Kristin Cashore, Graceling

The physical needs that limited other people did not limit her. The things from which other people suffered did not touch her. She knew instinctively how to live and thrive in the wilderness.

And she could kill anyone. At the slightest threat to her survival.

Katsa sat on the ground suddenly.

Could her Grace be survival?

The instant she asked it, she denied it. She was just a killer, had always been just a killer. She'd killed a cousin, in plain view of Randa's court - a man who wouldn't have hurt her, not really. She'd murdered him, without a thought, without hesitation - just as she'd very nearly murdered her uncle.

But she hadn't murdered her uncle. She'd found a way to avoid it and stay alive.

And she hadn't meant for that cousin to die. She'd been a child, her Grace unformed. She hadn't lashed out to kill him; she'd only lashed out to protect herself, to protect herself from his touch. She'd forgotten this, somewhere along the line, when the people of the court had begun to shy away from her and Randa had begun to use her skill for his own purposes, and call her his child killer.

Her Grace was not killing. Her Grace was survival.

She laughed then. For it was almost like saying her Grace was life; and of course, that was ridiculous (pp. 252-253).

The above scene from Kristin Cashore's debut novel, Graceling, underscores many of the tensions that Cashore explores throughout this book via the experiences of Katsa. Katsa is blessed (cursed?) with a preternatural ability called a Grace. Marked by mismatched eye colors, Gracelings have a mysterious ability to be great at a particular task, whether it be sailing, swimming, craftwork, fighting, or any other talent great or small. They are feared in most parts of Cashore's world precisely because of this mystery; who wants to confront the unknown?

Katsa's life is much rougher than most other Gracelings because despite being born a noblewoman (and chaffing against that station's expected duties), her Grace appears at first to be that of killing. Her uncle, the king, is a rather devious and malicious character who devises ways of using his niece's fighting/killing abilities to extort money or torture from those who displease him. This creates an interesting tension between the character as she views herself and those who judge her based on actions she is forced to inflict upon others. Cashore does a good job at first of having this lurk in the background, but ultimately this gets swept into a larger conflict, that between her and a new arrival, a fellow Graceling named Prince Po, who is in search of his kidnapped grandfather.

Much of the latter two-thirds of Graceling is taken up with the interactions between the two. At first glance, there appears to be occurring the common pattern of A) Feisty female meets introspective male youth, B) The two grow to like each other, but the feelings are hidden from their conscious views, C) A revelation occurs that causes a hurt that is more deep than it ought to be, D) Despite this revelation or perhaps because of it, the two fall in love. However, Cashore does some interesting things within this dynamic. Katsa, both before and during her time with Po, expresses both to herself and to others her refusal to settle down and to assume traditional domestic responsibilities. This expressed desire not to marry ever is no casual comment spoken out of fear or ignorance of the world around, but rather is presented (but without too much harping upon it) as a conscious, informed dissent against the expectations of her (our?) society.

Furthermore, as the plot unfolds over the final third of the novel, Cashore undermines even more the underlying expectations. Po, despite his growing abilities, is not the strong one in this tale. It is Katsa, who despite her own weaknesses and hesitancy, who assumes the leading role in their relationship, which Cashore takes pains to present as being a voluntary one devoid of any bonds other than the ones Katsa and Po choose. It is an interesting, often subtle inversion of romance tropes, one that, when combined with Cashore's clear, crisp prose, made for a mostly enjoyable read.

There were some problems with the pacing towards the end of the book, however. The introduction of the Princess Bitterblue could have been done better; it was quite obvious that Cashore left this character mostly unformed since Bitterblue will be the titular character for a future book set in this world. The subplot involving her didn't contain the same depth of emotional feeling as did the earlier Katsa and Po come to know one another plot element. At times, Cashore seemed to be hesitant about how much coverage she should give to the main villain of this book, as his presence was sporadic and too short-lived for what Cashore seemed to design.

Despite these flaws in her debut novel, I believe Cashore has managed to write a very readable, subtle, intriguing text that leaves me curious as to what her future novels will contain. Young Adult literature sometimes is dismissed as containing facile plots, cardboard characteristics, and vapid writing that fails to engage readers, particularly those over the age of 18. Such charges, while sometimes appropriate, certainly should not apply to Graceling. This novel contains enough action scenes to suit many, while balancing it with nuanced characters whose paths of self-exploration by means of their understanding of their gifted abilities makes for a story that is more complex than what any surface analysis could demonstrate. Recommended.

Publication Date: October 1, 2008 (US). Hardcover.

Publisher: Harcourt

Reading Tie-in Fiction: An Outsider's Perspective

Outside of reading some Star Trek novels when I was a teen, I never really have had much exposure to tie-in or shared/expanded universe novels. My first fantasy reads (outside of the Narnia books by C.S. Lewis and Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings) did not come until my mid-20s, meaning that I never read any Dungeons & Dragons-based novels (in fact, I have never played the game, as board games typically bore me within minutes). I also am not a big movie person, which means that although I have seen bits and pieces of the Predator and Aliens movies, I have seen enough to remember whole subplots or characters. Same holds true to a lesser extent in regards to the Star Wars franchise. I've seen the first three films several times in my childhood, but I have not watched those or any of the prequel trilogy after seeing the disastrous Episode I flick back in 1999.

So when a series of events (two of my favorite authors, Jeff VanderMeer and Brian Evenson, announcing that they had written books in the Predator and Aliens universes; Paul S. Kemp writing this little bit on his LiveJournal about his frustrations of people prejudging his books because they were set in the Forgotten Realms setting; and the timely arrival of Matthew Stover's Star Wars: Luke Skywalker and the Shadows of Mindor) occurred in the past couple of months, it led to me being curious enough to take the plunge and to read a sampling of each of these shared universe settings. Of course, it helped that I was familiar with and enjoyed the works of VanderMeer, Evenson, and Stover, but that too set up interesting possibilities.

When I decided that I would read the following four books (Predator: South China Sea, Aliens: No Exit, Forgotten Realms: Shadowbred: Book One of the Twilight War Trilogy, and Star Wars: Luke Skywalker and the Shadows of Mindor), I approached the reading from the angle of how would a shared universe "virgin" make sense of these stories? What would be some of the points that would capture my attention and which elements would be confusing to me precisely because of the shared universe setting? Also, for the three authors whose original fiction I had read previously, how would those experiences color my reading of their tie-in novels?

I began by reading VanderMeer's Predator: South China Sea in late November. While I knew the basics of the story (alien hunter with dreds and all sorts of cool gadgetry used to bring down the big prey, including humans), I went in with no other knowledge of that setting. VanderMeer's novel proved to be a good novel for someone like me. The plot is relatively simple (at least compared to his original fiction novels), as it is set on an island in the South China Sea with a motley crew of unsavory characters set to participate in a big hunt sponsored by a shady ex-military commander, only to discover that another hunt is about to take place, with the Predator appearing to cull this herd. Although at times I felt the "red shirt" effect with some of the characters (there momentarily for the sole purpose of being killed off), what I liked is that in little over 300 pages, VanderMeer developed interesting character arcs, gave his Predator some purpose in being there, and that the action felt smooth and cinematic. Only on a few occasions did I feel as though there were elements that I didn't "get" due to my lack of knowledge of the movie franchise; the rest of the time, it read like an original action/adventure novel. It was a pleasurable reading experience and while I usually don't read pure action/adventure novels, VanderMeer did an excellent job of keeping me hooked and entertained.

I cannot quite say the same for Brian (or B.K. for this novel) Evenson's Aliens: No Exit. The beginning to the novel was a mess for me, confusing and containing too many references to subplots from the movies (and perhaps other Aliens novels) for me to understand what was happening. Another element that noticed is that unlike my perceptions of the movies (claustrophobic settings, with a handful of characters struggling to survive the Aliens' onslaught), Evenson's story is sprawled out too much, leaving me confused for a while as to what type of story I was reading - was it a power struggle novel with the Aliens as a sideshow? Was it a tale of the main character's psychological trauma (an issue that I felt Evenson should have developed more, incidentally)? Was it to be a high-powered shoot-out? It felt a bit muddled at times to me and it certainly was the weakest story by Evenson that I have read to date.

