I have a real fondness for Latin American novels. From Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s magical realism to Juan Gabriel Vasquez’s rejection of that magical realism and always, always, a deep fondness of Pablo Neruda’s poetry, I’ve read what I can find and enjoyed it all. I very much wanted to enjoy Francisco Goldman’s The Long Night of the White Chickens as well, but it simply wasn’t on the level it could have been. It is, in essence, a murder mystery set in Guatemala, but I believe part of the problem with the book is that it tries to be too much and thus isn’t any one thing at all. The murder mystery itself turns out to be somewhat pedestrian. Guatemalan politics plays a role, and, while the horror and brutality of some of it comes up, it still feels like more of a passing mention than a real commentary on the political climate. There’s sections devoted to the mixing of cultures because the protagonist has an American Jewish father and a Guatemalan mother, but even that doesn’t paint a very clear picture. Any one of these things could have been interesting, could have been a book in and of themselves, but in the end it was a convoluted mishmash. It’s not a bad book, but it is a first book, and that shows. I’ll read more by Francisco Goldman when he writes, because I think it can only get better, and when he finally decides which thing he truly wants to focus on, then his facility with language will shine.
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2015/01/10/the-long-night-of-white-chickens-by-francisco-goldman/
Jan 09 2015
Eight Pieces of Empire by Lawrence Scott Sheets
Last autumn, Berlin celebrated the 25th anniversary of the opening of the Wall, and the peaceful collapse of the Communist order in eastern Germany. Eight Pieces of Empire: A 20-Year Journey Through the Soviet Collapse, by Lawrence Scott Sheets, reminds readers that in other places the end of Communism was not peaceful at all. The end of Moscow’s dictatorship brought freedom, but in many places it also brought war. In more than a dozen years as a journalist in the territory of the former Soviet Union, Sheets saw most of them.
Sheets writes, “One might wonder how these various stories are related. The answer is that empires do not break down along nice clean lines. They fragment, and the dissolution of the USSR and of the personal lives and explosive solutions affected by its fragmentation is the very subject of this book.”
Continue reading
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2015/01/09/eight-pieces-of-empire-by-lawrence-scott-sheets/
Jan 06 2015
The Cormorant (Miriam Black) by Chuck Wendig
The Cormorant is the third book in Chuck Wendig’s Miriam Black series. (The first two are Blackbirds and Mockingbird.) These books are intriguing and well-written, as well as entertaining as hell given that Miriam is prone to speaking her mind and she has an extensive vocabulary, as well as the power to tell when people are going to die. The third book didn’t disappoint at all, as Miriam answers a Craigslist ad and finds herself tangled up in a messy plot for revenge against her. The FBI shows up for some reason, and, also bizarre, Miriam reaches a sort of rapprochement with her mother, from whom she’s been estranged for a very long time. The author manages to combine the supernatural with a tightly told, well-written tale that brings Miriam to life in a way few characters manage. She is ultimately, to the end, herself – scarred, scared, tough, angry, and always ready to get up off the floor and take another shot.
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2015/01/06/the-cormorant-miriam-black-by-chuck-wendig/
Jan 05 2015
The Peripheral by William Gibson
I adore William Gibson with a slightly unhealthy fierceness, akin to obsession. His Neuromancer was my first introduction to cyberpunk of any sort, and I knew I had found my tribe, or at least part of it. To read Neuromancer in 1984, before everyone had a desktop computer and AOL, was a complete nerdgasm for a young geek in those days. I was fifteen years old, and had known from the age of 11 that I was going to work in computers somehow, someway, someday, even though everyone thought that was nuts.
I take this short trip down nostalgia lane because reading The Peripheral brought back those same feelings. This book is old school William Gibson, with that same ease of language that introduces the new and unusual as something accepted and known, and makes it interesting and puzzling and attractive all at once. And there’s time travel! In a way, it felt to me that The Peripheral does for our near(ish) future what Neuromancer did back in the early 80s for the world wide web. He builds a world that you can imagine coming into being, and meanwhile tells a really good story around it.
I realize now, at this point, that I haven’t actually told you what the story is, but I think I’m not going to. There’s the near future, one that you and I can relate to as happening within the next 20 years or so, and then there’s a future future, and the two complement each other in a story that includes intrigue, guns (of a futuristic type), death, and a healthy dose of “I need to know what happens NEXT!”
