Jun 06 2018

Sword of Destiny by Andrzej Sapkowski

Sword of Destiny collects six stories that take place early in the personal history Geralt of Rivia, a Witcher; that is, a human who has gained supernatural fighting abilities through a combination of training and magic. He is the central figure of four previous books by Sapkowski: The Last Wish, Blood of Elves, The Time of Contempt, and Baptism of Fire. (The order of publication in their original Polish may be a bit different.) The remaining three Witcher books — The Tower of the Swallow, The Lady of the Lake, and Season of Storms — are now available in English.

I was first introduced to Sapkowski in 2012 by a Russian friend who was surprised, ok, astonished, that such a massively popular author was not widely known in the English-speaking world. The appearance of the later Witcher books nearly two decades after they were originally written means that they are doubly distant: translated from another language and culture, and transported through time. The gap between 1990s fantasy and 2010s fantasy may not be as great as, say, the gap between 1950s science fiction and 1970s science fiction, but it is still noticeable.

Sword of Destiny most closely resembles The Last Wish, as both are loosely connected stories of Geralt’s various adventures. Sword of Destiny lacks the framing narrative of The Last Wish and simply presents the tales; as a book, it is none the worse for doing without the frame. The stories are classic fantasy adventures, including a dragon hunt, a duel, and a tale of misdirection featuring a doppelgänger. Sapkowski subverts each of them, changing the roles and motivations to confound the expectations of readers expecting the typical.

The stories in the second half of the book concern the early life of Ciri, the Child of Destiny who figures so prominently in the main sequence of Witcher novels: where she came from, how she first met Geralt, how that set larger events in motion. There is also an unusually forthright statement of a pro-choice position, which I presume would have been noticeable and controversial in 1990s Poland, when the Polish Pope was still alive and clerical Catholicism very much a force in public life in Sapkowski’s country.

“My mother? No, Calanthe. I presume she had a choice … Or perhaps she didn’t? No, but she did; a suitable spell or elixir would have been sufficient … A choice. A choice which should be respected, for it is the hold and irrefutable right of every woman.” (p. 345, ellipses in original)

All of them are solid fantasy adventures, with the various twists keeping them from feeling too time-worn. For readers of the whole series, the appearance of Ciri adds depth and fills in important pieces of Sapkowski’s longer narrative. For newcomers to the Witcher, Sword of Destiny would be a perfectly acceptable starting point. I enjoyed these stories and look forward to three more books concerning Geralt.

Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2018/06/06/sword-of-destiny-by-andrzej-sapkowski/

Jun 06 2018

Space Opera by Catherynne M Valente

Woof, and I thought LIFEL1K3 was gonzo.

The good: I really loved the fact that the two main (human) heroes are both British Muslims tho of vastly different stripes. Catherynne M Valente does a killer job of imagining a future world and, particularly, a future England capable of producing a band as genre- and gender-bending as Decibel Jones and the (unfortunately named) Absolute Zeros. I really enjoyed the ending, even if I felt it a tad under-baked and deserving of further exploration. And I definitely enjoyed this book about a billion times more than the awful Deathless, most likely because the relationships were a billion times healthier. I could speculate that this might have something to do with the ending of her relationship with her Ukrainian ex-husband, but I’m an incorrigible gossip, so what do I know. I’m just glad I wasn’t grossed out by this book’s portrayal of romance and sex and compatibility the way I was with Deathless’.

The bad: this book is A Lot. And if you enjoy Ms Valente, then you will enjoy this surfeit of her style: long, witty ramblings that come to a sharp point, so long as you don’t let your mind drift off along one of the many, many tangents. It is very much a disco ball of a book: glittery and illuminating but do you really want to stare at it for too long? It is a bit too brittle and bright for me, alas, but it’s the kind of things lots of other people (including Doug: hi, Doug!) really go for.