Muddled doesn't come close to describing my reaction to reading Paul S. Kemp's Forgotten Realms: Shadowbred. I was of two minds when I was reading this novel: 1) Kemp writes at a fast clip, moving the plot along, but not at the expense of developing character depth, and 2) What the hell is he referring to? This novel represents the main reason why I have been so hesitant to read any shared-universe novels, as there are so many references to past events covered in other novels by other authors that I was thoroughly confused at times, despite this being an opener to a trilogy (and one the author himself suggested that people read the first five chapters for free before making any comments about shared-universe settings)! The closest I can come to illustrating this confusion would be as if I decided, "Pues, si yo escriba mis pensamientos en español and some gringo no lo entienda, sería confusing, as he entendría some pero the whole lo dejaría confused." That's how it felt to me, reading about mind mages, halflings, gods appearing in alley ways, and so forth. I almost could understand what was transpiring, but not quite. Since Kemp has written virtually exclusively (minus a short story or two, I believe) in a shared-universe setting, I really have nothing else by which to judge his work. All I can say for now is that if I knew what the hell he was talking about, the story would have been upgraded from "interesting, with some good characterization starting to take place" to "hey, I really want to read on and to learn what happens next!" In this case, a lack of familiarity with the setting put a major damper on my reading. I suspect someone much more familiar with this setting would have enjoyed this novel much more than I did, precisely because they would understand the underlying "language" and thus be able to see where all the parts fit.

Since I am most familiar with the Star Wars universe, Matthew Stover's Luke Skywalker and the Shadows of Mindor was very easy to follow. Set in the months immediately following the events of Return of the Jedi, his story was gripping because he took the backdrop of the chaos following the Empire's collapse and he wove a multi-layered tale revolving around Luke's struggle to define himself to himself (and to a lesser degree, to others) while dealing with a powerful enemy who threatens to seize control of Luke himself. Stover displays an introspective touch that weaves in a philosophical-like discussion of the Force/the Dark with a story involving a lot of action and regret (there is a very high body count in this story). Despite my initial shock over how different his writing is from his Acts of Caine novels (I was waiting for Luke or Han to say, "Well, fuck me like a virgin goat!"), I almost immediately was sucked into the flow of the action and I found that I didn't need to know a lot of backstory outside the original trilogy to understand what was transpiring. Stover told a damn good story, simple as that.

Would I read more tie-in fiction in the future? Perhaps. Looking at my four commentaries (not quite reviews, since the focus was solely on how my lack of knowledge would impact my reception of these tales), I would have to say that ultimately, it depends upon what the author chooses to do. A well-written, well-developed tale that takes into consideration the reader's possible lack of knowledge of all the other related stories might succeed better than a fiction that is so full of references to other stories that it seems at times as though those other stories are the main overarching plot and not what is transpiring in that particular tale being read. Of course, if a tale is unfocused and doesn't contain a taut string of plot and characterization development, those stories are not going to be well-received by me (or likely, most readers, regardless of their previous experience with those shared-universe settings).

Anyone else here care to share their experiences with reading tie-in fiction, especially those works with which they are relatively unfamiliar?

Blogger Book Club: Bruce Sterling, Schismatrix Plus

Painted aircraft flew through the core of the world. Lindsay stood in knee-high grass, staring upward to follow their flight.

Flimsy as kites, the pedal-driven ultralights dipped and soared through the free-fall zone, far overhead. Beyond them, across the diameter of the cylindrical world, the curving landscape glowed with the yellow of wheat and the speckled green of cotton fields. (p. 3)

The scene above from the prologue to Bruce Sterling's Schismatrix embodies much of the style of this SF novel and its related short stories. Short, sharp staccato sentence bursts, containing brief but visceral images, serve to create vivid settings for the action that follows. Sterling, along with William Gibson, often is cited as being one of the founding fathers of the 1980s cyberpunk movement, and while I am unfortunately largely ignorant of their works, if Sterling's omnibus Schismatrix Plus is representative of the quality of the work being produced during this time, then perhaps I ought to reconsider my avoidance of cyberpunk fiction.

Schismatrix Plus contains the novel Schismatrix (1985) along with the earlier related short stories "Swarm" (1982), "Spider Rose" (1982), "Cicada Queen" (1983), "Sunken Gardens" (1984), and "Twenty Evocations" (1984). These stories revolve around a humanity that has split into two rival posthuman groups, the Shapers (who favor genetic and neural manipulation) and the Mechanists (who prefer mechanical alterations to the human body). Fleeing from a degraded Earth, over a span of several centuries, these groups have competed to control interplanetary trade, often with deadly results. Complicating matters is the arrival just before the setting of these tales of a reptilian alien race called the Investors, enigmatic and unwilling to depart with their interstellar secrets without a ransom's worth of energy and rare metals.

In these stories, Sterling explores issues such as human greed, our desire to explore and to dominate our surroundings, hatreds that emerge out of ignorance and confusion, among others. In the main novel, the apparently renegade Shaper Abelard Lindsay (doubtless a fitting, allusion-filled name, considering his namesake's history) lives many lives over a span of several hundred years. Through his character, Sterling comments upon many of the issues noted above. While often fascinating, especially considering that the novel takes up barely 230 pages (with another 85 or so devoted for the short stories), I often found myself struggling to make it through the early chapters, perhaps because of the above-mentioned staccato-like pattern to Sterling's writing. Lindsay's life intrigued me, but it took getting over halfway through the novel before enough information had been revealed; at first it was a bit too machine gun-like with the prose, with events and their consequences being set up and developed over just a few paragraphs, rather than the pages or even chapters to which I am more accustomed.

But the novel concluded satisfactorily for me. However, the short stories, especially "Swarm," caused much fewer problems in regards to comprehending Sterling's message embedded within the prose. It appeared to me that Sterling's prose is more suited for a short fiction style, as his tendency to write short, snappy passages that lead to a build up and concluding plot twist remind me more of the classic short stories I have read in the past than of most novels, whose longer structures lend themselves to a more leisurely pace. Regardless of my own conflicted feelings concerning the prose style, ultimately I came to appreciate and like what Sterling had accomplished with this Shaper/Mechanist universe. His explorations of basic human motivations, extrapolating these into a posthuman setting, manages to keep his fiction feeling "fresh" and not dated like many older fictions become once the generational concerns of that time have faded into historical obscurity. Schismatrix Plus certainly is worthy of its fame and I suspect that many readers who were children or unborn in 1985 will find new things to discover when reading it.

Other Reviews:

Twigs and Brambles

Post-Weird Thoughts

Adventures in Reading

J.K. Rowling, The Tales of Beedle the Bard

There was once a kindly old wizard who used his magic generously and wisely for the benefit of his neighbors. Rather than reveal the true source of his power, he pretended that his potions, charms, and antidotes sprang ready-made from the little cauldron he called his lucky cooking pot. From miles around, people came to him with their troubles, and the wizard was pleased to give his pot a stir, and put things right.

This well-beloved wizard lived to a goodly age, then died, little all his chattels to his only son. This son was of a very different disposition to his gentle father. Those who could not work magic were, to the son's mind, worthless, and he had often quarreled with his father's habit of dispensing magical aid to their neighbors.

Upon the father's death, the son found hidden inside the old cooking pot a small package bearing his name. He opened it, hoping for gold, but found instead a soft, thick slipper, much too small to war, and with no pair. A fragment of parchment within the slipper bore the words "In the fond hope, my son, that you will never need it." (pp. 1-2)

In her latest Harry Potter-related book, The Tales of Beedle the Bard, J.K. Rowling reveals the "contents" of the book that was referenced often in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. This is a slender, 110 page collection of five fairy tale-like stories intended for the fictional wizardly families. Rowling breaks down these five stories into the tales themselves (purportedly "translated" by Hermione Granger), with "commentaries" by Professor Albus Dumbledore. Clever as these tales are, this division often weakens the impact of the stories.

Rowling does a fairly good job with updating and referencing traditional fairy tales and their motifs in tales such as the one cited above, "The Wizard and the Hopping Pot." She manages to capture much of the feel of the old fairy and folk tales in these tales with her carefulness to mimic the structure of these tales without ever really going too far in the direction of creating pale carbon copies of the original tales. While the quoted first story obviously is going to set up a comeuppance for the wizard's son, it is the way that Rowling structures his pratfalls that makes for a satisfactory read. The other four tales are at least as strong as the first, with the middle tale, "The Warlock's Hairy Heart" being the darkest and most admonitory of the five stories. When reading that story, I found myself wishing that Rowling could have resisted the impulse to include the commentaries, as these were the weakest parts of the short collection.

