Fool on the Hill

          
"On a windless summer day in an uncertain year, more than a century after the founding of Cornell, a man who told lies for a living climbed to the top of The Hill to fly a kite..."

- Opening lines

              Just so we get the illusion of objectivity dispelled, I typed those above lines almost completely from memory. This, for the few of you who read this blog regularly (all three of you) is one of those books I keep talking about, one of the five books that moved me in a way nothing else seems to. And I discovered it completely by accident. 

              Way back in the dawn of time (okay, so it was more like Sophomore year of high school), we took a trip every summer to Montclair Book Center to get books to read when I went to summer camp. I'd discovered the bookstore the previous year, and it had quickly grown into a favorite of mine. I'd found a copy of a book called Sewer, Gas, and Electric: The Public Works Trilogy by Matt Ruff this time out, and when reading through the science-fiction book ads in the back, I found another book by the same author, a fantasy novel called Fool on the Hill. It wouldn't be until the following winter that I finally remembered the book and ILLed it, settling down to read it that Saturday on the bus to and from the Quiz Bowl tournament I was going to.


              Sweet Hell. That is all.


              The book hit all the right notes, and it hit them so well it was like they'd always been there, just waiting to get out. I laughed, I felt sad, I even whispered "no..." when the story reached its darkest point and things didn't seem like they could go very well for the heroes. Which, as we all know, is something only reserved for the books that really get their hooks in me. It is now, and will probably forever be, my favorite book of all time. It's the book that started me thinking that I could become a writer, of all things, and it will hold a place for me in my head and in my heart.


              The story goes like this: Stephen George goes up a hill in Ithaca just outside Cornell to fly a kite. Around him, storylines are just starting to emerge...a father in Wisconsin worries about his collegiate daughter missing out on the fun of life, the fairies of The Hill go about their daily life and speak in hushed tones of ancient evils and the cemetery known ominously as "The Boneyard", a dog and a cat set out to find Heaven, the most beautiful woman in the world sets out to find her next target and inspire him, and a colorful group of anarchist artists and non-conformists known as The Bohemians come back to Cornell for another semester to once again circle warily around their enemies-- a fraternity of degenerate preppies known as "The Rat Frat". Slowly, the various threads criscross and interact with each other over the course of the novel, but self-contained. All of it seeming to revolve around Stephen, the central character of the piece.


And then things get weird.


             Because, you see, there's another very important character, a Greek "original" going by the name Mr. Sunshine. And he and his (not quite) infinite army of monkeys with typewriters are hammering out a capital-S Story involving the various plot threads described above. He's been manipulating the Story for longer than anyone could fathom, and it's his job to create something interesting, something worth reading, for his own amusement. While he starts out slow to act, he quickly meddles around with the threads, and soon plot points collide, ancient evils are resurrected, rivalries and tensions start to flare, and the Forces of Good and the Forces of Darkness line up for a final confrontation on the Cornell campus. And if the Story is to have a happy ending, the damsel to be rescued, and the day to be saved, Stephen George (our protagonist and possibly an author avatar) has to unlock a very rare ability and step into the role of a hero-- or everything may be doomed. 


            Which sounds kinda like a stereotypical take on the usual fantasy story. I mean, there's a damsel in distress, a hero, fairies, magic, a group of new-wave knights...not much new-sounding here. But it's the way it's presented that makes it special. Matt Ruff has a clear control of his language and work, and it shows. The various storylines are handled in a very tight way, and when they start to connect and collide, the characters still remain unique enough that the plots are never confusing or off-the-rails. Even in the final climax, everything is kept very tightly-wound, and each subsequent payoff simply drives home the impact and closes the storyline without many loose ends. You're not left feeling particularly unsatisfied or left hanging, there's a definite sense of closure and everyone getting what they deserve, and it's nice to find a book that does that.


          Another good point of the book is the world it takes place in. Ruff's Ithaca and his Cornell are very strange, but well-realized places. The school and The Hill are characters in their own right, and really the centerpiece of the story. And they should be, as the story is just as much about them as it is about any of their various inhabitants. By the time there are blatantly magical elements to the story, they feel organic, like they've occurred naturally. Of course Tolkien House would exist in that form in Ruff's world. It can't possibly  exist in any other form. And that's what makes the book so brilliant. Despite all the contrivances, the world makes sense and follows its own internal logic to the letter. And between that and the descriptions, it creates a world that, actually, I'd want to live in, a vibrant place where anything can happen-- and does. Which does the book a great credit.


