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Review: City of Thieves by David Benioff
01 year ago
David Benioff’s superlative novel, City of Thieves, centers around the siege of Leningrad (née St. Petersburg) and two misfits — Lev, a Jewish youth caught looting the corpse of a German solider, and Kolya, a deserter from the Red Army — who under threat of execution are tasked by an NKVD colonel with finding a dozen eggs for his daughter’s wedding cake. The pair embark on an odyssey through the starving city and behind enemy lines in the surrounding countryside, hunting for what may turn out to be an unattainable prize.
Benioff, best known for the novel, The 25th Hour, and as showrunner of the upcoming HBO series, Game of Thrones, melds the comic with the macabre, neither trivializing the siege nor crushing the reader with despair. Lev, a pessimist, narrates the story in the company of the blonde and upbeat, Kolya, who is a self-styled ladies man and rogue. Though disparate in personality, the two become comrades and later friends through the course of their quest, and the dynamic between the two is one of the book’s many appealing qualities. The eastern front of World War II is often forgotten in U.S. accounts of the war, and rarely finds attention in American literature. But Benioff brings the scale and savagery home to the reader in the form of an entertaining adventure yarn.
As is often the case with my favorite books, I finished the last page sad to be losing touch with characters to whom I had grown incredibly attached. I didn’t want City of Thieves to end, and that’s high praise, indeed.
Review: The Passage by Justin Cronin
01 year ago
Justin Cronin's road to nowhere.
There’s a terrible secret that fans of “serious” literature can’t bring themselves to grasp — that the science fiction, fantasy and horror genres are all a legitimate part of the universe of literature. And some of the writers in the genre are actually good — not just “skilled craftsman” churning out formulaic juvenile adventure stories, but artists in their own right, using genre as a way of expressing something important about the human condition that can’t be conveyed in serious or realistic fiction. Others are master builders of alternate worlds with believable cultures, histories, topographies, etc. Either way, there’s real intelligence and talent working in speculative fiction.
Justin Cronin, author of the much hyped novel, The Passage, is a “serious” author. He normally writes and teaches realistic fiction, and to Cronin’s amused and delighted followers, his venture into post-apocalyptic vampire territory is divine brilliance. But here’s the rub: speculative fiction fans know better. Cronin is a carpetbagger, and the ideas and concepts he plays with are hardly new and original, but recycled from better novels, television series, video games and films. If anything, he is taking those ideas and exposing them to an audience unfamiliar with them, while taking credit for bringing innovation to a field that doesn’t need it.
The Passage begins in the near future, telling the story of the U.S. military’s attempt to bioengineer super soldiers from a virus found in Chilean bats. As these things usually go, the infected test subjects don’t turn out the way the military scientists expect and ultimately escape from captivity, leading to a vast vampire plague that destroys the United States and leaves only a handful of survivors behind. The story then abruptly jumps 100 years into the future, where we’re introduced to a vampire-besieged colony on the edge of destruction. Wind-powered generators begin to fail, society again teeters on the edge of collapse, and a desperate band (or … uhm, fellowship) sets out on a quest to save their colony and perhaps the human race, itself.
What follows is a pastiche of post-apocalyptic genre tropes lifted from Richard Matheson, Harlan Ellison, Stephen King, George Romero, Mad Max, Fallout 3, Ronald Moore’s re-imagined Battlestar Galactica, the Bible, Lost and even L. Ron Hubbard’s Battlefield Earth. Of course, the target audience isn’t familiar with any of those sources, so it probably all comes off as refreshingly new and original. The trouble is, it isn’t. It’s been done before and done better.
I’m always open to “real” writers playing in the science fiction sandbox — Cormac McCarthy did it with The Road, which was one of the best books published in recent years, period. But outside of the excellent opening chapters, which are set in near-future America, and Cronin leaves familiar territory to engage in a little world building, the novel collapses. The poorly-defined characters who go beyond archetypes and into the realm of stereotypes, the inconsistent and baffling explanations for supernatural events (uhm, god did it?), the obvious Biblical allegory and way in which Michael can fix just about everything is all a bit too much to accept. This is a stark contrast with McCarthy’s ash-strewn wasteland, which is frighteningly real. A shallow world, despite the level of craft used to describe it, remains unsatisfying and ultimately a hindrance to the story.
