Illusory Reality

The Best of 2006

2006-12-22T18:16:00.000Z

Now we're coming to the end of the year, it's time to look over the best releases of the year. Most of these are quite predictable - the solid continuations of major series, the hugely publicised new authors etc. But there were a few surprises, and all, whether expected or not, are impressive.

First, of course, The Lies of Locke Lamora has to be mentioned. With a single book, Scott Lynch managed to propel himself into the lofty sphere of epic fantasy alongside Bakker, Erikson and Martin. TLOLL has everything in it - great characters, an unpredictable, twisting plot, a brilliant setting with the city of Camorr, contrasts in tone between dark and brooding and hilarious with ease... And most of all, it lived up to the hype, which was its greatest challenge.

Keeping to epic fantasy, there were numerous other notable releases - Bakker concluded his Prince of Nothing trilogy with the excellent The Thousandfold Thought (with a good ending, though perhaps lacking not as conclusive as some readers may have hoped) while Erikson gave another solid effort with the sixth instalment of his Malazan series, the Bonehunters (disappointing given his brilliance in the past, but nonetheless a good book) and Greg Keyes' The Blood Knight was another competent instalment. There was another notable debut this year, from Joe Abercromie with the Blade Itself, a dark, gritty epic fantasy with a varied cast of characters including a barbarian losing his edge, a crippled torturer and an effete noble.

Outside of epic fantasy, there were also some notable developments - Alan Campbell's Scar Night displayed a huge level of originality, Jeffrey Ford's The Empire of Ice Cream and the anthology Feeling Very Strange showed that the short form was still alive and well, while Vernor Vinge's Rainbows End, Dave Kalstein's Prodigy and Tim Powers' Three Days to Never demonstrated the versatility and strength of science fiction today.

A brief discussion of some books I've read recently

2006-12-12T22:12:00.000Z

Having not written anything for nearly 3 months now, it seems about time to give another overview of books I've read recently. Fortunately, that number isn't too formidable, as during October and November I basically read no books other than those that were necessary (the demands of university), so it's mainly those I've read within the last couple of weeks.

A Shadow in Summer by Daniel Abraham:
An interesting premise and it comes with very high praise from GRRM himself, who compares Abraham to Vance, Harrison and Wolfe. Safe to say this is exaggerated, but it is still undoubtedly one of the better examples of epic fantasy out there. The main idea is in the form of the magic system - the andat, a concept in corporeal form, transcribed by "poets" who control them, have the power of gods. Of course, to become one there is an arduous training programme, etc, etc. But surprisingly, we don't simpy follow someone through a predictable life as they emerge as a poet fighting for noble causes, never making mistakes. Instead, our protagonist, offered a great opportunity, leaves the school to become an anonymous labourer. The culture of the Saraykeht (and the wider world, at least what we see of it) is refreshingly different from that of most other epic fantasies, drawing influence from the east. And the main story is not about saving the world, it is not a tale of good vs evil, it is not about the triumph of righteousness. It is instead the story of the lives of a few ordinary people, who end entangled in far more complex intrigues than they ever intended to be involved in. True, Abraham never approaches the depth of political intrigue or weaves the story with such skill as a pinnacle such as GRRM does, but it is there, and a credit to the novel. His attempts to address ethical questions are perhaps less successful, taking a heavy handed approach on the issue of abortion, but it is better to see the issue raised, even if imperfectly, rather than to have yet another vacant epic fantasy. It isn't perfect, but for a debut it is excellent. It isn't another Lies of Locke Lamora, and it is a shame that it was released in the same year, because it will almost certainly be overshadowed. 8 out of 10.

Prodigy by Dave Kalstein: A very impressive novel. One that I'm surprised I've heard so little about. A SF story set 30 years in the future in a spectacular school for the brilliant doesn't sound like a hugely enticing premise. But one remarkable aspect of the novel that makes this so worthwhile is the atmosphere of it and the author's sheer cynicism - on a level with Kafka and Heller. And it is entirely believable. There are some aspects which he emphasises too much, some implausibilities - but that is only to be expected. The main characters really shine through in this - the brilliantly intelligent, hard working Valedictorian, Goldsmith, the popular, failing, drug dealing Cooley, the cold, emotionless Camilla, the naive, kind headmaster and the Machiavellian President Lang. It is filled with twists with characters you had supported unreservedly throughout suddenly turning traitor. The school is slowly revealed to you, as if you are a visitor, walking through its front doors into the technological marvel, blinded by its great visible attributes, until slowly the mirage is torn away, revealing the darkness of its foundations. This plot itself is not a brilliant, complex, intricate story, the setting is not startlingly original, the
book's insights are not truly remarkable or particularly subtle, but these are mere details. It is both a hugely entertaining SF thriller and a morality tale, based on one key question: What is an acceptable price for progress?

8.5 out of 10.

Labyrinths by Jorge Luis Borges

A brilliant short story collection. I'm still pretty new to reading short stories, but Borges is the best short story writer I know of - even surpassing Kafka. The stories in Labyrinths are always intelligent, philosophical and most of all entertaining. They generally take on a surreal tone, but it is difficult to generalise about such varied tales. Most take a theme, idea or metaphor and extend and exaggerate it to its limits. For example, the idea that a writer writes what they know, based upon their experiences. So in Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote, Menard manages to rewrite the Quixote word for word without ever copying, purely by going through similar experiences. Yet his Quixote is immeasurably superior to Cervantes' original, as Borges so eloquently explains to you. Other stories range from the cryptic library of Babel, filled with books of seemingly meaningless gibberish, to the radical premise of society based on a lottery in the Lottery of Babylon. In short, if you want to read short stories, read Borges. Not one of the stories was weak, and several were absolutely brilliant. 9 out of 10.