             However, in the interest of clinging to my remaining shred of objectivity, I do have to point out a few minor points. First, the book does have certain points which, when taken in a more modern context, would raise small flags. Also, there are some points, like the entire arc with The Rubbermaid (though frightening and creepy she may be), where the contrivance wins out over the genuine emotion in the story.


              And it is that genuine emotion that finally wins me over in the end. Because for all its faults, for all the high-handed language I could throw about why this book is well-written, in the end, it comes down to this: Fool on the Hill is a very sweet book, generous in spirit and genuine in its emotion. It's about love, death, stories, free will, and the nature of what ties our world together. It's one of the sweetest and most optimistic books I've read, it never truly telegraphs the ending, and it has one of the best final lines during its last desperate struggle between Stephen George and the forces of good, and the dark forces that have menaced The Hill throughout the story.


               Everyone should read this book. Some of you will not like it. Some of you will openly mock and deride it. Some of you are just too cynical to accept something like this, or maybe it's got too many characters, or hell, maybe you just think everything's one-note or contrived. But some of you, some of you will find your was into Matt Ruff's world, into what he calls his "Shadow Cornell", and find a place for you waiting there. I certainly hope you do. This book is barely known (and everyone thinks it has something to do with The Beatles because of the title) when it should be lauded, neglected when we let people like this mope climb the bestseller lists. 


           So I beseech you: Read this book. Buy this book. Even if you don't like it, this is a book to be experienced. It's my favorite book of all time, for Gan's sake! It even warms through to a cynical bastard like me. I can't force you, of course. But I can strongly suggest it's a good idea.




Next Week: Another all-time favorite with The Great and Secret Show by Clive Barker. And in two weeks: The Town that Forgot How to Breathe, as well as articles on seeing The Batman Trilogy, and when I can work out a good angle, my ANEXT 2012 article!


            

Broken Piano For President

Hi, welcome to Broken Piano for President. Turn down the lights and fix yourself a stiff drink. Better yet, pour yourself a couple of cocktails and fix yourself a hangover

- The Narrator

           Bizarro, like retro-futurism, is a hit-or-miss field. When it's done right, you have a unique book that almost no major publishing house would ever touch, as the lit-fic that skirts the edges of bizarro is hard enough to market as it is. When it's done wrong, you have someone's book about zombie tentacle rape with grotesque descriptions for no other reason than to push the entire book further out past the boundaries of acceptable taste. For some reason, I've had a lot more luck with bizarro than retro-futurism, possibly because it's harder to classify, or possibly because it's less constrained by the genre it's set in, and can spread its wings a little. 

          '

         In either case, I love the bizarro genre a little too much, and so when I randomly found a link to Broken Piano for President out of the blue, I was intrigued. And then I read the plot description, and I was even more intrigued. Sadly, at the time, I was too stressed and had to spend all my money on food, not books, but eventually, when I had a moment, I picked up the e-book version* of Broken Piano and sat down to read it. And it blew me away.

               

        Broken Piano for President is the story of Deshler Dean. Dean is a musician with a band called Lothario Speedwagon, a group with lofty (and fairly dubious) ambitions of being the next Butthole Surfers, a task which they continue to fail at. Dean wakes up in an expensive sportscar with a broken screwdriver and a blonde woman who may be unconscious, or possibly dead. He doesn't remember how he got there, and he's not sure of much of anything save that he will get picked up by the cops for this, and he has a massive hangover. His band; comprised of himself, a meth-head drummer who never seems to run out of income, and a sugar-addicted bassist with a nebulous job description; are always on the verge of breaking up. And to complicate things, Dean isn't sure how much time has gone by between getting drunk and waking up in the car. This kind of thing happens to him a lot.

And then things get weird.

         I would tell you exactly how and why, but uncovering all of the various twists, turns, and factions Dean gets mixed up in is most of the fun. Books don't usually blow me away. There have only been a few, ever, that have completely knocked me on my ass, and only a handful more that have made me get emotionally invested in them**. Watching the pieces click together in Broken Piano for President is actually surprising, and many of the twists are set up chapters in advance, but only truly revealed when they bring in a plot element or a particular verbal tic unique to a character. One of the most major twists in the plot doesn't fully get revealed until the end, letting you believe for a long time that you know exactly what was going on and then pulling the rug out from underneath you. The most I can tell you is this: Fast-food corporations. It's about fast food corporations.

