Jan 28, 2008

Upcoming reviews

I was recently given an ARC of In The Courts Of The Crimson Kings by S.M. Stirling. I loved preceding book, The Sky People. I'll finish off Courts, re-read Sky People, and post a review of both books. This may take a while, so I'll put up a few meta-topic posts in the meanwhile.

Also, if anyone is reading this, is blogging, and links to this blog, let me know. I have no idea who links back here.

In other news, George R.R. Martin is working on another of the new Wild Cards novels. I hope to heck it's better than the last one, which I was fairly disappointed by.

There's also a new Jim Butcher book about to hit ARC radar, Small Favors. I'm looking forward to reviewing it here once I get the chance.

Jan 25, 2008

Childhood's end?

John Clute recently had a write up on Shadow Bridge.

I really liked Shadow Bridge. It should come as no surprise to anyone who knows me that nested stories are something I find really cool. I think Shadow Bridge delivers on that. I loved the bridge world, and how the image of it going on for ever and ever, curling off sometimes, and constantly connecting looked to my imagination. I didn't want the place to have to work with a conventional world look and feel.

I liked the characters too. There's a blend of near-real culture that's sort of real world and sort of not. I've seen is so frequently done with western cultures, so the emergence of pseudo-Asian or Polynesian culture is really fun. There's fox women, island fishing cultures, djinn and shadow puppetry. It's a good thing to read.

Clute saw it as a YA novel, which I wasn't quite sure about. It's certainly got coming of age elements. There's not as sharp a line in what makes a YA novel. I can point to things that certainly aren't, but someone's reading level is a rather subjective thing. Some books are intentionally targeted at younger readers, and it's evident when they are, but I didn't get as much of a feel of that from Shadow Bridge.

Where does YA end, and adult fiction begin? What are YA books that, as adults, we ought to read?

Jan 10, 2008

Scoundrels, scallawags and mountebanks

Why is it that , rather than a young, brawny, honest and goodhearted hero, I prefer my protagonists to be tricky bastards?

I prefer John Constantine to Superman. I prefer Scott Lynch's Locke Lamora to David Eddings Belgarion. Heck, I prefer Raven to Wolf in my native American mythology. I like my heroes smart, but flawed, and more interested in thinking their way out of a fight than bettering the God-Emperor of the Doom Kingdom with a flaming sword, or magic, or whatever.

Which isn't to say that I don't love a good fight scene, but really, I'd rather read a nocel that's all cons and out thinking than a novel that's all fights and no thinking.

Right now, I'm reading Scott Lynch's newest Locke Lamora book, Red Seas Under Red Skies. Locke, the protagonist, is a thief, and a wold class asshole, but true to his friends. And that's the myth of the scoundrel hero. Someone who'll turn those terrifying powers of out thinking people against only his enemies. And make no mistake, deep down, really smart, charismatic people with the ability to manipulate others are the one's we're really envious of. Vast athletic prowess and martial skill is good. But the ability to talk people into doing what you want them to, or to get around them by talking the people who control them to make them do what you want is what really runs the world.

I think, as a whole, people envy that ability to the extent that they don't have it, and want to see heroes who have that talent righting wrongs, and bringing down real villains. At the same time, we want there to be consequences for being that manipulative, because we think it should cause some problems in your life. And also a hero with no problems is boring.

So John Constantine, Han Solo, Locke Lamora, etc... all get into serious trouble with the cons they run. And that makes the books all the more enjoyable.

Jan 8, 2008

A well told tale

Tonight, I'm off to the NYRFS (NY Review of Science Fiction) reading at the South Street Seaport Museum.

Micheal Swanwick will be the first reader there. Having just read Dragons Of Babel, I'm really looking forward to hearing him read from whatever he chooses. His books really could do well red aloud.

Not much to say today. No large post, other than to tell my (few) readers that hearing a book read aloud is a treat you shouldn't miss, especially if you go to hear a live reading. Being in the same room with someone reading aloud is much more fun than listening to an audio book, which can certainly be fun. A reading is a shared experience though. Even if it's only at a mega bookstore in the midst a huge audience.

