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/

Jan 10 2019

Stories of Your Life and Others by Ted Chiang

Stories of Your Life and Others left me cold, which surprised me for two reasons: first, because he has a reputation as an excellent writer, few stories but nearly every one a contender for major awards and often enough a winner; second, because I had enjoyed The Merchant and the Alchemist’s Gate so much. (That work won the Hugo in 2007 for best novelette.) Stories of Your Life and Others is his first collection, gathering work published seven stories published from 1990 to 2001 and adding an eighth, “Liking What You See: A Documentary.” A second collection, Exhalation, is scheduled for publication in May 2019.

“Tower of Babylon” opens Stories of Your Life and Others; it was Chiang’s first published story, and won the Nebula in 1991 for best novelette. The tower’s builders have a problem: they have reached the vault of the sky, and cannot break through to heaven. To solve the problem, the Babylonians have sent for miners from Elam and from Egypt. The story follows Hillalum, one of the Elamites fetched from his copper mines to the mighty city, and tasked to ascend to heaven itself. Babylon has been building the tower for centuries, and the Babylonians have developed a system for supplying the construction. Teams pull carts loaded with bricks along a path on the tower’s outer edge upward for several days’ journey, and then pass their bricks to another team that is waiting to receive them. In a vertical relay, each group of pullers goes back and forth along a limited stretch of the tower, but “there is a continuous caravan of brick going up the tower; thousands of bricks reach the top each day.” (p. 5)

Hillalum and the other miners will be going all the way to the top, taking most of a year to get there on foot. They will see far more than any group of pullers. As they ascend, Hillalum and his company encounter many strange sights, or at least things that seem strange to ground dwellers. Soon they are among people who never leave the tower, in time they come to layers where there is more rain and water than in dusty Babylon, eventually they meet people who live above the clouds, and then above the sun itself. “Tower of Babylon” bridges the mythic and the mundane; Hillalum, the miners, and the people they meet along the way are direct and practical, with earthy senses of humor. They are grounded despite the dizzying heights at which they live, and the cosmic nature of their project. And the cosmos of course is one in which the sun travels around the earth, the stars are small points of light, and the top of the sky is a stone vault.

Continue reading

Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2019/01/10/stories-of-your-life-and-others-by-ted-chiang/

Jan 08 2019

White Stag (Permafrost #1) by Kara Barbieri

There are a few things that would have turned this book from passably entertaining YA fantasy to a really terrific read, and I’m hoping that the fact that there are only a few things bodes well for the future career of Kara Barbieri. First and foremost is the lack of rigor, whether it be in the editing process or in the world-building itself. I’m not the kind of nitpicker who’s all “Well in Book 3 of the so far 7-book series, it was clearly stated that the minor village of Bludhaven burned down in 1831 and not 1832” (because also I have a terrible head for dates) but there’s a lot of disbelief I’m willing to suspend, especially in fantasy novels. What I could not get over in this book was the idea that our heroine, Janneke (or Janneka to her friends,) had been Soren’s companion for a hundred years but that they were only now having this thawing in their relationship. Hell, I couldn’t believe she’d been in the Permafrost for that long yet knew so little about goblins, when she’s supposed to be smart and resourceful and all that, and had been given plenty of opportunity, often explicitly so as with her role as cupbearer/spy when visiting rival courts, to learn about the beings she lived with.

Which also leads to the whole concept of goblins only being able to destroy and thus needing humans to create and how this makes no sense whatsoever in the way it’s selectively applied. Like, Soren’s hand is damaged by the Permafrost because he dares to braid Janneke’s hair at one point, to ready for The Hunt, but his lips don’t fall off after he kisses her out of love? Not that I wanted them to, but it bothered me that the “hard and fast” rules governing goblinkind were so arbitrarily applied. Which is a shame because the world building otherwise is quite fascinating, as Ms Barbieri draws from a wealth of obscure Norse mythology to tell her tale. I do think a more rigorous editor would have been able to demand more from her, as the richness of the tale sometimes turns patchy, particularly when it comes to describing locations — oftentimes, I feel like Janneke must have some sort of myopia as nothing more than 5 feet away from her ever seems to be described. There were also a lot of assumptions in the way that events were described as givens after the fact despite their being supposedly contemporaneous with and important to the narrative. It’s like Ms Barbieri just assumed we knew stuff she had in her head, which is a common rookie mistake that a good editor should have been able to help remedy.

I also found the whole “I know he’s a serial killer but he’s my serial killer and aren’t we all really serial killers at heart” romance trope wearisome. Fortunately, this was balanced with some excellent self-examination, with the message that sometimes it’s healthier to let go of the past and embrace your future. I wasn’t as much of a fan of the natural selection theme, however, finding it painfully ironic that a character who spent so much time rightfully and knowingly fighting for survival as a human among goblins should assume that others welcome or deserve death due to inherent weakness. Also, and this is going to sound weird, was Janneke’s rape ever actually named such? I felt it was referred to euphemistically too often, and I’m not sure why. Whose sensibilities are we protecting here?

