The OF Blog

Tuesday, February 03, 2009

Locus 2008 Recommended Reading List: A Meme?

Since this is a long group of books/stories, bold for books read, italics for owned but not yet read in full:

SF novels

Fantasy novels

First novels

Young Adult Books

Collections

Anthologies - Original

Anthologies - Reprint

Anthologies - Best of the Year

Non-Fiction

Art Books

Novellas

  • Or Else My Lady Keeps the Key, Kage Baker (Subterranean Press)
  • "The Overseer", Albert E. Cowdrey (F&SF 3/08)
  • The Word of God: Or, Holy Writ Rewritten, Thomas M. Disch (Tachyon Publications)
  • “The Political Prisoner", Charles Coleman Finlay (F&SF 8/08)
  • "Arkfall", Carolyn Ives Gilman (F&SF 9/08)
  • The Luminous Depths, David Herter (PS Publishing)
  • "Mystery Hill", Alex Irvine (F&SF 1/08)
  • "The Erdmann Nexus", Nancy Kress (Asimov’s 10-11/08)
  • "Pretty Monsters", Kelly Link (Pretty Monsters)
  • "The Surfer", Kelly Link (The Starry Rift)
  • "The Hob Carpet", Ian R. MacLeod (Asimov’s 6/08)
  • "The Tear", Ian McDonald (Galactic Empires)
  • "Tenbrook of Mars", Dean McLaughlin (Analog 7-8/08)
  • Once Upon a Time in the North, Philip Pullman (Knopf)
  • "The Man with the Golden Balloon", Robert Reed (Galactic Empires)
  • "Truth", Robert Reed (Asimov’s 10-11/08)
  • "True Names", Benjamin Rosenbaum & Cory Doctorow (Fast Forward 2)
  • "Wonjjang and the Madman of Pyongyang", Gord Sellar (Tesseracts Twelve)
  • "The Philosopher’s Stone", Brian Stableford (Asimov’s 7/08)

Novelettes

  • "The Gambler", Paolo Bacigalupi (Fast Forward 2)
  • "Pump Six", Paolo Bacigalupi (Pump Six and Other Stories)
  • "Tangible Light", J. Timothy Bagwell (Analog 1-2/08)
  • "Radio Station St. Jack", Neal Barrett, Jr. (Asimov’s 8/08)
  • "The Ice War", Stephen Baxter (Asimov’s 9/08)
  • "Turing’s Apples", Stephen Baxter (Eclipse Two)
  • "The Rabbi’s Hobby", Peter S. Beagle (Eclipse Two)
  • "The Tale of Junko and Sayuri", Peter Beagle (InterGalactic Medicine Show 7/08)
  • "Uncle Chaim and Aunt Rifke and the Angel", Peter S. Beagle (Strange Roads)
  • "Shoggoths in Bloom", Elizabeth Bear (Asimov’s 3/08)
  • "The Golden Octopus", Beth Bernobich (Postscripts Summer ’08)
  • "If Angels Fight", Richard Bowes (F&SF 2/08)
  • "From the Clay of His Heart", John Brown (InterGalactic Medicine Show 4/08)
  • "Jimmy", Pat Cadigan (The Del Rey Book of Science Fiction and Fantasy)
  • "Catherine Drewe", Paul Cornell (Fast Forward 2)
  • Conversation Hearts, John Crowley (Subterranean Press)
  • "The Things that Make Me Weak and Strange Get Engineered Away", Cory Doctorow (Tor.com 8/08)
  • "Crystal Nights", Greg Egan (Interzone 4/08)
  • "Lost Continent", Greg Egan (The Starry Rift)
  • "The Ray-Gun: A Love Story", James Alan Gardner (Asimov’s 2/08)
  • "Memory Dog", Kathleen Ann Goonan (Asimov’s 4-5/08)
  • "Shining Armor", Dominic Green (The Solaris Book of New Science Fiction, Volume Two)
  • "The Illustrated Biography of Lord Grimm", Daryl Gregory (Eclipse Two)
  • "Pride and Prometheus", John Kessel (F&SF 1/08)
  • "The Art of Alchemy", Ted Kosmatka (F&SF 6/08)
  • "Divining Light", Ted Kosmatka (Asimov’s 8/08)
  • "Childrun", Marc Laidlaw (F&SF 8/08)
  • "Machine Maid", Margo Lanagan (Extraordinary Engines)
  • "The Woman", Tanith Lee (Clockwork Phoenix)
  • "The Magician’s House", Meghan McCarron (Strange Horizons 7/08)
  • "An Eligible Boy", Ian McDonald (Fast Forward 2)
  • "The Dust Assassin", Ian McDonald (The Starry Rift)
  • "Special Economics", Maureen F. McHugh (The Del Rey Book of Science Fiction and Fantasy)
  • "Beyond the Sea Gate of the Scholar-Pirates of Sarsköe", Garth Nix (Fast Ships, Black Sails)
  • "Infestation", Garth Nix (The Starry Rift)
  • "Immortal Snake", Rachel Pollack (F&SF 5/08)
  • "The Hour of Babel", Tim Powers (Subterranean: Tales of Dark Fantasy)
  • "Five Thrillers", Robert Reed (F&SF 4/08)
  • "Fury", Alastair Reynolds (Eclipse Two)
  • "The Star Surgeon’s Apprentice", Alastair Reynolds (The Starry Rift)
  • "The Egg Man", Mary Rosenblum (Asimov’s 2/08)
  • "Sacrifice", Mary Rosenblum (Sideways in Crime)
  • "Days of Wonder", Geoff Ryman (F&SF 10-11/08)
  • "Lester Young and the Jupiter’s Moons’ Blues", Gord Sellar (Asimov’s 7/08)
  • "Gift from a Spring", Delia Sherman (Realms of Fantasy 4/08)
  • "An Alien Heresy", S.P. Somtow (Asimov’s 4-5/08)
  • "Following the Pharmers", Brian Stableford (Asimov’s 3/08)
  • "The First Editions", James Stoddard (F&SF 4/08)

