Feb 09 2019

Why We Took the Car by Wolfgang Herrndorf

Why We Took the Car seems to have established a fixed place in the German YA firmament since its initial publication as Tschick in 2010. Young people read it on their own, they read it for class, and it’s part of the general culture. There was a movie in 2016. It has also done well outside of Germany, with Wikipedia noting the novel has been published in 25 different countries.

It’s easy to see why. The book tells the tale of Mike Klingenberg, whose wealthy but dysfunctional family is blowing up around him, and what happens at the end of eighth grade when the girl he has had a crush on all year utterly fails to notice him, and summer vacation opens up with his parents absent. Enter Tschick, Andrej Tschichatschow, a Russian immigrant who joined the class mid-year, scandalized people by occasionally showing up to school drunk, and alternated between brilliant and surly.

Why We Took the Car opens with Mike bleeding in a police station, apparently missing a large chunk of his calf. In the first three short chapters, Herrndorf establishes that Mike may be criminally responsible for something major, that the police should have turned him over to the doctors much sooner, and that he was trying to get to Wallachia. The rest of the book fills in how Mike came to be in precisely that state.

Continue reading

Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2019/02/09/why-we-took-the-car-by-wolfgang-herrndorf/

Feb 08 2019

A Backpack, a Bear, and Eight Crates of Vodka by Lev Golinkin

How did A Backpack, a Bear, and Eight Crates of Vodka turn out to be such an impossibly good book? I picked it up more or less on a whim during a visit to Texas — ok, memoir of leaving the Soviet Union as a kid and growing up in the States, could be interesting — and it sat unassumingly on my shelves for a couple of years. Now I know it was lying in wait to wallop me with a story that is by turns touching, harrowing and astonishing.

Lev Golinkin was born in 1980, in Kharkov, which was then part of the Ukrainian S.S.R., one of the fifteen union republics of the USSR. His early childhood memories recall for the reader how thoroughly rotten so much of the Soviet Union was, even under Gorbachev, even as Stalinist terror had receded to something less overwhelming but still capable of engendering random fear and harm. In Golinkin’s case, the harm is less random because his family is Jewish, and the casually violent anti-Semitism of the environment reaches even into the first grade. He is beaten by other boys for being Jewish, shit-stained toilet paper held in his face as other elementary school kids tell him that’s what he is for being a Jew. The teachers were studiedly indifferent.

The rot was there at the top, too:

On April 26, 1986, the year before I entered first grade, the Chernobyl nuclear plant (located less than three hundred miles from Kharkov) exploded, spewing a radioactive cloud over the Ukraine. Other, weaker countries would’ve had their citizens hunkering indoors and popping iodine tablets. But May 1 was International Workers’ Day, cancelling the parade was unthinkable, and so on we marched, blissfully unaware, soaking in the sunshine and the radiation. The reviewing stand was mostly vacant, of course, since local Party leaders had been alerted beforehand and had long evacuated the area, but the parade went off without a hitch. That’s commitment. (p. 7)

Continue reading

Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2019/02/08/a-backpack-a-bear-and-eight-crates-of-vodka-by-lev-golinkin/

Feb 04 2019

The Tower of the Swallow by Andrzej Sapkowski

The Tower of the Swallow is what happens when an author wrestles with the middle-book problem, and loses. Nothing happens, or rather, a great deal happens but none of it matters a dickie-bird until the last 30 pages or so (out of 400), at which time Ciri, the child of destiny, definitively escapes the several people who have been trying to capture her and claims her power through the magic of the titular Tower.

