The Shadow Speaker by Nnedi Okorafor-Mbachu

The Shadow Speaker
by Nnedi Okorafor
Hyperion, 2007
336 pages

Okay. This review is so unbelievably overdue, given I read this book for Aarti's initiative, A More Diverse Universe. But maybe I can get it into the same year. I had kind of hoped that this book would grow on me when I left it, but unfortunately that didn't happen. I was really excited to read this story, and I think in the end I was disappointed partially because of that.

Ejii is growing up in what used to be West Africa - and still is, but not any West Africa we recognize. After a cataclysm of proportions we start to recognize only as we get further into the book, magic has returned in a big way to Earth. Portals between Earth and other worlds have opened in places, animals speak, and certain humans have magical powers. Ejii is one, a shadow-speaker. She communicates with the shadows, which gives her some powers of telepathy and precognition. She is also the daughter of a man who was a violent, dictator-like, fundamentalist chief of the village, before he was slain by Jaa, the Red Queen. When the shadows tell Ejii that she must follow Jaa to an important meeting between the leaders of Earth and the other worlds, Ejii is torn. She's afraid to go, but curious and determined. So she sets off on the back of her talking camel, Onion, and soon realizes that her journey is going to be stranger, more dangerous, and more important than she could ever have fathomed.

It's not that the whole book was disappointing. So I'm going to start with the disappointing bits in a bid to end on a high note.

This wasn't a good book for me, personally, and I think it basically boils down to the fact that I'm about twenty years too old to really appreciate it. When I'm reading, characters are a key component of my enjoyment; these characters were extremely plot-driven, as opposed to having a plot driven by the character's choices. Characters did things that were utterly in service to the plot and seemed bizarrely out of step with what I thought their characters would do, which meant I was constantly reevaluating my understanding of each character. Not in a good way. It felt very disorienting and I didn't end up very attached to any of the characters. This is usually a death-knell for any book for me.

The thing is, if I was thirteen years old I would have loved this. The characters are BIG - everything is very melodramatic. The teens act like young teens - which would be great, except that most of the adults did too. As an adult I tend to like my characters more nuanced and less shouty and more emotionally consistent, especially if they are supposed to be important and intelligent world leaders.

What saved it for me was that the concept and the world-building are top-notch and really interesting. The setting was gorgeously-described - the descriptions of the colours and the smells and the sights were fantastic and fantastical. I also absolutely loved the language Okorafor uses: there are untranslated words that add so many layers of sound and tone to the writing, and the words that Okorafor makes up for the fantasy elements are magnificent and playful. I liked how the magic worked, I loved that it was never fully explained (because it wasn't ever entirely clear to the characters how they were able to do what they did, or how it was supposed to work - this, however, didn't feel lazy on the author's part, but carefully considered) and I was really interested in how the technology and the magic met and negotiated each other in this world.

But unfortunately, I do prefer my books to be more heavily weighed towards the character than the plot, and this was backwards for me. I think as an angsty pre-teen I would have just eaten this up - I've always been a sucker for interesting world-building, and the cultural background, so different from my own, would have been a huge plus - but as an adult it fell flat for me. I would, however, read more Nnedi Okorafor - I've got both Akata Witch and Zahrah the Windseeker on my list. Those are both books written for a younger audience too, so I'll have a better idea of what I'm getting into this time. I like her ideas and I'm hoping I can find some more consistent characters.

Redshirts by John Scalzi

Redshirts
by John Scalzi
Tor Books, 2012
318 pages

Oh John Scalzi. You are one of the big Good Guys in my world. There are so many reasons to be impressed with Scalzi and his writing, most of which one can glean from his blog and his Twitter feed, both of which I follow daily. He's not universally loved - someone with a blog tagline of "Taunting the Tauntable since 1998" is not going to be universally loved - but for someone with my sense of humour and sociocultural views, he's brain candy.

So are his books. They are clever, funny, extremely well-written, entertaining, thoughtful, and often moving. Well, the three I have read, one of which was non-fiction, so I suppose my sample size is limited, but I have faith. Old Man's War remains one of my favourite science fiction novels ever (and it's military SF, no less!) and holds the distinction of being the most fully genre-y book that my entire adventurous book club agreed was great.

Those of you who have watched Star Trek (any iteration) will be familiar with the concept of the redshirt, whether you know it by name or not. These are the minor characters, the ones who might not even have a name, who are along for whatever away mission might be happening, and who generally end up dead in order to prove that there's some sort of danger. Notice that with extremely rare exceptions, the main characters don't end up dead. They might end up injured, but not dead. It's the low-ranking extras who bite it.

Redshirts is about the ones who end up dead. Scalzi imagines them with real lives and loves and ideas, histories that are more than just pertinent to the storyline, and a realization that the way things are happening on their ship, the Intrepid, is statistically totally improbable. They are fighting to regain control of their lives, which means they are literally fighting for their lives - fighting The Narrative, an unseen menace that takes over people's minds, bodies, and even the laws of physics with disturbing regularity. And what's worse, as Jenkins, the conspiracy theorist who eventually convinces our main characters says, is that the sci-fi television show they're all living in isn't very good.

This is very clever, loving satire. It pokes gleeful holes in all the SF television tropes, but it does it in a way that is thoughtful - it really follows the consequences through - and what I really appreciated was that it wasn't only about the satire. It was also a book about friendship, love, and loyalty; about peeling back layers and asking the important and sometimes difficult questions. It was about fate versus free will, and even about what it means to die, and what it means to live.

I think having more than a passing familiarity with Star Trek in its many incarnations helped in the enjoyment of this book, because I really got it. I got the jokes, I got the references, and I appreciated all of them. It added an extra layer of glee.

But - and this is important - because of all the other wonderful things about this book, and the fact that it isn't just about the satire, you don't have to be familiar with Star Trek to enjoy the story. Or even get most of the jokes, because the relevant parts are explained. This is a funny book whether or not you know the backstory, and it contains far more than it appears at first glance. Highly recommended for science fiction buffs, and definitely readable for those of you who don't read sci-fi but think you might like it. It's an excellent entry into the genre.

The River of No Return by Bee Ridgway

The River of No Return (River of No Return 1)
by Bee Ridgway
Dutton Adult, 2013
452 pages

I cannot figure out for the life of me why I didn't like this better than I did. Which is not to say I didn't enjoy it; I stayed up until 1:30am to finish it, and it kept my attention, and I didn't ever feel like throwing it across the room or giving up. I just didn't love it and I can't figure out why. And unfortunately I didn't take adequate notes, and so this review is going to be an awful lot shorter than it might otherwise have been.

It's exactly my kind of candy - historical romance (Regency, even), plus mystery, plus science fiction/fantasy. There are spicy bits, believable spicy bits. And it was smart and well-written, too. I did find it sagged in the middle, but to be honest, a lot of what I'm reading these days seems to sag in the middle and that suggests to me that it's more me than the book.

Nicholas Davenant used to be a marquess. He used to be fighting Napoleon, an officer in the British Army. But then one day, a Frenchman was about to cut him down - and instead of dying, Nicholas disappeared, jumping ahead in time to the twenty-first century. He is greeted there by a representative of the Guild, an organization devoted to finding, rescuing, and helping acclimatize those who make the jump from the past. He is taught how to build a new life, and while there are hints that things might not be perfect and he misses his family and his old life, he spends ten very happy years in Vermont, farming. But then his suspicions bear out - things aren't entirely right, he hasn't been told the whole truth, and he's about to learn all sorts of new and unsettling things from the Guild.

