And an open mind…
…compels me to immediately add that the Birmingham novel DOES pick up. I still think the opening 100 pages contain a lot of Tom Clancy-style hooey (for reference, I thought The Hunt for Red October was unutterably boring), but it then begins to get quite interesting and Birmingham really handles his characters a lot better and exploit some of the ideas the situation opens up for him. Have to see how the last chunk of the book goes, and then will blog more on it.