It is difficult to comment upon a tale without risking an intrusion into that space where the Reader and the Fiction Text are interacting. Preferably, commentators will keep their comments succinct, eschewing any attempts at making a direct moral comparison in the tale. Unfortunately, Rowling too often has "Dumbledore" referring directly to the morals found in these tales. While she ostensibly did this as a means of trying to continue the illusion that the stories' readers were seeing it as might a Hogwarts student, she overdid it. At times, it felt as though one had read a really funny story, one that was witty and subtle at the time, but which was ruined at the end by someone explaining in laborious detail what the joke was about and what it aimed to accomplish.

Although the commentaries dampened my enjoyment of Rowling's fabulistic stories, the stories themselves contain that mixture of the familiar and the "new" that made for an enchanting read. While certainly not the type of book that I myself would re-read countless times, The Tales of Beedle the Bard definitely would merit a read by those who loved reading/listening to fables in their childhood and perhaps would be best suited for those growing up who still wish upon a star or hope beyond hope, even if such desires might prove to be costly in the end. Recommended.

Publication Date: December 4, 2008 (US). Hardcover.

Publisher: Arthur A. Levine (Scholastic)/Children's High Level Group.

Short Fiction Sunday: Álvaro Uribe and Olivia Sears's Best of Contemporary Mexican Fiction

Whenever an anthology bears within its title "Best of," one might have a natural inclination to question whether or not the anthologist(s) really knows what s/he is talking about. Add to that title the name of the country of origin and the challenge becomes even more, as not does the anthology editor have to demonstrate cause for bestowing the label of "Best of" on a collection of works from a single country, but the reader almost has to be quite aware of the fiction being produced in the given country in order to be able to evaluate properly the breadth and depth of the editor(s)' chosen pieces. I was sent a review copy of Álvaro Uribe and Olivia Sear's forthcoming Best of Contemporary Mexican Fiction bilingual anthology by another reviewer in large part due to my familiarity with very recent (post-2000) Latin American literature and my evaluation of this anthology will touch upon this awareness.

Uribe (Sears headed up the team of translators of these sixteen short stories) has certainly assembled a fine set of stories written by prominent Mexican short fiction writers born since the end of World War II. In his introduction, Uribe discusses the cosmopolitan nature of Mexican fiction, short and long alike, and how Spanish, French, and other Latin American writers have influenced the evolution of the Mexican short fiction. Interestingly (but not surprising, if one knows the complex history between these two nations), the United States is not cited (I will return to this at the end of this review). As a result of this tendency to look outside of Mexico's political boundaries for literary influences, these stories do not contain many uniting features, as Uribe notes:

Nothing unites them beyond the quality of their work and the essential, if not exactly literary, criteria of having produced their work, by happenstance or design, in the strain of Spanish common to the majority of Mexicans and of living or having lived in Mexico for most of their lives.

Uribe has ordered these stories in a reverse chronological order, beginning with "Lukin's Bed," written by Vivian Abenshushan (b. 1972) and concluding with Héctor Manjarrez's (b. 1945) "The End of the World." Uribe does this in order to take an inductive examination of Mexican short fiction, taking the reader from the more contemporary issues of Mexico's analogue to Generation X and stretching it back to the dawn of what would be the Boomer Generation in the United States. It is an interesting approach, one that allowed for some opportunity to show the diverse strains of Mexican fiction without the need to establish an artificial schema for evaluating these stories.

The stories themselves are almost uniformly strong. In particular, Ana García Bergua's "Los conservadores"/"The Preservers" struck me for its juxtapositioning of the Odd (a widow keeping her husband's embalmed corpse with her for years, dressing and undressing it according to the daily rhythms of the household) and the Mudane (the examination of the various relationships between the characters of aunt/nephew, nephew/girlfriend, girlfriend/corpse). Enrique Serna's "Tesoro viviente"/"Living Treasure" was a very subtle examination of motivation and temptation, with an ending that is all the more damning for how little things changed once the resident writer main character made her fateful decision.

While each of these stories are worthy of inclusion in "Best of"-style anthologies, I could not help but notice what was not included in this otherwise fine anthology. Where were the rising authors? Outside of Abenshushan and Álvaro Enrigue (b. 1969), there were no authors under the age of 40 included here; apparently this is an anthology for the truly-established authors. Strikingly, none of Mexico's Crack Manifesto members (Pedro Ángel Palou, Eloy Urroz, Ignacio Padilla, Ricardo Chávez Castañeda, Jorge Volpi) were included in this anthology and many of their works (especially those of Padilla and Volpi) have already begun to make their mark in international markets, including that of the United States. Perhaps it simply is a matter of their short fiction not being as well-known or regarded as their novels. However, Uribe's introduction fails to acknowledge them or the related South American McOndoist literary movement in his discussion of trends and authors that have influenced Mexican fiction, so perhaps it is something more.

Related to this is the question of how to evaluate the near-absence of Mexico's neighbor (and often antagonistic trading partner) the United States in these tales. While it certainly is true that Mexican writers drew their influences from Spain, France, and other parts of Latin America from the 19th century to the past twenty years before American culture became more influential in both Mexico and other regions of Latin America, one has to question whether or not these tales truly represent the most "contemporary" of Mexican attitudes, much less its fiction. This seeming lack of space devoted to addressing the issues and authors of "right now" however is but only a damper on what is otherwise an excellent, rich, diverse collection of stories that hopefully will inspire readers to dig deeper into Mexico's very rich literary tradition.

Publication Date: February 26, 2009 (US). Tradeback, Hardcover.

Publisher: Dalkey Archive Press

Elias Koury, Yalo

Yalo did not understand what was happening.

The young man stood before the interrogator and closed his eyes. He always closed his eyes when he faced danger, when he was alone, and when his mother...On that day too, the morning of Thursday, December 22, 1933, he closed his eyes involuntarily.

Yalo did not understand why everything was white.

He saw the white interrogator, sitting behind a white table, the sun refracting on the glass window behind him, and his face bathed in reflected light. All Yalo saw were halos of light and a woman walking through the city streets, tripping on her shadow.

Yalo closed his eyes for a moment, or so he thought. This young man with his knitted eyebrows and long tan face, his slender height, closed his eyes for a moment before reopening them. But here, in the Jounieh police station, he closed his eyes and saw crossed lines around two lips that moved as if whispering. He looked at his handcuffed wrists and felt that the sun that obscured the face of the interrogator struck him in the eyes, so he closed them (p. 9).

Lebanese writer Elias Khoury's latest novel to be translated into English, Yalo, opens with an interrogation. Yalo, a former paramilitary soldier during Lebanon's tragic civil war of the 1970s and 1980s, has been accused of raping a female acquaintance of his. The novel revolves around the process in which Yalo deals with certain shady events (not necessarily inclusive of the rape accusation), the attempts by his interrogators to beat more confessions out of him, and the psychological effects of such physical and emotional traumas.

Khoury does not take short cuts here, either in detailing the torture methods (very brutal, such as the case of the cat trained to swipe its claws across the genitals of the prisoners) or with Yalo's confrontration of his past and his conflated understandings of the present and what his interrogators want from him. While some reading Khoury's book might be tempted to make some comparison to Franz Kafka's The Trial, Khoury goes even further in exploring the elastic boundaries of Truth and Remembrance, while working in references to Lebanon's bloody past and present. Yalo's narrative, almost always given in the third person-limited point-of-view, shifts from the past to the present and back again, from memories of his relationships with women to thoughts of betrayals, from the understood Now to the imagined Past. It is difficult at times to discern a linear narrative arc, yet Khoury's method of using a fractured narrative to underscore his points about the traumas inflicted by and upon people works quite well.

In reading this novel, I found myself reflecting more and more on my reactions to Yalo's confessions, my thoughts regarding the society that could produce a Yalo and his interrogators, on my interpretations of what was transpiring. What I concluded was this: Khoury has written a rich, dense narrative that flows sublimely. The more one learns about Yalo, the more questions that arise from these revelations. What is truth? Whence the source of such brutality? The way that Khoury explores these issues made for a read, that while never "light" in tone, which was one of the best I have read this year. Highly recommended for those readers who like a "challenging" read and those who want to study an author's technique for revealing psychological duress.

Publication Date: January 1, 2008 (US); Hardcover.

