Feb 22 2019

A Map of the Dark (The Searchers #1) by Karen Ellis

Insofar as flawed protagonists go, this was a surprisingly satisfying novel. At “only” 290 pages, it isn’t a dense novel, which works in its favor, honestly, as it keeps the plot moving. I can’t help but compare and prefer it to Tana French’s mystifyingly overrated Dublin Murder Squad series. Sure Ms French has moments of delightful prose, but her mysteries, when she bothers to solve them, feel inorganic, and the actual procedural parts are so annoyingly bad as to be almost laughable. Her characters are also lamentably stupid. Flawed is one thing, dumb as hell quite another.

Karen Ellis isn’t quite as good a prose stylist as Ms French, but she’s 100% better at story and characterization. A Map Of The Dark follows FBI Special Agent Elsa Myers as she’s pulled away from her dying father’s bedside to consult on the case of a missing girl. The police officer who originally caught the case, Detective Lex Cole, has specially requested her expertise, as something doesn’t feel right to him about Ruby’s disappearance (and let me tell you, it’s super duper nice to read of different jurisdictions coming together with very little friction to stop criminals and save lives. For this and quite a few other reasons, Lex is awesome.)

Elsa tries to focus on the case, but her father’s illness and the recent sale of her childhood home are bringing up unwanted memories of the abusive mother she adored. Her relationship with her younger sister Tara and her niece Mel are also tested as Mel insists on helping to find Ruby, even as the stress of the situation begins to affect both Tara and Elsa in ugly ways.

I really enjoyed how Elsa’s past was slowly revealed as the search for the missing girl progressed, and how the kidnapper’s own hideous childhood came into play. Elsa’s conflicting feelings were moving and wholly convincing. I did have qualms about what she did in her showdown with the kidnapper, but the final revelation as to her past went a long way towards explaining her drastic and highly illegal reaction. I also enjoyed the authorial tricks with perspective, even if I couldn’t call myself truly surprised by any of the plot twists. Still, a very entertaining novel that is more than competently written, and honestly head and shoulders better than some of the more acclaimed thrillers out there. I’m looking forward to reading the sequel soon!

Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2019/02/22/a-map-of-the-dark-the-searchers-1-by-karen-ellis/

Feb 21 2019

An Interview with Gareth L Powell, author of Fleet Of Knives

Q. Every series has its own story about how it came to be conceived and written as it did. How did the Embers Of War series evolve?

A. The initial idea came when I was reading an article about the Titanic disaster, and idly started wondering what would happen if a star liner crashed in a distant system. Everything else grew from there.

Q. Fleet Of Knives is a novel that focuses on war and the elimination thereof, bringing to mind various conflicts of our own Earth’s past. Were there any particular ones that you referenced while writing the book?

A. There are some obvious parallels between Alva Clay’s experiences crawling through the sentient jungles and the war in Vietnam. Around the time I was writing the first book, I was re-reading The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien, which is a book of extraordinary short stories set during the conflict. Beyond that, I guess my main touchstones were the US bombings of Nagasaki and Hiroshima. Can such a monstrous crime really be morally justified because the perpetrators believe it will end the war and save more lives than it takes? And what would the weight of that responsibility do to a person? And what further horrors might they be willing to unleash in order to prevent another war?

Q. Will we see Laura Petrushka in the third novel? Please? Pretty please?

A. I’m afraid Laura’s tale has been told.

Q. Do you write with any particular audience in mind? Are there any particular audiences you hope will
connect with this story?

A. I hope the series will connect with people who enjoy the space opera of Iain M Banks, Becky Chambers, Peter F Hamilton and Ann Leckie.

Q. What is the first book you read that made you think, “I have got to write something like this someday!”

A. I’ve always wanted to be a writer, but the first book that made me think I could really do it was William Gibson’s Burning Chrome, which took the action away from the super competent space captains and brought everything down to the level of the street. It made me realise everything didn’t have to be white and shiny like Star Trek, it could be dirty and relatable too.

