A Greeting for New Folks

So, um, Cherie Priest linked back to my review of her book the other day. I gather (because I decided to take a look at my stats) that this has resulted in a moderately huge spike in traffic (less huge than in October; I'm not sure what prompted the spike in October). So, if you have come looking from Ms. Priest's kind link, hello. I hope you stick around and leave some comments if you feel moved to do so.

Monday Library Post 11/29/2010

Normally, I take the Kid Who Reads with me to the library, but today she stayed home with my wife (who reads), and I had the rare pleasure of a solo trip to the library. Thus, no fussing as I wandered by the new book rack (initially, there was nothing of interest on it - very sparse!) or browsed lingeringly through the stacks.

Three books today:

S.M. Stirling - The Protector's War
This is the second novel of The Change - I'm re-reading.

Bill Bryson - At Home
After grabbing the Stirling, I returned to the new book rack - and I'm glad I did, because I found this. I adore Bryson, his dry wit, and his sometimes unusual way of looking at things. This is a history of the world without leaving home - Bryson looks at the history of things one might find in a home. I really looking forward to this; might read it out of order, even.

R.J. Pineiro - conspiracy.com
I went looking for an Elfquest  graphic novel by the Pinis for the Kid Who Reads (didn't find it. And, decided that she's not quite ready for Elfquest anyway. Maybe in a couple of years.) and found this instead. It's old (and so the "ripped from the headlines" style might not work), but I wrote my master's thesis on conspiracy theories, so I thought I'd take a look at this.

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.

Library Post, 11/23/2010

Dear readers who read:

I wasn't planning on going to the library this week. Yesterday was pretty much a wash, today was supposed to be crazy busy (and it was!), and tomorrow doesn't look much better. Thursday is Thanksgiving, and so I am duty bound to attempt to consume my own weight in turkey and mashed potatoes, plus the library is closed, and also on Friday. And, beyond all of that, I have a huge stack of books already. The kid who reads is reading the Narnia books, which we own. The wife who also reads is re-reading the Harry Potter books, which we also own. No one needed to go to the library this week. Except, I had a pile of overdue books, and could not renew them online because they were overdue, and I had half an hour before a car appointment, so the kid and I went to the library.

In my net today:

Pierre Pevel - The Cardinal's Blades


This is, apparently, the English language debut for one of France's best fantasy authors. It's swashbuckle-y, in a Three Musketeers sort of way, with dragons! Who, apparently, rule Spain. It starts ok, so we'll see how it does.

Alex Butterworth - The World that Never Was


Non-fiction. This claims to be a very broad cultural/social history of the turn of the century, covering a huge range of things; utopian movements in Europe, proto-nationalist movements in Asia and Africa, and all manner of things. We shall see - it doesn't seem long enough to encompass the promises of the fly leaf.

Friday Review, 11/19/2010

Laney Salisbury, Aly Suju - Provenance



The best book on art forgery I've read in a while. Ok, that's not fair - it's not like I read a lot of books on art forgery. This was a good book. The background - in the late '80s and early '90s, a con man in London, with the help of a gifted artist, sold a large (possibly in the hundreds) number of fake pictures. The artists whose work was faked tended to be modern - cubists, expressionists, and abstracticists (is that a word?). These pieces of art were veted by serious art experts at major galleries and auction houses - people who should have been able to catch them as frauds - but the con man (John Drewe) went beyond acquiring fake pictures. Drewe's con was brilliant, because he also faked the provenance of the paintings - the paper trail which showed who owned the painting, when it was sold, and where it was displayed. Drewe inserted fake pedigrees for his fake paintings into the archives of prominent museums in England, like the Tate Gallery. Many experts, although sceptical about the painting in particular (elements were off, the artist usually used such and such a brush stroke, which was missing from the fake, etc), were convinced of the authenticity of the works because the paper looked good. A very small group of experts overrode the strength of the paper, and showed that the paintings were too new - the paper was wrong, the paint was wrong, the colours were wrong, etc.

One of the things that I found particularly interesting was the underlying sense that the forger - John Myatt - and Drewe saw that they were addressing weaknesses in the way that we percieve modern art. Myatt, after serving his term in jail, has gone on to be a popular and successful artist by paitining "genuine fakes" - carefully registered paintings in the style of the masters. Someone comes to him and asks for a portrait in the style of Picasso, for instances, and Myatt paints it. He tags it as a Genuine Fake, and everyone is happy. In the afterword, Myatt suggests that this allows people to judge the painting on its own merits - they don't feel compelled to like it because it was painted by Picasso, they can like it because of how it was painted, or how it makes them feel. The sense here - and the authors do nothing to diminish it - is one of deliberate anti-elitism. Art experts are snobs, and Drewe and Myatt took the air out of them.

The format of the book was part history, part police procedural, part caper novel. Salisbury and Sujo use moderately extensive footnotes (for a piece of popular writing, anyway), and have conducted considerable research into not just the specific case of Drewe and Myatt, but into counterfeiting in general, and there are numerous digressions into broader discussions of art, art forgery, and the psychology of con men. I found those fascinating. Salisbury and Sujo have made it easy to feel sympathy for Myatt, and for the ordinary people that Drewe's con took in, while maintaining a sense that, on some level, the art experts had it coming. Drewe comes off as a bit of a jerk, although there is some sympathy there too - of all the people he conned, perhaps he conned himself first.

In the end, an enjoyable read which uses a specific case to delve a little way into a fascinating subject. 

