Jun 01 2018

Space Opera by Catherynne M. Valente

Space Opera, I think, is wild. Really wild. You just won’t believe how strangely, weirdly, mind-bogglingly wild it is. I mean, you may think it was wild when Finnish heavy metal dudes in monster costumes won a continent-wide contest with “Chanson” in the name, but that’s just peanuts to Space Opera. After a while the style settles down a bit and the book starts telling you things that you actually need to know like how it’s all down to cows in the end and how becoming Englishblokeman confers immunity to abnormality.

Actually, no, that’s wrong.

The style never does settle down, much less move quietly to the suburbs with just the one spouse and a suitable number of progeny. It’s full-on electric and eclectic glam pretty much from start to finish, and that is meet and right and proper because what this book is, y’see, is Eurovision in Space. Eurovision. In SPAAAACE. Not small-bore space of carefully calculated molecular ratios and sensible orbital trajectories and a minimal amount of handwavium to allow interstellar travel. No, this is Tsar Bomba space, oozy gooey, loosey-goosey space filled to the n-dimensional brim with life, and with song. Bug eyes ain’t in it. (If Eurovision is an unfamiliar concept, Valente has written the perfect introduction and explainer.)

Take, for example, the Yurtmak of Planet Ynt, a deranged gutter ball of gas-jungles and carnivorous rivers hurtling through the beer-bottle-strewn lanes of the gravitational bowling alley that is septuple star system Nu Scorpii. Improbably, the body of an adult Yurtmak is basically the same as a human’s, if slightly a snailier color … Unfortunately for all of us, they also have heads. The head of a Yurtmak can best be described as what you would get if a hippo mated with a chain saw and produced something you wouldn’t let into public school even with a hat on, who then went on to have an unhappy affair with a spiny puffer fish, whereupon, at the height of a particularly pustulant, turgid puberty, the resulting grandchild’s face exploded. (Ch. 14)

There’s a zombie virus, various collective intelligences, massively intelligent pink algae, the “majestic stone citizens of the Utorak Formation,” plus “postcapitalist glass balloons filled with sentient gases all called Ursula,” and much more besides. The galaxy is teeming with life. “Yes, life is the opposite of rare and precious. It’s everywhere; it’s wet and sticky; it has all the restraint of a toddler left too long at day care without a juice box.” Valente has an answer for Enrico Fermi, whose paradox spurs much of Space Opera‘s first chapter: “…just then, when the [Los Alamos] desert sun was so hot and close overhead that for once Enrico was glad he’d gone bald so young, just then, when he looked up into the blue sky blistering with emptiness and wondered why it should be quite as empty as all that, just at that moment, and, in fact, up until fairly recently, everybody was terribly distracted by the seemingly inevitable, white-hot existential, intellectual, and actual obliteration of total galactic war.” (All quotations Ch. 1)

The Sentience Wars turned, in Valente’s memorable phrase, on who was people and who was meat.

Continue reading

Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2018/06/01/space-opera-by-catherynne-m-valente/

May 30 2018

LIFEL1K3 (LIFEL1K3 #1) by Jay Kristoff

For real, that was less Romeo & Juliet meets The Terminator, as the blurb says, than it was Westworld meets the Russian Revolution (with heavy Tank Girl influences.) It was crazy, in the best possible way. I was genuinely intrigued by Jay Kristoff’s narrative choices throughout the book, and tho I didn’t necessarily like the ending, assuming this is the first book in a series, I’m okay with the general idea of having it end on an “oh fuck, that was bad, what happens next?” note. I just wish that Mr Kristoff had given us a Star War before an Empire Strikes Back, to ease us into it.

Anyway, seventeen year-old Eve Carpenter is eking out a living as a mech-gladiator in a post-apocalyptic hellscape, earning credsticks to buy medicine for her ailing grandfather, Silas. Her best friend is Lemon Fresh, a fifteen year-old orphan Silas took in off the streets. Her other loyal companions are a robot named Cricket and a blitzhund — mostly construct, inherently canine — named Kaiser. When the girls and their robots go to loot a plane crash in order to earn more credsticks, they find far more than they bargained for in the form of a handsome android whose appearance stirs up memories that will upend Eve’s entire life and identity.