And that's only the summary of one character - Julia Percy, being the other, is an orphan, and neighbour to Nicholas' family. We meet her just as her beloved grandfather is dying, and she is about to be alone in the world, faced with a desperate, and desperately mean, cousin taking over the estate. The narrative switches back and forth between these two.

I didn't particularly love any of the characters, even though I enjoyed them and particularly Julia. I did love that Ridgway made things so complex; none of the characters are black and white, evil or not - even Mr. Mibbs, who does veer very close to irredeemable villain, has enough mystery surrounding him that I'm prepared to concede that he might have some sort of reason for being so thoroughly horrible. Arkady, for example, could have been a creepy, frightening, powerful villain - but while he's slightly creepy, and frightening, and powerful, he's not entirely villainous. His motives are clear and his actions, while repellant to the mains and therefore the reader, make a kind of sense. I believed that he believed he was doing the right thing, or at least, the righteous thing. That's not always an easy thing for an author to pull off.

The twists were varied and some of them I saw coming, and others I did not. It's a bit of a maze of a book, but it never really seemed to lose its way, if that makes sense, despite my feeling that things got a bit slow in the middle. The ending was a satisfying cliffhanger, if that makes sense. There's a lot to explore in the next book, and nothing feels quite safe or secure, which is exactly as it should be.

So why didn't I love it? I still can't say for sure. That I never really connected firmly with any of the characters is probably the big reason, but I'm not sure what it was that kept me from connecting. Certainly the plot was well-done and the historical bits very well-done, and the characters were interesting. It just didn't connect. So don't let me stop you from reading this, is what I am trying to say, if it tickles your fancy - you'll probably have better luck than me. But there is something mildly disappointing about finding book likeable when I really expected to love it.

Naked in Death by JD Robb

Naked in Death (In Death 1)
by J.D. Robb
Brilliance Audio, 2010 (originally published in 1995)
5 discs, abridged

Welp, that was another abridged audiobook. It wasn't supposed to be, but it was what I could get, and I've wanted to try this series for a while now. For those not sure, yes, JD Robb is a different incarnation of redoubtable, prolific romance author Nora Roberts. This series is exceedingly popular and long-lived, and incredibly all 40 (40!!) entries in the series have above a 4 star rating on Goodreads. The setting appealed to me - I like mysteries, and the idea of a series set in a futuristic New York City, but still a police procedural and a romantic thriller, really tickled my fancy.

Lieutenant Eve Dallas is a young and very successful police inspector with the New York City Police and Security Department in the year 2058. After a particularly messy episode with a domestic assault and murder, in which she's been responsible for the death of the murderer, she's immediately called in to a top secret investigation involving the gruesome murder of the prostitute (legalized, now) granddaughter of a very powerful, very right-wing Southern Senator. The top suspect is the charming billionaire Roarke, a man with deep secrets. But as Eve grows to know Roarke she becomes convinced that his secrets don't include coldblooded murder (this one, at least.) And she finds herself increasingly fascinated by this contrarian, handsome, and likely very dangerous man.

I know why this series is so popular. It ticks off alllll the fantasies: young, scarily competent, slightly maverick, and secretly scarred detective; fancy gadgets that do cool things; a possible conspiracy of the powerful and a hard-ass boss for our detective to fight against; and very rich, very good-looking, very alpha male hero. The writing is extremely competent and even excellent in places. The tone is perfect. The plot is... not a big surprise at any point, exactly, but there's enough tension to keep it interesting. In short, this book is straight-out escapist fiction and it doesn't pretend to be anything else, and it's very, very good at what it does.

Any problems I had with this book really had to do with the abridgement I listened to and nothing else. And that's not even saying that the abridgement was poorly done; it wasn't. It's just that any romance that is abridged feels too fast, and mysteries that are abridged often leave clues that the author might have buried a little better feeling pretty bare. The predictability of both the plot and the identity of the murderer are partially due to the format I chose.

So I need to talk about Roarke and the alpha male hero. Intellectually I find myself pretty conflicted about this, but in some ways Robb(erts) has made this easy: Eve is not a wallflower, nor is she too perfect. She saves herself when she needs saving, but she's messy, and she makes an acceptable number of mistakes. I say "acceptable" because I really think that this kind of story needs a protagonist who makes errors, but she can't make too many because otherwise the story stops being enjoyable because the reader is too worried - Eve hits these notes perfectly and manages not to be either one-note or stereotypical; she's very likeable and she's very competent and she's not a push-over.

This is important, because Roarke is super-alpha. In his desire to take care of Eve and help her out, he does a couple of things that are pretty creepy if one thinks too hard about it. To the author's credit Eve calls him out on these things, but she doesn't do the sensible thing and get him out of her life entirely. And this is where I have trouble. I feel that, by enjoying the alpha male, I am somehow buying into a misogynistic social construct, and I don't like that. On the other hand, I also feel like it's unhelpful to suggest to women that certain avenues of fantasy or desire are off-limits or shameful. I don't have the background to be able to take this discussion too much further, and I obviously still have a need to work through it.

But simply: I enjoy Roarke as a hero, and I find the scenes with him romantic and sexy, and as a fantasy his behaviour doesn't creep me out, even if I encountered someone like him in real life I'd stay as far away from him as possible. I can spend as much time as I would like trying to justify this, but I think I just maybe need to own up to it: as a fantasy, this works for me. It can be borderline - there are alpha males I find just insufferable and not attractive at all - but something about this combination, Eve and Roarke, I find sexy and believable enough as a fantasy to enjoy the relationship.

If it's not clear from all of the above, I really enjoyed listening to this, and I'll definitely read/listen to more of the In Death series. Do I have the need to read all 40+ books? Maybe not, but I'm glad I've started. A solid mystery and vivid characters, with the bonus of a well-realized, very interesting and fun setting. If you're not a fan of the alpha male romance, steer clear, but this is a good bet for those who like that sort of thing. Even if you're a bit conflicted about it.

DNF: The Circle by Dave Eggers

The Circle
by Dave Eggers
Random House Audio, 2013
11 discs, unabridged

I don't normally to this, but the reaction I had to this book and the fact that I was over halfway through when I threw in the towel makes me want to write something about it. Luckily I have a place to do that. Hello blog!

Um, so this book has actually been fairly well-received. And I felt the premise was really interesting, and definitely creepy, and things started off strongly. I didn't love any of the characters but that's okay... or so I thought. It made me think, it made me curious to know what was happening next. I was listening on audiobook, and it's a rare audiobook that I don't finish, so I figured I'd just keep going even if I wasn't loving it (also: book club.) But then the rage started.

The premise is that Mae Holland starts work at a big tech company in California, a company called The Circle. It's a bit like Facebook and a bit like Google and a bit its own thing (and has already subsumed Facebook and Google and all the rest.) It's a great place to work, but all is not as it seems. About a disc and a half in, it was really feeling like things were too good to be true - and of course they were.

And then. The further we got, the more I disliked Mae. This is 100% intentional on the author's part, and I think what I find most interesting here in my reaction is that he really did a good job. When I was sending my comments to the book club, I made a confession: I know I have said in the past (likely here on the blog too) that I don't have to like the main character in order to enjoy a book. This may be true, but I'm not sure I can actually tell you the title of a book I've enjoyed where I didn't like the main character. Mae starts out a bit... not loveable, but as the book progresses she becomes more and more obnoxious, stupid, vapid, selfish, thoughtless, and righteous, none of which is very fun to spend time with. In fact, I started wondering why I was spending hours of my life with characters I mostly wanted to punch in the face.

