Last Call

    

     Okay, so the rundown is as follows: I love this book. I love it unabashedly, I love it with all my heart and soul, it is hands down one of the best books I have read. The characters, dialogue, and the way history and actual mysticism and mathematics are woven into the fiction all work, and even anyone who isn't well-versed in crazy historical minutiae can enjoy the story of a man storming Las Vegas to claim back his soul and his birthright with no difficulty. Add to this the descriptions, some genuine moments of dread and well-conveyed paranoia from the characters, and a sense of danger that never really lets up, and you have a book well worth reading.

       The downside is, there are a few sequences that never really pay off, and sometimes there is just too much going on sometimes on even one page to keep up with. Also, the main character spends a whole section-- possibly two-- of the book doing some really stupid things against the advice of people who clearly know more about this stuff than he does. But it serves as some good character development, and helps create a line between Scott's self-destructive urges and his need to finish his quest. All in all, the book is worth a read, possibly a buy, and a ride you won't regret taking.

On Stranger Tides

"You used it up too fast."

- Benjamin Hurwood

Due to it being just as easy to post up here, I will be updating both the Tumblr and this simultaneously when I have a post. It's just neater for me.

Sweet Hell. That is all.

      Okay, maybe not all. As long-time readers of this blog may know, I am a Tim Powers fanboy for life. I've read his worst (the stable time looperiffic The Anubis Gates takes top prize, in my opinion), I've read his best, and I've read everything in between. And none of them-- that's right, a grand total of none of them knocked me on my ass the way On Stranger Tides did. I once said that a writer's job is done when he or she makes the reader feel anything at all, even revulsion. Not only has Tim Powers done that, he did it so well and so frequently that even at the book's most manipulative, I have nothing but the utmost respect for him. The man is a genius, and more importantly, a genius who continues to write to this very day. And this is easily one of his greatest works, one of the two best things I've ever read by him. The ripples it has made in pop-culture further cement it as a classic, and if I didn't own it myself, I would be kicking myself again and again.

      On Stranger Tides is the story of John Chandagnac, re-christened Jack Shandy after he was captured by a rather liberally-minded (and possibly anarcho-syndaclist) group of pirates crewed by a man named Phil Davies. Shandy is on the trail of his uncle, the nefarious Sebastian, who ruined both his life and his father's. Soon, he finds himself embroiled in sorcerer's duels, reincarnating pirates, zombies, voodoo curses, and the Fountain of Youth. To survive and rescue the woman he loves from her vile personal physician and other evil forces, Shandy must survive all these things, win a duel with Blackbeard, and contend with powers beyond human control or understanding. And all of it is fantastic.

Part of what makes it so fantastic is Powers' copious research into his topics. From very early on, he makes it clear that he's done all the research he can on large sailing ships, voodoo, and the politics of the Caribbean area. None of it feels rushed or handwaved, and all of it is very, very authentic-feeling, even when it's fictitious or the details are fudged. Powers also handily sidesteps the problem of having historical characters interact in his universe by way of the copious research. I never had time to think "But Blackbeard never acted like that..." because between the realism of the setting and the way the characters act, there's really very little room for doubt. 

       Another area with very little room for doubt is the characterization. All the characters are very three-dimensional, partly because Powers understands that it's not enough to have one's characters do things because they're good, or evil, but important to understand the why of their reasonings. Shandy may be one of the heroes, but he is forced, both by Davies and by his love for the book's romantic interest to occasionally do terrible things, to the point that he no longer recognizes himself. Davies may be a dashing pirate, but he's also a brutal murderer, because that's what he has to do to survive. One of the book's major villains performs actions that border on mind rape and are definitely unconscionable, but by understanding his motivation and the point that he's reached, you understand a little more of why he felt it was necessary, making him a more effective villain by showing that he'd reached that point (trying to resurrect his dead wife). 

       The magic in On Stranger Tides is also handled fairly well. Instead of "this is power over everything", it's a more practical approach-- eternal life means magical postponement/reincarnation (a common theme in Powers' work), rituals handle things instead of incantations and handwaving (though the minor spells are that), and everything is geared towards asking the loas, or gods politely "Could I please bend the rules of reality?" While there are a few exceptions (Blackbeard being a big one, the sorcerer's duel with Friend being another), most of the magic is very low-key...people gesturing a little, or tossing a ball of dirt into the air, or saying the proper rhyme. Because it isn't a high-magic setting, this also helps keep it believable and all the characters nicely grounded. 