Feeling Very Strange edited by James Patrick Kelly and John Kessel

This is probably one of those short story collections released this year that you've never heard of, never seen on the shelves in even the largest bookshops, never seen an advert for, and in short, isn't likely to become a bestseller. But it is still remarkable, with stories by some of the most talented writers in speculative fiction, including Jeff Vandermeer, Jeffrey Ford, Theodora Goss, Michael Chabon, Ted Chiang, Kelly Link and Bruce Sterling. There was not a single weak story in the collection, and some were absolutely brilliant. And it does its job admirably - it makes you feel very strange, and in the process, you begin slowly to understand what slipstream is, with a debate on the subgenre interspersed between the stories, ending on the humourous note of rebranding the genre as "infernokrusher" fiction. To conclude, now that you know this exists, go and read it! 9 out of 10.

Children of Men

2006-09-26T16:06:00.000+01:00

As usual, I've done far less blogging than I intended to, but back to the subject.
Children of Men is (if you haven't guessed) a recently released science fiction film. And one of the very select few films that I actually went to see at the cinema on the day of its release (in the UK). My expectations for the film weren't low, but they weren't particularly high either. But they should have been. Children of Men is a masterpiece, one of the best science fiction films ever made. Every aspect of the film is just as it should be. There' s a very strong cast with Clive Owen, Julianne Moore, Chiwetel Ejiofor and Michael Caine, who all give better performances than I expected and absolutely become the characters. Again, the characters feel very real - in part because of the acting but also because of the writing. They're all three-dimensional and a far cry from the standard Hollywood heroes. The main character, Theo, is a very reluctant hero and, while he seems barely suited to his monotonous day job in London, is even less suited to adventure. He doesn't solve his problems with bullets - in fact, he barely solves his problems. He does little more than stumble through them, dragged into doing what is right. He is not a leader, not an idealist, and crucially, he doesn't suffer from what Joss Whedon calls "Airforce One syndrome". He's not always strong and he's far from perfect. But despite that, you still are rooting for him. The other characters are equally developed, from Michael Caine's Jasper, Theo's old political columnist friend, who often provides some welcome comic relief in an otherwise very dark, depressing atmosphere to Chiwetel Ejiofor's Luke, a leader of the resistance who is much more complex than what he first seems to Peter Mullan's Syd, a slightly mad policeman.

The dark, gritty setting of dystopian London in 2027 is incredibly believable. This is not a bright, sleek version of the future that has become so common in film- it reminds you incredibly of today, though admittedly it seems as if the country is being run along the lines of tabloid editorial policy, with its asylum camps reminscent of Nazi concentration camps. There are hints that the rest of the world is even worse throughout, but for the most part, it seems to be a relatively ordinary world with one major difference - there are no children.

The plot itself is not particularly original or exciting, or wouldn't have been if it were not for the brilliant writing and directing of Alfonso Cuaron. A pregnant girl, an immigrant, is discovered, and Theo's help is enlisted in delivering her to the Human Project, a mysterious benign organisation that we never learn much about, but we are told is better than letting the government have her. What could have been a very simple plot and could ruin an otherwise excellent film becomes an asset, as it is filled with unexpected twists, Cuaron doing what most directors would never even contemplate. The writing itself expertly switches between humour and poignancy and the pacing is spot on. The big surprise for me though was not the brilliant acting, characters or even the unpredictable plot, but the cinematography. The camerawork is nothing short of virtuoso and the action scenes are some of the most impressive I've seen in any film.

In short, this is one of the best films I've ever seen. Everything comes together perfectly to create a science fiction masterwork which avoids all the traps. If you're in the UK, go and see it now. If you're anywhere else, go and see it as soon as it comes out. 9.5/10

Overview of books I've recently read

2006-08-13T20:25:00.000+01:00

I haven't done many posts recently and I don't feel like spending a lot of time in writing long reviews at the moment, but here are my thoughts on some books I've read recently:

Ringworld by Larry Niven

It's considered a classic, but for me it felt pretty bland. There were some interesting ideas in it, especially to do with the ringworld itself, and there were hints that the characters were more developed than what we saw, but that's all they were. The characters didn't serve much of a function beyond being a vehicle for exploring this ringworld and strangely enough, the puppeteer seemed the most human of all the characters. The central idea of breeding for luck I didn't like that much, as it meant that one of the main characters was pretty much invincible, because she was so lucky. The other thing I had a problem with in this novel was that it felt so directionless - they went to go and explore the ringworld for some barely plausible reasons, and then they wandered about on its surface for the rest of the book. The writing and worldbuilding were quite good, but even for a relatively slim volume, it felt padded out - it would have made a good novella, but I don't think there was enough content to fill out a full novel. I'd give it 6.5/10

To Your Scattered Bodies Go by Philip Jose Farmer

Another classic, and one that I was lucky enough to find in the villa I was staying in on holiday. This had a very original premise - the whole of humanity reborn on the banks of a huge river on a new world, each with nothing but a "grail", an item which when they went near a stone would fill with food enough for the day. The main character is Richard Burton, a 19th century translator, and he joins a group including Alice Hargreaves (inspiration for Alice in Wonderland), a prehistoric human, the alien responsible for destroying almost all of the human race and a 20th century man. And later on, perhaps most interestingly, Hermann Goering keeps meeting Burton. To Your Scattered Bodies Go only gives very brief glimpses of the world around, including the various societies that emerge, but they are more than sufficient and creates a surprisingly complex and realistic world, filled with interesting characters - and Burton is almost an anti-hero at times. There are a lot of good ideas in this, and it's often quite amusing and it deserves its status as a speculative fiction classic. I'd give it 8 out of 10.

