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Night of the Avenging Blowfish

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The first thing you notice about Night of the Avenging Blowfish: A Novel of Covert Operations, Love, and Luncheon Meat by John Welter is the humor. The book is downright funny, and not just a one-note sort of funny. At the start we are with a group of Secret Service agents who may (or may not) have been challenged to a baseball game by the CIA. The game will be played at night, in an unknown location. The challenge on the bulletin board may be a prank. The Secret Service men are eager to form a team, primarily because their boss doesn’t want them to. Silly? Perhaps, but no less silly than living your entire life ready to shoot anyone who looks like they might want to harm the president. No less silly, but a lot less painful.

Doyle is one of those agents. He and the other bachelors in the service sometimes go out drinking, to look at the women in the bars they will never meet. It’s hard to have a romance when you can’t even say where you work. Doyle has another secret, one all his own, to share with no one. He’s so desperately lonely that he’s starting to crumble. He’s also in love with a married woman whom he can never, ever tell about his feelings.

He’s also in a bit of a pickle at work. One night during a visit to the White House kitchen, he finds the chef preparing Spam for a state dinner. The president, it seems, made a comment that the chef took personally. The chef also tells Doyle that tonight’s paté will actually be cat food. Doyle decides that Spam poses no threat to the President so it’s not up to him to interfere. In fact, he’s amused by it all. Unfortunately, the Spam is exposed (though not the cat food), the chef is fired, and Doyle’s inaction angers important people. Eventually (with Doyle’s help) the episode develops into a political scandal (“The president is an elitist!”) that leads to the Chief Executive eating all sorts of awful local dishes, which in turn leads to protest from animal rights groups…

It gets complicated. Meanwhile, the baseball team, dubbed the Avenging Blowfish, continue to practice playing in the dark, and Doyle learns that the object of his unrequited love might — just might — return his affection.

The dialog in the book is crackling sharp and very funny, even when dancing around dark subjects. People speak almost in code, conversations twisting with deliberate misinterpretation of others’ words, layers of negatives, and an understood agreement to not understand. This is particularly true when the Secret Service and the CIA talk to each other. I was reminded of Joseph Heller several times while reading, and then noticed that Heller was quoted on the cover, endorsing the writer.

For all the silliness, the book has a heart. It’s a love story, and Doyle, speaking privately with us, feels emotions with a force that threatens to break him, and he can never, ever tell anyone about them. Occasionally I thought the author went a bit overboard with Doyle’s private expressions of hopelessness, but the language was powerful enough to pull it off. Doyle is a good man, and he’s in a tough place for someone who has emotions.

One thing I can say for Welter: He ended this novel really well. Progress made, understanding reached, but life is still complicated, the way life is. Doyle does his job, supports his friends, and hits a home run.

Or does he?

Note: if you use the above link to buy this book (or a Kindle, or a new car), I get a kickback.

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City of the Sun

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This will be a quick review, because there is another book I have a lot more to say about. So it goes. I picked up City of the Sun by David Levien in a bookstore in the Atlanta airport after spending many hours on a plane with no reading material at hand. Desperate times call for desperate measures, so I grabbed three books (one for fuego, two for me in case one blew) as we waited to board. On the flight I made it perhaps ten pages in before falling asleep.

I did read the book once I got to my new home in San Jose, and I really enjoyed it. It’s a detective novel, and it does have some good action and there is suspense, but the story really revolves around two fathers, both dealing with the tragic loss of a son. It is the chemistry between the two that drives the story, and the gradual healing we see (or at least coming to terms with their losses) is the real payoff of the story.

As far as the writing itself goes, the style annoyed me at first. There is a lot of present tense and some shifts that didn’t take me with them. I thought about that later, as I was tearing through the pages, how I wasn’t annoyed anymore. Then I realized the author had stopped doing that stuff and had just settled down to write the story. As soon as he did that I was along for the ride. Hopefully in subsequent books he won’t feel the need to start out fancy. Once he got rolling his prose was almost invisible. There was a story going on, not words on a page. Now that I pay so much attention to the mechanics, it’s really refreshing when the story just takes over.

As interesting as the progress of the characters and how they dealt with their loss was, I found the plot payoff at the end of the story to be rather annoying. I won’t go into detail, but there’s one bit of good fortune that doesn’t belong and actually undermines much of what came before. It would only take a small twist to provide a chance to really get inside the guts of these two men and provide a powerful finish. As it is, we really don’t get the detective’s take on the final events.

It’s a quibble, but often the detective seems a little too perfect — there’s a bit of superman to him that a few demons can’t hide. Maybe in the sequels his former drinking problems will resurface, he’ll hit someone he shouldn’t have, or something else will jump up and blindside him. Here’s hoping. The sequels will certainly be worth checking out.

Note: if you use the above link to buy this book (or a Kindle, or a new car), I get a kickback.

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Bangkok Tattoo

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Before I get to the quibbles let me just say that Bangkok Tattoo by John Burdett is a damn good read. Interesting characters, many of whom are not particularly good people, fill this story. It follows the story Bangkok 8, but stands alone as a complete story; while having read the precursor will add understanding of some of the nuances, I think one could pick up this book cold and enjoy it tremendously.

On to the quibbles: There are many passages about the contrast between east and west, about the different way that people think in Asia. There are times when Burdett goes beyond the need of the story to present and defend Thai culture and the sex trade in general. After one too many times harping on this theme, it started to feel defensive and even condescending at times. It started to feel western. Our narrator, Sonchai, himself a fairly advanced Buddhist for being a corrupt cop, were he really Thai, would have let events speak for themselves more. Thus the writer’s voice undermines his narrator’s voice, and the story is weakened.

But let’s look past that, shall we? This is a mystery story, but even the question they are trying to answer is evasive. What happened that night in the hotel room when an American was mutilated and murdered seems of only secondary importance. What concerns everyone involved are the consequences of the crime. As various interests try to influence the interpretation of the crime, things escalate. The Americans want to blame Al Qaida. The moderate muslims want it to be a simple crime; they are working to keep politics stable in the south next to Muslim Malaysia. Colonel Vikorn, head of police in the part of town where the crime occurred, wants to keep one of his star prostitutes out of jail. Sonchai’s dead partner has advice that seems to make no sense at all. Then things get complicated.