Short Stories

  • "Don’t Go Fishing on Witches Day", Joan Aiken (The Serial Garden)
  • "Goblin Music", Joan Aiken (The Serial Garden)
  • "The Occultation", Laird Barron (Clockwork Phoenix)
  • "King Pelles the Sure", Peter S. Beagle (Strange Roads)
  • "Boojum", Elizabeth Bear & Sarah Monette (Fast Ships, Black Sails)
  • "Private Eye", Terry Bisson (F&SF 10-11/08)
  • "Offworld Friends Are Best", Neal Blaikie (Greatest Uncommon Denominator Spring ’08)
  • "The Man Who Built Heaven", Keith Brooke (Postscripts Summer ’08)
  • "Balancing Accounts", James L. Cambias (F&SF 2/08)
  • "Exhalation", Ted Chiang (Eclipse Two)
  • "The Fooly", Terry Dowling (Dreaming Again)
  • "Truth Window: A Tale of the Bedlam Rose", Terry Dowling (Eclipse Two)
  • "Awskonomuk", Gregory Feeley (Otherworldly Maine)
  • "Daltharee", Jeffrey Ford (The Del Rey Book of Science Fiction and Fantasy)
  • "The Dismantled Invention of Fate", Jeffrey Ford (The Starry Rift)
  • "The Dream of Reason", Jeffrey Ford (Extraordinary Engines)
  • "The Seventh Expression of the Robot General", Jeffrey Ford (Eclipse Two)
  • "Reader’s Guide", Lisa Goldstein (F&SF 7/08)
  • “Glass”, Daryl Gregory (Technology Review 11-12/08)
  • "26 Monkeys, Also the Abyss", Kij Johnson (Asimov’s 7/08)
  • "The Voyage Out", Gwyneth Jones (Periphery)
  • "Evil Robot Monkey", Mary Robinette Kowal (The Solaris Book of New Science Fiction, Volume Two)
  • "The Kindness of Strangers", Nancy Kress (Fast Forward 2)
  • "The Sky that Wraps the World Round, Past the Blue into the Black", Jay Lake (Clarkesworld 3/08)
  • "The Fifth Star in the Southern Cross", Margo Lanagan (Dreaming Again)
  • "The Goosle", Margo Lanagan (The Del Rey Book of Science Fiction and Fantasy)
  • "The Thought War", Paul McAuley (Postscripts Summer ’08)
  • "[a ghost samba]", Ian McDonald (Postscripts Summer ’08)
  • "Midnight Blue", Will McIntosh (Asimov’s 9/08)
  • "Fallen Angel", Eugene Mirabelli (F&SF 12/08)
  • "Mars: A Traveler’s Guide", Ruth Nestvold (F&SF 1/08)
  • "The Blood of Peter Francisco", Paul Park (Sideways in Crime)
  • "The Small Door", Holly Phillips (Fantasy 5/08)
  • "His Master’s Voice", Hannu Rajaniemi (Interzone 10/08)
  • "The House Left Empty", Robert Reed (Asimov’s 4-5/08)
  • "Fifty Dinosaurs", Robert Reed (The Solaris Book of New Science Fiction, Volume Two)
  • "Traitor", M. Rickert (F&SF 5/08)
  • "Snatch Me Another", Mercurio D. Rivera (Abyss & Apex 1Q/08)
  • "The Film-makers of Mars", Geoff Ryman (Tor.com 12/08)
  • "Talk is Cheap", Geoff Ryman (Interzone 6/08)
  • "After the Coup", John Scalzi (Tor.com 7/08)
  • "Invisible Empire of Ascending Light", Ken Scholes (Eclipse Two)
  • "Ardent Clouds", Lucy Sussex (The Del Rey Book of Science Fiction and Fantasy)
  • "From Babel’s Fall’n Glory We Fled", Michael Swanwick (Asimov’s 2/08)
  • "The Scarecrow’s Boy", Michael Swanwick (F&SF 10-11/08)
  • "Marrying the Sun", Rachel Swirsky (Fantasy 6/08)
  • "A Buyer’s Guide to Maps of Antarctica", Catherynne M. Valente (Clarkesworld 5/08)
  • "Fixing Hanover", Jeff VanderMeer (Extraordinary Engines)
  • "The Eyes of God", Peter Watts (The Solaris Book of New Science Fiction, Volume Two)
  • "Ass-Hat Magic Spider", Scott Westerfeld (The Starry Rift)

A bit better than previous years. How did you match up on these, especially in the various novel categories?
Posted by Larry Nolen at 5:50 PM 2 comments
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The wotmania Files: Interview with Barry Hoffman of Gauntlet Press (1/14/2003)

The next few interviews to be posted here were not conducted by myself, but rather by another Admin at wotmania, Kory. Before his tragic and untimely death in April 2003, Kory contacted several of his favorite authors and conducted interviews and Q&As with them for wotmania's Other Fantasy section. This one with Barry Hoffman of Gauntlet Press was his first.
Hello Barry. Thanks for taking the time to answer these questions. I know you have just moved your entire operation to Colorado from Pennsylvania this past month and have a lot of work ahead of you getting settled in. So, between your unpacking and granddaughter hugs, I’ll throw a few questions at you and get out of your way.

1 ) Gauntlet Press seems to be a dream come true; an amalgamation of topical expression through the magazine, appreciation of the art of the book through publishing, and storytelling through your own writing. Can you give us a brief chronology of how you came to have such a wonderful set of outlets at your disposal?

It all started when I was two. No, seriously, I trace the beginnings of Gauntlet with my own writing. I’d written a decent number of short stories and had several accepted by Cemetery Dance and other lesser known magazines. So, I knew I had some talent. But it was frustrating waiting six months to find out if a story would be accepted and then a year for it to appear, if it was published at all. I KNEW I could do as good a job or better. When I was relieved of my duties of writing/producing/directing plays at the school I taught at (the reason is below) I had a lot of time on my hands. Because I had been censored (see below) I decided to publish a magazine devoted to censorship. My main contacts were in the horror field so I relied on them for issue #1. When Ray Bradbury allowed me to publish his afterword to FAHRENHEIT 451 I had the credibility I needed. Other authors came aboard since Bradbury had confidence in what I was attempting. We published one issue a year for 3 years, then two a year after (to be more topical). After I’d published the magazine for a year I became interested in signed limited editions. I’d collected books from other publishers for years and knew I could do as good a job as they could. I was shocked to find that Bob Bloch’s PSYCHO had never been released as a signed limited. When he passed away after seeing the galley, but before the book was published, it made me realize that there were a number of contemporary authors who were getting on in years. Upon doing some research I found that both Matheson and Bradbury had a slew of books that had never been released as signed limiteds. So, the focus at the beginning was on books that had already been published by extraordinary authors, but given a special treatment so they became definitive editions not just signed limited reprints. Later we began to publish new material by both well-known authors (F. Paul Wilson and Poppy Z. Brite for example) and authors who had never been published before (Mick Garris). And now we’re focusing on publishing previously unpublished material by Matheson and Bradbury to enhance their legacy. As for my own writing, signed limiteds of three of my books have been published but ONLY when I also had a mass market paperback deal in place.

2 ) Your magazine deals with the heated topic of censorship. Is there something in your past that triggered this long lasting quest to bring the detrimental effects of censorship out into the light?

