tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-86624521276910850852024-03-13T12:35:04.609-04:00Geek Rage!Experimentation. Discovery. Risk. Book reviews.Caius Caligulahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06345161053444317875noreply@blogger.comBlogger200125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8662452127691085085.post-19970719095633613642020-02-11T18:30:00.000-05:002020-02-11T18:30:01.677-05:00The Hellraiser Story<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgLqyQdDnR0daUJEHFpa7T5urtpjpvWzKRhh3QOJeIAzPgfM9miOHus-Lz8OeGB8GSZ0rp7i6RM9Wk0JJlRIEC5ZR8V0ou2VwqobXMWCG4t4W5MWm2CtbYyTDP6yQ9D82klFr2TShIkwNI/s1600/Hellraiser-e1561765986892.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="675" data-original-width="1200" height="360" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgLqyQdDnR0daUJEHFpa7T5urtpjpvWzKRhh3QOJeIAzPgfM9miOHus-Lz8OeGB8GSZ0rp7i6RM9Wk0JJlRIEC5ZR8V0ou2VwqobXMWCG4t4W5MWm2CtbYyTDP6yQ9D82klFr2TShIkwNI/s640/Hellraiser-e1561765986892.jpg" width="640" /></a></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="color: #cc0000;"><br /></span></div>
<span style="color: #cc0000;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #cc0000;">Obviously, this post will contain spoilers for <i>Hellraiser</i>.</span><br />
<span style="color: #45818e;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #45818e;">This is the story of how a pissing match in a dorm lounge started a tradition I've kept in place for over a decade. </span><br />
<span style="color: #45818e;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #45818e;">Every Valentine's day since 2009, I've gotten drunk and watched <i>Hellraiser</i>. It's usually a solitary exercise, I haven't had any want or desire for partnership since July of 2010*, but if anyone wished to join me, they would of course be welcome. It's been an annual tradition, usually involving the imbibing of several Dark and Stormys, a drink I became quite fond of at college, and since college is the whole reason I do this thing in the first place, it's a little bit of nostalgia and a small taste of a time I once called home. The rum may be better quality (ever since Captain Morgan changed the recipe on Private Stock it just hasn't been the same) and the ginger ale might be lower quality (It's difficult to get sugarcane colas at a goddamn Shop-Rite, okay?), but it's a connection to something important. And it's a way of striking back at people who tried to force their interpretation of love on to others, a way of showing that there are multiple forms of romance, and that even the darkest movies can be about painfully human subjects.</span><br />
<span style="color: #45818e;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #45818e;">Even if I was, as this story kind of illustrates, a prick. </span><br />
<span style="color: #45818e;"></span><br />
<a name='more'></a><span style="color: #45818e;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #45818e;">On the top floor of La Salle Hall at the College of Santa Fe was the LaSalle Lounge. It wasn't much overall, just a wall-mounted TV, a couple of huge heavy-ass comfy chairs and a couch made of scratchy fabric and gigantic wood blocks, a dining-room table, and a microwave. But the TV came with an A/V input, and a bunch of us had game systems and DVD players and the like, so it became kind of a prime hangout spot for the residents and their friends.</span><span style="color: #45818e;"> It was also safe enough and familiar enough that if you put your game system or something in the lounge, there was a high chance you didn't also have to build a metal cage around it to protect it**. There are a lot of good memories I have of that time, some of my favorite memories of watching movies are tied deeply to sitting in huge scratchy dorm-lounge chairs. </span><span style="color: #45818e;">It wasn't perfect, but it was nice.</span><br />
<span style="color: #45818e;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #45818e;">At first, claiming the lounge was a first-come first-served affair, but due to several incidents involving people who weren't residents occupying the space with their friends, and due to an incident where an unnamed party decided to announce about a week or two in advance that they were showing Peter Jackson's classic family drama <i>Dead-Alive</i> and posted handwritten signage to that effect, one forward-thinking resident put up a signup sheet for the lounge and TV. It gave a sense of schedule and people got advance warning if, say, several people from the lower floor were going to show an awful romance film called <i>Angst*** </i>that they picked up from the local Hastings for twenty bucks. By and large, most people played by the loose social contract the signup sheet presented-- there were always a few changes and cancellations and "hey, we need the room" sort of things, but the boundaries were respected, and those transgressors (who, I admit, I numbered among briefly) were rare. It also gave a good view of what was going on, so if you knew someone was watching, say, <i>The Land Before Time</i> synced up with <i>In Rainbows</i> by Radiohead as an ironic goof that still sorta vaguely worked, you could either show up, or avoid the upstairs like the plague. </span><br />
<span style="color: #45818e;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #45818e;">So, scene all set? Good, then let's begin.</span><br />
<span style="color: #45818e;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #45818e;">My friend Geoff was kind of a complicated figure. He was wildly philosophical, but also tended to do the thing where he tried to apply the specific strains of thought he learned to absolutely everything, to the point that he'd get in arguments all the time about whatever he'd read or learned at that particular moment. He was a person I'd had no less than three arguments about <i>Lost Highway</i> with, but he was also one of the few people I knew on campus who would watch trashy movies with me and try to appreciate them without irony (the best way to watch <i>Urotsukidoji</i> is in the middle of the afternoon on your roommate's mini-tv while complaining about the censor blur). He overintellectualized things, sometimes a lot, but at his heart, he was a good guy. Because of our shared taste in trashy and weird movies (it's through him that I finally saw <i>Caligula</i> and found it was everything I wanted and some sex scenes I didn't) and the residency status I had and he didn't, he would often get me to claim the lounge for whatever weird thing he wanted to watch. I didn't mind, because usually he could draw a better crowd and his choices were a little more acceptable than mine. (<i>Never</i> spring <i>Aeon Flux</i> on people who don't already want to watch <i>Aeon Flux. </i>That's your lesson for today.) He also had an unmatched passion for everything, when he hooked into something, he really hooked into it, deciphering it and deep-diving into it like it was a sacred text, trying to take it apart and figure out why he liked it so much. </span><br />
<span style="color: #45818e;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #45818e;">He also had his troubles with women.</span><br />
<span style="color: #45818e;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #45818e;">Between 2007 and 2008, Geoff bounced between bad breakups and some interesting coping mechanisms to try and gain some semblance of catharsis, vanishing down rabbit hole after rabbit hole of weird film theory, music theory, and experimentation. Not all of it was particularly well received, and a few things he proposed were wildly off-base and caused at least one shouting match in a Del Taco, but I felt for the guy, because he was really trying to get a grip. He needed people and a way to cope, and his normal approach was failing. For him, his solace was in figuring out how things worked, applying his own philosophical bent or ideas about the world to the things around him and trying to work his way through, the same way some people do with martial arts, or religion, or whatever you have. You find the thoughts and concepts to get you through the day, to help the world make sense to you. His might have taken him to some dark places and included drinking tons of vodka, but, again, he was a good friend. He was hurting in a bad way, and he needed help working through it. </span><br />
<span style="color: #45818e;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #45818e;">In hindsight, a lot of my behavior during that period was most likely enabling, but I meant well and I was trying to help someone out of a dark place.</span><br />
<span style="color: #45818e;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #45818e;">After a rather nasty social entanglement imploded on Geoff early in 2008 when he decided to get involved with <i>exactly</i> the wrong person, he was again in a dark place. Even I was starting to get a little weary of it as it had become self-destructive to the point of dragging me into the singularity, and of continually having to defend Geoff's choices, which he foisted on our mutual friends without much care to what he was saying. In those days, while many of us would be loath to admit it, we were all so sure and certain of our choices and resolute in our refusal to back down from them. It was just that Geoff took it way too far. And in this dark place, Geoff had an idea that would become the basis for a decades-old tradition. </span><br />
<span style="color: #45818e;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #45818e;">One day, about a week or so before Valentine's Day, Geoff came to me and told me, "Know what? Fuck it. We're gonna watch <i>Hellraiser</i> this Valentine's." For once, I was immediately on board. I've always been a huge proponent of non-trad genre distinctions, from <a href="https://www.tor.com/2020/01/13/frank-herberts-dune-science-fictions-greatest-epic-fantasy-novel/" target="_blank">calling <i>Dune </i>an epic fantasy novel</a>, to my early-adopter status on the "<i>Die Hard</i> is a Christmas movie and so is <i>The Long Kiss Goodnight</i>" argument (I know it probably had its supporters pre-2003, but I argued for it hard and it still seemed novel back then), to even <a href="https://srmbc.blogspot.com/2012/09/heres-thought-david-finchers-romantic.html" target="_blank">this blog's long-ass article on <i>Fight Club</i></a>. So <i>Hellraiser</i> as Valentine's Day watching? Sure it was a little bit of a dark choice, and sure it was a gruesome movie to watch on a holiday that's normally a celebration of love, but there's some insight there, and I was always down for a reason to watch Clive Barker. I'd gone off of Stephen King for a while after <i>The Stand</i> and loved the "melancholic lyricism but also everyone bangs" vibe Barker laid down in most of his work.</span><br />
<span style="color: #45818e;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #45818e;">So naturally, I said yes. Why wouldn't I? I put my name, time, and title of the movie down on the signup sheet in the lounge, and figured that would be the end of it. I'd hang with my friend, we could shit-talk love because we were both on the wrong end of things, and watch a movie that's romantic for all the weirdest reasons.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="color: #45818e;">Then midway through the week, things changed. By that time, Geoff wasn't well-received, and my film picks were seen as an extension of his ideas and choices, which did not jibe well, especially since I wasn't all that popular myself with contingents of the dorm for a variety of reasons****.</span><br />
<span style="color: #45818e;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #45818e;">When I mentioned I had plans, then one of my friends suddenly went, "Oh...yeah, we didn't want Geoff pushing his 'screw love it's all horrible' thing, so we crossed that out and we're gonna watch a bunch of romantic comedies instead." </span><br />
<span style="color: #45818e;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #45818e;">"...but I wanted to watch <i>Hellraiser</i>. And it's a romantic movie." I responded. "It's not about how love is evil."</span><br />
<span style="color: #45818e;">"Yeah, but...it doesn't fit with the holiday and Geoff was just trolling, so this is better." </span><br />
<span style="color: #45818e;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #45818e;">I protested that it wasn't Geoff who made the decision but me, tried to explain my reasons, and even offered to change the movie as long as I could keep the spot, but there really wasn't anything that could be done. Complete shutout because "it would be better." It seemed like both me and my friend wanted to end the awkward conversation, so I had to drop the issue. When the day finally came around and I was there, someone even stood there and announced how much time everyone had left in the lounge almost every five minutes for a solid <i>hour</i> before they took over, and kicked everyone out so that somehow we wouldn't ruin their viewing of <i>13 Going On 30^</i>.</span><br />
<span style="color: #45818e;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #45818e;">But they were wrong. </span><br />
<span style="color: #45818e;"><i><br /></i></span>
<span style="color: #45818e;"><i>Hellraiser</i> <i>is</i> a romantic film, and one <i>exclusively</i> about love. Let me explain.</span><br />
<span style="color: #45818e;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #45818e;"><i>Hellraiser</i> is the story of Julia, a woman who moves into the old house of her former lover Frank with her husband and stepdaughter. Frank mysteriously disappeared after an encounter with an ancient puzzle box called the Lemarchand Configuration, and now he's gone and presumed dead, his house an unsettling wreck of narrow interiors and dark rooms. Julia's husband Larry, Frank's brother, is a doofy good-natured and oblivious sort who wanted to move his wife back to her home country and hopes to strengthen their relationship. With them is Larry's daughter Kirsty, who moved so she could be closer to her parents and possibly learn to get along with her stepmother. While they're moving into Frank's house, Larry cuts himself in an accident and drips blood on the stairs, something that stirs the previously trapped spirit of Frank and allows him to contact Julia and beg her to spill more blood in the house so he can live again. Meanwhile, Kirsty is disturbed by both the house and her stepmother's odd behavior in hiding Frank, and begins to have encounters with a homeless vagrant who looks like the lawyer-friendly version of Alan Moore, and a mysterious puzzle box.</span><br />
<span style="color: #45818e;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #45818e;">Right away, that's the structure of a gothic romance. You have infidelity, an old dark house, a ghostly or demonic lover, weird artifacts, and a subtle hint of classism. Julia's a villain, but she's only a villain because of her obsessive love and a desire to right the wrongs of her now almost-dead lover. It's Larry's obliviousness that continues to isolate him from his wife's repeated awful misdeeds with Frank, believing that she's faithful and they're still in love even when it's obvious to the audience that she views him as an empty suit. And Kirsty, the one mostly "pure" person in the whole movie and definitely the one innocent, slowly grows in importance to the plot as she tries to piece everything together. It's Victoriana updated for the modern era, pitting the young woman against a house full of ghosts and wicked stepmothers, but somehow in a much more humanizing light. Julia's trapped by everyone, by Frank's obsessive need for resurrection, by her lack of maternal status in Kirsty's eyes, by Larry taking her for granted. </span><br />
<span style="color: #45818e;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #45818e;">It's also telling that it's the unhealthy relationships that cause all the deaths in this movie. It's established practically from the outset that Julia and Larry don't have the best relationship, and she was much happier with Frank, to the point of moving back into his house with him. It's that obsession and love that drives their toxic relationship, as Frank seems to see her as nothing more than a useful necessity, someone he needs to bring him blood and skin so he can finally escape the prison he was trapped in by the box. Meanwhile she believes what they had was truly love. Frank and Kirsty even have a shadowy but heavily implied past that doesn't exactly cast Frank in the best light and only further shows exactly how monstrous and uncaring towards everyone else he truly is. Julia and Larry fail to work on their marriage even a little, which drives Julia further into Frank's arms and away from her husband, who appears to not even care if she's in the room at times. All these toxic relationships even come crashing down in the finale when Kirsty, the one person who displays empathy towards others, manages to set up a desperate gambit with the box, finally bringing everything to its explosive and inevitable conclusion where all the toxicity finally burns itself out. </span><br />
<span style="color: #45818e;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #45818e;"><i>Hellraiser</i> is about love because it's Kirsty's love for her father that keeps driving her to investigate her stepmother, because it's Julia's lack of love and intimacy that drives her to literally murder people, because it was Larry's love and desire to support his wife and his failing marriage that put them in Frank's old dark mansion to begin with. It's a cautionary tale, a morality play about unhealthy relationships and chasing sensation over actual feeling and empathy. It's about pain, infatuation, obsession, and loss. It might go about it in a gory, effects-heavy, and surprisingly fish hook-happy way, but it's a tragic romance sure and certain as any other tragic romance out there, even if it's nontraditional. A human story is a human story, even if it involves a switchblade-wielding zombie and a man with his lips and eyes cut out, after all.</span><br />
<span style="color: #45818e;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #45818e;">So for those reasons, and because it's an amazing movie and the one correctly rated entry in Clive Barker's filmmaking career, every February 14th, while the rest of the world settles in with classic love stories and whoever makes them happiest, I pour myself a glass of rum and ginger ale. I pour myself a glass for Geoff and all those like Geoff, caught in a vortex of bad relationships and not-great thought patterns, and desperate to get out^^. I pour myself a glass for myself, never exactly sure where I stand romantically but terrified I'll end up in that same vortex before I'm able to escape, and knowing I'm too old to keep trying. I pour myself a glass against the people who stopped me, as petty as that is, because I know in my heart and in my head and in my G<i>od. Damn. Soul. </i>that they were wrong about love and wrong about <i>Hellraiser. </i>In my pettier moments, I hope they still are.</span><br />
<span style="color: #45818e;"><i><br /></i></span>
<span style="color: #45818e;">And this has happened every year since 2010, and I hope it still will. I hope it continues long past everyone who stood against that first viewing. I hope other people pick up on the trend and it outlasts and outlives us all. And I hope people realize that romance and romantic films aren't necessarily what everyone thinks they are. To paraphrase a former friend of mine, genre's fake anyway. </span><br />
<span style="color: #45818e;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #45818e;">So that's the story. It's overlong, it's not exactly charitable, but it's a tradition. In honor of all those things, I'll proudly raise a glass this Valentine's day and every day after. Hope you enjoyed this, and hope you do it, too.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="color: #45818e;">Goodnight.</span><br />
<span style="color: #45818e;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #45818e;"><br /><br /><br /><br /></span>
<span style="color: #45818e;">*My second-ever relationship ended in a rather depressing dissolution that was as much my fault as the other party's, and showed me that I was too emotionally immature to handle intimacy and the work that goes into romance. I promised my then-partner I would be alone from that point on, and in spite of several incidents I don't wish to discuss, I have tried to keep to that as best as I possibly can. While I do get lonely and I do have needs, I also don't want anyone to have to experience me. </span><br />
<span style="color: #45818e;">**The other dorms taught me the important lesson that maybe this wasn't the case everywhere on campus, and much thanks to my friend CMC for both fixing that and the chair I ended up stripping the screws on somehow</span><br />
<span style="color: #45818e;">***Two and a half stars from the now-defunct Absolute Horror, and a premise that's shitloads ahead of its execution</span><br />
<span style="color: #45818e;">****Being cringey, obnoxious, and generally making wildly explicit comments (while not about anyone in particular, still) will do that to you. By that point I'd had an identity of my own for maybe five years, tops, and the idea I could be confident and in control of my own identity and go to bed whenever I wanted all kinda went to my head, as well as finally living unrepressed for about two years. All of this informs my behavior. It doesn't excuse or absolve it. I'd get into it more, but why add fuel to the dumpster fire?</span><br />
<span style="color: #45818e;">^Ironically, a movie I have a small amount of fondness for ever since I watched it with my sister back when we were teenagers</span><br />
<span style="color: #45818e;">^^I know I've been using the past tense here about Geoff. I'd like to report that he's still alive and completely well as far as I can tell. We drifted apart years ago over a rather significant and irreconcilable difference of opinion. Writing this, I actually kind of miss him, the obstinate dingus. </span></div>
Caius Caligulahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06345161053444317875noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8662452127691085085.post-59428610095457241352019-10-08T06:04:00.000-04:002019-10-08T06:04:12.371-04:00Trolls<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<div style="text-align: left;">
<div style="text-align: center;">
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgdhtLfqQ7TNxVb_PHGzOjKgOQGOXk7IcSnRTBRq7j08BrPmJJLBS6Pz30rW9nd9EdXHwc5dDv9TDac0Wo9zlCSBCwdv3vcpbKCXdbR2QI0IkIBJDtnVS2MMdArlLdCa5UCctF30mvK0HQ/s1600/81Fma3H3BxL.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1047" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgdhtLfqQ7TNxVb_PHGzOjKgOQGOXk7IcSnRTBRq7j08BrPmJJLBS6Pz30rW9nd9EdXHwc5dDv9TDac0Wo9zlCSBCwdv3vcpbKCXdbR2QI0IkIBJDtnVS2MMdArlLdCa5UCctF30mvK0HQ/s320/81Fma3H3BxL.jpg" width="209" /></a></div>
<span style="color: #45818e;"> </span><br />
<span style="color: #45818e;"><span id="goog_580783169"></span><span id="goog_580783170"></span> </span></div>
<span style="color: #45818e;"> When I was younger, I used to have a saying: "It's in the past, it can't hurt you any more." The thing is, no matter how much you move on, the past will always be there behind you. It's not a static thing, but a living thing as much as the present, reaching out to touch all your present and future decisions. You can process something, but it'll always linger there, ready to resurface when you least want it to or least expect it. It's what happens </span><i style="color: #45818e;">when</i><span style="color: #45818e;"> that trigger pops, when that thing comes back to bite you, when the memories finally unlock in the dead of night, that shows you whether you've recovered enough. Whether you've processed enough. Whether or not you're actually on the mend. </span><i style="color: #45818e;">Trolls </i><span style="color: #45818e;">by Stefan Spjut and translated by Agnes Broomé</span><span style="color: #45818e;"> is a book about processing the trauma of the past, of how to deal with the horrible things you've seen and done, or had done to you. It might have shape-changing forest monsters and a bleak suspense-thriller plot, it might be one of the darkest and most downbeat horror novels I've ever read, coming forward at a slow and menacing pace as it delves into the depths of its characters' attempts to make sense of the things they've seen and done. It might not be the lurid, gothic horror I'm normally used to, but its psychological slow-burn, some absolutely horrifying scenes (usually involving Stava), some very off-kilter humor, and the way the themes of processing trauma mess me the hell up make it well worth the time to read it and enjoy. </span></div>
<div>
<span style="color: #45818e;"><br /></span></div>
<div>
<span style="color: #45818e;">More, as always, below. </span></div>
<div>
<span style="color: #45818e;"><br /></span></div>
<div>
<span style="color: #45818e;"></span><br />
<a name='more'></a><div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="color: #45818e;"><i>"They hide inside animals...And you can't be involved with them without being affected by it. You say you don't want to talk about it, and that's exactly it. If they get too close, they burn you up. Mentally. There's no way of telling how that ends."</i></span></div>
<span style="color: #45818e;">
</span>
<div style="color: #45818e; text-align: center;">
<span style="color: #45818e;"><i>- Susso Myren</i></span></div>
<span style="color: #45818e;">
<div style="color: #45818e; text-align: center;">
</div>
<div style="color: #45818e; text-align: left;">
A pair of researchers find and tranquilize a monstrous wolf, only for the creature to then shift into something <i>else</i> and go off on its own, leaving one of the men dead and the other with a severe mental illness. At the same time, Lennart, a former cult leader who might possibly be over a century old gnaws his own hand off to escape a psychiatric facility and reunites with an odd group of his former followers for some unusual purpose. A strange woman with the power of verbal suggestion finds her way into the researcher's broken home. And Susso Myrén, a former cryptozoology enthusiast living in self-imposed exile after a brush with Lennart's cult left her traumatized and disillusioned, is forced to confront further horrors as Lennart's followers close in just as her childhood friend Diana comes looking for her. </div>
<div style="color: #45818e; text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="color: #45818e; text-align: left;">
And then things get weird.</div>
<div style="color: #45818e; text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="color: #45818e; text-align: left;">
Spread throughout these various groups are a variety of odd, shapeshifting forestdwellers with unclear motives: A squirrel who seems highly protective of Susso, mice who incite people to violence, a homicidal wolf-creature who wears the faces of others like masks. All of them are drawn towards the small village of Runarjavi for some unknown purpose, leaving a swath of broken minds and bodies in their wake. But while they and the cult might be an immediate threat, the further psychic toll on their victims might be the thing that truly destroys them all. </div>
<div style="color: #45818e; text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="color: #45818e; text-align: left;">
I don't get to use the word "Lynchian" often enough to describe things. It's kind of an overused term in the criticism world, usually reserved for when someone puts <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CVBclV5ps2U" target="_blank">a dwarf in a dream sequence</a> or tries inexpertly to blend pastoral suburbia with dark surrealism. But that's not the essence of the thing. Stefan Spjut, by dint of keeping his supernatural elements shadowy, his focus on the wrenching human drama and suspense elements at the fore, and by working in elements of dark, off-kilter humor throughout, has actually created something Lynchian. <i>Trolls</i> feels eerie, even when there's nothing supernatural going on. There's enough wrong, enough menace lurking just at the edges of the book's events, that even the lighter and quieter scenes feel like there's something definitely wrong going on. The shapeshifters themselves feel weirdly alien, too. Few of them speak, their motives are unclear other than messing with humans, and even when the squirrel is protecting Susso, he doesn't feel particularly benevolent. It's a shock when there actually <i>is</i> an unambiguously benevolent creature, though the scene is still unnerving enough to sit weird. That alienness, that idea that the supernatural elements harm <i>simply by being</i>, is almost as horrifying as anything else the book can possibly serve up. It's terrifying to imagine that something's presence, even if you can't see it, will still affect you in massive ways. That these alien forces are constantly at work on your life. It'd almost be a cosmic horror premise, except it feels wrong to affix the cosmic or existential label to something so old and supernatural. It isn't the universe, it's that these things have existed and operated for longer than humans have, and have their own ways and methods. </div>
<div style="color: #45818e; text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<div style="color: #45818e;">
But while all of that is in play and comes through in the book, the actual supernatural and violent events are used sparingly, gruesome sequences revealing themselves with dawning horror as the plot moves ever forward, as slow and methodical as a slasher movie villain pursuing their victims. <i>Trolls</i> is a subdued book if anything, its more violent sections sudden and jarring shifts against the usually foreboding and downbeat nature. It plays well enough for the themes, though. This isn't a book about nasty people doing horrible things, it's about dealing with the aftermath of horrible things happening. Diana's left a wreck after Susso's captors torture her, but she tries her best to keep it together and seek closure for what happened. Her husband, meanwhile, completely falls apart and is prone to emotional outbursts after he encounters one of the mice, unable to deal with the guilt of what he'd done. The horror of the book comes mainly from these reactions and the further psychological manipulations of the trolls, the idea that one day something will come along and completely wipe out any sense of normal you have, that the world will keep going, but you'll be warped in some way and unable to adequately explain <i>why</i>. It's one of the very few really affecting and realistic portrayals of trauma in fiction, one that doesn't descend into histrionics, and I wish more people would portray this approach rather than the more heightened examples found elsewhere. </div>
<div style="color: #45818e;">
<br /></div>
<div style="color: #45818e;">
It's not <i>all</i> dark, though. Well, at least, it's not all dark and dramatic. There are some flashes of black humor that run through the work, whether it's the way the trolls around Lennart tend to...fail at being human (one decides to act more human by ripping off the face of an associate and wearing it like a mask. For the rest of the book, they just call him "Erasmus," the name of the man whose face he stole), the absurd juxtaposition of Hakan's violent search for a mouse, which makes sense in context but looks completely insane out of context, or the entire body-disposal scene, which turns into an argument about potatoes and finally involves two "helpers" Susso's mother's partner Roland employs for a variety of jobs (in fact, any time Roland and his easygoing weirdness is on the page, it's kind of a lighter time). It helps keep the tone from being completely grim, which is good, because processing that much trauma and horror over the course of four hundred pages would be brutal otherwise, and the humor never gets to the point of whiplash, adding a sardonic edge without overwhelming the darker nature of the book. </div>
<div style="color: #45818e;">
<br /></div>
<div style="color: #45818e;">
There are some things to keep in mind about <i>Trolls</i>, however. It does deal with some very dark subjects, including abuse, torture, toxic relationships, and some truly unsettling sequences involving murder, kidnapping, and other horrifying incidents. It doesn't pull its punches, and the internal monologues of the (willing or otherwise) participants only add to the feeling of dread. Its ruthlessness is only matched by its slow-burn pacing. It is not a book that rushes to get anywhere, but one that trudges relentlessly forward. If you're not prepared for a heavy slow-burn of a book, this is going to be a problem, and if you're expecting the usual kind of supernatural horror instead of horrifying supernatural folk-horror weirdness and Lynchian psychological suspense, then this might not be the book for you.</div>
<div style="color: #45818e;">
<br /></div>
<div style="color: #45818e;">
This is, of course, all academic. The book is very much what it is, and it's uncompromising in that. It's a deep, slow-burning, heavily psychological and surreal horror novel that'll hit you as hard and as deep as any extreme/hardcore horror volume without any of the gallons of bodily fluids that all those novels seem to want to sling around. <i>Trolls</i> is excellent, a very Scandinavian, very horrifying Scandinavian horror novel, dark and forbidding as the forests in which it's set. Stefan Spjut is incredible at building some absolutely wrenching psychological stakes, and when the cathartic moments finally come, they're every bit as hard-hitting as the buildup. While it's not for everyone, <i>Trolls</i> is at least worth checking out to see if it's for you. </div>
<div style="color: #45818e;">
<br /></div>
<span style="color: #cc0000;"><i>Geek Rage/Strange Library was sent a copy of this book in exchange for a review. Thanks to the good folks at Faber and Faber for allowing me the chance to get back in the saddle and write this, hopefully it's as fun to read as it was to write. </i></span></div>
</span></div>
</div>
Caius Caligulahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06345161053444317875noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8662452127691085085.post-88387122771811108222016-02-23T04:38:00.003-05:002016-02-23T04:38:38.182-05:00A Suite in Four Windows<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="color: #45818e;"> </span></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<span style="color: #45818e;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEieiP5WVKVLzAK8vNC87DAGQvQQviRPY1OZPRM3W42_ttBAc4FgIvZY4iJKycSNJUWWK_z4EnL4htW_uTa5qoXxbAvnzIdmNSjD96wFz2HpMHX2F2UaUa3c29CCuWDHPuB2P1snUvEJEc4/s1600/27800583.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEieiP5WVKVLzAK8vNC87DAGQvQQviRPY1OZPRM3W42_ttBAc4FgIvZY4iJKycSNJUWWK_z4EnL4htW_uTa5qoXxbAvnzIdmNSjD96wFz2HpMHX2F2UaUa3c29CCuWDHPuB2P1snUvEJEc4/s400/27800583.jpg" width="258" /></a></span></div>
<span style="color: #45818e;"> </span><br />
<span style="color: #45818e;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #45818e;"> Occasionally, I find myself saying "I like (x) because of what it does to my head." The feeling that a work is wandering around, opening doors and rearranging things as it pleases, realigning pathways for different thinking. And I haven't encountered something that captures the feeling of a created work rearranging mental furniture the way David Rix's <i>A Suite in Four Windows</i> does. In Rix's slim novella, he manages to perfectly nail the sensations of a mental topographical shift, and also captures the sensations of listening to the bizarre composition that forms the center of the novella*. </span><br />
<span style="color: #45818e;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #45818e;"> And sensation is really the name of the game, so to speak, as <i>Suite</i> is less of a narrative and more of a mood and character piece. While the narrative is there, the novella is much more about sensation and idea than character and action. </span><br />
<br />
<span style="color: #45818e;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #45818e;">More, as always, below. </span><br />
<span style="color: #45818e;"></span><br />