One of the best things about the narrator is the reverence Sonchai has for his boss. The relationship is a mass of contradictions; Vikorn is a drug-dealing cop and one wily SOB. Sonchai makes the whole force nervous with his ethics but he has nothing but praise for the man who runs the department (and is a majority shareholder in Sonchai’s mother’s brothel). Vikorn falsifies evidence, and Sonchai can do nothing but praise the skill with which he did it. Then there’s Lek, Sonchai’s young partner. The Colonel is glad hear that he’s not gay; he’s merely a transvestite, a female spirit in a male body. The Buddha teaches that this is a natural state and points out that such people must walk a very difficult path. Do not judge; you’ve been one before and you will be again. And there’s Chanya, the beautiful prostitute who took credit for killing the American. Chanya, whom Sonchai has come to love, even while admiring her skill making other men love her.

So, there are lots of people who want different things. Colonel Vikorn proves adept at coming up with evidence that will satisfy all parties. Every time he does, however, a new interest shows up on he scene, or contradictory evidence comes up in a way that can’t easily be ignored. There is a point, maybe two-thirds of the way through, where Sonchai says (I’m paraphrasing but the actual quote is equally straightforward), “that’s the end of the story. There’s just a coda to follow.”

The coda starts out like a well-behaved wrap-up would, then explodes. I don’t want to tell you too much more, but there comes a time when a man must pay for his actions, and sometimes that price can be unpleasant.

It’s hard for me to turn off the editor brain while I read these days. I’m cruising along and sooner or later I hit something that makes me think about the writing rather than the story. I’m happy to report that for this book most of those interruptions were positive; sometimes an unexpected but perfect adjective, other times a satisfying twist of phrase, once of twice a particularly sweet metaphor. The only negatives were when he betrayed the voice of the narrator to beat home that it’s different there. Got it. Thanks. Let’s move on with the story. It’s a really good story.

Note: if you use the above link to buy this book (or a Kindle, or a new car), I get a kickback.

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The Secret Agent

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This evening I picked another book off fuego’s shelves, this one a putative classic. The Secret Agent: A Simple Tale, by Joseph Conrad, has proven to be a pretty good read so far. First published in 1907, it is a story based on an actual terrorist attack against the Greenwich observatory outside London. In this version the act is incited by entrenched political forces who want to encourage terrorism so they can better legislate away the freedoms of the populace. The story is a satire, but back in the day it apparently pissed a few people off.

I was reading along, and I hit a section where I really got the joke. Which makes me wonder if there are other sections where I don’t get the jokes. I suspect that many of the character descriptions and actions are steeped in irony that is often lost on me because the vocabulary (and simple Englishness) used to describe them impedes my understanding. This isn’t a comedy by any means, but I think that wry undercurrent is what gives the story life. I just wich I could understand it a little better.

I get the same feeling sometimes with Japanese literature (and cartoons), that there are veins of humor and symbolism that I can detect but cannot fully appeciate. In a way that’s pretty cool; it defines a new area I can learn stuff. Happily, I can still laugh at things like nonsensical street numberings. Some things will never change in London Town, and Conrad deals with the subject with a dry wit that permeates the entire book. His portrayal of ‘revolutionaries’ is not very flattering, to say the least, and many of the good guys don’t come off that well either.

This story came out in what must have been a great time to be literaturati. The novel as an art form was changing dramatically; I mentioned it a while back when speaking of The Great Gatsby, and this work just adds to the muddle of those decades. There’s a couple of decades there where What A Novel Is was no longer clearly defined, and a few writers shook off convention and told good stories their own way. This one has a lot of devices, like non-linear storytelling, that I was surprised to find in something of this era. (Maybe non-linear storytelling was common then. I’m certainly not a expert, but I associate things like that with much more recent literature.)

The story has a slyness which I’m really enjoying. People are working at cross-purposes; even the best of the good guys has a personal agenda. Perhaps the bomb maker has the purest (in the sense of not being diluted) of intentions. I haven’t finished reading yet, but I will soon.

Note: if you use the above link to buy this book (or a Kindle, or a new car), I get a kickback.

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Bangkok 8

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At the beginning of Bangkok 8: A Novel, by John Burdett, we meet a pair of cops, former thugs who have had their brains dismantled and reassembled by a Buddhist Abbot. As we learn over time, they are honest cops in a way that makes just about everyone uncomfortable. They are Thai, and from the beginning we learn that cops are not supposed to be honest (otherwise, as one citizen point out, their pay would have to be increased and that would increase taxes).

That, of course is itself an oversimplification. The two are sent to tail an American marine. Two hours later the marine is dead in an unlikely fashion, trapped in a car with a bunch of poisonous snakes on yaa baa, the local amphetamine coctail. One of the cops dies trying to save the american. It is the sort of thing an arhat would do — a buddhist saint. The other cop, Sonchai, is devastated by the loss of his soul brother. It is seen as perfectly natural that he will kill those responsible for his partner’s death.

This doesn’t go over so well with the Americans charged with investigating the death of the marine. Sonchai has had extensive experience dealing with the west; his mother was a prostitute who was kept by a succession of western men in Europe and the United States. Even so, the female FBI agent sent to work with him is a source of mystery and frustration. She, in turn, is baffled by the way the one clean cop in Bangkok idolizes his boss, a gangster in cop’s clothes.

Sonchai is an intelligent man, very observant, who can see his own past lives and feel the histories of the people around him. This does not strike him as odd or even particularly noteworthy. It’s not some secret power he uses to solve cases. It’s just an empathy he has that lets him see below the surface of the people he meets, allowing him to reach conclusions that would be difficult to arrive at logically.

Obviously, the clash between western and eastern thought is a big theme in this story. This theme is made most obvious in the context of the sex trade. Prostitutes, brothels, minor wives, and other more disturbing forms of people selling their bodies for money, security, or even love abound, and give ample opportunity to contrast cultural responses. Sonchai’s own feelings on the subject are very complicated, and are almost as confusing to his countrymen as to westerners.

There are times when the author gets a bit preachy about the subject, and unfortunately one of the preachiest times is the last chapter of the book. It is a satisfying last chapter on some levels, but it actually embraces the very patness the previous chapter openly rebelled against, which is disappointing. The actions of one of the characters in the last chapter defied reason.

