Friday Reviews, 11/26/2010

I should confess that I am under the influence of rather too much turkey at this point. I hope all of you had lovely Thanksgivings, and ate just enough of the things you enjoy eating at this time of year. I hope you took the opportunity to do some reading, as well - I know I did. This week, my review features zombies, war, police detection and zombies, war and police detection all at once. Also, cyclopses. Ready?

Cherie Priest - Dreadnought


Ms. Priest has begun to make a name for herself in the steampunk genre. This is her second book in what she is calling her "Clockwork Century" series, a series of books set in an alternate history in which the US Civil War started just a little later, and so involves technology just a little better, and has thus lasted a lot longer. Also, there are zombies. The war provides the backdrop to this book - it has raged for at least a generation, such that boys and girls born after the beginning of the war are now old enough to participate in the war. Mercy Lynch, a nurse in a Confederate hospital, receives bad news about her Union husband, and then troubling news about the father who abandoned her family when Mercy was just an infant. This precipitates a long voyage across the continent by air ship, steam ship, and train. The only train she can get onto leaving St. Louis for the West Coast is pulled by a heavily armored Union locomotive named the Dreadnought. While on the train, she encounters some interesting characters, including a Union scientist who believes he has a solution to the war. It involves zombies. Right and justice prevail over warmongering and the undead hoards, but this prompts some thought for me.

Recently, Charles Stross has posted a screed attacking steampunk as a literary movement. His objection is grounded in two points - first, that the genre, or sub-genre or whatever it is within the speculative fiction realm, is too everpresent. That is perhaps justifiable - there does seem to be a trend towards tossing a zepplin and a steam powered robot at an otherwise perfectly good novel and calling it steampunk. His other point is that the genre (or sub-genre, or whatever) glorifies the Victorian era, with all of the darkness and excess of Victorian era imperialism. This, I think, seems to miss the point - and the zombies in Ms. Priest's books (which come under special condemnation - "gas induced zombies are not Science, now are they, Ms. Priest?" - I paraphrase) really seem to illustrate the point.  Yes, the "steam" in steampunk points to the Victorian era, when mechanization, especially of factories, was rising quickly. Yes, that factorization (if that's a word) marked the era, and every era after it, forcing (western) societies to take a certain path and other (eastern?) societies into a particular role (subjugation, mostly) - but the "punk" in steampunk rejects the standardization that those factories imply. A single example: aesthetically, yes, steampunks tend towards brass and brown, but, most importantly, they tend towards do it yourselfishness - not one size fits many off the rack fashion, but one size fits one tailor made clothing. The characters in Dreadnought fight against the zombies, against the standardization of modernism, against the uniformity of war and empire and conquest. Steampunk is, at its best, a celebration of the individual - and isn't that the basis for most speculative fiction? Indeed, isn't that why we read it and love it, those of us who do? So, Cherie Priest, keep on with your gas induced zombies and heavily armored trains and zepplins in the weird west, please, and I will continue reading about them.

Connie Willis - Blackout and All Clear


Although published as two works, these really constitute a single, very long, novel. Willis writes a wide variety of things, but she tends to be known for her time travelling books, like these two. The underlying premise - at some point in the future, time travel is developed.  After it becomes clear that the technology cannot be used to alter the past, it is abandoned by governments seeking to improve their situation and instead used by university history departments to get a real grasp on the past. Through several works, Ms. Willis has developed the principles of her version of time travel - what are the risks to the participants; where are the loop holes in the rules, and how far can they stretch; and, above all, how can these elements intersect to make for good stories? And they do make for good stories, because another thing Ms. Willis is known for is her skill as an excellent story teller.

Time and time again, Ms. Willis has returned not only to the theme of time travel, but to an exploration of World War Two in England - a fascinating topic. This two part novel is a tour de force, covering the war from a wide variety of angles, and bringing in stories about ordinary people doing extraordinarily heroic things. It is a story about heroes, and about love (Ms. Willis got her start in writing romance novels, and some of that shows here - but the really good sort of romance novels, not the kind you would ever sell to a used book store). The story is also about mystery novels, and about chaos, and about history. The plot is twisted, and the chronology is also twisted (which doesn't help), and Willis uses her characteristic dialogue to excellent effect. An element of many of Ms. Willis' stories is the way in which her characters talk over and under each other, accidentally using language to prevent communication. Sometimes this is a little frustrating, often it is amusing, and occasionally it is heart breaking, or leads to heart breaking conclusions. One thing you can fairly expect from a Willis novel is a happy ending, although it is often bitter sweet. This pair of books is no exception.