That’s too bad, really, because one of the virtues of Sapkowski’s series of books about the Witcher is that they have not followed the rhythms of Anglo-Saxon fantasy. Sapkowski grew up in communist Poland and began writing his fantastic stories as the old system collapsed. He draws on Polish history and legends, lightly, and structured his books and longer saga according to rhythms that do not match the customs of the genre as it has grown up in English. All of that has typically added to the fun of the gripping adventure tales that Sapkowski spins. There are familiar aspects, and memorable characters, but they are often at odd angles to expectations that I had built up over a lifetime of reading English-language fantasy stories. Indeed, I wrote that Baptism of Fire, the book immediately preceding The Tower of the Swallow, “does not seem to be aware that there is such a thing as a middle-book problem.” Maybe Sapkowski was still unaware in 1997, when he published The Tower of the Swallow, and that’s how he got so comprehensively waylaid.

To recap, Ciri is the child of destiny, but she is actively avoiding it by running around with a bunch of brigands and basically taking advantage of the unsettled situation that general war has brought. The Tower of the Swallow opens with Ciri being found nearly dead and nursed back to health by a hermit who lives deep in the equivalent of the Pripyet Marshes. About half of the book recounts how she came to be in the swamp, while the other half follows the efforts of Geralt of Rivera, the Witcher who is tied to Ciri’s destiny, to catch up with her. There are a number of incidents that feature neither Geralt nor Ciri, and these detail either army movements, political machinations divorced from ties to any character I cared about, or efforts of a few other characters to try to find Ciri. The most memorable of those was the sorceress Yennefer, who is closely tied to Geralt in other stories, but it’s not clear in the end what she is up to or how it ties in to any other thing.

I found myself skimming a great deal in this book, never a good sign. Telling Ciri’s story retrospectively, as she relates it to the hermit, just made the whole thing tedious. Her gang comes to a bad end; she spends a bad time as captor of a powerful bounty hunter; she claims some of her power and escapes, but is badly wounded and winds up deep in the swamps. Once she recovers, she leaves to meet the next stage of her destiny at the Tower of the Swallow. Geralt wanders around a lot, but never gets any closer to Ciri. The end.

I sure hope that the long saga of Ciri and her destiny wraps up more convincingly in the next book, The Lady of the Lake. After that, there is a standalone Geralt novel to look forward to, Season of Storms. Sapkowski still writes enjoyable adventures, but The Tower of the Swallow just got away from him.

Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2019/02/04/the-tower-of-the-swallow-by-andrzej-sapkowski/

Jan 29 2019

The Dead Queens Club by Hannah Capin

The sordid tale of King Henry VIII and his six wives is probably the one most well-known to those with even only a passing interest in English history. As an Anglophile myself, I grew up reading Antonia Fraser’s The Six Wives of Henry VIII alongside other titles more obscure on the topic, and heartily enjoyed the many popular TV adaptations. I tended to avoid the fictional stuff, an inclination cemented by viewing the movie of The Other Boleyn Girl. It was so terrible that, for once, Natalie Portman’s acting was the highlight of a movie for me (and she was quite good in it, don’t get me wrong, but the lack of historical rigor was appalling!) Most historical fiction about the six queens tends to follow some weird agenda, such as Ford Madox Ford’s attempt at redeeming Katherine Howard by pretending she was Anne Boleyn in The Fifth Queen. I did, however, give in and read Hilary Mantel’s Wolf Hall because Booker, and found it, while an excellent portrayal of Thomas Cromwell, a somewhat tedious read.

All this is by way of saying that I’ve read tons and tons of books on the subject and consumed so much film and TV on it, that when I watched the Mark Rylance-starring version of Wolf Hall, it was actually a shock to me to realize for the first time what a monster Henry VIII was. It was as if some BBC producer got tired of everyone pretending that Henry was just a quirky horndog and decided to finally put his sociopathy front and center (and God bless you, BBC producer, for doing it.) Pretty much everything ever written or filmed about Henry before the Beeb’s Wolf Hall tried to justify his actions because romance or religion or monarchy or whatever, but guys, he sucked, and nearly everything good that came out of his reign happened almost in spite of him.