Publisher: Archipelago Books

Short Fiction Sunday: Jeffrey Ford, John Langan, Kelly Link, Jeremy C. Shipp

Although this will not be a regular feature, I do plan to cover over the next couple of Sundays some of the short fiction that I've been reading lately, whether it be in book form (anthology or single-author short story collection) or magazine (I just began my one year subscription to Weird Tales and time/energy permitting, I'll try to be better about covering some of the better online e-zines out there, but there are no guarantees, as I am trying to cut back on my time in front of a computer). This weekend, I finished reading the following four 2008 short story collections: Kelly Link, Pretty Monsters; Jeremy C. Shipp, Sheep and Wolves; Jeffrey Ford, The Drowned Life; John Langan, Mr. Gaunt and Other Uneasy Encounters. I will be using more of a capsule format in reviewing each of these books (and for future short fiction reviews), although I may provide a quote or two to underscore certain points I want to make. Now on with the show, I suppose...

In her first two short story collections, Stranger Things Happen (2001) and Magic for Beginners (2005), Kelly Link established a reputation for writing quirky, imaginative stories that combined B-movie staples such as zombies with settings that were simultaneously very banal and haunting in feel. Pretty Monsters is a collection of nine stories, marketed as Young Adult literature, that reprints four stories from these first two collections, along with five newer pieces. In virtually each of these tales, the protagonists are either children or adolescents. Sometimes, as in the case of "The Specialist's Hat," the children are inquisitive, wanting to know what it is like to be Dead, while in others, such as the eponymous "Pretty Monsters," the theme revolves around discovering one's lusts and desires:

The next hour was the best hour of Clementine's life. Two months earlier she'd persuaded tenor David Ledbetter that it would be really, really special if they broke into the elementary school in the middle of the night. One thing had led to another and they'd lost their virginity together in the first-grade reading hut, and even though the whole thing had been kind of a catastrophe, ever since then David Ledbetter seemed to have this idea that in order to keep Clementine happy he had to come up with new and better locations. It was making Clementine crazy.

She and Cabell didn't even kiss. Nobody saved anybody's life, and Lucinda Larkin began to scream halfway through Beauty and the Beast because Clementine hadn't remembered to fast-forward through the scene where the singing candlestick did something scary that Lucinda Larkin had never been able to explain. They had to make her promise not to tell Dancy. (p. 366)

Such scenes serve to illustrate Link's knack of capturing the craziness of growing up. For those of us who are nearing middle age, reading such tales perhaps reminds one of making up stories why so-and-so was horrid, or what really lies beyond the horizon or down below the sewers (alligators? Rat-men? giant cockroaches?). Link's matter-of-fact deadpan delivery serves to ground the Unreal in a very "realistic" setting; it is easy to empathize with the characters, leading to payoffs that almost always are worth the effort put into imagining oneself in such a bizarre situation. Each of Link's nine stories contains these elements and while I would recommend not reading all of them at once (I spread my reading over a month's time, as I began to burn myself out on reading similarly-styled tales too quickly), it certainly is a novel that I would recommend for most any teen and above.

If Link's stories contain banal discussions among rather odd situations, then Jeremy C. Shipp's debut collection, Sheep and Wolves, makes for a truly bizarro-type feel. Take for example the opening to the first story, "Watching:"

You don't have to enjoy watching while Gerald masturbates onto his first cousin, or Nadine carefully chokes herself with an antique bonnet, or Carter craps into an urn that he stores under the kitchen sink. You just have to pretend. You have to sit back, sniff the cinnamon stick that you keep hidden in your glove, and give them what they want (p. 7).

If the above paragraph didn't drive you away screaming, then good, because many of Shipp's stories operate on such a cacophonous clash of imagery and character/story advancement. In some cases, such as in "American Sheep," this literary technique works well; in others it is sometimes more "miss" than "hit," although taken as a whole, I found Shipp's stories to be provocative, attention-grabbing, and containing quite a few insights into the brutal insensitivity that pervades modern American culture. While I wouldn't recommend this collection to those who prefer more staid storytelling forms, I am glad that I did read this book and will certainly consider more offerings from Shipp in the future.

Jeffrey Ford has won or been nominated for several short fiction awards over the past decade, including a World Fantasy Award nomination in 2007 for his second story collection, Empire of Ice Cream. In his third story collection (and first to be published by HarperColllins, who publishes his novels), The Drowned Life, Ford has collected sixteen recent stories that I believe are the equal to any that appeared in his previous collection.

One thing that has struck me about Ford's stories in the past (and which certainly holds true here) is how so many of them have this "everyday, everyman" sort of feel about them. Take for example this scene from "The Drowned Life:"

The place was enormous, row upon row of shelved dead fish, their snouts sticking into the aisle, silver and pink and brown. Here and there a gill still quivered, a fin twitched. "A lot of fish," thought Hatch. Along the way, he saw a special glass case that held frozen food that had sunk from the world above. The hot dog tempted him, even though a good quarter of it had gone green. There was a piece of a cupcake with melted sprinkles, three French fries, a black Twizzler, and a red-and-white Chinese take-out bag with two gnarled rib ends sticking out. He hadn't had any lunch, and his stomach growled in the presence of the delicacies, but he was thinking of Rose and wanted to talk to her (pp. 11-12).

Although this story features a third-person limited point-of-view, one of the things I've noted about Ford's stories is the tendency to create vivid characters whose thoughts and emotions are on display for the reader to read and to process. Combined with evocative scenes such as the one above, there often is a nostalgic feel to many of the character interactions, even though in many cases this sense of comfort and familarity is overturned by what transpires during the stories. For these reasons, Ford's stories tend to stick in my head longer than most others do and I was pleased to discover that The Drowned Life contains excellent stories such as "The Manticore Spell" and "Night Whiskey," among others. In fact, if I weren't so greedy, I would have entertained the thought of shipping this collection to a female friend of mine living overseas, as this is one of those rare quality tales that I would want everyone in my inner circle of friends to read.

Speaking of Ford, I remember him praising John Lanagan on his LiveJournal a little over a month ago. After finishing reading his debut story collection, Mr. Gaunt and Other Uneasy Encounters tonight, I have to share with Ford's assessment of Langan's comparison with a Glen Hirshberg (even though I think Langan's collection is stronger than Hirshberg's 2007 WFA-nominated American Morons). Dude can write some evocative, often creepy tales.

Mr. Gaunt and Other Uneasy Encounters contains four stories and a novella. Each of them contains elements of traditional tales such as the ghost tale or a study in the flawed protagonist and his/her downfall. Every scene in his stories moves the plot forward, develops the characters just a bit further. Take for example this scene in "Laocöon, or the Singularity:"

Of course, no one did. He watched the class's eyes dip down to escape catching on his as they swept the room. No point in dragging things out. "Virgil describes Laocöon as crying out. He says the cries were 'appalling,' awful, which makes sense. The guy's getting crushed to death by a pair of snakes. Who wouldn't cry out? Look at the statue, though." He lowered the lights again. "The son to Laocöon's right is already succumbing to the snakes. The son to his left is trying to step out of the coils, shake them off. Look at the expression on that son's face. Is he angry with his father for what he's brought down on them, for his inability to save them? Laocöon's struggling mightily, and he appears to be reasonably muscular, but the look on his face tells the whole story, doesn't it? Pain, failure - he knows what's coming, and if he doesn't understand the reason for it - which maybe he does: if he was shrewd enough to recognize the Trojan Horse for what it was, maybe he understood what was happening to him and his sons - anyway, he knows that he doesn't have a chance. When the gods have it in for you, you're done..." (p. 199).

In a way, those last two sentences summarize the fates of many of Langan's protagnonists. Like bulls being dragged off to the slaughter, these characters struggle mightily against fates that are sometimes ambiguous, othertimes horrorible in their inevitability and inexorableness. But Langan's approach to arrive at these tales' denouements is a good one. The reader is engaged in his protagonists' lives, their struggles, and eventually in their ends. And unlike a great many other story collections, this one was uniformly good; if I had to pick a favorite, the final tale, the one quoted above, would be it, but it is a very short distance between it and the other tales. Highly recommended collection.

Publication Dates:

Kelly Link: October 2, 2008 (US), Hardcover. Publisher: Viking Press.

Jeremy C. Shipp: November 15, 2008 (US), Hardcover, Tradeback. Publisher: Raw Dog Screaming Press.

Jeffrey Ford: November 4, 2008 (US), Tradeback. Publisher: Harper Perennial.

John Langan: November 30, 2008 (US), Hardcover. Publisher: Prime.