When, finally, one night at 2am I was still awake feeling furious with her, just over halfway through the book, I quit. I am not saying this is a rational response, or a good one, but it's not unusual for me to get really emotionally invested in a book. I prefer that I get emotionally invested in a positive way. I don't really have room in my life for books that make me feel that much rage right now. I need my sleep.

The premise was really interesting, and I think important. It certainly did make me think very seriously about how I use technology and how I feel about privacy, and why I think privacy in my online and physical life is important. It had things to say about the gradual erosion of our privacy and of meaning in our lives, without feeling like a conversation with a grouchy old uncle who thinks we should all go back to rotary telephones and making our own jam. (I am kind of with him, though.) It is even clear that these ideas that erode our privacy can be good - they can be convenient, they can help the world become a better place - but we have to be vigilant and we have to have protections in place, protections with teeth, sometimes to protect us from ourselves.

At any rate. I didn't finish it, but I don't think it was a bad book. Just definitely not for me. And it was a useful book to me, making me a bit more conscious that my desire to know everything about how smallfry is doing at her first day of preschool this morning is maybe not actually what I really want in the grander scheme of things...

Zita the Spacegirl by Ben Hatke

Zita the Spacegirl (Zita the Spacegirl 1)
by Ben Hatke
First Second, 2011
192 pages

I am always on the lookout for good graphic novels to read with my kids' book clubs. Because they are parent-child groups, I like to expose everyone - in this case, the adults - to something they may not have tried before. Most often the kids have at least tried a graphic novel, and most of the parents are always a little skeptical at first. In at least two or three cases I've had full converts, to the point of the adults searching out and reading new and interesting adult graphics themselves; and the only complaints I've had (there are always a few) have to do with the fact that reading graphic novels - or comics - can be difficult if you're not comfortable with the conventions, or with the very visual mode of storytelling. Sometimes kids have the same problems. But overall, reading a graphic novel every once in a while with my book clubs has been a success.

Zita the Spacegirl will be our next attempt at one. It's actually fairly difficult for me to find quality graphic novels that I feel have enough meat to carry a book club discussion with a group of seven- to eleven-year-olds and their adults, especially if I am trying to find something that most of the group hasn't already read. School librarians are very adept at finding the great graphic novels and making sure the receptive kids get a chance to read them. I find it hard to grudge them this.

Summary: when Zita's friend Joseph is snagged by a terrifying tentacled creature from a portal to an unknown world, Zita follows to try and save him. (This whole part is done so well, and so believably, character-wise, that I was hooked immediately.) She finds herself transported to the surface of a planet doomed to be destroyed in days by an incoming asteroid. She appears to be the only human around, she's penniless and friendless, and Joseph is whizzed off in some sort of flying car before she even has a chance to rescue him. Zita is going to need a little bit of help to save the day.

Zita fits my criteria for a good book club graphic novel. The art is easy to follow and evocative. The plot is very fast-paced, and there's lots of humour. Characters are interesting, though many are a bit mysterious; I think we'll learn more about some of the secondary characters as we move into the second book. Zita is a complex, totally believable kid. The story is not entirely straightforward and the subtext isn't always outright explained - always excellent features in a book club book. If it is a bit predictable at points, that's because I know the conventions of the adventure and science fiction genres. At other points, it managed to surprise me even within the conventions, so it gets points for that too. Finally, it isn't perfect. While I thought the book started incredibly strong, I was a little confused by the timelines for some of the later plot and the end of the book felt rushed. It's possible I might read the book again in order to see if that was just because I was distracted and/or reading too quickly at the end. Flaws in an otherwise well-done book make for good discussions, too, if they're not so deep as to wreck the book, and these are nothing like that.

Recommended for fans of middle-grade graphic novels; I'll be reading the rest of the trilogy.

Old Man's War by John Scalzi

Old Man's War
by John Scalzi
Tor Books, 2005
362 pages

Ever since reading On Basilisk Station I have been extremely, extremely wary of anything that hints at military science fiction. That was a good book, and I got attached to the characters, and then it caused me sleepless nights for days after I finished the thing. Not exaggerating. But Old Man's War has been on my list for ages (since Nymeth's review, to be exact) and I thoroughly enjoy John Scalzi's nonfic writing. So, looking for something different for my genre book club, this made the cut, and I went ahead and read it. Not without trepidation, which was somewhat justified, but I'm very glad I was brave and didn't cheat by just reading a summary on Wikipedia.

Without giving too much away: John Perry is 75, and he is about to join the army. The Colonial Defense Force, to be exact. Humans are a spacefaring race, but we're not the only ones, and competition for habitable planets is fierce. Earth is a quarantined backwater, and the only way off for most of those humans is the way Perry has decided to go: volunteering for the military force that keeps human colonies safe, scouts out, and (as necessary) takes by force new habitable planets for colonization. But the CDF only takes recruits of a certain age, and John Perry has made it there. And he is smart enough to know that the universe is a strange place - but nothing could prepare him for how strange, wonderful, and terrible it really is.

And it is easy to give things away, so I'll stop with a summary there. There are numerous little and some large surprises along the way, for Perry and therefore by extension for us. Some of them are funny, some of them are dark, some of them are just plain cool. I do not wish to spoil them for you.

What is interesting to me is how smart this book is. Which is not to say that science fiction, or military science fiction, or space opera (which this is, I think, though I have a surface understanding of the term) cannot be smart, and knowing what I do of John Scalzi I should have been prepared for just how smart this book is. But a large part of me had written this off as a fun book, a book with spaceships and larger-than-life heroes and battles and really nifty technology, written well and probably often quite amusing because, well, Scalzi. And I also assumed that there'd be some major space battle and most of the characters I'd grown to like would die, because I respected John Scalzi's intelligence and integrity enough to figure he wouldn't write a book about a space army without characters dying. He wouldn't play with the reality of what war is that way.

I am realizing this doesn't reflect well on me -- because yes, I'd apparently bought into the stereotypes I carry secretly about mass-market military science fiction, and I expected that sort of thing. I got a lot more and that is why I should read out of my comfort zone more often. Or one reason, anyway.

There were two themes that really struck me and stayed with me, and that were investigated in more depth than I would have expected. The first was aging, and what it means to grow old, and that theme really shouldn't surprise anyone, given the summary of the book I gave above. The second was marriage and love, and what marriage is, and what it means over a lifetime, and that is not the sort of thing I expected in a military SF book at all.

Aging, both mentally and physically, plays the largest role at the beginning of the book, but does come back again in interesting ways later on. Perry is 75, and despite the fact that we're a lot further in the future and some medical advances are to be expected, no one on Earth has come up with a way to reverse the aging process, and 75 in that future looks pretty darn similar to 75 in this present. Except that the CDF has apparently found a way to get a 75-year-old human into some sort of fighting shape. What this means, and what this means to Perry as an individual, and some of his newfound friends, is investigated pretty intimately, since the book is from Perry's perspective in first person. It's handled with sensitivity and insight and I was impressed.