There's a sense of sharing things with your fellow listeners, and with the reader. You can get captured by the voice of the reader, and transported in a different way than you might if you were reading.

If you cant find local readings, or even if you can, I also suggest reading to friends and family aloud on occasion. It's fun. Try it.

Jan 7, 2008

One of my favoritist books evar

If you get to know me in person and ever ask about what fantasy/science fiction book I'd recommend, without hesitation, I will almost always remember to mention Bridge Of Birds by Barry Hughart. It's absolutely one of my favorite books. Lets get into why.

First off, it's Chinese mythology. I've been into Chinese myths since I became aware of them while living in Singapore. There's a character of over-the-top-ness that Chinese myths have that the rest of the world simply fails at. It's incredibly lurid. The only people I can think of who get close are Millennialist Christians, and they take themselves far too seriously. Chinese myths are constantly making fun of either other myths, or themselves.

Bridge Of Birds was the first, and best book in which I realized that, wow, this could make for some great contemporary books. I cannot count the number of Norse or British myths that were re-worked into some sort of fairy tale, sometimes woven in with Native American myths, blah blah blah. It's not to say that visionaries like Charles DeLindt, Pam Dean or Emma Bull, are doing anything boring. But after a while, I can only take so much of the western perspective before it looses it's sparkle.

Barry Hughart understands on a deep level how the structure of Chinese myths blur into each other. Bridge of Birds has a fairly tale telling us that some elements that the main character takes as legend based on reality are hokum, but that other parts of reality are mythic and beautiful.

The heroes are a strong but shy, and clumsy pesant named Number Ten Ox, who's intentionaly obsequious manner actually shows a remarkable understanding and acceptance of class issues, and a drunken decrepit genius, Li Kao. They're off on a bog-standard quest to find a cure for Ox's village children, who were accidentally poisoned by the village pawnbroker and his companion in crime.

The book is heavy with cons and tricks. Li Kao and Number Ten ox trick themselves in and out of trouble on a constant basis. I've always had a fondness for the con-man as hero. Perhaps it's a drive to see something redeemable and heroic show up in someone that able to trick people out of money.

The search for a cure, which is in the form of sections of a ginseng root that ends up being the physical manifestation of a Goddess meshes it's self with the quest to reunite a pair of (literally) star crossed lover-gods.

Beyond the plot, which is fun, but not too unique, the prose style, pacing, and sheer joy in the story are what really make the book work so well for me. Hughart is an absolute master of the well crafted sentence that evokes his subject matter, and the feelings of his narrator. There's a cadence to the words that's sheer brilliance. Some authors I know tend to go for the "transparent prose" concept as vitally important. Or "grown up". To which I cheerfully make childlike faces at, and point to the XKCD comic that displays my attitude on it.

I like good prose that is constructed in a conscious way that enjoys the flow of words, and uses them as a lens to focus the readers attention on a story. I like sentences and paragraphs that are so close to poetry that you get somehow distracted from the story because the flow of the words is so pretty. The funny thing is that I don't like poetry as much as I like near poetic sentences in a novel.

Bridge Of Birds is quite close to poetry.

Finally, the various plot elements are really simple, and well crafted. The emotional issues that are dealt with are easy to grasp, classic dilemmas and action scenes. There's chase scenes, escape scenes, puzzle solving, confrontations, and dramatic bad guys. The end scene, that I won't spoil for you, is a no-holds-barred schmaltz fest. I loved it. It's rare that a writer has both the guts to go with such blatant emotional pulling, and has the chops to pull it off in a way that's both cognizant of what the story is doing, and gleeful in it's exploration of it. Horror writers do it well when trying to scare people, and romance novels do it well when talking about love, but the climax scenes of so many fantasy novels are not really blockbusters so much these days. Sometimes I miss that.