I actually recommended this to a friend of mine who loves Eurovision as much as Ms Valente does. It’s a fun take on an intergalactic competition that could end in humanity’s extermination, and I greatly enjoyed the characters, but it was just So Much crammed into a small space with uneven pacing and emphasis. Like everything at the party that didn’t involve Dess should have maybe been more relevant? I loved that there were heaps of imaginatively created alien species, but some were definitely created better than others: nothing about the Lummuti, for example, stood up to scrutiny, tho I really wanted it to.

Space Opera was fun, I didn’t hate it, but the chances of me going back for more are vanishingly slim. Thank goodness this is a standalone: the book gets extra points for that alone.

Doug was more of a fan. Read his reviews here and here.

Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2018/06/06/space-opera-by-catherynne-m-valente-2/

Jun 04 2018

My Grave Ritual (Warlock Holmes #3) by G.S. Denning

If A Study In Brimstone was the introduction to Warlock Holmes, and The Hell-Hound Of The Baskervilles essentially his origin story, then My Grave Ritual brings the machinations of The Woman to the forefront. Not for G.S. Denning the consignment of Irene Adler to a single story. She is, instead, a constant, if elusive, presence throughout this book (tho she was, of course, introduced much earlier in ASiB.) Coincidentally, her significance becomes more pronounced at the same time that our hero Dr John Watson’s romantic inclinations do. I am already relishing a Mary Morstan-Irene Adler showdown in the upcoming Sign Of Nine. Assuming, of course, that Mary exists in this brilliant alternate telling of the Sherlock Holmes oeuvre, one that combines John Watson’s excellent deductive skills with Warlock Holmes’ supernatural powers while adding a heaping dose of humor in the process. I loled when the demon Covfefe showed up, not my first shout of laughter with this book and certainly not my last.

With the third book in the Warlock Holmes series, it becomes clear that Mr Denning isn’t merely writing a spoof: he is building a cohesive narrative with his adaptations, adding elements that run through each story to form an overarching plot that is far more interesting to me than the somewhat cold calculations and case-of-the-week nature of the originals. This is actually a departure, as I tend to prefer standalone works to epic series: kudos to Mr Denning for flipping that on its head for me! I’m also really impressed with how he sorted through the many short stories to pick out the ones best suited to his purpose, and am looking forward to seeing where he goes next, since it is very clear that he has a lot of exciting, intelligent plot in store for us, if these first three books have been anything to go by.

See my review of the previous novel in the series, The Hell-Hound Of The Baskervilles.

Interview with the author himself to follow soon!

6/27/18 Here’s the interview!

Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2018/06/04/my-grave-ritual-warlock-holmes-3-by-g-s-denning/

Jun 03 2018

Space Opera by Catherynne M. Valente — The B Side

In her “Liner Notes” to Space Opera, Catherynne Valente thanks, “however obliquely … Douglas Adams, or at least his ghost, who looms somewhat benevolently over all science fiction comedy.” He did more than just hover over my review, he provided the framework of the lead paragraph and set the tone for much of the rest of the piece as well. A couple of sentences later, Valente adds, “Good lord, without Hitchhiker’s Guide, I would disappear in a puff of logic.” As someone who still has basically all six hours of the original radio show lodged in his brain, I can relate. I could no more write about Space Opera without picking up some of Adams’ style than I could say “Oolon Colluphid” without adding “trilogy of philosophical blockbusters.”

John Scalzi has often said that Hitchhiker’s was an extinction-level event for humorous science fiction. “It was so clearly, obviously, blindingly popular that it just obliterated everything else in the field.” It’s worse than that, in a way, because even Douglas Adams was really Douglas Adams only about half the time.

So Valente is going full-tilt at a windmill that has bested many a lance in the forty-odd (some very odd) years since Hitchhiker’s was published. Why does it work in Space Opera? Three reasons, I think. First, over-the-top is one of her natural idioms. The long and funny and occasionally random list; the apparent non sequitur that comes to a sharp point; the piling on of absurdist detail and action — all of these are apparent throughout the Fairyland books, for example. When Valente moves this approach to space, it doesn’t mean that she’s doing Douglas Adams. It means that she’s doing Valente in space, which happens to read a lot like Douglas Adams.