I was even more impressed, and somewhat flabbergasted, to find marriage holding a central role in the book. Perry's wife Kathy had also volunteered to sign up, but died of a massive stroke before her 75th birthday. He misses her, thinks of her often and often first, and while I wouldn't say that the Perrys' marriage plays a central role in the book's plot, exactly, it is such a central part of John Perry's character that it therefore looms large over the whole book. It's a rumination on the effect on a person of sharing the better part of a life with someone else one loves dearly. It adds a very human dimension to Perry, who could possibly be a larger-than-life character, except that he is so grounded in this very fundamental relationship that has very much defined who he was and is. And it adds a very warm, gentle dimension to a book that is, at its core, about someone learning to be a good, efficient, and effective soldier.

Unexpected, and delightful. The writing is also just excellent, the world imaginative, and other themes and conundrums interesting and worthwhile. Characterization is solid at worst and really, really good at best. I've recommended this book to several people since reading it. One of my book club members has already come back for the second book in the series, The Ghost Brigades. I may even read that one myself, though I'm pretty satisfied with where I left John Perry and company. I wasn't sure it was possible for me to have a higher opinion of John Scalzi than I already did, but reading Old Man's War managed to surprise me there, too.

A Princess of Mars by Edgar Rice Burroughs

A Princess of Mars
by Edgar Rice Burroughs
Duke Classics, 2012 (originally published as a serial in 1912)
195 pages

I love that my adult book club asked to read this book. True, it was more "I heard that John Carter [the Disney movie] was based on some books, wasn't it? Can we read that?" but still. They're game for anything and I really appreciate it. Not least because I get to fill in some gaps in my reading I otherwise might not.

This is very much a pulp adventure story, and contains science fiction elements and close attention to detail that would go on to become standard in the genre. I love reading books that are foundational to genres I enjoy, and so reading A Princess of Mars, despite its (copious) flaws, was a fun and maybe even enriching experience. But flaws, yes, and so in some ways my experience was mixed. And it wasn't just the typical historically-based flaws one might expect to encounter: some flawed science, and pretty egregious racism and sexism. There were also a couple of internal inconsistencies of character that bugged me, particularly in relation to the end of the book.

Okay, so for those who, like me, have managed to stay pretty much ignorant of the storyline of this tale: John Carter is a veteran Confederate soldier who escapes from a band of Apaches into a strange cave that turns out, somehow, to be a portal to Mars. Once he lands (naked!) he discovers that, in Mars' lesser gravity and less dense atmosphere, he has incredible strength and the ability to leap tall buildings in a single bound, which is pretty lucky because he almost immediately is set upon by a group of warlike, enormous, mean green bug-like brutes. Happily for John Carter, the green men are exceedingly impressed by his physical prowess, and so rather than shooting him, they take him as an honoured captive. From there, he continues to have several preposterous adventures, finds himself attached to a guard "dog" named Woola, a surprisingly sympathetic green female named Sola, and finally the titular princess enters the picture (naked!), a captive of the green martians, conveniently beautiful and human-like and in need of a super-human sort of rescue. More completely preposterous adventures ensue. And unlike what the cover above might have you believe, the adventures all take place without any clothes on. This is less sexy than one might hope.

I probably should have disliked this book, is the thing. The phrase "feminine reasoning" enters the picture shortly after Dejah Thoris, the princess, does, and you can probably imagine how well that flew with this reader. So the question here is how was I able to get past the embedded racism and sexism? The answer, I think, is world-building. And maybe a bit of understanding, if not forgiveness, due to the time period, and the audience Burroughs was writing for. And the fact that Dejah Thoris is indeed a limp fish, but not quite as much of a limp fish as I expected, which was a pleasant surprise. But mostly world-building.

The first chunk of the book, and other parts throughout, read almost like an anthropological study. Which again, I am not sure why this works so well, but it really does. For an adventure novel that packs a lot of plot, there is an incredible amount of exposition. In other books I would be tempted to call it one long infodump, but something about the narrative voice (John Carter, in first person) precludes that, and we build up a relatively deep understanding of the culture of Mars (or Barsoom, as the locals call it), its history, and its environment. The detail is astonishing in some cases, and equally astonishing is that my eyes didn't glaze over, nor did I start skipping descriptions of how things worked or how societies were structured. What comes out the other end is a very thorough understanding of the environment in which John Carter is operating, and a huge respect for Edgar Rice Burroughs' creativity.

I loved the detail. I loved the differences between our world as John Carter knew it and Barsoom. I loved the images and the intricacies of the cultures of the green martians and the red martians, the idea of the long-lost great civilization, the post-post-apocalyptic feel of the Barsoom John Carter finds himself on. Actually, I really loved that the societies of Mars were the way they were due to a long decline, not some single huge catastrophic event.

I loved that the green martians, the Tharks, weren't entirely villains, though they very easily could have been; I loved that some of the complexity of their culture was shown, and that John Carter displayed a willingness to work within it and even attempted to befriend some of the strange creatures he found.

I kind of loved that I spent a lot of time wondering how people -- men, in particular -- rode their thoats comfortably without any clothes on.

I didn't love the inconsistencies in John Carter's character. He is a great character, almost too great, really. He's quite likable.  He's got this super-human strength, but then he's also super-humanly dutiful and brave and good and smart and tolerant, too. EXCEPT for when he's not, which is when Edgar Rice Burroughs needs him not to be for the sake of the plot. There are two specific instances that bothered me, both towards the end of the book. Both are pretty outright cruel or stupid, neither of which things John Carter has ever appeared to be earlier in the text, and were so out of character that they threw me out of the book in a way that even the most unbelievable coincidences and preposterous feats of agility/strength/daring/intelligence didn't.

So the verdict for me on this book is ... it's kind of recommended? I'm really glad I read it, because as I say, the world-building was magnificent and incredibly creative and really interesting. But it also has the kind of appallingly casual racism and sexism that one might expect of a pulp adventure novel of the era, and that's grating. And while some of the writing is really quite excellent, which is why I think this book has lasted so long in the public imagination and the classic science fiction canon, some of it is inexcusably bad, with the characters and events contorting painfully to get to the place where Burroughs wants to go. I don't know that I'll ever go out of my way to read the second or third or following books in the series, but I won't rule it out either.

On Basilisk Station by David Weber

On Basilisk Station
by David Weber
Baen Books, 1993
346 pages

First of all, free eBook. Is awesome. Also legal. Thank you, Baen Books and David Weber for giving me the chance to test out the Honorverse for myself.

Sadly, the gambit didn't work out this time, as I'm not going to be purchasing, or reading, any of the other Honor Harrington books. It's not you, Commander Harrington and David Weber. It's me.

I want to be clear, because hopefully I can at least raise the profile of the book in return for its free-ness: this is a good book. This is a really good book. It's well-written, detailed, interesting, engaging, creative, adrenaline-boosting, entertaining, and even thought-provoking. And if you are in to military science fiction, this is a great, great place to go, as Weber's legion fans can attest. (Actually, if you're in to military science fiction, I imagine you've already been here. I'm late to the party on this one). In Commander Honor Harrington, David Weber has created a really attractive main character; she's intelligent, competent, and generally kicks ass. And (I mention this because it's not always the case in military SF) she's a woman in a powerful position and almost no mention is made of it; more mention is made of her youth than of her gender. Her gender does not signify, nor do the genders of any of the other characters in the book. They are simply people doing their jobs. I love this.

There are several moments in this book where the reader wants to sit up and whoop as Harrington makes yet another connection or faces down yet another bully with a will of steel. She even comes across as being almost too good sometimes, but she's not perfect, exactly. I will admit there were a few times when I thought maybe she was too good to be true. But I liked her too much to care.