Ignore the media hype — The Passage is a beautifully-rendered bore of a novel. Cronin would be better served returning to realistic family relationship novels and leaving the vampire apocalypse to the professionals.
Review: Kraken by China Mieville
01 year ago
by Jeff the Zombie
in Books
China Mieville is an author whose books don’t often live up to the scope of his ideas, and Kraken is no exception in this regard. This is not to say that I don’t like his work, or that I didn’t enjoy Kraken, but going back to Perdido Street Station and the Bas Lag novels, he has the habit of jamming awesome ideas into his novels that unfortunately don’t always work with the plot he’s constructed. I get the feeling that he makes things up as he goes along, and molding his ideas to fit into a cohesive story is not one of his strong suits. I’ve always preferred Mieville’s short fiction to his novels — when constrained by a shorter format, his stories are much more satisfying and focused.
Kraken centers around a scientist at the Museum of Natural History in London named Billy who is responsible for preserving a specimen of a giant squid, architeuthis. The squid is one of the most popular exhibits at the museum, but has also caught the attention of London’s secret underworld of mages and cults, who believe it to be both a god of the deep and the harbinger of an apocalypse. The Kraken is stolen from the museum, although there is no practical way to remove it from the room. Billy finds himself flung into the depths of a London he never new existed, a reluctant prophet for a cult that worships the squid, as well a person of great interest to the various supernatural factions in the city. What follows is a fairly standard “chase the McGuffin” story in which Billy and his new allies attempt to locate the squid and stop the end of the world, while various antagonists hunt for him.
I won’t reveal any spoilers here, because there’s lots of great surprises in the book — an unusual labor movement, a Star Trek loving mage (as well as an insightful look into a particular Star Trek trope that is often taken for granted by fans), a pair of terrifying immortal hit men called Goss and Subby, a man with a bizarre tattoo on his back and much more. However, for all the unique ideas, I can’t help but think of Kraken as a crazier version of Neil Gaiman’s Neverwhere, or a saner version of Grant Morrison’s comic book series, The Invisibles – either way, it covers ground that other writers have explored in better stories. In many ways, it is a conventional urban fantasy novel, except unlike others in the genre, the characters are ciphers who exist to carry Mieville’s big ideas. Billy, though the central character, is mostly unknown to us through the end. We know he’s very good at pickling squids, but other than that, we learn very little about him as a person. Others we get to know a little better, but given the strength of Mieville’s past protagonists, I expected more.
Overall, Kraken is an entertaining read, but not Mieville’s best. If you’re new to his work, I’d recommend starting out with Perdido Street Station and The Scar, both of which are worth your time.
Review: A Crown of Swords by Robert Jordan
01 year ago
My Kindle re-read of Robert Jordan’s Wheel of Time continues with A Crown of Swords.
This was the termination of my initial read-through of the series — at this point Path of Daggers wasn’t out yet, and I was in for a long wait for the next volume in the series. I remember being particularly bored and disillusioned with the Wheel of Time by this point, particularly with the Ebou Dar storyline. I’ve found that on my second reading of the book some 13 years later that I enjoyed it a great deal more than during my original reading — particularly (and ironically), the arc centered around Ebou Dar and the hunt for the Bowl of Winds. Mat Cauthon is increasingly becoming my favorite character in the series and seeing him finally getting treated with the respect he deserves by the Aes Sedai was satisfying, as was Elayne and Nynaeve’s dealings with the “real” sisters and the Kin.
Although more significant events take place in Lord of Chaos, A Crown of Swords is shorter and therefore unburdened by its predecessor’s many filler chapters. Not to say that there isn’t filler here — the central storyline of A Crown of Swords is a bit of a cul-de-sac for the series, as the struggle to fix the world’s broken weather is nothing more than a distraction from the Last Battle. I found it to be a relatively brief read, and although it doesn’t further the story significantly, the character movement was satisfying, and Mat’s cliffhanger is still as strong as I remembered. Tangential though the story may be, it comes down to whether or not you like the characters — I happen to be fond of them, so spending some time with Mat, Elayne and Nynaeve in Ebou Dar wasn’t a bad way to spend a week and a half of reading.