Jan 6, 2008

Go forth and proudly read crap if you want to

One of the things that my wife Rose who works fo Publisher's Weekly brought home recently was the Neil Baron "Fantasy And Horror" guide. It's absolutely jammed full of interesting information and a few informative essays on the genre. It's great to have in that it listls so may authors, their influences, and synopses of well known books.

It's also full of disdain for a lot of non specified authors who cashed in on Tolkein's popularity. In fact, it completely skips any critical analysis of what those works mean to readers, and to culture. I like beig a snob as much (if not more so) than any other snob you might meet. But even if I think McDonalds is crap, if I'm talking about the American diet, I can't ignore it's cultural impact and focus on Emeril. More to the point, just because I'm snobby about my consumption of something doesn't mean I disdain people who consume what I consider crap. Sometime I want a McDonalds french fry. There's nothing like them. I can't stand the burgers, but I figure if I crave the fries, who am I to say anything about people who crave the burgers?

I think Piers Anthony, for example, is pretty schlocky. He's also got a bit of creepy older man going after younger woman theme in his books that squicks me. But hey, if you really like his work, or Terry Brooks, or anyone else who writes what might be described as formulaic genre stuff, I say enjoy it proudly. I read Laurel Hamilton and Simon R Green for goodness sake. I read them *because* they're silly schlocky and fun. They're McDonalds French fries, and love them.

Back when he was getting realy popular, Stephen King was being dismissed for writing schlocky fun thrillers he came out to proudly proclaim himself as the iterary equivilant of a big mac and fries, which is where I get my metaphor from. King does well. He tells enjoyable stories, and he's popular. Some of his stories, like Dreamcatcher, are so over the top, I can't realy enjoy them. But some are just fun reads for me. They're not deep or meaningful, but I'm not reading him in search of deep meaning.

Reading just for fun, and not to search for deep meaning is not bad, or wrong. You're not contributing to the pollution of a genre if you read and enjoy schlocky stuff. Furthermore, historians and analysts of the genre who ignore the schlock are not doing thorough investigations. These books need to be examined, and the people who read them need to be considered as part of the real audience of a genre.

For example, really can't stand most of Kevin J Anderson's books. I find them totaly lacking in depth in a way that even Simon R Green manages to avoid. But the books themselves are important to note in that they sell OK. Anderson puts them out them at a frightening pace, and they get bought reliably.

Media consumption is an industry, just like art consumption is. Prity and high art can coexist with schlock. Neither is "better" in some moral sense. Sure, Shakespeare wrote better, more beautiful lines that give deep poetic insights into the human condition, and Dumb And Dumber was not as deep. But Dumb Ad Dumber has an place in culture, and should be examined in analyzing comedy. If you enjoyed it, and I didn't, big deal.

What I like about the mystery genre

I'm not as voracious a reader of mystery novels as I am science fiction or fantasy, unless you count cross genre mystery/fantasy or mystery sci fi. Consequentially, I'm not so up on trends in the genre.

I tend to go for classic styling - gumshoe detective type stuff. I like Rex Stout and Robert Parker. These are thinking mans detectives, but they're tough. At least Archie is tough. Nero Wolfe talks tough, an has an attitude. A smart person who's able to solve crimes and right wrongs is an important person for me to look to when wanting escapism.

There's also a sense of connection to and respect for some of the underworld in at least Parker's books. Spenser, the most used character, has a best friend who's a thug and a mercenary. It's the adherence to a code of ethics that bonds the two of them, along with shared work, and a love for one particular woman.

In a way, the books are like soap operas for thugs. Only there's a few characters who are by nature noble, an everyone else is probably corrupt and weak, or dishonorable, or both. They're usually set straight by the main characters in some violent way, or killed, or defeated.

Nero Wolfe, of course, is just a triumph of intellect over villainy. He rarely uses force, an when he does, it's by people in his employ. He's even more cultured than Spenser, but less self aware, and more egotistical. He's flawed, and Rex Stout makes clear the reader knows it.