        The rest of the book is a dizzying combination of thriller and satire as Dean has to pretend he knows what's going on and at the same time fill in the blanks to figure out how he got there. The plot is the real gem of the book here, and really carries the book as much as anything else. The dialogue pulls a similar duty, giving each character a distinct voice so that they can be recalled later and woven into the plot. Wensink is clearly very good at plotting, and the time he took to put together the various elements and how they hang together shows in every chapter. 

         The descriptions also pull their weight in the novel. I've heard before about how fantasy authors overload their books with descriptions of food. Personally, I never really saw it. However, Wensink's descriptions of the various fast-food monstrosities make me crave junk food. A lot of junk food. I know it's supposed to be satire, but his descriptive powers do him too much justice, and the food actually sounds pretty good***. Similarly, the description of Juan Pandemic, the meth-addict drummer for Lothario Speedwagon, is pretty nauseating. Especially the scenes where he has a cold, or the ones where he has to be disguised. Wensink knows his way around a sentence, hell, he's had intimate knowledge of sentences, and this makes Broken Piano for President easily one of the best books I've read all year.

           However, it isn't without its flaws. In creating a world that gets as cartoonishly nasty as Broken Piano's does, all the characters have to be pretty loathsome, and by the end, even the heroes rank up there with the worst of them. Dean's more or less allowed to get away with what he does because he's a blank slate, but the behavior of his bandmates, friends, and colleagues is all pretty nasty. I understand that this is necessary in a satire, and he pulls enough sympathy out of them to not make it a total loss, but I just don't like having to watch terrible people for hours on end.

           But is the book good? Yes. I highly recommend it. I'm actually a little envious, because Broken Piano for President is the kind of book I'd want to write if I could get off my ass and actually stay on target for once. It's nine bucks, you're supporting a publisher who genuinely enjoys unique voices in fiction. Buy this book. Get this book for a friend and get them to read it first if you're unsure. Do whatever you have to. I wish I could tell you more, but if I spoil any part of the experience for you (Aside from posting half the first chapter up there as I did), you won't be as surprised and amused as you could be. Go in blind, and tell him I sent you.

 Next Week: I return to a book I should have owned a long time ago with Fool On The Hill.          

*Because when money's tight, the option that means you don't have to pay shipping wins. 

**Stephen King's monster of a novel It ranks among those due to the fact that I was afraid of bathrooms and sewers until the monster was freaking dead at the end of the book

***I ran into a similar problem when working on my friend's play, also a fast food satire. He declared that if I went to Wendy's and ordered a Baconator after the whole thing was over, he would kill me myself. 

Empire State

"You're late."

"No, actually, you're early." He rechecked his watch. "Actually, I am late, I think my watch is busted."

"Like your lip."

- Rad Bradley and Kane Fortuna

       

        I found this book in a very conventional way, for once. It was on the shelves of the local Barnes & Noble not far from my house. Now, I don't normally support big bookstores, but they've never steered me wrong much. In fact, a lot of the ones I visit inexplicably have smaller and mid-range press genre titles sitting on the shelves without the slightest provocation*. I'd had a bad day, and some money burning a hole in my pocket, so I pointed myself towards the bookstore. And there the book was, its cover done in a very stark red-black-white-green Art Deco-style design, and its back promising a story of private detectives, film-noir backdrops, and masked villains. I was intrigued, and by the time it started to compare itself to Boardwalk Empire and Batman, I knew it would make the trip home with me. 

           And at first, it was brilliant. That was at first. As the book continued, it started to cool off a little, turning into something more and more...off. And eventually, I found myself realizing the thing I always realize...a lot of the modern retro-future writing aims high...and then promptly ducks under the bar. There are exceptions, of course...Stephen Hunt's lightly retro-themed fantasies are a delight, Larklight is a great book with an interesting atmosphere, and the seminal works of the genre-- like K.W. Jeter's Infernal Devices-- are, while flawed, classics in their own right. But it seems now that every pen jockey with something to prove has to say it with pneumatic tubes and an over-gross of airships. 