I can't really talk about this book and my reaction to it without some major spoilers. So if you like military fiction, or science fiction, this is for you. The detail encapsulated in the books, the work that has gone in to creating the universe his characters inhabit, is stunning. I wish I could follow Honor through her next thirteen-plus adventures, but I can't. If you have already read this book, or know you won't, and wish to know why I'm not going to go further, read on. If you've got this book on your TBR, stop now.


/spoilers ahoy! seriously guys, do not read past here if you want to read the book.



Guys, the ending. The ending is brutal. The ending is just. so. brutal. I'm talking as someone emotionally invested, but also as someone who has a upper limit for violence and death and this book sailed clear through that at hyper speed. Worse, I knew what was coming. Well, I didn't know exactly what was coming, but about halfway through, I knew that things were going to go sour, and I figured it would happen quickly, and I figured that it would be bloody, and I figured that I wasn't really going to like it. It made reading on both pleasurable, because I liked where I was, and painful because I knew it was going to end badly. And boy was I right.

The ending is a bloodbath. And what makes me feel somewhat worse about hating it, is that it should have been. If Weber had wimped out and let all the mains get away scott free, I would have been disappointed in him, and the book wouldn't have been good. It would have been an exercise in fantasy, of the worst sort, the sort I find trite and the reason some people don't take SF/F seriously. War is hell. And it should be shown that way, guts and glory. Weber knows this, so we get plenty of both.

If I had one technical problem with this book, this would be it: I realize she's Navy, but my impression is that Honor Harrington hasn't seen a lot of live action. Nor have the other characters. So I'd like to have seen a bit more about the psychological toll the death and grief would have taken, because while it was mentioned, it was... kind of glossed over. Frankly, I was a little uncomfortable with how comfortable Harrington is with the way she is lionized, though she did deserve it; I would have been a lot more traumatized than she appeared to be.

Actually, I was, and herein lies the problem. As much as I would love to spend more time with Honor Harrington, this book made me feel ill at the end. The characters -- the aliens, too -- who died, some just terribly, and the ones left behind -- there were scenes I couldn't get out of my head. I couldn't stop thinking about it. I felt like I needed to dip my brain in bleach. And I don't think Weber was gratuitous with the violence and the death, it's just that my threshold is low. There was implied torture -- implied makes it worse for me. There was a slaughter of drugged-up religious fanatic aliens (we understand why the slaughter has to take place, but still.) There was people being blown to pieces by shrapnel in the vacuum of space. People I liked, people who were narrating the action, people who were good people and who died doing heroic things or not. The people who survived, you read the roll call at the end and you feel like you've been given a gift because that character made it. Even Honor Harrington's seemingly unbeatable genius can't save the day entirely. It all fits, it's all exactly the way it should be, and I can't handle it.

So why did I start reading this book? Well, I'll be honest. I thought it would be a light, guilty pleasure, something more along the lines of Anne McCaffrey's space operas. I didn't realize until things started sinking in just how bad it might get, and once I realized it I was too invested to stop.

I was feeling a bit miserable about my inability to face the music, as it were; my constitutional aversion to watching bad things happen to good people in fiction. And I was thinking about how sometimes people equate tragedy with good literature, and the rest of it is fluff, meaning I'm somehow not a serious reader. (This goes back to the Greeks; drama was the Thing, and comedy was a lower art form, though I actually think good comedy is harder to write.) The thing is, I feel like I deal with enough in real life, and I'm well aware I have it relatively easy, and I know there's terrible things out there, and I don't want to put myself through fictional misery too. For some people it can be cathartic, but for me, it keeps me up at night for days and causes me to feel anxious and miserable and sad. I just get far, far too attached, far too emotionally invested even though I know it's fiction. I find plenty of excellent, brilliant, beautiful literature that doesn't make me feel like hell and I still manage to be pretty well-informed and well-read.

Then I read Darla's blog entry and felt better, because apparently I am not alone in being adversely affected by books. What Darla is talking about there is a little different; I didn't feel terribly manipulated here, just in shock. But much of it is applicable, I just think my threshold is even lower than Darla's...

To Say Nothing of the Dog by Connie Willis

To Say Nothing of the Dog, or How we found the bishop's bird stump at last

by Connie Willis

Random House, 1998

448 pages

There's a lot I want to say about this book, but unfortunately the exhaustion of the past couple months is beginning to take a toll. I suspect reviews from now on may be a little [more] rambling, and I'm likely to forget important points, or harp on unimportant ones. This will clear up at some indeterminate point in the future.

It also doesn't help the rambling that I adored this book, and find it hard to be at all objective. One of my favourite reads of the year, certainly, and possibly ever. I would like to have this book's kittens. This sort of thing often leads to a rather poor review from me at the best of times, as I try to rein in my "aaljkbkjabhlksdfa LOOOOOVE BOOK" incoherent gabbling and try to elucidate what actually made me enjoy the book that much.

I have wanted to read it for a long time, and it's always such a pleasant feeling to realize that a book one has anticipated for literally years actually lives up to its reputation. This is a clever, sweet, intelligent, funny, vivid romp through the idea of time travel, the meaning of history, the love of literature, and Victorian high society.

Plus, cats. And dogs. And physics.

It [the cat] had been put into a box in Shrödinger's thought experiment, along with a doomsday device: a bottle of cyanide gas, a hammer hooked to a Geiger counter, and a chunk of uranium. If the uranium emitted an electron, it would trigger the hammer which would break the bottle. That would release the gas that would kill the cat that lived in the box that Schrödinger built.

Actually, this was one thing, perhaps minor but indicative of the quality and care taken in the details and characters of the story, not to mention the overall writing: there are animal characters, who do not speak, who are given fair treatment in the story. They don't get lost; Willis doesn't introduce them as a gimmick and then get tired of them (see, for example, Hedwig).

This could be partially because Ned Henry, our first-person narrator and protagonist, loves animals. It is an excellent case of showing and not telling, frankly: Ned never comes out and says "I happen to really like dogs." One just picked that up pretty quickly from the way Ned treats and enjoys Cyril, our canine companion.

So, before I go too much further: Ned Henry is an historian. Historians, in Willis' near future, are not dusty (or even animated) academics; they're time travellers, sent via "the net" back in time to observe history first-hand. However, the fact-finding, observational aspects of the historians of Oxford's jobs have been tossed by the wayside in favour of an all-consuming rebuild of Coventry Cathedral, destroyed in the Blitz in the 1940s. A certain Lady Schrapnell has commissioned the entirety the time travel department to ensure that every single detail of the reconstruction is exactly as it was the hour of the bombing; if the historians help her out, she will donate a considerable sum to the university, which will allow them to continue and expand their research. Ned's duty in this is to find out if the bishop's bird stump was in the cathedral during the bombing, and track it down in the present day. Easier said than done, as the bird stump appears to have disappeared improbably at some point during the bombing.

So... this is how the book starts out. This isn't really what the book is about, although it is certainly about the search for the bishop's bird stump. The truth is, what the book is about, and what happens, is far too complex to summarize in a review like this. So, I'm not going to try further; you'll just have to read the book yourself.

