Seems like some are really "confessing" their feelings this week...

Over at Westeros, many of the "regulars" in a series of Terry Goodkind-bashing threads (up to XXX) are doing a "Tairy-themed Avatar Week" in "honor" of the release of the purportedly final volume of his Sword of Truth series. While I don't mind a bit of teasing, something tells me that photoshopped images such as the one below might not be the easiest of things to explain to those who are not aware of the myriad in-jokes made at Goodkind's expense over "noble goats" (from the ill-regarded seventh volume, The Pillars of Creation, which has a "noble" goat named Betty in it) or the "almost rape" theme which seems to run throughout most of the series (usually it is the protagonist's female lead, the Confessor Kahlan, who comes close to being raped multiple times in the novel). But with that in mind and in no way urging people to get graphic in their mockery of Goodkind, here is an image that I copied from a poster's avatar and enlarged:


This might be pushing things a bit too far, but for those reading this who know the history behind such jokes, it might also be a tad funny as well. I'm just posting this as the most extreme example of the "Tairy Bashing" images that I hope to endure seeing. I'm just praying that the series will "end," that the related stories apparently planned that will star some of the SoT characters will fall flat, and that this series can be banished to Gor Land, where it certainly belongs, in my opinion at least.

Until then, expect to hear of more "almost rape" jokes involving "noble goats" and other such matters that touch upon "important human themes."

Edit: For those wanting to see some "important human themes," I provide you with a much more eye-appealing avatar, again taken from a regular there and enlarged:


Enjoy!

Question for the blog readers

Although I browse through many websites and blogs almost every day, I am certain that I am missing some excellent review/commentary sites that perhaps ought to be added to my blogroll. Anyone reading this who has a blog that they'd like to nominate for inclusion in my links section? Perhaps one for a favorite author that I have yet to add?

Please let me know via the comments here or perhaps an email (address found in my profile), as it'd be nice to recognize others who are devoted to covering all things genre...and beyond.

And speaking of non-genre items, I wrote a review for my non-genre blog about one of my two favorite books of the year to date. Since this author has had a few genre-related releases in the past few years, perhaps some here would like to read this particular book.

But again, thanks in advance for those who do pass along links for me to consider!

Scott Lynch, Red Seas Under Red Skies

Scott Lynch's debut novel, The Lies of Locke Lamora, was an enjoyable caper novel starring a band of (almost, but not quite stereotypical) thieves who plan heists and who mostly enjoy what they can take from life, both literally and figuratively I suppose. Its critical and popular (well, online popularity, anyways) success propelled Lynch into consideration for the Campbell Award (for Best "New" Writer) and the World Fantasy Award in the Best Novel category for the book. The combination of wit, excitement, and interesting characters more than compensated for the perceived spottiness of the prose and the sometimes-awkward pacing. It was an enjoyable book that held enough hints of goodness to lead many to eagerly awaiting the second volume in the planned seven-volume sequence, Red Seas Under Red Skies.

Unfortunately, the expected improvements in prose did not overcome the rather drab and boring plot. Jean and Locke are now in a new locale, engaged in a years-long quest to break into this super-restricted place called the Sinspire. The enemies they made by the end of the first book become aware of their presence. Some things happen, leading to them boarding a ship. And there the problems began for me.

Lynch still has a gift for turning phrases. There were many times in the first half of the novel that I smiled at how well he accomplished making witticisms that did not feel forced. However, as the story progressed, I felt as though the repartees overwhelmed what was happening. I found myself wishing that Lynch had not overindulged himself with demonstrating the bon mots and the bold demeanor of Jean and Locke, as it seemed that the pacing suffered greatly as a result. While there were not as many cringe-worthy statements of the obvious as was contained in the first book, the plot developments and ending of Red Seas Under Red Skies left me feeling a bit underwhelmed. Then again, it is very difficult for an author to write a story largely set at sea, devoid of the usual "exploration" devices, and make it seem fresh and invigorating. Perhaps the upcoming third volume, Republic of Thieves, will fulfill better the promise that the first volume held.