Second, much of what she is up to in Space Opera is the obverse of what Adams was about in Hitchhiker’s. The first sequence in Hitchhiker’s is about blowing up the earth. (One of the threads that became Hitchhiker’s was the concept of a radio series, with each episode about a different way that the world came to an end.) All of Space Opera is about avoiding that very outcome. Adams’ British everyman has no trouble with that aspect of his role, it’s coming to terms with everything else that he can’t quite get the hang of. Valente’s everymen struggle hard both to attain and to get away from the remarkable unremarkability that was Arthur Dent’s very stock in trade. By flipping key elements, Valente gives herself more space to sing in the same key as Adams without simply doing a cover version.

Finally, the two authors are telling different kinds of stories, and the difference is right there in the title. One is an opera, the other is a guide. Adams’ picaresques famously went on to become a trilogy in five parts. The open-endedness of the Hitchhiker’s stories and universe meant that the only real limits were Adams’ ability to get the ideas onto a page. The Guide could always be revised. In extremis, new roving reporters could probably have been conjured to cast a slightly hungover eye on the galaxy’s foibles. By contrast, Space Opera is complete in itself. This is no Ring cycle. Once the skinny guy has sung, the curtain comes down and the audience streams out to the after-parties. Taking the opposite approach from Adams’ strengthens Valente’s work, especially in the inevitable comparisons.

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One of the book’s additional small pleasures was its depiction of Oort’s cat, Capo. A series of improbable events gives her the ability to talk, to which she attaches as much importance as one would expect from a cat. “The key to a happy life, Capo devoutly believed, was never giving much of a damn what happened in any given day so long as you got in a nap, a kill, and a snuggle, and the snuggle was optional.” A few lines later, Valente sorts out the priority of the remaining two elements of a good day: “The nap was the really important thing. The nap was all.” (Ch. 18)

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Late in the story, the temptations of Decibel Jones are accompanied by a drink that is almost but not quite entirely unlike tea. Here is part of Jones telling off the tempter, “Allow me to be one of the few historically significant Britons to say; India is none of my business. Thanks for the tea, Bloodtub. See you on the morrow, as it were. Upon St. Crispin’s Day.” Jones takes up a new kind of Britishness, one that might well have befuddled Arthur Dent as much as the machinations of the NutriMatic.

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Space Opera, douze points.

Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2018/06/03/space-opera-by-catherynne-m-valente-the-b-side/

Jun 02 2018

Silent House by Orhan Pamuk

Silent House, Orhan Pamuk’s second novel, tells some of the stories of three generations of an extended family. Pamuk rotates among five narrators, each of whom tells their part in the first person. Published in 1983, the book’s main action is set in 1980, just before another military coup shook Turkey.

The house in question is where the family’s matriarch, the grandmother of the other narrators, has lived since she and her husband, the late Dr. Selâhattin Darvinoglu, were exiled from Istanbul by the Committee of Union and Progress (the original “Young Turks”) because of his political views. When Fatma and Selâhattin came to the area, in a time when most Ottoman subjects had no last name (as they did not; Dr. Selâhattin chose one after Atatürk decreed that every Turk should have one), and the surrounding area was nothing but fishing villages. In the intervening decades, the area has become a beach-side playground for people from Istanbul. Many of the plots near their house have been filled with apartment buildings, and indeed some of the younger generation want their grandmother to do the same to prop up the family’s precarious finances.

The first narrator Pamuk introduces is Recep, a dwarf who is the grandmother’s servant. When more of the family comes to visit, he serves them as well, cooking, shopping, cleaning up. Readers soon learn that he is also Selâhattin’s illegitimate child, born to a woman who had served in the household but forced, in Fatma’s younger days, to grow up in a village elsewhere.