I taught for 28 years and in the eighties I wrote a play each year which my students would perform. I’d write the play on a current topic (running away, graffiti, being a loner, the homeless), hire a professional composer to set my 5th-8th grade students poems to music and a choreographer to teach the kids dances. It took an enormous amount of time as I was producer/writer/director/fund-raiser/ticket seller/head of promotions . . . and I could go on. I did this with no pay. The last play dealt with teen runaways. The head of the local PTA (who had endorsed and worked on our play dealing with the homeless) felt the play might encourage kids to run away, even though running away wasn’t glorified. Her child wasn’t in the play and parents of 60 kids in the play had seen the script and the songs and not one had a complaint. But this particular woman had the ear of the principal and he line-edited the play. He felt one character, who was in fact based on a white custodian, talked “too black” and demanded the grammar be changed. He made numerous other ludicrous changes. Then after the play went off without a hitch and to critical acclaim he didn’t invite me to write a play for the following year. So, I saw firsthand how one person (just as special interest groups) could adversely impact and in fact cause censorship of my work. Thus was born Gauntlet magazine.

3 ) Your publishing arm of the company works with many renowned authors and others who are on the rise or under-appreciated by the mainstream. How do you go about choosing which authors you pursue for the company?

First, as I explained before, after the untimely demise of Bob Bloch I was determined to publish as many of the classic contemporary authors as possible. Matheson and Bradbury have become Gauntlet staples. I liked the work of Nancy A. Collins so a short story collection of hers became our first book. I’d always been an avid fan of F. Paul Wilson and had written to him about publishing a collection of Repairman Jack stories. When he decided to write novels for the character instead that led to our publishing to date 4 Repairman Jack books and we are contracted for at least two more. Basically I publish authors whose work I like. I also want to work with authors who aren’t pains in the ass. That’s why you’ll never see a Gauntlet book by one major sci fi author whose name I won’t mention. There’s not a lot of money to be made in specialty press publishing, so why should I be driven to distraction by difficult authors when there are so many fine authors who are also gentleman (or ladies) like Matheson, Bradbury, Barker, F. Paul Wilson, Jack Ketchum and Poppy Z. Brite to name just a few? And to be honest this is a business. Some authors are wonderful writers but for some reason they are not collectible. So I have to take that into account as well.

4 ) How cool are Ray Bradbury and Richard Matheson? They, along with others like Clive Barker, Peter Straub, Robert Bloch and William Peter Blatty, must be a thrill to work with on a regular basis.

I can’t say enough about Matheson and Bradbury (not that the others haven’t been wonderful to work with). I loved working with Bob Bloch, the ultimate gentleman and professional, but unfortunately I was able to work with him for only one book. My relationship with Matheson has really changed over the years. At first he was reluctant to have his books published as signed limiteds. Now, he asks if I want to see something that was unpublished. And both ABU AND THE 7 MARVELS, a young adult book, and COME FYGURES, COME SHADOWES which we’re publishing in March are wonderful reads. He’s also provided screenplays I salivate over that we’ll be publishing. He just a wonder. He’s very sensitive to the needs and feelings of others. And what can you say about Bradbury. He (along with Matheson) has been an influence on me as an author, so to publish Bradbury is an honor. When we publish one of his books it’s guaranteed I’ll get a call telling me what a wonderful job we did. That’s the kind of person he is. And now because he has so much on his plate and so many tipsheets to sign my son has gone over to his house twice to help him with signature sheets. I’m envious. Ray and my son chat for an hour or two while he signs and his wife Maggie is also wonderful. I still feel nervous when I speak to either. I admit it freely. They had so much influence on me I just talk gibberish when I talk to them. It’s gotten better over the years, but I’m still awed by them. Jack Ketchum and Richard Christian Matheson are also wonderful to work with. I’ve become good friends with both (and while I love their work, I’m not awed by them as I am with Matheson Sr. and Bradbury. Maybe it’s because we’re closer in age). These are not only tremendously talented writers but good people.

5 ) A term I have heard used for some of your other authors is “mid-list”. Can you elaborate on this term?

There are an awful lot of jealous people out there who like to post on chatrooms but won’t confront me personally. Personally, I avoid such forums like the plague and feel most of what is posted is gibberish. I don’t see Matheson nor Bradbury being considered mid-list authors. They may not crack the bestseller lists but they are literary legends. I think the term “mid-list” is a demeaning one. You have your superstars who sell millions of books. King, Koontz and Barker, for instance. And then in horror you have ALL the other writers. There are some who are more successful than others, but I find the term meaningless as regards publishing and writing. It simply means their books are not bestsellers.

6 ) I have read, enjoyed and collect the works of many of these authors, but wonder if you believe they are going to break into the mass market someday or are they unwilling to sacrifice their art for mass public acceptance?

Just who are you talking about here? Poppy Z. Brite does not write for the masses. I don’t think she will ever write a book just to elevate herself to best-seller status. All of the authors we’ve published have broken into the mass market, including Poppy. There’s a difference between being published by mass market publishers and becoming a best-selling author. F. Paul Wilson’s Repairman Jack books are gaining in popularity with each book and a film may be made of THE TOMB where Repairman Jack was first introduced. But he hasn’t sacrificed anything (there are writers who have, but I’m not about to get into names. It serves no constructive purpose). F. Paul Wilson hasn’t sacrificed his art. He’s just found a character that has captured the attention of a growing number of people. Because of the violence in the work of Jack Ketchum he probably won’t become a best-seller. But he’s only interested in writing the best book possible. He’s not going to sacrifice his voice for greater acceptance by the public. I lose respect for those who do that. There are some writers who try to anticipate the next “big” thing or authors who trot out a book soon after an event book has captured the public’s attention. That happened with JAWS. After that there were any number of books dealing with killer sea monsters. Most were crap, simply put.

7 ) The books you publish are limited edition, which allows a number of extras to be added to the book. What do you feel the future of the printed book is? Will there always be enough people who appreciate the beauty of a quality book around to justify the continued creation of them, or are we heading towards a more disposable and / or electronic time.

There will always be a demand for the printed book, especially those like ours which are definitive editions of the book and not just a reprint (the classic-revisited series). When we published DARK CARNIVAL we added so much that I believe it will become as sought after years from now as the original. And there are many books that mass market publishers won’t touch. They’re not going to become e-books. They’ll continue to be published by the specialty press. Short story collections in particular will continue to be frowned upon by mass market publishers and are best served by the specialty press . . . in printed form. A few years ago there was this hue and cry that printed books were on their way out. But e-books haven’t caught on as anticipated. Even King abandoned an e-book novel. It wasn’t due to poor sales, but he sold far fewer copies of THE PLANT than his printed books. So, I’m not worried.

8 ) Your own books seem to deal with women, particularly women who have suffered and gain strength to regain control of their life. Is there an event or person in your life that drives these storylines?