This is a universe in which Asimov’s Three Laws of Robotics apply… until the day they don’t. Mr Kristoff riffs effortlessly off of all sorts of cultural references as he builds a gonzo adventure which eschews the simpering prissiness of a lot of popular YA novels that feature female heroines. Eve and Lemon are ride or die loyal to one another, sharing a bond and a sense of humor that anyone with a bestest can relate to. The hot android is definitely a love interest but he doesn’t automatically become the center of Eve’s universe, which is super refreshing. And I’m still chewing over that ending! I did not see the twist coming at all, and I’m totally freaked out by what happened after, to the point where I’m not even sure if I’m mad about it. All I know is that I’m definitely reading the sequel, and I’m kinda hoping Lemon is acknowledged as the real heroine of the piece, because she is a rolling badass and my favorite (and because I definitely identify with her more than with Eve. Her “tell me honestly” question to Zeke made me crack up far more than I should have.)

And the language choices! Sumptuous, true cert’. Future slang can sometimes feel forced, especially when it’s teen slang, especially when it’s oft repeated as is the way of slang and teens, but this was really well done. If I had more time in my life, I’d look up more of Mr Kristoff’s work, because he is really good at this writing thing and I admire very much what he’s done here. When’s the sequel come out? I wants it. In the meantime, regardless of what I just said, I’ve bought a copy of The Illuminae Files THAT I WILL NEVER HAVE THE TIME TO READ OH WELL.

Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2018/05/30/lifel1k3-lifel1k3-1-by-jay-kristoff/

May 26 2018

The Hell-Hound of the Baskervilles (Warlock Holmes #2) by G.S. Denning

I seriously underestimated my reading load (again) and spent the last few chapters of this book in a reading panic. Fortunately, it’s a good, fun read, tho I feel that the last half of the book, a mash-up of The Hound Of The Baskervilles and Warlock Holmes’ origin story, suffered from the same flaws that riddle the source material: it drags in a way that stifles suspense, despite G. S. Denning’s efforts to liven up the storyline with magic, demons and humor. Regardless, this book is still terrific fun, especially if you like your mysteries with healthy doses of the supernatural and irreverence. I laughed even as Mr Denning poked fun at me as a football fan and a bicyclist (and the comic book references are superb! Tho I think the joke in Silver Blaze was told better than the one in Baskervilles.) I also appreciated the symmetry of the novel, as well as the shout-out to Benedict Cumberbatch.

Looking forward to reading the third book soon, tho I just realized I have like four or five (or seven, gulp) others I need to get through first. And ugh, I’m getting a migraine as I type, oh no.

Read my review of the previous novel in the series, A Study In Brimstone.

Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2018/05/26/the-hell-hound-of-the-baskervilles-warlock-holmes-2-by-g-s-denning/

May 23 2018

Furyborn (Empirium #1) by Claire Legrand

You know there’s a problem with a book when you get to the end, find out it’s the first in a trilogy and groan out loud. I mean, the prologue essentially tells you the main plot of not only this book but the next (and who even knows, maybe the third given how dragged out this book felt!) I felt that the prologue itself was rather overwrought and was happy to settle down quietly into the next few chapters, but as I kept reading, I found myself growing steadily more annoyed with Claire Legrand’s choices. She kept pulling focus to the least important parts of scenes instead of maintaining dramatic tension, often with minor character interjections or, less frequently but also less forgiveably, with just bad writing. It made for a narrative that was at once chaotic and desperately dull, because most of the chaos came from wildly unimportant things suddenly thrust into the limelight for no reason I could think of besides a weird attempt at verisimilitude (tho which, staaaahp. It’s fiction: the minor character doesn’t have to pull focus in the conversation just to remind the reader he’s there when important characters are talking. Yes, that happens IRL but real life is messy and not a freaking novel.)

Essentially, this is the story of two women divided by a thousand years. While I can accept, somewhat grudgingly, the idea that the main technological change in that millennium was the loss of magic and the discovery of gunpowder, the idea that The Empire as it’s described in the book had essentially stood for that length of time is laughable. This book would have been so much more plausible given a shorter time gap. That said, of the two women, I found Eliana to be the slightly more bearable one. Forced to serve the Empire in order to protect her family, she’s conflicted about her role as a bounty hunter, even before her mother becomes the latest victim in a series of unexplained kidnappings. Eliana throws in her lot with the rebels to seek out her mother and protect her younger brother, and discovers her connection to a woman out of legend: Rielle, the long-dead Sun Queen.