I'm not sure why either of those series are so appealing, but they are. If there were well written books with technologically savy characters who're like Wolfe or Spenser, it might appeal to me more. Sadly, I don;t keep up with mystery as much, so I'd have to go on recommendations. If anyone has any, let me know.

Jan 4, 2008

Rambelation

In which my blog leaves the essay on some topic format, and enters the chatty bloggy format.

Lets talk about just genre fiction, and how it relates to me. The first book anyone can tell that I read was Jonathan Livingston Seagull by Richard Bach. My mother tells me that she sat me in her lap, as she always did when reading to me, and with that book, I started turning the pages faster than she was reading. She actually quizzed me on the content of the part I'd read that was slower than what she was reading out loud, and apparently I got it right.

The second book I really remember reading, cover to cover, was The Hobbit. I'm sure i read plenty of other books. I have memories of various Golden Books, but The Hobbit was one that stuck, because I re read it enough. I re read books I really like a lot. If I really love a book, I may re read it like I'm chain smoking.

Genre fiction, especial a series of books, or a book set in the same universe as previous books, like the Diskworld or Ethshar books, are usual re-reads. Sometimes if a new one crops up, I'll make a point of re reading the entire series. There's something comfortable about that. It's like getting reintroduced to old friends. It's an easier read, because I know the story. I suppose it's like seeing an opera you love performed again. And because I've had different experiences, I might have a differnt perspective on part of the story

Back to The Hobbit. I re read that book countless times as a child. I doubt churchgoing kids read the bible as much as I read The Hobbit, and later, The Lord Of The Rings. I knew those books backwards and forwards. I've probably forgotten huge chunks of them by now. More books have entered my re-reading stack, so the fanaticism to a few books has gotten a bit diluted.

Am I the only one who re-reads like this?

Jan 2, 2008

George R.R. Martin, why hast thou forsaken me?

Having just finished the first most recent George R.R. Martin edited Wild Cards book, "Inside Straight", I thought I'd try my hand at some reviewing.

I've read many, but not all of the Wild Cards books. I liked a good bunch of them. The thing about most of them is that they're what's known as "shared word anthologies", which from my recollection, started out with the Thieves World books or by the marketing mind behind the Wild Cards books "mosaic novels". A bit pretentious, but whatever. Pretension work some times.

The basic plot device behind the Wild Cards books is that an alien virus gave superpowers to part of humanity, and crippling, strange, and sometimes lethal disfigurements to another part. The heroic powerd ones get called "aces" and the disfigured ones get called "jokers". Of course, not every superhero has amazing fantastic powers. Some have lame powers. In an earlier book, they get the title "deuces".

There's a lot of the Thieves World conceptual space that's shared with the early Wild Card books. There's a grimness to a lot of the stories, and not a lot of huge high heroism. Anti-heroes and deeply flawed heroes are the main characters, for the most part. Of the most powerful aces, one is a homophobic pimp, another is an overweight drop out telekinetic, a another is a drug addicted schizoid who transmutes into a variety of heroes when he's tripping out.

Despite a lot of these flaws, the rise of real heroism and, failures of great figures, redemption and betrayal on a grand superheroic scale made the Wild cards books really interesting. It also helped that a lot of the authors were really great writers.

I wish I could say that the most recent Wild Cards book lived up to that. I have no idea how it managed to get a "Sci Fi Essentials" tag associated with it. Some sort of lobbying by the publicist? It wasn't because of the books quality, as far as I can tell.

Anyhow, on to the actual review.

The book starts with an blog post by a deuce named Jonathan Hive, who's blog posts divide the books chapters. By the end of the book, I liked who Hive became, but I didn't see his transformation into that person as plausible. He starts out as too much of an irresponsible self absorbed asshole to credit with becoming a heroic journalist blogger. His ace power is that he can turn himself into a swarm of green wasps, which can be used as spies, or to sting people.

