The Truth

                 

        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 that 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 Discworld and got me to start telling people about books I thought they should read. 

So without any further ado, I present The Truth. The book without which, along with Neverwhere, this blog would not exist. 


And Sir Terry? I knew it was coming. That doesn't make it hurt any less.

This Book Is Full Of Spiders: Seriously, Dude, Don't Touch It

                    

          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. 

                                 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 This Book Is Full Of Spiders 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 Going Going Gone) 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. 

                             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, Zombies and Shit), 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. 

More, as always, below

Gravity's Rainbow

"A Screaming comes across the sky..."

- First line

"What?"

- Richard M. Nixon

           It has been an age that I have been locked in mortal combat with this book. I first discovered it when my dad told me about it, and that if I could read it and understand it, I would be able to prove myself in most intellectual arenas against people who do the New York Times crossword in pen. Because he spoke so highly of the book, I took it out of the library one summer in my precocious youth and sat down on the back porch (because in those days we still had a back porch, before sad and upsetting circumstances forced us to do without) and began to read.

           Moments later, and about fifty pages in, I stopped and went, "Why this is simply a World War II novel written in dense and confusing language!" And closed the book, resolving never to pick it up again. This, combined with my earlier attempts to read V. at the local public pool (an attempt which may have been sadly colored by sitting in gum as I read at the local public pool), convinced me Thomas Pynchon was a complete waste of time. I believed I'd tried, seen through him, and that was all there was to it. I didn't need to read any more. I didn't need to know any more. I could safely write him off and never have to read any more ever again. 

               Except...then, on the advice of the usually sage and slightly whacked Steve Jackson Games, who listed The Crying of Lot 49 in their influences in the back of the manual for Illuminati*, I checked out Lot 49, and it was amazing. I still didn't think I was ready for Gravity's Rainbow, and maybe it was just the time that I read it, which was around the same time I'd read Naked Lunch and several other books of conspiracy lit written on drugs, but it was enough to make me turn around. I actually tried reading Gravity's Rainbow again in 2011, but sadly between looming overdue fees and the schedule for my then-budding book blog, I was unable to actually get very far. 

               But finally, after years of false starts and bizarre interruptions, I can finally say that I have read Gravity's Rainbow. And it is one of the greatest, if not the greatest work of American literature, and an all-time favorite of mine. While I cannot recommend this book to everyone, I believe that everyone should at least give it a try, as there is literally nothing else like it. It's a huge, dense, bizarre musical comedy-fantasy-science fiction-thriller that in the end is about absolutely everything, while not actually being about absolutely everything. As I have said twice before with books this month, literally the only thing you have to lose is time, so do yourself a favor. At the very least, it'll be interesting. At the most, it might open you up to some interesting thoughts that you may not have had. But either way, all you'll waste is your time.

More, as always, below.

Death Warmed Over

"You can rot in hell!"

"I'd prefer not to rot anywhere."

- Straight Edge member and Dan Chambeaux

                         

     I have something of a checkered history with the books of Kevin J. Anderson. He first appeared on my radar with his New Jedi Academy trilogy of Star Wars books, a series of books that, while competently written enough, were incredibly silly and involved a new superweapon called the Sun Crusher. New Jedi Academy was, perhaps, not the weapons-grade atrocity that R.A. Salvatore and Michael Stackpole would later unleash unto the expanded universe, but Anderson's book is full of weird narrative choices and introducing a new character who winds up riding the Sun Crusher around and declaring open war on the remainder of the Empire, all of which gives one pause. His other major track record, also focused on ruining my teenage years, is the expanded Dune series, an expansion of a series that should have stopped at book one, maybe book two the first time. In short, recoiling at his name and finding a nice Stephen Hunt book to curl up in has always seemed like the best option. 

                                But, as I have said repeatedly, the only thing you have to lose when you pick up a book-- even by an author you don't like-- is the time you spend reading it*. So when my dad handed me a copy of Death Warmed Over, the first entry in Kevin J. Anderson's Dan Shamble, Zombie PI series, at first I looked upon it with mild apprehension, but then decided to give it a shot. After all, I had nothing to lose, and it would either give me another gleefully dissenting review, or a surprising success to write for all of you guys. And I was at least interested in the novel, considering it started out with the hero being stalked by a werewolf hitman so he could rescue a kitschy painting of zombie dogs for a ghost who seems modeled slightly off of Andy Warhol.

And, well, guys, I think it's "Caius Admits He's Wrong" month. Because while no one would ever think that Death Warmed Over is great literature, it's a tremendously fun read, and if this is what Kevin J. Anderson wants to do with himself, then I welcome it with open arms and I'll admit that I might be wrong about him being as horrible as the other expanded universe authors I mentioned above. It's a delightful, light book that reminds me of law-procedural dramedies, only with a heavily supernatural twist. And it's a great summer read, if nothing else.