<a name='more'></a><div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="color: #45818e;"><i>"What the fuck can I say about this thing? I've never heard anything like it in my life."</i></span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="color: #45818e;"><i>- Carrie</i></span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="color: #45818e;"><br /></span></div>
<br />
<span style="color: #45818e;"> On the hottest night of the year, four students in a London apartment building (Terry, Mix, Kate, and Carrie) settle down to listen to George Crumb's avant-garde composition <i>Black Angels</i>. As they listen to the piece, it begins to <i>unlock</i> things for them, drawing each other into a shared headspace and amplifying their interpersonal conflicts and relationships. Each reacts to the piece in a different way, but as storm clouds gather over London and each gets drawn deeper into the music, it is clear that something is going on, something far stranger than even the bizarre music (with movements such as "Night of the Electric Insects") would suggest. And before the night is over, and before the piece is finished, all of this will come to a head. </span><br />
<span style="color: #45818e;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #45818e;"> So. Writing about music. Writing about music is fairly difficult to get right in works of fiction. Not impossible, as there are writers who have nailed it, but it requires an understanding of sensation and general <i>feel, </i>and that's incredibly difficult to pin down. Most people just settle for describing the general sounds of the piece, maybe a few lyrics, and leave it at that. Just enough for the reader to fill in their own information as far as the musical piece is concerned, and then move on with the narrative. Maybe post people's reaction to the sensations, and then move on from there. It's a useful bit of shorthand, but doesn't usually come off as intended. </span><br />
<span style="color: #45818e;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #45818e;"> However, that is not at all what David Rix has done here. Rix begins with the sensation and builds on top of it. The moment the first protagonist puts the CD in and hits "play," the sensation hits. The chittering beats of "Night of the Electric Insects" are described as notes that <i>hurt</i>, the visceral punctuation of "God Music" is described not so much in instrumental terms as it is a body phase acting upon the protagonist, and Rix makes sure each section is packed with feeling and sensation above all else. I could <i>feel</i> the music, even if I wasn't ever going to hear it, because Rix made sure it was something concrete. The instruments and time signatures are laid out, but even for a novice, it's easy enough to understand and creates concrete sensation to go with Rix's description of the pieces.</span><br />
<span style="color: #45818e;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #45818e;"> And concrete sensation is the thing Rix nails the hardest in this. <i>A Suite in Four Windows</i> is so concrete that I suddenly realized I was reading it in freezing temperatures and got really angry at its description of a humid, stormy summer night because immediately I <i><u>f</u>elt</i> the stormy, summer night Rix described. And then just as immediately, I remembered that wasn't the case. The ending (which I won't give away-- it's forty pages, just read the damn thing) is an absolute riot of sensory information bordering on the hallucinatory as the characters flood the apartment with George Crumb's Coil-esque symphony. </span><br />
<span style="color: #45818e;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #45818e;"> Which leads into another thing I really like that Rix does. <i>A Suite in Four Windows</i> paces itself really well. As the musical piece builds to its crescendo in "God Music" and heads into the final violent section of "Night of the Electric Insects," the novella builds to its own high, setting the building tension and mounting dread against similar beats in the music. But instead of being simply a precious narrative device, the tension of the music only serves to heighten the sensation and act as an anchor for the work as a whole. The quietest moments in <i>A Suite in Four Windows</i> come at the end, as the symphony fades out and the aftermath of the characters' mass hysteria becomes clear. </span><br />
<span style="color: #45818e;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #45818e;"> Since there isn't really much I dislike about <i>Suite</i>, instead, I'm going to leave a caveat that one shouldn't view <i>Suite</i> as a narrative work. It's much more a poem or an abstract work given prose form. I would even go as far as to state that it's a mood piece, an abstract stream of consciousness meant to evoke sensation and give a better idea of what's going on inside the heads of the characters, and what this particular symphony does to them. This might annoy some. I hope not, since it's also really good at doing everything it sets out to do.</span><br />
<span style="color: #45818e;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #45818e;"> In the end, I suggest tracking this one down, come hell or high water. Find this. Read this. Wait for a warm summer night, put on the right album (the house recommends <i>Horse Rotorvator</i>, <i>Moon's Milk (In Four Phases</i>), or <i>Musick to Play in the Dark vol. 2</i> in particular, but results may vary and one might find better results with a piece that isn't Coil), and let David Rix take you for a ride. It's a quick read, and a gorgeous, tense one. </span><br />
<span style="color: #45818e;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #45818e;">Just remember: Any sensations are sensations, reality plays by its own rules outside of that. </span><br />
<span style="color: #45818e;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #cc0000;"><i>Full disclosure: This review is based on an advance review copy sent to the reviewer from Snuggly Books</i></span><br />
<span style="color: #cc0000;"><i><br /></i></span>
<span style="color: #cc0000;"><i>NEXT TIME:</i></span><br />
<span style="color: #cc0000;">- Memoirs of an Ether Drinker <i>by Jean Lorrain</i></span><br />
<span style="color: #cc0000;"><i><br /></i></span>
<span style="color: #cc0000;"><i>AND THEN:</i></span><br />
<span style="color: #cc0000;">- Uzumaki <i>by Junji Ito</i></span><br />
<span style="color: #cc0000;">- Medusa's Web <i>by Tim Powers</i></span><br />
<span style="color: #cc0000;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #cc0000;"><i>AND MANY OTHERS</i></span><br />
<span style="color: #45818e;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #45818e;"> </span><br />
<span style="color: #45818e;">*It also captures the sensation of tripping balls while listening to music, but I deign to keep it profesh in the main part of the review.</span>
<span style="color: #45818e;"> </span></div>
Caius Caligulahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06345161053444317875noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8662452127691085085.post-20056885799041329172015-12-07T05:28:00.000-05:002015-12-07T05:28:12.435-05:00Blue on Blue<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="color: #45818e;"> </span><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<span style="color: #45818e;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjRIuMZcDmmtx4l5yeA7-aph-3RWoYEg6uNERhgicFKxDte0UZZqxNGpp2adHWMrpT8EqiY8LG_xR8PAMOog-Cd54s9fzVSeU2hEVJwMNB-zt1t8ffBtlYqTZBt7y-HrNN-nUej6dso5RQ/s1600/download+%252842%2529.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjRIuMZcDmmtx4l5yeA7-aph-3RWoYEg6uNERhgicFKxDte0UZZqxNGpp2adHWMrpT8EqiY8LG_xR8PAMOog-Cd54s9fzVSeU2hEVJwMNB-zt1t8ffBtlYqTZBt7y-HrNN-nUej6dso5RQ/s400/download+%252842%2529.jpg" width="265" /></a></span></div>
<span style="color: #45818e;"> <span id="goog_1802702331"></span><span id="goog_1802702332"></span></span></div>
<span style="color: #45818e;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #45818e;"> I don't think I've ever encountered a book as dreamlike as <i>Blue on Blue</i>. And not in the same sense as the surreal stories I read or anything like that, no, when I say <i>Blue on Blue</i> is "dreamlike," I mean in the sense that it honestly feels like a dream. There's a sense of more commonplace surreality and bright, pastel poetics that Quentin Crisp brings to his novel, that dreamlike sense that everything is absolutely strange, but that everything is exactly where it's supposed to be. <i>Of course</i> there are gigantic sapient brine shrimp running an attraction called the Sea Monkey Kingdom. <i>Of course</i> the Buena Vista (which I assumed looked like Sleeping Beauty's Castle from the Magic Kingdom) is a lucid dream palace. And of course all of these things are kind of In <i>Blue on Blue</i>, Quentin Crisp creates an intriguing world with wonderful sensations and feeling, and I'm definitely going to seek out more of his work. </span><br />
<span style="color: #45818e;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #45818e;">More, as always, below. </span><br />
<span style="color: #45818e;"></span><br />
<a name='more'></a><span style="color: #45818e;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #45818e;"><br /></span>
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="color: #45818e;"><i>"Doesn't everyone have a dream?"</i></span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="color: #45818e;"><i>- Victor Winton</i></span></div>
<span style="color: #45818e;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #45818e;"> <i>Blue on Blue</i> is the story of Victor Winton, a comic-book artist and animator living in an alternate-dimension time loop called the Alternative States of the American Fifties, or ASAF for short. Saying the ASAF is an odd place is an understatement-- there's an entire aquarium/amusement park devoted entirely to human-size Sea Monkeys, people soar through the air on flying kites and pogo sticks, X-Ray Specs are real and put into regular circulation by perverts, an architect built an enchanted castle that actually seems to be a lucid dream, and everything is tinged with an air of magical unrealism. So it seems something like fate when Victor finds a young red-haired woman on one of his frequent trips to the local museum when starved for inspiration, and sketches her as Lara Lovelily. He and the woman, Jenny Mills, strike up a conversation and, while she seems reluctant at first, she agrees to go with him to the Sea Monkey Kingdom. Their experience there seems magical, and Victor's inspiration knows no bounds.</span><br />
<span style="color: #45818e;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #45818e;"> Unfortunately, Jenny doesn't see things the same way. She withdraws from Victor's obsessive infatuation with her (and with Lara Lovelily, the comic book character based on her), and Victor retreats further into his worship of the idealized Lara. </span><br />
<span style="color: #45818e;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #45818e;"> And were this any other story, it would end there. But the ASAF doesn't play by reality's rules, and Victor's fascinations begin to take on new, bizarre forms, forms that may transcend the boundaries of existence itself. As Victor's obsession, tied to his love of the color blue, draws him in further and further, it becomes clear that he may have opened a door to something bigger than he might realize. </span><br />
<span style="color: #45818e;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #45818e;"> I have to admit, the thing I'm drawn to the most with <i>Blue on Blue</i> is the concept of Victor's fascination. Victor seems to immediately put Jenny on this kind of pedestal, making her a sort of imperfect avatar for Lara Lovelily, even though Lara is technically his creation and Jenny is...most likely not (we'll get to this in a moment). He seems to try and erase or invalidate the ways that Jenny is normal or ordinary-- her eyes are greener than he'd like, she claims she's "ordinary" and doesn't have any dreams or ambitions-- and kind of elevates her. It actually makes him come off as creepy and obsessive, which works, since he's basically turning an ordinary woman into a supersexed pin-up goddess via his medium. And...I can actually relate. I've felt this way before. I've <i>done</i> this before, though my medium was poetry instead of pictures. I'm pretty sure everyone who's ever been withdrawn has done this before. </span><br />
<span style="color: #45818e;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #45818e;"> But <i>Blue on Blue</i> kind of goes beyond that. Without giving too much away, Victor doesn't see this rejection as Jenny's fault but his own, and turns his gaze and obsession inward, and the results are...unexpected. Nothing exactly blindsiding, especially in a book with a dreamlike atmosphere and constant proof that maybe reality is more of a concept than an actual thing within the bounds of the ASAF, but unexpected and kind of cool all the same. It's an interesting way of addressing the concept, and actually the way it turns from creepy, obsessive worship to a kind of self-discovery and transcendence is one I like. </span><br />
<span style="color: #45818e;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #45818e;"> And, having mentioned those malleable rules of reality, I have to say, I love the setting and presentation <i>Blue on Blue</i> does with the ASAF. Anchored by Victor's fixation with the color blue, the setting is presented as one part pulp sci-fi paradise and one part pastel painting with enough tones of Lynch (fitting, given the dreamlike, nostalgic view of Fifties Americana) to keep the whole thing slightly out of reality. Through Victor's (unreliable) narration, the city of wonders in which he lives is a place of drive-in planetariums, "Magical Daoism," and all of it seems incredibly beautiful. Even when he's describing things that aren't as beautiful, they seem to have an artist's eye for beauty. </span><br />
<span style="color: #45818e;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #45818e;"> Victor's voice helps with that a lot. It's easy to get lost in his polysyllabic poetry, which makes something as simple as him going about his day spiral into passages of synaesthetic wonder. It's not so much a book that's <i>read</i> as it is <i>experienced</i>, since many of the passages deal with sensation and feeling as much as they deal with events or descriptions. <i>Blue on Blue</i> is a book that allows me to get lost in its language, though never to the point of passive reading. Crisp lets his readers wander around in the novel's brightly colored wonderland to their heart's content, and while the book has a definite plot, it's the impressionistic descriptions that move the book forward to its climax. </span><br />
<span style="color: #45818e;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #45818e;"> And along those lines, I like the way the dreamlike events of the plot tend to hide their significance on the first reading through. And that not everything presented as significant is actually a portent. It wasn't until I went back and reread sections of <i>Blue on Blue</i> that I realized exactly <i>which</i> events were set up, and that events-- whether filtered through Victor or not-- came back into play in a larger way. I admit, it might have been the way I read the book that did this, but in either case, I thought it worked fairly well that things happened in a way that called forward and backward. </span><br />
<span style="color: #45818e;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #45818e;"> However, I have to warn readers that most of <i>Blue on Blue</i>'s success relies on how much they like or dislike Victor. In the early parts, he came off to me as kind of creepy and detached, but as I identified with him more (and I've made similar mistakes to ones he's made, and seen people make them), I got more into it. How much you like or dislike Victor will also skew you on the ending, which goes in a certain direction, and, if you <i>don't</i> like Victor, will probably annoy you a little. </span><br />
<span style="color: #45818e;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #45818e;"> But honestly? If you can let Crisp's language carry you along and get lost in the swirls and eddies of the book's bright poetry, this book is well worth it. It's a gorgeous novel with some very weird twists and turns and a setting that stuck with me. While Crisp's elements might be reminiscent of other people, they feel like they're completely their own thing. If nothing else, I'm still going over it in my head, turning every facet over and over as I try to digest Victor's effect on his world, and the world's effect on Victor. It's a book that deserves to be found and read, and I hope more people will. </span><br />
<span style="color: #45818e;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #45818e;"><br /></span></div>
Caius Caligulahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06345161053444317875noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8662452127691085085.post-82338295835495558562015-12-01T06:42:00.000-05:002015-12-01T06:42:33.862-05:00Jottings from a Far Away Place<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhpv4n4eF4BvUC6ODIhtIW1MO-yG5NHwfWRbEHMF6z4ZGm7M0lviqtYXKY2SVSO0svgegLT9Kl2KOX56ehIYfGqHLClMBTQSyhGBt41CN-XmhtFx1ZqwqcPHk5qlkhiVrxFn7X-vk-WG30/s1600/JottingsCover10.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhpv4n4eF4BvUC6ODIhtIW1MO-yG5NHwfWRbEHMF6z4ZGm7M0lviqtYXKY2SVSO0svgegLT9Kl2KOX56ehIYfGqHLClMBTQSyhGBt41CN-XmhtFx1ZqwqcPHk5qlkhiVrxFn7X-vk-WG30/s400/JottingsCover10.jpg" width="265" /></a></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<span style="color: #45818e;">There are some books that command your undivided attention. That's the best way I can put it. There are simply books where having music on in the background or reading in a place where one could become distracted just isn't feasible. Sometimes it's because the material is dense, or the plot is heavily involved, or simply because the narrative style is just that immersive. In the case of <i>Jottings from a Far Away Place</i>, it's because Brendan Connell has written a book that's best contemplated and absorbed, and the best way to do that is without all that many distractions. </span><br />
<span style="color: #45818e;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #45818e;"> It's a book that does things to my head in the best way, a book where each section has its own unique rhythms and place, but that builds on the sections by featuring recurring characters and themes as it goes along. If nothing else, I have to say the closest thing I've ever read is either the <i>Zhuangzi</i> or the works of Ryu Murakami (with their own brand of meditative gorn), and Connell manages to distance himself from those works pretty thoroughly just by dint of being a lot more bizarre.</span><br />
<span style="color: #45818e;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #45818e;"> In the end, I'd suggest reading a little of this one to get familiar with it. While it's a fantastic book that gets inside your head in just the right way, it'll definitely take a little to get the rhythms down. </span><br />
<span style="color: #45818e;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #45818e;">More, as always, below. </span><br />
<br />
<a name='more'></a><div style="color: #45818e; text-align: center;">
"<i>The creature was my lobster before she was your wife. I am in a position of precedence." </i></div>
<div style="color: #45818e; text-align: center;">
<i>- Carlos</i></div>
<div style="color: #45818e; text-align: left;">
<i><br /> Jottings from a Far Away Place</i> is a series of...well, let's call them "pieces," each composed of several numbered, loosely related sections. While there is sometimes a narrative that covers several sections, each section is usually a new idea on the same theme of the piece. The sections vary wildly in both content and style; one section might feature a small philosophical anecdote between two moles, and then the next one might feature a description of physical intimacy bordering on cosmic body horror. The individual sections might be poems, or single-line maxims, or longer-form parables, or in a few cases, lists. Each one creates an odd, disorienting, and sometimes vividly violent whole, sometimes seeming like a loose collection of variations on a theme, other times seeming like something approaching a specific point. </div>
<div style="color: #45818e; text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="color: #45818e; text-align: left;">
But something odd begins to happen the more of the pieces one reads. Characters make reappearances in different sections, characters including two monks who are trying their best to worship a bizarre goddess, Romans, a corrupt priest and his servant, and others still. Themes also reappear, including people ingesting a substance that causes their fingers to grow into "tentacles," self-mortification, and dismemberment. Things weave in and out, creating a larger tapestry of absurd and sometimes unsettling work. There are also a ton of hidden jokes, references, and shaggy-dog stories, some of which don't become obvious until pieces way later in the book, While each piece in the book stands on its own, the book as a whole is an entirely different and equally enjoyable work. A twisted, occasionally scatological, absolutely Lynchian work that seems to run on dream logic, but let's face it, that's sort of the point. </div>
<div style="color: #45818e; text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="color: #45818e; text-align: left;">
I called the book "fun" up there, and that is entirely true. Even at its goriest or most downbeat, <i>Jottings from a Far Away Place </i>has a sense of fun to it. Actually, this is kind of similar to a lot of Taoist works-- certainly <i><a href="http://www.strangelibrary.com/post/5879147864/the-chronicles-of-master-li-and-number-ten-ox-part" target="_blank">Bridge of Birds</a></i> (which has been said to be written in a Taoist style) and <i>Zhuangzi*</i> play with things all over the place and have their own weird brand of fun, all in service to what they're trying to say. The way <i>Jottings</i> does this is best illustrated by Madhusudan and Vishvatma, two characters who take divergent paths while seeking a way to worship the Green-Complexioned Adho-Mukhi and achieve spiritual enlightenment. Without giving too much away (it's a long build with a nice finish), the book follows the story for a relatively long time over multiple sections, each with their own point, but all leading to a final point, one that works as both a culmination to the journey, and a punchline to the story. Even some of the darker passages come off as darkly funny, like the story of the "Indian God" in one of the earlier sections. </div>
<div style="color: #45818e; text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="color: #45818e; text-align: left;">
It's also very, very vivid without losing its dreamlike tone. There's a section with Countess Erzsebet de Bathory** that becomes very disturbing while filling the pages with concrete details like the servant's skin being the color and consistency of moldy cheese, and (in a call back to an earlier piece) Bathory's fingers being similar to tentacles (or perhaps they are tentacles?). The "Indian God" section does a lot with atmosphere to create a picture of a young man's worship of Kali that contains such acts as sleeping on a mattress strewn with tacks and involves livestock mutilation, all while he doesn't completely understand <i>what</i> he is worshipping, saying "Praise be to the Indian God." There's an entire section that I feel ready to admit squicked me out a little involving a man searching for ugliness and getting hollowed out by his intended paramour, all because while it didn't necessarily include <i>all</i> the details, it included the <i>right</i> details. </div>
<div style="color: #45818e; text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="color: #45818e; text-align: left;">
In the interest of fairness, though, I have to mention that while I had a great time with the book, I have to warn that it's possible to become lost in the language and I found myself occasionally snarled up in it. Also, the fragmented way the book is written in might not be for everyone. I, personally, loved it. I just feel like I should warn my readers that it's easy to become tangled at times, and some pieces need to be digested or contemplated a little, or read over more than once. But that's an objection easily overridden by simply reading it in whatever style one feels comfortable. </div>
<div style="color: #45818e; text-align: left;">
</div>
<div style="color: #45818e; text-align: left;">
In the end, <i>Jottings from a Far Away Place</i> is an amazing, unique book full of bizarre experiments with language and twisted, dreamlike essays that both stand on their own and form an excellent, cohesive whole. Brendan Connell does an excellent job melding the more playful Eastern philosophical style with the gleeful, dark-edged absurdity of Western surrealism, and anyone looking for a unique experience should definitely give this one a go. I look forward to seeking out other things Connell has done, and hope that <i>Jottings</i> makes it into more hands. </div>
<div style="color: #45818e; text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="color: #990000;"><i>NEXT WEEK:</i></span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="color: #990000;">- Blue on Blue<i> by Quentin S. Crisp</i></span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="color: #45818e;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<i><span style="color: #cc0000;">AND THEN:</span></i></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="color: #cc0000;"><i>- </i>The Name of the Rose <i>by Umberto Eco</i></span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="color: #cc0000;"><i><br /></i></span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="color: #cc0000;"><i>AND MANY OTHERS </i></span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="color: #45818e;"> </span><span style="color: #45818e;"> </span></div>
<div style="color: #45818e; text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="color: #45818e; text-align: left;">
*This book marks the only time I have ever said "I might need to reread <i>Zhuangzi</i> for this one."</div>
<div style="color: #45818e; text-align: left;">
**Only reason I know how to spell her name is because of the Sunn O))) song where they locked Malefic in a coffin.</div>
</div>
Caius Caligulahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06345161053444317875noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8662452127691085085.post-12313663287828105612015-08-30T17:57:00.000-04:002015-08-30T17:57:11.526-04:00The Scarlet Gospels<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="color: #45818e;"> </span></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhuDfpRVkUbFu-OXqNFMP5N5WN2jm7Rp1henN89eMZcW_GpkVSb8KLqK9519xI2mBaVBcLvQ-5IKJOak8Esd11HIZNsl0E_F206JlUel1vpT5vVMhyphenhyphenOnb8I5IWRsLAlRn5SpBDHyY_6bzg/s1600/download+%252831%2529.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhuDfpRVkUbFu-OXqNFMP5N5WN2jm7Rp1henN89eMZcW_GpkVSb8KLqK9519xI2mBaVBcLvQ-5IKJOak8Esd11HIZNsl0E_F206JlUel1vpT5vVMhyphenhyphenOnb8I5IWRsLAlRn5SpBDHyY_6bzg/s400/download+%252831%2529.jpg" width="283" /></a></div>
<span style="color: #45818e;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #45818e;"> I waited nine years for this book, and I'm still not completely sure it was worth it.</span><br />
<span style="color: #45818e;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #45818e;"> It's a good book, to be sure. And I didn't give up on it the same way I gave up on, say, <i>Abarat</i> (which is a huge rant I will deploy at another time. Maybe for post 200) by the same author. And, let's be honest, any meeting between Harry D'amour (the detective from <i>Great and Secret Show</i> and <i>Lord of Illusions</i>*) and the being people can't help but refer to as "Pinhead" (Him what was in the <i>Hellraiser</i> series**) would be final for one of them, if not both. But I couldn't help feeling like this was possibly a tired and annoyed farewell to his work, melding the dark, beautiful fantasy of his later works (D'amour's dominion) with the brutal, gruesome horror of his earlier works (you know who) in an effort to put them all to bed for good. </span><br />
<span style="color: #45818e;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #45818e;"> I'm not quite sure if it's just because I expected a four to five hundred page doorstopper about the ultimate battle between the reluctant champion of humanity and Barker's most terrifying agent of change, or because it dealt a final blow to stories I hoped would continue and I'm being entitled and pissy. Maybe it's that Barker took one of my favorite characters and flung them in a new direction. But either way, the book annoyed me. </span><br />
<span style="color: #45818e;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #45818e;"> If you're in the mood for a vivid, twisted fantasy involving a team of occult investigators in Hell, great. If you're in the mood for some of the most fucked-up scenes in horror outside of maybe the Edward Lee crowd***, you're in the right place. But I don't believe this'll go on the shelf next to <i>Imajica</i>, <i>The Great and Secret Show</i>, <i>Books of Blood</i>, and <i>Everville</i>. </span><br />
<span style="color: #45818e;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #45818e;">More, as always, below. </span><br />
<br />
<a name='more'></a><br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="color: #45818e;"><i>"Watch."</i></span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="color: #45818e;"><i>- The Priest</i></span></div>
<br />
<span style="color: #45818e;"> The Hell Priest is on the rise. The being, more commonly known as "Pinhead" much to its chagrin, a name that earns its users a free disemboweling via unnervingly large fish hook, is collecting magic for some bizarre purpose, gleefully torture-murdering his way through an ancient occult society for their combined powers. He's grown tired of playing games with his boxes and humans who don't understand the world of pleasure. He wants more. He wants the big brass ring.</span><br />
<span style="color: #45818e;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #45818e;">He wants Hell.</span><br />
<span style="color: #45818e;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #45818e;"> But his plan has a few parts that need to be ironed out. Blank spaces that need to be filled in. Things that need a decidedly <i>human</i> touch. And the Priest (I am going to call him the Priest, because I do not want to wake up pregnant with a devil-baby or disemboweled or with angry comments from Clive Barker) has just the person in mind. Someone with a long history with Hell. Someone whose job it is to watch and follow and won't flinch from what he has in store for existence. </span><br />
<span style="color: #45818e;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #45818e;">Someone like Harry D'amour.</span><br />
<span style="color: #45818e;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #45818e;"> Harry, meanwhile, has found an equilibrium for himself. He's not happy, no one with his history of nightmares and exorcisms would be. His life has made him a lot of odd circumstances, a few friends and enemies, and an extensive collection of protective tattoos (<a href="http://www.amazon.com/Butcher-Bird-Dominion-Richard-Kadrey/dp/1597800864/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1438941247&sr=8-1&keywords=Butcher+Bird" target="_blank">Kadrey did it better</a>.). He's wary, but he doesn't think anything of it when he's asked by the ghost of a businessman to investigate the remains of his house. He also doesn't think anything of it when that businessman runs a creepy occult sex ring (dammit, Barker) that might be the reason behind his death. He's paranoid, running all the usual wards, but it isn't until he finds the ornate puzzle box (yes, <i>that</i> one) open and chiming its little tunes on the floor, warded from his interference as the doorway to Hell slowly opens. After a brutal battle with a gibbering half-headed sorcerer, Harry awakes to find that the Priest has a job for him: Watching his ascent in Hell. When Harry understandably tells the Priest to get bent, the Priest kidnaps his blind psychic friend and drags her to Hell, forcing Harry and a motley band of allies to go rescue her.</span><br />
<span style="color: #45818e;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #45818e;"> Because while God doesn't have a plan, and it's possible Satan doesn't, the Priest definitely does. And he will do whatever is necessary to ensure his captive audience <i>sees</i>. </span><br />
<span style="color: #45818e;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #45818e;"> So, first, the good. Barker's universe has always been compelling, and while <i>Scarlet Gospels</i> borrows less from the bizarre and utterly alien geometries of his books and more from the kind of conventional versions of Hell seen in the later <i>Hellraiser</i> movies, it still packs a lot of awesome visuals, the kind of thing that might occur if one took some downers and fell asleep watching a <i>The Cell</i>/<i>Hellraiser</i> double feature. In particular, I loved the Quo'oto, a gigantic lake-dwelling centipede with a human face and rows of venom-tipped needle-sharp teeth. When it shows up, it absolutely dwarfs everything else on the page, both in scale and sheer aesthetic. </span><br />
<span style="color: #45818e;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #45818e;"> In fact, Harry's journey through Hell could make for its own book, being less epic and full of fancy than <i>Imajica</i>, but adhering to the same lines. Barker really lets his imagination run loose here, but at the same time makes significant callbacks to previous works. The Inquisition headquarters in Hell bears a certain resemblance to the Hell Temple in "Down, Satan!" and the Priest even kills a recognizable Cenobite or two from the films. Hell is also a masochist's paradise, from the man who seems to have fifth-degree burns all over his body to the description of the Chief Inquisitor as a being with jeweled scales pinned to his soft, decaying flesh to the point he looks like a lizard. Barker does a good job with the atmosphere, as well, making everything feel lavish without robbing it of menace. </span><br />
<span style="color: #45818e;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #45818e;"> But here's where everything begins to break down. Menace. Barker's villains have none. No, not even the Priest, who spends the prologue disemboweling two people, giving a third an exaggerated pregnancy, and turning the fourth into a gibbering, capering half-headed slave. But he doesn't really seem, for all his knowledge of the occult and dark arts, like he's really that nasty. In fact, halfway through the book, he's curb-stomped by Harry D'amour personally in an attempt to kidnap Nora (there are at least two or three of those), only to win at the last moment because...contractual immortality? The Priest and his subordinates never seem to terrify, and win against superior opponents mainly because of preparations we neither see nor hear about, or in some cases because shut up and get the fuck on the plot train. This is a guy who made a <i>decorative mural</i> a scary proposition, and one of his most recognizable villains gets...nothing. </span><br />
<span style="color: #45818e;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #45818e;"> This is compounded by the ending. That freaking ending. Where Harry, who had previously curb-stomped the Priest so hard some of those nails went <i>in</i>, is held at bay by powerful magics that seem to come from nowhere and, while his wards can protect him from everything (even the hooked chains from the puzzle box are kind of paused by Harry's wards), they are powerless against the Priest taking him out. Granted, there's justifiable reasons at that point for why both characters are at different power levels, but this is someone that halfway through the book, Harry beat the crap out of and <i>lit on fire</i>, and here he is immobilized and stuck as the Priest works his magic. And honestly, it feels like a cop-out. It feels like a way for Harry D'amour to exit the picture or be changed so much that no one ever brings him up again to Barker unless Barker wants it. Which is great for Barker, but not so much for the people reading it. </span><br />