No, my focus on women as both the protagonist and often the antagonist is due to my career as a teacher. I taught 5th and 6th graders for the most part. At that age the girls have widely divergent personalities and are very open about their feelings. Boys are more like unmolded lumps of clay. It’s not until 8th grade that their shape takes form. So, over a period of 28 years I came into contact with an enormous number of female students who supplied me with a vast amount of material to base my characters upon (not to mention their parents and grandparents). When I began writing my novels it just seemed natural for my protagonist (and in my first four books antagonists) to be female. I have several as yet unpublished novels with male antagonists. And I’ve also written a young adult novel with a female protagonist. I think that’s important because girls 12-16 and older need role models. Too many books for young people featuring female leads have heroines who are bland and one-dimensional. My female lead in CURSE OF THE SHAMRA is like the females in my adult books – wonderfully flawed and intricate characters who evolve and grow over the course of the book.

9 ) Your books also have supernatural influences. Is this something you feel is out there in real life?

I do believe there are people who can read other’s minds. Since just something like 10% of the human brain is utilized there must be some people who have portions of the other 90% of their brain operating. It may give them more insight than the rest of us. It may allow them to read other’s minds. It may allow them to know whether someone is telling the truth. So, to that extent I believe in the supernatural. But ghosts, werewolves and vampires I find hard to believe and I don’t write about them. In my EYES books there is a supernatural forest than can heal, but also demands a price. It’s a living entity in and of itself. The forest itself has an intelligence. This comes purely from my addled mind and I don’t believe there is such a forest. I think most psychics are frauds, but as I said before I do believe that some people may have tapped into parts of their brain the rest of us have not, so I do believe there are true psychics.

10 ) There is a growing number of fantasy and sci-fi writers outside the English-speaking world. Are there any plans to publish any English-language translations of their works?

Gauntlet is able to produce definitive works and work directly with the author because we take on only 4-5 projects a week. We're not interested in quantity. We'd rather work on our 4-5 books and do them right. Personally, I foresee a large number of obstacles in translating a book in a foreign language to English and publishing it through Gauntlet. The tranlations itself would be expensive. And, I've read in any number of places that if a book is not translated properly it can lead to embarrassing and neausating results. At the moment, it's just not something we'd feel comfortable doing. We also don't publish non-fiction titles. We don't publish sci fi or mystery. It's not that we have anything against any of them. I enjoy all forms of literature and I would love to publish a sci fi or mystery title. But each of them (as well as foreign translations) is totally out of the realm of what we now publish. We don't have the staff nor the time to adequately research venues for these books. In 2002 we published our first young adults book (ABU AND THE 7 MARVELS by Richard Matheson). We did this solely because we believe so strongly in Matheson. But, I gotta be honest with you, the amount of time we had to put into researching this market was incredible -- so time-consuming it woke me up what it takes publishing out of the genre I am most familiar with. There are any number of sci fi and mystery specialty presses, yet we seldom cross paths. Some authors I was interested in had already been published by a sci fi or mystery specialty press I never heard of. And when I queried someone who knew the mystery collector's market I was surprised that of two authors whose styles are quite similar, one author did quite well in the collectible field and the other fared terribly. Why? I have no idea. To maintain our standards at this point in time I have no desire to spend the time necessary to do the research needed to get into foreign translations . . . nor the other genres I mentioned.

11 ) Conversely, would you have any interest in books that you have published being translated into a foreign language?

Since the great majority of our books are signed limited editions, the very nature of the book wouldn't allow us to print the book in another language. What would have to occur (and I've been queried about this before) is a foreign publisher would contact the author or agent for the author to obtain foreign rights to the book. That book wouldn't be a limited edition, but could be made available in any number of languages. I know Jack Ketchum has had good luck in Japan. But the bottom line is Gauntlet could not undertake such a project because it goes against the very nature of a SIGNED LIMITED edition.

12 ) Finally, how much reading outside of your own authors are you able to find time for and are there any other authors out there that you would encourage our members to check out?

Unfortunately, lately I’ve found less and less time for what I’d call recreational reading. Gauntlet, my own writing and now that I’ve moved, time with my granddaughter fill my days. I have a stack of books I want to read but seldom get a chance to. I think George Pelecanos is going to strike it big. He writes somewhat similar to what I write, without the supernatural twist. He’s this white dude whose main characters are black males. I’m white and many of my lead characters are black females. I love David Morrell. He’s another writer who is also a true gentleman. Donald Westlake is the only author of fiction who makes me laugh out loud when I read his books (and those under the name of Richard Stark are darker, but just as worthy of attention). One guilty pleasure was Dick Francis who churned out a book a year. It was rumored that he co-wrote them with his wife. His wife died two years ago and there hasn’t been a Dick Francis book since. I enjoy betting on horses which is how I got caught up on Dick Francis, a former jockey. I’ve fallen behind on my Koontz and King, but will get back to them at some time. I’ve enjoyed John Sandford and Michael Connelley but haven’t had a chance to read their books lately. I used to like books by Andrew Vachss, but I think he’s slipped lately. I wish I had more time for reading for pleasure, but sad to say my days are more than filled.

Thank you for your time Barry, I sincerely appreciate it. Good luck with settling in and give your granddaughter a hug for me.

-Kory

My granddaughter and I have already bonded. I spend time with her everyday and it’s going to be wonderful seeing her grow up close and personal. I’ve written 9 short stories based on CURSE OF THE SHAMRA and each year I give Tyler one on her birthday. I won’t wait until she’s nine to read them all. I think as parents with so many responsibilities (like paying the rent) we tend to take for granted the little changes that occur with our children. Now that I’m my own boss and if I don’t want to work one day I don’t have to I think I’m getting a hell of a lot more out of my daily contact with my granddaughter.

-Barry
Posted by Larry Nolen at 10:05 AM 0 comments
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Monday, February 02, 2009

The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman


The Graveyard Book is the most recent addition to Neil Gaiman's growing library of titles and projects. The novel was recently announced as a Newbery Medal winner. Gaiman's storytelling coupled with Dave McKean's art creates a truly compelling novel.

The Graveyard Book is modeled on Rudyard Kipling's classic stories known as the Jungle Book. The novel opens with the murder of three members of a small family. The youngest, a mere toddler boy, accidentally escapes. While being hunted by the murder, the boy is taken in by the residents of an old graveyard, who shelter, protect, and raise the child.

The book is comprised of short chapters that each present a distinct moment in that child's, called Nobody "Bod" Owens, life and adventures in the graveyard. The stories are touching, tense, humorous, and infinitely entertaining. The graveyards' inhabitants, ghosts, Bod's mysterious guardian Silas, and other beings existing on the boundaries of reality, along with Bod himself, create an interesting tapestry for Gaiman's character development and slow unveiling of the mystery of Bod's life.