The Thousandfold Thought by R Scott Bakker

An excellent conclusion to the best completed epic fantasy series there is. It concludes the Holy War story, and the story about one of the best fantasy creations of recent times, Anasurimbor Kellhus, while it is clear the Second Apocalypse is only just beginning. It also contains a nicely detailed 100 page glossary at the end of the book. I'll come back to this at another time, but meanwhile, I'm very much looking forward to the Aspect Emperor and to Neuropath - R Scott Bakker is one of the most talented living fantasy authors. 9 out of 10.

The Lies of Locke Lamora by Scott Lynch

You've probably already read this. If you haven't, you should go and read it now. The Lies of Locke Lamora is currently my favourite 2006 release - it's intelligent, witty, cunning, but most of all, damn fun. There aren't many good fantasy books about thieves, conmen and deception, but here's one of the best. Sometimes it's hilarious, othertimes it's almost heartbreaking - Scott Lynch can kill off main characters when it's appropriate - and I find it really hard to fault. It's a book that all fantasy fans should enjoy. There've been a lot of reviews about it already, so if you want more detail, look at them (I advise Jay's at http://www.fantasybookspot.com/node/1197 - though keep away from the Strange Horizons review, which seems as if the reviewer was reading a completely different book from everyone else, and managed to anger just about everyone else by claiming that people who said differently were "bribed" to tell such "lies"). Anyway, a rating - 9 out of 10, and if I'm in a generous mood, 9.5 out of 10 (though this latter I hesitate because I reserve it for masterpieces, which this isn't quite).

The Stormcaller by Tom Lloyd

A few words to describe this book: Mediocre. Bland. Uninspired. It wasn't a bad book and Tom Lloyd is a competent author. But it wasn't a good book either. There was pretty much nothing original in it, nothing remotely surprising, nothing interesting. There were a couple of ideas that, if they were developed well, would have been worthwhile. But they weren't. The worldbuilding had the idea of splitting humanity in various warring tribes. And then they just acted like generic countries, and all united against the elves and trolls. A seemingly interesting anti-hero. Who turns out to be just another adolescent boy who's the heir to the throne and the saviour of prophecy. With almost everything that was good with this book there was a qualifying factor. The good didn't outweigh the bad so much as there was pretty much nothing of either. There was one interesting character, Lesarl. Safe to say that he was actually a pretty minor character who we hear very little about. Any character we saw a lot of became stereotypical and simplistic. There are a lot of good books out there, and a lot of good releases this year. This isn't one of them. It isn't awful in the way Eragon or the Elder Gods or Crossroads of Twilight are - but there's no reason you should waste your time reading it when there are so many superior alternatives. I'd give it 5 out of 10 - absolutely average. If you haven't read much fantasy at all, you might enjoy it. But if you've read pretty much any epic fantasy, you'll be disappointed.

End of an Era

2006-08-06T19:54:00.000+01:00

More sad news greets me as I arrive back from holiday - Emerald City, one of the best speculative fiction e-zines, is ceasing publication. http://www.emcit.com/wordpress/?p=2877

Fortunately, it isn't all bad news. While there will be no more Emerald City, the fantasybookspot E-zine, Heliotrope, has been launched, and it looks very good. It has articles, reviews, poetry and fiction. The line-up for the first issue is very impressive - an article by Jeff Vandermeer, an article by R Scott Bakker and poetry from Catherynne M. Valente - it doesn't get much better than that. http://www.heliotropemag.com/Issue01/index.html

Serenity

2006-08-06T16:30:00.000+01:00

I'd heard about this film for a long time, but for some reason, I never got around to watching it. It's been described as a sci-fi western. I don't particularly like westerns, and the director, Joss Whedon, is best known for the television series Buffy the Vampire Slayer, which I've had no intention of watching. But I saw it in the local HMV and decided to see what all the fuss was about. And it was definitely worth it. Serenity is perhaps the best science fiction film ever made - yes, including Star Wars.

Serenity has something that is hugely lacking in most films, especially SFF films - good characterisation. In fact, the characterisation in Serenity is of a level to rival many of the best science fiction novels. That is something I would very rarely say about films. Many of the ideas at first seem cliched - a group of bandits who are generally good on the run from the omnipresent empire and a person who holds a devastating secret. So far, nothing that original. But Joss Whedon takes delight in subverting our expectations. Yes, these bandits do come from the "uncivilised" outer planets and aren't exactly working for the Empire. But unlike Star Wars, they've lost their war of independence - the Alliance has won, not them. There is no clear good and evil - there are all shades of grey. The main character, River Tam, is a mentally unstable girl how can be triggered as a deadly weapon if certain words are spoken. The captain of the ship is unprincipled and amoral - as are most of his crew. The villain, by contrast, is a character with incredible empathy, understanding and kindness - but also an intense belief in the rightness of his cause. He has a very rigid code of honour and his development through the film is brilliant. This characterisation is helped by excellent acting from the entire cast.

The film is a serious one, on the whole, but there are many moments of humour and wit throughout - shown from the very beginning, with such comments as:
"Define interesting."
"Oh God, Oh God, we're all going to die?"
The humour always feels natural and exactly what the characters would say; it's never forced. On the note of humour, the director's commentary on the DVD is very entertaining - I tend not to watch these, but Joss Whedon managed to make it very entertaining, and starting with the line "Hello, I'm Joss Whedon, director of this mess... this film" was enough to convince me it was worth watching.

The plot is not spectacular, but it is effective, though it functions more as a setting - this is a film about the characters and not about the story. There are plenty of excellent fight scenes, there is great music, great special effects and everything else you would expect from a decent science fiction film - but this is also a science fiction film with decent writing, and that is much rarer. Go and watch Serenity if you haven't already. As for me, I'm just waiting until I can get a chance to watch the TV series Firefly that Serenity was based on.