One thing - this is LONG. Plus, once you start, it's very hard to stop - the pace is inexorable. Clear a weekend, because you won't get much sleep.

Laurie King - To Play the Fool
(recommended by my wife, who reads.)

If you've been reading these posts, you know about Laurie King - she writes the Sherlock Holmes post WWI novels. This is two or three books into her other series, the Kate Martinelli series. This series is set in present San Francisco, and focus on police detective Kate Martinelli. My wife has been enjoying the Holmes books, and there's a cross over between the two detectives (which is odd, since these books are set in the present), so she started the Martinellis, and she handed this one to me, so I read it. It was exceedingly good. Martinelli investigates the death of a homeless man. The prominent suspect is a Holy Fool - a sort of itinerant monk who speaks entirely in quotations (from the Bible, from Shakespeare, from Gilbert and Sullivan, from all over). He's not crazy, he's part of a movement which seeks (or sought, he seems to be the last one) to expose meaning in the world through acting as if they lack meaning. In the context of Shakespeare, the fool in King Lear serves as a model - through foolish acting, the fool can speak truth to power. The Fools seek to do the same in our modern world, to mixed effect.

I found this book fit very nicely with the rest of what I was reading. The Fools (or, well, Brother Erasmus) act as a foil for the dehumanizing effects of modern life, and so the theme fit with Dreadnought. Erasmus, and Martinelli, are heroes because of their dogged devotion to their personal cause, and so the theme fit with the Willis as well. Plus, King writes very nicely, and I appreciated that too. A surprisingly deep, and deeply satisfying, novel. Unconditional recommendation.

James Knapp - State of Decay


A debut novel for Mr. Knapp, this book features war, zombies, and police detectives. The war seems to be some sort of endless extension of the War on Terror (this is never really stated, but rather broadly implied - if we are entering into a forever war, then Knapp has described the outcome in his mind) and the zombies are the troops used to fight the war - the revivors, the re-animated corpses of those too poor or too insignificant to avoid being pressed into posthumous service. There are two ways to avoid being made into a revivor - one is to rise to the top of society as a scientist or engineer or businessperson. The other is to volunteer for pre-humous service - one way or another, service in the cause is guaranteed.

The novel follows a group of characters from various stratas of society as they work their way through life in this brave new world. A police detective struggles to make sense of a series of killings, an FBI agent deals with a zombie smuggling ring (for cheap labor, and also cheap thrills - some people like to pay for sex with revivors, it seems), a confused woman has visions of people asking her for help, and a lower class woman makes her living as a professional wrestler. Together, they unravel a complicated conspiracy, involving the zombies (naturally) and the government (sort of), and a shadowy group of shadowy people who are trying to run the world.

That description makes the whole thing sound cheap, doesn't it? It's not - this is quite well written, the characters are strong, the plot was strong, and the whole thing was quite enjoyable. Now, what remains to be seen is if Mr. Knapp will attempt a sequel - I think that will be a mistake, frankly - or is able to go off in an entirely different direction, either loosely within this setting, or somewhere else. That book would be worth reading, I think, and I'll keep my eye out for it. (edit - I note that State of Decay is the first of a trilogy - I won't go out of my way to avoid the second book [The Silent Army - out now], but I'm not putting it on my library reserve list.)

Rick Riordan - Percy Jackson and the Sea of Monsters


This is the second of the Percy Jackson books. I picked up the first one when the movie came out, and it was fun. This one was better than the first - fewer points where I wanted to shake the characters and shout "how could you miss that plot point, are you STUPID?!," but still not a hugely deep novel. The premise of the series - the Greek gods continue to exist and have limited influence upon the world, mostly through their half-deity offspring. Zeus, Poseidon, and Hades have taken a vow (post WWII) not to have kids anymore. Zeus, Poseidon, and Hades are the three big gods, and their offspring tend to have bigger and less intended consequences in the world (like World War Two). When I tell you that Percy (Perseus) Jackson is the son of Poseidon, you will begin to see how well the Greek gods tend to keep their promises, even to each other. The teen children of the various gods struggle against re-imagined monsters of myth (Hydra is responsible for commercial franchises, for instance), and the whole thing is a fun romp, just not all that deep.