I had, for fun and because I knew I was going to read this book eventually, read Jerome K. Jerome's Three Men in a Boat; I think it added to the experience of reading this one, but certainly wasn't necessary. Ned's excitement at being in the era when that book was written is infectious and instantly recognizeable to anyone who loves a particular book. There is something wonderful about exploring a place where a favourite book is set. Ned just happens to get to both the place and the time. Other literary references, particularly to classic mystery novels, are peppered throughout the book; Dorothy Sayers in particular gets plenty of time. This was the last straw for me -- I've now finally read Sayers too, thanks to To Say Nothing of the Dog reminding me that I really have wanted to for a while. The way the literature plays in to the plot is along the same lines as the animals above; it's not mentioned and then dropped, but has weight throughout.

Willis' writing is sharp, funny, and artful without being self-conscious or twee. One gets the impression that she really quite enjoyed writing this book, that she had fun with the ideas and characters and the tangled threads she created. It makes for an effortless, entertaining read that still has heft, which is a rare and precious thing.

Highly recommended, in case that wasn't obvious already.

Nell Gwynne's Scarlet Spy by Kage Baker

Nell Gwynne's Scarlet Spy

by Kage Baker

Subterranean Press, 2011

168 pages

This slim little volume is comprised of two stories: "Nell Gwynne's Scarlet Spy" and "The Bohemian Astrobleme" both of which feature a character named Lady Beatrice. I got it for the first tale, which I had originally heard of as The Women of Nell Gwynne's, a novella that won a Hugo in 2010. Frankly, I think the original title is more fetching; luckily, my most excellent local indie bookstore was able to track down this volume, as the original novella was out of print. Very pleased, because I'd desperately wanted to read this story since I'd first heard about it.

I think it was worth the wait; it was certainly diverting and well-written. It was a little more grim than I expected, but also funnier than I expected. Baker doesn't pull her punches, and though there's not a lot of graphic gore, there's a darkness to these stories that upon reflection makes a lot of sense -- the first story is an astute, if sideways, glimpse at a Victorian woman's life options. It's not a pretty picture. The second story is somewhat lighter, but the darkness blows in full force at the end. The humour is dark, too, in both of them, although it's also quite charming and often very dry in the way I particularly like. And both stories are exceedingly well-constructed.

"Nell Gwynne's Scarlet Spy" (aka "The Women of Nell Gwynne's") is almost a simple character study; at least, it starts out that way. Lady Beatrice -- not a lady, nor a Beatrice, but we never find out what name she used to go by -- was a soldier's daughter. After a pretty horrific, harrowing experience abroad, she ends up on the streets. She is brave, shrewd, and highly intelligent, though, and this gets her noticed by Mrs. Corvey, the proprietress of Nell Gwynne's, an exclusive brothel that serves customers by invitation only. It also happens to be connected to the Gentlemen's Speculative Society, a very secret group of highly intelligent men who are far, far ahead of their time. The women of Nell Gwynne's serve to gather secrets and occasionally blackmail the powerful into doing exactly what the Society wants them to do. In return, they have a relative measure of freedom, the opportunity to use their ample brains, and have use of some of the Society's fantastic inventions, not to mention a very comfortable living and an easy, early retirement.

"The Bohemian Astrobleme" is a story about what happens when the Society wants something. Lady Beatrice is involved, as is Ludbridge, a character we meet in the first story. It's an entertaining little piece, interesting and somewhat chilling, too. Because we like both Lady Beatrice and Ludbridge, and in this story they are pretty ruthless. There's a very good reason that this story was second in the pairing; characterization is very thin (it can be, because it is second) but the reader is left feeling a little alarmed by how easily we were charmed by both Lady Beatrice and Ludbridge, and how we still like and admire them.

There are a couple things that I liked about the first story especially: a) life as a Victorian woman isn't glamourized, nor is prostitution, which can be a trap historical fiction and fantasy of a certain kind falls into; and b) though there are steampunk elements, it also avoids the above glamour trap, which steampunk can certainly fall into. I felt like these stories both treated their time period respectfully -- affectionately, perhaps, and we weren't delving deeply into issues, but with a clear head.

Overall recommended, if you can get your hands on these stories. Definitely not for children or the prudish. I keep thinking of dark chocolate as a metaphor -- delicious, a little exotic, and slightly bitter in a way that makes the whole experience that much better. The writing is quietly excellent, and the story is original and diverting. I'll be reading more by Baker in the future.

*book clubbing* Little Brother by Cory Doctorow

After an insane and sad mix-up involving the internet eating emails, Mandy and I are back at it with reviews and chats about Cory Doctorow's award-winning YA novel Little Brother. Which, incidentally, you can now download for I-kid-you-not free, in addition to checking it out of your local library or buying yourself a hard copy.

My review:

So, Little Brother. There were parts that I really liked, and parts that I didn't like. But overall, my impression is very good: this is an Important Book, one that a lot more people need to be reading. It helps that it's very readable. It occurs to me that most of this review will be about some of the problems I had with the novel, but I want to be clear: I did enjoy it, and I will recommend it. What seem like problems to me actually all stem from the point of view of the narration, and so many will probably not find them as jarring as I did. It's not something Doctorow did wrong, it's that the point of view is completely consistent and strong throughout and sometimes I wanted more.

I would call this is a dystopian novel, although I'm not sure that's quite right. It's really, frighteningly close to what we've already got. There but for the grace of intelligent people like Cory Doctorow go we, my friends. Take a big, devastating terrorist attack and a giant, scary overreaction by the feds, and there are teenagers being disappeared for being teenagers, and privacy being stripped from us all. It doesn't take much to extrapolate from our current situation to get to where Doctorow has put his hero Marcus.

What I didn't like was that some of the villains were a little flat. The big villain, the Department of Homeland Security, is faceless, implacable and terrifying in the way it is supposed to be; but the individuals, the class bully, the obnoxious VP, the sadistic interrogator, all were kind of ... meh. I didn't see them as much but strawmen in a lot of ways, people for Marcus to fight against so that he could win and explain why he was right in the process.

The problem with the flatness of the villains is that it does lend an air of unreality to the big problems Marcus takes on. A number of times I ended up thinking, "really? really, reasonable people would let that sort of thing happen? really, reasonable reporters would gobble up the party line like that?" and I think that can be dangerous, because this book is all about not being complacent. I don't plan to ever get too political on this blog (it would get ranty and unpleasant for all involved), but this is a really political book. It forces one to be political, to think about what's happening in the world, and to be a little more vigilant than most of us have gotten used to being.

The only other problem I had was that occasionally Marcus would go off on tangents about various things related to his interests. Sometimes this is cool, but often it feels a little heavy-handed. That said, I don't think it was outside his character at all. The story is told in first person and Marcus is an earnest, righteously furious and very smart teenager. He wants the reader to understand his motivations, and he shares his various geeky loves with the reader too. So while I
found some of those interludes a little distracting, I don't think it was out of character -- it just took me out of the story.

Otherwise, as an intro to almost-dystopian YA lit, this was a good one. It was thrilling, I rooted for the good guys, some of it was quite original (I love the distraction Marcus came up with towards the end) and this book is absolutely an important one to read. It helps that it's a very readable, very engaging book.

***

This time, Mandy and I tried using Chatzy.com for a slightly different experience. What follows is our entire chat with only minor modifications to improve the flow. Enjoy!


Mandy: I liked your review, it was spot-on.

kiirstin: Thank you! I liked yours as well. You seemed to focus more on the technological aspects than I did. I didn't realize, for example, that gait recognition tech was something people were already working on.