<span style="color: #45818e;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #45818e;"> And...I understand part of that is how much I empathize with Harry, and that this is the end the creator chose for the book. It's better than the billion other ends that could have awaited him, and gives him a way out without completely closing out the story. The book ends with Hell getting what it wanted out of D'amour, D'amour still alive, and the adventure sort of continuing. That's not a bad thing. But it didn't sit well with me, and since this blog is mainly my opinionated ramblings on a variety of book-related subjects, well, I'm not going to recommend it on the strength of something I didn't like about it. Make of that what you will. </span><br />
<span style="color: #45818e;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #45818e;"> In the end, though, if you're looking for a good book by Clive Barker and don't mind the massive middle finger to his readership, or maybe if this is your first brush with one of the best neo-gothic writers on the scene, it's a pretty cool introduction to his world even as it's brutally and quickly ripped apart. </span><br />
<span style="color: #45818e;"><br /></span><span style="color: #cc0000;"><i>NEXT WEEK:</i> </span><br />
<span style="color: #cc0000;">- City of the Snakes <i>by Darren Shan</i></span><br />
<span style="color: #cc0000;"><i><br /></i></span>
<span style="color: #cc0000;"><i>AND THEN:</i></span><br />
<span style="color: #cc0000;">- Queen of the Dark Things <i>by C. Robert Cargill</i></span><br />
<span style="color: #cc0000;"><i><br /></i></span>
<span style="color: #cc0000;"><i>AND MANY OTHERS TO COME</i></span><br />
<span style="color: #45818e;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #45818e;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #45818e;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #45818e;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #45818e;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #45818e;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #45818e;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #45818e;"><br /></span><span style="color: #45818e;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #45818e;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #45818e;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #45818e;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #45818e;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #45818e;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #45818e;">*Originator of the oft-quoted in meatspace "I WAS BORN TO MURDER THE WORLD!" line</span><br />
<span style="color: #45818e;">**Originator of the fun to quote but annoying for others "DO I LOOK LIKE SOMEONE WHO CARES WHAT GOD THINKS?!" line I think I once used when LARPing as a walking abomination</span><br />
<span style="color: #45818e;">***I don't believe I have many Ed Lee fans on my blog****, but you gotta make sure.</span><br />
<span style="color: #45818e;">****Or many fans, now that I've gone on unofficial hiatus for AN ENTIRE GADDAMN SUMMER. </span></div>
Caius Caligulahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06345161053444317875noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8662452127691085085.post-46083192676995314302015-06-07T02:14:00.000-04:002015-06-07T02:14:46.250-04:00The Quantum Thief<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhhApWRhBcz3bFNpqZjthec1oQ9iMFWchpaebGgIGHBDjOCZFgh1mnqZn5jAN1GzNxx0VXFVDi3bkIWrkshn9P8oYKEWkJTKben4Of_dSlhSy4NKPigR8yc6MriZzQ4O40tths903Sadx0/s1600/186637t24mfcqjpg.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhhApWRhBcz3bFNpqZjthec1oQ9iMFWchpaebGgIGHBDjOCZFgh1mnqZn5jAN1GzNxx0VXFVDi3bkIWrkshn9P8oYKEWkJTKben4Of_dSlhSy4NKPigR8yc6MriZzQ4O40tths903Sadx0/s400/186637t24mfcqjpg.jpg" width="265" /></a></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="color: #45818e;"> </span></div>
<span style="color: #45818e;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #45818e;"> I have not been able to stop talking about this book for months (yep, two of them now) and I want to discuss it. I first came upon Hannu Rajaniemi when I reviewed his short story collection for one of my compensated gigs. While I didn't think much of <i>The Quantum Thief</i> before then and had written it off as a cyberpunk crime novel (as well as confusing it with M.M. Buckner's <i>War Surf</i> for some reason), I was impressed enough by his short stories to read an excerpt of <i>Quantum Thief</i>, and from there instantly fell in love with it. </span><br />
<span style="color: #45818e;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #45818e;"> It's kind of an interesting balancing act to juggle techno-utopianism with <i>fin-de-siecle</i> French pulp novels (the gentleman thief and the master detective archetypes kind of originated with the <i>Arsene Lupin </i>novels quoted as the epigraph to this novel) with a kind of wild high fantasy and some odd quantum entanglement-influenced technological twists. And Rajaniemi nails it one hundred percent. He juggles things with an incredible sense of play that, while the story may not exactly be new to me (I'm wary of any plot that involves someone reclaiming their memory) is exciting in the <i>way</i> it's told. </span><br />
<span style="color: #45818e;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #45818e;">And it is brilliant.</span><br />
<span style="color: #45818e;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #45818e;">More, as always, below.</span><br />
<span style="color: #45818e;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #45818e;"></span><br />
<a name='more'></a><div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="color: #45818e;"><i>"Bang Bang. We cooperate."</i></span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="color: #45818e;"><i>- Jean le Flambeur</i></span></div>
<span style="color: #45818e;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #45818e;"> Jean le Flambeur is in prison. Not just any prison, but the Dilemma Prison, prison of the Archons, a structure used to imprison criminal minds and force them to learn cooperation and rehabilitation through game theory. Unfortunately, the minds imprisoned around him are a homicidal warbot and a malicious program used to troll the inmates, none of which feel particularly cooperative. On the brink of being nearly wiped out, le Flambeur is rescued by a mysterious woman named Mieli and her flirtatious ship <i>Perhonen</i>, who have rescued him on the advice of a technologically advanced goddess known as "pellegrini." They give Jean a body and some use of <i>Perhonen</i>, on the condition that he help them with a job, a job connected to the job he never finished on the Oubliette, capital city of Mars. </span><br />
<span style="color: #45818e;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #45818e;"> And then things get weird.</span><br />
<span style="color: #45818e;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #45818e;"> The Oubliette, lit by the Phobos singularity, is a bizarre construction of layered architecture, where memory and time are carefully-guarded currency and mind pirates siphon out identities in power games played among the "cryptarchs" in the upper classes. People's identities are hidden by a privacy cloud only breached by contracts and exchanged for certain amounts of time held in quantum-entangled watches. And it is here that Jean le Flambeur has hidden something. Something that the goddess and the rest of her pantheon, the Sobornost, want found. Something he wanted to hide from everyone. A work of terrifying magnitude. </span><br />
<span style="color: #45818e;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #45818e;"> At the same time, a detective named Isidore, the Oubliette's own <i>wunderkind</i>, is on the trail of a criminal connected to the murder of a chocolatier by mind pirates, and slowly uncovers the Great Work of an artist, an artist deeply connected to the interplanetary thief Jean le Flambeur...</span><br />
<span style="color: #45818e;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #45818e;"> Okay, so tonight I have to talk a little about Clarke's Third Law. For those unfamiliar with the law (originated by elder statesman of sci-fi Arthur C. Clarke), it states that "Any significantly-advanced science is completely indistinguishable from magic." It's been used before a few times...Varley's <i>Titan</i> had a scientist on a planet that flirted with the trope, it was the focus of the excellent <i>The Warlock in Spite of Himself</i> and its numerous sequels...hell, even my favorite book of last year, M. John Harrison's <i>Light</i>, used it a little with its fixation on dice, tarot cards, and divination by fishtank. It's a common mode in science fiction, both in movies and in books, and it's a fun one to bring out in debates on stuff like <i>Harry Potter</i> and <i>Lord of the Rings</i>*. </span><br />
<span style="color: #45818e;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #45818e;"> The reason I mention it here is that Mr. Rajaniemi, a consultant with a degree in String Theory, here dials it up past any levels previously explored. Armed with his knowledge and some rather interesting ideas on advanced technology and transhumanism, <i>The Quantum Thief</i> breaks the barriers between postsingular sci-fi and outright fantasy. It's science fiction, with some grounding in that, but between the MMORPG-influenced Zoku guilds and the weird memory-entanglement of the Oubliette's upper classes, it aims for pure pulp escapism. With this style, Rajaniemi creates something entirely original, though it builds on some of the science fiction that comes before it. It's escapism, yes, but very smart escapism. </span><br />
<span style="color: #45818e;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #45818e;"> Another thing I really like about the book is the atmosphere. I mentioned above that <i>The Quantum Thief</i> draws on a lot of French influences. The Arsene Lupin books. The entire idea of "post-revolutionary Mars."<i> </i>Jean's name is even taken from the seminal French <i>nouvelle vague</i> movie (and one of the few <i>nouvelle vague</i> that is actually watchable) <i>Bob Le Flambeur</i>. It creates an interesting atmosphere that steeps the book in older-feeling charms, but with an incredibly fresh-seeming atmosphere. It conjures images of a baroque future of well-dressed ladies and gentlemen, nanite-ensconced police officers (one in a bowler hat) and well-tended mansions. </span><br />
<span style="color: #45818e;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #45818e;"> Aiding the atmosphere is a rather expansive setting that gives the world a complete cosmology, from odd language to the complex nature of memory contracts and private/public memories in the Oubliette. Rajaniemi puts a lot of thought into the nature of how things work, and it shows in the commonplace way everything feels. While the book has a barrier of entry involving language and themes (it took me a while to figure out what the "gevulot" and "gogols" were), the immersion and rhythm of the book, along with its whirlwind pace, actually work in its favor to create an environment where even if the language is a little unknown, it takes very little time to pick it up and continue on the way. </span><br />
<span style="color: #45818e;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #45818e;"> But it is within that pacing that things falter. Throughout the book, there are interludes that, while welcome because they detail more of the setting and the characters, really grind the pacing to a halt. And in a book as breezy and fast-paced as <i>The Quantum Thief</i>, that's more of a weakness than a strength, even when the interludes tie into the story. </span><br />
<span style="color: #45818e;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #45818e;"> In the end, though, you should be reading this. You should have skipped out on paragraph two, read the whole thing, and now be prepared to tell me how full of crap I am. Rajaniemi is a mastermind, and in his first novel that he managed to stumble <i>once</i> is an amazing feat in and of itself. This isn't just great (as people have said) "as a debut", it's a great novel <i>period</i>, and hopefully Rajaniemi will become a grandmaster in his own right. </span><br />
<span style="color: #45818e;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #45818e;">And now I need to find a way to buy his short story collection.</span><br />
<span style="color: #45818e;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #990000;"><i>NEXT TIME:</i></span><br />
<span style="color: #990000;"><i>-</i> Afterparty <i>by Daryl Gregory</i></span><br />
<span style="color: #990000;"><i><br /></i></span>
<span style="color: #990000;"><i>AND THEN:</i></span><br />
<span style="color: #990000;">Any number of my numerous backlog of stuff, or possibly <i>The Scarlet Gospel</i>, since I've been waiting for that one for almost a decade. </span><br />
<span style="color: #45818e;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #45818e;">*If you're either a real nerd or a real jackass. Or in my case, both!</span></div>
Caius Caligulahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06345161053444317875noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8662452127691085085.post-28179902231173832492015-05-02T20:43:00.000-04:002015-05-02T20:47:45.600-04:00Nuklear Age<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="color: #45818e;"> </span></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<span style="color: #45818e;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi1qDjOfnNZtNS0e30J7ukANKAyI0Ij1maQub_fmQoisyxuQErKMDttGRfWGMhOZ26pz8dBaSrJ2yNhK_n9maXvdRb-YQX9_7O5PeYnwQC4depqY4Hmok55Pa0l8PWHnug8P444RTEfZPU/s1600/517gQzwevWL._SY344_BO1,204,203,200_.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi1qDjOfnNZtNS0e30J7ukANKAyI0Ij1maQub_fmQoisyxuQErKMDttGRfWGMhOZ26pz8dBaSrJ2yNhK_n9maXvdRb-YQX9_7O5PeYnwQC4depqY4Hmok55Pa0l8PWHnug8P444RTEfZPU/s1600/517gQzwevWL._SY344_BO1,204,203,200_.jpg" height="400" width="266" /></a></span></div>
<span style="color: #45818e;"> </span><span style="color: #76a5af;"> </span><br />
<span style="color: #76a5af;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #76a5af;"> </span><span style="color: #45818e;">There are some very rare instances where I cannot actually reveal why I like a book so much. It's annoying, it's true. <i>Private Midnight</i> was a book like that. There are books out there that, to explain the reason I love it so much, would ruin the beautiful bounty the book has in store. But if I tell you guys too little, then I'm not doing my job as a reviewer*. So I have to give something away. </span><br />
<span style="color: #45818e;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #45818e;"> I suppose I'll just frame it like this. This is a book where the charms are not immediately obvious. It rewards careful reading, and at some point you'll either start to figure out what's going on, or you'll get annoyed and leave it be. Yes, it's a strange, kind of silly story about superheroes. Yes, it kind of goes for unsympathetic comedy. But if you're patient with it, and you stick with the concept, then it's rewarding in ways that few novels, few concepts, hell, few pieces of <i>media</i> hit you.</span><br />
<span style="color: #45818e;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #45818e;"> But if it doesn't draw you in, if you don't start to wonder about what's going on, if it doesn't "click" for you, you can walk away no problems. I'm not going to call this flawless, I know better. Nor am I going to insist, no matter <i>how</i> much I want to, that you read this all the way to the end. This is not a book that works when forced on the unwilling, and I'm pretty sure that's why it was self-published in all its printings. It's been said that you can write for an audience or write for yourself and hope an audience finds you. With <i>Nuklear Age</i>, Brian Clevinger clearly did the latter. Hopefully, it works for you.</span><br />
<span style="color: #45818e;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #45818e;">More, as always, below. </span><br />
<span style="color: #45818e;"></span><br />
<a name='more'></a><div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="color: #45818e;"><i>"How do you make God laugh?"</i></span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="color: #45818e;"><i>"You make a plan"</i></span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="color: #45818e;"><i>- Doctor Veronica Menace</i></span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="color: #45818e;"><i><br /></i></span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="color: #45818e;"><i> Nuklear Age</i> starts with Nuklear Man. The golden guardian of Metroville is introduced mid-destructive battle with his partner in crime-fighting Atomik Lad against the robotic menace calling itself Mechanikill. With the killer robot dispatched, Nuklear Man receives a birthday card from his father, and the two heroes venture off to get themselves a free birthday cake at a local restaurant, along with lunch. On the way, they're met by fellow hero the Iron Scotsman, fight a miniature civilization formed from incredibly old cheese, and discover the secret ingredient to the leading brand of breakfast serial. The story follows them from vignette to vignette as they fight villains, argue over the location of a sushi place, and interact with various people in Metroville. </span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="color: #45818e;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="color: #45818e;"> The book continues like this, interweaving vignettes about the heroes' life in Metroville with battles against giant crabs and ineffectual supervillains, but slowly and surely, a thread begins to emerge. Things have happened in the past. Doctor Genius over at the Uberdyne research institute seems a little disinterested in heroes other than their apparent potential as her research subjects. And what <i>really</i> happened when the mobster known as The Dragon tried to take over the city in the event known as Dragon's Strike? As the story begins to emerge, things start to come together in more and more intricate ways. And I wouldn't dare spoil what happens after that. This is, after all, a book from someone who knows how to weave a story together from dumb jokes, and it's the kind of story he weaves that's part of the fun. </span><br />
<span style="color: #45818e;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #45818e;"> The thing I like most about the book, though, more than the jokes that don't always land, is the way Clevinger uses setting. There's an interesting concept people explore in video games these days with familiarity. Coming back to places repeatedly and getting a feel for them helps get one into the story and really connect with it. For instance, the bar in <i>Dishonored</i>, with its various patrons, becomes almost like a home within the game world. It gives people a setting. People they meet. Then, when things happen to these people, it provides the emotional priming necessary to cause the reader to react. When it's done <i>right, </i>then it can cause incredible moments in fiction**. Through various vignettes in Metroville, Clevinger creates a sense of a setting the reader <i>knows</i>. The episodic way the story is told, with its repeating locations and characters, gives an excellent image of Metroville and its constantly-beleaguered inhabitants. And, when those episodes start coming together in unexpected ways, they follow on the previous chapters and create something newer and more interesting. </span><br />
<span style="color: #45818e;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #45818e;"> Actually, the episodic nature allows Clevinger to explore his characters more, too. By dividing the book up into "issues", each one building on the story before but remaining kind of self-contained. While one chapter may spend its time with Nuke and Atomik Lad in their underground silo, it creates a relationship that builds from those moments into later chapters of the work and helps explore that a little more. By organizing the chapters in this way, Clevinger can spend time having character moments without having to worry about the narrative thread the way a completely linear, non-episodic novel wouldn't be able to. Even from the opening ten issues, there's a sense that these characters, no matter how silly, have pasts and backstories and are actually people outside of how they're used. </span><br />
<span style="color: #45818e;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #45818e;"> And this actually touches on something interesting. Clevinger is not really a literary author. He was known back in the day for his webcomic <i>8-Bit Theater</i>, an epic comic fantasy told using sprites from <i>Final Fantasy</i>. These days, he writes the comic <i><a href="http://www.atomic-robo.com/" target="_blank">Atomic Robo</a>. Nuklear Age</i> is his only novel, and it's told not in a very narrative style, but in one that's meant to be more like comics, tracing their history from goofy golden-age titles to present day, with the storylines growing and changing based on that. The result is a novel that actually does character and plotline better, and knows its own pacing, because it's not trying to be a novel. Compare something like this to a book where the writer is steeped in the conventions and ideas of novel writing, and you'll find a dearth of kinetic prose and some definite points where things hit a narrative lull. By not thinking in the same way as someone whose main discipline is literature, Clevinger found a way to address themes better than if the book had been written in regular prose.</span><br />
<span style="color: #45818e;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #45818e;"> Now, the book is not without its faults. Since it's a self-published novel, it runs into a lot of typos, and it appears that several things were put in using the find-replace feature, as the names come up as "Iron: Battlesuit" and "Evil: Console", which I'm not sure was done on purpose or just a quirk of the writing/editing process. </span><br />
<span style="color: #45818e;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #45818e;"> But as someone who's read <i>Dhalgren</i>, <i>House of Leaves</i>, and <i>The Stars My Destination</i>, I don't really have any place to judge on the subject of text formatting,</span><br />
<span style="color: #45818e;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #45818e;"> <i>Nuklear Age</i> is an amazing book, and one that's definitely worth tracking down. I wish I could tell you more about <i>how</i> amazing, and about my favorite part, and about where the quote I used as the pull comes from, but no. As I said, this is a book where you have to experience most of it for yourself. So find this. Borrow it if you have to. If you can make it through the first ten issues, then hopefully you'll make it further. Hopefully, you'll make it to the end. </span><br />
<span style="color: #45818e;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #45818e;">Hopefully, you'll make it to the punchline. </span></div>
<br />
<span style="color: #cc0000;"><i>NEXT WEEK:</i></span><br />
<span style="color: #cc0000;"><i>- </i>Shovel Ready <i>by Adam Sternbergh</i></span><br />
<span style="color: #cc0000;"><i><br /></i></span>
<span style="color: #cc0000;"><i>AND THEN</i></span><br />
<span style="color: #cc0000;">- The Damnation Game <i>by Clive Barker</i></span>
<span style="color: #45818e;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #45818e;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #45818e;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #45818e;"><br /></span><span style="color: #45818e;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #45818e;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #45818e;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #45818e;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #45818e;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #45818e;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #45818e;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #45818e;">*Like I've been doing that much here anyway. Stupid compensated gigs. </span><br />
<span style="color: #45818e;">** When it's done wrong, please see <i>Fallout 3</i>. </span></div>
Caius Caligulahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06345161053444317875noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8662452127691085085.post-54918713907262187862015-04-12T02:50:00.001-04:002015-04-12T03:02:25.489-04:00Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgau0FE2bL-IcS1BbUqZFhB9mrAggxCBZM7i00rYkHBVszRspdeXNB4V7Fjzx8kcNWwu2Hw8oGmM0mflUHYVAWPLD0nOdH73w5PDjju72IMQv1WOFK9gfUsYdHuiSK-RyHPviL9YsZJrpQ/s1600/MissPPeculiarChildren.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgau0FE2bL-IcS1BbUqZFhB9mrAggxCBZM7i00rYkHBVszRspdeXNB4V7Fjzx8kcNWwu2Hw8oGmM0mflUHYVAWPLD0nOdH73w5PDjju72IMQv1WOFK9gfUsYdHuiSK-RyHPviL9YsZJrpQ/s1600/MissPPeculiarChildren.jpg" /></a></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="color: #45818e;"> </span></div>
<span style="color: #45818e;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #45818e;"> I like this book in spite of the book. That's the best way I've found to say this. I've been going around and around in circles about </span><i style="color: #45818e;">Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children</i><span style="color: #45818e;">, and what I liked, and what really annoyed me, and it comes down to this: I like the book in spite of what the book is. There's a great dark, atmospheric story that exists within these pages. There's also a great, creepy found-photograph novel. And as this was Ransom Riggs's first novel, and definitely the first novel he wrote with such a concept in mind, And...found document novels or works can be kind of finicky to begin with. Depending on the work, and depending on the source used, it's possible to get any number of permutations, from <i>House of Leaves</i> to <i>S.</i> to <i>Pale Fire</i> to everything in between. And a novel using creepy Victorian photographs and an abandoned Gothic-novel children's home is...pretty much exactly in my wheelhouse, let's face it. You could get a more Caius book, but only by virtue of the main bulk of my reading material being "very weird shit"*. </span><br />
<span style="color: #45818e;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #45818e;"> But there are...difficulties with this one. The concept needs to hang together a little better than it does, and while it's a fantastic novel, it's kind of hampered by its own premise, a premise that is good on its own, but a little awkward in its execution. But by no means should that discount that the book is full of atmosphere and weirdness, interesting world design, and a <i>very</i> quirky mystery at its heart. </span><br />
<span style="color: #45818e;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #45818e;">More, as always, below.</span><br />
<span style="color: #45818e;"></span><br />
<a name='more'></a><div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="color: #45818e;">"<i>Ready to go?"</i></span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="color: #45818e;"><i>"Only if you are."</i></span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="color: #45818e;"><i>- Jacob Portman and Emma Bloom</i></span></div>
<br />
<span style="color: #45818e;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #45818e;"> When Jacob Portman was young, his grandfather Abraham used to tell him stories. Stories about wise birds, odd children, and the home for children he was sent to during the War. Accompanied by black and white photographs, Jacob's grandfather would weave stories about his friends, friends who could levitate and lift boulders one-handed. And for the longest time, Jacob believed his grandfather's stories completely. After all, he had photographs, and he would never lie to his grandson, would he?</span><br />
<span style="color: #45818e;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #45818e;"> But as the years go on and Jacob's made fun of at school for his belief in his grandfather's "fairy stories", he begins to take the things his grandfather says with a grain of salt. After all, people can't levitate, or turn invisible, or any of those things. Photographs can be faked. And birds certainly cannot talk. So Jacob suppresses it, stops listening to his grandfather, and dismisses his stories as nothing more than stories. His grandfather didn't fight monsters during the war, went to an ordinary children's home, and is just making things up. He <i>has</i> to be.</span><br />
<span style="color: #45818e;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #45818e;"> And so it remains until the night Jacob answers a panicked call from his grandfather, who talks about "fending them off" and wants to know where Jacob's family hid the key to his gun locker. The night Jacob sees <i>something</i> stalk off away from his grandfather and into the dark. The night Grandpa Portman desperately whispers to him about finding the loop and the bird on an island. About Emerson and the letter. And it's these cryptic statements that send Jacob off to an island off the coast of England, an island with the crumbling ruins of a children's home and secrets far darker than he would have imagined. Because stories or not, his grandfather has left him a bizarre gift, and one with hidden dangers waiting around every turn. And no matter what, by the end of this, things <i>will</i> be changed unrecognizably. </span><br />
<span style="color: #45818e;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #45818e;"> So I suppose since the concept's the most obvious, and works as both a blessing and a curse, I'll start there. The book contains almost three hundred and fifty black-and-white vintage photographs that serve as illustrations for the text, as well as being something of a plot point-- most of the stories Jacob's grandfather tells are accompanied by the old man's collection of photographs, and when Jacob finds the box or his grandfather's documents, then they're actually there on the page instead of just existing in the text. The photographs add to the atmosphere wonderfully, and creates the perfect sort of atmosphere, building an unnerving, unsettling world where these things possibly <i>could</i> exist, along with sketches of humanoid abominations, hastily-written letters and the like. It's also an interesting way of introducing the characters, having them described and then having their photographs on the next page to illustrate in greater detail. Riggs also makes good use of damaged photographs in the book, writing the damage and corrupted visuals into the plotline as he goes. It also definitely helps with immersion to have the visual aids. </span><br />
<span style="color: #45818e;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #45818e;"> However, there's a bit of a problem with this. The story seems written around the photographs in such a way that Riggs was looking specifically for places to put the photographs into the novel, where a much more organic process could have yielded better results. Another option would be to make it much <i>more</i> of a found-document piece than it was, writing up a brief story about each of the photographs and then trying to string them into a larger plotline. It isn't to say that the story is bad, it's just kind of jarring, and there gets to be something of a pattern where something is described just vividly enough, and then the photograph appears on the next page, which just made me anticipate the photographs a little too much to get comfortable in the world. It also seems to be a thing he relies on more often than not, and the narrative sags at points when it gets really photograph-heavy. </span><br />
<span style="color: #45818e;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #45818e;"> Which is a shame, because the narrative is <i>really</i> good. Told in first-person perspective from the point of view of Jacob, <i>Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children</i> actually deals better with the disconnect and isolation of growing up than most books I've read in recent memory. It's wrenching to see Jacob slip more and more away from the people in his life, people who seem caught up in their own personal drama. His father is desperate to find new subjects for a book he's writing, his mother is stuck taking care of Jacob (who was deemed mentally ill because he "hallucinated" a monster in his grandfather's backyard) and his father (who has a drinking habit due to his inability to produce works and also possibly some fighting with Jacob's mother), Jacob's cousins just want to get him further into the family business, no one seems to care about Grandpa Portman's house...everyone's living in their own little worlds and they slip further and further away from each other the more Jacob is accepted by the strange world surrounding his grandfather. </span><br />
<span style="color: #45818e;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #45818e;"> Similarly, the world design is amazing. While not all of it is immediately obvious, and more than a little is kept quiet, and the rest I won't spoil because really, the book <i>is</i> worth reading, I'd like to stress that more than anything else, Riggs has created a world that is just peculiar enough to intrigue, but not forcibly or offensively quirky. It starts out as an unusual ghost story, but then brings in magic, temporal manipulation, Lovecraftian beings, and even more weird elements, creating an odd mythology that draws the reader in piece by piece but never seems too out of place. It's something I like to call the Pinkwater Effect, after the author who did it best, one Daniel Pinkwater. No matter how strange the story gets, it seems perfectly natural because the proper context is established just enough to allow for just about any ridiculous thing to happen based on the earlier framework. Of course, in this case it's more cosmic horror and dark fantasy than humor, but it still applies. Everything that happens in the novel has contextual grounding and leads to a dark, bizarre mythology that works in the books favor. </span><br />
<span style="color: #45818e;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #45818e;"> But...the other issue with the book is that, like many books of its kind, it appears to have been built with a series in mind, rather than standing on its own. The plotline is left hanging at the end of the book, with everything destroyed but not enough for any kind of finality. I cannot stress this enough, I wish more people would write books that ended, with enough left to continue the adventures on to other volumes. This writing with a sequel in mind is the thing that kills me more than anything else, and leads to Robert Jordan-esque stories that never properly end as long as the author can possibly bang out a few more books. For god's sake, people, <i>end your books</i>. I know it's harder, but in the long run, people will respect you more. If Darren Shan is able to do it (and even then, it seems to have taken him some time, but the <i>City Trilogy</i> does actually leave off with just enough that you can stop after each book), if Peter David is able to do it, then <i>so the hell are you</i>. </span><br />
<span style="color: #45818e;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #45818e;"> In the end, though, <i>Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children</i> is an interesting and unnerving read, a riff on the Gothic novel and with a strange historical quality that helps drive home the mood in a way few books can. I definitely suggest giving this one a read if you're into dark fantasy, with the warning that there are some <i>very</i> strange portions, and the story does get very dark at times. Still, I recommend it completely, warts and all. </span><br />
<span style="color: #45818e;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #45818e;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #cc0000;"><i>NEXT WEEK:</i></span><br />
<span style="color: #cc0000;">Nuklear Age <i>by Brian Clevinger</i></span><br />
<span style="color: #cc0000;"><i><br /></i></span>
<span style="color: #cc0000;"><i>AND THEN:</i></span><br />
<span style="color: #cc0000;">-Shovel Ready <i>by Adam Sternbergh</i></span><br />