Fatma herself is the second narrator. She seldom speaks to the other characters, save for giving orders to Recep, or accusing him of one thing or another. Pamuk allows readers to hear her interior monologue, as she recalls various parts of her life. Married off at age 15 — the process does not seem to have been much more than “he’s a doctor, why not?” — she grows increasingly estranged from him as he embraces science and secularism while she retains the upper-class Ottoman religiosity of her youth. She was a lively and energetic youth, but she’s a mean old lady, and was meaner still in her middle age when she had more physical strength.

The third narrator is named Hasan, and he is the first of three in the grandchildren’s generation. He is the son of Selâhattin’s other illegitimate son, Recep’s brother Ismail, who sells lottery tickets for a living, meaning that he is even poorer than Recep. They live not far from the silent house. Hasan is nearing the end of his schooling, but he can’t be bothered with much of it. He has fallen in with nationalist gangsters, and early on Pamuk shows them shaking down storekeepers, with Hasan desperate to prove himself as tough as others in his little clique.

Faruk is the fourth. He teaches history in Istanbul and has come down to the seaside house with other family members for a traditional summer visit. Faruk also enjoys going to a nearby archive where he does some research into local history, trying to piece together life stories from the traces left in the records. He is heir to his father’s and his grandfather’s predilections: drinking and writing. Selâhattin spent decades trying to write an encyclopedia in the Enlightenment tradition but geared to his countrymen. He believed that there were millions just waiting for him to explain why Turkey had fallen behind the West. He died not long after reaching the letter O, but his manuscript remained unpublished. Faruk is trying to write history, but he is too fond of raki to make much progress.

Faruk’s younger brother Metin is the fifth. Like Hasan, he is nearing the end of his schooling. Unlike Hasan, he is diligent in his studies, and he makes a considerable amount of money tutoring other wealthy high school students. Both Hasan and Metin have big dreams, and are not clear at all about how to attain them. Both are also clueless about and inappropriate around women their own age. More than inappropriate, actually.

I can see the art in what Pamuk is doing; I can admire his technique, especially in just his second book; I can see where approaches that he developed in Silent House flowered in books like The New Life or Snow. But actually reading the book, I struggled not to pronounce the Eight Deadly Words and close its covers. I suppose that’s mostly an illustration that mundane fiction often doesn’t hold my interest, even when it’s written by an author whose later works are undeniably great.

Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2018/06/02/silent-house-by-orhan-pamuk/

Jun 01 2018

Space Opera by Catherynne M. Valente

Space Opera, I think, is wild. Really wild. You just won’t believe how strangely, weirdly, mind-bogglingly wild it is. I mean, you may think it was wild when Finnish heavy metal dudes in monster costumes won a continent-wide contest with “Chanson” in the name, but that’s just peanuts to Space Opera. After a while the style settles down a bit and the book starts telling you things that you actually need to know like how it’s all down to cows in the end and how becoming Englishblokeman confers immunity to abnormality.

Actually, no, that’s wrong.

The style never does settle down, much less move quietly to the suburbs with just the one spouse and a suitable number of progeny. It’s full-on electric and eclectic glam pretty much from start to finish, and that is meet and right and proper because what this book is, y’see, is Eurovision in Space. Eurovision. In SPAAAACE. Not small-bore space of carefully calculated molecular ratios and sensible orbital trajectories and a minimal amount of handwavium to allow interstellar travel. No, this is Tsar Bomba space, oozy gooey, loosey-goosey space filled to the n-dimensional brim with life, and with song. Bug eyes ain’t in it. (If Eurovision is an unfamiliar concept, Valente has written the perfect introduction and explainer.)

