Oct 11 2016

A Night in the Lonesome October by Roger Zelazny

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By the pricking of my thumbs, something wicked this way puns. Several somethings, actually, in Roger Zelazny’s seasonal romp, A Night in the Lonesome October. Those things are not to be confused with the Things in the Mirror, the Thing in the Circle, the Thing in the Wardrobe, the Thing in the Steamer Trunk, or the Thing in the Attic; all of those are kept in place by faithful watchdog and narrator Snuff. He serves his master, Jack, even as they skulk about foggy London streets, evading both the regular police and the Great Detective. (He’s the one in the deerstalker hat, holding a dramatic pipe and observing very closely.)

Their tasks in London mostly done, Snuff and Jack relocate to the countryside, for this is a year when the full moon falls on Halloween and a Game for very high stakes is about to begin. Possible players include the Count, a Russian monk, a witch, a druid, and more, all with their animal familiars. Some will act together when the stars are right to open a gate and bring the Elder Gods back into the world; others will band together to try to slam the gate shut. Until the last night, though, no one is sure who is on which side. They spy, steal, thrust and feint, trying to gain advantage before the big night comes.

Zelazny relates it all with aplomb, never giving too much away too soon, and never taking the end of the world too terribly seriously.

Made the circuits. The Thing in the Circle changed shapes, finally making itself look like a lady dog of attractive person and very friendly disposition. But I was not fooled into breaking the Circle. It didn’t have the smell part down yet.
“Nice try,” I told it.
“You’ll get yours, mutt,” it said.
I walked past the various mirrors. The Things locked in them gibbered and writhed. I showed them my teeth and they writhed away.
The Thing in the Steamer Trunk pounded on the sides and hissed and sputtered when it became aware of my sniffing about. I snarled. It hissed again. I growled. It shut up. (p. 5)

Snuff makes friends with the witch’s cat, although he suspects they are working for the other side. They discuss what a sneaking rat, Bubo, might have seen at Snuff and Jack’s residence.

“But I heard him come in, and I know just where he was. All he got to see was the Things in the Mirror.” [Snuff is speaking]
“Things in the Mirror?” [asks the cat, Graymalk]
“Yes. Don’t you have any?”
“Afraid not. What do they do?”
“Slither.”
“Oh.”
“Come on. I’ll show you.”
“You sure it’s all right?”
“Yes.”
Later, she placed a paw against its reflection as she stared.
“You’re right,” she said. “They—slither.”
“Change colors, too, when they get excited.” (pp. 49–50)

There are twists and turns, and moons to howl at. Players attack, traps are laid, plans made. Soon all is ready for the Game’s final moves.

Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2016/10/11/a-night-in-the-lonesome-october-by-roger-zelazny/

Oct 05 2016

The Vanquished by Robert Gerwarth

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At the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month in 1918, the guns fell silent, ending more than four years of terrible war in Europe. First as Armistice Day and later as Remembrance Day, European (and Commonwealth) countries even now commemorate the end of the First World War nearly a century after the event. Except the armistice in Western Europe is at best half the story. As Robert Gerwarth details in The Vanquished, war, civil war, and revolution continued in Central and Eastern Europe for years after fighting in the west had ceased. His subtitle is Why the First World War Failed to End, 1917–1923, and even that does not encompass the full extent of the fighting and suffering. Gerwarth makes a good case for linking the First and Second Balkan Wars (1912–13) to the First World War. From that perspective, the Balkans saw fighting from 1912 through 1919, and dislocation even later as population exchanges after the end of the Greek-Turkish War forced hundreds of thousands from their homes.

Drawing on original sources across the whole of Central and Eastern Europe (including Anatolia and the Caucasus), Gerwarth argues that the continuation of the First World War should be examined across the whole region, and not in national isolation. Europe’s land empires collapsed, leaving behind them revolutions and new states, many with competing claims to the same lands and peoples.