And this is where we circle round to The Dead Queens Club by Hannah Capin. It takes the story of Henry and his queens and transplants it to a small-town Indiana high school in the modern day (and frankly, if you’re trying to reshape history to fit your own agenda, this is the way to do it, by changing the scenario entirely so that it makes sense to pick and choose what you carry over.) Our narrator is Annie Marck, the adopted Asian daughter of Cleveland professors, who is the best friend of Henry, the most popular guy in Lancaster, Indiana. As the book opens, Henry is dating Annie’s other best friend, Katie Howard, while Annie, an aspiring journalist, is constantly thwarted by her nemesis, editor-in-chief of the high school paper, Cat Parr. When Katie dies at a party in the woods, Annie must start to confront Henry’s terrible dating history and, more sinisterly, the death of yet another of his exes, Anna Boleyn.

While modern and feminist, TDQC hews quite closely to the history, performing a remarkable feat in repotting this Tudor drama into the hothouse of an American high school. Ms Capin clearly knows her stuff, and readers will find themselves absorbing actual history almost unwittingly, as we’re carried along by the narrative. Her portrayals of Katherine Howard, especially, and (Jane) Parker (Boleyn) Rochford are both loving and illuminating. I have to admit that it took me a while to get really comfortable with Annie’s first person POV, as she’s a decidedly idiosyncratic personality, but that’s sort of the point, that she’s the quirky one. And also? A teenager. Ms Capin does a really terrific job of taking these archetypes and pinning them on to actual teenage personalities.

I really enjoyed this book, and am looking forward to reading more from Ms Capin, perhaps with more non-white characters (tho I’m going to pretend that Lina is a brown Latina, because if Annie can be Chinese, why not?) I especially recommend it to everyone tired of Henry VIII being given a pass on being a bad dude. It doesn’t fix what he did, but it does help people see better the truth of his court, quite an accomplishment for an ostensibly YA novel.

Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2019/01/29/the-dead-queens-club-by-hannah-capin/

Jan 28 2019

The Smoke by Simon Ings

I read a lot of novels and it is perishing rare for me to feel genuinely intimidated by the intellect of an author but here we are! Simon Ings’ terrifying intelligence is palpable throughout the pages of The Smoke, with my only quibble being why London is called such, as the text doesn’t seem to offer any explanation. Is this a British thing that has eluded me as a foreigner, albeit an Anglophile?

Anyway, a bright if otherwise ordinary young man named Stu breaks up with his girlfriend, Fel, the daughter of a prominent scientist who has pioneered a means of prolonging life. Stu and Fel lived in The Smoke, near The Bund, as the colony of Fel’s people — a hyper-intelligent race who are evolving to hyper-efficiency — is known. Years ago, Stu had an unsettling encounter with a member of another of the human races, known somewhat disparagingly as Chickies, that continues to haunt him. Stu’s family begins to fall apart as war and destruction loom, and Stu finds himself at the mercy of forces beyond his control.

Mr Ings switches masterfully from third- to second- to first-person narratives and back again in a stylistic carnival ride that takes us from alternate history to space opera to classical mythology homage, all the while touching on class conflicts (in a world cheerfully devoid of America with all its complicated geopolitical neuroses,) anti-Semitism and the sociopolitical ramifications of advancing technology. It is at once an homage to classic British SF and a weirdly bold paean to love, tho not perhaps in the way you’d expect. Personally, I thought the main weakness of the book was in Stu and Fel’s relationship. Like everyone else in the novel, I had no idea why she loved him.

The Smoke is a truly weird, profoundly intelligent science fiction novel that dares to extrapolate a richness of both wonders and horrors from our own modern world. Pick it up and prepare to be dazzled by its sheer inventiveness.

Interview with Simon Ings to come soon!

Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2019/01/28/the-smoke-by-simon-ings/

Jan 26 2019

Frankenstein by Mary Shelley

You know how sometimes you think you’ve read a literary classic but it’s only that (you think) you know the story from sheer media saturation? I thought I’d read Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein decades ago, at the very least as an Illustrated Classic, but there were very many scenes completely unfamiliar to me, particularly where Adam went when Victor first cast him out, and how he thus suffered and learned. I was familiar with the Arctic ice floes, however, and found it strange that the framing narrative was essentially the only part of the book I could recall from my earlier “reading.”

Anyway! This self-involved young sociopath named Victor Frankenstein stitches together a bunch of dead people and animal parts and somehow imbues the entire framework with life (it’s never made clear how, though Ms Shelley did refer to galvanism when discussing the conception of the novel.) When the creature stirs, Victor, a shallow narcissist through and through, realizes that the thing is fugly, and in keeping with his habit of judging a book by its cover, declares the creature evil and an abomination and then, um, runs away. The creature, waking to such warm reception, himself flees but then undergoes all manner of deprivation and rejection as he learns that everyone hates him because he looks hideous. Calling himself Adam, the creature endeavors to learn language and other subjects, but mostly discovers that he is hella lonely. So he goes to find Victor and ask for a mate, promising that he and his intended will run off to darkest South America to bother humanity no more. Victor first says yes, then says nah, so Adam is once again driven to homicidal despair.

The story is told in letters from a reckless explorer, Captain Robert Walton, trying to discover a Northeast Passage, who comes across first Adam then Victor in the ice far north of Russia. He pulls Victor off an ice floe and swiftly falls in love with him, so readily accepts all the nonsense Victor spouts even tho anyone with a lick of sense would know that Victor is shady af. His narration tries to make Victor sound noble, even sympathetic, but fails utterly in the face of Victor’s sheer sociopathy. In just one example, when a childhood companion is set to hang for a murder Adam committed, Victor complains that he’s the one who’s suffering the most of them all because he is the most tormented by guilt. I had very many moments of “shut it, bitch” whenever Victor wallowed, which was often. I couldn’t quite figure out whether Ms Shelley was trying to show the reader that Victor sucked or whether she bought into his assertions of grandeur herself. I do believe that she meant for Victor to be an anti-hero, but to me, he’s just the villain of the piece. There’s a pretty terrific cautionary tale in here for learning to take responsibility for one’s actions, but it’s rather contradicted by the ending, plus the whole “well, it was ugly, so I was justified in being a shit” attitude is wildly underwhelming.

I’m minded now to see if I can find a taping, if any exists, of the relatively recent stage play starring Benedict Cumberbatch and Jonny Lee Miller; I’d heard about it but actually reading the book makes the conceit that much more compelling, where on any given night, each actor will play either Victor or Adam, emphasizing again the interchangeable monstrosity of both.

Had I more brain power atm, I’d dive into my concept of the book as modern-day allegory for white supremacy only, in that case, with even less sympathy for creator and created, but it’s been a long day with very little coming up Milhouse, so I will leave you to your own conjectures on the topic, dear reader.

Kudos go out to Kiersten White’s The Dark Descent Of Elizabeth Frankenstein for looking at this novel and creating a terrific counterargument to all of it, and for forcing me to actually read the original.

Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2019/01/26/frankenstein-by-mary-shelley/

Jan 24 2019

The Dark Descent Of Elizabeth Frankenstein by Kiersten White

It’s interesting how quickly one’s sympathy for a young girl raised to cosset a psychopath plummets as she goes from teaching him social skills to actively enabling his monstrous tendencies. And in this political climate, it’s hard to feel much sympathy for a woman who knows that her man is a shit but feels she has to protect him in order to protect her own way of life. Granted, Elizabeth Frankenstein faces much more dire circumstances in 18th century Europe than she would in the modern day, but that didn’t mean I had to root for her till she finally came to her senses.