Or Rielle, the incredibly tedious, as I prefer to think of her. Basically, she’s the only person ever to have access to the seven elements, as everyone else gets just one and needs to use a physical object to focus their castings through, a limitation she does not possess. Rielle’s life is somehow strictly controlled by her father and a priest because she’s oh so dangerous, yet she runs freely around the palace with her best friends, the crown prince and his cousin/fiancee? When her powers are discovered, she’s put through seven unlikely but life-threatening trials where Ms Legrand’s horrible mastery of priorities shines through brightest. Rielle is all-powerful! But she can’t control her powers! But she can’t access her powers! But she doesn’t know what to do with them! But she’s afraid she’ll harm people when she uses them! If she can use them! There’s no consistency, and it’s all a hot, muddled mess.

And ugh, the sex. I thought it was oddly graphic in a bodice-ripping way, not in the down-to-earth manner that I expect from good YA fiction. As a boy-crazy lady myself, I totally get having a thing for any hot guy that crosses your path, but Furyborn was just Too Much. There’s a huge difference between thinking a dude is hot and wanting to bone him as soon as your current love interest walks off-screen. Someone more socially conscious than I am pointed out that the women being ostensibly bi but really just acting like cats in heat all the time was actually damaging to bi rep, and I would tend to agree. I was especially annoyed by Rielle’s inappropriate urges in inappropriate places: not as bad as in some trashy romances I’ve read but still an annoying trope. Oh, and the way her powers manifested in response to her sexual urges (and vice versa) was absurd to the point of laughable.

There’s a lot of potentially interesting stuff going on in Furyborn (even if I did think the introduction of wraiths was way too deus ex machina) but the world-building could not withstand the really poor narrative choices. I won’t be reading the rest of this trilogy when there are so many other actually good books to read, I’m afraid. I’m disappointed because this sounds like exactly the kind of book I love reading but it’s executed so horribly that I just can’t even.

Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2018/05/23/furyborn-empirium-1-by-claire-legrand/

May 23 2018

A Study in Brimstone (Warlock Holmes #1) by G.S. Denning

Weirdly, given how I love and devour mystery novels, I have never really been into reading Sherlock pastiches. For that matter, I’ve never been a huge fan of the source material, having read the originals only insofar as they were available to me in the library of a paternal uncle whom my family visited in my father’s hometown once a year. Books being much scarcer for me then than now, I would usually read whatever was available to me whenever it was available, and would store the locations of books like a pirate carrying a mental map of buried treasures (and never mind actually socializing.) So reading Sherlock Holmes, for me, carries a visceral memory of sun-warmed concrete blocks, sliding glass doors on rattan bookshelves and the old, almost sepia pages of a Penguin Classics volume that I read as I tried not to fall asleep in the heat of a Malaccan afternoon. Perhaps it was this perpetual drowsiness that made it so difficult to fully appreciate Holmes’ deductive powers, or his and Watson’s feats of derring-do: all I remember from my reading was how very unlikely their adventures felt, but how much more interesting than trying to make small talk with much older relatives whom I barely knew.

Anyway, the main reason I’ve been so lukewarm over most modern continuations of Sherlock Holmes’ adventures in print is that they are entirely faithful to Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s tone as I remember it: crushingly serious in the face of events that are implausible at best. Enter G. S. Denning. Not only does he make his Holmes a literal Warlock, amping up the supernatural (and in my opinion, most interesting) aspect of the original stories to eleven, but he also serves up a healthy dose of humor and strips the insufferable aura of self-importance almost completely from his subject. It’s a breath of fresh air and, frankly, the only time but one in all my enjoyment of Sherlock-related media that I’ve felt compelled to go back and look up the source material (the exception being Kitty Winters in the excellent Elementary TV series. My reluctance to consume Sherlockiana is mostly confined to reading, as modern dramatizations tend to add humor and humanization.)

Watson is the true deductive hero of Mr Denning’s A Study In Brimstone, which reimagines six classic Sherlock stories as overtly supernatural cases that fall neatly under Warlock’s purview. The hijinks feel refreshed and the references renew my interest in reading the originals, which is some of the highest praise I can give to any homage. I love the twist with Moriarty, and am very interested in reading more of the character introduced in the very last story included here. Excitingly, I’ll be able to read the next two volumes quite quickly, courtesy of Titan Press. Reviews of those soon!

Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2018/05/23/a-study-in-brimstone-warlock-holmes-1-by-g-s-denning/

May 21 2018

An Interview With Roger Levy, author of The Rig

Q: Every book has its own story about how it came to be conceived and written as it did. How did The Rig evolve?

A: It came very slowly. I was processing a lot of things in my life while completing Icarus, and The Rig came in fits and starts. I wanted to say something about how isolated we can be, how poorly we comprehend the world and the people around us, and how much we need all those people and their understanding. And of course I wanted to do it with mystery and suspense and action – so not ambitious at all! A few scenes and characters – the Chute, Alef and Pellonhorc, Razer – came first, and of course the concept of AfterLife, and everything else just flowed from there. It flowed like cold treacle. It’s really hard to say more without giving spoilers, as I’m sure you’ll understand.

Q: The Rig deals with the intersection of faith and technology in a way I find refreshingly different from most other science fiction. Religion and tech were also important themes in one of your previous books, Dark Heavens. What inspires your ongoing engagement with these subjects?

A: It’s always intrigued me that so many of us can hold in the mind, and quite comfortably, two such conflicting systems as evidential science and belief in a god. There is an evolutionary advantage to having a belief. As you say, I’ve previously looked at the malign manipulation of those holding faith in a technologically advanced society, and in The Rig I’m looking at a different aspect. Might we begin to shed faith only to find that we suffer in the absence of its comfort, and need some way to replace those comforts? Thus AfterLife.

Q: When Razer, the writer in The Rig, is asked why she writes, she responds “curiosity and dissatisfaction.” I couldn’t help but wonder if she was speaking for you as well. What are your reasons for being a novelist, and particularly one who writes science fiction?

A: Yes, Razer is speaking for me. As for my reasons for being a novelist, I just wanted, always, to write. It was never a reason for me, but a drive. The best motivation to write that I ever heard, though, was Hubert Selby Jr’s reasoning, ‘I know the alphabet. Maybe I could be a writer.’ And where science fiction is concerned, when Reckless Sleep was picked up, the die was cast and I was a science fiction writer. In fact I wouldn’t have it any other way. Science fiction is an inexhaustible repository of ideas. Those who write it and those who read it are the most varied, inquisitive, disputatious, interesting of people.

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

A: I always write for myself, in the hope that if something interests me, it might interest others. I like to be caught in a story, to be challenged, to learn something, and I like it when a story has a twist or two that I don’t see coming. I hope I’ve done some of those things in The Rig. I’d like my writing to be conversing with readers, not speaking at them.

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

A: That would be Wasp, by Eric Frank Russell. I was twelve or thirteen, and the first pages just hooked me.

Q: I very much enjoyed the way you incorporated linguistic evolution into the writing of The Rig. Words like “goddery” and “threedy” reflected the social incorporation of futuristic developments in religion and technology in a way that felt very natural. I also enjoyed your playful almost-puns, e.g. ParaSites, arkestras. What stimulates your experimentation with language?

A: Thank you. I’ve always loved puns and wordplay. Shortly after I’d thought of putery, I went to Bletchley Park, where the Enigma codes were broken, and discovered that Alan Turing had talked of computery. That satisfied me a lot. I derive as much writing pleasure from wordplay as from plot and idea. And I enjoy reading a book so much more if the writing, word by word and sentence by sentence, is as interesting as the greater span.

Q: Do you adhere to any particular writing regimen, given your other, very busy (ed: I originally used the word worthy but it somehow got changed in the interview process) occupation as an NHS dentist?

A: I am part of a writing group, which keeps my work ticking along, and I try to go once a year to a writing retreat in Spain, run by my friend Anne Aylor, who also teaches there. Other than that, I write when I can, but it’s always in my head, composing and recomposing itself.

Q: We usually like to ask whether an author is a pantser (someone who writes by the seat of their pants) or a plotter, but it’s hard to imagine a novel as layered and thoughtful as The Rig being written extemporaneously. Did you find yourself surprised, however, by any unexpected directions the plot took outside of what you’d planned?

A: I’m a pantser who panics and becomes a plotter. There was a lot of panic in the writing of The Rig, a great many holes I dug myself into. There was also an entire subplot that got cut. But yes, the plot skidded all over the place, and I was constantly steering it back. I knew where I wanted it to end, and how, but the book didn’t want to make it easy. And without the detailed editing of Miranda Jewess and Ella Chappell at Titan, it certainly wouldn’t be what it is.