Friday Review 8/06/10

I've managed to read 4 books this week.

Yasmin Sabina Khan - Enlightening the World

This was a fascinating look at the construction of the Statue of Liberty (originally called "Liberty Enlightening the World"). Khan does an excellent job of placing the construction into the context of American and French history. However, in doing that excellent job, Khan also displays one of the two traits I found annoying in the book.  The first comes from the fact that Khan has an historian's tendency to follow ideas back to their distant roots. In this discussion of the Statue of Liberty, she traces, extensively, the history of the friendship between France and the United States; the situation in the US following the Civil War; the situation in France preceding and following the Franco-Prussian War; the history of colossal monuments back to the 7 wonders of the ancient world; the use of neo-classical architecture in the US, and what that means, architecturally and ideologically within the US; the situation of architecture in France at the same time; and, finally, the various histories and biographies of the various "fathers" of the statue. The book is organized chronologically, more or less, but these side trips into the deeper past tend to come at unusual intervals throughout. In a longer book, this might not matter - actually, in a longer book, these digressions would contribute to the value of the book - but this is a very slim book, and so the digressions feel very much like distractions. The book has 12 chapters, and until chapter 10, nothing of the actual building of the Statue has been really discussed. That is, perhaps, too many discursive side trips. I frequently found myself saying "c'mon, get ON with it!," and anticipating another venture to discuss this financier, or that manufacturer of copper.

The other thing I found irksome in the book was the use of illustrations.  The book was lavishly illustrated - but often there were no pictures of what I wanted pictures of. Khan offered detailed descriptions of buildings, paintings, sculpture - many of which are still extant - but didn't include pictures of the building, painting or statue in question. I would have liked to have seen pictures of them - especially some of the Franco-Prussian War monuments, which Khan made sound particularly evocative. I could look them up via Google, but that's not the point. I would happily have sacrificed a photo of a sculptor for a photo of one of his sculptures.

Laurie King - The Beekeeper's Apprentice and O, Jerusalem 
Earlier, I reviewed King's second Mary Russell novel - A Monstrous Regiment of Women. The Russell novels describe a series of mysteries solved by Mary Russell and her husband, Sherlock Holmes.  My wife, a fan of Doyle's detective, was intrigued, and so I acquired the first of the series for her, and several of the later books - she's spent the past week devouring them. I had complained that the romance in Monstrous Regiment didn't work particularly well - it seemed ungrounded - and so my wife suggested that I read the first book and the fourth book (I will explain momentarily) in order to get a better fix on why the romance does work, or is at least grounded in a relationship which makes sense.  O, Jerusalem takes place towards the end of Beekeeper - literally, there is a passage where Russell states "this is not the place to include a book length description of our trip to Palestine" - and so I do recommend that you read them concurrently. Beekeeper is a series of tightly linked vignettes - how Russell and Holmes met; their first case, their first serious case, the big event which cements their partnership. O, Jerusalem and the subsequent novels are more traditional novels. King has done some research on the period (just after World War One), and her descriptions are highly detailed and quite enjoyable. I recommend these to anyone who likes mystery novels, Sherlock Holmes, and/or well researched and written historical romance.