But that's enough of that. 

             Empire State is the story of private detective Rad Bradley, a man who doesn't seem terribly in his element. Rad lives in the Empire State, a fog-enshrouded version of New York City, and is given a case to find Samantha Saturn, a woman who has gone missing after an encounter with the quietly-sinister Pastor of Lost Souls. Rad is also menaced by two men in gas masks asking him about "Nineteen Fifty" and hounded by a long-dead superhero named The Skyguard. Rad must decipher the clues about the city and keep one step ahead of his enemies if he ever hopes to unravel exactly what is going on in his city and indeed why it even exists. As things ramp up, he will encounter cyborgs, doppelgangers, alternate universes, and the possibility that his own friends may know more than they let on. Much more than one could ever think of. In the end, he may have to contend with the end of the world if he hopes to solve the case and save his own universe from destruction at the unwitting hands of our own world.
            And I would like to tell you it's the book that revived my faith in the genre. I'd like to tell you it's the book that I could hold aloft as proof that the retro-future genre isn't a complete wash. 


Yeah. I'd like to. But you already know how this review is gonna go. 


              Empire State is above all a book with serious commitment issues. It wants very badly to be a golden-age superhero story. It also wants very badly to be an alternate-world story (spoilers be damned, it's right there on the back of the freaking book), a noir detective story, a retro-future sci-fi novel, and a pulp adventure story. It wants to be all these things and it tries really, really hard to be all of them. The problem is, since it can't make up its mind and it cannot be all of these things, it really just falls short of all of it. The book ends up a jangling, confused mess where people swap allegiances almost with the flip of a coin and a major character is named "Nimrod" for seemingly no purpose than to hold up the naming conventions. The ending makes no sense, as not even the main character can tell whose side he's on and what he's doing in the overall conflict. 
              That sense of not really knowing what's going on permeates the entire book, too. Perhaps it's just that I failed to connect with the plot on any level, but it just didn't seem like there was any reason for me to. The initial chapters did much to try and draw me in, but once I was there; the story got bored, puttered around the house, checked its email, and then promptly looked back into the living room where I was sitting and asked, "Oh, you're still here?" When the few historical characters used (there are two of them at the very least, I know, shocker) appear, they're given some brief context as to who they are, but not really much to why they're there. The main villain of the piece is one of those, further driving any investment in the plot towards apathy.
               Speaking of the characters that drive the main plot, there are four of them. None of them are the main character. Not a single one. And this is the problem. There are books where the protagonists have had no effect on the plot. Gravity's Rainbow is a good example of a book where the main character has no real effect on the plot, and Gravity's Rainbow, despite being the most incoherent and cack-handed book ever written, is a fantastic read**. But to have us follow a single character from cohesive beginnings to an incoherent climax that involves Rad, his alternate universe double (spoilers be damned, if there's an alternate universe, there is always an alternate universe double. This is a scientific fact), his introduced-as-untrustworthy ballroom-dancer friend, and just about every other high-powered character in the story. It eventually rockets towards a climax that, somehow, The Strange Affair of Spring-Heeled Jack handled better***.
                However, after all of that, I do have to say this: The book has its good points. A fair number of them. The bits in the Empire State reveal a pulp dystopia**** that sounds like a lot of fun to play around in, and there is an excellent control over setting. At the beginning, the mystery is gripping and reads very well, unfolding with just the right amount of information to keep you guessing. I admit that this is one of the very few works of fiction that had me stumped: I had no idea where they were going with the story (I would later learn this is because the story went nowhere), and I liked that. And the dialogue, on top of all those things, is very well-done. Maybe not to Locke Lamora levels, but very well done nonetheless.
                But in conclusion, it is the plot that keeps the book down, and the plot that damns it. Despite having a great many cool concepts in it, the book isn't actually about anything, and without any kind of driving force behind it, the machinery breaks down, and that big, beautiful box of a plot unfolds into a depressing Christmas present, much like an ugly sweater but with more robots and gunplay.The issue Mr. Christopher has in his book is the same one I have with my own writing-- you can invent as many cool concepts and characters and lines as your mind can dream of, but it doesn't mean a thing if you can't give them anything to do.
                And so my final verdict would be this: While I don't recommend this book, it's certainly not terrible enough to warn you away from it (Hello to Ghosts of Manhattan!). I'd suggest taking it out from the library if you're curious, and seeing how you fare. It's certainly an interesting novel, if not a particularly well-plotted one. 