Mandy: I was inspired to do some further reading, which is what I hope people would do after reading the book. My further reading was Google related, but I love that Cory included some fantastic resources at the end of his book for anyone interested.

kiirstin: Absolutely. And the essays by others at the end, I thought that was a neat touch.

Mandy: Gait-recognition technology sounds so silly after reading LB. It makes no sense. I love that LB made me question something that might otherwise seem like an okay technology to develop.

kiirstin: I thought he was very tech neutral, in some ways. Not necessarily saying "this is a bad technology" but "it is stupid to use technology in this way." Also, it made me decide I'd better password protect my cell phone.

Mandy: Many times throughout the book I was like "hunh?" about the techno-talk, but I'm used to that in SciFi. What is so cool about LB, and "mundane SciFi" in general, is that the techno-talk is not techno-babble; terms made up and used for plot purposes in some SciFi.

All of his explanations made perfect sense and were well researched. He also explained things very vividly.

kiirstin: Which all leads to that creepy "um, yeah, this could actually happen. yikes" feeling, because the technology behind the story was so established.

Mandy: Completely. You could see it all happening. LB did make me more paranoid in general--which was a big theme in the book. It also made me want to hack my Xbox with my zero hacker knowledge, but exuberant interest.

kiirstin: I think making you a bit paranoid's exactly what it was supposed to do. Even the times where I felt it might be a bit over the top, part of me was whispering that it wasn't really that over the top.

And then there was that thing on the border with the SciFi author who got the crap kicked out of him by border guards, like, a week after I finished the book.

Mandy: I didn't know about that. Who was the author?

kiirstin: Dr. Peter Watts. The first article I read about it was at Making Light. The comments on that post are really wonderful to read, too. Cory Doctorow was the first one to really break the news about that one. Dr. Watts is a friend of his.

Mandy: Cory is the coolest.

I love that his book was impeccably researched. He really knows his stuff. It's great to see someone who has a real message and gets it across, even in fiction.

Not to denigrate fiction, of course, as I love reading it. A heavy dose of non-fiction is great, though, and a bit of a breath of fresh surveilled air compared to many contemporary YA books.

kiirstin: There's a lot of fluff out there, which of course is wonderful to read too, but LB definitely had meat to it.

He just felt so familiar with the subject material. Although... if I can admit... that was one of the small things that kind of bugged me every once in a while.

Mandy: At times it was too much for me, as well.

kiirstin: It was just sometimes that there was such a clear agenda. While I agree wholeheartedly with the agenda, it was still quite noticeable.

Mandy: I agree. It was a little heavy-handed. I did like how he brings up the question, a few times in the book, how can you tell the difference between the good guys and the bad guys? Both know how to hack but the good guys are the ones who use it for a "good" purpose. However, who's the judge of that?

He touches on this a few times. I would have liked him to bring this to the fore a little more in the book.

kiirstin: Oh yes! Definitely. I liked what he did with that but I did want a bit more. The thing with Marcus' father was interesting -- I think any parent reading that would understand Marcus' father's perspective perfectly.

He was like the walking question "How much freedom and privacy would you give up to protect your family." And I *know* for many people it would be "all of it" except that without a bigger picture it's hard to recognize that by giving up those things, you're also harming your family.

Mandy: And the question of security was huge in the book. But when does the need for a sense of security become a means to possibly "evil" ends? Can we ever attain the type of security we're so set on keeping?

kiirstin: For example, how far are we willing to go just to catch wankers who decide that putting explosives in their underwear is the ideal way to inspire terror?

At the risk of overloading, there's another great Making Light thread talking about that issue. The point that is made somewhere in there is that there will *always* be outliers that we will never be able to predict.

Mandy: The lengths that we'd HAVE to go, according to LB, would only be "good" for the whole, not the individual and then you get on the slippery slope of means to the end for the greater good, which sometimes bulldozes the individual. And Homeland Security in the book demands that predictability be the norm. Which is crazy to suggest. And desperate to maintain.

kiirstin: Yes, exactly! Actually, something that stuck with me about that even though I didn't write it down was an offhand comment made about a kid who was HIV positive and his parents didn't know. And because of DHS' movement-watching scheme, they flagged his (her?) movements and blew his cover. Which would quite possibly have ruined his life.

Actually, this is something we've started having to deal with in libraries. In the States, there have been a couple of cases where the DHS has wanted libraries to release patron records to see what someone who is suspicious has been checking out of the library.

Mandy: I've heard of the library records cases. Crazy.

I also love the theme of Don't Trust Anyone Over 25 (I want to source this in the book to make sure). Because in the book anyone over 25 doesn't trust them. It's a theme that's interesting; the latter generation doesn't trust the newer generation because they are the next world-makers. What if they aren't right for the job?

"What if we haven't taught them the right way of being in the world and now it will come back to haunt us?" = blanket mistrust.

kiirstin: That whole blanket mistrust is SO PREVALENT though. Even some parents don't trust the kids they've raised to make good decisions. And true, teenagers sometimes make stupid decisions. But adults also often make stupid decisions, and they're the ones with the power.

I really liked that push-back.

***

And that's that! Thanks so much, Mandy! It was awesome chatting with you about Little Brother. Head on over to edge of seventeen and read Mandy's review for a different angle.

The Drowned World by J.G. Ballard *guest review by fishy!*

It appears that book blogging is catching. My husband, known here as fishy, asked me if I thought he should review some of the books he's been reading. I was quite excited at the prospect, so here it is -- his first ever review. My nefarious plan is to keep him reviewing after this one too and apparently he is down with that. He might even consider reviewing a thing or two with me. But for now, he has reviewed a science-fiction classic. With footnotes! Enjoy!

***

J. G. Ballard passed away this past spring, and shortly after, Writers and Company¹ aired an earlier interview with him, and a reading by him of a short story ("The Enormous Space"). I listened to this as a podcast² while driving north towards Huntsville, Ontario along highway 11. That route is a mix of natural beauty and beautiful human ruins, an ideal environment for Ballard. The reading put me in such a trance that I became convinced that I was lost, and pulled over to look at a map, only to discover I was in Orillia, right next to the shattered corpse of the Sundial Inn³.

I've been wanting to read his work ever since, and picked up this early novel for a birthday stay-cation this week. The library had very little, but this felt like a perfect introductory work.

The novel opens some 70 years after the beginning of a global environmental collapse. Sun storms have increased global temperatures and blown away the Van Allen Belt, exposing the earth to (you got it) global warming and ozone depletion. Human populations have dwindled and fled north, living in polar regions as rising waters swallowed major cities, rising heat made them uninhabitable, and atmospheric loss made high altitudes impossible.

A small military scout team has spent the last 3 years mapping out flooded cities, cataloguing the new realities of flora and fauna in preparation for an overly wishful future of rehabitation. Working their way north as temperatures continue to rise, the team has spent the last 6 months in some great northern European city: maybe Paris, Berlin or London. Our main character, Dr. Kerans never bothers to find out. He and Dr. Bodkin are the scout biologists, flora and fauna respectively.

The city is submerged, 10 stories deep, the base of operation is in 'the lagoon', a silty swamp surrounded by the crests of hotels, apartment blocks and office buildings. Kerans has commandeered the penthouse of the Ritz, living in a bubble of hermetic luxury in the middle of a primeval lagoon. The staggering temperatures lay a tropical exhaustion over the narrative. Bodkin and Kerans carefully recorded their observations at first, but now the effort feels impossible, and the conclusions clear. The heat and the high levels of solar radiation have the world re-converging on a "Neo-Triassic". Reptiles dominate the lagoon, giant horsetails erupt from the silt, and moss coats the insides and outsides of buildings. The genetic memory of the Triassic has been reawakened and re-expressed in plants and animals; whole swathes of modern species simply die off.