Last chapter notwithstanding, this was a really good read. I like stories that effectively portray a view of life different than mine, in such a way that it makes complete sense. This story succeeds admirably on that scale. In addition, it’s not a half-bad mystery. There are a lot of different forces in conflict with one another (some of whom never emerge from the shadows, which is cool), and its got old alliances, betrayals, gut-wrenching evil, and revenge. Not everyone is completely sane.

It’s really not a thriller, thought there are plenty of tense moments, and even some intense ones. The author does an excellent job communicating the extremity of situations (some very bad) without being gratuitous. You see enough to fill in the blanks. I like that in a story. This book was a fun read with plenty of food for thought, and if you don’t mind things getting a little gritty sometimes (although not nearly as explicit as many other things I’ve read lately), then you might want to give this one a try. I’m sure glad I did.

Note: if you use the above link to buy this book (or a Kindle, or a new car), I get a kickback.

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The Heretics of Dune

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I was staying at fuego’s the other night, and I was looking for something that I could spend a few minutes reading without too much commitment. The first thing I pulled off the shelf was Hemingway, but it was in Czech. An interesting project, but not the few minutes of entertainment I was looking for. Heretics of Dune by Frank Herbert caught my eye. I decided to read just the opening of the book, to see how a well-known author constructs his first words to his readers. Then I would put the book back on the shelf and get on with my life, perhaps a little wiser.

I made myself comfortable and opened the book. The first sentence is a quote. Ordinarily opening with a quote is a risky move because in your head the context is there, but the reader doesn’t have a clue. So even a very dramatic statement is not going to have nearly the effect you expect. If the statement is very short, it’s not so bad, but when the reader has no idea who is speaking, not even gender or clues about how the speech is pitched, the reader will have to defer understanding the statement until he or she gets more data. It is just a bunch of words, waiting to be interpreted. A dramatic moment wasted.

I say “ordinarily” because there are plenty of exceptions. I regularly start my stories with someone speaking (though these days almost all of those openers die in revision), and other people do, too. My corollary to the above rule is “Only start with a quote if it has context and characterization built in.” Off the top of my head, the line “I don’t care who you say you are, you’re not going to see the King,” tells a lot about the circumstances, and even tells us that the speaker is probably not important, it’s who’s being spoken to that matters. It’s got setting, conflict, and is a clear marker that the following will be a fantasy story. So, it’s not bad. Still, is it any better than, “The guard’s armor squeaked with rusty joints as he stepped in front of the door. ‘I don’t care…'”? The second version says volumes about guard (and by extension the king) as perceived by the one being addressed. When the guard says his bit, we already have mild contempt for him.

An interesting project: find works that start with a quote that cannot be easily improved with an introductory sentence. Figure out what they have in common.

So, book review. Right. That’s why we’re here. Herbert opens this novel with a quote, and he most certainly has not found an exception to the above rule. I started right off with a feeling of disorientation. That feelilng did not go away. Heretics of Dune is a textbook example of how not to start a novel. I was bombarded with made-up words, names of people and organizations, leading statements that went nowhere, things left understood between characters without letting me in on it, and on and on. I read chapter 1 with a giant WTF?! hovering over my fizzing head.

It’s probably a good time to point out that I’ve read the book before. And I’m still confused. It’s been a long time, but I’m familiar enough with Frank Herbert’s universe that I made it through that chapter. I pity the poor slob who reads this before reading the many prequels.

It was, overall, a pretty frustrating chapter one. Chapter two wasn’t much better. By chapter three we were meeting new characters that don’t have histories or secrets we needed to know. And just like that I read the whole damn book.

Which leads to the central mystery: I only planned to read the first bit. It wasn’t very good. But for some reason I kept reading. This, somehow, is Herbert’s great skill. He hides things from me, both by not telling and by deliberately obscuring them behind jargon and dogma. (I ground my teeth every time I read something like, (slight paraphrase) “Lucilla understood the full scope of Taraza’s plan. Holy crap! That was the most amazing plan ever! The implications were astonishing!” and then not tell us what Lucilla figured out. AAAARRRGGGHHH!) He assumes knowledge I don’t have. He flatters his characters by saying they have qualities that their actions demonstrate they lack.

All that, and I read the whole book, even though I didn’t intend to, in three sittings.

So what’s in there that kept me going? It’s an interesting question. The writing itself flows well; despite a rich vocabulary the words did not get in the way of the story. I think what really kept me going, however, was a handful of the characters. Not all of them; the principle rivals were all crippled by flaws that undermined thier rivalness, and some of the good guys were too damn good. But there was real internal conflict in some of the characters, people fighting against known flaws and weaknesses. (To make things more interesting, some of those perceived weaknesses sound a lot like strengths to us.)

There is one little girl who comes in out of the desert in a circumstance that has ‘miracle’ written all over it. The local priesthood adopts her, and what do you know? she turns into a spoiled brat. It was nice to meet a character who will obviously be a major factor in the history of humanity portrayed with natural human frailties. She also had a knack for superpowers.

Superpowers abound in this book; some powers are shared by members of the various secret societies, while rogue superpowers manifest unpredictably in individuals (of proper breeding). Politics are everywhere as well, and the core theme of the book might be condensed to “people with superpowers wrangling over how to rule the rest of us.” Herbert, I think, would have disagreed; his good elite are the ones who still care about the welfare of the common man. All the characters in the story are among the elite, however. Even one of the most ordinary of the good guys manages to grow spectacular superpowers (super-duperpowers) by the end.

Speaking of the end, I was running out of pages and there were still a whole lot of loose ends flying around in the narrative. People who needed to interact at length hadn’t even met yet. I knew this book was part of a series, but it was starting to look like this was going to be one of my most aggravating of peeves, the book that doesn’t even pretend to end. Happily, that was not the case. It wasn’t the best ending imaginable, but the end of one of the major characters marks a fitting end to this installment in the series. We get open-ended closure for many of the others — lessons learned, resolutions made, plans revealed — and I was satisfied with that.