The revolutions that occurred between 1917 and 1923 could be socio-political in nature, pursuing a redistribution of power, land, and wealth, as was the case in Russia, Hungary, Bulgaria and Germany; or they could be ‘national’ revolutions, as was the case in the shatter-zones of the defeated Habsburg, Romanov, Hohenzollern and Ottoman empires, where new and re-emerging states, inspired by the ideas of national self-determination, sought to establish themselves. The simultaneous occurrence and frequent overlap of these two currents of revolution was one of the peculiarities of the years between 1917 and 1923. (p. 10)

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2016/10/05/the-vanquished-by-robert-gerwarth/

Oct 04 2016

Feet of Clay by Terry Pratchett

The cover gives it away, I thought. And so does the text on the back cover! Readers are being set up for a murder mystery, but whodunit, or rather whatdunit, is clear from the very beginning, if not before. I was all set to be cross at having the mystery solved before it had even properly started.

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With Terry Pratchett in charge, I should have known better than to think things would be simple. Yes, a golem committed the murder that opens Feet of Clay. But which golem? There are far more of them in the city of Ankh-Morpork than one would have thought. And what about this other thing? The Patrician, apparently being poisoned? And this other thing, too? And this other, other thing that seems unrelated but probably is related after all?

Pratchett deftly weaves together several threads in this novel of a Night Watch that has moved ever closer to respectability since it was first introduced in Guards! Guards! as a collection of three or four lost souls, mostly drunk, and careful to keep away from crime, lest the other side take them seriously enough to cause real harm. The Watch has grown, and now incorporates most of the species who make their home in Ankh-Morpork: dwarves, trolls, and the occasional undead in addition to more familiar figures of humanity, no matter how odd. They are even beginning to engage in detective work, though they are not entirely sure how it should be done.

It also seems that someone powerful, or perhaps powerful someones, thinks that Ankh-Morpork should have a king. Samuel Vimes, commander of the Night Watch and descendant of the city’s most famous regicide, has firm views on that topic.

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2016/10/04/feet-of-clay-by-terry-pratchett/

Oct 01 2016

The Girl With All The Gifts by M. R. Carey

This is another one of those books where I saw that a movie was coming out, and the trailer looked good enough that I felt I ought to read the book before I was inadvertently spoiled as to what happens. And then I was puzzled to discover that M. R. Carey is the pseudonym of celebrated comics writer, Mike Carey. Is the pseudonym an attempt to ensure that the novel is read by people who would otherwise dismiss it as coming from the pen of a “mere comics” writer? I’d hope not, especially since this book is so firmly within the speculative fiction genre that you’d think the target audience wouldn’t offer the same disdain to comics as “serious” readers would to them.

Anyhoo, as to the contents of the book itself. It really shouldn’t be a spoiler that this book is about zombies. And not to ghettoize zombie fiction, but there are really only so many ways one can tell a zombie story. Mr Carey does a pretty good job of it here, and I figured out the ending even earlier than Dr Caldwell did (though not necessarily what Melanie chose to do with the wall at the end.) I did think Mr Carey might have explored Miss Justineau’s feelings at the end in more depth, as she’s the closest to a reader stand-in we have at that point, but my feelings regarding Miss Justineau aren’t quite as effusive as they could be given the incredibly stupid thing she does around the halfway mark. I get that she’s concerned for Melanie, but come on. In that sense, maybe the lack of internal exploration does make sense, since Miss Justineau’s survival instinct is clearly subservient to her maternal instinct.

Which isn’t to say that I didn’t enjoy the implications of what happens next. I suppose there’s a certain element of traitorousness in my satisfaction, but Melanie is a capable sort and this fictional world is in good hands, more or less. I’d be interested to read Mr Carey’s exploration of what happens next, tho I imagine it’s meant to be an exercise in speculation for each reader. I did also enjoy Sgt Parks’ equation of the teaching program with a war crime. Is it weird that I kept picturing him as played by Idris Elba?

I’m not sure if, after reading this, I’d go to see the movie, honestly. Besides the fact that I’d spend the whole movie thinking “But… Idris Elba…” instead of enjoying what I’m sure is a perfectly competent if not better performance from Paddy Considine, I don’t enjoy watching gore. But it’s prolly the kind of thing you’ll enjoy if you want to watch a zombie film based on an intelligent novel (even if the characters occasionally do extraordinarily stupid things.) I would be rather curious as to how they filmed Melanie’s first exposure to the world outside Hotel Echo, as well as her walk through the wall, but not enough to sit through the rest of it, I think.

Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2016/10/01/the-girl-with-all-the-gifts-by-m-r-carey/

Sep 27 2016

League of Dragons by Naomi Novik

League of Dragons brings the Temeraire series to a fitting conclusion. The story picks up right where Blood of Tyrants left off: with Napoleon retreating to the west through the Russian winter. Novik captures the terrible pity of that march, the unrelenting cold of the borderlands, and the folly of men who tried to carry off so much treasure that they skimped on the clothing that survival required. In this volume, Novik finally begins to play around with European history, having air transport of French troops speed the retreat somewhat, and alleviate the deadliness of the river crossings that killed so many soldiers in our timeline. Allied commanders are also anxious to capture Napoleon because they believe that if he escapes, his dragons will transport much of the French army back to areas where they can be supplied and readied for a fresh spring offensive.

league-of-dragons

As with Blood of Tyrants, I found the section of League of Dragons set in Russia the strongest part of the book. The cold is palpable, the hardships of the men and dragons give meaning to the action, and the supporting cast is full of strong personalities. Again there are echoes of War and Peace, and other Russian literature. All of that adds up to show that Novik can write more than just a cracking good adventure when that is what she wants to do. The amnesia-driven realignment of Laurence’s personality even gets put to dramatic use: he compels a duel with a Russian nobleman. Aviators, in Temeraire’s world, are forbidden duels of honor because in the event of a loss their dragon might also be lost to the Corps. In early 19th century society, they are, for good and for ill, outside the realm of honor that still means so much among Europe’s rulers. Laurence, as a naval officer, was firmly within that realm, and he calls a Russian nobleman out by returning an unforgivable insult before anyone thinks to impress upon him what a bad idea that would be.

The duel is one of the best scenes in the book. The details, the things left unsaid, the competing agendas of the protagonists and seconds, with several different nationalities involved, make for gripping drama. The aftermath is nearly as good, with Temeraire wondering where Laurence has been gone so long, and the increasingly uneasy crew trying to conceal what their captain has been up to from a dragon who knows very well why duelling is forbidden among aviators.

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2016/09/27/league-of-dragons-by-naomi-novik/

Sep 21 2016

Blood of Tyrants by Naomi Novik

The premise of Naomi Novik’s Temeraire novels is simple: Patrick O’Brian with dragons instead of ships. What’s not to like? The first three or four books are pretty much a lark. The history is alternate – dragons! – but not too alternate, because otherwise there wouldn’t be any Royal Aerial Corps, nor any wicked Napoleon to fight. It doesn’t pay to think about the premise too hard. The notion that the presence of dragons in human history would lead to precisely the same configuration of events that allowed a young Corsican to be Emperor of France and would-be conqueror of Europe collapses as soon as it is plainly stated, so I will take it for granted and run with it. Which is precisely what Novik does, with panache.

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The dragons in Novik’s world are sentient, and some are large enough to carry a crew of dozens of humans into aerial combat. The British, from whose point of view she tells the first few novels, regard dragons as beasts whose abilities to fight and talk make them useful but also dangerous. They are treated poorly, kept away from most human settlements, and strictly regimented by the Aerial Corps. The Corps itself is the most disreputable of Britain’s armed forces, the more so because dragons sometimes bond with women, accepting no one else as their captain.

In the first book, circumstances align to forge an unbreakable bond between a hatchling, soon to name himself Temeraire, and Capt. William Laurence, a Royal Navy officer of noble birth and high social standing. That volume, and the ones that follow mix exploration — Laurence is learning the strange customs of the aviators at the same time the readers are — and adventure. Part of the fun is watching how Novik arranges events so that dragons’ involvement in major battles of the Napoleonic wars changes the main line of history not a whit, something of an anti-butterfly effect. It’s a neat trick, when deftly done, and Novik is reasonably deft. Temeraire and Laurence are also a fun pair to spend time with; they’re not quite Aubrey and Maturin, but that is an awfully high bar to clear. It’s also fun to see their stock in the service rise, as Laurence becomes less of a stiff-upper-lip Navy man and more of a freethinking aviator, while Temeraire’s abilities grow far past expectations.