A lament for heroic fantasy

2006-08-05T21:20:00.000+01:00

I discovered today, having just returned from holiday, that David Gemell died at the age of 57 on Friday 28th July. I enjoyed the Drenai books quite a lot - I wasn't his greatest fan, but he was one of the few remaining practitioners of that subgenre known as epic fantasy, and it came as a shock to hear that he had died. I had heard nothing to suggest he was suffering from ill health (though this might have been me not paying attention) and I expected him to keep writing for years to come. Sadly, this won't be the case.

The Bonehunters by Steven Erikson

2006-07-17T18:42:00.000+01:00

This is the 6th installment of Steven Erikson's A Tale of the Malazan Book of the Fallen, one of the best epic fantasy series being written at the moment, and perhaps when complete it will be one of the best epic fantasy series ever written. Erikson combines a world of unparalleled scope and depth with a great storyline filled with intriguing, complex characters. And he diverges from the traditional epic fantasy influences of Tolkien and his primary influences come from the swords and sorcery subgenre, providing a very entertaining high magic setting. To add to all of this, he brings in some excellent humour that alleviates an otherwise very dark tone. Or at least, he usually manages to achieve all of this, and when he does, he creates a masterpiece. So as you can see, I'm a big fan of the series and if you're reading this, you probably know all of that anyway - so I had high expectations, and I expect many people who have read this far into the series will do as well. Unfortunately, The Bonehunters wasn't one of those books.

My advice to you then, if you haven't already read it, is tone down your expectations. This isn't another Deadhouse Gates or Memories of Ice, or even another Midnight Tides. The closest novel to it in terms of quality and style would be Gardens of the Moon. There are few things you notice about the book initially - its size, and the cover. Normally I don't find these particularly important, so long as what's between the covers is worthwhile. But here I just want to make a brief comment on them. In hardback, it's over 900 pages. That's a pretty substantial book, but not exactly unusual for Erikson or even for epic fantasy. I'm used to the Malazan books making these pages fly by, almost entirely lacking in filler. The Bonehunters is different - the pacing is wrong. It feels like a book of 900 pages. In the last section the plot moves at a breakneck speed, perhaps even too fast, so some major events have to be covered in the space of about 10 pages, while the whole of the middle section felt very drawn out. Now, for the cover - it's not a bad cover by any means, but I'm curious as to why the artist decided to pick a scene right at the end of the book. But more importantly, the title - I'm used to Erikson coming up with some really great titles in the past, that are both intriguing and have depth to them - Memories of Ice being one of the best titles I've ever seen - but this one seems incredibly simplistic. Admittedly you find out about the namesake in the second half of the book, but it really isn't that interesting. Perhaps its reflecting the quality of the rest of the book? Anyway, on to the book itself...

The Bonehunters is a book with great potential. There are some very interesting ideas in it, but the writing seems to have taken a dive since Midnight Tides. Everything about the Bonehunters screams "missed opportunity" to me - there are some major deaths (it's Erikson, after all), some shocking, unpredictable events, a large scale siege and conflagration. This is the first book in which the various plotlines begin to converge - the Tiste Edur are becoming increasingly important as Rhulad expands his empire, Icarium draws closer to unleashing his rage again, the aftermath of the Chain of Dogs and the Whirlwind is the primary setting and the war between the gods begins in earnest. But despite all of these really interesting ideas, Erikson didn't quite manage to pull it off. The writing was competent but uninspired for the most part, the humour was forced rather than genuine and the major deaths lacked emotional impact. Erikson's never disguised the fact that he's writing fantasy - his novels are full of complex, high powered magic, intervening gods and hugely powerful individuals. The Bonehunters is no different. We see the return of some of the best characters of the earlier books (particularly from the Bridgeburners - Quick Ben, Kalam and Fiddler back together again) with a few new ones, and some of these characters reveal themselves to be a lot more powerful than previously thought. But for once, Erikson goes over the top with the power of his characters. There are a few scenes which were preposterous to my mind - characters surviving impossible odds when in previous books they had struggled against much more modest numbers. And that fateful Erikson trait returns - he is unwilling to really let go of his characters - the dead are not really dead, and there is one scene which is utterly awful as it (temporarily) brings back a character who we saw die. In the previous books, I only saw this as at most a minor problem with only one glaring case - but it occurs a lot more in the Bonehunters.

A Conclusion: The Bonehunters is a good book, and certainly a lot better than most fantasy that is published. But it is far from Erikson's best - it seemed as if he had suddenly lost all the experience he had gained since writing Gardens of the Moon, as if he was struggling to bring the threads together and was concentrating more on that than on providing a great story. Part of the problem was of course what it had to follow - it would be difficult to live up to Midnight Tides, let alone Memories of Ice or Deadhouse Gates - and having a brilliant story such as those would be very difficult to achieve at this point in the series, but nonetheless I see it as a novel full of unachieved potential. I find it difficult to rate, but I think I would give it 7.5 out of 10.