In summation, Red Seas Under Red Skies was a slight step down in the adventure/excitement scale, while the writing and characterization was good, although still there were moments when Lynch might have been better served to have cut out on the witticisms and improve the pacing and the overall plot of this novel. Mildly recommended for those who enjoyed the first book, but not a book that I would consider to be anywhere near the best of the year.

Note: The image here is taken from the signed limited-edition, which I own. I can say that the quality of the binding and the illustrations within were excellent, but since my review is for the story, I thought that it'd be better to mention this in an aside at the end rather than in the body of the review.
Publication Date: July 31, 2007 (US), Hardcover; October 30, 2007, Limited-Edition Hardcover

Publisher: Bantam Spectra (Hardcover), Subterranean Press (Limited-Edition Hardcover)

Obscure Classics: Edward Whittemore's Jerusalem Quartet

Sometimes, for whatever reason may be imagined under the sun, authors of brilliant works appear to be destined to fade into obscurity. Perhaps the public was not ready for such a challenging work, or maybe the author's oevre was never heavily promoted during his or her lifetime. Whatever the reason, there are many excellent works, both within, without, and skirting the edges of speculative fiction that have had a disproportionate influence on writers and readers. In the first of what hopefully shall be an irregular series, I want to highlight works that have flown under the collective radars of SF fans over the years (with the noticeable exceptions, of course). I shall begin by discussing briefly Edward Whittemore and the four novels that comprise the critically-lauded (but publicly ignored) Jerusalem Quartet: Sinai Tapestry (1977), Jerusalem Poker (1978), Nile Shadows (1983), and Jericho Mosaic (1987).

Edward Whittemore lived more in one life than most readers of this article could ever hope to live in 5 lifetimes. Born in New Hampshire, Whittemore went from becoming a Yale graduate (degree in history), to a US Marine officer, to a CIA spy, to a newspaper reporter, Middle East correspondent splitting his time between New York City and Jerusalem, to a photocopy assistant his last years before dying of prostate cancer in 1995. When reading his novels, one gets the sense that not only did Whittemore live an exciting life, but that his experiences deeply affected how he portrayed the characters and situations.

The first two novels, Sinai Tapestry and Jerusalem Poker, take exaggerated physical traits and outlandish behavior as the basis for telling about the Middle East region during the last decades of Ottoman rule. From a 7'7" deaf giant who writes a multi-volume work on Levantine sexual practices to an Irish revolutionary who escapes the Black and Tans by dressing up as a Poor Claire nun and later swapping identities with an elderly survivor of the Battle of Balaclava, to the secret "owner" of the Ottoman Empire, Sinai Tapestry is a tale that wanders dangerous close to being a farce before Whittemore adroitly pulls back on the plot reins, with the end result of a moving tale that might appeal to fans of Terry Pratchett's work, although Whittemore certainly keeps his story grounded in the realities of the early 20th century even despite the oversized heroes going through it.

In Jerusalem Poker, a twelve year-long poker game begins in the city in the late 1920s, overseen by its 3000 year-old guardian, with three main participants (Christian, Muslim, and Jew) and a cast of thousands participating on occasion. At stake is control of the Holy City itself. Whittemore uses metaphor and symbolic character actions to illustrate just what has been at stake in the region for centuries, as well as making a more pointed critique of what was occurring there during the time of the Lebanese Civil War.

The third and fourth volumes, Nile Shadows and Jericho Mosaic, contain more of a spy novel aspect to them. Nile Shadows is set in Cairo around the time of Rommel's defeat at El Alamein in 1942. There is a greater emphasis on intrigue and with characters such as the mysterious Monks (presumably those of the Mount Sinai monastery, the oldest Christian monastery in the world still operating), the action becomes more serious and Whittemore's writing reflects the uncertainties of that time while foreshadowing the conflicts that would erupt in the region after the establishment of the state of Israel in 1948. Nile Shadows is the largest of the four novels at a shade over 450 pages and it serves well as a transition from the more mythical and exaggerated aspects of the first two volumes to the rather tragic and moving final volume.