Precisely those developments, however, lead the series into more treacherous waters. Temeraire is too powerful for the balance of forces in Europe to stay the same, even after a similarly powerful dragon turns up as an ally of Napoleon. It’s as if Patrick O’Brian’s hero had discovered he was captain of a dreadnought in the middle of the age of sail. The stories are no longer yarns of adventure, but Novik is not yet ready to change European history. Her solution is to send her protagonists around the world (the Napoleonic wars had a global scope), but that brings in another difficulty: history outside of Europe is much more alternate. Africa, for instance, has a very different political setup than was known in our timeline. In South America, the Spanish never conquered the Inca, and a possible alliance between Napoleon and the Inca Empress drives the plot of one of the later books. These differences prompt more thinking about the premise of the series, which can’t really stand up to the scrutiny.

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2016/09/21/blood-of-tyrants-by-naomi-novik/

Sep 20 2016

When All the World Was Young by Ferrol Sams

When All the World Was Young wraps up Ferrol Sams’ semi-autobiographical bildungsroman trilogy that began in Run With the Horsemen and continued in The Whisper of the River. It follows Porter Osborne, Jr., from his entrance into the medical school at Emory University six months after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor through his service in the US Army until he heads home in early 1945.

The first book told of a childhood both privileged and circumscribed, with Porter growing up as the son of a cotton planter in rural, early 20th century Georgia. It was a world still close to the soil, ruled by the rhythms of the seasons and by the near-feudal social relations of the Jim Crow South. Porter’s name was seldom used; within the closed cosmos of the county, everyone knew who he was. The second book carried him through his college years, a time of learning and exploring, marked by professors, girls, and pranks. Names play a role there, too, as he learns to juggle the identities marked by his full name, his childhood moniker (Sambo), and nicknames bestowed on him by friends. His world is bigger, but still protected by his social standing and his status as a college student.

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2016/09/20/when-all-the-world-was-young-by-ferrol-sams/

Sep 18 2016

The Return Of Sir Percival: Guinevere’s Prayer by S. Alexander O’Keefe

I’m not sure how I feel about this book. On the one hand, it’s an entertaining tale of Dark Ages Britain, with some really cool Roman/Byzantine/Middle Eastern history and politics thrown in. On the other, it’s a re-imagining of Arthurian lore which plays super fast and loose with established canon, and while it’s good reading, I spent way too much time being irritated that S Alexander O’Keefe conveniently ignored whatever didn’t fit in with the story he wanted to tell. While that’s his prerogative as an author, it also feels lazy as hell: at that rate, why not just build your own mythos instead of piggybacking off this one? Which is also one of my problems with the genre of historical fantasy, as those of you who’ve read my extended rants against some of Guy Gavriel Kay’s novels will remember enduring.

Anyway, if you want an entertaining tale of knights and queens a la Robin Hood: Prince Of Thieves (and I choose that comparison for quite definite, not unflattering reasons,) then this is the book for you. But if you’re anything of an Arthurian purist, you might find this book less fun than annoying.

Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2016/09/18/the-return-of-sir-percival-guineveres-prayer-by-s-alexander-okeefe/

Sep 16 2016

Die Räuber by Friedrich Schiller

This spring I went to Weimar. It’s a good weekend outing from Berlin, about three hours by train, and it’s lovely in May. The park on the Ilm, in particular, is splendid, with views and points of interest coming in and out of sight just as Goethe had intended. His country house, where he lived during his early years in Weimar and where he still retreated from official business during his later years, is on the opposite side of the park from the city (and the ducal court, in his day). It’s a modest affair, quite in contrast to his town house, which features a courtyard that carriages could drive in and out of, and an entrance stairway designed to impress visitors to the statesman, scientist, and writer. Schiller’s house was on the edge of town when he lived there, but is on the main pedestrian street now. It has been handsomely preserved and gave me a sense of both his family life and how he wrote.

Although I have a degree in German literature, I never took a class that focused on Goethe or Schiller. The university is small, the German faculty smaller still, and that class was only offered periodically. The only time it was taught when I was sufficiently proficient in the language was while I was abroad on an exchange program. (On the other hand, one of the final hurdles for the degree is a comprehensive exam on anything the faculty in your major thinks you ought to know about the subject, so I did read Faust, Werther, and familiarized myself with much of the rest.) It was nice to partly close this odd gap in my education by visiting the places where both men had lived and worked. While I was at Schiller’s house, I also picked up several of his plays, in the handy yellow Reclam editions that anyone who has studied German literature will instantly recognize.