That aside, I quite enjoyed this retelling of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein that makes it very, very clear that the real monster here is the doctor, not his creation. Friendships are what ultimately save Elizabeth, and I must say that Mary Delgado is much more forgiving than I was — but Mary is also a product of the time, so it’s easier for her (and also I’m a grudge holder myself.) Kiersten White’s intelligent use of perspective re-imagines the classic in ways that point out the true horrors of her source material, teasing out subtext and really making the reader reconsider their prior notions.

I’m ambivalent about the inclusion of said classic in the ebook version, however. Ms White has a terrific imagination and style, but her writing cannot help but pale in comparison with Ms Shelley’s. It’s great to be able to readily reference the original in the same volume, especially for the teenage target audience who might not yet have read it, but the vivid 19th century prose washes out the preceding text, which does a disservice to Ms White’s achievement here.

Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2019/01/24/the-dark-descent-of-elizabeth-frankenstein-by-kiersten-white/

Jan 19 2019

Hero at the Fall (Rebel of the Sands #3) by Alwyn Hamilton

If you’d told me after I read Rebel Of The Sands that this series would go on to be one of the best fantasy series I’ve ever enjoyed, I would probably have laughed in your face. The first book was pretty rough in terms of storytelling but had so much promise. The second book made good on that promise with a nuanced exploration of the politics of rebellion but even so, I did not expect this final volume to be as amazing as it was. Hero At The Fall was smart and funny and tragic and tender and I cried for pages and pages at the courage of our rebel army as they fought to free Miraji from oppression. So many people die for the cause, and HatF acknowledges the heroism of their deaths and the grief of the survivors so beautifully, without giving in to lazy rhetoric or cheap conclusions. Most importantly, HatF is a reminder of the power of storytelling and the legacies we leave.

I’m really glad I didn’t give up on this series after the first book, even as I’m amazed at Alwyn Hamilton’s ability to go from strength to strength. HatF isn’t a perfect book — there are still a few underwritten bits — but overall, it’s one of the finest fantasy novels I’ve ever enjoyed (with honestly one of the best love scenes ever written, in fantasy or otherwise.) Can’t recommend it highly enough!

Want it now? For the Kindle version, click here.

Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2019/01/19/hero-at-the-fall-rebel-of-the-sands-3-by-alwyn-hamilton/

Jan 16 2019

Kingdom of the Blazing Phoenix (Rise of the Empress #2) by Julie C. Dao

Wow, that was fucking terrible.

I mean, I’d been warned that this book would not be as brilliant as its predecessor Forest Of A Thousand Lanterns, a book so good that I put it in my Top 10 of 2018, but a lot of the (valid) criticism is that the main character, Jade, is extremely boring. That, in and of itself, is not a deal breaker, though it does give one pause: an unreservedly good/moral character need not necessarily be rendered boring, and having her be such usually points to a glaring deficiency of imagination. And yes, Jade, the Snow White figure in this East Asian retelling of the fairy tale is good, but she’s also unconvincingly uncomplicated. Raised in a monastery away from court, she and her nursemaid are summoned back shortly before her 18th birthday. She’s shocked, shocked I tell you, to learn that she’ll be used as a political pawn by her father the Emperor, who inherited the throne by marriage instead of blood, and her stepmother, who is the real power behind the throne. In a dramatic reversal from the court of the first book, everyone there loves Jade because she’s so plot device, I mean, nice! And she sees her stepmother doing evil in a dream so clearly the stepmother must be evil, because DREAMS are EVIDENCE in this ridiculous place so far removed from the hothouse setting of political intrigue of the first book. I’m not saying Xifeng isn’t evil, but really, a fucking dream?! I was also annoyed by Jade’s insistence on her right to rule due to her being of “real” imperial blood somehow reinforcing her claim as opposed to making her a snobby elitist brat.

You should probably stop reading here if you don’t want actual spoilers for the rest of the narrative, as I’m so incensed that I’m going to eschew the spoiler tags that I usually prefer to use, because this book was fucking terrible and deserves no respect in that sense.