Andrzej Sapkowski, Blood of Elves

'She is not a child,' the voice repeated. 'She is the Flame, the White Flame which will set light to the world. She is the Elder Blood, Hen Ichaer. The blood of elves. The seed which will not sprout but burst into flame. The blood which will be defiled...When Tedd Deireádh arrives, the Time of End. Va'esse deireádh aep eigean!' (p. 88)

Andrzej Sapkowski's third book in The Saga of Geralt of Rivia, Blood of Elves, is the beginning of a five-novel sequence that builds upon the stories and characters introduced in the first two short story collections, The Last Wish and The Sword of Destiny (not yet available in English translation). In particular, there are two passages from each of these books respectively that I want to cite as a way of giving a sense of how the stories relate to the novel.

From "A Question of Price," the conclusion contains an enigmatic exchange between Geralt and the Queen of Cintra, Calanthe, that plays an important role in the Saga proper:

'Duny," said Geralt seriously, 'Calanthe, Pavetta. And you, righteous knight Tuirseach, future king of Cintra. In order to become a witcher, you have to be born in the shadow of destiny, and very few are born like that. That's why there are so few of us. We're growing old, dying, without anyone to pass knowledge, our gifts, on to. We lack successors. And this world is full of Evil which waits for the day none of us are left.'

'Geralt,' whispered Calanthe.

'Yes, you're not wrong, queen. Duny! You will give me that which you already have but do not know. I'll return to Cintra in six years to see if destiny has been kind to me.'

'Pavetta,' Duny opened his eyes wide. 'Surely you're not -'

'Pavetta!' exclaimed Calanthe. 'Are you...are you - ?'

The princess lowered her eyes and blushed. Then replied. (The Last Wish, p. 156)

The other passage involves an exchange between Geralt and the young Ciri at the end of the story "The Sword of Destiny." This exchange appears to bear a hint of the storyline that follows, beginning with Blood of Elves. I have translated this from the Spanish translation, so any errors are my own:

" Geraaalt!"

He turned around. Ciri was on foot on top of the mountain, a little grey figure with disheveled hair the color of ashes.

"Don't leave!"

Geralt waved his hand.

"Don't leave!" she cried with a very high-pitched voice. "Don't leave!"

I have to do it, he thought. I have to do it, Ciri. Because I...I always am leaving.

"You won't achieve it!" she cried. "Don't believe it! You won't flee! I am your destiny, you hear me?"

Destiny doesn't exist, he thought. It doesn't exist. The only thing destined for all of us is death. Death is the other edge of a double-edged sword. I am one. The other is death, which follows me step by step. I cannot, I should not injure you, Ciri.

"I am your destiny!" reached him from the top of the mountain, a voice distant, desperate.

He spurred the horse on with the spurs and rode forward, sinking as in a sinkhole, in a dark forest, cold and humid, in the known, friendly darkness, in a darkness that didn't seem to have an end. (La espada del destino, p. 242).

I give these passages from the first two books because without them in mind, much of the tension that develops in Blood of Elves would be lessened; it really is essential to have read these first two collections before reading the novels, although that option has been taken away from the English-language readers. However, there are contextual clues in this novel and the ones that follow after that refer to these events.

The novel opens with Ciri having a flashback to the sacking of Cintra and Geralt comforting her. In an echo of the passage I quoted above, Ciri thinks this:

Ciri had heard such reassurances in the past. They had been repeated to her endlessly; many, many times she had been offered comforting words when her screams had woken her during the night. But this time it was different. Now she believed it. Because it was Geralt of Rivia, the White Wolf, the Witcher, who said it. The man who was her destiny. The one for whom she was destined. Geralt the Witcher, who had found her surrounded by war, death and despair, who had taken her with him and promised they would never part.

She fell asleep holding tight to his hand. (p. 7).

From there, the action shifts to a performance given by the talented, foppish bard Danilion (Jaskier), who is one of Geralt's few friends. Danilion has finished singing a ballad based closely upon the events of the first two collections, stories involving Geralt, the sorceress Yennefer, and Ciri. Before the action commences, Sapkowski foreshadows future divisions by means of this passage:

But even during an event as exceptional as the world-famous troubadour's just-concluded performance the travellers kept to themselves, remaining in clearly delineated groups. Elves stayed with elves. Dwarfish craftsmen gathered with their kin, who were often hired to protect the merchant caravans and were armed to the teeth. Their groups tolerated at best the gnome miners and halfling farmers who camped beside them. All non-humans were uniformly distant towards humans. The humans repaid in kind, but were not seen to mix amongst themselves either. Nobility looked down on the merchants and travelling salesmen with open scorn, while soldiers and mercenaries distanced themselves from shepherds and their reeking sheepskins. The few wizards and their disciples kept themselves entirely apart from the others, and bestowed their arrogance on everyone in equal parts. A tight-knit, dark and silent group of peasants lurked in the background. Resembling a forest with their rakes, pitchforks and flails poking above their heads, they were ignored by all and sundry.

The exception, as ever, was the children. Freed from the constraints fo silence which had been enforced during the bard's performance, the children dashed into the woods with wild cries, and enthusiastically immersed themselves in a game whose rules were incomprehensible to all those who had bidden farewell to the happy years of childhood. Children of elves, dwarves, halflings, gnomes, half-elves, quarter-elves, and toddlers of mysterious provenance neither knew nor recognised racial or social divisions. At least, not yet (p. 9).

Immediately after this, the action begins with Danilion being confronted about his story by a mysterious personage, one whose role in this novel (and in future volumes) appears to be malevolent. Soon after, the invasion of the realms (first with the conquest of neighboring Cintra, then continued in the backdrop into the other cities and principalities featured in the first two collections) by the Nilfgaard Empire sparks a series of conflicts; the Nilfgaardians try to divide and conquer by means of encouraging the non-humans to rise up against the humans, while simultaneously they exploit human fears and antagonisms towards the elves, dwarves, gnomes, and halflings. "Freedom fighters" such as the elvish Scoia'tael, the Squirrels, rise up and the devastation spreads in a decentralized fashion, as group hatreds explode in a bloody frenzy.

Through all this, young Ciri is taken by Geralt to the home of the Witchers, Kaer Morhen. There she is tested and trained in the ways of the Witchers, although she does not undergo the mysterious, mutation-causing infusions that the Witchers receive during the course of their training. All the while, Ciri continues to be beset by strange dreams and visitations which seem to hint at a dark, nebulous future ahead for her, Geralt, and certain others. Geralt takes heed of this and the events that follow after open the action from small, local affairs to a broader world in which the causes and consequences of prejudices, fears, and hatreds are seen to be flowering like poisonous mushrooms.

The pacing is excellent; in just over 300 pages Sapkowski ties in the events of the earlier two collections to a sprawling world that is full of conflicts, both internal and external. The characterization is well-done, as Geralt's wish to stay neutral stands in sharp contrast to what Ciri experiences when she, Geralt, and the sorceress Triss Merigold meet up with the dwarf Yarpen:

'You've got pretty good hearing, girl, like a marmot.' He grinned broadly. 'You're also a bit too bright for someone destined to give birth, cook and spin. You think you know everything, don't you? That's because you're a brat. Don't pull silly faces. Faces like that don't make you look any older, just uglier than usual. You've grasped the nature of the Scoia'taels quickly, you like the slogans. You know why you understand them so well? Because the Scoia'taels are brats too. They're little snotheads who don't understand that they're being egged on, that someone's taking advantage of their childish stupidity by feeding them slogans about freedom.'

'But they really are fighting for freedom.' Ciri raised her head and gazed at the dwarf wide wide-open green eyes. 'Like the dryads in the Brokilon woods. They kill people because people...some people are harming them. Because this used to be your country, the dwarves' and the elves' and those...halflings', gnomes', and other...And now there are people here so the elves - '

'Elves!' snorted Yarpen. 'They - to be accurate - happen to be strangers just as much as you humans, although they arrived in their white ships a good thousand years before you. Now they're competing with each other to offer us friendship, suddenly we're all brothers, now they're grinning and saying: "we, kinsmen", "we, the Elder races". But before, shi - Hm, hm...Before, their arrows used to whistle past our ears when we - '

'So the first on earth were dwarves?'

'Gnomes, to be honest. As far as this part of the world is concerned - because the world is unimaginably huge, Ciri.'

'I know. I saw a map - '

'You couldn't have. No one's drawn a map like that, and I doubt they will in the near future. No one knows what exists beyond the Mountains of Fire and the Great Sea. Even elves, although they claim they know everything. They know shit all, I tell you.'