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Schiller wrote Die Räuber (The Robbers) as a very young man, and it was published in 1781, when he was 22. The five-act play follows the fortunes of the ruling family in a fictional small German state. The elder son, Karl, has been away from the court, while the younger has stayed with his aging father. Franz, the younger, plots to have his father disinherit his brother, playing up tales of Karl’s waywardness and deliberately distressing their father. Karl hears that he has been cut off, and decides to show his father and the world what an outlaw career could really be like. He builds up a band of robbers in the Bohemian forest, and they become notorious throughout the land. Karl himself tries to be something of a Robin Hood, but his underlings compete to see who can commit the worst atrocities. Franz tries to bring about his father’s death (without resorting to outright murder) so that he can rule their land with an iron hand.

It’s all very melodramatic, and indeed, Schiller is one of the fathers of European melodrama. The play was a sensation at the time — eight years before the French Revolution — for its anarchy, its comments on the nobility, on religion, on morality, on evil, and many other subjects. The characters are violent and heedless, on and off stage. There is a good priest, who tries to get Karl to surrender his band and repent, but the robbers send him packing. For good measure, they escape from the forces of law and order, killing them (off-stage, in this case) in huge numbers.

The Robbers is not subtle. For a modern reader, accustomed to characters who show their feelings and intentions rather than declaim them from center-stage, it can be a bit off-putting. No wonder Verdi adapted the play into an opera. Wikipedia tells me that there are two recent translations into English, one that leans toward imitation of the original language, and one that leans toward adapting archaic idioms into contemporary language. Both are legitimate approaches to translating a play, but I have not read either. Next up from Schiller are two volumes of plays about Wallenstein, a general in the Thirty Years War.

Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2016/09/16/die-rauber-by-friedrich-schiller/

Sep 09 2016

Fresh Off The Boat: A Memoir by Eddie Huang

I’m a fan of the charming ABC comedy of the same name, which was how I first heard of this memoir, and was taken aback to discover that Eddie Huang himself had very negative opinions of the show. But then I read this book, and I get it. Mr Huang had an abusive childhood, and to see that elided for the prime time palate can be hard to stomach. Which, I believe, doesn’t detract from the value of the TV show at all, as it’s a necessary showcase for Asian-American culture, even if it isn’t a strict interpretation of Mr Huang’s book. Personally, I feel that content creators should take their cue from Alan Moore upon selling their rights for production in other mediums: it’s not your baby any more, so you shouldn’t feel like it’s a reflection on your worth even if it comes out atrocious or, in the case of Fresh Off The Boat, terrific but wildly inaccurate. Besides, if it weren’t for the show, I would never have thought to pick up the memoir, particularly when needing a humorous read after some of the heavy stuff I’ve been ingesting recently.

And I suppose I could have been bitter at how misled I was, not only by the show, but by all the reviews stating that this was a funny book. It’s not. Not unless you think it’s hilarious that an Asian dude becomes a black stereotype because he’s so conflicted about his own cultural identity. Don’t get me wrong: I really did appreciate the book as a considered, clear-eyed evaluation of Eddie Huang’s life by the man himself, but it wasn’t funny. Or was funny in the way The Big Bang Theory is funny where you’re not laughing with the geeks, you’re laughing at them (I hate TBBT, btw, it’s awful and minstrelsy.)

Lack of hilarity aside, this was a well-written book about a shitty but not atypical immigrant Taiwanese childhood. Mr Huang is unafraid to examine his life and choices, so while I wouldn’t have made the same decisions he did, it was easy to understand his reasons. He carries a lot of anger at the world, which isn’t a bad thing either: anger can drive you to agitate for positive change, which it often feels that Mr Huang does. The only part I found really tiresome was his insistence on being a gatekeeper. It would be nice if he extended that same examination he gives to his own and his family’s motivations to others, or at the very least tried to empathize more instead of, at best, condescending to people who share his interests but aren’t as “hardcore” as he is. One day, I suppose, he’ll learn that being cool doesn’t come at the expense of others.

Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2016/09/09/fresh-off-the-boat-a-memoir-by-eddie-huang/