It occurs to me that this might be the least useful review I’ve ever written, in terms of advising people whether or not to read a book (which, to be honest, isn’t really my goal). If you haven’t read any of the prequels, do not, by any means, start with this one. If you have read Dune, you’ve already decided whether to continue with the series. I’m guessing that if you did read Dune it frustrated you, but you read the rest of the series anyway, for reasons you can’t quite put your finger on, and you’re glad you did.

Note: if you use the above link to buy this book (or a Kindle, or a new car), I get a kickback.

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The Descent – let’s wrap this up.

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Part three of my review of this book.

OK, to start, if I was editor of The Descent, I would have put a big message on the top of the manuscript, that just said, “Hey! Who knew what when?” Then I would have tagged a few choice examples and sent it back to the author. People are nearly simultneously theorizing that the bad guys are extinct and lamenting that there are no good specimins to study because mobs tear them apart.

Eventually, I gave up on the details. I was able to just shrug off the inconsistencies and enjoy the ride. It wasn’t so much suspension of disbelief as a conscious choice to just let the details slide and get on with the story. Resupply in the tunnels? OK, whatever. For some reason the ocean chooses not to come down the holes. For some reason people in an unmapped labyrinth can reach prearranged locations. Fine. I’ll tolerate it because other strange things are happening that are really interesting, and I’ll focus my attention on those things. Why do the bad guys hold Ali the Hot Nun in such high regard? Is Branch nuts? Holy crap! A doomsday device! (It says something about the intricate world this takes place in that those are NOT spoilers.) And the bad guys themselves – they are awesome.

Normally I wouldn’t put up with the crap. When I find myself in a book like that I can easily set it aside. It’s a compliment to the writer, then, that I still found the story worth reading. It’s got the Devil in it, and he’s not a nice guy. When he murders someone, he makes it poetic. Yet, as I mentioned above, he’s got some competition this time around. There are good guys hunting him, and bad guys hunting him too.

I’m glad I read this book. Do I recommend it? I guess that depends on you. Are you one of those people who sits in a movie and annoys your friends pointing out the technical problems? Then no, this book is not for you. Are you the one who wants to hit the guy who’s talking about the technical problems and says, “Who cares, asshole? The hadals are coming!” then this story could work for you.

Note: if you use the above link to buy this book (or a Kindle, or a new car), I get a kickback.

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Just Because I Don’t Know What They’re Saying Doesn’t Make it Not Crap

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I’m at the Budvar Bar Near Home right now. There aren’t many people here, and the plasma TV is showing an American thriller movie. Tom Clancy was mentioned in the opening credits, and it seems that Ben Affleck is the star.

It could be that Mr. Clancy bludgeons himself whenever he’s reminded of this flick. I hope so. I’ve read several books by him that I’ve enjoyed greatly. But what is happening before my eyes on the television is patently ridiculous.

A pilot is patrolling the desert wastes. He is distracted when the photo of his wife and child comes untaped from his jet fighter dashboard. While trying to recover the photo he lets his guard down and runs into a hostile missile. Words fail me. The photo on the dashboard immediately classified the guy as Dead Meat. But then I am asked to believe that a guy carrying an atomic fuckin’ bomb would be distracted that way. Or even that he would be flying without an escort.

Then I’m asked to believe that those who lost the bomb shrugged and said, “oh, well, we can make another.” Twenty-nine years later, the bomb is recovered by Bad Guys. “It’s warm!” one of the scavengers declares. I am being asked to believe (I think) that the Israelis lost an atomic bomb and didn’t try to get it back. Yeeeeaaaah, riiiight. Tom! Mr. Clancy! That wasn’t your idea, was it? I can still respect you, can’t I?

OK, and as I watch we have the silliest of all action movie conceits. The standoff where each guy is pointing a gun at the other. Only in Hollywood would someone hesitate to pull the trigger. *ahem quentin* Seriously. A standoff occurs when the person who moves first loses. Guns pointed at each other is not a standoff situation – the first to move wins. If I have a gun pointed at someone’s head, and they have a gun pointed at mine, and we’re not old chums from back in the day, I’m pulling the trigger.

It could be that there was dialog to go along with this patently ridiculous standoff to make it make sense. If I was the guard with bad teeth, things would not have got to that point. Here’s the test I give myself as a writer, for every character in every story. Would I have done that? Given that character X has limited information and even less time to make a decision, would any non-stupid human being act the way the author asked this guy to behave? You can’t base a plot on the actions of stupid people.

Nor can you depend on bad driving, but as the movie progresses they have done that too. You can’t make a really stupid driving error a plot point. OK, you can, but you shouldn’t. The car that won’t start should be reserved for crappy horror movies. Please, Mr. Clancy, tell me you’re better than this. I hunger for the reassurance that you were not responsible for what I have been watching.

Although, honestly, I know you’ve already sold out. You flog your name shamelessly, unconcerned with quality. There’s the whole series of crappy airport novels with your name on them that you can’t feel good about. But there they are. You’ve earned your laurels. Just… don’t insult me like this.

Hopefully, when I sell out, I will do it more gracefully.

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The Descent – ongoing commentary

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If you’ve been here recently you’ve seen my review of the first four chapters and the beginning of the fifth of The Descent by Jeff Long. To summarize: Tiresome pages of backstory, cheap writer’s tricks, and really frickin’ cool stuff.

I don’t know what it was that prompted me to set down the book and write the previous review, what instinct warned me that it was time to record my impressions – there was no time break or anything like that – but the very next paragraph announced a new narrative direction that almost made me put the book down for good. After spending four chapters introducing four interesting people, the point of view is wrested away from one of those characters and we are subjected to a series of anecdotes of only passing relevance to the story. We learn about the mobilization of millions of people, from dozens of countries, in absolute secrecy. Unlikely as that is, the secrecy turns out not to matter. The bad guys counterattack in a coordinated, lethal, downright evil fashion. Panic in the streets leads to great (but ultimately irrelevant) destruction. Our guy? The one this chapter started to be about? Oh, yeah, the author says (well, he practically does), probably should have mentioned – Branch is delirious with a fever in a hospital safely out of harm’s way.