The story roughly covers Bod's life from 18 months old to when he is considered an adult by the residents of the graveyard. The story is a balance of what a person can learn about life from those in a graveyard, and the constant threat of danger that lurks beyond the graveyard wall. There is action, there is intrigue, and there is even resolution.

The Graveyard Book is a fun read. It is a compelling and entertaining read. I think that Gaiman has created the perfect blend of his somewhat darker vision, his macabre sense of humor, and a truly touching story. I have no doubts that this novel can be read and enjoyed by young and older alike. Oh, and if a first page was ever to capture your entire attention, the is the book where it will happen.

The Graveyard Book is simply one of the best and most enjoyable books that I have read recently, or for some time
Posted by Jacob at 11:41 AM 2 comments

Sunday, February 01, 2009

Interview with Brian Evenson


Brian Evenson is the author of 9 works of fiction, beginning with his first collection of short fiction, Altmann's Tongue (1994), with Last Days ( Feb. 1, 2009; my review here) and the upcoming (Sept. 2009) collection Fugue State being his most recent publications.

It is hard to classify Evenson's works into a single category, as his stories range from "literary" to "horror," with permutations of each mixing and mingling within each story. For someone such as myself, who loves fiction that isn't fitted easily into neat categories, Evenson's stories were like a godsend. Recently I was asked by Matt Staggs if I would be interested in interviewing Evenson and I jumped at the chance, as there were several questions I had related to some of the thematic issues contained within Last Days, as well as those explored in two of his short story collections (Altmann's Tongue, The Wavering Knife). This interview, conducted by email over the past week, I hope will be of interest to readers. In it, Evenson and I talk about the writing process, religious faith and its influences, types of apocalypses, among other matters.

The beginning paragraph to Spanish author Carlos Ruiz Zafón's latest novel may be translated thusly:
A writer never forgets the first time that he accepts some money or praise in exchange for a story. He never forgets the first time that he feels the sweet venom of vanity in his blood, and he believes that if he manages that no one discovers his lack of talent the literary dream will be capable of placing a roof over his head, a hot plate for the end of the day and his deepest yearning: his name impressed on a miserable piece of paper which surely will survive longer than he. A writer is condemned to remember that moment, because from then on he is lost and his soul has a price.
 As an author, what are your reactions to such a quote? Is there something that drove you to become an author, or did writing grow out of other interests?

When I was a tween my mother published a few science fiction stories and--probably to keep us busy so that she could find time to write herself--she encouraged all the children (I was the oldest of five) to write as well. For some reason it stuck with me and very quickly became an almost obsessional activity. But I think it’s been less because of praise that I’ve gotten or haven’t gotten (I kept writing even when a lot of people close to me were disturbed by what I was doing and thought I should stop) and more because it’s somehow satisfying at a very basic level. Writing and reading are a huge part of what I am and if I go for even a short while without either of them I feel like there’s less of me there. So, yes, that probably does suggest that I’m lost...

Speaking of your family, I just received a copy of your first book, Altmann's Tongue, and I see that you dedicated the novella "The Sanza Affair" to her. Besides encouraging you to write, was there ever a direct influence from her own story writing on the way you tell stories?

I don’t think there was a direct influence on the way I tell my stories, but maybe there’s one that I just don’t see. The story of hers I remember best was quite different from any of mine. It was called "Exodus" and appeared in a collection of Mormon-themed science fiction stories, and involved a Mormon Church leader saving Utah from an alien invasion through the Church’s emergency preparedness program. The first ‘real’ story I remember writing, when I was fourteen or fifteen, was a piece inspired by Kafka’s short parable "The Coming of the Messiah," and was an odd combination of fantastical mysticism and religious doubt. One of the stories I worked on earlier, when my Mom was encouraging us to write, was a story about a rock living in the crust of the earth who is trying to stir the other rocks into revolt. So, I think my mother and I really were beginning in very different places with our idea of what stories should do and where they should stand in relation to the community. Her story seemed to imply a wisdom to the religious structure, while my stories always tend to have a much larger component of fear or doubt.

It’s a funny thing: growing up faithful in a religious culture, I was almost barraged with stories. Things from the Bible or from the book of Mormon (which I was told I should read as if they had been written for my instruction), stories in church meant to illustrate a moral lesson, stories meant to make one afraid of committing a sin, and so on. All of that was important to forming my sense of myself as a writer, partly in terms of opposition—I have a real resistance now, for instance, to stories which have the hint of a moral message—but also in terms of the way they were formulated. That mixture of King James language, half hidden biblical allusions, and vernacular speech—which I think you can find in many Christian cultures, not just Mormonism—is something that still stays with me, and something that’s very much present in my stories. The closer you are to that sort culture, probably, the more challenging my stories tend to be.

It is interesting that you bring up your Mormon upbringing and the impact that elements of that faith has had on your writing. I recently bought a first edition hardcover of Altmann’s Tongue and the cover flap seemed to focus as much on the dichotomy between your faith at the end and the nature of the stories themselves. What is your general reaction to those who want to examine your stories through the prism of your religious upbringing?

I think it’s a complicated. It’s hard for your ideas not to be formed by, and in reaction to, your upbringing. For me it was also complicated by the fact that my parents were politically both democrats who were also faithful Mormons, something that a lot of the kids I grew up with saw as an impossible combination. “Which are you,” some of them would ask. “Mormon? Or Democrat?” So I grew up with a very schizophrenic sense of my relationship to that culture, feeling simultaneously outside of it and inside of it. I was, for many years, a very faithful Mormon, even served in the local church leadership in my 20s and feel I gained a great deal from that background. I do think there’s often an interest in the complexities of community in my fiction which is probably due to that, and it’s certainly the basis for my continued exploration of belief and odd religion, but I don’t think either my religious background or my movement away from it in later life really captures the essence of what I’m doing. There’s a lot of other things that are part of that mental conversation that leads to my work: philosophy, absurd literature, ideas from other writers, phenomenology, things that have haunted me, things I’ve learned from music and visual art, etc.

From what I understand, you lived outside the United States for some considerable length of time. In what ways, if any, did that experience influence your views of the world and your fiction writing?

I lived briefly in Mexico and I also lived in France for a while, and I’ve translated from both French and (in collaboration) from Spanish. I think living outside of the United States changed the way that I thought for the better. It made me reconsider a lot of ideas and beliefs that I had taken for granted and I think it also really expanded my ability to empathize with others. Speaking French even changed the patterns of my thoughts, helped me to see things about the world that I hadn’t notice before. I think reading had already done some of that for me, but I think speaking a foreign language and living in a foreign country was incredibly important for me as a writer.

Who were some of the real-life and literary influences on your writing career?