However, on the negative side, the pacing of Rand’s arc was especially uneven. The showdown at the end seemed to come out of nowhere, given that the chief antagonist was barely mentioned in A Crown of Swords before the climax. It does show that Jordan was able to move the story when he wanted to and could have resolved many of his story lines within a few chapters. However, in this case the lack of any kind of build-up to the fight left me a bit bewildered. The ending itself is incredibly rushed, the payoff seemingly unearned given the similar ending (and better set-up) featured in The Dragon Reborn. This is something I remembered from my first read-through, and my opinion has changed little on the second.
At this point, readers know whether or not they’re invested in the series — if you like Mat, Elayne and Nynaeve, then A Crown of Swords will be a worthy read. But if you’re plowing through the series eager for the start of Tarmon Gaidon, you are setting yourself up for disappointment.
Review: Lord of Chaos by Robert Jordan
01 year ago
When I first read Robert Jordan’s Lord of Chaos back in 1997, I remember it being a grueling read that sapped my enthusiasm for the series. In many ways, it sets the formula for its successors — hundreds of pages of inertia punctuated by an event at the end. Now that I’m older and am better at deconstructing an author’s intent, successful or not, I do appreciate what Robert Jordan was trying to do with the book. The payoff is neatly executed based on themes set-up throughout the book, it’s just that it necessitates making the women of the book — particularly Nynaeve and Elayne — extremely unlikable.
Lord of Chaos is fundamentally about Rand’s relationship with the Aes Sedai, which in turn is a proxy for the relationships between men and women in general. In Fires of Heaven, Moiraine told him never to trust another Aes Sedai — Rand understands the argument, but naively underestimates the two delegations that come to him. He chooses to trust the wrong delegation, and that in turn forces a series of events that culminates in the Battle of Dumai’s Wells, perhaps one of the most visceral and exhilarating action sequences in the series. The final moments of the story proper also bring about the natural resolution for Robert Jordan’s major themes — his view of the politics between men and women, and in particular, the manipulation and humiliation of men at the hands of women and ultimately the need for women to submit to men.
I’m not sure if I would describe Robert Jordan as a sexist, necessarily, and he’s definitely not a misogynist, but he takes the “Women are from Venus, Men are from Mars” approach to an embarrassing level. The women of the book do not treat its men very well — indeed, Rand is literally tortured for being a man that can channel (though one wonders if he’s tortured for simply being a man who stands up to powerful women). This has been a problem for me throughout the series, but I find it especially troubling in Lord of Chaos. Gender is treated as a see saw, tilting the balance of power between one side or the other. There is no equality, only a struggle for dominance.
I want to continue my re-read of the series to get to Brandon Sanderson’s contributions, but I wonder how much more of this I can take. It’s especially a shame because the earlier books were so entertaining. Alas, I must grit my teeth and soldier on to the end, although each volume grows more tedious than the last.
Review: Fortress of Solitude by Jonathan Lethem
11 year ago
Brooklyn. The name floats constantly in the air, calling to hipsters of all ages from across the globe. As a resident of Washington, D.C., I have seen numerous people I know move there, some returning to Washington, some staying behind on that distant island to the north with its beckoning neighborhoods — Bed-Stuy, Park Slope, Williamsburg. Just as Manhattan was once (and still is) the source of all-consuming New York City naval gazing, Brooklyn has now seized its own chunk of the self-obsessed NYC mantle. “Brooklyn is the new Manhattan,” Ted Danson’s editor character told Jason Schwartzman’s Jonathan Ames character on the HBO series, Bored to Death. Sadly, it was only half a joke.
Jonathan Lethem’s Fortress of Solitude is perhaps the gold standard for Brooklyn narcissism. It follows the story of Dylan Ebdus, a white kid whose parents were part of the early wave of gentrification in the 1970′s, Fortress of Solitude is about how contemporary Brooklyn came to be than it is how Dylan Ebdus grew into adulthood there. Long and rambling, most chapters serve to celebrate some aspect of Brooklyn’s history, painting the city with obtuse sentences that sound good as they roll into the brain from the page (or in my case, my Kindle), but when considered for too long hardly make a bit of sense.