A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess

2006-07-14T19:37:00.000+01:00

A Clockwork Orange is an incredibly violent book, and a very disturbing one. So be warned. It certainly won't appeal to everyone - the Wasp Factory was described as a "depraved" piece of literature when it was released, but it has nothing on this. The protagonist, Alex (well named - A-lex - without law) is a typical 15 year old of the dystopian future - he enjoys theft, rape, murder and torture with his gang of friends. The first section of the book details these activities and Alex enjoys this. He is a thoroughly unlikeable protagonist, and as this is written in the first person, it forces you to engage with his every thought as he violently assaults innocent victims, sharing his every laugh and cry with you. Yet, somehow, on some level, we can sympathise with him. While abhorring the violence and rape, there is still a level of emotional power when he is betrayed by his friends and captured by the police. He may be a violent, despicable character - but despite that, he is a teenager, who retains a certain naivety and innocence, despite his terrible acts. Much of what he puts on is an act of bravado, attempts to impress his friends, to demonstrate his position of leader of the gang - Alex is an entirely believable character, and in the context, more than just a psychopath. For ultraviolence and rape are common amongst the cities' youth. If you were to take the hysteria that exists about crime and youth today, and were to make it real, you would soon see a world not dissimilar from that of A Clockwork Orange. And while the acts of the characters are unpalatable, it creates an important friendship between them. A Clockwork Orange is not just about its central theme of free will vs forced morality (as Alex is subjected to a programme to remove his ability to do anything but good), it is about the relationship between these characters and a changing world.

A Clockwork Orange is not an easy book to read. This isn't, surprisingly, because of the content, but because of the style. It is written in Burgess' invented slang language, nadsat, which derives almost entirely from Russian. At first sight it is very offputting, but it is very effective at conveying atmosphere. It reminds you, always, that these are real teenagers, who don't look through to the consequences. An example (this is quoted in the introduction in my copy):

"All right, Dim", I said. "Now for the other veshch, Bog help us all." So he did the strong-man on the devotchka, who was still creech creech creeching away in very horrorshow four-in-a-bar, locking her rookers from the back, while I ripped away at this and that and the other, the others going haw haw haw still, and real good horrorshow groodies they were that then exhibited their pink glazzies, O my brothers, while I untrussed and got ready for the plunge.

The strange language also has a dampening effect on what are truly horrifying scenes. The prose also reveals other aspects of Alex's character - he is not ill-educated, and often takes on a Shakespearean tone in a slightly ironic tone ( "Oh my father", I said, "Fear not. He canst take care of himself, verily" ). The first person perspective also helps to emphasise his one other true passion in life - music. It is an interesting quirk of personality that it is classical music he is passionate about and he is particularly dismissive of his age group's love of pop. His enthusiasm for music, and particularly Beethoven, is shown to be genuine through the prose, and therefore, its loss, as terrible.

His transformation is genuinely moving, despite his background. The loss of the choice to do evil is shown to be almost as terrible as the evil itself. Alex is the first to undergo this "treatment" and initially he enthusiastically agrees, expecting a painless, quick way out of prison. But within days he is yearning for the prison life again. But the true cruelty of this punishment is that it removes the pleasure of music for him due to an oversight, and that is the one aspect Alex can't tolerate. This loss is a terrible one and the reader feels for Alex, whatever his past. Later he is forced to confront the consequences of his actions, and soon sees that the adult world is no less cruel than the children's. There is heartbreaking irony when he is confronted with kindness by one of his victims. Incidents like these are what make the book more than a crude exploration of a single theme - it is both simple and complex, an entertaining and despicable story, with a clear message, but it is not didactic fiction by any means. A Clockwork Orange is a masterpiece - irritating, sickening and depressing, the virtuoso performace of Burgess challenges the reader on many levels. I would give it 9.5 out of 10. Most people have seen the film. Now go and read the book.

A note on the final chapter: This is ommitted from the US version, but it is an important chapter. It shows that perhaps Alex, eventually, achieves maturity and redemption. But it is not a simple happy ending - for while Alex achieves this maturity, as all people eventually do, the youth will continue their orgy of theft, violence and rape. Both endings are equally depressing, and both are effective - but this final chapter is, tellingly, the 21st, the age of maturity.

(This review is of the UK version: http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/0141182601/026-2112759-5758025?v=glance&n=266239 ,rather than the one with the cover above - the last chapter is included in the UK version, but not in the US version).

The Etched City by K. J. Bishop

2006-07-13T13:56:00.000+01:00

I was initially sceptical about the Etched City - I'd heard that it was a Western-type fantasy and comparisons were drawn with Stephen King's the Gunslinger, which I found distinctly mediocre, and from the opening sequence, you could be forgiven for thinking that this is what the Etched City would be. Raule, a doctor, and Gwynn, a killer, are both on the run from General Anforth's Army of Heroes, after being on the wrong side in the civil war. The setting seems to be that of a Western - a desert which they're fleeing across, 19th century technology and weapons and the towns they visit could easily be those of the American mid-West. This isn't a setting which particularly interests me, and it's probably the weakest part of the book. It's a straightforward chase, culminating in a battle of which our two protagonists are overwhelmingly outnumbered, yet still manage to win. And they flee to the city of Ashamoil. There was nothing particularly bad about it up to this point, and the writing was already of a high quality, but there was nothing special either.