At this point I started getting annoyed not only with the author but with the editor as well. If I had been the editor, much of this chapter would have been cut, and the story would have benefitted. Twenty (give or take) pages of blah blah blah in the omniscient point of view – “then this happened and then that happened” – while Branch, the interesting guy this chapter is supposed to be about, is mentioned now and then and winds up watching the worst of it on TV. Branch could have been in the middle of it, bringing us the events viscearally, which also happens to be the author’s strength. If I’m his editor, I say to Jeff, “ok, you’ve written a synopsis of events. Now put it in the story. Some of it won’t fit, and we’ll just cut those bits.”

This is a lesson I would do well to remember.

I did not put the book aside. I plowed through all the blah blah blah. Why? Because when Jeff Long gets to the parts he does well, he does them really well. Eventually the story starts again, with our man Branch down in the caves, and there’s horror and fear and holy crap there’s Ike. Ike was interesting before, but now… yeah, Ike has some stuff going on in his head. He gets full credit for my continued reading of this story.

And that’s what’s driving me crazy. Why couldn’t someone have gone over the manuscript before it got to me? I need William Goldman’s dad to say, “what with this and that, two years passed.”

So three quarters of chapter five is crap, but then it ends strong. There follows some maneuvering to get people in the right places to allow the adventure to truly begin. Fifty percent blah blah blah and a parade of names I sure hope don’t matter. And then a really cool encounter between Ike and Ali, a quiet meeting that shows Ike’s humanity, and his almost magical understanding of what it means to pass from the light into darkness. It’s a moment that will have repercussions, and just like that I’m back on board.

I just want to grab the author by the lapels and say, “Do you see the parts you do well? Yes? Just do those. Leave the rest.” At the end of my last review I thought I had gone through the introductions with the characters and now the story was going to get under way. It was time. A lot of pages later, I still have the feeling the story is about to get under way. Hopefully I’m right this time.

Note: if you use the above link to buy this book (or a Kindle, or a new car), I get a kickback.

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The Descent

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I have read the first 4 chapters and a bit of the fifth in the novel The Descent, by Jeff Long. Some among you might contend that one should read the entire book before writing a review, but to that I say, “fiddlesticks!” If the fist hundred pages give you plenty to talk about, why wait? The following is in the style of a real-time blog I might have been writing as I read the beginning of this book. My memory of my impressions as I read the first few chapters is unusually clear, however I feel I must write this review before going on with the story, lest I forget.

Edited to add: apparently the reading public (all one person who has mentioned it to me) has gotten the idea that I’m really not enjoying this book. There are a couple of times near the beginning that nearly lost me, but then something really cool happens and all is forgiven. I think now that the characters are introduced things will just be getting better.

Pseudo-LiveBlogging Descent’s first 4.2 chapters:

Acknowledgments

Every kid who aspires to be a writer should read this. A lot of people worked very hard on this book, including a nameless copy editor. It is apparent that the author also worked hard, devoting himself to research on many different subjects. This book was not the product of some guy simply sitting in front of a keyboard and making the magic happen.

We’re off to a good start; I have already developed a personal attachment to the author.

Chapter 1

We have a group of tourists trapped in a cave somewhere in the bumpiest part of Tibet. Nice.

WTF??? we just had our first dramatic moment of the book, and it was totally contrived. I’m willing to suspend disbelief for almost any situation, but when people stop acting like people, that’s it, I’m done. They’re in a cave, in the pitch black, and only now someone thinks to turn on a light? Pleeeeeeease. So the big moment is ruined by a ridiculous and ultimately unnecessary need on the part of the author to have a Big Surprise.

It’s three days later now, and I’m picking the book back up. Despite the disappointment on the third page, I suspect I’m going to like this story. Onward, then, with chapter one. The thing revealed by the lights is pretty damn amazing, marred only by someone identifying an object as “solid gold” based on a glimpse of color beneath a coating of grime. Another silly detail that ultimately is not needed for the plot. But the thing itself, there in the cave, it’s pretty intense.

You know what I could use about now? Another page or two of backstory. You can’t overdo the backstory.

All right! Ike and his business partner/sweetie seem to be patching up some backstory relationship problems. It’s too easy. These two are going to be fighting for the whole damn book. Now they have to find another way out of the caves.

Sweet holy crap. I was undecided about this book until now. As chapter one closes, we learn just what Jeff Long is capable of. It’s not the horror of the situation, it’s how Ike judges his own response to the horror. All the above criticism is forgiven.

Chapter 2

Another time, another place.

Nooooooooo! Not the mirror! The nun looks in the mirror and once again feels bad about being attractive. Ali took the mirror down for a while, then she put it back up – which I suspect is more a description of the author’s efforts to find another way to introduce her hotness. He wrote out the mirror then put it back in. Never mind that during the rest of the chapter there are plenty of times (especially during the extensive backstory) to present her hotness dramatically. From the mirror we learn two things: Ali’s a looker and she has long blonde hair. At the time, her attractiveness is irrelevant. The color of her hair could easily be introduced in a dozen other places, and the length is incongruous with the local heat and available hygiene. Easy to mention. But the author wanted us to know right away that Ali was one smokin’ nun.

Like there’s been a nun in modern literature who wasn’t temptation personified. Goes without saying.

Ooo! The intriguing native girl has given Ali a good luck charm. I will be sooo surprised to learn that it’s made from human skin.

The nun was a rising star in the church, but she stepped out of line at the wrong time. When she was relocated to the butthole of Africa, she went. Sometimes critical, but always loyal. She has given her life to the church and she will not be asking to have it returned.

But… things are getting interesting. The locals, and the girl (reputed to be a witch) in particular, seem to know a deep, dark secret. Perhaps they’ve been trying to tell Ali about it all along, but she hasn’t been willing to open her mind enough to hear them. There aren’t any obvious connections with the incidents in the cave that we can decipher, but it’s pretty clear that something big is going on. I want to know more.

Yep… It’s human skin. I lied before; I’m not surprised at all.

Chapter 3

Bosnia. Rain. War crimes investigators. Branch is a career military guy who on that night accidentally lets his principles do the talking. He winds up flying an attack helicopter to investigate a strange occurrence. His commanding officer is not happy. Not at all. The colonel had put his foot down and Branch undermined his authority. A promising career just crashed against one man’s morals. This isn’t going to come out well.

OK, the other guy in the helicopter has never seen his newborn son. Why don’t we just paint a bulls-eye on him?