And lastly, the book has a remarkable sense of humor about itself. Most of this humor is delivered through the character of Philip Davies, who snarks his way through the book while both embodying and deconstructing the lovable dashing rogue stereotype. Some of it comes from Jack figuring out how to interact with the strange world he's been dropped in. All of it is as dark as one would expect for a setting this creepy, but it makes sense that the humor should match the tone of the book and not run counter to it. 

      On Stranger Tides is not without its flaws, though. Well, flaw. The book leads its readers on a merry chase through the Caribbean, but falls short in the last three chapters with the final confrontation. After watching Shandy pursue his goals tirelessly through the book, sometimes doing absolutely grotesque things in the name of love and justice, to have the book resolve Shandy's revenge and his rescue of the damsel in distress in such a way is a bit of a let-down. While Powers recovers nicely, the flaw is too glaring not to at least bring up. Also, calling the final chapter an epilogue when it doesn't really tie up any loose ends but just ends the book is a bit of a strange move. 

      But this flaw is negligible. This book is a classic, one that should be read and remembered for decades to come. Read it. Buy it. Request it for your libraries. Do whatever you have to so you can read this book. It is important that you read this book. It is equally important that this book survives. It has made it easily to the top of my list of things to read, managing to surprise me and engage me, usually at the same time. Read this book. This is too good a book to be remembered by thePirates of the Caribbean movie based on it. You will like this book. You must read this book.That is all.

Next up:

- I try an anime Live Action Roleplay

- Either Electric Barracuda or Nuclear Jellyfish by Tim Dorsey

- Other things as they arise

- Hopefully, the tenth-anniversary edition of American Gods.

Expiration Date

         

 "Madam, I've just run over your cat and I'd like to replace it."

"I don't know...how good are you at catching mice?"