Then, in Ashamoil, this changed. Ashamoil is one of the most fully realised cities in fantasy and it has the same depth of atmosphere and the same intensity of imagination as New Crobuzon or Ambergris. Ashamoil is a dark, industrialising city with little to commend it, but still seems like a paradise for Raule, at least, until she reached it. Then she finds out that the only way to be a practising doctor is to study at the university (at immense cost - which of course she cannot afford), and she ends up working as a doctor in a parish hospital in one of the poorest districts of the city. From her view we see how terrible life is for the poor, when their best opportunities are to risk their lives fighting to the death amongst each other to attract the attention of potential employers, and Raule is left to tend to the loser of the fight, who inevitably dies soon afterwards. But while the writing is excellent, creating a great atmosphere, it is the characters which bring the city to life. Raule is perhaps the simplest of these and she does very little throughout the book, but she is surrounded by an array of brilliantly developed characters. Gwynn, the amoral killer who joins a slaving company, his friend the Rev, who is always trying to convert him, his employer, Elm, his friend Marriott, also in the employ of Elm. These are all entirely believable three dimensional characters. Gwynn seems at first to be an archetypal anti-hero, but he possesses a clear (if twisted) sense of duty and a certain naïvity. Dominating his life is the relationship with the enigmatic woman, Beth Constanzin. He engages upon a search for her after encountering an etching entitled the Sphinx converses with the Basilisk. These two roles are fulfilled by Beth and Gwynn respectively. Their interactions prove some of the most interesting and imaginative in the book. There is also an element of surrealism - the slave trade relies on the war between two tribes, but it must progress at such a rate that the population grows at the same rate people are enslaved. While Gwynn has no moral objections to working for slavers, Raule breaks off all contacts with him for this. On the whole, though, slavery is not the issue addressed. Much of the first half of the novel is little more than setting the scene, establishing the place of Ashamoil and its inhabitants. It is then that the plot starts to gather pace, as Elm's son returns to the city and they run into problems, and all are put at risk. Gwynn and the other employees are soon forced to commit the most vile acts, and when this extends to his own friends Gwynn's earlier facade of confidence and amorality collapses, as guilt begins to overwhelm him. The change in Gwynn throughout the novel is remarkably well done and, when the story begins to pick up pace, it is a truly gripping horror novel, full of the fantastic. Bishop displays an imagination to rival Mieville's at times, and the image of the Lotus Man is one of the most imaginative creations I've seen in all fantasy. Bishop weaves in a mythology into the story without adversely affecting the pace, creating a much more complete city than could be expected in a modestly sized book (of about 300 pages in my edition).

The Etched City is a brilliant novel - particularly when it deals with its namesake, and it is a worthy contender to the likes of Mieville, Vandermeer and Harrison, displaying that same outlandish imagination and skilful atmospheric writing. And she populates this city with a diverse cast of three-dimensional characters. There are perhaps some minor issues with pacing, and a couple of sentences don't work as well as they should. But they are few, and more than outweighed by the raw emotion and sheer imagination of this novel. And what I haven't yet mentioned is this is a debut novel. For a debut novel it is more than just remarkable - it is perhaps the single greatest fantasy debut I've ever read. There are few experienced authors who can create anything like this good - and I can only hope to read more novels by Bishop in the future. I would give this a 9 out of 10.

The Reader's Duty

2006-07-08T12:35:00.000+01:00

I noticed this on one of the forums:

I'm a Feist fan and while some of his books may not be as good as Magician i
could not say that i do not like his later books any less. If you are doing your
job as a reader then you would be to imerrsed in the story and excited about
where it will go to be thinking about how this sentence or that sentence does
not make sense, or wondering why you have spent your money on a series of books

I don't know what everyone else thinks about this, but to me, it seems utterly ridiculous. The reader has no duty to the author, at all. A reviewer of a book has the duty to read the whole book, so that they actually give valid criticism, but why should an ordinary reader have any duty?

Some preparatory reading:

Hal Duncan on "reading too much" into books: http://notesfromthegeekshow.blogspot.com/2005/07/duh-tell-us-about-rabbits-george.html

Hal Duncan on style v substance: http://www.emcit.com/emcit128.php?a=2

"If you are doing your job as a reader then you would be to imerrsed in the
story and excited about where it will go to be thinking about how this sentence
or that sentence does not make sense, or wondering why you have spent your money on a series of books"

I'll repeat - how does the reader have a duty? They are paying money for these books, and they expect them to be worthy of that money. If you buy a TV and that picture quality is terrible, you'll feel ripped off. Why should that be any different in books? If you buy a book by Feist, for example, and the prose is absolutely terrible so that it ruins your enjoyment,why the hell is it your duty to ignore that? If a reader has a duty, IMO, it would be the exact opposite - to try and help the author improve by offering constructive criticism (that's the role that editors should, but often don't, do). This person suggests we should just accept awful prose by keeping immersed in the world. Ok. Right. Perhaps just ignoring the words altogether might work as well - it's not about the writing, its about the story, and anyway, the story is all layed out in the blurb, so you might as well not waste your time with all of the writing actually between the covers. Or at least that is what is suggested by this. But as Hal Duncan points out, style is substance. The writing is what makes the story. If the writing's terrible, it's impossible to get immersed in the story. It is not our duty as readers to ignore an author's poor writing. Ok, so we come up against some utterly incomprehensible sentences. I'll use Goodkind as an example - we have a sheer clifface called Blunt Mountain upon which there is a pathway running along it at near mid-height just wide enough for two people. Of course, if you actually read that properly, it's nonsensical. But with this group of people whose primary objective is escapism at any cost, they'll just ignore that, because they're immersed in the story. And being immersed in the story means shutting down your brain, in the views of these people. But I ask you this - how can you be immersed in a story if the writing doesn't immerse you? The story is the writing -it's a novel, not an action movie. Ok, that's a brief rant about the "duty of the reader"- I'll leave it to others to elaborate.

Now on to the first sentence:

I'm a Feist fan and while some of his books may not be as good as Magician i
could not say that i do not like his later books any less.

Huh? How the hell does that work? You first of all say that the other books aren't as good as Magician, but you don't like them any less? I can accept that perhaps you acknowledge that to some extent you can objectively say, this is good and this is bad. Fair enough. Except that your next sentence contradicts that assumption. Effectively what you are saying is "I like Magician the most of Feist's books but I don't like any of the other books any less". The implication is that you have a duty ot the author to like every book just as much as the other because you're immersed in the story. So the fact that one book's shit and the other book's decent is irrelevant - this explains the immense success of Dan Brown. So, I'm expected to enjoy Crossroads of Twilight just as much as The Great Hunt? Because I'm immersed in the story. Right. The fact that the story is almost non-existent in CoT is irrelevant because I'm immersed in the story, feeling a non-existent tension which keeps me turning the pages, and because I enjoyed reading about some of the characters in the first couple of books I must now still keep enjoying reading about them, even if it is reading about them doing absolutely nothing. I'm afraid I don't believe in all books being equal. And, unlike this reader, I also believe that writing is important in novels. A novel isn't just the front cover and the blurb- it's what's held between those covers, and between those covers are words. If the words are poor, the novel's poor. Characterisation, plot, atmosphere, tension - everything comes from the prose itself. Trying to ignore the prose in a novel is like listening to the radio muted.