Holy smoke. Let’s just leave the chapter at that. Holy frickin smoke. Although the rockets don’t really make sense. But I’ll tell you this: I like the helicopter pilot, and I think these events are going to mess him up. I really care what happens to this guy. Like Ike in chapter one, Branch was faced with a choice between survival and compassion. He made a different choice. I think that’s going to matter down the road.

Chapter 4

Our fourth point of view. We have a vatican scientist named Thomas investigating some ancienter-than-ancient ruins that were accidentally exposed. The vatican is quite adamant that the ruins be hidden away again, but Thomas wants a look first. He has an old friend who has seen the site, who has said some interesting things about a carving there, a face depicted in the ruins that seems to be actively preventing the church scientist from seeing it.

It’s funny when there are characters who have no reason to suspect foul play, but we readers all know bad shit is going to happen. Hell, it’s chapter four, and people have died in nasty ways in all the previous chapters. “Huh,” says one of the scientists. “The security guard must be off drinking.” Of course we know the security guard has died terribly, and we want to shout at the characters, “don’t you see?” But of course they don’t see. Why would they?

Thomas is a pretty good guy. You can feel his quiet confidence and the internal consistency of his character. His presence is intimidating to those who feel themselves lacking.

This chapter ends with a horrific revelation. What do you know? I like the church scientist, and with him came a couple of other characters that might prove interesting. We have met the intellect of our inevitable party of discovery (although the nun was also pretty damn smart).

Chapter 5

Oh please oh please oh please don’t introduce another character. I’m looking at the book sitting on the table in front of me and I know another character would be more than I can handle. It’s not like I can’t keep track of five people, it’s that we have four completely different vectors toward the truth in this story, and that’s plenty. Also, some of the folks in the previous chapters were in pretty deep doodoo, and I’m anxious to hear back from them.

It has been pointed out to me that an odd-numbered group good for storytelling – it is always imbalanced, and can be imbalanced between different subsets of the group over different issues at the same time. We’ve got four characters right now, and that’s enough. A couple of these introductions were brutal enough to last me for a while.

I get the feeling that each character is crafted to represent a particular facet of humanity. Ali is compassionate, Thomas is intellectual, and so forth. One of the guys will get the hot nun, but at first it will be the wrong one.

Chapter 5 underway. We’re back with Branch, the helicopter pilot, and yes he’s messed up. Spooky messed up. The burn scars are competing with the scars from cuts and trauma; he’s still carrying a fair amount of metal around with him, as well as some medical equipment he absorbed while healing. His recovery was not normal. Now he’s back in Bosnia.

And that’s as far as I’ve gotten. There have been a couple of close calls where I put the book down and almost didn’t pick it back up again, but I’m hooked now. There will be a convergence, and the group will combine weaknesses as well as strengths.

I did not mention above the style of the writer, and to be honest, I never thought about it much. That’s a good thing. His voice is clear and doesn’t get in the way of the story. If I discover anything else over the next 450 pages I’ll let you know.

Note: if you use the above link to buy this book (or a Kindle, or a new car), I get a kickback.

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Bimbos of the Death Sun

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When one is in a used bookstore with a bunch of writers, it is only natural to expect that you will end up with a couple of purchases you would not ordinarliy consider. I was at a science fiction writing conference, so naturally we were clustered in the SF section of Half-Price Books. The selection was impressive. As I browsed the colorful spines of the books, one title caught my eye. “Hey, guys!” I said, “Check this out. Bimbos of the Death Sun!”

The response was not quite what I expected. “That’s a good book,” one of my party said. “Really funny,” another concurred. Then I noticed a badge on the cover proclaiming that it had won the Edgar Allen Poe Award in for best paperback mystery in 1988. What was I to do? Bimbos joined my other unplanned purchases.

Note that the cover pictured here looks nothing like the version I have. Just look at that picture. Can you imagine a worse cover for a book with that title? Seriously. [Update – the current picture is a major improvement.]

It took me a while to work through the reading pile to get to Bimbos of the Death Sun by Sharyn McCrumb, but when I finally did I was surprised. It’s not science fiction. It takes place at a science fiction convention (”Rubicon”), but there are no aliens (unless you count the Scot), no wondrous technology (unless you count the personal computers of the late ’80s), no world-threatening cataclysms or mysterious paranormal events. Bimbos of the Death Sun is a murder mystery.

It follows the pattern my sister likes so much: create a really nasty guy, have him anger just about everyone, then kill him off. Lots of suspects, lots of motives, a crazy hotel scene with people coming and going to provide unlimited opportunity for mischief.

The title of the book is simultanelously ironic and exploitative; one of the characters is a writer who wrote a hard science fiction novel that involved the effect of solar radiation on computers, and (as an afterthought) on women. The book is not at all sexist — the author’s girlfriend made sure of that — and has no sex in it. The publisher decided to call it Bimbos of the Death Sun and give it a suggestive cover to promote sales. The author in the story is embarrassed; I suspect that Ms. McCrumb was chuckling gleefully when she thought of the name. (Can you blame her?) In fact, I imagine her at a convention, sitting with friends, drunk, when an informal Most Salacious Science Fiction Title contest breaks out…

[Hmm… I have a short story that needs a title. Maybe I’ve been going about it the wrong way.]

This was a fun read. It’s not really a whodunnit because the reveal is gradual and begins long before the big final confrontation scene. There is a lot going on, however, and there is no shortage of odd characters. Every stereotype of trekkie and gamer and SCA member and fantasy addict is (lovingly) packed into a single hotel, and it looks like a pretty good time. You know, except for the murder.

The book was marred for me by a couple of things. Foremost, some of the characters behave in ways I just could not accept as real. I’m not talking about the wacky Rubicon attendees, but about the people around them who are supposed to be normal. The police detective is the biggest offender in this department. More than once I thought to myself, “no cop would ever do that, let alone one who’s been promoted to detective.”

My other complaint is that someone was given a very complicated task with almost no notice, then took it upon himself to make the task even more complicated to catch the killer, and then pull that task off with grace and style. In the movies, at least he would have had a chance for “Montage Training.”

Despite those complaints, I greatly enjoyed reading Bimbos. It was a good light read with many, many chuckle points as it went along. I think folks who attend conferences like the one in the story would find even more humor that I missed. Oh, yes, they do exist, and probably thirty years later are even crazier — though perhaps more commercial.