Next Week: A new classic of literature with Broken Piano for President
      

*It's weird, but then again I live in New Jersey. Weird kinds of things (like, f'rinstance, Eraserhead Press books sitting on the shelves of Barnes & Noble) just sort of happen statewide. My unofficial state motto is "Over sixteen portals to hell and counting!"


**As a sidenote, I hate this book even more for making me use up a Pynchon reference before I did a review of an actual Pynchon book.


***Actually, in hindsight, I may have been a little too hard on Burton & Swinburne. Despite the stupid time-travel bits, it's actually quite well-constructed compared to other books in the retro-future genre.


****This word is not recognized by my spellcheck, but somehow "Quidditch" is. Why is it not recognized by my spellcheck?!

Test Pattern

This is a test pattern to try out new font colors for the Blogger version of this blog



This is a test pattern to try out new font colors for the Blogger version of this blog


This is a test pattern to try out new font colors for the Blogger version of this blog


This is a test pattern to try out new font colors for the Blogger version of this blog


This is a test pattern to try out new font colors for the Blogger version of this blog


This is a test pattern to try out new font colors for the Blogger version of this blog


This is a test pattern to try out new font colors for the Blogger version of this blog


This is a test pattern to try out new font colors for the Blogger version of this blog

Original Work: Now Somewhere Else!

                   So I've decided to do something kind of interesting. I'm going to be blogging my project The Becksdale Archaeology over here.


The project is a sort of "fake true ghost stories/local legends" collection...think something like this, only I've made all the stories up, and they take place in the small town of Becksdale, NJ.


Why NJ? Because it's such a supernatural focal point it's hard not to set a book there. Also, most people write what they know, and I do know the small town of Metuchen NJ. As well as having taken many eerie-looking photographs of Metuchen, NJ At least in its fictional version based on real landmarks and photos I've taken. It's experimental, and as part of it, I have to write most of it as "nonfiction", to help keep the "immersion" when this is actually gonna be published. So here's the copy:


The small town of Becksdale, NJ has more than a few local secrets. People feel like they're being watched in the woods behind the town. The town's bike path, labelled the "Greenway", has been left mostly abandoned and overgrown for unexplained reasons. A man appears and vanishes every night at the local veteran's grove, placing a wreath under a specific tree. Join the Becksdale Historical Society and paranormal enthusiast Sam Reader* as they explore the local legends and unusual historical treasures of our small town, in a book that is sure to chill and delight**.




And of course there will be ongoing threads and whatnot. I just figure if I write it for my audience (all two of you), I'll keep going at it, and with the schedule, it'll get easier. In essence, treat it like a blog, and I'll act like it's a responsibility.


So. Hope you enjoy, and I'm proud to announce I may be getting off my ass. Watch this space and that space.
























*Just to break fourth wall here. Since it's probably going to be my name on the damn thing, I might as well use my name as the main character
** Since we're spoofing the genre, why not spoof the ad copy, too?

The Grand Unveilling: Taste by Kate Evangelista

Ladies and gentlemen, today I have something new and unprecedented. It’s really cool that I’m able to do this, because I definitely don’t do it often, and I may never get the chance again. 

So, let me get the first part out of the way: 

New for you and coming out soon, the new novel from my wonderful and very worthy of your time colleague Kate Evangelista, Taste! Trailer below, with the song “Hunger” by the very talented Noelle Pico*. There’s also a hidden link somewhere in this post. Do be on the lookout.

As you have no doubt guessed from the cover, this is not the usual kind of thing I do. This should give you all the more reason to read it, because just based on the excerpt (which will be posted and dissected below), I definitely think it’s worth a read. Why? Because the author knows what she’s doing, she actually got me interested in a book in the supernatural/urban fantasy genre that wasn’t written by Richard Kadrey or Simon R. Green, and overall, she’s someone who I am truly pleased to know.

But I’m talking too much here. Please, for your own edification, an excerpt where the heroine, Phoenix McKay is accosted by the fearsome Night Students:

I mentally stomped on the intimidation their perfection brought into my mind and said, “Excuse me.”