'Hmm...But now...There are far more people than...Than there are you.'

'Because you multiply like rabbits.' The dwarf ground his teeth. 'You'd do nothing but screw day in day out, without discrimination, with just anyone and anywhere. And it's enough for your women to just sit on a man's trousers and it makes their bellies swell...Why have you gone so red, crimson as a poppy? You wanted to know, didn't you? So you've got the honest truth and faithful history of a world where he who shatters the skulls of others most efficiently and swells women's bellies fastest, reigns. And it's just as hard to compete with you people in murdering as it is in screwing - '

'Yarpen,' said Geralt coldly, riding up on Roach. 'Restrain yourself a little, if you please, with your choice of words. And Ciri, stop playing at being a coachwoman and have a care for Triss, check if she's awake and needs anything.'

'I've been awake for a long time,' the magician said weakly from the depths of the wagon. "But I didn't want to...interrupt this interesting conversation. Don't disturb them, Geralt. I'd like...to learn more about the role of screwing in the evolution of society (pp. 136-138).

I cite this entire scene because it encapsulates perfectly many of Sapkowski's gifts as a writer. The dialogue is interesting and at turns bitter and hilarious. Ciri and Yarpen's personalities are shown via the way each addresses the other, one being inquisitive and eager to learn while the other is embittered and yet ready with sharing his own sarcastic take on the world. We learn about how the various races are not getting along, how rhetoric seeks to both divide and unite groups, as well as what is transpiring around the travelers. In short, it is a microcosm of the unfolding events and serves to make the reader focus not just on the plot actions, but also on the thematic underpinnings of the story. Sapkowski accomplishes much with scenes such as these and while Blood of Elves truly is a set-arranging opener that doesn't advance the main plot too rapidly, these undercurrents that Sapkowski explores serves to create an opener that is exciting and one that plays off of the tensions introduced in the story collections and the opening chapter, creating the promise of a rewarding payoff. One of the better opening sequences to a multi-volume fantasy series that I have read in years. Highly recommended.

Publication Date: October 16, 2008 (UK); US release scheduled for Summer 2009. Tradeback, Hardcover.

Publishers: Gollancz (UK), Orbit (US).

Tobias Buckell, Sly Mongoose

Sly Mongoose by Tobias Buckell

Sly Mongoose is Tobias Buckell's third novel, following in the series after Crystal Rain and Ragamuffin. Each novel works mostly as a stand alone novel, but they are related and chronological in nature.

Sly Mongoose was a very satisfying novel. While coming in at a little less than 320 pages, the story is strongly developed, and very nuanced. The characters are well developed, and the settings become characters themselves. Personally, I think that this novel would make a remarkable movie.

The story picks up some generations after the end of Ragamuffin. The story once again features a good mixture of politics, philosophy, and action. Pepper is once again one of the primary PoVs, and fans of the previous novels might know what to expect. Let's just say that Pepper kicks butt, takes names, and has to deal with the consequences. While on a mission for the Dread Council, Pepper gets caught up in a plot hatched by a competing human faction. He ends up stranded on a remote planet and faced with a Species Extinction threat. What happens next is a white-knuckled read through the night sort of story.

Besides zeppelin air battles, and floating cities, we also get scifi zombies. Yep, scifi zombies. If you're interested check out Larry's interview with Tobias Buckell. I would classify the novel as something of a scifi/steampunk/horror.

In my opinion, Sly Mongoose is Buckell's best novel to date. It is entertaining, well-crafted, and surprisingly deep. The story is definitely amongst a handful of others on my favorite novels of the year list. It would greatly benefit all readers to start with Crystal Rain and read from there. However, I think a person could pick up Sly Mongoose and enjoy it without knowing the back story.

Sly Mongoose by Tobias Buckell

TOR Publishing

Javier Negrete, Alejandro Magno y las águilas de Roma

- Ese cabrón tiene que morir.

- No hables así de él. Es Alejandro.

- Es mi esposo. Y tú eres su general y su amigo y te acabas de acostar conmigo. Otra vez.

( "That bastard must die."

"Don't speak so of him. He is Alexander."

"He is my husband. And you are his general and his friend and you just slept with me. Another time.")

So begins Javier Negrete's alt-history, Alejandro Magno y las águilas de Roma (Alexander the Great and the Eagles of Rome). It opens with the mysterious events in Babylon in the year 323 BCE that led to Alexander's death at the age of 32. Negrete posits that instead of contracting a fatal illness, that one of Alexander's wives, Roxana, the daughter of the former Satrap of Bactria, persuaded Perdiccas, cavalry commander of the King's Companions, to help her poison Alexander. But instead of dying, the ill Alexander is saved at the last moment by the near-miraculous appearance of a physician sent by the Delphi oracle, Néstor.

The tricky part about alt-histories is determining just how credible the alt-history (or ucronía in Spanish) is in relation to the events that actually unfolded. In the brief chapter that follows Néstor's intervention, Negrete utilizes a fragment of the official diary of Alexander kept by his secretary, Eumenes of Cardia, to tell briefly what happened in the immediate aftermath of Alexander's recovery from the attempted poisoning. Stretching from 323 BCE to 317 BCE, this journal briefly notes Alexander's division of his army, with one half sent to conquer the Arabian peninsula, while he himself returned to Macedonia in 322 BCE after a twelve year absence to quell an incipient rebellion begun by Antipater:

12 de dío:

«Después de más de once años, el rey ha vuelto a Macedonia. Las noticias de las sospechas de Alejandro han llegado a Antípatro. Él y Casandro han huido a Tesalia con un ejército.»

24 de dío:

«Batalla en Larisa. El ala izquierda de Antípatro se pasa al bando de Alejandro durante el combate. Antípatro se arroja sobre su espada antes de ser capturado. Casandro es apresado.»

25 de dío:

«Casandro es interrogado. Se declara inocente. Muere durante el interrogatorio.»

(October 12:

After more than eleven years, the king has returned to Macedonia. News of Alexander's suspicions [regarding Antipater's ambitions to seize power for himself] have reached Antipater. He and Cassander have fled to Thessaly with an army.

October 24:

Battle in Larisa. Antipater's left wing goes over to Alexander's side during combat. Antipater falls on his sword before being captured. Cassander is seized.

October 25:

Cassander is interrogated. He declares his innocence. He dies during the interrogation.)

Negrete uses this and PoVs from some of Alexander's generals, such as Craterus, as well as completely fictional characters such as Néstor and the Roman tribune Gaius Julius Caesar to tell an intricate story that extrapolates from the real-life Alexander's stated future conquest plans in order to create a vivid and very believable account of what might have transpired had Alexander lived and had turned his armies toward the western Mediterranean. Negrete, himself a former Professor of Greek at the Instituto de Educación Secundaria Gabriel y Galán de Plasencia in Spain, has researched the time period and the social and political conditions very assidiously. He bases his imagined conflict between the Macedonians and the Romans on events that did indeed transpire a generation later in the regions of Calabria and Sicily in southern Italy.

Rome, having just consolidated its power in central, Latin-speaking Italy, has begun to move to assert its dominance over the Greek colonies in Syracuse, Neapolis (Naples), and other parts of southern Italy. These colonies appealed to Alexander for intervention and in 317 BCE, he begins to move his forces into the region. The story the devotes the middle 300 pages of this 526 page novel toward developing the interactions between Alexander and his supporters in the region, as well as between Néstor, Gaius Julius Caesar, and a certain acquaintance Néstor has made. In addition, there is an ominus discovery by the Greek astronomer Euctemon - that the comet Icarus, full of ominous portents, was heading directly towards Earth/Gaea and might strike it.

For the most part, Negrete moves adroitly between these three main subplots. He has a vivid, direct style (of which my translated passages above give only the barest hint) and his characterizations of Alexander, Néstor, Euctemon, and Caesar are well-done, as each is shown in various reflective or emotional states that feel "real," even though some of these characters have no true basis in late fourth century BCE history. Negrete does not rush to the conclusion, but instead develops the scenes set in southern Italy and Rome until they and not the forthcoming, portent-filled battle are the true focus of the novel. In fact, the battle itself comprises only a single chapter and it serves to set the stage for a cliffhanger that ends this novel.