Take, for example, the Yurtmak of Planet Ynt, a deranged gutter ball of gas-jungles and carnivorous rivers hurtling through the beer-bottle-strewn lanes of the gravitational bowling alley that is septuple star system Nu Scorpii. Improbably, the body of an adult Yurtmak is basically the same as a human’s, if slightly a snailier color … Unfortunately for all of us, they also have heads. The head of a Yurtmak can best be described as what you would get if a hippo mated with a chain saw and produced something you wouldn’t let into public school even with a hat on, who then went on to have an unhappy affair with a spiny puffer fish, whereupon, at the height of a particularly pustulant, turgid puberty, the resulting grandchild’s face exploded. (Ch. 14)

There’s a zombie virus, various collective intelligences, massively intelligent pink algae, the “majestic stone citizens of the Utorak Formation,” plus “postcapitalist glass balloons filled with sentient gases all called Ursula,” and much more besides. The galaxy is teeming with life. “Yes, life is the opposite of rare and precious. It’s everywhere; it’s wet and sticky; it has all the restraint of a toddler left too long at day care without a juice box.” Valente has an answer for Enrico Fermi, whose paradox spurs much of Space Opera‘s first chapter: “…just then, when the [Los Alamos] desert sun was so hot and close overhead that for once Enrico was glad he’d gone bald so young, just then, when he looked up into the blue sky blistering with emptiness and wondered why it should be quite as empty as all that, just at that moment, and, in fact, up until fairly recently, everybody was terribly distracted by the seemingly inevitable, white-hot existential, intellectual, and actual obliteration of total galactic war.” (All quotations Ch. 1)

The Sentience Wars turned, in Valente’s memorable phrase, on who was people and who was meat.

Continue reading

Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2018/06/01/space-opera-by-catherynne-m-valente/

May 30 2018

LIFEL1K3 (LIFEL1K3 #1) by Jay Kristoff

For real, that was less Romeo & Juliet meets The Terminator, as the blurb says, than it was Westworld meets the Russian Revolution (with heavy Tank Girl influences.) It was crazy, in the best possible way. I was genuinely intrigued by Jay Kristoff’s narrative choices throughout the book, and tho I didn’t necessarily like the ending, assuming this is the first book in a series, I’m okay with the general idea of having it end on an “oh fuck, that was bad, what happens next?” note. I just wish that Mr Kristoff had given us a Star War before an Empire Strikes Back, to ease us into it.

Anyway, seventeen year-old Eve Carpenter is eking out a living as a mech-gladiator in a post-apocalyptic hellscape, earning credsticks to buy medicine for her ailing grandfather, Silas. Her best friend is Lemon Fresh, a fifteen year-old orphan Silas took in off the streets. Her other loyal companions are a robot named Cricket and a blitzhund — mostly construct, inherently canine — named Kaiser. When the girls and their robots go to loot a plane crash in order to earn more credsticks, they find far more than they bargained for in the form of a handsome android whose appearance stirs up memories that will upend Eve’s entire life and identity.

This is a universe in which Asimov’s Three Laws of Robotics apply… until the day they don’t. Mr Kristoff riffs effortlessly off of all sorts of cultural references as he builds a gonzo adventure which eschews the simpering prissiness of a lot of popular YA novels that feature female heroines. Eve and Lemon are ride or die loyal to one another, sharing a bond and a sense of humor that anyone with a bestest can relate to. The hot android is definitely a love interest but he doesn’t automatically become the center of Eve’s universe, which is super refreshing. And I’m still chewing over that ending! I did not see the twist coming at all, and I’m totally freaked out by what happened after, to the point where I’m not even sure if I’m mad about it. All I know is that I’m definitely reading the sequel, and I’m kinda hoping Lemon is acknowledged as the real heroine of the piece, because she is a rolling badass and my favorite (and because I definitely identify with her more than with Eve. Her “tell me honestly” question to Zeke made me crack up far more than I should have.)