And humans? Colonel Riggs, the commander of the scouting party, jokes that humans will return to the jungles, but continue to dress for dinner. But humans in modern form here are submerged and stuck in a silt amber, living in air conditioned bubbles and increasingly hypnotized by the lagoon. Alarmed by jungle dreams and a primal fear of iguanas, spinal Triassic memory seems to be awakening too.

Ballard's prose could be read and enjoyed for the imagery alone, I think:

Kerans [..] was distracted by his discovery among the clutter of debris on the opposite bank of a small cemetery sloping down into the water, its leaning headstones advancing to the crowns like a party of bathers. He remembered again one ghastly cemetery over which they had moored, its ornate florentine tomb cracked and sprung, corpses floating out in their unravelling winding-sheets in a grim rehearsal of the Day of Judgement.

and I felt myself entranced by the punishing sun setting the lagoon surface on fire. The setting and mood feels real and immediate, but the humans feel uncomfortably cold and unconscious. Civilian hold-out Beatrice seems almost reptilian, solitary and aloof. Characters are compelled and sometimes singularly driven, but without accessible motives.

I suspect this might be a big turn-off for some readers, but it is critical to both the mood and the ideas of the piece. And at least for me, this novel is a work of images and ideas. Characters and plot are well constructed, but minimally constructed, all underlining a well executed thought exercise.

It is tempting as a novice reviewer to launch into a discussion paper about the ideas in this book, and my reflections on them. It's similarly tempting to just say that the book filled me with enough reflections to shovel the driveway and wash two loads of dishes. I'll strike a balance.

A lot of dystopian novels, which I guess this is, depict post-collapse humanity as... well, humanity. Some of those archetypes are here: the tribal scavengers, the lucky recluse, the naval artifact, the survivalist. Kerans even references the surreality of the Crusoe-model of human survival... I think of this as the dystopian Flintstones effect: regressed to the stone age, we can fashion a tea-set from elk bones and retire to the parlour.

But in reality, modern humanity is profoundly environmental, and human desires and motivation suprizingly submerged in our reptile brains. Somewhere perched on that knife-edge between the two is our reality. Ballard's regressing survivors are solitary, selfish and alliances are transient. Like the crocodiles, they are only momentarily agitated when one of their companions meets an end. They clutch loosely to the remnants of civilization, and when they spring from that lingering structure into the jungle, language and identity drift away. It is hard to say whether they descend into the jungles as animals, or flare out as human sparks dispersed into the swamps.

Time is also a concern: at the lagoon there is a transient overlap of human time and evolutionary time. The city has no Friday afternoon rush hour, the hands have fallen off the clock towers, or are locked in place. But the days have their rhythm and presumably the seasons will too.

I enjoyed this book, though in places it did feel like an 'early novel'. Plot periodically was too neat, the science a bit loose. There were moments of magic realism, which stuck out a bit. But with strong imagery and interesting (to me) themes, this was perhaps a book written for me. If you need redemption or rescue, or perseverance of the traditional sort, it should be clear early on in this short work that you will be disappointed. However, it isn't as dark or stringy with the sinister as you might expect. Suprizingly buoyant, rather than cynical. Calling it cheerful would be a stretch.

From the interview referenced at the start of this review, I understand that urban decay and driven but somewhat inaccessible characters are common in his works. That appealed to me, and this work didn't disappoint. Next for me from Ballard will be Vermilion Sands, a collection of short stories he wrote about a decade later with similar themes.

---
1. http://www.cbc.ca/writersandcompany/

2. http://www.cbc.ca/writersandcompany/schedule/may.html
[scroll down, this can be listened to on the page, or if you are nimble at
agent spoofing, downloaded as an mp3]

3. http://urbexbarrie.blogspot.com/2008/02/sundial-inn.html
http://urbexbarrie.blogspot.com/2008/05/sundial-reloaded-1.html
http://urbexbarrie.blogspot.com/2008/05/sundial-reloaded-2.html
http://urbexbarrie.blogspot.com/2008/08/sundial-3.html
[though sadly a dearth of good exterior shots]

Empire Star by Samuel R. Delany

I have left this review for a little bit, hoping that with digestion will come more clarity. I think that a certain acceptance of ambiguity is necessary with this story, though.

I came across Jo Walton's mention of Empire Star some time ago, and put the story immediately on the TBR list. I'm glad I did, and I'm glad it was some time ago because reading her post now, I realize that I'd forgotten some things she said that would have made the whole experience less cool. It's not that she includes spoilers, specifically, although they're there if you are looking for them; it's that she mentions certain things in a straightforward way that Delany writes about more obliquely. It's the journey with this story. And then it's the re-journey once you've read to the end and turn back to page one.

I don't read nearly enough science fiction, though I enjoy it, and I've always been curious about Samuel R. Delany's work. fishy and I were trying to decide on a story that the two of us would surely read, and probably enjoy, for our informal book club (which got off to a sputtering start several months ago before stalling). I suggested something by Delany, and we picked Empire Star specifically because it was short. Far shorter than Dhalgren, which was the one option my library had. Dhalgren is 800+ pages. Empire Star is under 100.

What really made this novella for me is Delany's use of language. His plot and characters and ideas are all interesting, and thought-provoking. But he writes wonderfully and that, to me, is the main draw. Throughout, the lanugage is poetic and lyrical, and a joy to savour.

It's hard to talk a lot about this story without giving things away. The narrator of Empire Star is the multiplexually conscious crystallized Tritovian, Jewel, who has the advantage of knowing everything and therefore being an omniscient narrator. And by the way, if much of that sentence made little sense -- um, sorry? It takes an entire novella to explain. Comet Jo is our main character, and he makes a wonderful, fascinating journey through space to deliver a message given to him by a dying man, and clarified for him by the aforementioned Jewel. Quite a lot happens, in slightly less than 100 pages, and Empire Star rewards re-reading. I saw it as a coming of age, primarily, although the story also deals with slavery and emancipation, as well as the universality of human experience.

One thing I particularly like is that there is no direct translation of current (or 60's -- the story was written in 1965) human culture and mores to space at some indeterminate time in the future. There are some standard, material and occasionally oddly clumsy reversals (men have long hair, women have short; clothes appear to be mostly optional; and so forth). But overall, the future of humanity is different -- but the human experience is still recognizeable in the pages. There were moments where I felt completely connected to the story. There were also moments where I felt completely disconnected, but not in a jarring way. More as an observer, and I am sure this is intentional.

On a slightly less profound level, I like that the indicator of a multiplex consciousness is asking questions, and knowing (or figuring out) the right questions to ask -- and that Delany also pays homage to Theodore Sturgeon, whose credo (according to Wikipedia, anyway, and I haven't fact-checked even though I am a librarian and know I should) was: "ask the next question." Nicely done.

I thoroughly enjoyed the entire experience of reading this story, and I do recommend it for anyone, even those not particularly enamoured of science fiction. The prose is beautifully lyrical and the story both entertaining and just a little mind-bending, especially the first time you read it. And don't peek ahead in this one (or read Jo Walton's post until after you've read the story!). It's got one of the best twists I've encountered recently.