Veniss Underground by Jeff Vandermeer

2006-07-06T14:46:00.000+01:00

Jeff Vandermeer's writing is always of a remarkably high quality, and Veniss Underground is no exception. And for once, the book has a great cover that suggests the artist has actually read the book. What's even more surprising is that Veniss Underground was his first novel, and there are very few debuts that come anything close to matching this. The story follows three characters, Nicholas, Nicola and Shadrach, through their perspectives. Each has a section dedicated to them, getting progressively longer - and in a different person. It begins with the Nicholas' "vain, whining arrogance" in the first person, then it moves on to Nicola's section, Nicholas' sister who is desperately, futilely searching for her brother, and its all done in the second person. Yes, the main character throughout that section is referred to as "you". And surprisingly, it works. The final section, and also the largest, is Shadrach's in the more traditional third person. It's a comparatively straightforward narrative, but also the section which Vandermeer uses to create a vivid image of the nightmarish city (and particularly, its underground). Vandermeer doesn't show you the city in all its details from the very beginning, he slowly creates an image in your mind as the characters discover certain aspects of it - and then, you can never be quite sure, because none of the characters are particularly reliable. The first section, in Nicholas' POV, seems rather innocuous, until the situation is revealed in a lot more detail towards the end. The city is populated by various creatures (who have some fundamental differences to those we know - most of them were wiped out, but we never find out exactly how), particularly the sentient Meerkats, who are, in fact, little different than humans. It is all part of Living Art, which is a rather sinister form of artwork, and Nicholas is just a mediocre Living Artist. The Underground itself is a striking place and seemingly infinite, with its 30 levels, populated by a diverse array of people, who cannot afford to live above. It is full of the sinister - one of the most outstanding scenes is when Shadrach visits what seems to be a hospital, but everywhere lined by "donated" organs, limbs and various body parts.

One thing struck me about Veniss Underground - I expected Vandermeer to create such a brilliant surreal atmosphere, but I didn't expect such a depth of characterisation in such a brief novel. There are few characters of importance, but those characters are some of the most interesting I've seen - Nicholas only has a few pages to devoted to him, but that's enough for him to be an entirely believable character. Shadrach is relatively simple initially, but he develops into something far more than a simple lovestruck fool. And then, there is Quin. Quin, who experiments with Living Art more than any other. Who makes himself an empire in the Underground, who successfully managed to make Meerkats sentient. Quin, who is, to all intents and purposes, a god. Quin is a brilliant character, and the short story in the afterword describing how he came to be emphasises this. He is not a simple archetypal villain but something much more complex. I say something, because it is hard to describe him as human by the end of the novel, or even something resembling a person.

Veniss Underground is also filled with literary allusions - from the existence of "Quin's Shanghai circus" to the occasional quote from other novels, (eg "shadow of the waxwing slain"). Vandermeer shows himself to be a reader as well as a writer. Veniss Underground is well written, experimental, atmospheric, but of a rather different style than to any of his Ambergris stories, but it is equally effective. Vandermeer demonstrates with his first novel that he is already a master of the speculative fiction genre. This easily recieves a 9 out of 10.

The Best of Speculative Fiction

2006-07-05T21:53:00.000+01:00

Or some of them, anyway. Trying to keep lists to a reasonable length is a huge challenge, so I've decided to have lots of small lists, making it a bit easier to list some of my favourites. They aren't here because of importance in the genre, because of the author's personality, because of a generally agreed status as classics but because I think they're great books. That's why you can see Feist + Wurts' Empire series in the same list as GRRM's A Song of Ice and Fire.

Epic Fantasy:
1. A Tale of the Malazan Book of the Fallen - Steven Erikson
2. A Song of Ice and Fire - George RR Martin
3. The Prince of Nothing - R Scott Bakker
4. The Lions of Al-Rassan - Guy Gavriel Kay
5. The Kingdom of Thorn and Bone - Greg Keyes
6. A Sword of Shadows - J. V. Jones
7. Lords of Rainbow - Vera Nazarian
8. The Silmarillion - J. R. R. Tolkien
9. The Empire trilogy - Raymond E. Feist + Janny Wurts
10. Elantris - Brandon Sanderson
11. The Riddlemaster of Hed - Patricia McKillip
12. The King of Elfland's Daughter - Lord Dunsany

(I left off Kearney's Monarchies of God as I've only read the first book of it so far - otherwise, the only major omission is Tolkien's LotR, which I think is inferior to the Silmarillion and I'm only including one book/series per author for epic fantasy).