John Sandford - Storm Prey

So, another Sandford. He twists the police procedural a bit here - under normal circumstances, in a procedural, the reader is as much in the dark as the protagonist. Sandford, in this book, lets his readers see the criminals - this makes it harder to twist the plot; to suddenly reveal that the criminal is someone that you never expected. In that regard, Sandford is setting himself up in a situation where it is difficult for him to cheat.

Sandford novels, while well written, tend not to have a great deal of depth. I've said this before, and this book is no different. Lucas Davenport is still God's gift to police investigators, there's a crime, his family is threatened, he and the rest of the cops track down the bad guys, and the real villains end up dead. I was a little bothered by the inclusion of a pair of Middle Eastern characters, one of whom is really bad and one who is not. There's a fair bit of stereotype there. Sandford plays with it - these men are not Arabs, and they are not terrorists - but they both end up dead, and neither are really all that well developed as characters. Mind you, none of the characters are that well developed - and on some level, you shouldn't pick up a John Sandford novel expecting a group of highly developed characters. It was quick, it was a fun romp, and that's what I was looking for. Hard to complain when you get what you were looking for.

Mark Keating - The Pirate Devlin

This is Mr. Keating's first novel, and it's a good start. It's an historical novel, and Keating includes a nice author's note - something that I look for in an historical novel. Keating is writing about the "golden age" of piracy, in the late 18th century, just before the American Revolution. His pirates are true to the historical record - Keating has clearly done his research. The author's note clearly deliniates - and justifies -  the places where Keating has deviated from the historical record. Additionally, the book is packed with swashbuckling action and naval battles - all good stuff. Keating is clearly a writer to watch for, as he continues this series.

Some things I didn't like all that much. Devlin - the titular character - is fairly brutal in his outlook on the world - quick to violence as a solution to problems. Keating gives us a few snippets of Devlin's backstory which would seem to provide motivation for this violent outlook, but I'd like a little bit more depth. Second, Keating makes use of a lot of sentence fragments.  I suspect this is to project a sense of breathless action, and it works fairly well in the context of actual action scenes.  It's a little distracting in a passage of general description, and I found it tripping me up a little. I should stress, I'm not a huge grammar maven or anything of that nature, but, in this instance, it was quite noticable and it bugged me.

mid-week library post 11/18/2010

Two books this week:

Ian M. Banks - Surface Detail
Mr. Banks writes big, chewy, hard sci-fi novels, packed with fantastic characters and plenty of dry wit. He is one of a small group of authors whose books I will grab based on the enjoyment I have gotten from previous works. I must confess, however, that I didn't really like his last book - Consider Phlebas (edit 11/29/2010 - of course I mean Matter as Simon points out in the comments, and the most recent prior to this one is Transition which I have yet to read. Entirely my mistake.)- I think I felt that it lacked resolution. So, we shall see. This is a good book to have on hand with the Thanksgiving holiday around the corner - I should have time to read it, then!

Eric Flint - 1635: The Eastern Front
This is the most recent book in the Ring of Fire series. These books are a little frustrating in that they have excellent continuity, but some of them are harder to find than others. That means that there tend to be gaps in what I've read. Flint is an interesting author in that he collaborates quite freely - this series, in particular, works very much like a shared universe. Flint established the concept - a small mining town in West Virginia is suddenly catapulted backwards into the 1630s, in the middle of Europe, and in the middle of the 30 years war - and has since then allowed other authors to play in his sandbox. This book, however, is Flint himself, by himself.

ahhhh! (very late reviews, 11/17/10)

This past week and such has been crazy! For instance, I have not yet been to the library this week, which is unprecedented. I did paint a room, though, so that's all good.

I do have reviews:

S.M. Stirling - Dies The Fire 

This is the first of Stirling's novels of the Change - I reviewed the most recent one a couple of weeks ago. I wanted to go back and take a look at the beginning of the characters. This was, I thought, a neat way to approach a post-apocalyptic setting - at the beginning of the novel, all explosive technology stops working. Gasoline no longer burns fast enough to power engines. Gunpowder no longer ignites quickly enough to fire bullets. Steam engines do not produce enough pressure to drive locomotives. The world is thrown back into a pre-industrial state. Stirling looks at the implications of that, and follows around 3 groups who adapt to the new environment. It's good stuff - he has good characters, he's thought about the setting a lot, and it's an entertaining read. I do find his use of accents distracting, I know I've mentioned this before. Additionally, he skirts the edge of implausible luck in a couple of places - to the extent that his characters comment on it, actually. Some plot points that I remember as coming later in the series actually happen much earlier. A good re-read, I may continue re-reading the series. 

Charles Stross - The Jennifer Morgue 

On Saturday, in addition to painting, I also went to a local book sale - factory seconds and the like - and picked up this book. Last year, I grabbed the first one of these - The Atrocity Archives - and I was actually looking for the 3rd one, which I thought was the second - so this was a nice surprise. Stross has a neat premise here. Magic, and particularly demonology, actually work. It's a subset of math. With the rise of computers during and after WWII, it's actually become easier to summon things from elsewhere. All of the major world powers have subsets of their secret services which are devoted to ensuring that such summoning doesn't happen. James Bond meets Cthulhu, basically, with a healthy dose of computer hacking thrown in for good measure. The humor is dry, the horror is just under the surface, and the books are exceedingly well written.

Stross is a hugely versitile author - he can go from hard science fiction to this to softer fantasy type settings, and makes each of them work. He doesn't like steampunk, but I suppose you can't please everyone all the time. One of the signs of that versitility here is the inclusion of a short non-fiction essay at the end of these novels. In the first one, Stross muses on the shared nature of horror writing and spy fiction. In this one, he discusses the creation and endurance of James Bond as a character. Well thought out, well written essays, plus entertaining novels? Hard to beat!