The most important real-life influence was a Welsh writer named Leslie Norris who was a tremendous supporter of my work when I was in college. He’d read incredibly widely and got me reading obsessively and eccentrically, which has been the most important thing to me as a writer. One week he’d introduce me to J.G. Ballard’s The Concrete Island and the next he had me reading Salman Rushdie’s Shame or . He introduced me to a great many writers I probably would have eventually found on my own, but also to a few that I never would have found but who I love: writers like Mervyn Peake, Dambudzo Marechera, and Caradoc Evans. He also had no interest in making my work fit a certain model: he liked that it was in its own strange place and encouraged me to build a space for myself in a way that I’ve always tried to emulate in my own teaching. Professionally he helped me know where to send work out and also introduced me to my first agent. I really couldn’t have done without him. My most important early literary influences were Franz Kafka, who my father introduced me to when I was 14, and Samuel Beckett who I stumbled on on my own when I was in high school. Kafka really changed my sense of what writing could do, and then Beckett changed it again: his novel Molloy is still one of the most important books for me. Later there have been other people and other writers who have been very, very important, and many who still are, but those are the some of the earliest.

Interesting that you mention Kafka here, as I thought when I was reading The Wavering Knife and now Altmann's Tongue that there were hints in your stories of his use of a direct voice to accentuate the surrealness of the surroundings. Hadn't considered Beckett, however. If pressed, what one element, if not more than one, of Molloy would you say might be found in your work?

Yes, Kafka’s there and I feel like I learned a tremendous amount for him. With Beckett, there are things he does in Molloy that I think were very influential for me: the way that Molloy and Moran become doubles of one another and yet remain intact, for instance. I also very laboriously compared the French and English versions of the novel word for word, and published an article about that, so I think I’ve thought more closely about the words and sentences of Molloy than any other book I’ve read, and it’s a book I re-read regularly. I love the tone of Molloy as well, and the shift in tone from the first to the second part. I love the moment in the second part when a stranger thrusts his hand at Moran and the latter says "I can still see the hand coming towards me, pallid, opening and closing. As if self-propelled. I do not know what happened then. But a little later, perhaps a long time later, I found him stretched on the ground his head in a pulp. I am sorry I cannot indicate more clearly how this result was obtained..." That passage does a whole series of things I find astounding. When I first read that, it really crystallized something for me, and I think a lot of my fiction has been an attempt to create for others the feeling I felt when reading that. That’s just the tip of the iceberg.

You mention that you did a laborious comparison of the French and English versions of Beckett’s story. I understand that you have done several translation of works from French to English. Has that experience of trying to find le mot juste for each language involved had any impact on how you approach the craft of writing stories at the syntactical level?

Yes, that’s had a tremendous impact. I’ve done a fair amount of translation, ranging from contemporary literary writers like Christian Gailly or Marcel Cohen to earlier genre writers like Gustave Le Rouge. You really do end thinking very closely about how another writer puts together his or her style and you really have to stretch your mind to render the work in English in a way that captures what’s central to the original text. I find it a very satisfying and challenging activity, and it’s taught me a lot about my own writing. And yes, I do sometimes tend to appropriate strategies from French syntax in my own writing, sometimes as a way of defamiliarizing the prose, sometimes for other reasons.

In creating your stories, which do you place more emphasis on - creating the characters or the "worldbuilding" aspects of creating a plausible setting for the action?

I feel like all of those things are very connected, and that emphasis can change from moment to moment, depending what a particular scene or paragraph or story is trying to do. My writing tends to be fairly stripped down, and I like to try to do as much as I can as efficiently as possible. I try to give just enough detail to allow readers to bring the situation, characters and events to life in their minds quickly, and almost without knowing how much they’re participating in that act of creation. I think a lot of that is done by instinct, but when I think about it concretely I tend to think in terms of things like the velocity, intensity, and rhythm. What I like as a reader is a story that carries me away, and I want to give that to my readers.

My first exposure to your work was through your short story collection The Wavering Knife. Later I read two novels by you, the Aliens: No Exit tie-in novel and your most recent release, Last Days. Were there many difficulties in adapting your storytelling approach towards longer fiction?

I’ve published many more stories than novels over the years, though I think lately I’ve been drawn more to novellas and novels simply because the situations I’ve been interested in exploring have proved too complex for stories. I think a novel does end up being something of a different animal; it can’t have the same kind of tautness as you can inflict upon a story, but it also allows you to draw connections and create resonances that are harder to make work in story. A novel like Last Days ends up being an almost dreamlike series of echoes and resonances; it has, as Peter Straub kindly suggests in his introduction, an almost musical structure of repetition and variation, and part of the pleasure for me in writing it comes back to that. I don’t think that’s something I could pull off in a longer novel, and a novel of mine like The Open Curtain ends up taking a different tactic. Aliens: No Exit was really fun to write, partly because the first Aliens movie terrified me when I was a kid. I had to write a summary of it first and that summary had to be approved by Fox, so I had a sense of exactly where I was going with it, which is unusual for me. It’s a little pulpy, but I think you still see my interests and obsessions in it, and I hope it’s the kind of Aliens novel only I could write.

You mention that in Aliens: No Exit that one can see your interests and obsessions. For those who have not yet read that novel, what scene would you single out as being a good example of your interests merging with the Aliens setting? Also, are there any plans for writing future novels set in that universe or other shared-world settings?

I think the basic idea of the novel, in which there’s a confusion between what’s real and what’s not, a kind of false reality being offered up, is something that’s very central to my work—you can see it in some of the stories in The Wavering Knife and it’s in Last Days as well. The way the tunnel scenes are handled seem pretty specific to me as well. I think that opening scene, where you’re given an encounter with an Alien and then immediately move to a much worse trauma, one that leads Kline to do something unimaginable, is very much my own, as is the particular mixture of humor and violence in the later part of the novel. There’s also (among other things) a slightly modified quotation from Hegel used to describe the Alien hive (and various other allusions); that’s something that only I would be foolhardy enough to do.

I’d love to do another Aliens novel if they’ll let me. I suppose it depends on how well this one does; readers so far seem to like it.

In your latest novel, Last Days, you expand upon your 2003 novella, The Brotherhood of Mutilation. What led you to decide that you had more to tell within that setting?

When I first finished the novella, I thought that would be it, but something about that world really stuck with me. And I found I’d become attached enough to Kline as a character that I kept thinking about him, about what the kind of sustained trauma he’d been through was likely to do to him. I also realized that even if he escaped the brotherhood were definitely the sort of people to hold a grudge. The second part, then, ends up being a kind of exploration of how one loses one’s humanity, with Kline reaching a point that all he can think to do is bring about a sort of apocalypse, one that’s both internal and external.