Q. What made you choose speculative fiction, and particularly military sci-fi, as your means of expression?

A. I’m not sure I would class the Embers series as military sci-fi, as the term seems to come freighted with various expectations. But I’ve wanted to write sci-fi since the first Star Wars movie came out. I was six years old at the time, and there was no going back.

Q. How did you learn to write?

A. I studied English at O Level and A Level, and then studied creative writing as part of my course at university. Then, once I’d been out of academia for seven or eight years, I realised I had to jettison everything I’d learned and start from scratch if I wanted to develop a clean, engaging style of my own.

Q. Do you adhere to any particular writing regimen?

A. I write when I feel like, but as often as possible.

Q. Are you a pantser (someone who writes by the seat of their pants) or a plotter?

A. I usually have a two- or three-page outline covering the general points of the plot. Everything else evolves
organically as I write.

Q. What are you reading at the moment?

A. At the time of writing this, I’m reading Aliette de Bodard’s excellent novella, The Tea Master & The Detective, and I highly recommend it.

~~~

Author Links

Gareth L Powell

Twitter

~~~

Fleet Of Knives was published in the US on February 19th 2019 and may be found at all good booksellers. My review of the book itself may be found here.

Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2019/02/21/an-interview-with-gareth-l-powell-author-of-fleet-of-knives/

Feb 20 2019

Pump Six and Other Stories by Paolo Bacigalupi

There’s a lot of ick in the ten tales that comprise Pump Six and Other Stories. Most of the settings are dystopias of one sort of another — mostly near-ish future, mostly Asian-inflected, mostly involving some sort if environmental collapse — and most of the characters in the stories are either horrible people in and of themselves, or wind up doing horrible things. Over time, I have read rather a lot about the history of Germany, Russia, and Central Europe, so I have more than a passing familiarity with how horrible people can be to each other; perhaps I should have just set the book aside as Not For Me and let it go at that.

The stories were originally published between 1998 and 2008; five of them first appeared in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, two in Asimov’s, and the rest elsewhere, except for the title story, which is original to the collection.

“The Calorie Man” and “Yellow Card Man” share a setting with Bacigalupi’s first novel The Windup Girl. In that world, natural crops have collapsed globally, and the only remaining crops that can provide sustenance are tightly controlled by multinational companies that effectively determine how many calories each person can have. The fossil-fuel economy has also fallen apart, and energy is provided by newfangled (and slightly handwavy) clockwork, sometimes wound by genetically recreated mammoths. It’s a striking setting, and probably a fun one to write about. “The Calorie Man” is also interesting for being set in the remains of the United States but told through the eyes of characters who escaped disaster in India and rebuilt their lives in New Orleans. I don’t think the setting works economically, but it’s probably not fair to poke quite so hard at a world that’s clearly devised as a warning.

Continue reading

Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2019/02/20/pump-six-and-other-stories-by-paolo-bacigalupi/

Feb 19 2019

Fleet of Knives (Embers of War #2) by Gareth L. Powell

Oh, man, Book 3 cannot come fast enough!

I readily admit that I don’t remember a whole lot from the first book, which was an intriguing novel of ideas that somehow lacked an ability to engage me emotionally. Fleet Of Knives certainly doesn’t suffer from that problem! We open with Captain Sal Konstanz on a pilgrimage of sorts, with her ship Trouble Dog on overwatch. Sal is trying to patch things up with security officer Alva Clay after the events of the last novel, and the two women reach a sort of tentative peace even as they become aware of the suspicions that the rest of humanity hold against the Marble Armada, as the unmanned fleet that Sal, Alva and Trouble Dog discovered is now known. They soon have more immediate things to worry about, however, when their bosses at the House Of Reclamation send them to the edge of alien Nymtoq territory in response to a distress call from human starship Lucy’s Ghost.

Lucy’s Ghost is captained by Lucky Johnny Schultz, a rogue trader pushed to the limits of legality to pay his crew. To this end, he’s decided to have them raid an abandoned, if still venerated, Nymtoq generation ship, but finds that their passage through hyperspace has brought along unwelcome visitors.

Elsewhere in the known universe, former poet Ona Sudak has been found guilty of war crimes, and is set to face execution. But the Marble Armada has plans that will set her on a collision course with Trouble Dog, even as she plots to save the Human Generality from itself.