The group froze, startled by my words. The girls had their brows raised and the boys stopped mid-speech, mouths agape. They stared at me with eyes the shade of onyx stones.

I smiled and gave them a little wave.

The boy a step ahead of the rest recovered first. His stunning features went from shocked surprise to intense interest. He reminded me of a hawk eyeing its prey. I gulped.

“A Day Student,” he said, his eyes insolent and excited.

Something about the way he said “Day Student” made my stomach flip. “Excuse me?”

They snickered. The boys looked at each other while the girls continued to stare, muffling their laughter by delicate hands. I seemed to be the butt of some joke. 

“You broke the rule.” The boy’s grin turned predatory.

The students formed a loose semi-circle in front of me. My gaze darted from face to face. Hunger filled their eyes. The image of lions about to chase down a gazelle came to mind. I mentally shook my head. I was in the mountains not the Serengeti for crying out loud.

I took a small step back and cleared my throat. “Can any of you give me a ride back to the dorms?”

The boy wagged his forefinger like a metronome. “Ah, that’s unfortunate for you.”

One of the girls pinched the bridge of her nose. “Eli, you can’t possibly—”

“It’s forbidden, Eli,” another boy interrupted, pronouncing the word “forbidden” like a curse.

The nervous murmur at the pit of my stomach grew louder. Six against one. Not good odds. Instinct told me to cut my losses and run. Bad enough I faced expulsion, now it seemed like weird, beautiful people who’d suddenly appeared on campus wanted to beat me up. No, scratch that. Judging from the way they studied me, beating me up wouldn’t satisfy them. Something more primal prowled behind their looks.

I definitely wasn’t going down without a fight. Years of self-defense and hand-to-hand combat classes had me prepared. While other children from rich and important families got bodyguards, I got defense training. But I think my father meant for my skills to go up against potential kidnappers, not against other students who may or may not be crazy. Oh God! Maybe I stepped into a parallel universe or something when I reentered Barinkoff.

“None of the students are supposed to be on campus,” I said. Then, realizing my mistake, I added, “Okay, I know I’m not supposed to be here either. If one of you gives me a ride back to the dorms, I won’t say anything about all this. Let’s pretend this never happened. I didn’t see you, you didn’t see me.”

“We’re not ordinary students,” Eli answered. “We’re the Night Students.”

He’d said “Night Students” like the words were capitalized. I didn’t know Barinkoff held classes at night. What was going on here?

Eli smiled with just one side of his mouth and said to the group, “She’s right, no one will have to know. We’re the only ones here. And it’s been so long, don’t you agree?”

The rest of them nodded reluctantly.

“What’s been so long?” I challenged. I fisted my hands, ready to put them up if any of them so much as twitched my way.

“Since the taste of real flesh passed through my lips,” Eli said. He came forward and took a whiff of me then laughed when I cringed.

“Flesh.” Yep, parallel universe.

“Yes,” he said. “And yours smells so fresh.”

Someone grabbed my shoulders from behind and yanked me back before I could wrap my mind around the meaning behind Eli’s words. In a blink, I found myself behind someone tall. Someone really tall. And quite broad. And very male.

I realized he wore the same clothes Eli and the other boys did. Not good. He was one of them. Although… I cocked my head, raking my gaze over him. He seemed born to wear the uniform, like he was the pattern everyone else was cut from. My eyes wandered to long, layered, blue-black hair tied at the nape by a silk ribbon. Even in dim light, his hair possessed a sheen akin to mercury.

I looked down. The boy’s long fingers were wrapped around my wrist like a cuff. His fevered touch felt hotter than human standards, hot enough to make me sweat like I was standing beside a radiator but not hot enough to burn.

“I must be mistaken, Eli,” the boy who held my arm said in a monotone. “Correct me. Did I hear you say you wanted to taste the flesh of this girl?”

A hush descended on us. It had the hairs at the back of my neck rising. How was it possible for the atmosphere to switch from threatening to dangerous? Unable to help myself, I peeked around the new guy’s bulk. Eli and his friends bowed. They all had their right hands on their chests.

“Demitri, I’m sure you misheard me,” Eli said.

So the guy standing between me and the person who said he’d wanted to taste me was named Demitri. I like the sound of his name. Demitri. So strong, yet rolls off the tongue. Definite yum factor.