<span style="color: #cc0000;"><i>- </i>The False Magic Kingdom Cycle <i>by Jordan Krall</i></span><br />
<span style="color: #cc0000;"><i><br /></i></span>
<span style="color: #cc0000;"><i>AND MANY OTHERS. NORMAL SERVICE...HAS RESUMED.</i></span><br />
<span style="color: #45818e;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #45818e;"><br /></span>
<br />
<span style="color: #45818e;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #45818e;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #45818e;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #45818e;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #45818e;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #45818e;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #45818e;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #45818e;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #45818e;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #45818e;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #45818e;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #45818e;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #45818e;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #45818e;"><br /></span>
<br />
<span style="color: #45818e;">*There have been attempts to figure out what exactly what "my aesthetics" were. Sadly, the people who tried didn't take into account that they are literally "everything".</span></div>
Caius Caligulahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06345161053444317875noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8662452127691085085.post-56813594824493629922015-04-05T04:13:00.001-04:002015-04-05T04:20:28.213-04:00The Truth<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh37EkWgNP2LnRjEIK_OeEwb4QUO-yH0P5ODJ67rWNCz9SsVPBgTZCMhGijCuhWQwzrg6Bn1JEQp8dmrrmtcoHoUK4bxoP1nHwBP8jKS-hWZZvFugMeJ2WuRC0aHsnNAy041a5Vvq982Eo/s1600/0380978954.01.LZZZZZZZ.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh37EkWgNP2LnRjEIK_OeEwb4QUO-yH0P5ODJ67rWNCz9SsVPBgTZCMhGijCuhWQwzrg6Bn1JEQp8dmrrmtcoHoUK4bxoP1nHwBP8jKS-hWZZvFugMeJ2WuRC0aHsnNAy041a5Vvq982Eo/s1600/0380978954.01.LZZZZZZZ.jpg" height="400" width="278" /></a></div>
<br />
<br />
<span style="color: #45818e;">I never really had any kind of deep relationship with Terry Pratchett, but he left an amazing impact on my life. I'd tried to write this out as a brief tribute, but as there are certain undisclosable legal implications to me posting <i>that </i>piece (this, folks, is one of the drawbacks with going pro-- the first steps into the professional arena are rough and couched in weird legal implications), I decided instead that I would try to reflect on Sir Pterry's life in the way that I have so many other authors that have left an impact on me: I'd write a review of the book that got me into his work in the first place, the book that led me to <i>Discworld</i> and got me to start telling people about books I thought they should read. </span><br />
<span style="color: #45818e;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #45818e;">So without any further ado, I present <i>The Truth</i>. The book without which, along with <i>Neverwhere</i>, this blog would not exist. </span><br />
<span style="color: #45818e;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #45818e;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #45818e;">And Sir Terry? I knew it was coming. That doesn't make it hurt any less.</span><br />
<span style="color: #45818e;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #45818e;"></span><br />
<a name='more'></a><div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="color: #45818e;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="color: #45818e;"><i>"The Truth </i>has<i> got its boots on. And it's about to start kicking</i>.<i>"</i></span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="color: #45818e;"><i>- William de Worde</i></span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="color: #45818e;"><i><br /></i></span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="color: #45818e;"> William de Worde is a common scribe in Ankh-Morpork. His family is rich, influential, and wants nothing to do with him. This suits William just fine, as he's been trying to do something more important with his time, taking the family's motto of "Le Mot Juste" (the right word in the right place) to heart. In his spare time, he writes newsletters to nobles in far-off parts of the Disc*, getting a little extra income for telling them of goings-on in and around the city. A run-in with a group of dwarves who have recently discovered moveable lead type and a few other occurrences give him the idea to start Ankh-Morpork's first newspaper, <i>The Times</i>. However, his attempt at this enterprise involves him getting involved with the complex and frightening thing that is Ankh-Morpork city politics. At the same time, a rival sets up the Disc's first tabloid and begins reporting on events made up out of whole cloth. A group of <i>very</i> powerful businessmen have decided that perhaps freedom of the press might not be in their best interest. And then there's the City Watch, who have decided perhaps that the press snooping around their crime scenes might not be in <i>their</i> best interest.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="color: #45818e;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="color: #45818e;"> And then there's the matter of the plot against the Patrician, Lord Havelock Vetinari, a plot that involves a break-in at the Patrician's Palace and his favorite little dog Wuffles going missing. A plot that has unleashed two violent and eccentric assassins known as "The New Firm" on the city to do as they please and cover up the conspiracy's repeated attempts to remove the city's ruler from his long tenure as the thing keeping everything in order. All of this centers around Wuffles's disappearance, as the dog is the sole witness to the palace break-in. But as complications, including zombie lawyers, insane assassins, bureaucracy, a vampire photographer with an eerily prescient camera, the City Watch, and the Patrician himself, begin to mount, the only thing de Worde seems able to count on is the truth. Well, and funnily shaped vegetables, which everyone seems to want to get into his paper. But the truth can be just as dangerous, and William and his friends are prepared to show people just <i>how</i>. </span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="color: #45818e;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="color: #45818e;"> The thing that first drew me to <i>The Truth</i> was how accessible the book is. Discworld can be frighteningly dense and odd at times, and more so as the books go on. The world relies on running gags, recurring characters, and repeating concepts throughout the many linked "arcs" (Death/Susan, City Watch, Wizards, Witches, Rincewind, Industrial Revolution, et. al), creating a brilliant world that changes and advances as things go on. <i>The Truth</i>, something of an exception and also a major turning point for the world of the Disc, keeps things fairly simple. While it still has its share of running gags and call-backs (Lord Vetinari's monologue about how progress tends to reset itself on the Disc references <i>Soul Music, Moving Pictures, </i>and a running gag about the Three Lucky Take-Away Fish Bar) it represents a turning point in Disc continuity, and so all my issues with Pratchett's other books (which <i>did</i> rely more on their continuities) are kind of rendered a little more moot. On top of which, it's easy to get lost in the world of Ankh Morpork. The city feels overfull with life, and locations are visited repeatedly, which generates a nice sense of familiarity. The city feels "lived-in".</span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="color: #45818e;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="color: #45818e;"> Another aspect of Pratchett's writing I liked here was that the characters behave like real people, and through that are presented as kind of unique. In fact, a lot of Pratchett's humor occurs when the slightly cracked but mostly sane protagonists try to interact with a world that quite literally runs on impossible physical laws and narrative causality. Because narrative convenience and causality are built into the laws of physics, the characters develop a certain genre-saviness that makes them both intelligent and capable of amazing thoughts both inside and outside the box. It also creates the kind of plot-twist pileups not usually seen outside serials, with plots and counterplots so complex that the protagonist could have been running a scam all along and only reveal the full implications at the very last second, unraveling all the plots one-by-one-by-one. In this case, the characters are acting out a complex (almost as complex as the one in reality) conspiracy plot along the lines of <i>All the President's Men</i>, with the two main characters serving as an unwilling Woodward and a scandal-obsessed Bernstein. </span><br />
<span style="color: #45818e;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #45818e;"> All of this is, of course, held together with some brilliantly absurd comic touches. What it comes down to is this: Pratchett is very, very sincere. No matter how ridiculous the story gets, no matter how insane the touches, he plays it as comically straight as possible. It's never a matter of "this is how things are?" but "this is how things are." The comedy comes from-- well, no, honestly I should have probably refused to pick apart the comedy. Discworld books work because they run on the most absurd premises possible, play them as sincerely as they can, and invite you into further absurdities and linguistic jokes and all the rest. Also, because the Fool's Guild being the most humorless guild in Ankh-Morpork is, to my interpretation, a dig at people who analyze comedy so much that they're unable to enjoy it. What I <i>will</i> say is that it's the best high-fantasy Watergate parody ever committed to the page, and while that's overly narrow, it's still just broad enough that I mean it as praise instead of damning it with faint praise.</span><br />
<span style="color: #45818e;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #45818e;"> However, if there's one thing I have to talk about, it's that (and this happens more often than it should) the book just...<i>stops</i> at certain points. What Pratchett produced is amazing, but the pacing...just doesn't always hang together like it should. While there are brilliant moments, and brilliant scenes, and brilliant points throughout, it seems like it was always <i>in spite of</i> the pacing, not that the pacing added to it. </span><br />
<span style="color: #45818e;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #45818e;"> But Pratchett's pacing issues in <i>The Truth</i> are much less than, well, most of the books in <i>Discworld</i> that I have read. In fact, a lot of the issues I kind of brought up here are lesser compared to most <i>Discworld</i> books that I've read. So please, if you're new to the series, if you gave it a chance and you're looking for a way to get into the series, or if you're an old hand, please read <i>The Truth</i>. It's well worth the time and effort. </span><br />
<span style="color: #45818e;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #45818e;">It also gets off a nice Neil Gaiman jab, but I won't tell you what. </span><br />
<span style="color: #45818e;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #990000;"><i>LATER THIS WEEKEND:</i></span><br />
<span style="color: #990000;"><i>- </i>Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children <i>by Ransom Riggs</i></span><br />
<span style="color: #990000;"><i><br /></i></span>
<span style="color: #990000;"><i>AND THEN:</i></span><br />
<span style="color: #990000;">- Nuklear Age <i>by Brian Clevinger</i></span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="color: #45818e;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="color: #45818e;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="color: #45818e;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="color: #45818e;">*A round world on the back of four elephants on the back of a turtle. </span><br />
<span style="color: #45818e;">**And then there are the Wizards, who are both due to them being kind of beyond the normal spectrum. And incurably insane</span></div>
</div>
Caius Caligulahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06345161053444317875noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8662452127691085085.post-80209173967887879142015-03-26T13:47:00.004-04:002015-03-26T13:47:40.465-04:00Health Issues Post<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<span style="color: #990000;">Hi, guys.</span><br />
<span style="color: #990000;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #990000;">So you may have realized that this month, my output was...okay, let's call a spade a spade. It was piss-poor. It was terrible.</span><br />
<span style="color: #990000;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #990000;">For the past few weeks, due to some serious time slippage and insomnia, I've had trouble keeping focus and keeping my head together. This is the first day in a while I even know what day it is, and that's because last night I had a game and today I'm going to ZenKaiKon for the weekend.</span><br />
<span style="color: #990000;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #990000;">I'm sorry.</span><br />
<span style="color: #990000;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #990000;">I'm really sorry. You guys are my lifeblood, you have given me the ability to do amazing, awesome things, and you deserve better.</span><br />
<span style="color: #990000;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #990000;">I'm gonna take the next few days off, hopefully relax, settle down a little. And then be back in April with the posts I've been working on.</span><br />
<span style="color: #990000;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #990000;">See you then,</span><br />
<span style="color: #990000;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #990000;">SR/CC</span></div>
Caius Caligulahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06345161053444317875noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8662452127691085085.post-47216597090503044582015-03-01T21:06:00.000-05:002015-03-01T21:06:41.244-05:00Dr. Adder<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgPr9p8x6b79zTLGSVEC05wdpgyhX-GhF-iyd-bCDMjiKE1FpkVzReMT60VdF1xM4nbrUozBB2KN4U_GlgqE5aX_hLiyS1keOtzDClSVqweOVlDeYhp2aLNNO81DpQbOElxi1DCYqH3iZ8/s1600/939961.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgPr9p8x6b79zTLGSVEC05wdpgyhX-GhF-iyd-bCDMjiKE1FpkVzReMT60VdF1xM4nbrUozBB2KN4U_GlgqE5aX_hLiyS1keOtzDClSVqweOVlDeYhp2aLNNO81DpQbOElxi1DCYqH3iZ8/s1600/939961.jpg" height="400" width="262" /></a></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
</div>
<br />
<span style="color: #45818e;">Okay, finally, a book I don't have to discount on the basis of it being a great book with an absolute shambles of an ending. A book I can feel proud to recommend despite it being one of the sickest books I have had the pleasure (and it was a pleasure) of reading. And maybe that's the point, that it's influential for not only the science fiction genre and the underground element of "bizarre fiction", but that it's also influential for the extreme horror genre, since it features one of the best gruesome operatic revenge stories this side of <i>Sweeney Todd</i>, only with a casual eye towards the kind of brutal grotesquerie that only the works of less well-known weird fiction like <i>Geek Love</i> and <i>Freaks 'Amour</i> (among others) can provide. While the book's plot is something of a series of potshots in a dark room centered around the titular doctor and the young man who is his assistant, the images are strong ones overall and stuck with me well after finally closing the pages. Even if I didn't necessarily understand the climax. </span><br />
<span style="color: #45818e;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #45818e;"> For those willing to brave the bizarre and sometimes downright sick and depraved (all good things in my opinion) world of the Interface and its inhabitants, you will find a hell of a good read, and one of the most shining examples of American dystopian fiction. For those who want something with a little less military grade hallucinogens, dying alien gods, and prostitutes destroying their own brains with permanent and harmful drugs, then you should probably look elsewhere, or at least get this out of the library before making a decision to commit fully to this classic act of lovingly poetic depravity. </span><br />
<span style="color: #45818e;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #45818e;">More, as always, below.</span><br />
<span style="color: #45818e;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #45818e;"></span><br />
<a name='more'></a><span style="color: #45818e;"><br /></span>
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 18px; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #45818e;"><i>“Life's nothing but the beating you take before you die. And I've died so many times already. Killed and lost so much..."</i></span></span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 18px; text-align: left;"><br /></span></div>
<span style="color: #45818e;"> The Interface. A sprawling section of future Los Angeles designed as a monument to deviancy. In this area, you can experience literally anything you could ever desire as long as you make the appropriate tribute to its twisted god, a man known only as Dr. Adder. Adder, a sociopath with a penchant for drugs and an artist's eye when it comes to matters of the scalpel, provides two crucial services for the Interface: His first is performing surgery on the various denizens and prostitutes to turn them into the people they always knew they wanted to be-- be that drug-addled, missing several limbs, or even having their sex organs turned into frightening and elaborate traps designed to destroy clients-- Adder provides. Even if it would destroy them. <i>Especially</i> if it would destroy them. The second service he provides is matching these clients to the rich and powerful elite of Los Angeles County, giving them the sickening wishes they always wanted to act out but never dared say aloud or worse yet go looking for. And so, the Interface thrives, entirely on Adder's whims and the aid of the drug ADR*, a drug designed to create a telepathic link between two people, allowing Adder to look into his subject's subconscious and find their deepest, darkest secrets.</span><br />
<span style="color: #45818e;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #45818e;"> Opposing Adder and his indecent and horrifying freedom are the Moral Forcers, a fanatical cult of violent white-coated thugs under the rule of John Mox, a televangelist with ties to the Greater Production Corporation in the Orange County area. Where Adder advocates freedom of the flesh to the point of self-destruction, Mox advocates the opposite, a kind of purity that relies on giving up even one's own carnal desires and equipment, complete annihilation for moral devotion. These two men form opposite extremes, each contributing to the further decline of the urban sprawl they fight over in their own special way. </span><br />
<span style="color: #45818e;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #45818e;"> Into this tableau enters one E. Allen Limmit, a former brothel administrator for the Greater Production Corporation's giant chicken farm. Limmit has a very nebulous plan that involves a boot knife and moving to the interface, a plan complicated when a GPC executive asks him to deliver a mysterious briefcase to Dr. Adder. Adder takes Limmit under his wing as an assistant, getting him to help with various tasks with an eye towards further entrenchment in his business. But what both Adder and Limmit fail to realize is that they are pawns in a much larger game, a game played among the rich elite, and among the forces of the Midwestern Liberation Front, and all throughout the interface. And before they're through, Limmit will have to discover things he never even realized, things that draw the men closer and closer to a confrontation with John Mox and GPC. </span><br />
<span style="color: #45818e;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #45818e;"> So first things first, Dr. Adder is a misanthropic sociopath. There, got that out of the way. He hates women, he hates men, he hates gay people, he hates kink, he hates straight people, he sneers at people who have sex, and he thinks he's above the people that he surgically mutilates into their new shapes. There is not a single person in the entire novel he feels anything approaching empathy for, save maybe near the end of the novel. Much like <i>The Stars My Destination</i>, Adder is a deliberately unsympathetic character, Limmit kind of is, too, actually, considering he doesn't seem to view women as anything but objects and has a latent giant chicken fetish. But let's be perfectly honest here: You are not supposed to like these people. The central characters are two villains and an antihero because it's that kind of book. It's that kind of society. </span><br />
<span style="color: #45818e;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #45818e;"> But with that out of the way, there's something important about these characters-- well, two of them if not the third. They <i>change</i>. They actually change and grow over time. Limmit, who spends a lot of the book making nebulous plans and not actually taking a side, is actually the deciding factor in the final battle at the end of the book. Adder abandons his messianic sociopath persona and, though still a massive misanthrope, seems poised to actually truly help people in some way other than destroying them. This is, in some ways, a story about people abandoning the flawed coping mechanisms and cynical worldviews that kept them just as bound up as Mox and GPC's machinations. It's a different kind of story from the usual cyberpunk tropes because it shows the characters being bound by their cynicism and pessimism, rather than it being a useful survival tool. In fact, it's the one character who isn't a complete cynical shit who gets through the story intact. Maybe it's because it was written in the early Seventies when people were just starting to slide into cynicism, but for such a dark novel, it's got some incredibly optimistic flourishes. </span><br />
<span style="color: #45818e;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #45818e;"> It's also vivid. I think this is the thing I love most about K.W. Jeter-- the visuals. And for something so lurid and grotesque, <i>Dr. Adder</i> really puts it over the edge. There are descriptions of surgeries, of extreme body modification, and of The Visitor, which is something I wouldn't dare give away to anyone. The set piece that closes out the first section of the book ("Proud Flesh") is a brutal and bloody riot in the streets that manages to seem lurid without giving up any sense of consequence. The operations Dr. Adder performs are suitably stomach-churning and give off the exact vibe I believe they're supposed to-- dark, disturbing, and a little of 'why the hell would you <i>want</i> to?' The feel of the book, thanks to the visuals, has a grimy, pulpy sort of way about it. Everything feels covered in dirt and grit, and the parts that <i>aren't</i> are so polished that it feels like there's something inhuman and grotesque about them. The Orange County segments especially, with their pill-popping disaffection and the sex bot theme park. </span><br />
<span style="color: #45818e;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #45818e;"> And in the end, it's a brilliant book that's worth at least one read. If you can't get past the disturbing imagery and the rampant hatred of humanity as a whole that permeates a lot of the book, then this probably isn't for you. However, if a story of a creepy fallen messiah fighting a man who may only exist on television, a story that features giant talking chickens and amputee transgender prostitutes doped up with military-grade drugs <i>doesn't</i> frighten you away, there is a lot to like about <i>Dr. Adder</i>. A lot to dislike, but a lot to like. </span><br />
<span style="color: #45818e;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #45818e;">And again, the only thing you have to lose by reading is time. </span><br />
<span style="color: #45818e;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #cc0000;"><i>NEXT WEEK:</i></span><br />
<span style="color: #cc0000;">- Heathern <i>by Jack Womack</i></span><br />
<span style="color: #cc0000;">- Shovel Ready <i>by Adam Sternbergh</i></span><br />
<span style="color: #cc0000;">- City of Stairs <i>by Robert Jackson Bennett</i></span><br />
<span style="color: #cc0000;"><i><br /></i></span>
<span style="color: #cc0000;"><i>AND MANY OTHERS</i></span><br />
<span style="color: #45818e;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #45818e;">*In my circles, ADR stands for "Additional Dialogue Recording", which made the book a little hard to read. </span></div>
Caius Caligulahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06345161053444317875noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8662452127691085085.post-76238698881440172102015-02-24T06:18:00.001-05:002015-02-24T06:20:06.708-05:00Near Enemy<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhxg0u4Piaj9sTfJaHYQ7CMFsU9LI9S3gX9hBniUThvTvCV1xaXwCersC_dkAApRHDBwh0F71nSjsGl6fKQdIOK3LSHw8vES8BAkAxxHdyg65fZ_kD-eWw49tmp3UDD5ahBCORRfxXMKmU/s1600/download+(23).jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhxg0u4Piaj9sTfJaHYQ7CMFsU9LI9S3gX9hBniUThvTvCV1xaXwCersC_dkAApRHDBwh0F71nSjsGl6fKQdIOK3LSHw8vES8BAkAxxHdyg65fZ_kD-eWw49tmp3UDD5ahBCORRfxXMKmU/s1600/download+(23).jpg" /></a></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<span style="color: #45818e;"> Why is this slowly becoming the month of books I really want to like but are laid low by really stupid ideas for endings? That's a terrible theme for a book blog, and in this case, where the ending ramps up to nowhere, it's especially egregious. <i>Near Enemy</i> enraged me when I read it, not because of its amazing depiction of a paranoid post-terror New York where anyone with money plugs themselves into a virtual world and forgets about the outside, but because the final sentences lead off into nowhere. Now, I have not yet finished Adam Sternbergh's first novel, the highly-acclaimed <i>Shovel Ready</i> (released a few months prior to <i>Near Enemy</i>), but I would hope it doesn't leave off unfinished at a random point before the assumed climax, or I would be forced to conclude that the man is one of those people who tells long stories at parties that go absolutely nowhere, trails off right when it sounds like it's going somewhere, and then never returns to it. </span><br />
<span style="color: #45818e;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #45818e;"> But maybe a book with no ending won't bother you nearly as much as it did me. Maybe you will await the third installment on tenterhooks-- not <i>your</i> tenterhooks, of course, it's much more fun to use someone else's, but tenterhooks all the same. Maybe you'll see it as some kind of artistic choice. A terrible, terrible artistic choice. I'd suggest taking this one out of the library, or if you can find it for free somewhere by some miracle. But unless you're a disappointment fetishist, I'd strongly suggest that perhaps you don't buy this book. It's a lot of buildup for a few lackluster reveals and a plot that eventually ends just when it was getting good.</span><br />
<span style="color: #45818e;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #45818e;">More, as always, below</span><br />
<br />
<a name='more'></a><div style="color: #45818e; text-align: center;">
<i><br /></i></div>
<div style="color: #45818e; text-align: center;">
<i>Do you know what the most dangerous thing in the world is, Spademan? It's a man armed with a boxcutter and one fucking fact.</i></div>
<div style="color: #45818e; text-align: center;">
<i>- Boonce</i></div>
<div style="color: #45818e; text-align: left;">
<i><br /></i></div>
<div style="color: #45818e; text-align: left;">
<i> </i>In the not-too-distant future, terrorists detonated a dirty bomb in Times Square. This coincided with a technological breakthrough known as the Limn, a full-immersion virtual-reality environment that people wire into to escape the harsh and frightening realities of their existence. However, the sheer amount of technology and home-care needed to operate in the Limn 24/7 exclude most of the poorer elements of New York from the Limnosphere unless they can get a spotter and scrounge their own equipment. Those who can't exist in a world in which the infrastructure is crumbling and underground dealings flourish. Into this space slouches Spademan; a killer-for hire armed with a boxcutter, a sledgehammer, a burner phone and the attitude of a Dashiell Hammett tough guy. If you want someone dead, all you have to do is call Spademan with a name and agree to "the usual payment", and the person will more than likely wind up dead. </div>
<div style="color: #45818e; text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="color: #45818e; text-align: left;">
<i>Near Enemy</i> begins with Spademan getting a job from an unknown woman to drop a "bed-hopper" named Lesser. Lesser is a Limn user who spies on and stalks other Limn users, piggybacking in a feat of hacking and voyeurism.as they go about their fantasies. Only when Spademan arrives to find Lesser wired in, Lesser pops back into consciousness with an amazing story-- that someone has discovered a way to kill other people through the previously-harmless Limn. Sure enough, as Spademan investigates, he discovers that Lesser's story checks out. Someone has discovered a way to kill through the Limn. And, as a shady agency of mercenaries menaces Lesser, Spademan, and Spademan's family, he'll have to figure out why everyone's so interested in a measly bed-hopper, and why. </div>
<div style="color: #45818e; text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="color: #45818e; text-align: left;">
So allow me first to go on a tangent regarding music history, You see, in the sixties and seventies, there was punk. Then, when people tired of punk and its anti-everything posturing, they created post-punk as an expansion of themes. And, when post-punk's innovation started to wear on people, thence came industrial. The reason I mention this is because I think what Adam Sternbergh has created is the cyberpunk version of industrial, a gritty, paranoid future that borrows on post-cyberpunk's promise of brilliant worlds and twists them. There are a group of colorful hackers who feel like they'd fit in a Doctorow novel or one of those techno-utopian books about how technology saves us all, but here the optimism is toned down and the colors are washed out. Spademan's world is painted in black, white, and red, and any glimpses of utopia are the province of the rich and powerful-- in other words, the promise of technology and the utopia it brings stayed in the hands of the few rather than bringing everything to the hands of the many and creating a new society. It's been explored in other books (<i>Noir</i> comes to mind with its rants about how "the hippies lost"), but this feels like something <i>new</i>, a voice to challenge the old guard and possibly nudge the revolution to its next stage. </div>
<div style="color: #45818e; text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="color: #45818e; text-align: left;">
And speaking of stages, Sternbergh's New York feels rightly desolate. Abandoned. So many desolate stretches of post-apocalypse in fiction still feel vibrant and highly-populated. It's a problem the genre has. It's a problem <i>Fallout</i> and <i>Fallout 2</i> actually had, despite being two of my favorite ridiculous post-apocalypse games. New York feels like a place of remnants, a once-opulent and urgent city reduced to quiet rubble. It feels oppressively quiet, even when it's not. It's easy to believe that all the characters in the story are all the characters <i>left in New York</i>, just going about their lives and trying their hardest not to get killed, a proposition that seems about as hard as it is living in Jack Womack's future Manhattan. </div>
<div style="color: #45818e; text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="color: #45818e; text-align: left;">
In fact, given that Spademan narrates the entire story in terse, clipped prose without any quotation marks and barely a definite article to be found, this doesn't seem far off from Womack's New New York. Less futurespeak and the like, but it still feels remarkably similar to the crumbling hellscape from <i>Random Acts of Senseless Violence</i> or the twistedness of <i>Ambient*</i>. I could see Spademan and his box cutter fitting right in with Gus and Jake. Or killing them. Either way. He's a hell of a character, an erudite philosopher hiding behind a brute, but not in the sense that he's brutal and philosophical, no, he remains the terse sociopath who kills people for a living, but through his stream-of-consciousness thoughts, he reveals hidden depths, depths he doesn't really allow himself to have. </div>
<div style="color: #45818e; text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="color: #45818e; text-align: left;">
But that brings up one of the issues for me with the book...the characters are less depth than they are secrets. Piles of secrets do not a character make. If everyone just has hidden depths, then they're just flat characters with hidden angles of flatness. For example, the character of Simon the Magician is an interesting character in that he constantly pitches in to move the plot along, but I don't get a good sense of who he is. Though since this book <i>is</i> a sequel to <i>Shovel Ready</i>, Sternbergh's first Spademan novel, then perhaps that has more to do with it.</div>
<div style="color: #45818e; text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="color: #45818e; text-align: left;">
And that brings us to the first problem with the book: It doesn't stand on its own. It's part two of a multi-part saga. It requires some knowledge of the plot of <i>Shovel Ready, </i>even with the exposition Spademan ladles into the early chapters. For the most part, these characters were fleshed out a book ago, so Sternbergh kind of feels he doesn't have to re-hash old...hash, as it were. But he does. He does so much, because of course there are going to be people who pick up <i>Near Enemy</i> and have no clue of the plot of <i>Shovel Ready</i>. But, as stated earlier, Sternbergh isn't one for plotting in general.</div>
<div style="color: #45818e; text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="color: #45818e; text-align: left;">
Why do I think this? Because Sternbergh can't end a single plotline to save his life. All the major reveals, all the major plotlines in <i>Near Enemy, </i>are tied up in the least satisfying way possible. And even after that, there's literally no resolution to any of them. All the issues of the novel are just kind of shrugged at, and then discarded. And then it stops. It doesn't end. Spademan prepares to fight the book's antagonist, and as he prepares to enter the Limn to do battle with his enemy, Sternbergh ends the book practically mid-sentence. The entire plot is explained in a car ride to the house where this is going on, and then the book just ends. This is kind of an unforgivable offense. And a massive waste of time. It isn't okay when fantasy authors do it for no reason, it's not okay when movies do it, and it sure as hell isn't okay when up-and-coming science fiction authors do it. The only reason it was okay when Bret Easton Ellis did it was because his book also started midsentence. </div>
<div style="color: #45818e; text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="color: #45818e; text-align: left;">
But in the end, if you feel like reading <i>Near Enemy</i>, I'm not going to stop you. It's good. It's a gritty cyberpunk novel that leans a little heavier on the punk side, and Sternbergh's narrative voice kicks all kinds of ass. For such a gritty, monochrome world, it teems with color, and the desolation of New York feels real for once, which gives it weight. If you can get past the weird characterization, unsatisfying endings, and the fact that the book stops dead when it gets to a point where it thinks it's done, then by all means pick it up. But I think I'm going to be less optimistic and more cautiously optimistic when I pick up Adam Sternbergh again.</div>