This book was such a ride, switching quickly and smoothly between points of view to present a really terrific space opera. The personalities of all involved felt so alive, even as everyone worked towards their different ends. Gareth Powell plots deftly, and writes with an eye for both action and humor. When I hit the last page, I nearly jumped out of my seat with outrage: I want to know what happens next, and now! That said, it’s a good ending — I hate when books feel incomplete and this one certainly doesn’t. I’m just impatient for the rest of the story! FoK also contains the best two-word chapter I’ve ever had the privilege of reading.

Interview with Mr Powell himself to come soon!

Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2019/02/19/fleet-of-knives-embers-of-war-2-by-gareth-l-powell/

Feb 14 2019

The Vanishing Stair (Truly Devious #2) by Maureen Johnson

In book two of the Truly Devious series, Stevie’s return to Ellingham Academy comes at a price. Her benefactor, the abhorrent politician Edward King whom her parents idolize, wants her back at the school in order to keep an eye on his wayward son, noting that her relationship with his kid seems to calm the latter down. Stevie is desperate to return and doesn’t know how to tell David the truth, but schoolwork and an internship with a scholar on the mysteries of the Academy soon have her preoccupied otherwise, at least till she and David discover what happened to the person Stevie accused in the last book of wanting their murdered housemate dead.

I had a bunch of issues with the first book, the series’ namesake, because it didn’t solve for any of the mysteries it brought up, but The Vanishing Stair avoids that problem with aplomb. I did guess who was responsible for the kidnappings fairly early on in the proceedings, but I’m still rather stumped as to who might have murdered Stevie’s housemate. I do believe that David knows whodunnit and is trying to call out the killer via the video he posted, but I’m not sure whether or not he was involved with the arson at the end. I have the sneaking suspicion that Stevie’s housemate was killed for getting too close to the truth of Alice’s disappearance, and that someone on the board wants to keep the reward money sequestered for the school — at least until the 90-year reward period is over — but I haven’t the slightest idea who and, of course, you may come to different conclusions. All I know is that I’ll be mad if Larry had anything to do with it because his relationship with Stevie is awesome.

Anyway, very strong second installment of a teens-solving-crimes-at-boarding-school mystery series. Hopefully, the third book continues this trend of exponential improvement and blows me out of the water!

Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2019/02/14/the-vanishing-stair-truly-devious-2-by-maureen-johnson/

Feb 12 2019

The Perfect Nanny by Leïla Slimani

I think I would have appreciated this more if I were French. There were hints of subtext that I could only guess at, nuances of race and class and prejudice that are foreign even to my broad background in the mores of American, Southeast Asian and British Commonwealth cultures. So I’m not sure if the point was for me to sympathize most of all with Louise, the murderous nanny, but that’s what I wound up doing.

This book is essentially a character study of the people at the heart of a terrible tragedy. Louise is the perfect nanny to Mila and Adam, the small children of Myriam and Paul Masse, a multiracial French couple living in Paris. Paul is the kind of guy who’s inherently bourgeois even as he pretends he isn’t, a music producer who loves the bohemian life when it suits him but really thrives in a conventional milieu. Myriam fought against her upbringing to become a gifted lawyer, but gave it up to have two children in fairly quick succession. When the joy of child-rearing loses its bloom, she decides that she wants to go back to work. Paul is dismayed, but agrees so long as they can find a competent nanny. Myriam doesn’t want to hire a fellow Arab, for fear of familiarity and as a conscious rejection of the background that gave her so much grief growing up.

Enter Louise. A poor native-born Frenchwoman down on her luck, she comes with wonderful references but has recently lost most of her family. While she begins as “just” the nanny, she soon proves herself an invaluable housekeeper and cook. Paul and Myriam are only too happy to exploit her talents, and willingly overlook some of her stranger behavior as part of their total unwillingness to learn anything about her outside of her utility to them. Do they suck? Absolutely. Do they deserve to lose their children? Absolutely not. But would their lives have been totally different had they extended to Louise the courtesy of treating her like a human being instead of an automaton to be paraded out as a measure of how lucky and privileged they were? You fucking bet.