Jericho Mosaic does not contain any of the mystical or outlandish scenes from the prior volumes. Set in the near-present (1960s-1980s) Middle East, it is an espionage novel that doubles as a pointed commentary on the tragic nature of the fighting and how Jews and Arabs alike were little more than pawns in the chess match that the United States and the Soviet Union were then playing in the region and elsewhere. It also contains some of the more moving passages in the series and it closes in such a way as to make the reader pause, step back for a moment, and then contemplate everything that has gone on, not just in the novels but also in the actual Middle East. The metaphors that Whittemore set up in the previous volumes are fully realized in Jericho Mosaic.

In his lifetime, none of Whittemore's novels sold more than 3,000 hardcover copies or 10,000 paperback editions. Until the 2002 reprinting of these books by Old Earth Books, none of them had been in print since the 1980s and even now, that reissue has gone out of print. Yet Whittemore, with his talents for characterization and the use of exaggeration and metaphors to craft visual scenes, has been lauded by a great many writers. Jeff VanderMeer is one who regularly mentions Whittemore as an influence on his work and there are others writing in the speculative fiction field who likewise have claimed Whittemore as an influence. It is for this as well as for his entertaining and thought-provoking stories that I put forth Whittemore's Jerusalem Quartet as an "Obscure Classic."

Review of M. John Harrison's Nova Swing (2007 Clarke Award Winner)

Note: The beginning to this review was inspired by reading a review of this book by John Clute. Although my take is a bit different than his in places, I felt that I needed to acknowledge this influence on the opening part of my review.

Solitude - the word, like others derived from the Latin solitatem, evokes quite a few emotions when examined from various angles. Gabriel García Márquez in his seminal work, One Hundred Years of Solitude, illustrates all the forms that solitude can take.

In M. John Harrison's Arthur C. Clarke Award-winning novel, Nova Swing, solitude is a physical place called Saudade (taking its name from the Portuguese word for solitude). Although set in the world of his 2002 novel, Light, and although the mysterious Kefahuchi Tract appears here as well, Nova Swing has only the most tenuous of connections with that earlier novel. Instead of exploring the heart of the Tract, the characters here in Nova Swing remind me more of Humphrey Bogart and crew in the classic movie Casablanca. Rick's Café Américain has instead become a city within a stretch affected by a recent falling of the Kefahuchi Tract's odd physics onto parts of the Earth itself. The geography is strange, with everything seemingly skewed and even "reality" itself not being what it seems. And then there are those mysterious black and white cats that come and go with the dusk and the dawn.

Such a strange, weird place. The reader never will be able to feel "accustomed" to the place; it is simply too twisted and dreamlike, which is exactly the mood that Harrison aimed to achieve. The story itself is relatively simple, that of the aptly named "travel agent" named Vic Serotonin who often enters Saudade for clients. His latest client is a mysterious and unpredictable woman whose desire for a tour drives the action of this story. Shadowed by a detective intent on shutting down his technically illegal operation, Serotonin finds himself going ever deeper into a world in which the strange and warped become as "alive" as the characters themselves.

That is the bare-bones, mostly spoiler-free summation of the plot setup. Harrison is doing much more than just telling a simple story. With his use of words and the images evoked, Harrison addresses issues of imagination and perception in a way that allows for the reader to fill in the blanks eagerly rather than being forced down a single perceptual path by the author. Characters shift, their minds as much as their bodies are altered, and what happens is something that is more easily visualized than something put into mere verbal speech.

Nova Swing is perhaps the most difficult novel I have read this year in regards to summing up the plot. Harrison strives to create a setting in which the unfamiliar and the near non-describable become important parts of the action, with the intent to cause the reader to change perceptions and to consider even "everyday" matters from other angles. In a shade over 250 pages, Harrison realizes most of his ambitions and the end result, for me at least, was an almost literal mindfuck of a tale, with solitude having yet another dimension added to our concepts of it. One of the best and most challenging reads of this year.

