you pondering its pieces for days.
2773156
I voluntarily reviewed an Advanced Reader Copy of this book. I enjoyed it but I felt the dialogue was unrealistic. I did enjoy the plot very much, though!
3805121
Excellent dialog -- The Coens lifted the language right off the page -- so great!
730823
A realistic story speaking to a current world problem or terrorism, politics and growing military PC.
1435384
VERY funny, very clever dialogue. I laughed out loud at the following because, well - we've all been there. Read them all, you will not be disappointed!

'sometimes there is such a thing as being too honest" I said.
"But -"
"Trust me on this," I said. "Now that we're a couple, there are a few times it's ok to like to me."
His gaze file with distrust, Anthony crossed his arms. "Like when?"
"Like when I drool on your shirt or snore really loudly." I paused. "And I don't snore loudly."
"But I heard it -"
"Anthony," I warned. "Let's try this again. Do I snore?"
Catching on, Anthony shook his head solemnly. "Never".
"Good!"
"Out of curiosity, what else don't you do?" He looked as eager to learn as a high school senior on the final day of class.
"I'll keep the list short for now," I said. "But for starters, I don't snore, I don't drool, and I do sweat - but only daintily. Also, I don't ever go number two."
"Number two?"
"In the bathroom, Anthony. Number one and number two. You do know what that means?"
Anthony's eyes widened with horror. Leaning in, he whispered in my ear. "That's a real medical condition, Lacey. I'm sure Dr. Gambino has something he can give you -"
"Anthony!" I placed my hands on both of his cheeks, forcing him to look into my eyes, "The only thing that happens in the bathroom is glitter and sparked, got it? Just like I don't drool."
Anthony gave a long, slow nod. "I think I understand."
"Good. Let's leave it at that." I said.
484881
The dialogue is in the eyes. If you can read that, the quietness of this film is filled with ten volumes of speach. A 'must see' for the aware!