I really had to power through the book, and finish it in a few hours, because with the exception of the first chapter it was an uninteresting read. The introductory chapter was actually great - an Egyptian leader is assassinated by an ace I can't remember form previous books, a female teleport called Lillith. The writing on that chapter was tight, and well paced. It was what I'd come to expect from the Wild cards books.

After the assassination, the book shifts to describing a reality TV show called "American Hero". Jonathan Hive is one of the contestants. I fully admit, I think reality TV is some of the worst crap ever invented. I can't stand it. And I couldn't stand any of the characters in the book that were on the show, and god, there were a lot of them. And the book actually played out scenarios from the fictional show. I really couldn't find it in myself to care about any of the characters in the book, because they were, on the whole, self absorbed assholes. I'm sure this is realistic, but it's a boring read.

I like books with characters who're real villains, or even interesting villains. Martin's Wild Cards books are great examples of this. There's an evil incestuous brother and sister who're twins, who eventually, you begin to really understand. they have depth, even if its in madness. One of them actually redeems himself. And the heights to which they climb and depths to which they fall are epic.

The contestants in Inside Straight are not that deep. They don't fall from heights. Some of them die at the end, and I can't even bring myself to feel anything other than relived that the plot was moved along, and I wasn't reading about who was fucking around on who in the reality show.

Concurrently with the brain bendingly unpleasant reality show, Egypt is falling apart. The assassin placed blame on a group of joker terrorists. Because of that, jokers in Egypt are being selected for genocide, as are worshipers of the "living gods" who're aces and jokers with either powers or animal heads that have them looking like ancient Egyptian gods.

In a convoluted plot twist, Peregrine, who's a producer of the show, was given an amulet from one of the living gods. She has wings, and despite being an American, gets called Isis by the Egyptian gods. The amulet has the power and memories of a previous god who can become a lion, breathe fire, and is immune to bullets, but only when it's melded to the flesh of Peregrine's son, John Fortune who's perpetually living in the shadow of his deceased father, Fortunado, who had vast power, and his mother, Peregrine, who was incredibly overprotective.

Did I mention convoluted? Keep in mind that there were a lot of wild card books. Plot twists get really damn gnarly.

The short of it is that Jonathan Hive, after getting kicked off the contestant part of the show, convinces John Fortune and another ace, Lohengrin, who has invulnerable psychic armor and a sword that can cut through anything, to raid Peregrine's home for the amulet, because he as told by another contestant, who happens to be from Egypt, that the amulet will give John Fortune his powers back. They do this while drunk. The writing was just as bad as the plotting.

Johnathan Hive is basically a device for moving the plot at this point. I had a lot of trouble accepting his motivations even when he was just a jerk on a reality TV show.

After some page filling angst, Johnathan Hive, John Fortune and Lohengrin shuttle off to Egypt to be real heroes, because the reality TV show land was just too nonheroic for them. Also the spirit of the Egyptian Ace in the amulet, and his own feelings of inadequacy about not being the hero his parents were motivates John Fortune. And Hive wants to be a journalist, so he tags along. Lohengrin just wants to be a hero. Really, he's another way to move the plot along, and to be an incongruous "crusader" in Egypt.

After close encounters with genocide by Hive, Fortune and, Lohengrin, large amounts of the cast of "American Hero" shuttle themselves off to Egypt to fight the good fight. they're motivated by Hive's blog posts from Egypt. Again, I couldn't really get behind the scene in which this happens. All of a sudden, vapid, self absorbed assholes decide to go off and fight the good fight? It's like a switch it turned in their heads.

They get to Egypt, and fight off soldiers, and Islamic aces. Some of the American aces die, some don't. I was unmoved by any of the deaths. Either the authors had no idea how to get me to care, or I was too numbed out by despising all of the characters in a fictional reality TV show. Eventually, the lesson of teamwork sinks in to the vapid, self absorbed reality TV fans, and they kill the boss at the end of the level, or book. Whatever. It's a decently written super hero battle, at least, but the triteness of the teamwork versus self absorbedness lesson spoiled a large chunk of it.