Swords + Sorcery
1. Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser - Fritz Leiber
2. The History of the Runestaff - Michael Moorcock
3. Tales of the Dying Earth - Jack Vance
4. The Broken Sword - Poul Anderson
5. Conan - Robert Howard
6. The Emperor of Dreams - Clark Ashton Smith
7. Elric - Michael Moorcock
8. The Healthy Dead by Steven Erikson

Magical Realism + contemporary fantasy
1. One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
2. Midnight's Children - Salman Rushdie
3. Little Big - John Crowley
4. Pale Fire - Vladimir Nabokov
5. Invisible Cities - Italo Calvino
6. Master and Margarita - Mikhail Bulgakov
7. If on a Winter's Night a Traveller - Italo Calvino
8. The Tooth Fairy - Graham Joyce
9. The Onion Girl - Charles de Lint

Urban fantasy and the New Weird
1. Gormenghast by Mervyn Peake
2. Perdido Street Station - China Mieville
3. City of Saints and Madmen - Jeff Vandermeer
4. The Light Ages - Ian R Macleod
5. The Scar - China Mieville
6. The Iron Dragon's Daughter - Michael Swanwick
7. The Anubis Gates - Tim Powers
8. Viriconium - M John Harrison
9. Neverwhere - Neil Gaiman
10. The Year of Our War - Steph Swainston

Science Fiction
1. Flowers for Algernon - Daniel Keyes
2. A Scanner Darkly - Philip K Dick
3. The Forever War - Joe Haldeman
4. Dying Inside - Robert Silverberg
5. The Book of the New Sun - Gene Wolfe
6. Dune - Frank Herbert
7. The Stars My Destination - Alfred Bester
8. The Dancers at the End of Time - Michael Moorcock
9. Slaughterhouse 5 - Kurt Vonnegut
10. A Canticle for Leibowitz - Walter M Miller Jr
11. The Day of the Triffids - John Wyndham
12. Gateway - Frederik Pohl
13. The Disposessed - Ursula Le Guin
14. Lord of Light - Roger Zelazny
15. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams

For Children + Young Adults
1. The Borribles Trilogy - Michael de Larrabeiti
2. His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
3. The Dark is Rising - Susan Cooper
4. The Owl Service - Alan Garner
5. The Chronicles of Narnia - C. S. Lewis
6. The Kin - Peter Dickinson
7. Stuck in Neutral - Terry Trueman
8. The Hobbit - J. R. R. Tolkien
9. The Earthsea Quartet - Ursula Le Guin
10. Redwall - Brian Jacques

Everything else:
1. The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
2. Heroes Die - Matthew Stover
3. The Drawing of the Dark - Tim Powers
4. Chronicles of Amber - Roger Zelazny
5. Quicksilver - Neal Stephenson
6. Gloriana - Michael Moorcock
7. The Stand - Stephen King
8. The Compleat Enchanter - L. Sprague de Camp and Fletcher Pratt
9. The Man in the High Castle - Philip K Dick
10. Ender's Game - Orson Scott Card
11. The Physiognomy - Jeffrey Ford
12. Guards! Guards! - Terry Pratchett

Hype, reviews and the Lies of Locke Lamora

2006-07-04T22:49:00.000+01:00

There's been a lot of controversy recently about this review: http://www.strangehorizons.com/reviews/2006/06/the_lies_.shtml
and in particular, about these two sentences:

Sometimes, as in the case of Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell, the praise seems
warranted. Far more often I want to know how the reviewer was bribed to tell me
such lies.

We've seen responses from across the blogging speculative fiction community: http://www.emcit.com/wordpress/?p=2760

http://nihilistic-kid.livejournal.com/793588.html

http://notesfromthegeekshow.blogspot.com/2006/06/hype-hype-hoorah.html

So there's not really a lot to add, so I'll limit myself to a couple of brief
comments:

1. Morrison made a very bad choice of words. On the internet
that is deadly. What was implied was pretty insulting, but I think that
most of us actually understand that it was just poor phrasing rather than a
deliberate attempt to slander the vast majority of reviewers on the
internet.

2. We have yet to see a sensible debate on the actual novel of Lies of Locke Lamora. I haven't yet read the book, but other than that one review, I've almost exclusively seen praise for it. It would be far more informative for the debate to have been one on the book rather than on semantics. And it would have been very useful to see some sensible criticism on it, rather than a dislike of it because it wasn't the same book as Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell.

Gateway by Frederick Pohl

2006-07-04T20:35:00.000+01:00

I've just finished Gateway by Frederik Pohl (winner of the 1977 Nebula award and the 1978 Hugo and Campbell awards). And my thoughts about it are mixed - yes, it was an excellent novel. Probably even deserving of all those awards (but I haven't read much else from that year). But to me it also seemed like a missed opportunity - it was so nearly a masterpiece, but in the end didn't quite achieve it. The pacing was a little erratic - too slow at the beginning, too fast at the end. The main characters were also very interesting - Bob, Klara and Sigfrid the computer were all great characters, and even some of the supporting characters were pretty well developed for a relatively short novel. But there were minor flaws - while he was great at creating characters, he didn't quite manage to convey a great atmosphere. Gateway is a great concept - that of an alien space station filled with their ancient, working ships, which can go anywhere in the universe, many of which come to ancient ruins of theirs, a huge gamble - but it's left at that. There are almost no more revelations, and when a damaged ship was brought in, it didn't feel as terrible as it should. Bob's fear was entirely believable - but it didn't translate to me in the same way that Mandella's did in The Forever War. Gateway also seemed to be a novel which can't quite tell if it's trying to be hard SF or soft SF - a lot of the Gateway scenes were often filled with scientific ideas as to how this might work and why, and it also had that hard SF trait of keeping the action quite limited - but on the whole it's very difficult to describe it as hard SF. Gateway certainly isn't a bad novel - it's an excellent novel in fact - but it's just shy of being a masterpiece and I think it could have been, but I'm not entirely sure how. I think ultimately I'd give it a 8 out of 10.

Starting up

2006-07-04T19:49:00.000+01:00

So I decided to start a blog. It'll be mainly about speculative fiction - some reviews, lists etc occasionally. But from time to time there'll be rants on other issues. Anyway...

Edit: For some reason the FBS link won't work, so I'll try it here:
http://www.fantasybookspot.com/