Louise is not a well woman but the Masses don’t care, and that’s almost as much of a tragedy as the killings that a desperate, unbalanced Louise perpetrates. You’d think that I, as a work-from-home mom and minority citizen, would feel a kinship for Myriam’s struggles, but I only felt disdain for her prejudice against her own race and all the rest of her self-serving petite bourgeoisie affectations. I suppose it’s not a newsflash that matters of class transcend race but I did wind up spending a lot of this book wondering if I was supposed to feel as I did, which I’m not sure is the kind of unsettling feeling Leila Slimani was aiming to evoke in her readers. But, as I said, I think I would have understood it better were I more familiar with French culture, so I could at least understand the suitability of my own reactions.

Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2019/02/12/the-perfect-nanny-by-leila-slimani/

Feb 11 2019

Wheel of the Infinite by Martha Wells

Martha Wells has recently received a lot of attention for her Murderbot novellas (Doreen’s reviews of the first three are here, here, and here), but she has been publishing fantasy and science fiction novels since the early 1990s, snagging a Nebula nomination for The Death of the Necromancer in 1998. Wheel of the Infinite, her fourth novel, was published in 2000.

The story follows Maskelle, a disgraced but still powerful religious leader, as she returns to the magnificent city of Duvalpore, summoned by the Celestial One to try to help meet a danger that threatens to undo reality itself. As the book’s front matter explains, “Every year in the great Temple City of Duvalpore, the image of the Wheel of the Infinite must be painstakingly remade to ensure another year of peace and harmony for the Celestial Empire. Every hundred years the sacred rite takes on added significance. For it is then that the fabric of the world must be rewoven. Linked by the mystic energies of the Infinite, the Wheel and the world are one. Should the holy image be marred, the world will suffer a similar injury.”

Maskelle has been called because as the Voices of the Infnite and the lower-ranking religious have worked on the Wheel, a disfigurement has kept developing. Every time they remove it, it reappears. Nobody can understand where the problem is coming from, or what could be causing it. And time until the completion of the Hundred-Year Rite is running short.

Wells reveals all of this gradually; at the beginning, readers only know that Maskelle is making her way upriver in rainy tropical jungles, accompanying a troupe of traveling theater people. While out alone looking for herbs to heal a sick child, she fends off a hostile water spirit. Soon after, she rescues a foreigner from river pirates. The foreigner turns out to be a rogue bodyguard who fled his former master when it became clear that he was supposed to be interred as well as part of the former master’s funeral rites. After the rescue the bodyguard, Rian, attaches himself to Maskelle’s group and takes up a similar role, his skills complementing her own formidable abilities and mystical powers.

Upon her return to Duvalpore, Maskelle finds that some of her old enemies are still active, and some new ones may have appeared, along with whoever (or whatever) is behind the damage to the Wheel. She is in a race against time to unravel the mystery and to set the world right. Wheel of the Infinite is a solid, enjoyable fantasy tale. Its South Asian–inflected setting was more unusual in the genre in 2000 than it would be now, and it’s an interesting world that Wells has set up. She shows much of the religious aspects through the observations of Rian, who, as an outsider to the Celestial Empire, can’t quite believe that the sand mandala that is the Wheel has an actual effect on reality. Events show him the error of this view; in fact, the religious of Duvalpore would argue that the Wheel and reality are one, that remaking one reworks the other. They cite the case of a strait that was closed and cities cut off from the sea by changes to the Wheel centuries ago, but they say they try not to do that anymore because it leads to unforeseen consequences.

There is plenty of action and unexpected reversals as Maskelle and her allies rush to find the cause of the damage to the Wheel, and it comes to a satisfying conclusion. All in all, nifty and enjoyable.

Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2019/02/11/wheel-of-the-infinite-by-martha-wells/

Feb 11 2019

The Silver Linings Playbook by Matthew Quick

Y’all, that was delightful. Ngl, I totally pictured Bradley Cooper and JLaw in the roles (and had to suffer the cognitive dissonance of her being way too young to play Tiffany) but that aside, I was incredibly moved by this surprisingly gentle tale of lost love, mental illness and sports fandom.