<div style="color: #45818e; text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="color: #cc0000;"><i>NEXT WEEK:</i></span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="color: #cc0000;"><i>- </i>Dr. Adder <i>by K.W. Jeter</i></span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="color: #cc0000;"><i><br /></i></span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="color: #cc0000;"><i>AND THEN</i></span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="color: #cc0000;">- Heathern <i>by Jack Womack</i></span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="color: #cc0000;"><i><br /></i></span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="color: #cc0000;"><i>AND MANY OTHERS</i></span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="color: #cc0000;"><i><br /></i></span></div>
<div style="color: #45818e; text-align: left;">
*Seriously, though, <i>Heathern</i> is kind of a throwaway. But more on that in...two weeks? Something like? </div>
<br />
<br /></div>
Caius Caligulahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06345161053444317875noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8662452127691085085.post-56848890959321959242015-02-09T21:27:00.000-05:002015-02-09T21:39:45.397-05:00The Supernatural Enhancements<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEimKpBABXpxb9X-SW2-vvr-dVYW8dMsRg5rA5zm9QgZssBaurzsC6WYTWBTvsyqEFgdy-I-n4ffY7nSNwero2xyeifAMnVtSi_0uGI407b81tIk-R4-QNxXlP5Vl7fZlsxpUsxpAlveIxg/s1600/18782854.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEimKpBABXpxb9X-SW2-vvr-dVYW8dMsRg5rA5zm9QgZssBaurzsC6WYTWBTvsyqEFgdy-I-n4ffY7nSNwero2xyeifAMnVtSi_0uGI407b81tIk-R4-QNxXlP5Vl7fZlsxpUsxpAlveIxg/s1600/18782854.jpg" height="400" width="263" /></a></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
</div>
<br />
<span style="color: #45818e;"> I should, by all accounts, like this book a lot. I love found document stories. I love gothic mysteries. I even love Edward Gorey and pastiches that borrow from Gorey (still trying to track down the volumes of <i>Amphigorey</i> that my dad doesn't own so I can add them to the collection). And I love mad science. There is literally no reason why I shouldn't like this book. The main character even has a love of <i>The X-Files</i> bordering on the obsessive. That's something I can get behind. </span><br />
<span style="color: #45818e;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #45818e;"> But there is something that makes me pause. The book I spent nights breathlessly reading for page after page after page did something I disliked immensely. And then, against better judgement, kept doing it. And I'm going to try as hard as I can to keep this top portion spoiler-free the way I usually do and not give up <i>too</i> much, but I've gotta say this: Get the book for its awesome design and format. Read it because it's an incredibly quirky and intelligent read. Then throw it across the room because Edgar Cantero can't for the life of him end a book in the proper manner. After that, you're welcome to do whatever you wish. Personally, I'm looking forward to Edgar Cantero's next book. </span><br />
<span style="color: #45818e;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #45818e;">This one was really good, even despite its issues.</span><br />
<span style="color: #45818e;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #45818e;">More, as always, below. </span><br />
<span style="color: #45818e;"></span><br />
<a name='more'></a><br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="color: #45818e;"><i>"And the sad truth is, I want to be all those people. I'd sooner die a thousand times forked in that house than wake up to a world without monsters or goddesses. I'd rather play the monster myself."</i></span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="color: #45818e;"><i>- A.</i></span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="color: #45818e;"><i> The Supernatural Enhancements</i> begins mid-journal entry with A. A. is the second cousin twice removed of Ambrose Wells, a wealthy Virginian recluse with an interest in the occult. Wells has decided out of the blue to leave his house and all its contents to A., who journeys to Virginia with his mute punk assistant Niamh to take over the estate. But right away, there are oddities all around. Wells apparently belonged to a strange organization that met every solstice (but wasn't the Masons). There's a ghost in the bathroom. A. begins to have strange dreams every night about various people and places he's never visited, dreams that leave him unnerved and frightened. There are odd passages and secret rooms throughout the house. And someone keeps breaking in and trying to steal things from the house, things that might be important if anyone could actually figure out what they did.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="color: #45818e;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="color: #45818e;"> And so A. and Niamh, two seemingly time-displaced slackers armed with a video camera and a digital tape recorder, must work their way through a web of strange devices, cryptographic ciphers, transformative house EPs, ghosts, messianic visions, and murder to discover exactly what kind of poison gift Cousin Ambrose has given them. But with mysterious requests, eccentric neighbors, and a Winter Solstice showdown approaching, will A. and Niamh be able to solve things before they're too late?</span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="color: #45818e;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="color: #45818e;"> So the thing that drew me to the book, apart from the awesome cover and interior design* was that the entire story is told in the form of documents and fragments of audio and video. What this actually boils down to is that a lot of the book is told in script format or audio transcripts, with passages in first-person narrative, creating an odd viewpoint. It kind of reminded me a little of <i>House of Leaves</i> or the weirder portions of <i>Illuminatus!</i>, where the book would spin off into odd script-treatment sections. It also leads to some interesting sequences like an emergency call later in the book, and one moment where the action takes place through several recovered telegraph messages. Found document format is one I wish was used more, though I understand how it could be daunting, and that Edgar Cantero managed to use it to such great effect with his first ever novel makes it all the more impressive. </span><br />
<span style="color: #45818e;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #45818e;"> Second, I have to applaud him for putting a mute character in a novel such as this. The format really does most of the heavy lifting, but Niamh's idiosyncrasies and constant mugging never really wear on me. She's a funny, interesting character with plenty of agency who serves as a comic foil to the lead, and actually manages to do most of the investigating in the book. We should want more characters like Niamh, a lively young woman who manages to snark even without words and despite her status as a secondary character, has a full range of movement, serving kind of as a mute Great Detective to A's laconic and melancholic audience surrogate. Cantero even describes one of her facial expressions, a thing I knew existed but didn't have a name for, a kind of tight smile with wide eyes. Apparently it's called a "nive".</span><br />
<span style="color: #45818e;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #45818e;"> However, as awesome as Niamh as a character is, there <i>is</i> one thing I have to address about her character, and that's near the end. See, Niamh and A. have a kind of interesting relationship. She's really into him, he thinks of her as a younger sister. This is brought up several times throughout the book, with him rebuffing her every time. For other reference, she's seventeen and he's twenty-three. While it didn't completely spoil my enjoyment of the book and its characters, it was <i>really</i> creepy when Niamh finally gets what she wants by getting in bed with A. and kind of belligerently obtaining consent. Partly because due to the nature of the book, I wasn't sure if she was actually still seventeen (which makes it creepy, I understand this is a cultural norm in America that is not necessarily present in countries in Europe), partly because of the relationship between Niamh and A., and partly because belligerently-obtained consent is not something I really feel I can get behind. I will stress over and over again that apart from this and the other main issue with the book, I really liked the book, and one creepy scene does not override the fact that the book is good.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="color: #45818e;"> The other main issue with the book is the ending. Cantero rushed it. He rushed it and took an excellent premise almost all the way to the finish, only to trip himself and drop the whole thing on the ground. After an uncharacteristically-violent climax where the mansion is raided (and almost all the major characters are killed or injured) by mercenaries shortly after most of the loose ends are tied up and things are actually ending on a pretty good note, there follows a two-page epilogue where it turns out that all the wonderful energy of the book was a ruse. Between these two things, what was a quirky mystery story suddenly takes a left turn into a very dark conspiracy thriller. It also doesn't help that this change takes place right after the other thing I was annoyed with in the book. </span><br />
<span style="color: #45818e;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #45818e;"> And it's a shame, because Cantero really puts his visuals to work in the service of the story. A. is a protagonist with personality to spare. Niamh (despite her little lapse) is a strong female lead like few I've encountered in fiction. The book design plays really well, and the scripted portions never feel jarring. In fact, I'd have liked to see this adapted into a graphic novel. It might take away from the writing, but not terribly. It also help make things a little more consistent. Cantero does have a habit of occasionally forgetting his own details, so characters change from scene to scene and while sometimes it's a running gag (Niamh keeps changing hairstyles throughout the book until at the end she's bald), sometimes it's just annoying. Like he wrote all the parts of the book separately and then assembled them together. </span><br />
<span style="color: #45818e;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #45818e;"> In the end, though, it's worth getting. You might not find it as problematic as I did. You might like the ending more. Either way, it's a quirky, amusing read up until the last fifty pages or so. Edgar Cantero's first effort isn't a great book, but it's a good book, and it's one whose surprises and secrets are a lot of fun to figure out. </span><br />
<span style="color: #45818e;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #45818e;">Also, fifty bucks says Betty is the Juggernaut again this year.</span><br />
<span style="color: #45818e;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #cc0000;"><i>NEXT WEEK:</i></span><br />
<span style="color: #cc0000;">- <i>I'm going to a convention. So:</i></span><br />
<span style="color: #cc0000;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #cc0000;">- <i>Either this weekend or next:</i></span><br />
<span style="color: #cc0000;"><i>-- </i>Near Enemy <i>by Adam Sternbergh</i></span><br />
<span style="color: #cc0000;"><i><br /></i></span>
<span style="color: #cc0000;"><i>AND THEN:</i></span><br />
<span style="color: #cc0000;"><i>- </i>The Grand Hotel<i> by Scott Kenemore</i></span><br />
<span style="color: #cc0000;">- Dr. Adder <i>by K.W. Jeter</i></span><br />
<span style="color: #cc0000;"><i><br /></i></span>
<span style="color: #cc0000;"><i>AND MANY OTHERS</i></span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="color: #45818e;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="color: #45818e;">*I know, I shouldn't judge a book by its cover, but the cover and design elements are what attracted a lot of people to give the book another look. It's a cool-looking book</span></div>
</div>
Caius Caligulahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06345161053444317875noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8662452127691085085.post-14373313495019668952015-02-02T06:26:00.001-05:002015-02-02T06:27:33.187-05:00Motorman<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEipYq6aV1duhYouVG6gYClzzkMyJnKeK91arr7Esfly58cKV_n3CddHMM40_2w3SKbar-XIklc8_kXd99_tR9YbeUbwATsLX6Zy4bkm1eS0_DcFH6VW1YkOC-Rsm4JOBQP2LVs-8JufjCQ/s1600/download+(22).jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEipYq6aV1duhYouVG6gYClzzkMyJnKeK91arr7Esfly58cKV_n3CddHMM40_2w3SKbar-XIklc8_kXd99_tR9YbeUbwATsLX6Zy4bkm1eS0_DcFH6VW1YkOC-Rsm4JOBQP2LVs-8JufjCQ/s1600/download+(22).jpg" height="400" width="253" /></a></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<span style="color: #45818e;"> </span><span style="color: #45818e;">In my time running this blog, I've begun to wonder if I've become cynical. Hardened. Inured to the charms of some books. I wondered this when I read </span><i style="color: #45818e;">Down Town</i><span style="color: #45818e;"> and failed to be captivated. I wondered this when I got slightly annoyed at the main character of one of my all-time favorite books, </span><i style="color: #45818e;">The Neverending Story</i><span style="color: #45818e;">. And I wondered it here. When I was sixteen, I read a </span><i style="color: #45818e;">lot</i><span style="color: #45818e;"> of books like </span><i style="color: #45818e;">Motorman</i><span style="color: #45818e;">. Hell, when I was seventeen, too. I thought I was profound because I sought out strange books like </span><i style="color: #45818e;">Electric Jesus Corpse</i><span style="color: #45818e;"> and </span><i style="color: #45818e;">In The Watermelon Sugar</i><span style="color: #45818e;">. Because I was the only person my age I knew who'd read </span><i style="color: #45818e;">Time's Arrow</i><span style="color: #45818e;">. And, well, </span><i style="color: #45818e;">Motorman</i><span style="color: #45818e;"> was the kind of book I'd have read back then, read and recommended to a whole bunch of my friends, who probably would have punched me for it. Hell, even three years ago in the pre-breakdown time of 2012*, I was still reading </span><i style="color: #45818e;">Trout Fishing in America</i><span style="color: #45818e;"> and feeling like I'd rediscovered something in myself. </span><span style="color: #45818e;"> </span><br />
<span style="color: #45818e;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #45818e;"> I enjoyed reading <i>Motorman</i>. I just want to get that out of the way, because the rest of this review is going to be very introspective and very weird and probably as much of an insight into the reviewer as an insight into the book. The issue with reviewing <i>Motorman</i> in a conventional way and adhering religiously to the format I've slowly tinkered with over the past four years is that <i>Motorman</i> itself resists conventional analysis a bit. It's a book that slips around chronologically as it examines the inner and outer contents of its main character's head, a book that trades more on feeling and atmosphere and weird, gooey tactile sensations than on any conventional plot or structure. There are points where the book seems to have an agenda and a point it wants to make about the interplay between the real and the artificial, and possibly the nature of things in general, but the narrative doesn't concern itself with making anything obvious. It just kind of lets the story about a four-hearted man trying to meet his mad scientist friend sink in and just kind of <i>is</i>.</span><br />
<span style="color: #45818e;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #45818e;"> It's certainly a book unlike many I have read. It's a unique experience, and while I enjoyed it, I'm not sure I could completely recommend it to people. I'm not sure I'd even recommend it to myself as much. But I <i>did</i> thoroughly enjoy it. </span><br />
<span style="color: #45818e;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #45818e;">More, as always, below.</span><br />
<br />
<a name='more'></a><div style="color: #45818e; text-align: center;">
<i>"However, when this building is filled with water, flatworms can swim in it."</i></div>
<div style="color: #45818e; text-align: center;">
<i>- M.C. Escher</i></div>
<div style="color: #45818e; text-align: left;">
<i><br /></i></div>
<div style="color: #45818e; text-align: left;">
<i> Motorman</i> is the story of Moldenke. It's actually kind of a character study of Moldenke, as sometimes it is very hard to tell what takes place in Moldenke's head and what takes place outside of it. Moldenke lives in an apartment in Texaco City, his only friend being a mad scientist named Doctor Burnheart who communicates through letters. For somewhat inexplicable reasons, Moldenke is implanted with four sheep's hearts instead of a human heart and only has one working lung most times, as the other is gummed up by some kind of mysterious crud floating through the air in particles. The air in Moldenke's home city is so polluted the people have to breathe through gauze pads and keep their goggles on. The world is also so close to death that the planet is lit by multiple artificial suns that break apart every evening, and by artificial moons that break apart every daybreak. </div>
<div style="color: #45818e; text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="color: #45818e; text-align: left;">
Moldenke lives a fairly uncomplicated life, eating bugs from around his apartment and reading letters from Burnheart (whom he calls "Burny") about his work with another scientist known only as Eagleman. This life, however, is suddenly interrupted when the godlike ruler of Texaco City, a man named Bunce, calls Moldenke to tell him that he has certain tapes and Moldenke should play ball. When Moldenke refuses, Bunce proceeds to shut off his power and water and keep him prisoner, prompting Moldenke to flee the city. With seventy-two hours, Moldenke must navigate The Bottoms, the dangerous world outside Texaco City to meet with Burnheart and Eagleman and possibly help them fix the mess they are in. As the story progresses, it goes back and forth in time, as well, showing what Moldenke was like when he fought in the Mock War (before he sustained a minor fracture and lost all his feelings in said war), when he met his former girlfriend Cock Roberta, and his friendship with Burnheart. But Moldenke is pursued by the Jellymen, Bunce's weird automaton minions filled with Jelly, and he may not be able to complete the mission he's undertaken...</div>
<div style="color: #45818e; text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="color: #45818e; text-align: left;">
So first, the plot I just recapped above there? There isn't much more than that, and I'm not sure there really <i>needs </i>to be. <i>Motorman</i> isn't really a plot-driven book, it's kind of a bizarre allegory. Moldenke is kind of living an artificial existence and he and his cohorts are desperately trying to become real. However, this is hampered by Moldenke not actually <i>knowing</i> what is real-- Bunce only becomes interested in him because Moldenke may or may not have killed two of his artificial humans full of jelly, Moldenke's thought processes are replicated much in the same way as the book (slipping in and out of bizarre nostalgia and memory until the end, which posits Moldenke might not even have left his chair in the apartment at the beginning), and at least one character has their name change repeatedly. And artificial living seems to get in the way of the real, as well. The planet has more and more artificial moons show up every day, because a single artificial moon doesn't work well enough and will shatter fairly quickly. Moldenke doesn't fall in love, but is <i>given</i> a girlfriend after he peels a scab off of his "crank", a scab gained from pulling too hard. There's even a scene in the end where the last living person of color has been stuffed and mounted, and turns out to just be little more than a dummy. Bunce and the people of the city try harder and harder to develop coping mechanisms from artifice, but it doesn't stop the world from getting in.</div>
<div style="color: #45818e; text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="color: #45818e; text-align: left;">
Another place where this is evident is in the scene where Moldenke is mere inches away from Burnheart and Eagleman on a boat, only for his attempt to reach them to be thwarted by a crowd nearly rioting because they want to watch the film. In the end, he winds up running away from an overflowing jelly river and trying to find something to float in that he can paddle around. This also causes an interesting interpretation of the ending: Moldenke is floating around on the Jelly, and his mind slips back to a safe place where there was no risk or danger to him: The darkened apartment where Bunce held sway. It reminds me a little of a weird dichotomy brought up in the <i>Wayside School</i> books, actually. In the second book of that series, a kid named Myron is offered a choice: He can either be safe, or he can be free. If he's safe, rules protect him and keep him connected to the world, but he can be ordered around. If he's free, no one can tell him what to do, but there's no connection to anything any more. Moldenke has the same choice, a choice between the safety of his powerless apartment-- a known quantity that can be controlled but will in fact control <i>him</i>, and the unusual bug-infested anarchy of The Bottoms, something repeatedly referred to as dangerous but with the promise of freedom and perhaps the aid of the only two people who can fix the world and bring it back to reality. </div>
<div style="color: #45818e; text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="color: #45818e; text-align: left;">
And there's also the curious nature of Moldenke's relationship with others. Doctor Burnheart calls him "Dinky" all the time and seems to belittle him even as he tries to help him. But he also seems willing to aid in the control over Moldenke's life. The one time Moldenke <i>doesn't</i> seem easily led is when he finally quits his job as an insect taster because he regains some of his feelings (feelings taken from him in the Mock War). Now, these feelings are immediately lost again, but it's an important moment of agency in a world that's basically more or less a bunch of abstract puppets in a dystopia**. And, in the end, it's Moldenke's inability to break free of his own delusions and coping mechanisms (stonepicks, fantasies, nostalgia, memory) that leaves him stranded in a world that is slowly being destroyed due to its increasingly stupid ideas on how to slow the eventual collapse. </div>
<div style="color: #45818e; text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="color: #45818e; text-align: left;">
And all of this, upon reflection, <i>does</i> speak to me. As someone who came out of a bad time in their life with agoraphobia and anxiety, I spend a lot of time parked in front of my own artificial system and artifical sun to calm myself and slow the collapse of my mental and physical faculties. I find myself stuck in a chair and reliving old memories to help soothe my head and keep myself running. My lungs are full of crap. Maybe that's why I enjoyed it, I found moments of empathy overall throughout the work, moments that helped tie me into the storyline of a bug-eating four-hearted mutant and his quest to resolve his own existence into something more real. Maybe I just needed to feel the book out.</div>
<div style="color: #45818e; text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="color: #45818e; text-align: left;">
You may get something different out of it. I certainly won't dissuade you from reading it, and it's an unusual read full of odd viscera and slime. I wouldn't say that this is something people should rush out and get, but it's something I don't regret reading, and it certainly interested me enough to get three paragraphs out. Maybe next time I decide to get all analytical and navel-gazey, I'll post more quotes. Either way, I didn't regret reading it. Hopefully, you won't either. </div>
<div style="color: #45818e; text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="color: #45818e; text-align: left;">
And please, remember the goggles. They do help, after all. </div>
<div style="color: #45818e; text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="color: #cc0000;"><i>NEXT WEEK: </i></span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="color: #cc0000;"><i>- </i>The Supernatural Enhancements <i>by Edgar Cantero</i></span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="color: #cc0000;"><i><br /></i></span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="color: #cc0000;"><i>AND THEN:</i></span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="color: #cc0000;">- Near Enemy <i>by Adam Sternbergh</i></span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="color: #cc0000;">- Luminous Chaos <i>by Jean Cristophe Valtat</i></span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="color: #cc0000;">- The Grand Hotel <i>by Scott Kenemore</i></span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="color: #cc0000;"><i><br /></i></span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="color: #cc0000;"><i>AND MANY OTHERS</i></span></div>
<div style="color: #45818e; text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="color: #45818e; text-align: left;">
*<i>Abstract Puppet Dystopia</i> is now either a JRPG or anime I want to see made. Get on that, people.</div>
</div>
Caius Caligulahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06345161053444317875noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8662452127691085085.post-34779413138921401592015-01-26T07:11:00.000-05:002015-01-26T07:11:40.065-05:00Random Acts of Senseless Violence<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="color: #45818e;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgkyT41tfWMwZdlXv8ZT2bJJxdZXn6vsdmphN8nIwdADJVRQN6P9yd8V2rvyfuViCU9qmy9TaNfyrkdJdVil0N5hYnK4EnSquvRfa9z-0_en_RyiC-ngm0sXmhNo1vol-aWITy6YMOsfIQ/s1600/0802134246.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgkyT41tfWMwZdlXv8ZT2bJJxdZXn6vsdmphN8nIwdADJVRQN6P9yd8V2rvyfuViCU9qmy9TaNfyrkdJdVil0N5hYnK4EnSquvRfa9z-0_en_RyiC-ngm0sXmhNo1vol-aWITy6YMOsfIQ/s1600/0802134246.JPG" height="400" width="262" /></a></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="color: #45818e;"> </span></div>
<span style="color: #45818e;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #45818e;"> My wish for this year is that just once, just one time, just for a second, there would be a Jack Womack book that I could actually recommend to people. Because he's a good author. And as I slowly maneuver my way through the DryCo books, I <i>do</i> like them quite a bit. The futurespeak isn't completely impenetrable, the plots are intriguing and kind of freaky, and there's something very organic about the world of the books. </span><br />
<span style="color: #45818e;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #45818e;">But the ones I've read, I can't recommend. </span><br />
<span style="color: #45818e;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #45818e;"> <i>Random Acts of Senseless Violence</i> doesn't have the problems of <i>Going Going Gone</i>, though. It's technically the first book in the series chronologically, it's written for the most part in conventional language instead of barely-coherent hipster slang, it doesn't slam the doors on any of the worlds it creates, and for the most part, it's a tense, engaging read that posits a near-future United States where society is quickly crumbling and then sticks to it. It manages some moments of intense black humor, memorable characters, and one of the most engaging and human-feeling female leads I've read in years. This is a book that should be reprinted in classic editions and substituted in high schools instead of <i>The Catcher in the Rye</i>, and read and analyzed alongside <i>A Clockwork Orange</i> and <i>Riddley Walker</i>.* This is, by all metrics I have available, an objectively good book.</span><br />
<span style="color: #45818e;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #45818e;"> But if I tell you to read this book, I do so with the knowledge it will hold you down and punch your lights out. It will attack you on pure lizard-brain instinct and punch you in the gut so hard and so often it'll become a second career. This is to dystopian literature what <i>Straw Dogs</i> was to romantic movies. </span><br />
<br />
<span style="color: #45818e;">And I loved every second of it.</span><br />
<span style="color: #45818e;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #45818e;">More, as always, below.</span><br />
<span style="color: #45818e;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #45818e;"></span><br />
<a name='more'></a><span style="color: #45818e;"><br /></span>
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="color: #45818e;">"<i>Mama says I have a night mind.</i>"</span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="color: #45818e;">- <i>Lola "Booz" Hart</i></span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="color: #45818e;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="color: #45818e;">And it is literally all downhill from there. </span><span style="color: #45818e;">Actually, no, let me explain. </span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="color: #45818e;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="color: #45818e;"> <i>Random Acts of Senseless Violence</i> begins on Lola Hart's twelfth birthday. Lola's parents give her a bunch of the usual things-- new clothes, some new books, other various presents-- but most notable among the presents is Lola's new diary, which she names Anne. The book unfolds in diary entry after diary entry as Lola goes out for ice cream with her family, attends her upper-crust private school in Manhattan with her friends, and goes out to the various places in the city along the familiar, clean, reliable paths. Her mother and father are a literature professor and a television writer, respectively, and while they aren't doing terribly well, they're doing well enough they don't have to worry about money or losing their modest apartment. In fact, the only indication that anything is going wrong is that there seem to be small outbreaks of violence throughout the city, but since these are nowhere near the Harts, it's barely worth Lola's notice. She's too busy wondering why her friend Katherine is asking her weird questions and wants to practice kissing. And why her more brash friend Lori seems hostile towards the two of them, and especially Lola. </span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="color: #45818e;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="color: #45818e;"> But soon the book takes a turn for the worse as the Hart parents lose their jobs due to the continual deterioration of the government and infrastructure. With no need for the arts, a TV writer and an English professor are out of work, and so the Hart parents try to make ends meet by editing manuscripts and trying to write better stories. Finally, Mr. Hart gets a job at a bookstore working for a cantankerous and possibly psychotic man named Mossbacher, and the entire family moves to Harlem. Within two days, they've lost most of their belongings and Lola's mother is upping her medication count. Thankfully, Lola's father managed to pay off her tuition, so she still gets to go to school with her friends, but as she is living in what they so eloquently refer to as "Cracktown", it puts a strain on things. </span><br />
<span style="color: #45818e;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #45818e;"> Lola's life is about to get a lot worse, though, not through any fault of her own but the fault of an uncaring system as it desperately clings to life. Despite new friends, Lola will have to learn a new language, a new set of social rules to live by, and even those she might leave behind as she and her family struggle to keep their heads above water and keep what little they have left.</span><br />
<span style="color: #45818e;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #45818e;"> When discussing the book with people outside this blog, I used the term "dystopian horror novel", and I stick to it, because it's an absolutely wrenching read, and because it's more horror novel than anything else. I was genuinely afraid while reading the book, not just because <i>Random Acts of Senseless Violence </i>avoids giving its hero even a little hope that things will be different (Lola can tell her mother is lying when she says that they'll be back at their old apartment someday), but because the horror was so commonplace and could literally happen to anyone. All of the worst events are simply a combination of bad luck and bad timing, starting with the Hart parents unable to get jobs that let them keep their lifestyle and that of their children. It's the plausibility and the fact that the conflicts and terrors in the novel are all very real that makes this more terrifying than anything else I've read in the past few months. </span><br />
<span style="color: #45818e;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #45818e;"> By grounding it in the first-person narration of a twelve year old girl, and one that starts the book as an optimistic and precocious young woman, the horror is all that nastier, too. In the beginning of the book, as things start to go bad, Lola has no idea what's going on. She's a fairly innocent child who doesn't understand much of anything. The earlier entries in her diary talk about things like going to an ice cream parlor and the toy store on her birthday, talking about boys with her friends, and when the horror enters, it's either trivial or something Lola can't even comprehend. As the book continues Lola's gradual descent into what can only be described as "hell", the language she uses slowly transforms more and more to match the street, and the tone of the novel becomes harder, harsher. It helps that Lola's a very human presence, and very believably written. Her family even acts like a family, and I loved that Lola used the euphemism of "a visit from Granny" or just "Granny" to describe her periods. It seemed so personal, and the exact sort of thing an innocent would use to describe something like that. Throughout the book, she recognizes that her mother's drugs put her her mother in a stupor, but doesn't actually go into detail about how. It's the same incomprehension level of <i>Koko</i>, though I do admit it works better here.</span><br />
<span style="color: #45818e;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #45818e;"> And finally, the world of NYC in the near-future is an immersive and vibrant one. The inhabitants have their own slang, their own legends, and even their own boogeyman in the form of violent-yet-unseen DCons. "Joining the DCons" seems to be a euphemism for being lost to the lower areas of New York and swallowed up by the city, the way that someone could be lost to any city. It's something that adds a certain element that I really liked. I felt connected, brought further in. As the slang starts to proliferate, the book's language breaking down into street-speak as the heroine does and as the world around her crumbles. There are also some darkly comic moments that help inform the setting, like when the angry citizens of the decaying US keep killing the President every time a new one is appointed, or Lola's crazy religious aunt who continues to feel justified as the country slides down the tubes. There are also some moments of setting-based horror, as well (What <i>did</i> they do to poor Lori at Kure-A-Kid? And why does everyone think it's <i>better</i>?).</span><br />