Alejandro Magno y las águilas de Roma won the Premio Ignotus award for Best Novel in September 2008 and based on Negrete's economical use of dialogue and his introspective looks into what would motivate ambitious people such as Alexander and Caesar to strive to attain their dreams, I found myself thinking that this probably was a very worthy winner. If this book were available in English translation, I suspect it would be very popular with ancient history fans, especially those who are interested in more than idle speculation over whether Macedonian phalanxes could overcome the Roman legions. Negrete tells an exciting story, but one that feels "authentic" in its characterizations, its setting, and in how certain events are portrayed and interpreted by the characters. I eagerly await the second half of this story.

Publication Date: May 2007 (Spain). Hardcover.

Publisher: Minotauro.

Matthew Stover, Caine Black Knife

I made a fist and hold it out. "Tonight is a good night to die."

They look at each other, at the niter-scaled walls, at the shadowed vault above. Anywhere but at me.

Christians like to say the truth will make you free. Guess I've got the wrong truth.

"Listen - " I let my fist go slack and rub my forehead. "Listen: I've got my share of problems, y'know? You all know it. I'm an asshole. Nobody likes me. Sometimes I don't like me much either."

I give them a second to disagree. Nobody jumps in. Big goddamn surprise.

"Shit weighs down on me, y'know? Like it does on everybody, I guess. I worry what the fuck I'm doing with my life. I've got a sick dad, and I can't take care of him, and this girl I'm hot for thinks I'm a jerk, and shit, y'know, she's right, but somehow I just can't help my - " I manage to avoid looking at her. "Ahh, forget all that, it's not important.

"Here's the point: that's all future stuff, y'know? Everything you worry about. Everything that keeps you awake at night. All the shitty things the world has waiting for all of us. You know: Failure. Old age. Loneliness. Heartbreak. Cancer. Whatever.

"All of that is gone, now. You get it? That's all shit to worry about tomorrow - but we won't have to. Not ever again.

"For us, there is no tomorrow.

"Think about it. We have nothing left to worry about. Nothing. Shit, those Black Knives out there tonight? They're giving us a gift. Because all that bad stuff, all the rotten fucking shit that could possibly happen for the rest of our lives...won't. Because the only rest of our lives we have left is a few minutes to decide how we're gonna die."

"What difference does that make?" somebody says. "Dead is dead."

"Don't care how you die? You don't even have to leave this room. Just step over here." I open my arms, offering. "You won't feel a thing."

No takers. No surprise.

"I'll tell you how I'm gonna die."

A long, slow look, eye to eye to eye. I let that spark in my balls heat up my voice. "I'm gonna drown in their smoking fucking blood." (pp. 84-85)

Matthew Stover in his first two The Acts of Caine novels, Heroes Die (1998) and Blade of Tyshalle (2001) created a brutal, violent, sadistic futuristic society in which a secular caste system controls life on Earth. Akin to the Roman gladiators, many lower-caste men and women found themselves agreeing to become Actors in a hyper-reality show in which they would be transported to an alternate dimension and their exploits (carefully edited, of course) would be beamed back to Earth. Each grunt, each slash of the knife would be felt in the homes of millions as if they were participating alongside the Actors. The most famous Actor, Caine (played by the formerly upcaste - before his father was demoted to Laborer caste for espousing dangerous ideas - Hari Michaelson), was the most famous Actor of them all, one whose blood-and-vomit filled adventures entranced millions and made him a star.

In the first two novels, Stover explores several thematic issues revolving around a Bread and Circuses-oriented totalitarian state, what "honor" means to someone who is smart but held down, how desire can create both opportunity and destruction, as well as exploring how religious/philosophical ideals evolve out of expediency. Caine's attitude, expressed in the passage quoted above, pervades virtually every single page of these three novels.

For Caine Black Knife, Stover had the difficult task of addressing the question of "Now that you've saved the world from outside imperial aggression, what do you do for an encore?" He chose a very complex story of atonement, showing Caine/Hari at the beginning of his Actor career making a name for himself by practically annihilating the fearsome Black Knife clan (and later being adopted by one of them, Orbek) despite the long odds depicted in the scene I quoted above, before then switching to the literary present, thirty years later. There Caine is not as brash or as eager to spit in the eye of Death; he has become worn down by age, injuries, and the knowledge that he is little more than a harbinger of destruction.

The "now" sections of the novel revolve around Caine's return to the Boedecken, the scene of his legend-creating adventures escaping the Black Knife clan. He is haunted by memories of the people he abandoned there, the hurt that the survivors told, although he also realizes that he did what he felt was necessary at the time to survive. Stover utilizes first-person accounts for both the "then" and "now" segments to construct a very complex composite character image. Caine's travails have altered him and while Stover does have Caine acknowledge this explicitly, more often this paradigm shift is shown in scenes such as this one, where a few snotty Artan/Earth rich kids have managed to get around the blocks on interdimensional travel and have appeared in simulated form:

"You're kids..." My brain had somehow turned into a wet wool blanket stuffed inside my skull. "You're all kids."

"Well, sure," one of the Sauds said. "This is still in beta, and they need playtesters, and Turner's really pretty all right, you know, he set us up, it's a real party, even though everything's virtual. The simichair hookup cost my dad a bundle, and he's itching to play, too. Maybe once they smoke the bugs out and get this ready for release. This is way sweeter than even firsthanding, because, you know, first off, the Studio hasn't even done that in like forever, and even then, if we were like firsthanding you, we'd just be riding along while you kill people. This way we get to kill them ourselves - "

"And eat them." Bush's tusks gleamed pale and wet in the moonlight. "We get to kill them and eat them. This is way harder core than even your stuff - no offense, y'know; I'm a real fan, not like Ass-Packard. I have your Collector's Platinum Edition box-set, plus I've got a bootleg master of Servant of the Empire - "

"Just 'cause your mom sucked Turner's wrinkled old grampadick for it," Packard sneered.

I shook my head. "You little shits understand that these are real people? You get it? This isn't just a fucking game - "

"Sure it is," Packard said. "Our pack gets points for every civilian we take out before the Knights knock us to pieces. We get extra points for taking out armsmen, and killing a Knight's an automatic win, unless another pack gets a Knight too, and they've got more civilian kills than - "

"And you get points too just for duration, you know?" Bush nodded enthusiastically. "We're short on kills, but just standing here talking to you we've racking our score, and that's bone grippy, because we get to meet you and everything, and we can still do our mission objective, because we came down the river - these grills we're piloting are already dead, y'know, they don't have to breathe - and the Knights aren't here yet - "

I couldn't get my mind around it. "You're just sonofabitching kids - "

Packard smirked at me. "Yeah, right. How old were you the first time you killed somebody?"

"The first time I killed somebody I was fighting for my life, you little bastard." Which was a damn lie, but what the hell. "You're a pack of spoiled Leisure brats sitting in simichairs a universe away - "

"Well, sure," the other Saud said, shaking his head at me like I was a goddamn idiot, which was exactly how I felt. "You think our parents would let us do this if we could actually get hurt? I mean, check it out - " He lighted his loincloth to show a ragged stump where the Smoke Hunter's cock had been severed at the root. "We can't even fuck. What are we supposed to do except kill people?"

"I never killed anybody just for fun - "

"No, you killed 'em for our fun." Bush's smirk was almost identical to Packard's. (pp. 274-275)

Much of the character interaction follows this basic path - people who know of Caine, but who do not understand him, despite their beliefs that they do. People who idolize his violence (while often secretly being terrified of being in a similar situation) but who fail to understand that he doesn't take pride in his violent, sometimes "evil" ways; he has tried to move on and wishes others would accept that as well. But his past still haunts him and as the novel progresses, he is forced into a confrontation with a ghost from his past, one that haunts him as this volume concludes on a cliffhanger.

Compared to the first two Caine novels, Caine Black Knife is just as intelligently plotted and written. Caine's character, strong as it is, never verges toward sanctimoniousness nor caricature. He remains a complex, dynamic character whose development makes for a fascinating read. Stover's use of the "then" and "now" chapters serves to highlight this shift in Caine's personality, creating a narrative tension that drives this novel towards a strong cliffhanger ending. Caine Black Knife is one of the best character-driven fantasy/SF novels that I have read this year and now I resume my wait for the final Caine novel, My Father's Fist.

Publication Date: October 14, 2008 (US). Tradeback.