I also think that the really odd investigation I was doing of a certain kind of extreme religious belief didn’t feel like it was done; I wanted to explore the notion of schism and the added complications this can cause (as religious history has shown). I also think the kinds of noirs and detective novels I was reading shifted a little bit and I suddenly started to see new possibilities because of writers like James M. Cain, Richard Stark, Fredric Brown, and David Goodis (Dashiell Hammett is at the heart of the first part, particularly The Dain Curse and Red Harvest). Then suddenly I entered a period in my life where everyone seemed like they were named Paul, and during that time I discovered that Paul Wittgenstein had done one-handed piano pieces. From there, everything fell into place.

You note that the second part of Last Days explores how one might lose one's humanity. Has that been a thread that has run through much of your fiction, or are there key differences in how Kline's story evolves?

This is a good question. I think that that’s been a concern in different ways in my other fiction, but usually it’s been put a little differently. Some of the stories in Altmann’s Tongue, for instance, are interested in exploring that by its absence, by having the reader be faced by acts of violence or difficult choices presented flatly, without a sense of authorial judgment, so that there’s no safety net. I think, when this strategy works, it can make the reader think about his or her own ethics, his or her own choices, by being confronted by something that seems to be potentially monstrous. With Last Days it’s a little different. In the first part, after making a major choice before the story starts, Kline is carried along by events or circumstances to a point where he has to make a similar sort of choice. The second part starts in the aftermath of that choice, in what he’s done after that, and follows with him consciously making a choice to try to extricate himself from a difficult situation by repeated acts of violence. He does in fact extricate himself but by so doing he may very well have ‘lost’ himself. He has very complicated feelings about what he’s gone through and going through, and is afraid both that he’s becoming an animal and that (and this terrifies him much more) the cult members might be right and that he might be more than human: chosen or divine. So, whether he’s losing his humanity to become less than human or more than human is a question that he keeps toying with, hinting at.

You refer to Kline having "choices" throughout the narrative, yet events/circumstances exert a major influence on those choices. One of the issues of contention between adherents of various religious faiths is that of just exactly how much "choice" an individual has, especially in regards to moral actions. Would it be fair to question just how much of Kline (or the Brotherhood)’s actions are the result of faith and how much was "predestined?" Would Kline or the Brotherhood have different interpretations of this?

Yes, this is fair, and yes, Kline and the Brotherhood or its break-offs would interpret it differently. Kline does, in theory, have free will, but Borchert makes it very clear to him that there are severe limitations on what choices he can make—usually it’s a choice between something bad and something worse. In the second part, every time he tries to act freely circumstances arrange themselves such that the Pauls can see it as a sign that what happened was predestined, and I wouldn’t be surprised if any survivors would continue to think that way, that this was destiny, a “test”. Kline wants to believe his actions are free, but seems increasingly worried that they’re not. That’s one of the basic tensions between religion and the individual: where does free will stop and predestination or foreordination begin?

If Kline is indeed trying to bring about an "apocalypse," which type of apocalypse would be a more apt description: The original, "unveiling" sense of the word, or the latter-day view of it being an eschatological crisis of a Götterdämmerung end to things?

Well, I don’t think he knows for certain. I thought about them both at various times in the book. Sometimes it seems to be the one, sometimes the other. Ultimately I think he opts for a kind of end of all things, but there are a lot of moments along the way when he’s interested in apocalypse as an unveiling. The first part seems more informed by that, but I think the second part ultimately goes toward the later definition. But when he’s conversing with Ramse late in the second part, essentially planning (in an admittedly odd way) the future of the brotherhood, that earlier definition can be seen as informing the scene and his decision to stop his destruction. It’s flitting about in other places as well.

When I was reading your stories, particularly Last Days, I kept wondering if what these characters were seeking might be called the Sublime. Is that a fair approach toward viewing these characters' motivations, or is there much more to it than that?

I did a lot of work with literary and philosophical ideas of the sublime in graduate school, and I think that that’s certainly there, an interesting way to approach it. I do think the actions of the brotherhood are more than a little extreme but the thing about most of the people in the cult is that they’re genuinely sincere: they’re really trying to get at something beyond life as we know it around us. Borchert is incredibly manipulative, but even he actually does have a core of basic belief in what he’s doing: it’s not about money and it’s only partly about power. In a way, I suppose, that makes them all the scarier. If you think of a grouping of religious people as doing things for very human motivations then their behavior is predictable. Many of them may never reach ecstatic heights, or may reach them only temporarily, but they also are likely to say "wait a minute, let’s think this through" instead of simply drinking the poisoned kool-ade. But if you have a group that really does believe fervently in what they’re doing, the behavior becomes unpredictable and very difficult to control. They’ve left the logic of the world behind to follow a higher logic. That’s why people often have to be deprogrammed when they leave a cult, because the very structure of their thought has changed. In any case, I think one of the terrifying things for Kline is that he can sense the appeal of it, that he can see how it might be possible for him to start to believe. That in itself is so terrifying that it leads him to a kind of madness and into something that either is a kind of rampage or a kind of holy wrath, depending on how you want to read it.

So would it be fair to say that at one level, Last Days revolves as much around how one interacts with his/her religious faith as it does around what motivates an apocalyptic cult?

Yes, it’s at least as much about that. Each of the different characters seem to have a little different position in regard to their religious faith. What you find about the cult is that, when you cut through that first layer of conditioned response everybody’s relationship to it is slightly different, that there are different levels of faith, different ways in which faith mixes with other things like pride or love of power, and different subsects with perhaps different levels of commitment. Kline is an outsider trying to negotiate a very complex structure of codes that’s there and trying to keep some sort of distance from it.

Instead of asking where you got the inspiration for your ideas, I want to reverse the order a bit: In what ways has the act of creating stories affected your views on the world and your interactions with others?

This is a very good question, and I don’t know that I have a very good or complete answer. I think writing stories has made me very curious about the world around me, and has attuned me to things and interactions that I otherwise would pay no attention to. It’s also taught me to hide the fact that I’m attuned and listening, since I find that behavior changes when it’s observed. I don’t think I’m always writing instead of living or always half-living the event and half-thinking about how that event might be transformed into fiction, but there are definitely moments when that does happen. I think writing’s made me more skeptical, but also more patient. I do think to be brutally honest that in some ways it’s made me more of a misanthrope, but in other ways much more empathetic with the world in general, but having said that I think I’d be hard-pressed to prove it. I also think, partly because of the controversy surrounding my first book, that writing has made me feel like I have to take responsibility for my own actions and be willing to stand behind them. I opened by saying that I feel like there’s less of me there when I’m not writing. I think the reverse is true; writing (admittedly in a complicated way) makes me feel more present in the world.

Thanks again, Brian, for agreeing to do this interview. It has been a real pleasure working with you on this.