<span style="color: #45818e;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #45818e;"> In the end, what you have is a violent, visceral, and terrifying book about a girl and her friends being broken both by the system and by the decay of society to the point of almost feral mental deterioration, and it is one of the best things I've read. Not because of all of that, but because Womack makes it terrifying in a way that <i>A Clockwork Orange**</i> only made surreal and unnerving. Despite all of this, the book is incredibly readable and does manage to make you care about these people getting crushed, only to see their brief glimmers of hope slowly extinguished. I am not sorry I read it, although I'm not sure I would ever read it again, knowing now that it is the first book to cause lingering disturbance since Athena Villaverde's <i>Clockwork Girl</i>, a book that I find myself referencing far too often. You should read this book. And then have a nice comedy to read directly afterwards. I myself and the staff at Geek Rage/Strange Library Media recommend either a Tim Dorsey book, or if you want something without violent criminals, <i>The Good Fairies of New York</i>. </span><br />
<span style="color: #45818e;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #45818e;">I leave you know with a quote from one of the greatest philosophers and geniuses of our time:</span><br />
<span style="color: #45818e;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #45818e;"><i>"All it takes is one bad day to reduce the sanest man to lunacy. That's how far the world is from where I am. Just one bad day."</i></span><br />
<span style="color: #45818e;"><i><br /></i></span>
<span style="color: #cc0000;"><i>NEXT WEEK:</i></span><br />
<span style="color: #cc0000;">Motorman <i>by David Ohle</i></span><br />
<span style="color: #cc0000;"><i><br /></i></span>
<span style="color: #cc0000;"><i>AND THEN:</i></span><br />
<span style="color: #cc0000;">- The Supernatural Enhancements <i>by Edgar Cantero</i></span><br />
<span style="color: #cc0000;">- Near Enemy <i>by Adam Sternbergh</i></span><br />
<span style="color: #45818e;"> </span><span style="color: #45818e;"> </span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="color: #45818e;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="color: #45818e;"> </span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="color: #45818e;">*Although I suppose the problem with those books would be that they've been analyzed so much that any possible impact the stories have is now lost...</span><br />
<span style="color: #45818e;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #45818e;">**I should <i>really</i> ditch the Womack/Burgess comparisons, but no one else has really attempted what they did, and while Russell Hoban comes close, <i>Riddley Walker</i> is a little too pastoral and lyrical. Despite the baby-eating***. </span><br />
<span style="color: #45818e;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #45818e;">***Yes, there's at least one baby that gets eaten in <i>Riddley Walker</i>. I got that far before I got sidetracked.</span></div>
</div>
Caius Caligulahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06345161053444317875noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8662452127691085085.post-78748564253684144172015-01-18T21:05:00.002-05:002015-01-18T21:05:49.376-05:00Going Going Gone<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="color: #45818e;"> </span></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<span style="color: #45818e;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi9GcP7q_2QrC0pHS7REACNXtfJY2SYV3833tO29WHwu7h3OW0rznAw-hKc1b1aldcajV-VsGPicK36j8xWP5rX_QpQ7IhYEliyO1Laty2o7DixI2opmvKaJP89lwb1LvN12QVCN6u42QU/s1600/Going,_Going,_Gone.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi9GcP7q_2QrC0pHS7REACNXtfJY2SYV3833tO29WHwu7h3OW0rznAw-hKc1b1aldcajV-VsGPicK36j8xWP5rX_QpQ7IhYEliyO1Laty2o7DixI2opmvKaJP89lwb1LvN12QVCN6u42QU/s1600/Going,_Going,_Gone.jpg" height="400" width="247" /></a></span></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<span style="color: #45818e;"><br /></span></div>
<br />
<span style="color: #45818e;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #45818e;"> I <i>really</i> shouldn't have read this book. Not because it's bad, or because it's disturbing-- it's a <i>little</i> disturbing, but not in a bad way. No, I really shouldn't have read <i>Going Going Gone</i> because it is in fact the last book in a six book sequence known as the "Dryco novels". <i>Going Going Gone</i> is actually the book that more or less slams the door on the entire universe, and kind of reveals plot details for some of the goings-on in the rest of the series. In fact, the book ends with a "where are they now" look at every character in the universe Jack Womack created and how their lives have changed after the events of the book, sort of like a trans-universal version of <i>The Wire</i>'s closing moments. </span><br />
<span style="color: #45818e;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #45818e;"> That said, a lot of the questions I had as I was reading and issues I had with the book could probably be chalked up to not quite understanding the world I was dropped into, and while I enjoyed the book enough on its own, I have a feeling a lot of the points where I thought it wasn't going anywhere or that it was spiraling off on odd tangents is probably a way to tie up the few loose ends Womack left in the previous five books' worth of dystopian black comedy. It's hard to tell what was there to shut the door on Dryco and what was actually a thing in the book that perhaps should have been better thought out.</span><br />
<span style="color: #45818e;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #45818e;"> In the end, though, <i>Going Going Gone </i>is a hilarious and unusual novel. It's like very few things I've read (a few books with invented languages and shorter Pynchon books come to mind), it's kinda twisted, and it features a fast-approaching and most likely prophetic version of the town and indeed the neighborhood where I grew up. I wouldn't make this my <i>first</i> Jack Womack novel, but it's immensely readable and, if you're in the mood for a shaggy-dog story involving psychedelic drugs and government conspiracies, you could do a hell of a lot worse.</span><br />
<span style="color: #45818e;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #45818e;">More, as always, below. </span><br />
<br />
<a name='more'></a><div style="color: #45818e; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div style="color: #45818e; text-align: center;">
<i>"The garden has many paths"</i></div>
<div style="color: #45818e; text-align: center;">
<i>- Eulalia "Eulie" Bax</i></div>
<div style="color: #45818e; text-align: center;">
<i><br /></i></div>
<div style="color: #45818e; text-align: left;">
<i> Going Going Gone</i> begins with Walter Bullitt on a drug trip. Bullitt is a freelancer with the US government, a man who guinea-pigs psychedelic compounds on himself before the government (either on their own or through Walter) disseminates them to the populace in controlled psychological experiments. His pay is good, he doesn't hate his bosses, and it keeps his life well-stocked with obscure jazz and gospel records. The only two things that seem particularly wrong with Walter's life are that some <i>new</i> government spooks are leaning on him to interfere with Bobby Kennedy's upcoming election, and that his apartment is infested with ghosts that do nothing but alternate between crying out his name and crying for help. The second thing is a little less urgent, of course, as it has no effect on Walter's life other than annoying him from time to time until he starts singing or playing records to drown them out.</div>
<div style="color: #45818e; text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="color: #45818e; text-align: left;">
Unfortunately, the apartment ghosts are the reason Walter gets dragged out of Max's Kansas City one night by two oddly-dressed women: Eulie, a petite little woman with a bizarre vocabulary; and her partner Chlojo, a massive terminatrix built like a brick house and with about half the subtlety and tact of same. The two of them confirm that Walter is indeed haunted by something bizarre, but leave without answering too many questions after that confirmation, leaving behind only their impossibly potent weed from "Secaucus". Something very strange is going on, and Walter's apartment is only a small facet of something threatening to engulf all of existence in its wake. </div>
<div style="color: #45818e; text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="color: #45818e; text-align: left;">
In his attempt to find out finally and definitively what is going on in his life, Walter will run drugs to a cult that believes in maximizing potential via physical abuse, hang out with the black-sheep record-head son of the Kennedy family, risk run-ins with the more brutal members of the NYPD, and explore cultures right under his nose that he never even knew existed. But all of this may not be enough to save Walter and his friends. After all, how can one stop reality from being erased?</div>
<div style="color: #45818e; text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="color: #45818e; text-align: left;">
In <i>Going Going Gone</i>, the thing that works best in the book's favor is Womack's use of language. Walter Bullitt narrates the entire novel in first-person, rambling through impenetrable sentence after impenetrable sentence in what has to be at least partially-invented hipster slang. As the reader continues, however, it helps them get better entrenched in Walter's world. It's a kind of immersion therapy for a fictional universe-- get the reader to try and find their head in the bizarre language terms, and then introduce them to the world of the work while they slowly adapt to the utterly bizarre language patterns and thoughts. It's an <i>easy</i> way to get the readers to connect, though the legions of people trying to imitate pioneers in the field like Irvine Welsh, Anthony Burgess, and Robert Heinlein would suggest that perhaps it is not as easy to pull off as it looks. Womack does manage, though, creating something accessible but still strange and impenetrable, with phrases like "Okay, but I'm going to want to hear the Once Upon A Time.", among others. It's unique. And the way various groups (like the broken-English gibberish-spouting cult of Dynamism) pervert the language further just adds to it. </div>
<div style="color: #45818e; text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="color: #45818e; text-align: left;">
Dovetailing nicely with the language is the setting and the way the world is designed. When reading it, I felt like something was definitely <i>off</i> about Walter's world, but I never fully grasped what that was until afterward. Not just the slang, but the entirety of the <i>world</i>. Womack doesn't directly come out and state anything. He has this habit in a lot of its books, but when paired with the slang, it becomes something subtle. Almost missable. In fact, I almost <i>did</i> miss it, had someone else who read the books not pointed it out to me. And honestly, this is the way worldbuilding should be done. Not in infodump after infodump, not in bald exposition...the people in the story have no reason to believe the worlds and cultures around them are different, so they have no reason to explain their world to anyone. This is something Samantha Shannon failed to grasp with her book <i>The Bone Season</i>. So. In the world of <i>Going Going Gone</i>, the Civil War never happened, and African Americans are marginalized. You get glimpses of this in the way Walter collects records with ad copy bearing words like "The famous race record!", and the way people react to Chlojo, who is Jamaican/Swedish, but overall it doesn't make itself known. Similarly, despite the novel taking place in 1968, television seems not to have caught on at all. But none of this is revealed out in the open. </div>
<div style="color: #45818e; text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="color: #45818e; text-align: left;">
And, for once, I like that. I also like a narrator who isn't part of the action per se but instead is buffeted around by it all, finding things out when the reader does. Too many times I've read conspiracy lit only for the hero to finally figure out everything, or have some agency in what he does. I like it when they're just as much in the dark as I have, and Walter, while clueless, presents a narrator who actually seems smart enough to figure things out, but has trouble getting all the pieces to meet in his head. The events at the end of the book, as near as I can tell, happen simply because there was too much going on for everyone to keep track of, and so in trying to solve the various mysteries, instead things get solved in their own weird way and existence is a much, much, different place for it. It makes the conspiracies and problems actually seem as big as they're made out to be-- which, in a genre such as this one, is a problem a lot of writers seem to have. No matter how monumental the problem, the stakes seem low. </div>
<div style="color: #45818e; text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="color: #45818e; text-align: left;">
But there are two major problems in the work. The first is that this is Womack's way of slamming the door on his universe and writing it into our own. While this works really well, it also relies on the reader having read the previous books. It also kind of turns Walter into a secondary protagonist in his own novel, as in terms of the greater universe he matters significantly less than he would if <i>Going Going Gone</i> stood alone. And while the book at first stands alone, the sudden detour into the future and erasure of all reality within the fictive universe (followed by the alternate fates of literally every major character in the Dryco series*) means that its foundation is shaky at best. As someone who has now read two books in the series, I like how there's a nice chronological bookend: The first book in the series. <i>Random Acts of Senseless Violence</i>, begins with conventional speak and descends into dense slang and vernacular. <i>Going Going Gone</i> starts out with dense slang, and by the end has moved back into conventional speech.</div>
<div style="color: #45818e; text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="color: #45818e; text-align: left;">
The second problem is that the story is a shaggy-dog story that even Thomas Pynchon couldn't match. The characters' actions don't really have as much bearing on the plot as they think: James Kennedy gets screwed by his family in a manner that barely involves Walter, reality still gets rewritten, and literally every conspiracy was actually kind of a red herring. Now, this plot makes me laugh, and a lot of the sense of humor in the book is something I enjoy. But there are a lot of people who might be turned off by the ending, especially if they haven't read a book of Womack's before and don't have much investment in that second "future" universe of New New York. </div>
<div style="color: #45818e; text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="color: #45818e; text-align: left;">
But in the end, while I can't recommend the book, I did <i>enjoy</i> it. There are some great moments, like Walter contemplating feeding a liquid psychological warfare compound to a cult, the constant slang-speak between Walter and his best friend/ex-girlfriend Trish, and the meetings of the Personality Dynamos, whose leader spouts gibberish about jewels buried in feces and seems to use enlightenment as an excuse to beat up his followers. I'd say find this one, but find it <i>after</i> you read other works of Womack's. While the books aren't directly connected, <i>Going Going Gone</i> is definitively the <i>last</i> one in the series. </div>
<div style="color: #45818e; text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="color: #45818e; text-align: left;">
Also, many props for having Eulie Bax hail from Golf Island, Maplewood, New Jersey. Even if it caused me some wistful nostalgia when I realized she lived right on the same street I used to, or at least up the street from where I grew up. </div>
<div style="color: #45818e; text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="color: #cc0000;"><i>NEXT WEEK</i></span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="color: #cc0000;">- Random Acts of Senseless Violence <i>by Jack Womack</i></span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="color: #cc0000;"><i>- </i>Motorman <i>by David Ohle</i></span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="color: #cc0000;"><i><br /></i></span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="color: #cc0000;"><i>AND MANY OTHERS</i>.</span></div>
<div style="color: #45818e; text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="color: #45818e; text-align: left;">
*Including Lola "Boob" Hart, which made me breathe a sigh of relief. <i>Random Acts of Senseless Violence</i> was a nasty, wrenching book...as you will all find out next week...</div>
</div>
Caius Caligulahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06345161053444317875noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8662452127691085085.post-37991512950025541512015-01-11T05:39:00.000-05:002015-01-11T05:41:08.618-05:00Horrorstor<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="color: #45818e;"> </span></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<span style="color: #45818e;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiWMa_4MRjJ06EF4gKsd0cjwIBkgYUn_Y6jEbMZDir32YlVFH0jewKwmLVDzpE-xI1HQ8b8uDmtSl9nnX_g_pO7946I54zcvh_NnUFFSOa6tXdDIw5WNR7PRYcEFe6DoQCeFNp3QelK0kw/s1600/Horrorstor_final_300dpi.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiWMa_4MRjJ06EF4gKsd0cjwIBkgYUn_Y6jEbMZDir32YlVFH0jewKwmLVDzpE-xI1HQ8b8uDmtSl9nnX_g_pO7946I54zcvh_NnUFFSOa6tXdDIw5WNR7PRYcEFe6DoQCeFNp3QelK0kw/s1600/Horrorstor_final_300dpi.jpg" height="400" width="336" /></a>\</span></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<span style="color: #45818e;"><br /></span></div>
<br />
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="color: #45818e;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="color: #45818e;"> I'll admit it, I'm afraid to write fiction. There are a lot of things that make me utterly petrified to try and write a story, or I'll stop midway through a paragraph to ask myself "Where is this <i>going</i>?", or I'll have some memory from three years ago that'll make me close the window and have a minor panic attack. But there's one fear that tonight stands tall above any others, and that's the fear that someday I will write a book like this one. A book that constantly and unsubtly winks at the audience, a book with <i>so</i> many good flourishes that ultimately doesn't cross the finish line because it tries a little too hard to be <i>clever</i>. It's kind of a problem with authors in recent years...it's not enough to write a good story, but they have to let people know how brilliant they are at the same time. </span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="color: #45818e; text-align: -webkit-center;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="color: #45818e; text-align: -webkit-center;"> And what really gets up me about this is that </span><i style="color: #45818e; text-align: -webkit-center;">Horrorstor</i><span style="color: #45818e; text-align: -webkit-center;"> is actually, when it's not occasionally trying to nudge the reader here and there, a pretty good book. The setting is unique, the atmosphere of an empty retail store at night where weird things go on is something that's been explored but not often enough that it's a cliche, the cast is well rounded, and when the frightening parts of the book actually kick in full-throttle, it's pretty unnerving. But for every unnerving moment or cool scene or neat idea, there's just that smirk, that desire the book has for the reader to get its jokes, to be "in on it". It's a desire the book doesn't really need, and it's one that doesn't completely work in its favor. When it forgets it's supposed to be a clever book, it actually is a pretty innovative and clever book, but when it decides to go that extra mile and be about as subtle as a brick to the nose.</span><br />
<span style="color: #45818e; text-align: -webkit-center;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #45818e; text-align: -webkit-center;">But more, as always, below.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="color: #45818e; text-align: -webkit-center;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="color: #45818e; text-align: -webkit-center;"></span></div>
<a name='more'></a><div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="color: #45818e;"><i><br /></i></span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="color: #45818e;"><i>"Scratch any rebel and you'll find a father's credit card underneath"</i></span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="color: #45818e;"><i>- Amy</i></span></div>
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="color: #45818e; text-align: -webkit-center;"><i> Horrorstor</i> is the story of Orsk, an IKEA* knockoff located in Cuyahoga, Ohio. As the book opens (complete with fake Ikea-catalog touches like an order form and store map that stay ever so slightly ominous), the Cuyahoga store is underperforming. It has also seen its card-reader destroyed, its escalator stuck running in the wrong direction, and vandals smear poop all over a sofa in the showroom. Among the numerous "partners" heading in for work is Amy, a young woman with an antagonistic attitude who just wants to keep her head down, do her job, and get enough money to pay her roommates the six hundred dollars she owes them. Amy tries to get through her day despite run-ins with mysterious text messages reading "HELP", bearded rebel-without-a-cause Matt, the unusual and spiritual Trinity, the near-messianic checkout clerk Ruth Anne, and her zealous store manager, Basil. Unfortunately, Basil is waiting at her post, ready to try and inspire her to reach for further heights at Orsk. But with his annoying quasi-religious style of management, Basil takes Amy aside and gives her an interesting proposition: A closing-to-opening shift, double overtime, in cash. </span><br />
<span style="color: #45818e; text-align: -webkit-center;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #45818e; text-align: -webkit-center;"> Someone has been breaking into the Orsk store at night to vandalize the carefully laid-out showroom sets. Someone has been leaving a mess for the day crew every night, possibly after closing. Shattering glasses. And while Loss Prevention has cameras placed all over the store, they don't ever seem to catch anything, possibly because the store's night-time lighting actually interferes with the camera feeds. So Basil enlists Ruth Anne and Amy to help him patrol the store at night, hoping to catch the culprit before the big meeting and walkthrough with Corporate the next day. The three of them spread out through the elegantly-designed showroom, sure that they will find the culprit and successfully protect everyone's jobs. And, despite some minor hiccups to the plan, and someone having gummed the locks to Orsk's employee entrance, they seem to be getting off to a good start. </span><br />
<span style="color: #45818e; text-align: -webkit-center;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #45818e; text-align: -webkit-center;">Except.</span><br />
<span style="color: #45818e; text-align: -webkit-center;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #45818e; text-align: -webkit-center;"> Except Amy keeps finding more and more graffiti in the women's bathroom mentioning a "beehive" that people seem to be stuck in. Except the "HELP" texts are still coming freely. Except the TV in the breakroom keeps playing security camera footage following a mysterious man in a blue polo shirt that employees keep seeing out of the corner of their eye in the showroom. And while some of the strange noises can be explained when Matt and Trinity are discovered having sex on the bedroom set while ghost-hunting, what about the <i>further</i> disturbances?</span><br />
<span style="color: #45818e; text-align: -webkit-center;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #45818e; text-align: -webkit-center;"> The only thing that is clear is that something is with the employees here in Orsk. Something vile, something calculating, and something unnatural. And if the heroes want to escape with their above-minimum-wage lives intact, they may have to learn teamwork and responsibility the hard way. </span><br />
<span style="color: #45818e; text-align: -webkit-center;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #45818e; text-align: -webkit-center;"> So I have to say, right off the bat, I don't normally commend a book on its <i>design</i>, but Grady Hendrix and his team have done a great job mimicking the right look. The book looks, from its outset, like an IKEA catalog with a cover featuring an ominous ghost peeking out through the modern-looking picture frames. Inside, there's the usual frontmatter, but all made to look like the front of the catalog for Orsk. In fact, <i>Horrorstor</i> commits as much as it can to looking like a catalog, save for the book's prose. The whole thing begins right after the title page, going right into the "product", with the first chapter. The chapter headings are product descriptions, all with weird names and information, gradually becoming creepier and creepier as the influence of whatever-it-is takes over more and more of the store. Eventually, the chapter headings cease to be repurposed functional objects and become flat-out torture devices, still described cheerily as part of the catalog. The backmatter and back cover of the book also aid with the tone, showing a bunch of coupons for the store and a much darker and creepier map, as well as the destroyed version of the living-room set from the cover. </span><br />
<span style="color: #45818e; text-align: -webkit-center;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #45818e; text-align: -webkit-center;"> And the design also helps feed into the content fairly well. When the story reaches its pitch and the forces inside Orsk begin torturing the people inside, they use objects that are readily available to them inside the store: Wardrobes, treadmill desks, office chairs, and things like that. There's also a nice parallel between the store being built on a panopticon prison: a place ergonomically designed so it keeps everyone in its place under constant surveillance, and the Orsk store, a place ergonomically designed to keep employees where they belong and under surveillance while also enticing people to spend ridiculous amounts of money on flat-packed furniture. I thought it was also a nice touch that the various doors to nowhere and fake windows inside Orsk actually led to places when the supernatural incursions start. Hendrix made use of the environment and aesthetics of the book to really sell the concept and create a good atmosphere. And atmosphere is the center of every horror novel. It's something that gets kicked to the wayside far too often with them, too. Nightmarish imagery is not enough to sell a horror story. There needs to be a psychological aspect. And while it's perhaps cheating a little to make that psychological aspect the way the book is designed, I can't argue with the results. </span><br />
<span style="color: #45818e; text-align: -webkit-center;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #45818e; text-align: -webkit-center;"> It also does a good job playing with haunted house tropes. Instead of just leaving the store, the characters first wind up putting themselves in a ridiculously precarious position, and can't leave because if they do, then their jobs (and basically their lives) are over. When they <i>do</i> call the emergency services and try to act with responsibility, the police (in a moment of black comedy) can't seem to find their way up the feeder road to get to Orsk, causing further and further confusion as the GPS apparently lists the address as invalid from two to seven AM. In fact, it's due to playing into the ghost tropes that the Orsk employees accidentally open a door the other side, allowing the ghosts through to cause further mayhem and fright. </span><br />
<span style="color: #45818e; text-align: -webkit-center;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #45818e; text-align: -webkit-center;"> Finally, the characters are actually fairly engaging. There's a diverse cast in the book; Old, young, different races, different sexualities and viewpoints on life. And while any one of these people could be a caricature (and in fact, all of them start out that way), they take on new life and are actually interesting people. They inspire empathy. I found myself wanting Amy to just make her rent, and Basil to get back to his life in the outside world, and for Ruth Anne to get home in time for <i>Real Housewives</i>. While Matt and Trinity are somewhat underdeveloped, they still inspire at least some feelings towards them. You don't care as much, but you still <i>care</i>. </span><br />
<span style="color: #45818e; text-align: -webkit-center;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #45818e; text-align: -webkit-center;"> But...there's just some parts of it that don't work. Hendrix nails the dumb corporate philosophy and silly slogans, and even during the crazier portions manages to create parallels subtly, but that subtlety is blown out of the water when he keeps making the parallels so obvious. There was a point when Amy passes a banner that she keeps passing throughout the story, only to find that it now says "<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arbeit_macht_frei" target="_blank">work makes you free</a>". I screamed "Seriously?!" at the top of my lungs, probably startling someone in another room. And if this were the only thing, the only trespass, that would be fine. But the parallels between "penitents" in the Cuyahoga Panopticon and employees at Orsk are already good enough, why belabor the issue by continually beating the reader over the head with the point? And while the chapter headings are interesting, even the torture devices, I'd have perhaps liked it a little better if maybe it kept a more subtle tone, giving innocent-looking devices and then revealing their true purpose in the description.</span><br />
<span style="color: #45818e; text-align: -webkit-center;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #45818e; text-align: -webkit-center;"> However, perhaps that's it. Perhaps I'm actually part of the target audience for the book, and what I think is Grady Hendrix being oh-so-clever is actually stuff I was meant to get, but react to badly. The book is excessively readable, and a lot of fun even just to look through. While I could have used more of the catalog gimmick (perhaps a supplimental Orsk Catalogue book?), I liked the plot and managed to read the book in a single sitting without stopping. You may get more out of it. You may get less out of it. Either way, I think it's worth your time. Get this out of the library first, but if you really want to buy it and have it to own, I can think of worse purchases to make**. </span><br />
<span style="color: #45818e; text-align: -webkit-center;"><br /></span>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<span style="color: #45818e; text-align: -webkit-center;">In the meantime, I believe I'll figure out one of life's gnawing questions: Whether desks sell more when there's a fake computer on one. </span><br />
<span style="color: #45818e; text-align: -webkit-center;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #cc0000; text-align: -webkit-center;"><i>NEXT WEEK:</i></span><br />
<span style="color: #cc0000; text-align: -webkit-center;">- Going, Going, Gone <i>by Jack Womack</i></span><br />
<span style="color: #cc0000; text-align: -webkit-center;">- Riddley Walker <i>by Russell Hoban</i></span><br />
<span style="color: #cc0000; text-align: -webkit-center;"><i><br /></i></span>
<span style="color: #cc0000; text-align: -webkit-center;"><i>AND MANY OTHERS</i></span><br />
<span style="color: #45818e; text-align: -webkit-center;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #45818e; text-align: -webkit-center;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #45818e; text-align: -webkit-center;">*So apparently IKEA should be capitalized, because it's an acronym. Who knew?</span><br />
<span style="color: #45818e; text-align: -webkit-center;">**Most of them from Orsk.</span></div>
</div>
</div>
Caius Caligulahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06345161053444317875noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8662452127691085085.post-89079293450711302992015-01-08T22:05:00.001-05:002015-01-08T22:05:43.568-05:00Ribblestrop<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgb4nbxfAywjIbE9B0nUvYDyNLLZlcY9DXXWTo3sBvhevUFI-t4pHpWJBXGs3QptTmfH1j_cecPAkT7KQZfWcvI5KTrN8qcy7d5BbI0V_dEwrtpU58XVfSMVIY7oQJnuD_NXNIhNqhuwRo/s1600/ribblestop_701.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgb4nbxfAywjIbE9B0nUvYDyNLLZlcY9DXXWTo3sBvhevUFI-t4pHpWJBXGs3QptTmfH1j_cecPAkT7KQZfWcvI5KTrN8qcy7d5BbI0V_dEwrtpU58XVfSMVIY7oQJnuD_NXNIhNqhuwRo/s1600/ribblestop_701.jpg" height="400" width="260" /></a></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="color: #45818e;"> </span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="color: #45818e;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="color: #45818e;"> </span></div>
<span style="color: #45818e;"> In preparation for my first ever break with the format of this blog to review a Young Adult book about a school, I went back and looked up some of the young adult titles of my youth: <i>Wayside School</i>, for one. some of Ellen Raskin's books for another, and Neal Shusterman, and Bruce Coville, and some other titles here and there that I remember digging. And, upon looking back, I realized something: </span><br />
<span style="color: #45818e;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #45818e;">YA authors scare the living daylights out of me.</span><br />
<span style="color: #45818e;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #45818e;"> Seriously, YA is a genre full of some freaking warped books. And not just the ones they force middle and high schoolers to read at gunpoint, either. I'm talking about the humor books meant for the middle school-age audience, I'm talking about the ridiculous books they let us read thinking "oh, they're all right for kids" that involve stuff like child slavery and brainwashing. The aforementioned <i>Wayside School</i> is a series of linked cosmic horror stories that also work as school comedy. </span><br />
<span style="color: #45818e;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #45818e;"> Now, they're also <i>good</i> books, because most of these people can write. But I did want everyone to know that I have read me some Edward Lee. And some Jack Ketchum. And some Clive Barker. And all the rest. And not <i>once</i> did I find anything nearly as fucked up as I did in young adult fantasy or science fiction or comedy books*.</span><br />
<span style="color: #45818e;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #45818e;">This brings us to <i>Ribblestrop</i>.</span><br />
<span style="color: #45818e;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #45818e;"> In <i>Ribblestrop</i>, Andy Mulligan takes the "school of adventure" tropes that one seems to find reoccuring throughout young adult novels, and blows them so far over the top that it creates an unusual adventure in a school that might as well be unmoored from reality. Despite being ostensibly aimed at the younger set, it's a book full of strange mannequins, kids getting drunk on rum repeatedly, numerous train accidents, and at least one case of nonconsensual trepanation. It's also a book full of heart, and the points where the book gets shaggy make up for it with heart and character and a wicked sense of humor. It's not a book I'd necessarily recommend, but it's <i>fun</i>. And in this case, fun is really all that matters.</span><br />
<span style="color: #45818e;"></span><br />
<a name='more'></a><div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="color: #45818e;"><i><br /></i></span>