Pat Peoples is not well but he’s working on getting better. Formerly an out-of-shape history teacher and sports coach married to the beautiful English teacher, Nikki, something terrible happened that landed him in a neural health facility. His mom, Jeanie, lobbies for his release to her and therapist Cliff Patel’s care. Once out of the Baltimore facility and living back with his parents, Pat discovers that a lot has changed while he was inside.

One thing that hasn’t is his dad, Patrick, an emotionally constipated older man whose only joy seems to be watching the Philadelphia Eagles play. He barely speaks to Pat, despite Jeanie’s entreaties. Pat’s younger brother, Jake, does his best to help smooth things over, both at home and out in the rest of the world, while Pat’s best friend Ronnie even fixes him up with his damaged sister-in-law, modern dancer Tiffany. Not that Pat has any interest in her romantically: he’s patiently working on bettering himself, inside and out, in order to finally reunite with his beloved Nikki.

Another reviewer compared this book to Stephen Chbosky’s The Perks Of Being A Wallflower (which is one of the greatest books of all time, IMO) and I can definitely see how this is an adult version of that. The narrator is a guy trying to figure out his place in the world by being kind, who is often beset by a blinding urge to violence that threatens everything he’s worked to build. He has a supportive, if unconventional, circle of friends and family. In addition to these similarities, Pat has a connection to the Eagles and their fandom that almost transcends the (somewhat acknowledged) fact that Eagles fans are the absolute worst. I actually really enjoyed reading about their rituals and camaraderie, and comparing it with my own love for the Arsenal. The book also promotes over-tipping, literature and modern dance, and I don’t know if it was written specifically for me, but it sure does feel like Matthew Quick is my people.

But most of all, it’s a thoroughly convincing examination of a damaged man’s efforts at recovery by practicing kindness and consideration, and I was completely enthralled by it. Can’t wait to read more of Mr Quick’s stuff!

Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2019/02/11/the-silver-linings-playbook-by-matthew-quick/

Feb 10 2019

Don’t Panic by Neil Gaiman

Don’t Panic, subtitled Douglas Adams & The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy began as a labor of friendship in 1987 when Nick Landau of Titan Books, which had Adams’ agreement to write a Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy companion book, called up Neil Gaiman “and asked if I was interested. I wanted to write this book more than anything. I said yes.” (p. ix)

Gaiman had Adams’ full cooperation. “Douglas Adams opened his address book to me. I talked to his colleagues, and went through his filing cabinets. I read dozens of scripts and photocopied all of Douglas’s press clippings. I played the Hitchhiker’s computer game to the end, and battled with primitive word processing programs trying to find one that would let me do footnotes. My favourite bits were interviewing Douglas, though, and the way he’d manage to be funny, and serious, and faintly baffled, all at the same time.” (p. ix) The original book ran 23 chapters, now the first 170 or so pages of text. It has been updated three times; David K. Dickson added three chapters in 1993, M.J. Simpson added four in 2002 and “overhauled the entire text” (p. x), and Guy Adams adding another eight chapters in 2009.

The first part of the book, Gaiman’s text, forms something of a professional biography of Adams, circling around his precarious circumstances until he finally found his niche at precisely the right time, telling the story of a wholly unremarkable Earthman and a wholly remarkable book, in a radio series that wasn’t quite like anything before or since. Simon Brett, a radio and television producer among many other things, said, “Douglas was a talent without a niche.” Gaiman adds, “Brett had the wit to see that Douglas needed a show of his own, rather than to try to cram his own strange talent into someone else’s format, and on 4th February 1977 Douglas traveled to Dorset to see Simon, who wanted to know if he had any ideas for a comedy show.” Adams initially tossed out some conservative ideas, “And then history differs. As far as Douglas remembers, Simon Brett said, ‘Yes, those ideas are all very well, but what I always wanted to do was a science fiction comedy.’ According to Brett it was Douglas who suggested it, and he who agreed. … The subject was broached, both were enthusiastic, and Douglas went off to come up with an idea.”