- Elizalde, to herself

            As previously stated, I freaking love Tim Powers. And this is one of the books that did that to me. At the time I found it, I'd just finished Last Call and found this one on the "Leave a book, take a book" rack at one of the public places in town. The story sounded so engaging and the ideas were definitely ones I hadn't heard before, and it was Tim Powers to boot, so I started it, hoping it would grip me the way Last Call did and give me just as many reasons to love it. Annnnd...I was wrong. It wasn't completely the book's fault as much as it was the format. For some reason, I am completely incapable of reading mass-market paperbacks these days. I still do from time to time...you can't really avoid it these days, particularly in genre writing, but my preferred format is a nice-sized hardcover or trade paperback copy. It's the way the pages tend to slip while I'm reading and the spine bends too easy, I think.
            But when I got a copy I could actually read, and got through the parts where I'd kept putting it down, I loved it. Maybe not as much as Last Call, but definitely more than Deviant's Palace. Powers has managed to take his own weird, somewhat gritty style and reliance on historical fact, meld it with a modern-day crime novel sensibility (I'll get to what kind later), and then let it run amok all over Los Angeles. Expiration Date is our world, more or less, but one with pragmatic supernatural rules, a certain sensibility to it. Ghosts are commonplace and can be bought and sold fairly easily. The more famous and the "purer" the ghost, the more in demand they are. And why are ghosts so in demand? So they can be inhaled. Yes, Expiration Date is a drug novel about people snorting ghosts. And I can't believe I just typed that with a straight face.
             Expiration Date begins, though, with Koot Hoomie Parganas, whose parents are part of a rather strict Buddhist sect. Kootie, as he will be known for the rest of the book, is a young man who wants to run away from home. His parents treat him like a reincarnation of a dead religious leader, which means no meat, no real friends, and Kootie is tired of it. But in running away from home, he destroys a precious bust of Dante Aligheri, a bust with a rather important artifact that Kootie's parents were keeping from some very unsavory characters who want it for themselves. With his parents brutally (and I do mean brutally) murdered, Kootie sets off with this artifact (okay, it's the last breath of Thomas Alva Edison) into the world, trying to figure out exactly what the hell is going on. He is pursued by a one-armed amnesiac ghost trapper named Sherman Oaks, and at various times aided by a cast of other characters. The other three main leads are Pete, an electrician with certain latent psychic abilities (and a psychic mask of Harry Houdini), Shadroe, a ghost haunting his body to evade the main antagonist, and  Doctor Elizalde a former psychologist whose brush with the supernatural destroyed her career. Together, they're afloat in plots they can never quite understand, trying to keep between their pursuers and their next fix. 
               The one major problem with the book is its focus. In having these protagonists and stories running around, you easily find that you like some better than others, and the worst of them is the stupid double-act that makes up the "Kootie and Edison" arc. Edison gets absorbed by the young man, you see, but not enough to be assimilated. So he shares Kootie's body as the two evade the violent and irrational Sherman Oaks. And it's dull. Pete's arc has the traditional "man on the run" story, Elizalde is trying to piece together what happened to her despite her being an avowed atheist, Shadroe is possessing his own body, and we get stuck with the kid for the brunt of the book. They have some good moments, of course, but overall, it feels like it should be leading somewhere, and it doesn't until two-thirds through.
                 Which isn't to say the book is bad at all. Powers exercises amazing control despite the "large sprawling cast" form being out of his usual purview, and each of the characters (including the villains) have their own motivations and reasons. It's all handled wonderfully, and comes to a climax that's well worth it and where more than a few plot twists are answered (Tim Powers never met a loose end he didn't want tied in a neat little bow), too, which is nice. Elements found at the beginning of the book come into play near the end, improbable escapes are had by all, and the story and theme fit almost as if they'd been designed for each other. 
                And the themes are death, the apocalypse, and addiction. I know, it's hard to have a happy ending with those things in there, but somehow, they manage to pull it off. Pete, Elizalde, and Kootie start to form a family structure somewhere near the end, there's a nice ironic fate for the villain, and things go swimmingly from there. Though...I really do have to wonder why there are all the apocalyptic overtones in the work, like the gigantic "lobster-quadrille" that beaches itself on the shore, or the fact that dead people are walking the earth to get inhaled by the living, another sign of the apocalypse. The dead walking around, not the inhaling thing. 
                  Powers does a wonderful job with the spiritualist parts, too, as Thomas Edison and Harry Houdini actually were interested in the spirit world (which was the very reason Houdini went around debunking mediums-- he wasn't skeptical about the existence of spirits, he just wanted people to stop with all the fake claims and making money off of spirits), and they're used to fantastic effect. As usual, Powers has definitely done his research, and it shows in every last bit-- be it the constantly referencing the Queen Mary's history, or the flashbacks to Edison's past. There's definitely a command of the language and ideas here that makes the book well worthwhile.
                      But with all of these things, I can't recommend it completely. The first time I read it was in the prime of my Tim Powers infatuation, and looking upon it now, I see that may have clouded my judgement. Expiration Date is a fine book, yes, but not as original as it might seem. The plot is loose, but follows many of the conventions of a regular crime novel, where all the characters eventually come together and the ending has at least one gunfight. It hardly seems as tightly-woven as many of his other books, in particular Last Call, the companion piece and preceding volume to this one. Kootie is too annoying a main character to stick with for two-thirds of the book, and the other characters aren't featured enough to pick up the slack, leaving me with a feeling that this should really have been a different kind of book. 
                        So in the end, yes, you should read Expiration Date, but please don't buy it. Pick it up from the library, read it over a weekend, and you'll find it enjoyable enough that it will leave a good impression. But please, instead, save your money for one of Powers' much better books, such as Three Days to Never, Last Call, or his other equally brilliant works (except for The Anubis Gates, but I'll get to that later). This is a good book, but not a great one.


Next week: We get even more conventional with The Neverending Story, a children's fantasy novel that is a lot darker and more German than one would think

Dinner at Deviant's Palace

"They can't stand the bitter rain, so they run underneath one of the two awnings--religion or dissipation-- and guess who's waiting for them, under both awnings at once..." - Sevatividam

           I freaking love Tim Powers. I'd like to just get that out of the way. The man flings ideas into the air and then makes them collide at high speeds, he helped invent the steampunk genre, and more than that, he tends to write books that unfold at equally high speeds with a lot of substance. Whether it's the Las Vegas sleaze hiding a soul-trading game in Last Call or the drug addiction novel centered around ghost-huffing that is Expiration Date, he manages to deliver. And while his book On Stranger Tides is getting made into a movie in the most terrible and sad way possible, it's still getting made into a movie, and that's kinda cool. Also, due to Tides, every time you see pirates and voodoo together in a movie (or a video game *coughcough* Monkey Island*coughcough*), it's officially Tim Powers' fault.

           I first uncovered Dinner at Deviant's Palace in a Bookman's. It had no cover and no plot synopsis, just a simple yellow book in the sci-fi section. Granted, this didn't exactly endear me to it, as I kinda need some kind of synopsis to get an idea of what I'm getting into. Too many books titled things like The Vampires of Venice or things like that only to be about a bunch of war atrocities when I'm not in the mood for them. However, on a train last week, I found a copy of the paperback and dove right in. By three AM the next morning, I was done with the book. I finished it within a day, almost, and I have to say: It's one of the best freaking books I've read. And entirely unexpected as to the central ideas.