<span style="color: #45818e;"><i>"What a question to ask! 'Is it dangerous?' We're at Ribblestrop, Giles. Where life </i>is<i> dangerous. Don't tell me you didn't know that."</i></span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="color: #45818e;"><i>- Professor Worthington</i></span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="color: #45818e;"><i><br /></i></span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="color: #45818e;"><i> Ribblestrop</i> begins with one Sam Arthur Tack getting on a train for a long voyage to his new school, the titular Ribblestrop. Sam**'s parents have been told that Ribblestrop is a prestigious boys' school with a long tradition behind it, and their small boy will be a wonderful addition. Upon entering the train (and suffering the first of many train accidents), Sam is met by Jacob Ruskin, a portly boy who is a returning student to Ribblestrop Towers. Ruskin talks to Sam about the various ins and outs of Ribblestrop-- the eccentric headmaster Giles Norcross-Webb, the small handful of other kids (most of whom are Asian and eastern European orphans) who attend the school, the fact that the dormitory doesn't have a roof, but will eventually have one built-- and then accidentally spills his tea on Sam, causing the two boys to try and find a way to get Sam a spare pair of pants. </span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="color: #45818e;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="color: #45818e;"> On the way, they meet Millie, a young woman and enterprising criminal who accidentally loses Sam's school pants out the window along with his tie, steals a woman's credit card, and barges into a restaurant where they meet the other returning student to the school, Sanchez. Sanchez is the son of a South American gangster, a soft-spoken boy who still has trauma from when he was kidnapped and held for ransom. One helicopter ride later, the four of them arrive at Ribblestrop Towers...</span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="color: #45818e;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="color: #45818e;"> ...where Sam promptly gets hit on the head by crockery thrown out of the tower window by Lady Vyner, the eccentric owner of the Ribblestrop property, and her monstrous grandson Casper. Things quickly settle into a routine. The school is barely supposed to exist, practically runs under the table, and has all sorts of strange secret passages. The only teachers are the affable but completely cracked Captain Routon and the mad "electrical scientist" Professor Worthington. One of the main classes involves mapping the entire state, including cutting out new trails and paths through the overgrowth. Doctor Norcross-Webb insists that they'll make everything up as they go along. And then one day a deputy headmistress appears...</span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="color: #45818e;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="color: #45818e;">And things get very strange indeed.</span></div>
<br />
<span style="color: #45818e;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #45818e;"> Ribblestrop Towers is soon pulled into a strange mystery involving unusual-looking mannequins, a series of secret basements in the school, the corrupt local law enforcement, and the deputy headmistress Miss Hazlitt, who has a prior connection to Millie and seems to be a little too concerned with psychopharmacology and discipline. Mad science abounds. After all, Ribblestrop Towers used to be an Allied research facility. </span><br />
<span style="color: #45818e;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #45818e;"> What follows is a ridiculous adventure story as the students of Ribblestrop battle murderous high schoolers from the local city, corrupt police, the government, a former dentist and mad scientist, an antique weaponry-toting heir, ghosts, a human robot, and a conspiracy that threatens not just Ribblestrop Towers, but the entirety of students in all of the schools in the whole world if it gets out. </span><br />
<span style="color: #45818e;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #45818e;"> I'm going to talk about something I don't usually talk about here, and that's commitment. Commitment is more important than anyone could possibly realize. It's when people accept a premise and play it as straight as they possibly can. No winking, no tongue-in-cheek, just accepting the most ridiculous thing you can and playing it as straightfaced as possible. It's something very few people do, but for the sake of comedy, sometimes you have to pick up that shovel and dig all the way down. For science fiction and fantasy, too. Andy Mulligan takes a very weird premise and slowly makes it weirder, but never once does he flinch. Never once does he present the absurd world he creates as anything but normal. The chief of police in Reading spends his time squeezing the school dry for bribes that he then funnels into shady projects in the surrounding countryside. The deputy headmistress is clearly an evil sociopath, but everyone just goes along with it because the school needs a little order. In fact, it's pretty easy for even the children of Ribblestrop to realize that there is something seriously wrong with just about everything, but because the world is that strange (an early chapter involves a gunfight where absolutely no one gets shot or arrested), it doesn't bother them that they have to rebuild the dormitory roof like a gothic cathedral during the fall/winter term. </span><br />
<span style="color: #45818e;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #45818e;"> But commitment doesn't just make <i>Ribblestrop</i> believable and grounded. It also helps the reader not think too hard about the fact that a lot of the book is twisted. The school takes in orphans to brainwash them, a group of students almost get hit by a train, and a sadistic dentist has a plan to chemically and surgically alter the brains of schoolchildren to obey authority and rules without question. The science teacher is a mad scientist as well, the true owner of the property nearly kills a main character, and <i>all of this</i> is pretty much played for some kind of laughs. It's more amusing than terrifying and I, for the life of me, could not tell you why. There's just something that keeps it all moving forward and funny. Maybe it's the idea that everything <i>could</i> be funny, and that there's not as many real stakes. Yes, everything is cartoonishly frightening, but at the same time, there's a lot of safety. And...while normally the "no real stakes" thing would be something bad, here it actually works fairly well. The book is not without its plot risks and stakes, but the idea of bad things <i>actually happening</i> in a book like <i>Ribblestrop</i> would be kind of terrifying. If the villains won, even in part, it would destroy the pretense that all of this is actually funny. </span><br />
<span style="color: #45818e;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #45818e;"> Which leads me into the other thing I really enjoy about the book, and that's the way it handles the tone. While there are a few genuinely unnerving scenes played straight, a lot of it comes off as funny. Sam Tack's repeated and brutal injuries (he spends a section in the middle of the book in a coma after an ill-fated football game) as a running gag are actually kind of amusing. Casper and Lady Vyner's horrifyingly insane behavior comes off as darkly comic. That this is the kind of world where a school can be run totally under the table and have to bribe a police chief for its continued existence comes off as unnerving and funny rather than flat-out frightening. With <i>Ribblestrop</i>, Andy Mulligan's tone and control manage to keep all of this in the realm of the absurd and out of the realm of near-Gothic horror. </span><br />
<span style="color: #45818e;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #45818e;"> My only issue with it is that the beginning is more a series of vignettes than an actual book. It transitions from one scene to the next without much thought, sort of shrugging as it goes through the paces and outlines its characters. That the rest of the book is much tighter makes me wonder if it was just kind of Mulligan playing around and then finding a common thread to link everything together. It just feels shaggy, a little loose, just trying to establish its voice, and I would have liked it to be a little tighter. But, as this was practically the first novel Mr. Mulligan wrote for young adult audiences, I can shake some of that off. Besides, the book finds its feet around the time everyone almost gets run over by a train, and suddenly it's off and running.</span><br />
<span style="color: #45818e;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #45818e;"> So in the end, I think this one is worth a library checkout. Especially since it's now out in the US. I especially recommend it to those of you out there with children, provided they know that yes, it is incredibly warped. I wouldn't unknowingly inflict <i>Ribblestrop</i> on anyone, but for someone looking for a fun, adventurous young adult read, I highly recommend you pick this one up and spend some time with it. Hell, someone younger than me will probably get something better out of it than I did, or like it more. The only thing it'll take from you is your time. </span><br />
<span style="color: #45818e;"><br /></span><span style="color: #cc0000;"><i>NEXT WEEK:</i></span><br />
<span style="color: #cc0000;"><i>- A short break while I try to get back to some semblance of a schedule and stop releasing Wednesday/Thursday posts.</i></span><br />
<span style="color: #cc0000;"><i><br /></i></span>
<span style="color: #cc0000;"><i>- </i>Going, Going, Gone <i>by Jack Womack</i></span><br />
<span style="color: #cc0000;"><i>- </i>Riddley Walker <i>by Russell Hoban</i></span><br />
<span style="color: #cc0000;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #cc0000;"><i>AND MANY OTHERS.</i></span>
<span style="color: #45818e;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #45818e;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #45818e;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #45818e;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #45818e;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #45818e;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #45818e;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #45818e;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #45818e;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #45818e;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #45818e;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #45818e;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #45818e;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #45818e;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #45818e;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #45818e;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #45818e;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #45818e;">*Even when they're not being intentionally creepy...the passage about weeping librarians eating remaindered books with a knife and fork in <i>Whales On Stilts!</i> was kind of depressing and horrifying while still being kinda funny. </span><br />
<span style="color: #45818e;">**Those of you who are giggling...<i>stop</i>...<i>please</i>...</span></div>
Caius Caligulahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06345161053444317875noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8662452127691085085.post-75757632899801143412014-12-31T17:55:00.001-05:002014-12-31T17:56:09.276-05:00Revival<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<span style="color: #45818e;"><br /></span>
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjRV8NQD2Gsxc1-HeES6o6BuIt4oUvE4gyWW7p-xTAUFBiP2Bf3CdXdIL_daVISF8ia7-nkovOzFPvYUb0L3ELVgLv_tM3HCZblCeQQJNP_6umf1l24yU292LuIKgZFrAu1sYpXY1pmsKo/s1600/revival-stephenking-cover-UK-hodder-stoughton--static.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjRV8NQD2Gsxc1-HeES6o6BuIt4oUvE4gyWW7p-xTAUFBiP2Bf3CdXdIL_daVISF8ia7-nkovOzFPvYUb0L3ELVgLv_tM3HCZblCeQQJNP_6umf1l24yU292LuIKgZFrAu1sYpXY1pmsKo/s1600/revival-stephenking-cover-UK-hodder-stoughton--static.jpg" height="400" width="273" /></a></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="color: #45818e;"><br /></span></div>
<span style="color: #45818e;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #45818e;">Okay, controversial opinion time:</span><br />
<div>
<span style="color: #45818e;"><br /></span></div>
<div>
<span style="color: #45818e;"> If <i>Revival</i> was Stephen King's last work of fiction-- if he wrote no more-- I would be fine with that. </span></div>
<div>
<span style="color: #45818e;"><br /></span></div>
<div>
<span style="color: #45818e;"> I know he can't stop, I know he <i>won't</i> stop, and I know he's only going to stop when he's all out of stories, and it's a long way to then. But here's the thing: I see <i>Revival</i> as a perfect riff on Stephen King-- all the things I love about him, all the things I think could be a little tighter, and all the things in between. While it may not have been his intent, with <i>Revival</i>, King's written the perfect bookend to his early work in suburban gothic horror, something that ties its past to the traditional pastoral setting while exploring new ways to be disturbing. It's a look at the numerous strange ways someone's life can go, and how we meet the same people in vastly different circumstances throughout our lives. It's about how people can mean <i>so much</i> in one instant and drift off in the next. And it's also a great pastiche of the older titles in the "existential horror" or "cosmic horror" genre, but without much of the difficulty or sheer dryness of those older works. It's a twisted morality tale with a villain who isn't exactly evil and a hero who could never be described as good. </span></div>
<div>
<span style="color: #45818e;"><br /></span></div>
<div>
<span style="color: #45818e;"> And it is brilliant.</span></div>
<div>
<span style="color: #45818e;"><br /></span></div>
<div>
<span style="color: #45818e;">Why? More, as always, below</span></div>
<div>
<span style="color: #45818e;"></span><br />
<a name='more'></a><span style="color: #45818e;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="color: #45818e;"><i>"Mother needs her sacrifices"</i></span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="color: #45818e;"><i>- Jamie Morrow</i></span></div>
<div>
<span style="color: #45818e;"><br /></span></div>
<div>
<span style="color: #45818e;"> <i>Revival</i> begins in a small town in New England as Jamie Morton plays with his new toy soldiers. As he plays, a shadow falls over him, the shadow of the town's new minister, Charles Jacobs. Jacobs seems to understand him, and even suggests a pincer movement for Jamie's troops, attacking the hill with cunning rather than an all-out attack. He helps Jamie mold his terrain to create "skull mountain", and then allows him back into his workshop to see the pastor's own diorama of a little Jesus walking across a pond on what Jacobs calls "Peaceable Lake". This is only the first event in a long chain of them, a chain that will stretch and bind Jamie and Jacobs together with a single bond, something the pastor calls his "secret electricity". Jacobs later uses his obsession for all things electrical to save Jamie's brother Con from a skiing accident where he loses his voice, restoring Con back to himself again.</span></div>
<div>
<span style="color: #45818e;"><br /></span></div>
<div>
<span style="color: #45818e;">But then</span></div>
<div>
<span style="color: #45818e;"><br /></span></div>
<div>
<span style="color: #45818e;"> But then comes the thing that makes Pastor Jacobs lose his faith in religion and regain it in his sacred "secret electricity". After a sermon on such that earns him the ire of all the townsfolk, they decide to run him out of town quietly, the way small-town folks do. Exiled from the town, Jacobs makes his way off into the world, but his indelible fingerprints remain all over Jamie and Jamie's life after that. As their lives go on, Jamie and Jacobs cross paths several other times, drawn to each other in stranger and stranger circumstances, drawn to something neither of them understand but that marked them from their first meeting. It becomes clear that something-- destiny, fate, something far beyond any kind of human comprehension-- is keeping them alive for a specific purpose. And by the time they reach that purpose, there's no guarantee that either of them will survive the journey. </span><br />
<span style="color: #45818e;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #45818e;"> So in every Stephen King book, there's something I like to call the Big Black. A massive, shadowy presence, an indomitable evil that chews its way through the book and its inhabitants piece by piece. <i>It</i> had Pennywise. <i>The Shining</i> had The Overlook. Every Stephen King book seems to have a monster that serves as the force of absolute evil. This is so its heroes can, sometimes at great cost, overcome it and triumph over it. The Big Black is usually defeated by the end of the book, and while everything might go wrong in the process, things are usually a little less terrible after that. It's pretty much a constant in every book, except for maybe <i>From a Buick 8</i>, where there wasn't really a large malevolent presence so much as just something so alien that it was unfriendly and harmful to humans. The rule also doesn't really hold true to his short stories. But every novel, there's some <i>evil</i> for the main characters to struggle against. </span><br />
<span style="color: #45818e;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #45818e;"> The reason I bring this up is because <i>Revival</i> doesn't have that. It's hinted a couple of times that Charles Jacobs <i>might</i> be evil, but as far as actual evil goes, Jacobs is fairly benign. He presents more as a tragic antihero...a man whose slow descent into madness is paired uneasily with his desire to help mankind as a whole, leading to him doing more and more experiments. He's a mad scientist in the mold of Victor Frankenstein and the classic '50s horror movies, someone who genuinely desires to do good, but has the misfortune to be doing it wrong. He isn't the big monster, he's just a human being, and it's that humanity and empathy that allows him to be such a compelling villain. There were moments in his rants where I began to sympathize with his views and thinking, to go "he might have a point there" now and then. He was clearly cracked, but there are points where that crackedness actually works in his favor. He's no saint, but he's no monster either, and that actually makes him a more sympathetic villain. Jacobs still has his melodramatic touches-- the sequence in the revival tent, the way he cruelly manipulates Jamie into helping him-- but he genuinely believes he's doing good, and it's hard not to like him for that. </span><br />
<span style="color: #45818e;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #45818e;"> Jamie Morrow also isn't much of a hero. He's not very active in the plot until the very end, and his main form of agency seems to be telling people "no" as the book goes on. He lies, he cheats, and he acts mainly out of cowardice. While he stands up to Jacobs, telling him very clearly that he doesn't want to be his assistant and that his special electricity is a lot more dangerous than he thinks, he doesn't seem to warn anyone else or do anything that would help <i>stop</i> Jacobs. In some circumstances, it's that he just can't, but there are moments when he lies for no reason. His dreams somewhere around the midpoint of the novel and the continued twitches and myoclonic jerks he suffers are things he hides from Jacobs for seemingly no reason at all. He only brings them up later, when it's clear Jacobs isn't ever going to stop his experiments and has no reason to. But through it all, he actually seems like he's supposed to be that way. His decisions are decisions made by people who think they're good at the time, only to find out later that the consequences are hideous, and is now forced to live with them. </span><br />
<span style="color: #45818e;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #45818e;"> But there are still problems with the book, despite its strong leads. King's references become more and more obvious, leading up to a woman whose name is a reference to Mary Shelley and whose young boy is named Victor. King also references his favorite short stories, including "August Heat". There's some points that feel a little unusually othering of homosexual people. It feels overlong, overstuffed in places. <i>Revival</i> feels in certain moments like the book leading up to the climax was written as a scaffold to support a short story that only occurs in the last few moments. It's something the book shares with <i>From a Buick 8</i>, where a short story is elongated, but there's something I noticed with <i>Revival</i> that actually makes me re-evaluate my judgment on this. </span><br />
<span style="color: #45818e;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #45818e;"> <i>Revival</i> is a book about the passage of time, and mortality. The end of the book confirms this, as it tackles an existential question of the afterlife in a really twisted way that brings the relationship of the two men to a close. Jacobs's final experiment is an effort to rip aside the veil between life and death, Jamie tells his story over the course of several decades while becoming more confused as modern context seeps into the world, and the book ends with many characters dying horribly as further existential implications resulting from the experiments to see into the afterlife seep into their day-to-day lives. The plot is actually beside the point here, the importance is the journey, not the destination or what the reader sees along the way. It's about two characters, drawn together by fate or something worse. It's about the people you know who slip in and out of your life. It's about how family can be at once so near and at the same time so distant.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="color: #45818e;"> It's no surprise I liked this book. But I recommend this book to everyone. Find this. Buy this if you want. If you haven't liked Stephen King because of his uproariously unsubtle horror, this may be a tonic to that. If you have, you will find here that if you think you've seen all he can do, there are still some surprises and his boast in <i>Nightmares and Dreamscapes</i> about biting the reader harder when they're unawares is still true. The worst thing that will happen is that you lose time to this, and there are worse ways to lose that. Believe me, they're in this book. </span><br />
<span style="color: #45818e;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #cc0000;"><i>NEXT WEEK:</i></span><br />
<span style="color: #cc0000;"><i>- </i>Ribblestrop <i>by Andy Mulligan</i></span><br />
<span style="color: #cc0000;"><i><br /></i></span>
<span style="color: #cc0000;"><i>AND MANY OTHERS, BECAUSE THIS IS THE HOLIDAYS AND BOOKS MAY STILL BE INCOMING, I HAVE NO IDEA.</i></span></div>
</div>
Caius Caligulahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06345161053444317875noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8662452127691085085.post-24875167206267360702014-12-22T01:01:00.000-05:002014-12-22T01:03:19.941-05:00Light<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="color: #45818e;"> </span></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<span style="color: #45818e;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg0SR_QUefOJ970hRUiRnnn8cmSyHy3K-ynSKTB6c8pgwL3tjlBXhV6FeW859ZH8INybz5MeKb_tbpVcO2-Zz3SYDGKoOqInVz45vADXNT0xDwT8XBplw3_WvFXK1sFM5vRpet9KPla9L8/s1600/41ATFFZ3PXL.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg0SR_QUefOJ970hRUiRnnn8cmSyHy3K-ynSKTB6c8pgwL3tjlBXhV6FeW859ZH8INybz5MeKb_tbpVcO2-Zz3SYDGKoOqInVz45vADXNT0xDwT8XBplw3_WvFXK1sFM5vRpet9KPla9L8/s1600/41ATFFZ3PXL.jpg" height="400" width="268" /></a></span></div>
<span style="color: #45818e;"> </span><br />
<span style="color: #45818e;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #45818e;"> I've tried to write this intro properly multiple times, but I might as well just put this front and center so those of you who are reading this on the go can get it over with:</span><br />
<span style="color: #45818e;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #45818e;"><i>Light</i> is one of my favorite books of the year, possibly one of my favorite books <i>of all time</i>. </span><br />
<span style="color: #45818e;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #45818e;"> I know, I do a whole ton of positive reviews on here, and significantly less dissenting ones, so every book comes out looking really good, but there is no other way to say it. While good books pass constantly through these halls, <i>Light</i> is special even among them. When I was done, I sat there for a few moments, unsure of what to think now that it was over. Then, because seven hours had passed by unnoticed, I was immediately surprised that it was dark outside. It's an engrossing story, one that transcends the boundaries of a genre people feel unnervingly comfortable filing it under. It's a beautiful, well-designed world that seems immense but moves tautly through its places. </span><br />
<span style="color: #45818e;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #45818e;">At the very least, folks, reading that paragraph back, it's caused my language center to break down in joy as I revert to stock reviewer phrases normally seen on book blurbs.</span><br />
<span style="color: #45818e;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #45818e;"> <i>Light</i> is crazy, brilliant, and I wish I'd managed to finish it the first time I read it, instead of losing interest somewhere around chapter 2 and abandoning it for books I understood better. M. John Harrison is a unique writer and one who stands out even above such titans as Stephenson, Banks, and other more modern writers, and passing up a chance to read this book is a mistake on par with starting a land war in Asia. You may like it as much as I did. You may like it less. All I know is that it moved me, it's brilliantly written and constructed, and I must share this joy with as many of you out there as possible. </span><br />
<span style="color: #45818e;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #45818e;">More, as always, below</span><br />
<span style="color: #45818e;"></span><br />
<a name='more'></a><span style="color: #45818e;"><br /></span>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="color: #45818e;">"<i>God does not play dice with the universe."</i></span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="color: #45818e;"><i>- Albert Einstein</i>*</span></div>
<span style="color: #45818e;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #45818e;"> <i>Light</i> is the story of three drifters. Seria Mau Genlicher is the biomechanical pilot of the <i>White Cat</i>, a "K-ship" that runs on sentient mathematical calculations and can think in fourteen dimensions simultaneously. After stealing the vessel and breaking ties with the military contractor who turned her into the human-ship hybrid she is now, she has become a freelancer, fighting it out with other K-ships and performing various missions for herself and others all throughout the galactic hub known as the Kefahuchi Tract (or K-tract for short). Ed Chianese is a VR addict who spends most of his life getting money from loan sharks to turn it into more time spent in a tank, engaging in detective fantasies as Chinese Ed. He also seems fond of telling stories about the time <i>before</i> the tank, tall tales about when he was a hero and adventurer running alien mazes and piloting ships all throughout the K-Tract. And Michael Kearney is a frightened quantum physicist running from <i>something</i>, turning to any possible avenue to delay it from reaching him and obsessed with the occult to help him understand. The three of them are intertwined-- not in any immediately obvious way, but due to the cosmic spirals everything turns in. And all of them are further connected to the K-Tract.</span><br />
<span style="color: #45818e;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #45818e;"> What follows are three intertwining stories of serial murder, tense shootouts, fourteen-dimensional dogfights, existential horror, stomach-churning descriptions of cybernetics, pitch-black comedy, depressed clones having sex, people putting fishtanks on their heads, and things too bizarre to even describe. I could, of course, but any more description and I would be spoiling the work. Most of the plot of <i>Light</i> can be figured out, and the book has an element of discovery to its twisted plotline. When I figured some elements out for myself, I was surprised at how simple certain puzzles were, and why it took me so damn long to figure out exactly what in God's name it was. As it is, I wouldn't <i>want</i> to explain much more of the plot. I want most of the people who find this book to go in blind, without much of an idea of what they were getting into. That way, all these sensations will be that much sharper. That much sweeter. That much nastier. Because something is <i>waiting</i> out in the K-tract. Something important. Something beyond understanding. And all three of these heroes will have to come face-to-face with it.</span><br />
<span style="color: #45818e;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #45818e;"> "Elegant" feels like an odd adjective to use for a book. Or at least, an odd adjective to use for <i>this</i> kind of book. But it fits. M. John Harrison has a way with economy of language that feels fresh, light, and beautiful. What Harrison is able to do in a single sentence, it takes most people paragraphs or pages to describe. And in that single sentence will be everything the reader needs or wants to know about what Harrison describes. No sentence is wasted or without meaning, everything has just the right amount of balance to it. In one section, describing a character's trauma, a single line of dialogue manages to convey almost unimaginable horror without actually conveying the act or any hint of it on the actual page. While the K-Tract and its inhabitants are revealed gradually-- a few sentences here, a few sentences there-- the picture it paints as a whole is vivid. In Kearney's story, arguably the part of the narrative that gets the closest to horror (though Seria Mau gets awfully close), it's arguably the use of negative space, the things that <i>aren't</i> seen or heard or on the page, that drive the story of cosmic dread and existential unease. The details the reader <i>does</i> get also help hammer home the sense of dread in Kearney's section, the nervous energy of Ed Chianese, and the unnerving sterility of Seria Mau. </span><br />
<span style="color: #45818e;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #45818e;"> There's also a great sense of humanity and empathy to the work, something that tends to be tossed by the wayside when it comes to a lot of books**. Empathy is sometimes confused with "sympathy", in that the characters have to be sympathetic, but no. A writer should at least make their audience <i>care</i> about the characters, however despicable they are. And...Harrison does do that. Ed may be interested in drugs and sex, but the mystery of how much of what Ed talks is complete bullcrap is something enticing. He also proves to be the most moral of the three protagonists, or perhaps just the least damaged. Seria Mau starts off as cold and vicious, but as her plot unfolds, more reasons for why she's so vicious and cold put her actions into focus. And Kearney is obviously deranged from his confrontations with insane mystic Sprake and the thing he's afraid of, but his clear dread and relationship with his wife (as well as the eventual fates of people around him) make his section of story a lot more tragic and less vulnerable to apathy. Harrison manages to give the sense that these are <i>people,</i> if not <i>human beings</i>. There's even an encounter late in the book, one that I don't <i>dare</i> give away, that makes it very easy to understand what Kearney's going through, and one that is really freaking frightening. </span><br />
<span style="color: #45818e;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #45818e;"> And, finally, the book is <i>very</i> tight. In less-capable hands, these would be three separate books, or a much longer book, but Harrison keeps the action taut and moving quickly. Every piece seems suitably large, but at the same time, it's small. Tight. Confined to these characters and their journeys. It goes quickly, but covers a lot of ground. It's very fast-paced, partly because of that economy of language, and partly because Harrison keeps it ticking along nicely. I especially enjoy the action scenes, like the gunfight in the tank farm and Seria Mau's attempt to outrun the EMC forces when they come for her. It's very quick and quite easy to follow. Unlike last week's offering, it doesn't flag or lower, it just keeps on ramping up the stakes and eventually, when everything's revealed, it comes to a head and only then does it cool off to a more meditative tone. At which point, the perspective of the book changes and it reveals a new dimension, something unexpected but not necessarily a twist. It then ends on kind of an open question. This isn't a bad thing-- it ends with everything wrapped up-- but on a question nonetheless. </span><br />
<span style="color: #45818e;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #45818e;"> In fact, that's the one issue. Everything ends a little neatly and in one section where finally all is revealed and the characters receive some kind of closure. And it still feels like the beginning of something else. I really shouldn't be complaining, it ends exactly where it should and there are two sequels that revisit the K-Tract, but it feels like the mysteries were a little too mysterious? I don't know. I'm grasping at straws, at this point I'm pretty sure I couldn't find something to hate about <i>Light</i> unless I dug deep. </span><br />
<span style="color: #45818e;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #45818e;"> But in the end, there is one excuse for not at least giving <i>Light</i> a try, and that is that you are somehow unable to read. It's not science fiction, so that's not an excuse not to read it. It's short, so it won't take you much time: Barely over three hundred pages. It's well worth the trip. Find this book. Buy it if you can't find it. If your friends can't find it, give it to them. If you know their tastes and they would dig something like this, then press it into their hands, tell them "Don't look at the front flap, just start reading." and run off cackling madly***. Get your hands on this book and read it by any means necessary. You won't be disappointed. In fact, I think you'll be quite the opposite. This book may do things to your head the way it did for me, or it may just be a hell of a read. So yes. I now need a copy of this book and its sequels. </span><br />
<span style="color: #45818e;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #45818e;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #45818e;">Also, watch out for the Shrander. </span><br />
<span style="color: #45818e;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #45818e;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #45818e;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #990000;"><i>NEXT WEEK: </i></span><br />
<span style="color: #990000;"><i>- </i>The Company Man <i>by Robert Jackson Bennett</i></span><br />
<span style="color: #990000;"><i>AND THEN</i></span><br />
<span style="color: #990000;"><i><br /></i></span>
<span style="color: #990000;">- The Restraint of Beasts <i>by Magnus Mills</i></span><br />
<span style="color: #990000;">- Empty Space: A Haunting <i>by M. John Harrison</i></span><br />
<span style="color: #990000;"><i><br /></i></span>
<span style="color: #990000;"><i>AND MANY OTHERS</i></span><br />
<span style="color: #45818e;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #45818e;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #45818e;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #45818e;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #45818e;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #45818e;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #45818e;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #45818e;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #45818e;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #45818e;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #45818e;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #45818e;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #45818e;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #45818e;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #45818e;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #45818e;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #45818e;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #45818e;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #45818e;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #45818e;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #45818e;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #45818e;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #45818e;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #45818e;">* Yes, I know, but any epigraph or pull quote I could use from the book would be a huuuuuge spoiler. </span><br />