The book is not science fiction, but it belongs in the SF section of the store, all right, since that’s where the readers this book is aimed at hang out. If you run into this title in the used book store, take a look!

Note: if you use the above link to buy this book (or a Kindle, or a new car), I get a kickback.

Thanks!

Fudoki

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There are several books in the queue for me to write blurbs about, but I’m going to skip to the one I just finished an hour ago. Fudoki, by Kij Johnson, has got me thinking, and we all know that can only lead to trouble.

Before I get too far, I should note that I know the author, and though I have not known her long I consider her a friend. She was the head of the novel writing workshop that was the core excuse for my travels this summer. Take this into account when I say that this is a very good book and you should all buy multiple copies. (Only half of the above is a joke; this is a very good book but you only need to buy one copy each.) My association leads inevitably to bias, but please be assured that in this case the bias is simply that if I didn’t like the book I would just never mention it.

So, the book. Japan again. It begins as a journal of Princess Harueme, daughter of an emperor, half-sister of another, aunt and great-aunt of others. She is clever and curious, traits that are not appreciated in a woman of her station. She is also dying. She has spent her entire life confined by her station, by the obligations of serving at court, unable to chase the dreams that truly inspire her. Now she takes up brush and ink to tell us the story of a cat made human, and a journey to places the princess has only heard about, places she longs to see but never will.

There is magic in the story of the cat. Magic and adventure and war and death. The cat is transformed into a woman by a capricious god, the god of the road, but she never loses her intrinsic catness. Through her eyes we see the behavior of humans, and perhaps from this vantage we learn a bit. Harueme certainly does; as she writes her story she writes about herself as well, and we watch over her shoulder as she transforms, and along with her the past changes, as she sees old events with new eyes. She is a little surprised, I think, when she discovers how deeply she is capable of loving.

It’s a fantasy story, I guess, in the way that magical realism is fantasy. Here we are, back in Japan, in the year 1129, and the world is filled with inscrutable gods, demons, ghosts, and magical creatures. In fact, magic is so prevalent it’s not thought of as magic at all. It’s nature. Or you could argue that this book not a fantasy at all; the magic is contained within Harueme’s story of the cat. It is her invention — though maybe the magic starts to leak out of the story and into Harueme’s life. Maybe. Read the book and then we’ll talk.

(By the way, I know Princess Harueme is writing her tale in 1129 because the author included some notes at the end. Thanks, Kij, for adding those references and other insight. I have commented several times in these sporadic reviews that many books would benefit from a bit of extra info at the end. On the other hand, the list of characters at the beginning was totally unnecessary — she does a fine job reminding the reader of the relationships between characters during the narrative, and the list at the beginning just made me feel like I was going to be tested later. You, dear reader, enlightened by this review, can skim the list and read on, confident that all will make sense.)

Fudoki is a word used by cats to mean the history of the clan, the generations-long story of who they are and how they fit in. It is, for a cat, “self and soul and home and shrine.” Princess Harueme’s tortoise-shell protagonist is stripped of her fudoki, stripped of her very identity, and is put on the road. “I am nothing and no one,” she says. After a while it becomes apparent that Harueme is writing this to discover her own fudoki, her own tale of who she is.

This really is a very good book. It’s well-crafted — the language is natural but manages to surprise, and the atmosphere Johnson creates works very well. It really does feel like Harueme is writing the story; her voice is clear and her perspective permeates everything, even as her perspective changes. They are the words of a woman who is learning as she goes, in ink, with no way to revise what she has written before.

Note: if you use the above link to buy this book (or a Kindle, or a new car), I get a kickback.

Thanks!

The Emperor’s General

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My backlog of things to blog about is getting embarassingly long, so this little rieiew will likely be short. (“He says that like it’s a bad thing,” the experienced readers among you say…)

The Emperor’s General by James Webb is a story that takes place primarily in the waning days of the second world war, and is told from the point of view of Jay Marsh, an aide to General Douglas MacArthur. The story has many layers as Marsh wrestles with balancing his blossoming career in MacArthur’s camp – one which he finds himself surprisingly adept at – and the love of a woman and the promises he made.

MacArthur’s occupation of Japan after the war was quite peaceful and successful, and this book examines some of the trade-offs that MacArthur made to ensure that stability. Some of those compromises were less than honorable, as he steadfastly refused to allow any of the Japanese royal family to be tried for war crimes, despite very strong evidence that they were intimately involved in the atrocities at Nanking.

Captain Marsh, who understands the Japanese language and, more importantly, Japanese culture, becomes a key go-between, an unofficial conduit of information between the Emperor’s men and the general. Marsh becomes increasingly disenchanted with the process as he realizes that guilt or innocence have nothing to do with who will be tried and who won’t. “There is no sin in Japan,” he observes, “only shame.” Several generals and politicians have been designated to bear the shame of defeat and the shame of the crimes committed.

Meanwhile, Marsh is in love with a Filipino woman, and I had to cringe every time he made promises that no matter what happened he would come back to her and they would marry. He won’t. We know that from the first chapter of the book. Something is going to happen and his most solemn vow will be broken. By giving us this foreknowledge, the author quite effectively casts a shadow of tragedy over even their happiest moments. There’s some good storytelling going on.

It’s also obvious that the author has done his research. Webb knows his military lore (he once served as Secretary of the Navy), and he has a good flair for bringing the historical characters to life, and providing a very well-rounded view of the historical incidents. This is another story that would benefit from a short list of suggested reading at the end, for those who want to learn more about the history without the encumbrance of a story narrative that must necessarily take precedence over fact.

Note: if you use the above link to buy this book (or a Kindle, or a new car), I get a kickback.

Thanks!

Cryptonomicon

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My buddy John had spoken more than once of this book, and on a Christmas eve (give or take) when we found ourselves in the same bookstore he bought it for me. (This is the same John I accidentally stole Dead Girls from, compounding his largesse, though without his knowledge.)

Cryptonomicon, by Neal Stephenson, is a big book, filled with history, science, politics, and adventure. The title refers to an informal compilation of knowledge on the subject of making and breaking codes. Much of the story takes place during the second world war, when the same forces that accelerated the development of the atomic bomb also lead to enormous strides in computing machines. Much of that computing power is devoted to the breaking of codes.