More, as always, below. 

Insane City

"And then everybody got arrested."  

                          

        I've been struggling a little with this review, and I couldn't figure out why. Insane City is a book that's a lot of fun, the dialogue is great, though it's beyond loose, and the characters are colorful and exist in more than one dimension, which is rare in certain genres these days. And it's by Dave Barry, one of my favorite authors and one of the few people in the Florida crime genre not to have fallen into the rut of formulaic writing. But trying to quantify the book got harder and harder, and every time I looked at what I'd written, I just got more and more pissed off. And finally, something clicked and locked into place earlier this morning, something that finally made everything make perfect sense:

       I couldn't review the book the way I did every other book for one fundamental reason: There's not actually much there to review. Which isn't to say that there isn't a book there, there's definitely a book, but there isn't actually too much to it. It's a series of vignettes and character sketches that eventually coalesce into a beautiful chase sequence at the end of the novel, but I just can't dissect this one the way I usually do. How do you pick apart a book that works well as a whole, but falls apart under closer scrutiny? 

        Well, you don't, obviously, because the whole thing falls apart that way. The entire insane mess whirls around these characters and scenes, never slowing down.  When it finally reaches its ending and collapses, exhausted, on the ground for the epilogue, then you're left with the feeling that you've read something enjoyable. Lacking in substance, full of snarky asides to issues with Florida, and with the usual complaints about twenty-first century air travel, but definitely enjoyable.

But if I just ended the review there, you guys would feel cheated. Well-- since this is two days behind deadline, more cheated than you already are*. 

So, as I attempt to make some sense of this...

More, as always, below.

Ready Player One

 "I'm seeing flying ostriches now in my sleep!"

-Art3mis             

     The most important film critic of our generation, a Mr. Roger Ebert, once said that when he reviewed movies, he tried to look at each film from a specific viewpoint. He said the first thing he would always do is ask "Who is this movie for?" That he couldn't review a movie until he knew who the filmmaker was trying to reach, and that he would then work forward from there and review the movie on the merits it had from that perspective.

                  I have had my mild disagreements with Mr. Ebert in the past, but I'm reminded of Lewis Carroll's maxim about the broken clock being right at least twice a day. And in this statement, he outlines something kind of important to remember about criticism. Especially with Ready Player One. You see, Ernest Cline is pretty clearly writing for a specific audience with this book. And if you're not in the specific audience, well, it can kind of get annoying when the unending spiel of anime, TV, movie, and music references fills up the page like brand names in American Psycho...though perhaps that might be the point, a self-reflective look at "geek culture" and internet culture and all of the numerous things that go along with that. It's hard to exactly say whether it's a culture-geek power fantasy, or making fun of it, but if it's as earnest as it seems in the book, I hope Mr. Cline got all the pop-culture references out of his bloodstream before he decides to write another one. 

              That isn't to say it's a bad book. Cline knows his way around a sentence, clearly, and he has some sequences that definitely work. While it's a deeply flawed book, it's an amazing first novel and when Cline works all the kinks out of his writing, I'd definitely like to read more of what he wrote. And I admit that there were some moments that definitely surprised me. And, at its core, it's got a really human message about growing up and learning to live in the world, or at least to make a place somewhere for yourself and your friends and your loved ones. But in the end, the sheer crushing weight of pop-culture eventually drowns out any message or heart or humanity the book has in its noise which, satirical or not, is still noise. And while at times it's worth the slog, most of the time it isn't really.

But how can it be all those things? Well, read on...

Popular Hits of the Showa Era

 

      
      Okay, the rundown is as follows: This is a wonderful satire of two groups of disaffected people who somehow find their way in the world through karaoke and murdering each other. While this is well-written, it's more about the relationships between the two groups, whose dwindling members are experiencing life and bringing each other closer by slowly picking off the other side. The murders are a very small part of it. The characters are overly-cartoonish and sociopathic, but if you can get beyond that, then there's a rich, very twisted comedy hiding between these covers, and one I suggest people read.

           On the other hand, the characters are all cartoonish sociopaths with no real moral compass, the novel doesn't give us anyone to root for on either side, and the whole thing seems a little too over-the-top for its own good. It's like a roadrunner cartoon disguised as social satire. When the devastating consequences of the actions taken in the book finally come to a head in the final chapters, it comes as something of a shock-- no one's really been chastised for their behavior before now, they've merely existed in a cartoon, and to suddenly have psychological and physical consequences reached at that point kind of seems needlessly cruel. Even for characters as unsympathetic as this.

            But in the end, I enjoyed it. As nasty and twisted as it was, it's an interesting way of looking at the social issues in an urban environment, and a good satire of those "life-affirming" books where the heroes are brought closer together by some kind of event. Also, I didn't quite see the ending coming, and that's always a plus as far as I'm concerned. More as always, this time with spoilers, below.