<span style="color: #45818e;">** By which I mean <i>The Magicians</i><i> </i>and <i>Tales of the Otori. </i>Among others.</span><br />
<span style="color: #45818e;">*** The cackling madly is mandatory, unless you have trouble with lung capacity and mold, like I do apparently now</span></div>
Caius Caligulahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06345161053444317875noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8662452127691085085.post-21915536769062495632014-12-15T00:24:00.000-05:002014-12-15T02:04:46.018-05:00Across the Nightingale Floor<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="color: #45818e;"> </span></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<span style="color: #45818e;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEghOiB_CbX36l9vCEN5etW2mDZjCrynDZxfWtbTirx1JZiEVSwq6L74GLSnZN8AU3V6N-mfsVE08Qdmo73jQ1MuFls_UFcHXjQB878Ar6QPuXgK8DanMlPkfVUJ2Wx6I09ATAx64nwJdkE/s1600/Otori_Nightingale.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEghOiB_CbX36l9vCEN5etW2mDZjCrynDZxfWtbTirx1JZiEVSwq6L74GLSnZN8AU3V6N-mfsVE08Qdmo73jQ1MuFls_UFcHXjQB878Ar6QPuXgK8DanMlPkfVUJ2Wx6I09ATAx64nwJdkE/s1600/Otori_Nightingale.jpg" height="400" width="267" /></a></span></div>
<span style="color: #45818e;"> </span><br />
<span style="color: #45818e;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #45818e;"> Planned trilogies are sometimes difficult to judge without reading the whole thing. How can someone judge a book that's just the first part of a larger work? Can it be criticized for not standing on its own merits when it's just the first third (or fourth, or eighth, or tenth, or whatever) of a larger story? After all, reading just the exposition chapters of a novel and then putting it down and saying "This is a bad book" is really poor form and something to be discouraged. But, at the same time, if you're going to write novels, you should strive to write complete ones, even if you have grand designs for the world at large. Stephen R. Donaldson, for example, wrote absolutely execrable fantasy novels in groups of three, but I could pick up any one of those books and read its absolutely atrocious contents without necessarily needing to go in order. </span><br />
<span style="color: #45818e;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #45818e;"> So I suppose my criteria for this book would be that it is able to stand on its own, but also judging it as the introduction to a greater series of works, works that I might possibly want to read.</span><br />
<span style="color: #45818e;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #45818e;">And...as far as that goes, it isn't a <i>bad</i> book? </span><br />
<span style="color: #45818e;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #45818e;"> It's not a <i>good</i> book, and there are some serious issues with structural senses and the way characters are treated, but I would be lying if I said there weren't some cool scenes in there. In fact, I would love for this to be filmed or animated and for it to play out onscreen. It reads like it was meant to be adapted into something or to be played out in a visual medium. And while that is wonderful for screenplays and movies and the like, when applied to a medium like books, it...doesn't go nearly as well. </span><br />
<span style="color: #45818e;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #45818e;"> That isn't to say it isn't an <i>interesting</i> book. But, well...</span><br />
<span style="color: #45818e;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #45818e;">More, as always, below.</span><br />
<span style="color: #45818e;"></span><br />
<a name='more'></a><span style="color: #45818e;"><br /></span>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="color: #45818e;"><i>"It is good to come home...but just as the river is always at the door, the world is always outside. And it is in the world that we have to live."</i></span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="color: #45818e;"><i>- Shigeru Otori</i></span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="color: #45818e;"><i><br /></i></span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="color: #45818e;"> <i>Across the Nightingale Floor </i>by Lian Hearn is the story of Takeo, the ward of Lord Shigeru Otori. Takeo is a member of a secret civilization called The Hidden living in the wilds of his country. The Hidden are a Christian analogue that worship a single god whose rules abhor killing. One day, when Takeo is out picking mushrooms, the ruthless Tohan attack the village. The Tohan, under the control of the cruel Lord Iida Sadamu, mean to exterminate or drive the Hidden out by force, capturing the inhabitants and burning the village to the ground. In the ensuing chaos, Takeo accidentally unhorses Lord Iida himself and promptly runs from the Lord's retainers, only to be caught by Lord Otori. Otori rescues him from the retainers and brings him back to his castle, where the young Takeo is educated and taken in as part of his family.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="color: #45818e;"><i><br /></i></span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="color: #45818e;"><i> </i>But there are some odd <i>quirks</i> to Takeo, things he himself isn't aware of. Things like his ability to hear absolutely everyone in a house. Or the way he dispatched one of the top assassins in the country by accident after hearing him coming in the middle of the night. And then, suddenly a merchant who can project himself into two places at once shows up at the Otori household with a specific interest in Lord Otori's young ward...</span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="color: #45818e;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="color: #45818e;">And then things get weird. </span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="color: #45818e;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="color: #45818e;"> It turns out that a secret group known as The Tribe, a group able to put people to sleep at a glance and use their supernatural talents to rule from behind the scenes, far from the reach of the Three Countries or the Tohan Empire, has taken an interest in Takeo. Takeo's father was once a member of the Tribe, and an incredibly strong and accomplished one at that. Slowly, Kenji, the merchant and an ally of Lord Otori, trains Takeo to become more of an assassin, to shed his rough upbringing as a Hidden and take up the ways of his father. There is a darker, more ulterior purpose to Otori and Kenji's training, one that will lead Takeo to the large black-walled fortress of Iida Sadamu, and his infamous Nightingale Floor. If, of course, the Tribe doesn't have other plans for him, first...</span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="color: #45818e;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="color: #45818e;"> So the obvious place to start would be the action. The book, when it is active, when it is <i>moving</i>, is an immensely enjoyable read. It feels like it's going places. It feels like all the questions have answers. It feels like all the characters belong in the plot. And Hearn can write action like nobody else. It's fast, it's furious, and it's brilliant to read, whether it's a quick and brutal knife fight or an extended sequence of a rescue mission. There's nothing quite like Hearn when she's on. My favorite sequence has to be an extended fight with poles that ends in a sort of stalemate, where both people drop their poles to the ground. It's a training sequence, but imbued with such meaning and ability and emotion that it transcends that, becomes something more. Both people are trained fighters, but it's <i>how</i> they fight that makes it memorable. Another favorite is the tense fight with Shintaro, a fight that doesn't last very long, but uses the most of its space. Hearn's action is fluid, and the pacing in these sections is excellent.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="color: #45818e;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="color: #45818e;"> Unfortunately, the book has a serious pacing issue that keeps it from being as fun as it could be. Halfway through the book, around the time characters start seriously getting introduced, When everyone ends up at Hagi, the ancestral home of the Otori clan, things...just...stop. And don't really go anywhere. Takeo still trains, there's romance, there's a little angst, there's people generally being people, and it feels like a samurai film directed by late-stage Robert Altman. Which would be wonderful in any other book than a political-fantasy-thriller taking place in fantasy Not-Japan. When it finally clears and the wheels of the plot start moving again away from the exposition, they don't recover enough to not cast a pall over the rest of the book. This sequence also introduces a lot of extraneous characters that, overall, have very little to do with the plot. A love interest of Shigeru's barely appears, a few Tribe members and training montages occur, and there's some forced chemistry between Takeo and the betrothed of Shigeru Otori, Kaede Shirakawa.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="color: #45818e;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="color: #45818e;"> Kaede is another major issue with the book. You will notice in the plot summary that it doesn't say much about Kaede. That's because in <i>Across the Nightingale Floor</i>, she is barely an afterthought. I have heard that she gets much better and actually gains quite a bit of agency, But in this book, despite actually being given numerous chances to affect the plot, and having several scenes where she accomplishes great things (such as the scene where she manages to turn the tables on one of the villains), she seems to be a passive observer. Given a POV and chapters of her own just to add her point of view and show the role of women in Feudal Japanese society, but a passive observer. Which...could be important on its own, but in the course of a book like this, it stops things dead. Also, because she doesn't use what little agency she has, there's not much point to her being in the book in general. She could easily be lifted out or made a secondary character, but instead we are left with her killing the pacing dead to set up the next two books where she's more important. While it is true she kills two major villains, it isn't really enough to keep her from being more of an expositionary conveyance in someone else's story. </span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="color: #45818e;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="color: #45818e;"> And finally, there's the ending. The rushed, rushed ending. Hearn seems to realize that perhaps things are coming a little too easily to the heroes, and in retaliation has one faction pull a move that makes everything harder, allowing Kaede for a single moment of heroism before the book's close. It's not a surprising plot move, the sudden betrayal and removal of characters from the plot, it's just...arbitrary. There was a plot that could happen here, but unfortunately, the plot that could happen and the plot that actually happened are two disparate elements, two alternate futures from which we got a single bad one. It ties up everything loosely to set up the next book, and then stops short. At the very least, if Hearn was going to leave this mostly to exposition and the meanderings of Kaede Shirakawa, this should be the exciting lead-in to the next book. Unfortunately, none of those things are true in the slightest.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="color: #45818e;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="color: #45818e;"> So in the end, I can't recommend this book. Give it a pass. It may improve with the sequels, but that has absolutely no bearing on me. I'm hanging up on Lian Hearn, and I'd encourage the rest of you to do the same. The chemistry between characters is forced, the pacing is shot, and overall, this does a great disservice to all the things the author seemed to be trying to do with it. I hope Lian Hearn, whoever their pseudonym really is, gets more enjoyment out of writing under their own name, because with any luck, the Tales of the Otori series will be lost to the mists of time. </span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="color: #45818e;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="color: #cc0000;"><i>NEXT WEEK: </i></span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="color: #cc0000;"><i>- </i>Light<i> by M. John Harrison</i></span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="color: #cc0000;"><i><br /></i></span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="color: #cc0000;"><i>AND THEN</i></span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="color: #cc0000;">- The Company Man <i>by Robert Jackson Bennett</i></span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="color: #cc0000;"><i>- </i>Nova Swing <i>by M. John Harrison</i></span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="color: #cc0000;"><i><br /></i></span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="color: #cc0000;"><i>AND MANY OTHERS</i></span></div>
</div>
Caius Caligulahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06345161053444317875noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8662452127691085085.post-30356867917065367832014-12-12T16:30:00.001-05:002014-12-12T16:37:05.049-05:00The Geek Initiative Needs Your Help - Signal Boost!<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="color: #990000;"> </span></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<span style="color: #990000;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEglHJoUdW2UuYrdpBvySiL-9munVMoQGCZz8doBm9ehXSk0i3FV67lpBDlQWKSFgcBSt4Xvnc1SU_Ks_ZXMm45tjyhm1jMs_Lr1IZWKbkrLx5zVvg2LD7n_ueG2HlLAfiy0DAASRuUSeH8/s1600/tgibannertry5.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEglHJoUdW2UuYrdpBvySiL-9munVMoQGCZz8doBm9ehXSk0i3FV67lpBDlQWKSFgcBSt4Xvnc1SU_Ks_ZXMm45tjyhm1jMs_Lr1IZWKbkrLx5zVvg2LD7n_ueG2HlLAfiy0DAASRuUSeH8/s1600/tgibannertry5.png" height="70" width="400" /></a></span></div>
<br />
<span style="color: #990000;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #990000;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #990000;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #990000;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #990000;"> Hey, guys.</span><br />
<span style="color: #990000;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #990000;"> So, as I'm sure many of you constant readers know, occasionally I do work for other sites. I like it, and as cool as this is, it's nice to have things like editors and enforced deadlines and stuff like that. One of these sites is called <a href="http://www.geekinitiative.com/" target="_blank">The Geek Initiative</a>. It's run by an awesome lady named Tara, and she is having an Indiegogo drive right now to raise some funds. I would really like their drive to succeed, as I dig <a href="http://www.geekinitiative.com/author/caius/" target="_blank">writing stuff for them</a>, and I dig a lot of their output, which is well-reasoned and fairly rationally put. Mr. Ellis works over there, too, and you can read his articles under the handle of <a href="http://www.geekinitiative.com/?s=Kung+Fu+Dave" target="_blank">Kung Fu Dave</a>. </span><br />
<span style="color: #990000;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #990000;">Geek Initiative isn't asking for much, just eight hundred bucks to help out with some of the costs of being a badass geek journalism site. And every bit helps, guys. So I'm sending out a call to all you there in Constant Readerland to help these good people out. They deserve it, and it would be really cool if The Geek Initiative were able to reach further heights because of you awesome ladies and gentlemen. </span><br />
<span style="color: #990000;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #990000;">So: </span><br />
<br />
<span style="color: #990000;">If you'd like to help us out, click on the link below and donate a little. Or donate a lot. It's up to you, but please, don't hesitate to support the awesome contributors on the site. You really can't go wrong. </span><br />
<span style="color: #990000;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #990000;"><a href="https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/the-geek-initiative-level-up%C2%A0" target="_blank">https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/the-geek-initiative-level-up </a></span><br />
<span style="color: #990000;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #990000;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #990000;"><br /></span></div>
Caius Caligulahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06345161053444317875noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8662452127691085085.post-13575751722385630432014-12-07T00:38:00.002-05:002014-12-07T00:38:37.968-05:00This Book Is Full Of Spiders: Seriously, Dude, Don't Touch It<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="color: #45818e;"> </span></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<span style="color: #45818e;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhQxhlAJkTzZg0K7zNe7E1Pctd8aTZPfx_7KHpFXZqzkwDnGiQF-s78PxFFOc82OditkYrDKSje1TT9nW4nmVag-shRPcQukR0dul_GFB6geU_PddSY4G3vWUCyCUYjj5Eknsth2paN2-o/s1600/download+(17).jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhQxhlAJkTzZg0K7zNe7E1Pctd8aTZPfx_7KHpFXZqzkwDnGiQF-s78PxFFOc82OditkYrDKSje1TT9nW4nmVag-shRPcQukR0dul_GFB6geU_PddSY4G3vWUCyCUYjj5Eknsth2paN2-o/s1600/download+(17).jpg" height="400" width="258" /></a></span></div>
<br />
<span style="color: #45818e;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #45818e;"> When I was but a confused and kind of frightened college freshman living in a dorm somewhere in the high desert of New Mexico without many friends or a frame of reference, I took solace in the internet. It was kind of a cautionary prelude to the near-complete agoraphobia I currently find myself dealing with on a semi-regular basis. Honestly...I probably shoulda seen this coming. But in my sort of self-imposed exile in my room, I kept seeing this weird banner with blue eye design. It would pop up on every webcomic, every horror review site, practically everywhere I went, I was followed by this thing like a stalker follows the popular kid at school. It was more annoying than intriguing, but finally it wore me down and I clicked on it. </span><br />
<span style="color: #45818e;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #45818e;"> The site, johndiesattheend.com, contained a blackly comic novel so good that I had to spam the link as many places as I possibly could, and did so. It was a brilliant work. Not the most tightly-written thing under the sun, but hilarious, and most importantly for my impoverished ass, it was free. Later on, as kind of a "thank you", I actually bought a hardcover copy of the book. I haven't even lent my copy to anyone. And when I found the sequel </span><i style="color: #45818e;">This Book Is Full Of Spiders</i><span style="color: #45818e;"> came out, I tried to pick up that. Unfortunately, it took me a few years to actually track down one I could pay for, and it wasn't until I randomly found it while looking for something else (Jack Womack's </span><i style="color: #45818e;">Going Going Gone</i><span style="color: #45818e;">) that I decided to pick it up and take it home for review. Immediately it promised a story of bizarre experiments, military intervention, and the good sort of weirdness and style that made me try to emulate it multiple times in my own work. </span><br />
<span style="color: #45818e;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #45818e;"> And sadly, it isn't as good. While still unique, and head and shoulders above most of what passes for mainstream works in the bizarro genre these days (lookin' at you, <i>Zombies and Shit</i>), it's a little too polished. A little too safe. The biases are worn a little more clearly on the book's sleeve. So while it's entirely readable, and rightfully so, I'm a little conflicted on this one. I'd say get it from the library or borrow it if you're curious, and then buy it if you really like it. It's certainly weird, and a good read, but the magic just wasn't there for me has much. Especially where it falls apart for me at the end. </span><br />
<span style="color: #45818e;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #45818e;">More, as always, below</span><br />
<br />
<a name='more'></a><div style="color: #45818e; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div style="color: #45818e; text-align: center;">
<i>"If you had to choose, and if you were not allowed to see either ahead of time and had no other information to go on, would you rather fight Mindcrow, or Gonadulus?"</i></div>
<div style="color: #45818e; text-align: center;">
<i><br /></i></div>
<div style="color: #45818e; text-align: center;">
<i>"This isn't a government operation, is it?"</i></div>
<div style="color: #45818e; text-align: center;">
<i>- Dr. Tennet and John Cheese</i></div>
<div style="color: #45818e; text-align: center;">
<i><br /></i></div>
<div style="color: #45818e; text-align: left;">
<i><br /></i></div>
<div style="color: #45818e; text-align: left;">
<i> </i>The town of Undisclosed lies somewhere around the Midwestern US. It's a small town, one that still has a video store despite it being 2012, and in most ways is entirely unremarkable to the numerous inhabitants who live and work there. While the inhabitants seem a little off themselves, for the most part they're just the usual weird small-town characters who would exist anywhere with a high enough crime rate and enough bored people. In this town live two youngish men named David Wong and John Cheese. David seems unusually, impossibly average in his day to day life. He's troubled, sure, and he has this constant attitude of disdain with a side of well-contained anger, but apart from that, he seems like anyone else. His friend John is a loud, boisterous, drunken maniac who keeps a triple-barrel sawed-off shotgun in the trunk of his rusted-out Cadillac and "sings" in a punk band called Three-Arm Sally. Oh-- and they also investigate weird phenomena, something that seems incredibly commonplace in the town of Undisclosed. </div>
<div style="color: #45818e; text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="color: #45818e; text-align: left;">
John and David, you see, are uniquely gifted to find the various insane phenomena in Undisclosed, having been granted visions after a horrifying drug trip they (accidentally) took a few years ago. Things have kind of settled into a routine after those events, with them doing the things they always do: Taking care of the weird phenomena, trailing the clean-cut Asian guy in the SUV who pulls vanishing acts in the restroom of the local burrito hut, and generally pissing around town. Well-- there <i>was</i> that incident where David shot a pizza delivery man with a crossbow because he thought it was the creepy homeless guy who decided to levitate by his bedroom window and stalk his girlfriend, but he's getting court-appointed therapy for that now, so everything's more or less good. Until the day that our intrepid heroes are peeing off the top of a water tower, and see a military-style SUV crash into a telephone pole further down the road. Upon investigation, they find that the SUV is full of GI Joe toys and a mysterious green box, and while the box is weird, it isn't anything more than an odd curiosity, even when opened. </div>
<div style="color: #45818e; text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="color: #45818e; text-align: left;">
Of course, then things get weird.</div>
<div style="color: #45818e; text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="color: #45818e; text-align: left;">
David wakes up to find some kind of huge-mouthed spider-creature climbing slowly up his legs beneath the covers. It injects him with some kind of paralytic poison, but he manages to survive the experience and traps it temporarily under a laundry basket until he and John can deal with it. Unfortunately, a police officer happens to arrive, hearing the commotion and knowing that Dave is some kind of crazy freak, and refuses to leave until he can investigate. A few scant moments later, and the police officer has had a parasitic spider climb into his mouth and take control of his brain, is sent to the hospital, and begins killing people and livestock all over Undisclosed in an attempt to infect David and John. And, were this anything other than the beginning of the plot, a rampaging cop zombie with an arachnid version of The Thing in it would make for an interesting enough story.</div>
<div style="color: #45818e; text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="color: #45818e; text-align: left;">
But, as it turns out, the "spider" is the kind of creature that can <i>breed</i>, and in no time at all, an outbreak of horrifying mouth-creatures is on the rise, a shadowy government organization known as REPER has taken over and quarantined Undisclosed, and anything John and David try to do to fix the situation, any of their numerous tricks gleaned from incompetently dispatching extradimensional and paranormal entities all over Undisclosed, seems to make it worse. With David locked inside the city, his girlfriend Amy on the outside of it, and John trying to devise a way to get trapped inside the quarantine to save everyone, the outlook continues to get grimmer by the moment. But there is still hope, and let's face it, the two of them have gotten better results with even less resources, so maybe, <i>maybe</i>, they'll be able to pull this one out all right. Or they'll doom the world to extinction by spider monsters, but either way, they have to try <i>something</i>. </div>
<div style="color: #45818e; text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="color: #45818e; text-align: left;">
So to start off, <i>This Book is Full of Spiders</i> does a good job of keeping the sense of humor and tone of its predecessor alive. David Wong does an excellent job of constantly bouncing between horror and comedy, sometimes in the same sentence, and something can be absolutely frightening after it's given a moment's thought, but be entirely hilarious the moment you think of it. A lot of the time, like David's battle against the spider-creature in his house, it can be both. Where normally this would be annoying, a book unable to make up its mind, the narrative control Wong brings to the table, as well as the sense of restraint, makes it well worth the read, and not nearly as annoying in the same way as many others who try to do the same thing. And then, there are some sequences that kind of walk the line, played completely serious, but are actually kind of weirdly funny in a way, like the weird rules the quarantined sanitarium has, rules that result in over-the-top and gory consequences. It says something that the book can actually support the adventures of both David and John without ever feeling <i>too</i> uneven or forced during their screen time. Through all of this, one never feels that Wong lets the narrative get away from him, or that it gets really out of control. </div>
<div style="color: #45818e; text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="color: #45818e; text-align: left;">
The other great thing about the book is the way it's paced. At the beginning of each section, a countdown starts. The chapter headings will read "48 hours until outbreak" or "8 days until the massacre at Ffirth Asylum". The countdown continues throughout the book, keeping the tension up. Because the book is more or less told in first-person by David (or in third-person focused with Amy and John), it does a good job of letting you know "Oh, by the way, this is going to happen" without actually giving away much of what happens. As the countdown ticks lower and lower, the tension of what's going to happen is ratcheted up, creating an unnerving and altogether tense race. And, part of the doom is that you <i>know</i> what's going to happen, but not <i>how</i>. There is <i>going</i> to be an outbreak in Undisclosed, of course there is, but what kind and how is a mystery. And, given Wong's writing style, where any given character can die at any given moment (and does, many times), it actually keeps things tense. Especially with three main characters to share narrative duties. After all, just because the brunt of the book is Dave's first-person narration, that doesn't mean that he can't pull a <i>Lovely Bones.</i> Or a <i>Sunset Boulevard</i>. Or a <i>Time's</i>...well, you get the idea. </div>
<div style="color: #45818e; text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="color: #45818e; text-align: left;">
However, there are a few problems with the book. Chief among them is that the book borders on author filibuster at times. It's somewhat difficult to tell whether the opinions being voiced on things like violent video games and the lack of humanity to be able to focus and/or care about each other is just the character, or whether it is the author's views. It creates some kind of weird Poe's Law whirlwind. What is more clear, however, is that the section on how video games create desensitivity to violence (a longer version of a similar rant delivered by a character in <i>John Dies at the End</i>) is about half as effective or intriguing as the infamous copyright rant in K. W. Jeter's <i>Noir</i>, and about as annoying as that one was. Part of it, I realize, is my fault, my inability to separate David Wong the character from David Wong the author from David Wong the Cracked writer. But the tirades against humanity and the idea that technology is slowly killing us, while worked into the plot developments, kind of stick out a little and kill the momentum in a way that isn't entirely welcome. The strawman sections with </div>
<div style="color: #45818e; text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="color: #45818e; text-align: left;">
Another problem with the book is that in this one, when the POV switches around from David, it doesn't feel as cohesive. While it can be useful in places, the book just sort of feels adrift. While it's useful to get Amy's point of view, for example, during the Ffirth Asylum massacre, it kind of takes away from what makes the book so appealing in the first place. The core of the book is the interactions between the three. Having the ego and superego of the group split away and spending time with them as the ego and superego of <i>other</i> groups of people just weakens the narrative. Where in other books with POV switches, then the insights into the group might be surprising or thought-provoking or cement the characters, but here Amy, John, and David's relationships are part of who they are as characters. Taking that away doesn't make them stronger on their own, it just weakens the story. </div>
<div style="color: #45818e; text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="color: #45818e; text-align: left;">
And finally, there's the ending. Where the book before could be excused and forgiven for its odd idiosyncrasies and crazy twists and turns, a large portion of the climax of the book is just really messy and doesn't make as much sense. It falls apart in strange explanations, contradictions, and just plain odd narrative choices. The wackiness that occurs at the end seems like a sort of tacked-on bit. The book recovers with "elegy" and "epilogue", but the third section of the book just feels...kinda forced and loose, honestly. Alien to the concept that came before it. There were some foreshadowed moments, but it just feels silly in the wrong way to turn the characters into reality-warpers able to stop time and several elements played for comedy suddenly turning into superweapons. And silly in the wrong way just kind of stops everything dead. </div>
<div style="color: #45818e; text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="color: #45818e; text-align: left;">
In the end, I think this book's effectiveness hinges on whether or not you find David Wong (the writer) as clever as Wong finds himself. Or as funny. It's clear he's on board with most of the stuff in this, including a scene where a velvet Jesus painting incinerates enemies, and if you're the kind of person who digs that kind of action, you might like it more than I did. I like that sort of thing given the proper context, and I'm sure someone like Patrick Wensink or Darren Shan could make me care about using that kind of element in the climax. But I just couldn't get behind it. I felt like I'd gone the entire book and then was rewarded not with any kind of bang, but a few shrugs and an epilogue that kind of made up for it but not really. Now, it may be wrong to damn a book on a section that's maybe a chapter at the most, but it really killed the enthusiasm of the book for me. </div>
<div style="color: #45818e; text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="color: #45818e; text-align: left;">
So find this book at the library. If you like David Wong's stuff, then pick it up. If you're curious about his stuff, then definitely pick it up from the library or as an inter-library loan. You might like it as much as I did. You might like it more than I did. The most you have to lose on any of these things is your time.</div>
<div style="color: #45818e; text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="color: #45818e; text-align: left;">
Well, and your brain to parasitic spiders. Apparently the book is full of them. </div>
<div style="color: #45818e; text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="color: #990000;"><i>NEXT WEEK:</i></span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="color: #990000;">- Across the Nightingale Floor <i>by Lian Hearn</i></span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="color: #990000;"><i><br /></i></span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="color: #990000;"><i>AND THEN:</i></span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="color: #990000;">- The Company Man <i>by Robert Jackson Bennett</i></span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="color: #990000;"><i><br /></i></span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="color: #990000;"><i>AND MANY OTHERS. NORMAL SERVICE HAS RESUMED.</i></span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="color: #990000;"><i><br /></i></span></div>
</div>
Caius Caligulahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06345161053444317875noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8662452127691085085.post-54873468224984102072014-11-06T04:33:00.001-05:002014-11-06T04:33:35.981-05:00Month of Long Books Announcement<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<span style="color: #990000;">Hey, guys. </span><br />
<span style="color: #990000;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #990000;">So, as the holidays are coming up, and I have some longer books I'd like to read (Robert Jackson Bennett's <i>American Elsewhere</i> being one), and some books I'd like to read that don't fit the format (<i>Everybody Loves Our Town</i> by Mark Yarm, among others), I'm having another Month of Long Books, where I can get back into the swing of reading things without having to worry about if it fits or if I need to spend enough time on it. </span><br />
<span style="color: #990000;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #990000;">So: See you guys in December with an armload of new reviews! I did this last year, and it really helped, so I figured I'd do it again.</span><br />
<span style="color: #990000;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #990000;">Have a good Thanksgiving</span><br />
<span style="color: #990000;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #990000;">-SR/CC</span></div>
Caius Caligulahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06345161053444317875noreply@blogger.com2