Highly recommended.
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2015/01/05/the-peripheral-by-william-gibson/
Jan 04 2015
The Secret Life of Pronouns: What Our Words Say About Us by James W Pennebaker
Despite the unpromising beginning, The Secret Life Of Pronouns did turn out to be a fascinating look at how our personalities and circumstances influence the language we use, unconsciously betraying us to the canny observer. I especially liked how it tied into the website and the exercises there, with bonus points for the humor. A great read for people who care about language and the way we present ourselves; it’ll probably teach you a little something about your own attitudes along the way.
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2015/01/04/the-secret-life-of-pronouns-what-our-words-say-about-us-by-james-w-pennebaker/
Jan 04 2015
The Book of Strange New Things: A Novel by Michel Faber
I admit that I was prepared to not like this book. It concerns a Christian pastor being sent to the first inhabitable planet found by humankind so that he can minister to the alien species already living there, but I quickly discovered that that was an extremely simplistic view of the story. What I had expected to be a boring read, or an annoying read, or perhaps a non-read if I put it down and never picked it up again, quickly turned into an I’m interested read. This is a book very much about people – their personalities, their relationships, their abilities to encompass certain amounts and types of information, and also their frailties. There were several unexpected heart-wrenching turns to the story, and while this is most definitely a science fiction novel, it’s one that deals with the ramifications of science as it relates to human (and alien) existence, and not just thrusters on full.
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2015/01/04/the-book-of-strange-new-things-a-novel-by-michel-faber/
Jan 03 2015
Through the Valley of the Nest of Spiders by Samuel R. Delany
I bought this book blindly because of the title and the author. I have loved some of Samuel R. Delany’s past science fiction novels, and that’s how I thought of him – a Science Fiction writer and only a Science Fiction writer. Combine that with the title and I thought I couldn’t go wrong with a blind buy like this.
You know what they say about assumptions.
I’m still puzzling over what I think of this novel. When I first started it, I was immediately plunged into a lake of hardcore gay erotica. That doesn’t bother me in and of itself, but I think it’s true to say that within this book everyone will find some graphically-described sexual practice that is guaranteed to push the reader right out of his or her sexual comfort zone and right into what-the-hell territory. In fairly rapid order, without warning, I was introduced to coprophilia, mucophilia, mysophilia, pedophilia, salirophilia, zoophilia, and urolagnia. (I’m pretty sure that isn’t a complete list, either; I got tired of looking at the ‘philia’ page of Wikipedia.) I believe with all my heart in consenting adults doing whatever the hell they want sexually, but I quickly reached the point where I wasn’t sure I wanted to read about it. That’s part of why it took me so long to finish the book, along with the fact that it’s 800+ pages long.
Eric, the main character of the book, moves to a small seaside town (Diamond Harbor) in Georgia in 2007, just before his 17th birthday. He immediately meets the love of his life, Morgan Haskell, who prefers to go by the nickname ‘Shit.’ They live in an area called The Dump, which is financed by a wealthy gay African American who grew up on the island that is part of the town. In this little piece of Diamond Harbor, black gay men (with the occasional white man, of which Eric is one) are encouraged to live, work, and love without worrying about being judged.
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2015/01/03/through-the-valley-of-the-nest-of-spiders-by-samuel-r-delany/
Jan 02 2015
Never Deal With a Dragon / Choose Your Enemies Carefully / Find Your Own Truth by Robert N. Charrette
For my first review for the Frumious Consortium, I’d like to start with a bang, a triple play. Three books at once, all part of a trilogy inscribed in the same universe, all by the same author, and all uncommonly uniform enough in style and execution as to try and pass a single review as if it where worth for three whole reviews, all at once.
Background
Shadowrun is a universe that was designed for and stems from a Cyberpunk RPG. It is set on earth in the second half of the 21St century, an earth where not only have different cathaclisms changed the socio-political structure of humanity and mega corporations have consolidated, bringing on new and perfected technologies and a typical cyberpunk setting, including a matrix and all, but where also magic has been discovered to be real and to come and go in cycles, being the 2000s the start of one such cycles, producing in the end a mixed environment of corporations and high tech with magic and varied creatures, both sentient and not sentient, which makes this universe a particularly rare one, and tends to divide readers and players into pretty well separated camps of fans and detractors.