Q: I can’t help but be fascinated by Razer’s evolution through the course of The Rig. Arguably, she becomes the most important, if unsung, shaper of AfterLife through her actions and omissions. What is your opinion on the power of the written word to influence history and civilization?

A: That’s such an interesting question. I think that the spoken word is more important in the moment, than the written – look at Churchill, Hitler, Martin Luther King – but the written word comes into its own as event becomes history. We have always acted from the spoken word and learnt from the written word. Having said that, I realise I’m talking about the considered written word, the cold and detailed analysis, and we’re in a time when the written word is not always so considered. The written word now has to be instant and short. And what worries me is that this new written word may influence history and civilisation to the point of annihilation, and it may come in a tweet.

Q: One thing I desperately wanted to read more of in The Rig was the subject of The Question. This actually led me to wonder whether The Question was left deliberately vague so that the reader could assign their own interpretations to the accompanying faith. Can you tell us more about The Question, or will that be the subject of another novel?

A: Yes, it was left deliberately vague, and not solely for the reason you suggest, though of course you’re right. There are clues to its basis in the book, both actual and by omission, but I don’t want to say much more. Without being cryptic, mystic or coy, The Question isn’t even, necessarily, a faith as we understand it. What it may be, from a human perspective, is hopeful. And where some beliefs claim answers, I wanted the idea of uncertainty. I wanted to provoke thought. My character representing The Question is named in reference to a character in Italo Calvino’s Cosmicomix, and Calvino is a writer of metafiction. I’d say more, but there’s the risk of spoilers.

Q: What can you tell us about your next project?

A: Just that it’s set a little closer to home and a little nearer to now.

Q: What are you reading at the moment?

A: I always have a number of books on the go. At the moment I’m going through Adam Hall’s Quiller series.

Q: Are there any new books or authors in science fiction that have you excited?

A: I wouldn’t single anyone out, nor give gravity to my own personal taste.

Q: Tell us why you love your book!

A: Apart from the simple fact that it’s finished? I’m really happy with the twists. I have a great fondness for the humechs, Beata and Lode, who crept up on me. But what I really love about it is the beautiful cover by Julia Lloyd at Titan.

~~~

Author links:

RogerLevy.co.uk

~~~

The Rig was published May 8th 2018 and is available via all good book sellers. My review of the book itself may be found here.

Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2018/05/21/an-interview-with-roger-levy-author-of-the-rig/

May 20 2018

All Systems Red (The Murderbot Diaries #1) by Martha Wells

All Systems Red by Martha WellsLoads of fun, in large part due to the main character/narrator of Murderbot. That isn’t actually Murderbot’s name, but it’s what our narrator chooses as a self-referential, and to tell you why would possibly tell you too much about this novella. Murderbot is a Security Unit, a half-machine half-organic being created solely to protect humans in a highly corporatized, planet-faring future. The plot itself is a somewhat straightforward adventure narrative laced with progressive sci-fi concepts. The military bits occasionally get elided enough for even me, the civilian, to notice, but any criticism is quickly subsumed by how awesome Murderbot is. And that’s not to imply that Murderbot is some kind of hardcore badass (tho there are definitely moments of that): on the contrary, Murderbot’s appeal comes largely from the flaws of this fascinating, self-aware being as Murderbot guides and protects a group of explorers on a dangerous planet.

Murderbot, you see, is the epitome of socially hostile (“antisocial” and “socially awkward” just don’t accurately describe the condition.) Murderbot would much rather sit in a Cubicle, watching entertainment feeds, than interact with humans. When circumstances force Murderbot into very personal quarters with the human members of the expedition, the results are both comic and almost painfully insightful into what it means to shun human company. Any introvert can empathize.

I also really enjoyed the economy of emotion put into that ending, and am very much looking forward to the rest of the novellas in the series, tho I rather wish they could all have been published together in one volume to begin with. While I do think that this novella could have been fleshed out into a meatier novel, it is pretty great on its own, and its brevity lends itself to recommendation as an introduction to the joys of progressive hard sf.