So anyway, there’s a mostly inoffensive middle part where Jade flees the court and goes to collect a bunch of things that will help her defeat her evil stepmother, but I was irritated that she essentially falls in love with the first dude who’s nice to her after leaving the all-female monastery. It was cool that said dude isn’t your typical YA hero but come the fuck on.

And then that ending. You guys. What the fuck.

It’s all dudes! Dudes save the kingdom! The least offensive part is the resuscitating kiss (tho I scoffed at Jade conveniently explaining that it was the combination of romance with her mother’s love that saved her.) A dude puts together the stuff Jade quested for in order to raise the mystical army, and another dude kills Xifeng (and also strikes a mortal blow at one of the Serpent God’s avatars.) The badass feminist narrative of FoaTL is completely defeated by this bullshit Savior Dudeness. I nearly threw my Kindle down in a rage. The Crimson Army was cool in concept but the execution was terrible, which could be said about this entire book, unfortunately.

Also, wtf, snakes aren’t slimy!!!

I’m still furious with this novel, especially since it’s the follow-up to one of the most brilliant fairy tale retellings I’ve ever enjoyed. Kingdom Of The Blazing Phoenix was complete bullshit, and I’m going to try to pretend it doesn’t exist so that FoaTL can stay pristine in my mind. Wow, I just went back to read the review to FoaTL that I linked to up there and this goddamn book did everything I hoped it wouldn’t do. Wtf, Julie C Dao. Disappointing.

Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2019/01/16/kingdom-of-the-blazing-phoenix-rise-of-the-empress-2-by-julie-c-dao/

Jan 14 2019

Authority (Southern Reach #2) by Jeff VanderMeer

Whereas the first book in the Southern Reach trilogy, the darkly beautiful Annihilation stands perfectly well on its own, Authority requires both a lead-in and a follow-up. It’s a creepy ass book about, well, part of the problem is that it’s not really about anything that makes sense independent of Books 1 and 3. Essentially, about a year after the events chronicled by The Biologist in Annihilation, a new director is sent by Central to oversee the Southern Reach. He’s kind of an overconfident dick, a spy/agent who washed out by virtue of that same overconfidence, and is now relegated to status of fixer (tho arguably a fixer is just as valuable as any other covert operative, IMO, but the spycraft in this book is fairly fungible.) The main reason he wasn’t cut loose altogether was his mom, who’s an agency hotshot and still pulling a lot of strings from behind the scenes.

The main resistance to John Rodriguez’s presence is Grace, the assistant director, who’s convinced that The Director is still coming back after the events of Annihilation, never mind the fact that everyone else came back weeks ago. Yes, this includes The Biologist, with whom John strikes up a weird not-quite-rapport when he interviews her about her experiences in Area X, the biologically anomalous region that the Southern Reach was set up to investigate and contain. As John tries to get to the bottom of what’s been going on in Area X and the Southern Reach, he slowly becomes aware that Central itself is resorting to unsavory tactics to exert its own authority.

My favorite part of the book was absolutely John finding the artwork in that hideously creepy scene. As an examination of lines blurring between the researcher and the researched, as well as a metaphor for the mind-numbing quality of life in a stagnant bureaucracy, this was a fairly good novel. As an explanation of Area X, it provided little further illumination than the first book. As a family novel, I found it lukewarm; as a romance, quite gross actually, particularly in comparison with Annihilation.

Idk how I feel about that ending. The last scenes at the Southern Reach were quite horrifying, and I was quite impressed with the twist regarding who The Director really was. But I didn’t really latch on to John as being someone to root for, much less invest in, nor did I feel similarly for The Biologist as she appears in this book. I’ll definitely be borrowing the third book in the series to see how it all plays out, but Authority was not a great book on its own. Still better than that dreadful movie adaptation of Annihilation tho.

Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2019/01/14/authority-southern-reach-2-by-jeff-vandermeer/