I’m a fan of the universe, as much as of “traditional” cyberpunk.
The books
Like a few other RPG franchises, apart from the different tabletop games, and old and recent computer games set into the shadowrun universe, the publisher, FASA Corporation has licensed and published a total of 40 books inscribed into the universe, as a way to expand the game outside the play itself, beef up the background, and create famous characters for the universe.
Never Deal With A Dragon, Choose Your Enemies Carefully and Find Your Own Truth by Robert Charrette are books number 2, 3 and 4 published on shadowrun by fasa. And they all deal with the fall of a single character, Samuel Verner from corporate grace and his entering of the shadow world,and his quest to find and save his sister, all that’s left of his family.
Being part of the first four books ever produced into the canon, these three thankfully waste very little time introducing us into the world, and do so in a cursory manner as it accompanies us through Verner’s troubles and tribulations, yet things are written clear enough that someone with no experience on the universe wouldn’t have that much of a trouble grasping most of what is happening, if at the cost of missing a little of the why.
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2015/01/02/never-deal-with-a-dragon-choose-your-enemies-carefully-find-your-own-truth-robert-n-charrette/
Jan 02 2015
The Stolen: An American Faerie Tale by Bishop O’Connell
I’m not entirely sure why I picked this book up. I have an enormous To Be Read (TBR) pile that’s 400+ books and counting, and so when I finally get to a book, I often have trouble remembering how or when it got into the pile. In the spirit of trying to reconcile my need for perfection with the idea that a short book review is perfectly acceptable, I’m going to make this concise.
I found this book to be derivative. Faeries of various warring courts both in the human world and without. The liberal sprinkling of Irish brogues and Gaelic phrases that seemed strained at best and haphazard at worst. Wizards, because, well, why the hell not? I can’t even really say I found some of the ideas good if badly executed. It really did seem to come down to a repetitive series of fantasy and urban fantasy tropes, and it jumped the shark for me in the first chapter when an Irish Fain (whatever that is, the author never really explained) went berserker on some evil faeries who had killed his fiancee.
I had started to say that this would be an adequate introduction to the urban fantasy genre for Young Adults, but I can’t even say that. If you want an excellent introduction to urban fantasy then go with Charles de Lint, even if he does have an obsession with penny whistles.
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2015/01/02/the-stolen-an-american-faerie-tale-by-bishop-oconnell/
Jan 02 2015
Cold Days by Jim Butcher
One of the biggest issues with a SF/F series is in the area of character development and growth. While mysteries require no change to the characters themselves, a series has the difficult balancing act of maintaining accessibility for first time readers, while simultaneously rewarding fans with meaningful growth and character development. One of the tipping points in a series is when the hero has done so well as to move out of the circumstances that started the series, and into a larger, more demanding role, which takes them out of the series premise, and into a series of power-leveling exercises against ever-more potent foes and dangers.
Jim Butcher’s Cold Days, the penultimate entry in the Dresden Files series, manages to avoid this issue, as the wizard Harry Dresden picks up a new role following his death and aftermath in Ghost Story, but the problems (and the wisecracks) remain. As the Winter Knight to Mab, the Queen of Air and Darkness, the power level has been upped for Harry’s adversaries, but for Harry? Not so much.
A good part of the novel is spent getting the band back together, as the various members of the supporting cast are reunited with Harry and wind up working with him on his latest struggle. It’s one of them more enjoyable parts of the book, as the characters are integrated more or less seamlessly into Harry’s life, with some unexpected twists since last we saw a few of them. As the Winter Knight, there is more mayhem, and especially more intrigue, as befits a mortal working with the Sidhe.
The book flows really well, as I would expect from the fourteenth book in a series, but offers easy accessibility for the newcomer to the Dresden Files. Harry’s setting out on his new role as Winter Knight, and I’m curious to see how well the shift to a wider focus is going to play out in the series. The next novel , Skin Game, is already out (and has been since May, 2014), so we’ll get a chance to see how things shake out after this debut of a new chapter in Harry’s life.
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2015/01/02/cold-days-by-jim-butcher/
Al Singh
Doug Merrill
Doreen Sheridan
Emily Lauer
John Pitzel
Lars N. Goldschlager
Laura Eilers
Professor X
Robert Maedgen
Sylvere Ap Leanan
The Shire