            The book begins in post-nuke California with Gregorio Rivas, a musician, or "gunner", getting an odd request. One of the richest people in LA, Barrows, has lost a loved one to a religious cult called the Jaybirds. He pays Rivas five thousand "fifths" (playing cards used to represent brandy, the currency of this new world) to infiltrate the cult and bring her back home. You see, Rivas used to be a member of the cult who found out how sinister it actually was and ran away. He's also got a shady past as a "redemptionist", a combination of a cult deprogrammer and bounty hunter who tries to rescue wayward cultists and bring them back to their families by pretending to be cultists. And all of this has to do with his target: Barrows' daughter, Urania-- the former love of Rivas' life and what set him off on such a strange path on the first place. After much internal conflict, Rivas takes the job, infiltrates the Jaybirds to kidnap her back, and battles threats both external and internal in his quest, leading him to the titular event.

             

              And to top it all off, it's a western about a man doing what has to be done, to save himself and to save others.

              

          What I liked most about the book is the setting. While it becomes obvious that it's a post-apocalyptic setting where they use Brandy as currency and drive horse-drawn carriages made out of classic cars, it's very well-realized. Venice is presented as a sleazy den of sin with Deviant's Palace rising over it like some insane, nightmarish castle. The Holy City of Irvine is bright and clean from the outside, but filled with poverty and trash on the inside, with everyone being welded into leg-irons and forced to work. It's a world with its own slang, mannerisms, and rules of reality. Powers spent a lot of time on this for a book clocking in at under three hundred pages, and every bit of it shows. Despite the book being a slim, quick read, every page has a new facet of the world, be it the playing card-obsessed "Aces" who ruled the wasteland until an explosion went off and killed the Sixth, the alien intelligence known as Sevatividam, the history of Jaybird leader Norton Jaybush, and so on. 

              The problem, though, with Deviant's Palace is that it vanishes too far inside its character's own head. WAY too far sometimes. It's fine that we have a great sense of internal conflict, of Rivas fighting that impulse inside of him to join back up with the Jaybirds and let it consume him, but to have him living in his own head breaks immersion a little, like the scenes where he has flashbacks and can't tell past from present. While this sort of thing was merely disorienting and added to hallucinatory qualities in a book such as Private Midnight, it sometimes stops the book dead here, as the action is suddenly interrupted. 

               In fact, Private Midnight has a lot of similarities with Deviant's Palace. Both are books involving a rather driven man with a curious and dark past encountering a charismatic person who hints at being an otherworldly intelligence. But where one is a hallucinatory and strange tale of identity and how people can change, Deviant's is a book about being unable to run from who you are and knowing that icky, repugnant thing may not be pleasant to look at, but it's a part of you.

                 The other problem, and it's not really a problem, is the fantasy elements. It starts out as a post-apocalyptic western about a man fighting a cult, sort of like The Searchers if it was just John Wayne and he had to pretend to be an Apache for half the movie. But then you get the floating thing known as a Hemogoblin that claims to be a part of Rivas, the weirdness behind the "Sacrament", the restorative powers of "Peter and the Wolf" (which just makes me think of Peter Lorre in M), and a climax involving an alien psychic vampire. Or perhaps just some kind of mutant. And while the book should have ended there, you get a strange two-chapter epilogue just to tie up loose ends that didn't really need to be tied up. While the fantasy elements were still cool, and led to a fantastic setpiece, they didn't tie correctly into the book as well as they should have. Also, there's that stupid epilogue. 

                   But you must read this book. It's a fast, brilliant ride, and while it's ugly and insane in places, it's all part of the charm. Besides, it rips a few satirical targets a good one, and is possibly the best post-apocalyptic and single-character book I've ever read. Rivas, despite starting out as a money-grubbing bastard, turns into a stone-cold badass by the end of the first section, and by the end he's a completely changed man, willing to throw himself in the way if it gets the job done, because his sanity-- and the sanity of his world-- are riding on the consequences. You feel every twist, every turn, and every triumph, and while the epilogue shoehorns a vague romance and tries to end things on a more ambiguous note, it's more than worth a read. 

Next week: My three-parter on The Chronicles of Master Li and Number Ten Ox begins with my review of Bridge of Birds by Barry Hughart.