I will probably read Book 2 because the ending and epilogue were actually pretty cool, and I’m willing to overlook debut novel mistakes as a fledgling writer makes her way into the world. There’s a lot of promise here, and I’m hoping that, as with Alwyn Hamilton’s Rebel Of The Sands series, it just keeps getting better.

Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2019/01/08/white-stag-permafrost-1-by-kara-barbieri/

Jan 05 2019

Neverworld Wake by Marisha Pessl

I absolutely adored Marisha Pessl’s debut novel, Special Topics in Calamity Physics, and was one of many fans disappointed and confused by her follow-up, Night Film (tho the multimedia aspect of that novel was really, really nice.) So I put her third novel, Neverworld Wake, on my to-read pile but didn’t feel any burning need to actually get to it. I’m so glad that I finally did.

And before I get to reviewing the body of the book, I have to say that I kinda sorta understand why it’s marketed as a Young Adult novel but I don’t really agree. Sure, NW is about five teenagers reliving a single night of their lives over and over before banding together to investigate the death of a boy who’d once been integral to their lives. And there isn’t any graphic sex, which seems to be the only thing that would have prevented the YA label. But the protagonists being teenagers doesn’t automatically classify it as a novel for not-yet-mature readers, IMO. Idk, book marketing is weird.

Anyway! Bee is our heroine, known as Sister Bee by her former classmates at the Darrow-Harker School for her unrelenting niceness. She was dating Jim, the songwriting prodigy working on a musical about the life of John Lennon, when his body is found in a nearby quarry just days before graduation. Bee’s grief causes her to flee Darrow-Harker even before the cops close the case as a suicide, but she knows Jim would never kill himself. For the next year, she goes about in a sort of trance as she tries to make sense of his death.

When one of their former circle invites her to a party, Bee accepts, thinking that if she can confront her old friends, they’ll help her find out what really happened that fateful night. But a car crash slips them into the Neverworld, a place where they’re forced to repeat the past eleven or so hours until they can all decide on which one of them gets to live while the rest slip forever into death.

So far, so many tropes, but Ms Pessl blends them all together into a really terrific, sensitively written meditation on youth and relationships that, above all, elevates friendship and the power of kindness and gratitude to change lives. I do wish there’d been a little more examining of Bee and Jim’s relationship after she managed to wake in Central Park, but I do think that overall it was a deeply satisfying novel, even if you do ache, as I did, for dorky, gallant Martha. The last scene in the Neverworld, especially, was incredibly moving.

Definitely a return to form for Ms Pessl. I can’t wait to see what she writes next!

Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2019/01/05/neverworld-wake-by-marisha-pessl/

Jan 04 2019

The Devourers by Indra Das

So there are some books where you finish them and you’re all “Well, I guess that wasn’t for me” such as, in my most recent experience prior to this, Marlon James’ A Brief History Of Seven Killings (and have you heard, he’s coming out with a fantasy novel! Despite my tepid response to prior book, I am excite! I only hope it isn’t the literature version of the upcoming Spawn movie, which we were promised would be, unbelievably, devoid of joy, as if that were a selling point. But I digress.) The weird thing is that lots of parts of Indra Das’ The Devourers did feel like it was for me. I’m totally there for tales of everyday lonely people getting sucked into bizarre realms that parallel our own. I abso-fucking-lutely love contemporary novels set in Asia. Weird family sagas, queer characters, sign me up!

But it’s just so unrelentingly violent and I get it, that’s how the shapeshifters are, but by the time the stranger confronts each parent in turn, I was just exhausted and numb and pretty much uncaring. Idk if each confrontation was meant to shock me out of said numbness, but they didn’t and I was just meh about it all. Logically speaking, given the personalities of all involved, everything had to happen the way it did, but it was all unsurprisingly, monotonously brutal, and I just didn’t care at that point.

Also? I felt that that last sentence of an ending was simultaneously twee and cynical. I loved the prior paragraphs with their sentence hurricanes tangling the various storylines together, but the last sentence felt like such an enormous cop-out given that Alok, with his obsession with names and labels, doesn’t claim his true self by saying it outright. Perhaps that’s the point, that labels don’t matter as long as there’s love, but let me tell you, if the book had ended in the stereotypically heteronormative fashion it had been hinting at earlier in the proceedings, I would have been infuriated. Claiming your identity matters. For a book about admitting who you are and being proud of it, it was a huge disappointment that it didn’t make Alok do the same. And, you know, I’m not one of those people who think that people should out themselves before they’re comfortable, but this is a fictional character in a book who’s just led you on a journey through his psyche and who ends the narrative with words that literally mean nothing instead of words that could mean something. As a coeur de cri from an author, as an essay, as a message from a real person to a real audience, it would be fine (see: outing yourself when you feel comfortable because the real world has real problems) but coming from a fictional character? Cheap.

Much as with Mr James, I’m looking forward to more of Mr Das’ work in future, even if I was tepid, at best, about their breakthrough novels. Hope springs eternal, especially when there’s evidence for the fertile soil of their imaginations and, honestly, technical prowess. I just hope for less dreariness and, in Mr Das’ case, more courage.

Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2019/01/04/the-devourers-by-indra-das/