Just as race relations and gentrification are the sources of modern Brooklyn’s conflicts (one need look no further than Spike Lee’s Do the Right Thing to see that gentrification has long been a concern for the borough), race relations inform the central plot of the novel. Dylan, being a living racial experiment for his Utopian mother, is the one white boy in a black neighborhood and black public school. Thus he is bullied and harassed for his whiteness by a sea of faceless black children. With the exception of his friend Mingus Rude, most black characters in the early part of the novel are pretty much the same character — a dehumanized other who exist solely to “yoke” Dylan for pocket change. If anything, Dylan’s experience is a reflection of white anxiety more so than the reality of race relations. Dylan’s experience is, I think, oversimplified and stereotypical. The reality of minority whites in a majority black city is much more complex — as a father with children in a D.C. public charter school, I can say with some authority that the brutalization of Dylan’s daily life does not reflect the reality my daughters see every day in our city. As a human being, I’m offended by the simplification of many of the book’s black characters.
Dylan drifts through the tumultuous 1970′s reading Marvel comics, seeing the emergence of disco, punk and hip hop, and incongruously receiving a magic ring from a flying homeless man. Literature enthusiasts will no doubt enjoy the “magical realism” of this ring, which is barely explained and may not actually be real. But as a longtime reader of fantasy, particularly contemporary “slipstream” fantasy that has its own literary ambitions, I have to say that Lethem handles the ring rather clumsily. It seems incredibly out of place in Dylan’s bildungsroman, and does not help the sprawling, unfocused narrative.
In the end, Fortress of Solitude became a chore to finish — as my enthusiasm waned, I found it harder and harder to get through its pages. Perhaps if I aspired to one day move to Brooklyn, I would have had a different experience with the novel — but as I have no affection for that magical borough, I can confidently say that this book is not for me, or others not already enamored with it.
Review: Grant and Sherman: The Friendship That Won the Civil War by Charles Bracelen Flood
02 years ago
The Civil War has long been one of my favorite periods in American history, and Ulysses S. Grant and William Tecumseh Sherman are perhaps its most significant actors outside of Abraham Lincoln. So imagine my delight when I discovered a joint biography that focuses on their unique bond, and how it was instrumental in winning the war. Other books have touched on the subject, but not in the depth I was looking for. But sadly, the marketing for a book and the book itself can sometimes be two completely different things, as is the case here.
Grant and Sherman is a work of popular history that covers the biographies of its subjects from their childhoods through the conclusion of the Civil War, with a few chapters dealing with their postwar relationship. There is very little here that hasn’t been covered in greater detail in other books. It’s nice to get reacquainted with the events of their lives, but unless you’ve never read biographies of either man — or their highly recommended memoirs — then you’re not going to get much out of it. There is very little detailed analysis on their friendship, and a lot of the writing — particularly in the later half of the book where there seems to be fewer primary sources — extrapolates what the two men where thinking or feeling. It may make for good drama, but it’s not necessarily good history.
That said, I would recommend Grant and Sherman for anyone who would like a breezy primer on the lives of both men, as well as an overview of the western theater of the Civil War. There is genuine emotion to be found here, and Flood does a fine job of dramatizing the contradictory feelings of joy and despair that filled the nation following the War’s conclusion and the President’s assassination. More widely-read aficionados of the war will probably find themselves underwhelmed, but newcomers to the topic will definitely enjoy it.
Review: I Am Not a Serial Killer by Dan Wells
02 years ago
Dan Wells’ debut novel deals with John Wayne Cleaver, a disaffected teenage boy living somewhere in the Midwest with his mother, a mortician by trade, and dealing with both the absence of his father and an unreliable sister. Also, he’s a diagnosed sociopath who visits a therapist once a week. Growing up around dead people has had an effect on John, who loves the process of embalming (described in lavish and well-researched detail by Wells), and is fascinated with serial killers. He has one friend, another outcast named Max, who he keeps around in attempt to fool the world into thinking he’s normal. He’s seemingly incapable of empathy and is struggling with his natural instinct to kill for pleasure.