I'm know there's some message I was supposed to take home in here about how we decadent westerners watch our atrociously meaningless reality TV while people in the rest of the world have serious problems. It was pretty much beaten into the readers head by the end of the book when the remaining contestants get pre-empted by the Secretary General of the UN announcing that former contestants had saved the day.

In conclusion, if you really love Wild Cards, wait for the paperback edition.

Cross Genre thoughts

For the first post on the blog, I thought I'd cover one of my favorite things - what I consider to be cross genre fiction. Fantasy crossed with science fiction, mystery crossed with horror, and so on.

I like it best when this is intentionally done. I don't mean like what some people consider to be fantasy elements in the Star Wars movies, though there is a bit of genre tweaking with light sabers and knights flying around on star ships. What I mean, like most examples of what is or isn't a genre, is best defined by examples of what it is, and isn't.

One of my favorite examples cross genre fiction is Larry Niven's Gil The ARM stories. They're classic 'hard' SF crossed with a bit of supernatural (the lead character has a telekinetic ghost arm) and a classic mystery tropes - the locked room, the murder of the heir, and so on. Niven knows his mystery classics, and is one of the great shapers of modern science fiction.

Another good example is Richard Morgan's first Takeshi Kovaks mystery, Altered Carbon, which is a great example of how current trends from cyberpunk and noir mystery thrillers. Altered Carbon captures the feel of the noir thriller on the movie screen, and the grit and class commentary of Gibson's early cyberpunk work.

Outside of the realm of F&SF/Mystery, which admittedly is one of my favorites, there's the cast new field of "paranormal romance" which admittedly contains a lot of serious schlock, and some bad writing. That said, it does sell, and some of the storytelling is compelling. The best known name in this is Laurel Hamilton, whom I'll admit to reading and enjoying as a guilty pleasure, despite the fact that some of her recent composition and styling has made me want to throw the book across the room.

Hamilton crosses mystery, fantasy, horror and romance. When she hits on all of them well, it's quite impressive. Relationship angst in the midst of a zombie raising to see who murdered a vampire? That's pretty cool. A lot of where I think she's started falling down is where she's forgotten to tap the roots of the genre she's in, and gotten into too much mary-sue-ism with crap like "power levels" and some pretty blatant fanservice sex scenes.

A lot of horror involves solving some sort of mystery, so it's necessary to me to pin down who's really intentionally pulling from the roots of different genres in such a way that the reader will get that it's really, truly blending two or more genre s.

John Connolly's Charlie Parker novels are another example of supernatural/horror and mystery being crossed. As I mentioned with Hamilton, the later novels go deeper into story arc of the characters, and become less about the genre crossing. Again, for me, they are less compelling in that respect. I don't think Connolly's quality of writing took the downhill slide that Hamilton's did though.

Those examples seem to occupy the core of the realm of what I call cross genre. Further out, there's a little grey area where things like Steve Brust's Khavren books occupy. They're crossing a genre that's essentially over, that of the Dumas age romantic heroic adventures, and contemporary fantasy, which is still pretty much alive, but pulls from it's own realm of genres-gone-by and myths and fairy tales. I like this sort of writing a lot too, especially the recent work by S.M. Stirling in Sky People, and the upcoming In The Courts Of The Crimson Kings. Those two books comprise are even further out on the edges, because they're contemporary SF referencing and paying homage to and referencing an older type of SF. Not really cross genre, but more internal genre historical commentary. Mystery novels are published with noir sensibilities that are set in current day.

In a way, much of fiction references and is influenced by previous elements of fiction in the genre it's in, so that's why intentional crossing of what are usually separated genres interests me so much. It's a minor transgression of boundaries in bookstore classification.

The question is, what holds the taint? Mystery taints horror, for the most part, and science fiction/fantasy taint mystery. Romance taints pretty much everything, but despite being supernatural horror, Laurel Hamilton stays in F/SF, and does not get put into those specialty racks that paranormal romance imprints send out to B&N.

And that's my first post. I hope future ones live up to, or exceed this one.