Publisher: Del Rey

Brandon Sanderson, The Hero of Ages

Last year, I wrote this in regard to Brandon Sanderson's middle volume in the Mistborn trilogy:

But just because one chooses to use some of the older conventions does not mean that the story cannot be enjoyable or even innovative in places. Those who believe this might point out Brandon Sanderson's Mistborn trilogy, now with the second volume, The Well of Ascension, in bookstores. There are no real shades of grey characters driving the plot, nor are there buckets of blood waiting to be poured out on the battlefields with vultures circling off in the distance. Instead, we see something a bit smaller, something perhaps more akin to a naive country bumpkin stumbling upon a great inner power, but we see it done differently and perhaps with more sincerity behind it.

Sanderson in his novels has started with a rather interesting question: What would happen if a prophesied hero were to fail at his task? What if the destined Frodo-like character had instead seized the forbidden power and had become corrupted? What would happen in a world where a Dark Lord would indeed reign for a thousand years?

Sanderson's concluding volume, The Hero of Ages, takes those questions that I had noted earlier and creates a story that is darker without being grim and better, a story whose character development is good, a story that is in turns surprising and logical in its plotting. When I read a galley proof of this book four months ago, the world around me was very different than it is today - who knew that companies such as Lehman Brothers, Wachovia, or Washington Mutual would sink in a red sea of bad debt? Who knew that millions of 401K retirement accounts would lose much of their value? Who knew that in 1/3 of a year, around 9 out of 10 Americans (and likely a similar percentage in much of the post-industrial world) would feel that things were so off-track and "wrong?"

In skimming through Sanderson's book after those developments, I cannot help but to wonder if outside matters such as the current financial crisis will color others' opinions of the story and its tone. I found that for myself, that the dark opening chapters, with the powerful Mistborn Vin and her consort-husband Elend (himself only recently endowed with Mistborn powers at the Well of Ascension) reeling from the onslaught of Ruin unleashed by their mistake at the Well, to contain some well-written scenes exploring the confusion and frustation that comes when one tries to hold back wave after wave of bad luck and horrid consequences. Just like today with many people searching for scapegoats to offer up as atonement for financial malfeasance/sin, there is that sense in the story of the protagonists and several supporting characters blindly seeking for understanding, with some placing blame rather than attempting to overcome their frustrations.

Much of The Hero of Ages deals with Vin and Elend learning how to confront Ruin and the forces he controls via dark arts such as Hemalurgy (the stealing of power via the driving of various metal spikes through the bodies of selected victims), as well as certain creatures created via the use of such spikes. At times, the story threatens to become yet one other travelogue, with the intrepid heroes gaining knowledge and wisdom, but Sanderson manages to overcome (for the most part) his tendency to have manna from heaven revelations and interventions by devoting more time to showing how certain peripheral characters, such as TenSoon, have developed and have been changed by their experiences. In addition, mysterious little elements, such as a certain piece of jewelry and the etching of important information on steel, are explored in greater depth and while for many astute readers these plot revelations will come as no surprise, nonetheless Sanderson incorporates them well into his tale.

Thematically, The Hero of Ages examines the duality of creation/destruction, eros/thanatos, and Preservation/Ruin. Character goals and aspirations, even when one considers events from the prior two novels, are cast in this dualist light. By the novel's conclusion, there is a marshaling of forces by both Ruin and Preservation, with surprising results. Referring back to my earlier review, I made the following observation:

It is rather obvious from reading Sanderson's novels and his interviews that the author is an optimistic person and in these novels, that sense of hope and joy of life pervades the pages and provides a lighter view of the imagined world than what one would find in the "gritty" novels such as Winterbirth.

The conclusion to The Hero of Ages fits this observation well. After a massive battle that had an extremely high body count, including PoV characters as well as the Imperial Stormtrooper stand-ins, the novel concludes with a twist, one that harks back to the original question about heroes and their "failures." Sanderson brings things full-circle and the end result is a denouement that feels complete; it would be very hard to justify returning to this world for future adventures based on how the story ended.

Although there were a few weaknesses with the novel (mostly in the dialogue and sometimes in how certain events were set up during the course of the novel), for the most part The Hero of Ages builds upon the accomplishments of Sanderson's earlier two novels. It was fast-paced and the conclusion was one of the best I had read in an epic fantasy in years. While doubtless there will be those who will be reading this series and especially this volume for clues as to how Sanderson will complete Robert Jordan's The Wheel of Time, those who read it expecting to find an enjoyable read likely will find this concluding volume to be his strongest and most solid work to date.

Publication Date: October 14, 2008 (US). Hardcover.

Publisher: Tor

Thomas Disch, The Wall of America

As much as I enjoyed Thomas Disch's 1968 novel, Camp Concentration, I have to admit that his just-released posthumous short story collection, The Wall of America, shows Disch's writing range better. From pre-apocalyptic to post-apocalyptic to the quasi-apocalyptic and beyond, the nineteen stories in this collection display a savage wit and biting satire that I have rarely encountered in contemporary speculative fiction writing.

Take for instance this passage from "A Family of the Post-Apocalypse," where a non-Raptured family is dealing with a plague of locusts:

Big ones, and dressed, according to the prophecies, pretty much like the bikers in Mad Max, except that instead of riding Harleys their bikes were incorporated into their exoskeletons. It was the whirring of their huge wings that sounded like the revving of unmuffled engines. The Bible says at this point that in those days men shall seek death and not find it, shall desire to die, and death shall flee from them. But it doesn't go into the details, it only says that the locusts had stings in their tails and the power to torment people five months, if they didn't have a particular mark on their forehead, which Mom and Dad didn't.

Five months is a limited sentence, but when you are being tortured around the clock by giant insects with stings in their tails and sadistic imaginations, it can seem an eternity, and in a sense, because of the temporal dilations produced by the pall of smoke that covered the sun and the moon and even the fluorescent lights in the kitchen, it was an eternity.

"How'd ya like a taste of this then!" Abaddon, the leader of the locusts, would sneer, waving his stinger back and forth, brushing their naked flesh with its venomous tip, and then, Whoop! he'd give it a flick and connect right to the swollen lymph gland in Dad's armpit, or Whap! Whap! across Mom's lacerated breasts. "Oh, I'm a bad one, yes I am," he'd quip, and all his locust cronies would guffaw on cue.

Abaddon also, which is not in the Bible but perfectly in keeping with his character, taught the Big Babies to act as their parents' tormentors, when the locusts in the house were too bored or drunk to torture Dad and Mom themselves. (p. 130)

This story, like most of the others in this collection, plays off of reader knowledge of things as diverse as an early Mel Gibson movie and apocalyptic Christianity. Each element carries its own semantical expectation - the biker locusts, the family unit, the expectation of suffering and wailing - but then Disch often provides a twist to these tales, such as the one to "A Family of the Post-Apocalypse":

The human body has a threshold beyond which pain stops registering, so there were times when the locusts would vanish for days at a time, leaving Dad and Mom to recuperate and make lamentations. "I don't understand it," Dad would say, shaking his head and wincing at the pain. "What did we do wrong? Why is this happening to us?"

"It was our fornications and abominations!" Mom lamented, reaching into the fireplace for a handful of ashes, which she rubbed into her wounds.

"What fornications! We're married, aren't we? Is that fornication?"

Mom groaned. "And what about the time you came home drunk and made me do you know what? Oh, Jesus, I wish I were dead!"

"You always hated sex," Dad complained, for the umpteenth time. (pp. 130-131)

Yes, much lamenting, wailing, and seeking death and not finding it. Although there is a bit more to this tale than what I have liberally excerpted here, it does serve as an example for Disch's basic approach to his tales - take a person who may or may not fit into a preconceived societal/cultural/religious role, place that person in a baffling, sometimes cruel situation, and then proceed to rip into any clichéd conceptions a reader might have regarding that juxtaposing of character and place. Whether it be American attitudes toward immigration (the eponymous short story) or post-literacy ("The Man Who Read a Book"), Disch rarely settles for straightfoward satire. Instead, he satirizes not just the situations presented in the book, but also the readers' likely preconceptions of how such a satire ought to proceed. For the most part, the stories work and occasionally, such as with "The Man Who Read a Book," are outright hilarious.

But Disch's stories bite, and there is much darkness to them. The conclusion to "The Wall of America" is one such example, as well as the bitterness behind "The White Man." People do foolish things and often pay the consequences for their stupidity and trust. In Disch's tales, underneath the humor, this facet of human life is explored often, making for a dark human comedy that a Honore Balzac would appreciate. I certainly did.

Publication Date: October 1, 2008 (US). Tradeback.

Publisher: Tachyon