And then something happens — people in town start dying in grotesque ways. It is clear that serial killer has taken up residence in town, and John commits himself to not only uncovering the killer’s identity, but also stopping him. Like fellow literary psycho Dexter Morgan, John believes that he can unleash his inner monster if it’s in the service of stopping another killer. But what happens when the killer is not what he seems — when there’s more to him than John suspects? That he kills for a reason John is virtually incapable of understanding. A reason that ultimately causes John to question who the real monster is — the killer, or himself?
In many ways I am reminded of another supernatural novel set in a snowy environment, featuring a disaffected teenage boy with psycopathic tendencies — the excellent Swedish Vampire novel, Let the Right One In. And although it doesn’t have that book’s amazing emotional core, but it shares Let the Right One In‘s mixing of mundane life with elements of horror and insanity.
I Am Not a Serial Killer is a relatively short book, but does an excellent job of establishing John and his inner struggle. It has an unexpected, though welcome fantasy element, and although it can be easily pigeon-holed as a teenage Dexter, it only shares the same concept. Wells does different things than one might expect. It is not perfect, however — John’s first person narration sometimes rings false, with John using words and terminology a teenage boy would not use. At times, I found myself taken out of the otherwise engaging narrative due to certain expressions and phrases not ringing true. That said, it is an extremely promising first novel and establishes Dan Wells as a writer to watch. I’m not sure that I agree with the publisher’s decision to market it as young adult fiction given some of the themes it deals with — but all and all, it is an enjoyable read and well worth your time.
Review: The View from the Bridge by Nicholas Meyer
02 years ago
The View from the Bridge, Nicholas Meyer’s memoir of his life in Hollywood, is a perfect of example of why I have a Kindle. It was a book I was interested in reading, but never would have sought out in a book store. The ease of use of Kindle erased the barrier to entry — my laziness — and resulted in access to a thoroughly entertaining book.
Breezy and conversational, Meyer offers up his story of making movies in Hollywood, including lively accounts of his involvement with three of the original crew Star Trek movies. Most of this information is old news to longtime Trekkers, as Meyer himself writes, but Meyer goes into a greater level of detail regarding the business aspects of film making than past accounts. For anyone interested in the art of movie making, as well as the practical limitations placed on writers and directors by the corporate suits at the studio, Meyer’s book gives a great glimpse into that world as it stood in the 1980′s and 1990′s.
There’s not much else to say regarding the book — the Kindle edition is a bit overpriced for the content, but Meyer is an interesting and self-deprecatingly honest character, and spending a few hours reading him spin the great Hollywood yarn that is is own life is definitely recommended. Just wait for the price to drop.
Review: Well of Ascension (Mistborn Book 2) by Brandon Sanderson
02 years ago
With every action, there is a consequence — and Well of Ascension, the follow-up to Brandon Sanderson’s excellent Mistborn: The Final Empire is all about unintended consequences and their impact on the residents of the Final Empire.
Following the events of the first novel, things haven’t quite worked out quite how Vin, Elend and Kelsier’s crew had in mind. Luthadel is under siege and strange things are happening in the mists. A mysterious Mistborn is stalking the streets of the city at night and many questions remain about the Lord Ruler, the Deepness and allomancy.
In the first half of the book, Sanderson begins his set-up and there are some interesting twists and turns, but it does tend to drag a bit. Vin deals with some internal struggles, which while logical, do feel a bit like the infamous “ball” sequences in the first novel.
Yet somewhere after the midway point Sanderson finishes assembling his plot and things begin to unfold in a surprising and exciting manner. Although the climax of Mistborn: the Final Empire is superior, the closing events of Well of Ascension are impressively rendered, offering Sanderson’s strong blend of compelling characters and huge action sequences. The ending expertly sets up book three, following the overall theme of “unintended” consequences that runs through the course of the novel.
Despite the slow start, Well of Ascension is a worthy follow-up to its predecessor and is more proof that Brandon Sanderson is the best fantasy novelist of his generation, the true heir to Robert Jordan and George R.R. Martin