All Systems Red by Martha Wells was published May 2 2017 by Tor.com and is available from all good booksellers, including

Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2018/05/20/all-systems-red-the-murderbot-diaries-1-by-martha-wells/

May 19 2018

Dread Nation (Dread Nation #1) by Justina Ireland

Wow, I didn’t even know about the firestorm over this book and the author and her Twitter use until after I’d read and thoroughly enjoyed Dread Nation. It’s a really terrific novel: what if zombies rose after the Battle of Gettysburg, and American history took a decided turn to deal with this new existential threat? It’s not a sunshine and roses look at the American psyche, tho. If anything, it’s a very realistic look at how the prevailing mindset would still find a way to oppress anyone who wasn’t white “enough”. Slavery might have been abolished, but systemized oppression remains, built into the structures of the new society that has grown to grapple with the threat of shamblers, as the zombies are called. Jane McKeene was born into this society, a biracial daughter of means who is still forced to go to combat school because the law demands that all black children be taken from their parents to learn to fight the shamblers. Good thing Jane is so good at it. If it weren’t for her ornery nature, she’d likely excel at Miss Preston’s School for Combat, whose graduates can look forward to relatively cushy lives as the Attendants (essentially personal bodyguards) of society ladies. Even so, she’s set to graduate near the top of her class, when disaster strikes and Jane soon finds herself fighting for her life against enemies undead or otherwise.

One thing I really enjoyed about this book is that you can tell it was written by an African-American woman. I loved Ben H Winters’ Underground Airlines and Matt Ruff’s Lovecraft Country, but the nuance and layers built into Dread Nation’s first person narrative of a young black woman (who also happens to be bisexual!) read with a sharp authenticity that goes beyond the universal emotional wellspring available to all talented writers. It makes for compelling, eye-opening reading, which is one of the many reasons that the #OwnVoices movement is so important. Like Ms Ireland, I don’t believe that people can’t write outside their race/ethnicity/culture but I do believe that it is very, very important that the voices of people writing about their own minority race/ethnicity/culture are promoted so that they have an equal shot at being heard in the contemporary market. I also liked this a whole lot better than Octavia E Butler’s Kindred because it tackles racism and sisterhood without blinders on, and is whip smart about the ongoing corruption and self-deception at the heart of white supremacy.

I also thought that the way the narrative was framed was very clever, with the letter excerpts opening each chapter. I very much want to read the sequel because I like Jane (she reminded me a lot of Tom Sawyer, even before his novel showed up in the narrative — a sly reference I greatly enjoyed) and Katherine, but I admit to being meh on Ms Ireland herself, after her choice of words on Asian-American writers and her refusal to apologize for being a shitty Tweeter. I guess I’m just going to have to put her down as a problematic fave; hopefully, by the time the sequel comes out, she’ll have seen why refusing to apologize for sounding like an asshole to other marginalized communities makes her just as arrogant as the people she criticizes.

Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2018/05/19/dread-nation-dread-nation-1-by-justina-ireland/

May 14 2018

Mani: Travels in the Southern Peleponnese by Patrick Leigh Fermor

Mani grew in the telling. Patrick Leigh Fermor meant it “to be a single chapter among many, each of them describing the stages and halts, the encounters, the background and the conclusions of a leisurely journey … through continental Greece and the islands.” He undertook the journey, “to pull together the strands of many previous travels and sojourns in all parts of Greece, for I had begun wandering about this country and living in various parts of it a few years before [World War II].” Combining understatement and insouciance as he will throughout the book, he adds, “The war did not interrupt these travels though for the time being it altered their scope and their purpose; and since then they have continued intermittently until this very minute of an early morning on a white terrace on the island of Hydra.” (all p. 5)

“All of Greece is absorbing and rewarding,” (p. 6) which tells the reader as much or more about the author as about Greece itself. Enthusiasm seems his natural mode; a published book of one of his correspondences is titled In Tearing Haste and I can see that as the closing in many letters, dashed off from here or there as he explored places, met people, discovered their pasts and presents, and filed away notes to charm multitudes of readers decades hence. “There is hardly a rock or a stream without a battle or a myth, a miracle or a peasant anecdote or a superstition; and talk and incident, nearly all of it odd or memorable, thicken round the traveller’s path at every step.” (p. 6) Considering his natural style and approach, a single volume encompassing all of Greece was clearly impossible. The 350 pages of Mani encompass a single peninsula in the Peleponnese, but this is no dry recounting of every nook and cranny. “Thus I could allow myself the luxury of long digressions, and, by attempting to involve the reader in them, aspire to sharing with him a far wider of Greek lands, both in space and time, than the brisker chronicle of a precise itinerary would have allowed. … there was now no need to furnish this free elbow-room with anything which had not filled me with interest, curiosity, pleasure or excitement.” And indeed he does.