Thanks again for the questions, which were good and very provocative.
Posted by Larry Nolen at 6:55 PM 6 comments
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Trying to grasp a (somewhat) poorly-written review, part III

In the name of fairness and because I said at one point that I'd point out something in his reviews if the situation merit it, this edition of "What annoys Larry about some of the reviews that he reads" will look at a just-published positive review, posted by Ken at Neth Space, of Joe Abercrombie's The Last Argument of Kings. I've known Ken for a while and while he and I occasionally have differences of opinion on books, it is always civil and what I'm going to say below will be equally civil. Besides, it's not as though I thought the entire review was rubbish (there were some good points made), but rather that the opening paragraph just was a bit jarring for me:

Last Argument of Kings (US, UK, Canada) is the closing argument of Joe Abercrombie’s answer to epic fantasy. Abercrombie embraces the cliché of fantasy, spins it around, turns it upside down, and covers it stinky, dark, sardonic wit – and then he surprised you. Not everyone believes he succeeds in these goals – often complaining that he still falls into same old traps – but I applaud his effort and the satiric success of it. In the Last Argument of Kings Abercrombie offers up more of the same from the previous two books and then adds some more with an ending that is simply brilliant.
Uh...where to begin? In reading this opening paragraph I chose to put aside any associations with Abercrombie's works (I have read and reviewed all three of them in 2008) and instead tried to think of this from a person who might be totally unfamiliar with his work. While Ken obviously has the very difficult task of balancing out what to reveal (as this is the closing volume in a trilogy) and what to conceal from readers who may or may not have read the first two volumes, his first two sentences make declarations without providing anything in the way of substance to them.

"Answer to epic fantasy"? Is epic fantasy some sort of monolithic entity all of the sudden? "Embraces the clichés of fantasy"? What clichés? If there are clichés, are they universal in all types of fantasy and not just epic fantasy (presuming that there is a monolithism to epic fantasy, as may be inferred from Ken's opening sentence)? Leaving aside the noun/pronoun needing to agree ("them," not "it" in reference to said clichés), I still have no clue at all (mind you, I'm thinking of this as someone who may have read a small part of his work or had just heard of him for the first time, not as someone who's read the first two books twice and the reviewed third one once) as to what he's referring to here. Way too vague. Sometimes, you just have to come out and say something like this: "Abercrombie takes a standard trope of epic fantasy, that of a guiding, mysterious wizard and a traveling troupe of miscreants and misfits and he tweaks the formula, creating a story in which the guiding wizard may be malicious and the miscreant troupe may not have a touching, Hallmark-worthy bonding moment." It gives enough of a hint as to what Abercrombie is up to, without spelling it out in laborious detail. Sometimes, you just have to provide something in the way of detail.

Since Last Argument of Kings is the third book in a trilogy, I’ll be light on the plot summary. The epic quest of Book 2, Before They Are Hanged (US, Uk, Canada), is complete and our adventures have returned. The war in the north continues, yet does come to an end while the central city of Adua becomes embroiled in issues regarding succession of the monarchy and a threat of invasion. Interesting and surprising things await the characters we’ve come to love (or hate) through the series.

Although personally I would have preferred a bit more in the way of recapitulating the plots of the first two books (presuming that the target reading audience is someone who wants to know if the third book is as good as the two prior works that possibly were read by this hypothetical reader), it is a difficult choice to make and while I disagree with it, I can understand Ken's reasoning here. After all, how does one balance covering works that may not have been read by a potential reader with the need to establish what specifically worked/didn't work in the concluding volume? I spent over a month trying to figure that out before I wrote my review of this book last year, so I know it isn't something that's easily done.

The most enjoyable aspect of The First Law trilogy is the way that Abercrombie plays with the tropes of epic fantasy – he fully embraces them while adding a satiric bite and unexpected outcomes. In my review of Before They Are Hanged I mentioned that this had lost the novelty of The Blade Itself – but I must say that Abercrombie rounds things out wonderfully in Last Argument of Kings. As the trilogy ends, the reader is finally let in on a bit of what’s been going on behind the scenes – and the end is decidedly not typical for epic fantasy. For experienced readers of the genre – basically, people who are in on the joke – the end will likely be something of a breath of fresh air. I imagine those that aren’t in on the joke (or don’t find it all that amusing) will simply think it stinks – or at least that it is not particularly satisfying in the way that people generally want things to end. I found it inspired as the mixed emotions rebelled against one another.
Again, I don't what to make of this "plays with the tropes of epic fantasy" without having a clear understanding of what Ken means here. Do agree on the loss of novelty in the second volume, however. As for the last half of this paragraph, it is again tied in to the difficult decision of what to include and what to withhold when reviewing a concluding volume to a multi-volume work. But it does sound a bit bland in a way, because there is nothing specific above that would give any smidgen of a hint of what this "joke" would be (I've read the book and I know it is in reference to how the character arcs unfold and how there isn't a nice, neat ending, but saying this is not by itself going to "spoil" anything. Sometimes, many reviewers are just too reluctant to delve into what it is that moved them in the first place about a story, with the end result being a review that is a bit too mushy in places).

Characterization remains a strong point – Inquisitor Glokta may be my favorite character in epic fantasy at the moment. The sardonic wit of his external and internal dialogue is priceless, while I can’t help but like this almost entirely unlikable person. Logen reveals his dark side and the Bloody Nine, Jezal grows as a character as he falls back to his roots, and that bastard Bayaz…. I was also pleased to find out that Abercrombie has indeed been keeping Ardee around for a reason – though her character is a little too witty and unconvincing.

While I would have considered using a quote here or there to support these assertions, at least there's something specific here being said about the characters and Ken's reactions to them. Just a little bit more explanation on the "whys" and I would have been satisfied, but this isn't bad at all. It would have made me want to read the third book if I hadn't already read it a year ago.

Series come to an end – and I’ve said before how it’s often a bitter-sweet kind of moment. With the Last Argument of Kings, Abercrombie seems to have poured on the bitter – which makes it all the more sweet. Abercrombie hasn’t been writing the standard epic fantasy trilogy – and the proof is in the ending. This series has overwhelmed many and under-whelmed more than few – but it something that fans of epic fantasy simply must read for themselves. 8.5/10

All in all, not a really "bad" review, but rather one that left me wishing that Ken had explored things more, as there just wasn't that "personal" connection between reviewer and book there that sometimes makes for a great review. Mind you, I myself have made just about all the mistakes that I note above, but hey, sometimes the point in critiquing another's review is to learn just what it is about your own that is lacking. Besides, diff'rent stroke, diff'rent folks, right? It's a review that'll work for many, even if it didn't work as well for me. Can't say he didn't engage the book, only that he didn't do it as well as perhaps some (me?) would have liked.

Now I hope others will do the same for mine...perhaps note how I quote too much on occasion, how I focus on theme to the detriment of plot/characterization analysis, and how I don't rip books to shreds as I perhaps ought to do, etc. Turnabout is fair play, no?
Posted by Larry Nolen at 12:54 AM 11 comments
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