Mar 08 2016

Nobody’s Home by Tim Powers

Nobody’s Home is subtitled An Anubis Gates Story, which helped to draw me towards reading this story because I had heard good things about The Anubis Gates, although I have not read it.

In an alternate nineteenth-century London, ghosts haunt the living, and some magics work, if not routinely then with a certain amount of reliability. The story follows Jacky Snapp, who apparently also plays a role in The Anubis Gates, and one of the first puzzles of the story is figuring out why Jacky spent the evening before the novella’s first scene “tracking down a beggar who was rumored to have fur growing all over him like an ape” but who had turned out, after Jacky cornered him and aimed a flintlock pistol at him, “to be only a very hairy old fellow with a prodigious beard—not the half-legendary man she had devoted her life to finding and killing.”

The rest of the novella reels out at a rapid pace; no sooner has she determined that the beggar is not her quarry than she rescues a woman from burning in the energies released by magic that hadn’t been as reliable as advertised. The story proceeds as a chase on several levels: the two women chasing the knowledge they need, ghosts chasing them, Jacky chasing her quarry, unsavory if mundane sorts chasing the women in rainy London streets. The final encounters are as chilling as the chases leading up to them as heart-pumping.

Nobody’s Home is one of two novellas I read in an afternoon. Good fun, and a reason to read the longer story that it precedes.

Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2016/03/08/nobodys-home-by-tim-powers/

Mar 07 2016

The King In Yellow by Robert W Chambers

This book is easily split into two parts, perhaps three. The first four stories are overtly supernatural and horrific, having to do with a fabled play, The King In Yellow, and its unhappy effects on its readers. The second bit transitions away from TKIY, seguing from horror and romance to horrors of a different sort and finally, in what you might call the third section, just romance (tho I suppose there’s a sort of existential horror to be found in the final story of the collection, Rue Barree, which I personally thought the weakest of the bunch.) My favorite stories were actually The Yellow Sign and The Street Of Our Lady Of The Fields, two rather diametrically opposite tales: the first being creepy and tragic, and the other luminous and romantic. It’s easy to see why this book has had a lasting impression on readers, even if it isn’t the tightest collection, thematically.

Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2016/03/07/the-king-in-yellow-by-robert-w-chambers/

Mar 04 2016

Rumpole And The Reign Of Terror by John Mortimer

Originally read this back in 2008, but picked it up to re-read before loaning it to my darling bff. Brilliant book: funny, topical, with a good mystery and courtroom/romantic drama to boot. There are several awfully convenient coincidences, but they don’t distract from the over-all worth of the story. I didn’t realize when I picked this book up at the thrift store that it was set in modern times (for some reason, I always thought the Rumpole novels to be more current with the Bertie Wooster milieu,) but it was a very pleasant surprise. If you thought the Patriot Act was absurdly fascistic, wait till you get a load of how the UK reacted to the London Underground bombings. Mortimer deals with this issue with all the good sense and humor that his creation, Rumpole, is known for.

Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2016/03/04/rumpole-and-the-reign-of-terror-by-john-mortimer/

Feb 29 2016

CyberStorm by Matthew Mather

At its heart, CyberStorm is a book about how the human condition unravels under intense external pressure. Here, the external pressure is a record-breaking blizzard that strikes Manhattan as the Internet, and the many essential services it controls, fall victim to mysterious cyber attacks (which are actually very cleverly explained in the book’s denouement.) There are quite a few interesting ideas in this book, but I’m pretty sure I’d have liked it better as a speculative essay, mostly because as a human-interest novel, it was incredibly terrible. The characterization was almost uniformly awful, with my biggest problem being the narrator. Purportedly an average American, he’s so incredibly privileged and annoying that it’s hard to take him seriously. He does show the occasional flash of self-awareness, but I could hardly even muster the barest human sympathy at his plight, much less his flaws, which is a huge problem when dealing with an unreliable first person narrator.

And then the fucking cholera. Given how it’s a very easy thing to research, not only by the author but also by the protagonists (as the Internet was available to them when it became a problem!) I was hugely disappointed that it was used as a bogeyman not only on a micro but also a macro level. It makes me question the validity of the rest of the author’s technological suppositions. I powered through CyberStorm because of book club but ugh, can’t recommend this to anyone wanting intelligent disaster fiction.

Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2016/02/29/cyberstorm-by-matthew-mather/

Feb 28 2016

Cauldron by Jack McDevitt

Cauldron is the sixth novel in Jack McDevitt’s series of novels featuring Priscilla Hutchins as a protagonist, and is not a good place to begin reading the series. In fact, it’s chronologically the last novel (to date) in the series, as the seventh book goes back to the very beginning of Hutchins’ career to show how everything got started.