I’m not sure how historically accurate some of this stuff is, but he makes a pretty compelling argument that allied code-breaking turned the war, not just in Europe (with the famous enigma crack), but in the pacific as well. To this day, events in the battle of Midway are ascribed to good fortune. Could signal intelligence have been the real hero?

At the center of the story is a karass — a name coined by Kurt Vonnegut to describe a group of people whose lives are inexplicably but undeniably intertwined. The karass is such an intrinsic part of storytelling that I’m surprised it has never been named before. “So, we meet again,” is something a karass-mate would say. (Although, to be honest, most of my stories are not grand enough to encompass a whole karass.) If you cannot accept the idea of a karass then there are parts of this story that are going to be difficult for you. In this case the karass is stretched across generations; it is an inheritable karass, and to my mind this pushes things a little too far. There really is no reason that some of the people involved needed to descend from the previous batch. I might have been more tolerant of the connections if, at the end, many of the characters weren’t so blasé about the enormous coincidence. “You taught my grandfather karate in Shanghai before the war? Holy crap! That’s staggering!” was not said.

Still, for all that this is one seriously powerful karass that all concerned seem to take for granted, the story works very well. One of the cool things about it is that cryptography is not just treated as a technology, not just as a weapon, but as a socially significant phenomenon. Cryptography is a cornerstone of privacy in our world, and privacy is a cornerstone of freedom. Somewhere in there Stephenson makes the leap to “a currency not controlled by a government could have averted the holocaust”, and that was a leap I didn’t manage to make, but overall the message worked.

What was really cool was how human the people making these giant advancements in technology and mathematics were. Paradoxically, the writer made them human by emphasizing their oddities, the ways they didn’t conform to the human norm. In this way the novel was populated with a host of interesting, dynamic, and believable people. Some of them were pretty damn clever as well. The story goes back and forth between people just starting to define what the nature of a programmable machine even is, to people with hacker as a middle name. That worked very well.

And now a brief time-out for the complaining: There were a couple of business ethics points that were contrived, simply incorrect, and since they were critical to the progress of the plot they bothered me. There was a sequence that involved a family of geeks dividing an inheritance that didn’t work on two axes – the solution they arrived at was flawed in a way all the geeks would have recognized, and there was a much simpler solution that would have accomplished the same thing. General Douglas MacArthur, a peripheral member of the karass, makes a jump of faith I just couldn’t handle. I was bothered at the end when a statue of Buddha was melted down in a scheme I don’t think would have worked anyway. Somehow the last two people alive in the submarine belonged to the karass.

OK then! Now that that’s out of the way, I have to say that I’ve never read a better story about the inner lives of geeks even as they go about rewriting all the rules. The geeks, both the documented historical ones like Turing and the add-ins, are all pretty cool. Did geeks win the second world war, or did factories, or did the marines? Does it even matter? In the years of war and the time following, secrecy was a national asset, and secrecy was increasingly dependent on mathematics and computation. Reading about the code-breakers of old, the guessing-games and rooms full of men using abacuses on one side versus a computing machine that may deafen you on the other, makes for some good reading. Add on top heroism, adventure, and prose written with a dry wit, and you’ve got yourself a good book.

And then there’s the open hatch on the submarine. Danm. Complaints I registered above acknowledged, you just know that a member of the karass went though that hatch. Somebody got out. Stephenson didn’t have to write this part; the story can live without it. But he did, and I’m glad. It hangs over a good span of the book. The answer to that mystery is as satisfying as it is tragic.

One last complaint, or perhaps a left-handed compliment. This book needs a bibliography, or at least a recommended reading list. There were dozens of times through the course of this story that I wanted to know more about the surrounding events. I can only assume Stephenson did some serious research, and I’d like to be able to follow in his footsteps. All historical fiction should at the end cite sources, but in a story about the dawn of the information age, that seems even more important. There is a great appendix about one particular code that you and I can use, written by someone who obviously thinks a lot about passing information in a hostile environment, but I really wanted more. It is unconscionable that a book that tickles my interest in so many subjects does not supply a reading list at the end.

I liked Bobby Shaftoe. I liked Goto Dengo. I liked the geeks. Stephenson created a whole zoo of people I liked. Right there, you know you’ve got a good story. Embrace the karass; find your own karass, and enjoy this book.

Note: if you use the above link to buy this book (or a Kindle, or a new car), I get a kickback.

Thanks!

The Catcher in the Rye

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The Catcher in the Rye by J. D. Salinger is one of those American classics that everyone is supposed to read. Somehow I never did. As an American who proposes to make a living butting words up next to each other, I’ve been working on closing up some of the gaping holes in my mental library.

The results of these efforts are almost always rewarding. There’s a reason these books have gained the stature they have. This one is no exception and I will not attempt to add to the already-too-large body of criticism surrounding it. People, it seems, can make a big deal out of a good story.

The main guy, the narrator, Holden, is a high-school kid who is full of contradictions. He knows what he is supposed to be, he knows what he wants to be, and he’s acutely aware that he is neither. What he is, we start to realize, is better (by conventional standards) than what he thinks he should be. He aspires to be a modern, devil-may-care man, but he simply isn’t. He cares about a lot of things. He cares so much it’s a little scary.

That’s my take, anyway.

After reading the first few paragraphs I knew this book would be a special sort of challenge for me. A personal one, a gauntlet thrown. There is a voice driving this narrative, a guy speaking in a very natural manner that exposes his character, and old JD isn’t going to let the English language get in the way. There are times Salinger simply repeats the same sentence twice. The same goddam sentence. Twice. That old JD knocked me out sometimes the way he’d just repeat things like that.

Sometimes I write stuff like that. I just let fly, type like I think, words are punctuation, punctuation are words. Fragments. Asides, nonlinear thought expressed in a linear form. Then I delete it, or clean it up, to make it easier to digest. What I get from Salinger is not just a very good read but also an example that done well there’s nothing wrong with setting aside rules, as long as the result is a distinctive voice. My first drafts tend to be much more courageous than my final results. Maybe that’s not a bad thing most of the time, but I think I miss opportunities too often.

Note: if you use the above link to buy this book (or a Kindle, or a new car), I get a kickback.

Thanks!