Publication Date: November 9, 2006 (UK), Hardcover. September 25, 2007 (US), tradeback.

Publisher: Gollancz (UK), Bantam Spectra (US).

Review of Jeff Somers's The Electric Church

In a world where marketing has become key, sometimes the product falls short of expectations. Sometimes, it's a matter of the product not delivering what was promised in the advertisements. Other times, it's just not as "original" as it could have been. Still other times, the promotional materials seem to be more intriguing and exciting than the finished product itself.

Jeff Somers's debut novel, The Electric Church, falls into this last category for me. The marketing campaign was very impressive, with an intriguing website that seemed to promise a story that would be very immersive, with a setting that had the potential to have the best of the techno-thriller and psychological novels combined into one sleek package.

The book did not live up to this promise. The character of Avery Cates, a killer on the run in a post-industrial scarcity world, while amusing at times, was a bit trite and underdeveloped. The Monks, cyborgs who proclaimed a doctrine of salvation through the immortal transference of the mind into a robotic body, had the potential (again, that damning word) to make a statement about human desire, blah blah blah, but Somers fails to develop this possibility, instead focusing on a rather simple hunt-and-chase sequence that lasts most of the novel. Even the surroundings had that feel of being underdeveloped. It was as if the sketch of a very good novel was published. If only the finished product could have been done as well as its promotional website...

Needless to say, this was not a good read for me. Although Somers writes decently on the sentence level, he really failed to develop his promising idea into a story that would transcend its patische of thriller elements. As a result, the setting was bland, the characters blander, and the action a bit too trite and ultimately nothing memorable. A little more attention to characterization and development of the overarching premise would have gone a long way in making this book a more enjoyable experience than the pedestrian read it was for me.

Publication Date: September 25, 2007 (US). Tradeback.

Publisher: Orbit Books (US)

Review of Catherynne M. Valente's The Orphan's Tale: In the Cities of Coin and Spice

In a time and place where readers, especially those who are active online with blogs and message board sites, demand not just speed but also quality from their favorite authors, it becomes a bit of a frustrating task to wait for the author's next work. After all, the sequel might not equal the magic of the first, or beloved characters or settings might be abandoned for new vistas and other personae. Considering that the first half of Catherynne M. Valente's The Orphan's Tale, In the Night Garden, was a finalist for the 2007 World Fantasy Award for Best Novel, the weight of expectations can become too much for most books, even those as talented as Valente.

Thankfully, this second volume, In the Cities of Coin and Spice, not only maintains the story-within-a-story structure that made In the Night Garden an enchanting read, but that it pushed the frame story forward in such a way as to make the storyteller, the mysterious girl in the Sultan's garden with the tattooed eyes, herself a part of the overall arc of the storyline. Like its predecessor, In the Cities of Coin and Spice takes the framework of the nameless girl telling stories from her tattooed eyes to one of the Sultan's boys as the basis for tales that touch upon desire, loss, questing, and occasionally redemption. With djinn, funereal coins, and other symbols of death, life, and the in-between, Valente weaves many more tales within this volume that flit about the edges of our shared cultural pasts, with many twists that show that the standard formulas can be tweaked to reveal new truths about how stories reflect our presents as well as our pasts.

The pacing, development, and linking of the stories is on par with that of the first volume. While only the final connecting story held as much power for me as the first volume's Bear thread, it was enough to convince me that this second volume is a worthy successor to the first. Valente is a damn fine storyteller and I know I shall be re-reading these two volumes many times in the years to come, as the re-readability is very high. Readers will read these tales not just to find out what happens next, but also shall re-read them to marvel at how well these stories fit in with the older oral storytelling tradition. This is a serious candidate for my personal Best of 2007 list and I would be disappointed if none of the major awards (Hugo, Nebula, WFA) do not consider In the Cities of Coin and Spice for the 2008-2009 award season.

Publication Date: October 30, 2007 (US), tradeback.

Publisher: Bantam Spectra