The universe that McDevitt has shown through Hutch’s — to use her nickname from the books — eyes is a grand one: enough faster-than-light travel to make the space opera work, but enough of the limitations of lightspeed, the immensity of the galaxy, and the implacability of deep time to show that even an earth-based civilization capable of sending ships regularly through interstellar distances is a mere speck in space and time. One of the recurring motifs of the series is that intelligent life and civilizations, even those that reach the stars, don’t last long on a galactic scale. Xenoarchaeologists appear in several books, and some of the most affecting scenes involve civilizations that have been and gone by the time that humans show up. Not all of the civilizations that the archaeologists explore died natural deaths, however; over the course of the series, evidence mounts of something (or rather, somethings) moving through our part of the galaxy at a significant fraction of c, and laying waste to any place with sufficiently high technology.

Continue reading

Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2016/02/28/cauldron-by-jack-mcdevitt/

Feb 23 2016

Mistborn: Secret History by Brandon Sanderson

Immediately upon finishing Bands Of Mourning, I went to Amazon and purchased this novella. Now, everyone will warn you that you can’t read this book without having read the entirety of the first Mistborn trilogy, and I am no different. But I will further recommend that you read this soon after reading those books, because if your memory holds primarily to impressions as opposed to details as mine does, a lot of the relevance may be lost for you.

There isn’t much to say about the book itself except that it is not at all accessible if you haven’t read the trilogy. In fact, it’s a rather disjointed work, because it fits around the narrative of the trilogy instead of working at all as a standalone. That said, if you enjoy Brandon Sanderson’s work, and if you enjoy indulging in the occasional ugly cry (dat ending yo,) you will enjoy this secret history.

Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2016/02/23/mistborn-secret-history-by-brandon-sanderson/

Feb 22 2016

Bands Of Mourning by Brandon Sanderson

Just Goddamnit, Brandon Sanderson, why are you so good?!?! HOW are you so good?! I spent far too much time yelling at the book like it was an Arsenal match, it was that engaging. At one point, I pounded my fists on the table with rage. Really terrific installment. The Mistborn series just gets better and better and I have no idea how that could possibly happen!

And let me tell you, I’ve been Team Steris from the start, but she’s really terrific here, and I super love her relationship with Wax. Everything about this book is awesome. Even when I thought I’d figured out the plot twist with Telsin, there was more plot twist. Also, I’m betting the spike in the statue’s eye (still) has some significance. But no more, because I do not want even a breath of spoiler to get close to you, dear reader. Just go get the book and read it already.

One other thing: I was thinking, that if I had to boil my life philosophy down to a single author, it might be Sanderson. Not necessarily in the details of cosmological belief, but in the humanity and underlying tenets of faith and goodness. And his work ethic and humility just blow me away. He is a god among writers.

Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2016/02/22/bands-of-mourning-by-brandon-sanderson/

Feb 17 2016

Embroideries by Marjane Satrapi

Was digging through my boxes and boxes of books unopened since my move here over a year ago (my home office will be organized and furnished someday!) for a book for the bff when I came across this again and felt, rather contrarily given how slow I’ve been with reading recently otherwise, that I ought to give it another go. My God, has it been seven years since I first read this? (And thank you to Goodreads for helping me chart this information!) No wonder I remembered so little of it. Which isn’t to say it’s bad for being unmemorable, but the experience is so much of hanging out with the ladies, having tea and gossiping — an experience I like to enjoy, often, in real life — that it blends into my every day with only the exoticism of Iranian culture to differentiate it from either my American or Malaysian lives. Still a fast, lovely read, and a fascinating glimpse into life in Iran, but universally resonant in the way women contend with their (in this case, strictly hetero)sexuality and with men and the expectations of society. Marjane Satrapi’s art takes a distinctly secondary role to the vignettes of her narrative, and while this book is slighter than either her Persepolis masterwork or even the moving Chicken With Plums, it’s still a terrific graphic novel.

Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2016/02/17/embroideries-by-marjane-satrapi/

Feb 17 2016

Wake Up, Sir! by Jonathan Ames

The bff and I are both big fans of Wodehousian humor, so while trawling a Best-Of list last year, I stumbled across a glowing review of this novel, recently out in paperback, and thought I’d buy us a copy. Gave it to him for Christmas, and he passed it back to me recently to read over my birthday. It is certainly an updating of the Jeeves conceit, with a narrator who is a modern-day, American Bertie. One wonders if the modern-day, American equivalent would necessarily be as neurotic as our protagonist Alan Blair, tho. I found the best parts to definitely be the beginning and end, when Jonathan Ames hews more closely to Wodehousian plot structure, than the middle, where Blair flounders with Questions and neuroses and a rather charmless hyper-self-consciousness. Overall, a satisfying book for a Wodehousian completist, but given the choice, I’d rather read one of John Mortimer’s modern-day Rumpoles, such as this one, instead.

Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2016/02/17/wake-up-sir-by-jonathan-ames/

Feb 11 2016

Binti by Nnedi Okorafor

I thought that Lagoon would be the first book I read by Nnedi Okorafor. Or maybe The Book of Phoenix, which a friend had strongly recommended. Turns out the first was Binti, one of a new line of novellas published electronically and on paper by Tor.com. I have it on paper, courtesy of a surprisingly well stocked airport bookstore at Chicago’s O’Hare.

“Her name is Binti, and she is the first of the Himba people ever to be offered a place at Oomza University, the finest institution of higher learning in the galaxy. But to accept the offer will mean giving up her place in her family to travel between the stars among strangers who do not share her ways or respect her customs.”

There is a Himba people in northern Namibia, as Okorafor notes in her acknowledgments, and the customs that Binti describes as belonging to her people closely parallel the present-day Himba, translated to a different time and setting — one with interstellar travel and a galactic university.

Binti tells her own story; at the outset she is sixteen, and about to run away. “… I had scored so high on the planetary exams in mathematics that Oomza University had not only admitted me, but promised to pay for whatever I needed to attend. No matter what choice, I was never going to have a normal life, really.” In the first scene, she is fiddling with a transporter, a small lifting device (Micro-antigravity? It’s never explained, only shown) to carry her personal belongings so that she may leave her home undetected, in the middle of the night. From the desert setting, the run-down device, the fervent desire to leave home, it could be Luke Skywalker in the first Star Wars movie. Except, of course, for every personal detail about the two characters.

That is one of the things that Okorafor is doing with this short, but by no means slight, tale. She is taking the universal story of leaving home to discover the wide world, the science fictional story of escaping a backwater province of a backwater world to head to the big time of interstellar institutions, and telling it through the eyes of someone who is a young woman, who is black, whose ancestry is not the best among her own people (she alludes to a grandparent from the “Desert People,” about whom some stigma is attached), and whose people are looked down on by essentially all of their neighbors. Some of the neighbors, the Khoush, also depend on and covet technological objects that Binti’s family makes; this relationship of dependence and disdain is surely not a coincidence.

In her brief journey to the spaceport, she encounters whispers and pointing, people who want to touch her hair to see if it is real, disapproval. But people being people, not everyone is mean.

When [the officer, an old Khoush man] finished, he looked up at me with his bright green piercing eyes that seemed to see deeper into me than his scan of my astrolabe. There were people behind me and I was aware of their whispers, soft laughter and a young child murmuring. It was cool in the terminal, but I felt the heat of social pressure. My temples ached and my feet tingled.
“Congratulations,” he said to me in his parched voice, holding out my astrolabe.
I frowned at him, confused. “What for?”
“You are the pride of your people, child,” he said, looking me in the eye. … He’d just seen my whole life. He knew of my admission into Oomza Uni. (pp. 14–15)

The next stage is also straight from classic science fiction.

The ship was packed with outward-looking people who loved mathematics, experimenting, learning, reading, inventing, studying, obsessing, revealing. The people on the ship weren’t Himba, but I soon understood that they were still my people. I stood out as a Himba, but the commonalities shined brighter. I made friends quickly. And by the second week in space, they were good friends. (pp. 21–22)

Danger erupts suddenly into this idyll, before Binti has properly had a chance to find herself among those people who are her people. The rest of the book’s 90 pages are about how she tries to survive the danger, and works to salvage something from the carnage. It’s fast-paced and gripping, but also a reminder of how horrible many adventures portrayed in science fiction and fantasy would be to most people.

There’s a depth, too, a point in showing what Binti has to do to survive, where power lies and what she, a young Himba woman, has to do and become when she encounters hostile power in its rawest form. When I first read through the book, my one complaint would have been that she seemed to make the changes too readily, to adapt too easily. But maybe “seemed” is doing an awful lot of work in that sentence, maybe even doing a lot of awful work. Something to keep thinking about.

Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2016/02/11/binti-by-nnedi-okorafor/