Victor Hanson - Ripples of Battle: How Wars of the Past Still Determine How we Fight, How we Live, and How we Think


It's hard to be an academic military historian these days.  Military history is very old fashioned in a world of social and cultural historians.  Indeed, there was an article some years ago about how so few schools even teach military history anymore. At the same time, military history outsells most other forms of history books in the general public, especially if the book addresses World War Two, or the US Civil War. The American public is deeply engrossed in those conflicts.
This book is clearly military history, and it is also popular history but Hanson is trying to do a couple of fairly important things on an academic level.  First, this is properly a short collection of three interconnected essays. Hanson examines three battles - the battle for Okinawa in World War Two, the Battle at Shiloh in the American Civil War, and the Battle of Delium during the Peloponnesian War.
This use of essays is, I think, critical to one of the two things Hanson is trying to do - form a bridge between popular and academic history. The book aims for a certain level of academic rigor, but by using the less formal essays rather than the more formal monograph, the book is not held to quite the same standards that an academic monograph might be - Hanson uses several short bibliographic essays instead of standard footnotes, for instance. A lack of footnotes appeals to the general reading public, while the use of essays keeps the book within the purview of academia. Hanson also writes in a style which is accessible to a popular audience, but is making a fairly significant argument about the nature of military history; again, attempting to bridge the divide between academic and popular history. So, that's the first thing that Hanson is doing, and I think he does a fairly decent job of it.  The book is most firmly rooted in popular history, but I think it is rigorous enough to withstand at least casual academic discussion.
The second thing Hanson is trying to accomplish is to provide an academic justification for traditional military history.  This book is crie de coure against the rise of military social history - the study of military history through a lens of social history.  Hanson decries works about women and African Americans in the US Army taking precedence over discussions of battles fought by the Army. His central argument is that the effects of specific battles have "ripples" which affect the war the battle is part of, the soldiers fighting the battle, and the societies from which the soldiers have come. While on the one hand, Hanson has a point, I think he oversells his position. Hanson is trying to prove not just that traditional military history - the study of movements of armies, analysis of battles, and discussion of decisions made by generals - has a place in academia. He is also trying to prove that this sort of history should have pride of place in academia - that it is literally more important to understand the Battle of Shiloh than it is to understand the society which made the battle necessary. Do wars have an effect on society? Absolutely. Does the outcome of a particular battle influence the direction of a specific war, and of future wars? No doubt in my mind. Should we throw out a century of historiography and return to a study of great generals and their detailed battle plans - that, I think, is taking things a little too far.
A final thought. Hanson provides some small maps of the battles in question - considerably more detailed maps would have improved this as a work of military history. Perhaps, instead of looking at three battles, Hanson could have focused on one - Shiloh, I felt, was the strongest part of his argument, but Okinawa was the battle that Hanson was clearly the most interested in - and still made the argument. So, good popular history, an interesting thesis for academic discussion, but not, actually, all that good as military history.

Friday Review, 7/23/10

I think I've only actually finished two books this week, which is mildly alarming, to say the least.

Laurie King - A Monstrous Regiment of Women


This is the second in a series of books re-imagining Sherlock Holmes as he would be shortly after WWI. The protagonist is a young theological student, a woman named Mary Russell. I enjoyed the book, mostly for the descriptions of post-WWI England in terms of gender mores and social structures. There is a romance between Russell and Holmes - I gather this prompted some criticism of the series as a whole, they end up married - and it might have worked better if I had read the first book. However, in this second book, there seemed to be very little preamble. My wife is currently re-reading the original Holmes stories, and remarked on how interesting it is that a) so few of the stories feature a murder and b) how often the supplicant to Holmes goes away only partially satisfied. This book, by contrast, is a murder mystery (as most mysteries post Holmes have been), and the clients get what they were looking for, more or less. So, an interesting period piece, relatively well researched, and perhaps it would have worked better if it had not included Holmes. I have, however, ordered the first book, to see how it goes.

Thomas Sniegoski - Dancing on the Head of a Pin


This one is also a mystery. The twist here is that the detective is a fallen angel - not fallen unto Hell, but no longer welcome in Heaven either. Sniegoski has done some interesting things with the character - I especially liked the interactions between Remy Chandler and his labrador dog. It is also, interestingly enough, not really a murder mystery. In fact, it fits better as a spy novel, almost - Chandler is a detective, yes, but he is also a critical go-between between Heaven and Earth, and between Earth and Hell - someone who can do things that neither side in the longest cold war can or are willing to do. When you look at it in those terms, it works differently. Anyway, this was an enjoyable and quick read, and I'll certainly pick up a book 3, if there is one.

Both of those books were fairly quick reads. Since then, I've been somewhat bogged down in Red Families, Blue Families, which is somewhat heavy going. I will review it next week, have no fear.