The germ of the idea was the parallel between the demolition of an everyman’s house and the simultaneous demolition of the earth. Adam’s initial idea was for a series of shows, each dealing with the destruction of the earth for different reasons.

“It was going to be called The Ends of the Earth. It’s still not a bad idea,” [said Adams].
“But it was while I was tinkering with the story idea for the first one that I thought, to give the story perspective there really ought to be somebody on Earth who is an alien and who knows what’s going on.
“Then I remembered this title I’d thought of while lying in a field in Innsbruck in 1971 and thought, ‘OK, he’s a roving researcher for The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.’ And the more I thought about it, the more that seemed to be a promising idea for a continuing story, as opposed to The Ends of the Earth, which would have been a series of different stories.” (p. 25)

Continue reading

Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2019/02/10/dont-panic-by-neil-gaiman/

Feb 10 2019

The Labyrinth Index by Charles Stross

I suppose The Labyrinth Index marks the time in the Laundryverse when horror overtakes humor, and the combining apocalypses leave the characters nothing to do but get on with it in the face of diminishing hope for the human race, but honestly it makes the book a bit of a slog. The Laundry is, or by the time of The Labyrinth Index, was, a secret agency of the British government devoted to defending the realm from supernatural enemies, mostly unspeakable Things from beyond the walls of time and space that like nothing more than feasting on consciousness, especially of the human kind. The series began as a mashup of The Office, spy novels, and H.P. Lovecraft, leavened with a hefty dose of Stross’ manic glee.

Over the course of eight books, it has become clear that the barriers between the mundane world and the dimensions full of soul-eaters are weakening, and this could go very badly for humanity. In the seventh book, all pretense of secrecy was blown away, as an army of extradimensional elves with dragons for air support invaded northern England and made a hash out of downtown Leeds. In the eighth, apocalypses started piling on top of each other, as Bob Howard, the series’ main protagonist, fought to prevent the UK government from being taken over by the avatar of an Elder God, and lost.

As The Labyrinth Index opens, the Laundry has been officially disbanded, but the new Prime Minister wants to stand up a new organization that can take offensive sorcerous actions against the enemies of the realm, as designated by the PM. He gives that task to Mhari Murphy, former MBA at a large bank, former Laundry HR, and now full-time vampire. She’s the main narrator and protagonist of the book, and to tell the truth, I have never warmed to her as a character. The PM, or New Management as Mhari refers to him, is inhuman and has plans for the UK (and the world) that are only marginally less horrible than extinction. Mhari likens the New Management to a beekeeper with humanity as his hive, and he’s only interested in fending off worse things because he wants us to make honey for him. Such is the cheery world of The Labyrinth Index.

The worse things are currently stirring up trouble in the USA, and Mhari’s task is to assemble a team that will put a spanner in their works. The American counterpart to the Laundry, casually referred to as the Nazgûl though their three-letter agency name is quite different, has been captured by cultists who want to bring back to our dimension an entity that is even less well disposed toward humanity than the New Management. As part of the plan, they have laid a geas over most of the country to forget that there is a president. The idea is that they will be able to substitute in a new focus of belief for 300 million people, helping to immanentize their particular eschaton.

The real president is still out there, on the run but protected by a small band of Secret Service who manage to remember who and what he is. Mhari’s team is to figure out what’s actually happened, and if possible make contact with the president to either offer him political asylum or improvise something equally inimical to the Nazgûl’s plans. As thrillers go, The Labyrinth Index is not half bad; the bit with the Concorde is neat. But it’s missing the humor and dark glee that have been a trademark of the Laundry series even in its bleakest moments. It’s been a very difficult year for Stross, and The Labyrinth Index was not the book he had originally planned to bring out in 2018. In the story, there are some hints at efforts to avoid the worst apocalypse and get Britain out from under the New Management. I hope Stross shows more of that in the next Laundry book, and I definitely hope that he has a kinder fate in store for Pete the vicar, because what appears to have happened to him in The Labyrinth Index feels like an arbitrary betrayal. Most of all, though, I hope that whenever Stross returns to the Laundryverse, he finds the humor again.

Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2019/02/10/the-labyrinth-index-by-charles-stross/