And the language choices! Sumptuous, true cert’. Future slang can sometimes feel forced, especially when it’s teen slang, especially when it’s oft repeated as is the way of slang and teens, but this was really well done. If I had more time in my life, I’d look up more of Mr Kristoff’s work, because he is really good at this writing thing and I admire very much what he’s done here. When’s the sequel come out? I wants it. In the meantime, regardless of what I just said, I’ve bought a copy of The Illuminae Files THAT I WILL NEVER HAVE THE TIME TO READ OH WELL.

Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2018/05/30/lifel1k3-lifel1k3-1-by-jay-kristoff/

May 26 2018

The Hell-Hound of the Baskervilles (Warlock Holmes #2) by G.S. Denning

I seriously underestimated my reading load (again) and spent the last few chapters of this book in a reading panic. Fortunately, it’s a good, fun read, tho I feel that the last half of the book, a mash-up of The Hound Of The Baskervilles and Warlock Holmes’ origin story, suffered from the same flaws that riddle the source material: it drags in a way that stifles suspense, despite G. S. Denning’s efforts to liven up the storyline with magic, demons and humor. Regardless, this book is still terrific fun, especially if you like your mysteries with healthy doses of the supernatural and irreverence. I laughed even as Mr Denning poked fun at me as a football fan and a bicyclist (and the comic book references are superb! Tho I think the joke in Silver Blaze was told better than the one in Baskervilles.) I also appreciated the symmetry of the novel, as well as the shout-out to Benedict Cumberbatch.

Looking forward to reading the third book soon, tho I just realized I have like four or five (or seven, gulp) others I need to get through first. And ugh, I’m getting a migraine as I type, oh no.

Read my review of the previous novel in the series, A Study In Brimstone.

Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2018/05/26/the-hell-hound-of-the-baskervilles-warlock-holmes-2-by-g-s-denning/

May 23 2018

Furyborn (Empirium #1) by Claire Legrand

You know there’s a problem with a book when you get to the end, find out it’s the first in a trilogy and groan out loud. I mean, the prologue essentially tells you the main plot of not only this book but the next (and who even knows, maybe the third given how dragged out this book felt!) I felt that the prologue itself was rather overwrought and was happy to settle down quietly into the next few chapters, but as I kept reading, I found myself growing steadily more annoyed with Claire Legrand’s choices. She kept pulling focus to the least important parts of scenes instead of maintaining dramatic tension, often with minor character interjections or, less frequently but also less forgiveably, with just bad writing. It made for a narrative that was at once chaotic and desperately dull, because most of the chaos came from wildly unimportant things suddenly thrust into the limelight for no reason I could think of besides a weird attempt at verisimilitude (tho which, staaaahp. It’s fiction: the minor character doesn’t have to pull focus in the conversation just to remind the reader he’s there when important characters are talking. Yes, that happens IRL but real life is messy and not a freaking novel.)

Essentially, this is the story of two women divided by a thousand years. While I can accept, somewhat grudgingly, the idea that the main technological change in that millennium was the loss of magic and the discovery of gunpowder, the idea that The Empire as it’s described in the book had essentially stood for that length of time is laughable. This book would have been so much more plausible given a shorter time gap. That said, of the two women, I found Eliana to be the slightly more bearable one. Forced to serve the Empire in order to protect her family, she’s conflicted about her role as a bounty hunter, even before her mother becomes the latest victim in a series of unexplained kidnappings. Eliana throws in her lot with the rebels to seek out her mother and protect her younger brother, and discovers her connection to a woman out of legend: Rielle, the long-dead Sun Queen.

Or Rielle, the incredibly tedious, as I prefer to think of her. Basically, she’s the only person ever to have access to the seven elements, as everyone else gets just one and needs to use a physical object to focus their castings through, a limitation she does not possess. Rielle’s life is somehow strictly controlled by her father and a priest because she’s oh so dangerous, yet she runs freely around the palace with her best friends, the crown prince and his cousin/fiancee? When her powers are discovered, she’s put through seven unlikely but life-threatening trials where Ms Legrand’s horrible mastery of priorities shines through brightest. Rielle is all-powerful! But she can’t control her powers! But she can’t access her powers! But she doesn’t know what to do with them! But she’s afraid she’ll harm people when she uses them! If she can use them! There’s no consistency, and it’s all a hot, muddled mess.