The temporal dimension is particularly important, as Michael Gorra notes in his introduction to Mani. “In Leigh Fermor’s pages any account of the present begins a thousand years back, and to read him is to enter a mind that delights in bounding from moment to moment and century and century, a mind in which all times appear to exist at once. … [I]t’s instead as though they were each one indexed, and available for use.” (p. viii) Leigh Fermor sees the centuries that have shaped the settlements and the landscapes he travels, the ebb and flow not only of Greek power (both ancient and otherwise) but also Frankish, Venetian, Ottoman, and more, each leaving telltale evidence in building, names, technology, words, or local legend.

The second aim, both of this and other books to follow, is to situate and describe present-day Greeks of the mountains and the islands in relationship to their habitat and history; to seek them out in those regions where bad communications and remoteness have left this ancient relationship, comparatively speaking, undisturbed. In the towns and the more accessible plains many sides of life which had remained intact for centuries are being destroyed apace—indeed, a great deal has vanished since my own first visits to Greece. Ancient and celebrated sites are carefully preserved, but, between the butt of a Coca-cola bottle and the Iron Curtain, much that is previous and venerable, many living mementoes of Greece’s past are being hammered to powder. It seems worth while to observe and record some of these less famous aspects before the process is complete. (pp. 6–7)

In the end, he only managed one other book of similar depth about a Greek region, Roumeli: Travels in Northern Greece. What might have been takes nothing away from the amazing achievement of Mani in bringing an obscure region vividly to life. Leigh Fermor carries his learning lightly and leavens it with personal encounters.

Continue reading

Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2018/05/14/mani-travels-in-the-southern-peleponnese-by-patrick-leigh-fermor/

May 14 2018

Batman: Nightwalker (DC Icons Series #2) by Marie Lu

As hoped, it was better than the first in the DC Icons series, Wonder Woman: Warbringer. Maybe that’s due in large part to the fact that Batman as a mortal character needs to have his origin updated for each leap in technological progress: it’s absurd to think that this iconic character, dependent as he is on gadgets and tech, could be anything less than hyper-modern, whereas to do the same to the ageless and essentially immortal Wonder Woman feels both unnecessary and insulting to her background (but since DC Comics doesn’t have a problem with it, who am I to complain? ::eye-roll::)

Which isn’t to say that Batman: Nightwalker doesn’t have issues of its own. It’s not particularly clever or ground-breaking — and it definitely hasn’t carved out a place for itself in the essential canon — but it’s an entertaining and not entirely unconvincing depiction of a pivotal chapter in a teenage Bruce Wayne’s life. My main problem was with the editing: I was more than happy to let a few weird mistakes go, but by the time this came along, I was grinding my teeth so hard that I had to bookmark the damn thing so I wouldn’t forget to quote it verbatim for this review:

“Half a flight ahead of him was [redacted], who seemed to move with a speed and agility that belied everyone else.”

Are you fucking kidding me?! Look, as an Asian-American first-generation immigrant, I get that the nuances of the English language can be hard, so I legit don’t hold it against Marie Lu (or any other author, no matter what background) to fuck that one up. But that a professional editor read through this and didn’t immediately red line that shit makes me want to scream in horror. I do not have the time or patience to go through the rest of the book again to pick out the other glaring mistakes, but I am aghast at the standards here. Also? My copy had an excerpt from the next novel, the Catwoman re-imagining, and oh my God, fuck you everyone involved. Elegant cat burglar Selina Kyle is a teenage cage fighter, like ayfkm? I get that it’s more palatable than being a young prostitute, as she was in canon (tho this also opens up a whole ‘nother can of worms about sex work and shame,) but oh fuck it, I give up, Catwoman in non-comics media has been a hot mess since Tim Burton fucking ruined her in his stupid movie. Yeah, I said it. I am grossed out by the association of gratuitous violence with the character, particularly in a YA setting, especially since it looks like it’s taking the place of voluntary, if transactional, sex. Definitely not reading the next book.

Anyway, if you can get over the basic editing errors in this volume, it’s a perfectly serviceable piece of entertainment that is recognizably Batman and not some appalling bastardization of the character.

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