And ugh, the sex. I thought it was oddly graphic in a bodice-ripping way, not in the down-to-earth manner that I expect from good YA fiction. As a boy-crazy lady myself, I totally get having a thing for any hot guy that crosses your path, but Furyborn was just Too Much. There’s a huge difference between thinking a dude is hot and wanting to bone him as soon as your current love interest walks off-screen. Someone more socially conscious than I am pointed out that the women being ostensibly bi but really just acting like cats in heat all the time was actually damaging to bi rep, and I would tend to agree. I was especially annoyed by Rielle’s inappropriate urges in inappropriate places: not as bad as in some trashy romances I’ve read but still an annoying trope. Oh, and the way her powers manifested in response to her sexual urges (and vice versa) was absurd to the point of laughable.

There’s a lot of potentially interesting stuff going on in Furyborn (even if I did think the introduction of wraiths was way too deus ex machina) but the world-building could not withstand the really poor narrative choices. I won’t be reading the rest of this trilogy when there are so many other actually good books to read, I’m afraid. I’m disappointed because this sounds like exactly the kind of book I love reading but it’s executed so horribly that I just can’t even.

Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2018/05/23/furyborn-empirium-1-by-claire-legrand/

May 23 2018

A Study in Brimstone (Warlock Holmes #1) by G.S. Denning

Weirdly, given how I love and devour mystery novels, I have never really been into reading Sherlock pastiches. For that matter, I’ve never been a huge fan of the source material, having read the originals only insofar as they were available to me in the library of a paternal uncle whom my family visited in my father’s hometown once a year. Books being much scarcer for me then than now, I would usually read whatever was available to me whenever it was available, and would store the locations of books like a pirate carrying a mental map of buried treasures (and never mind actually socializing.) So reading Sherlock Holmes, for me, carries a visceral memory of sun-warmed concrete blocks, sliding glass doors on rattan bookshelves and the old, almost sepia pages of a Penguin Classics volume that I read as I tried not to fall asleep in the heat of a Malaccan afternoon. Perhaps it was this perpetual drowsiness that made it so difficult to fully appreciate Holmes’ deductive powers, or his and Watson’s feats of derring-do: all I remember from my reading was how very unlikely their adventures felt, but how much more interesting than trying to make small talk with much older relatives whom I barely knew.

Anyway, the main reason I’ve been so lukewarm over most modern continuations of Sherlock Holmes’ adventures in print is that they are entirely faithful to Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s tone as I remember it: crushingly serious in the face of events that are implausible at best. Enter G. S. Denning. Not only does he make his Holmes a literal Warlock, amping up the supernatural (and in my opinion, most interesting) aspect of the original stories to eleven, but he also serves up a healthy dose of humor and strips the insufferable aura of self-importance almost completely from his subject. It’s a breath of fresh air and, frankly, the only time but one in all my enjoyment of Sherlock-related media that I’ve felt compelled to go back and look up the source material (the exception being Kitty Winters in the excellent Elementary TV series. My reluctance to consume Sherlockiana is mostly confined to reading, as modern dramatizations tend to add humor and humanization.)

Watson is the true deductive hero of Mr Denning’s A Study In Brimstone, which reimagines six classic Sherlock stories as overtly supernatural cases that fall neatly under Warlock’s purview. The hijinks feel refreshed and the references renew my interest in reading the originals, which is some of the highest praise I can give to any homage. I love the twist with Moriarty, and am very interested in reading more of the character introduced in the very last story included here. Excitingly, I’ll be able to read the next two volumes quite quickly, courtesy of Titan Press. Reviews of those soon!

Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2018/05/23/a-study-in-brimstone-warlock-holmes-1-by-g-s-denning/