“So, you imply I made a mistake?” Demitri demanded.

“No!” Eli lifted his gaze. “I did no such thing. I simply wanted to show the girl the consequences of breaking curfew.”

“Hey!” I yelled. “Don’t talk about me like I’m not here!”

Demitri ignored my protest and continued to address Eli. “So, you threatened to taste her flesh.” His fingers tightened their grip around my wrist. “In the interest of investigating this matter further, I invoke the Silence.”

All six students gasped, passing surprised glances at one another.

Before I could ask about what was going on, Demitri yanked me down the hall toward the library. But why there? Oh, maybe we were getting my things. No, wait, he couldn’t have known about that. Everything was too confusing now.

Eli and the others didn’t try to stop us when we passed them. Demitri’s cold command must have carried power. Handsome and powerful, never a bad combination on a guy.

We reached the heavy double doors in seconds. He jerked one open effortlessly. I’d needed all my strength just to squeeze through that same door earlier. To him, the thick wood might as well have been cardboard. I raised an eyebrow and mentally listed the benefits of going to gym class.

“Why are we here?” I asked after my curiosity overpowered my worry. I’d almost forgotten how frightened I’d been right before Demitri showed up. I wasn’t above accepting help from strangers. Especially from gorgeous dark-haired strangers with hot hands and wide shoulders.

Demitri kept going, tugging me along, snaking his way deeper into the library. I had to take two steps for every stride his legs made. I tried to stay directly behind him, praying we didn’t slam into anything.

He stopped suddenly and I collided with him. It felt like slamming into a wall.

“Hey,” I said, momentarily stunned. “A little warning would be nice!”

He faced me, and I gasped. His eyes resembled a starless night, deep and endless. Their intensity drilled through me without pity, seeming to expose all my secrets. I felt naked and flustered beneath his gaze.

“You could have died back there,” he warned.

A lump of panic rebuilt itself in my throat.

So immediately we have a conflict between a group of beautiful-but-cruel um…students, and our main character. I like the feel of this conversation, that it’s similar to other novels, but doesn’t play up the helplessness and impulse first thing. In the interest of objectivity, I do have to say that the prose is a little too purple for me, but I like it enough.

And finally, no unveilling would be complete without the author:

When Kate Evangelista was told she had a knack for writing stories, she did the next best thing: entered medical school. After realizing she wasn't going to be the next Doogie Howser, M.D., Kate wandered into the Literature department of her university and never looked back. Today, she is in possession of a piece of paper that says to the world she owns a Literature degree. To make matters worse, she took Master's courses in creative writing. In the end, she realized to be a writer, none of what she had mattered. What really mattered? Writing. Plain and simple, honest to God, sitting in front of her computer, writing. Today, she has four completed Young Adult novels.

And you may contact her here:

Author Website: www.kateevangelista.com

Twitter: @KateEvangelista

Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Kate-Evangelista/165693410143202

Find Taste on Goodreads: http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/13484226-taste

Crescent Moon Press page for Taste: http://crescentmoonpress.com/books/Taste.html

So there you have it. A really cool book, a fantastic author, and my first grand unveilling. Congratulations, Kate!

Clans of the Alphane Moon

"Psychosis is psychosis", said Lord Running Clam, "And a fanatic is not to be trusted."

         I was going to give you a post on Empire State, and to do this the time after that. But this was too good to pass up. See, I've wanted to read this for years and never got around to it, and now that I have, I'm very glad I did. Because it's not the book I first thought it was. It's much better than that book.

       

       So this actually starts with my dad again, like most of my early forays into genre fiction. He's the one who first read me The Hobbit, with its illustrations by Michael Hague. He's also the one who steered me away from most of the books that I wouldn't have got as much when I was younger, and then recommended I read them when I was older. In fact, a lot of my taste in books comes initially from him. It grew and mutated out of that, getting both crazier and a little bit saner, but overall, this blog wouldn't exist if it weren't for him reading to (and telling stories to) a confused little kid and then helping him seek out more of the same.

And, through this book, he was also my first introduction to Philip K. Dick.

    I found the book, like most of the books he turned me on to, on the bookcase in his office. He had a whole mess of mass-market science fiction paperbacks on those shelves, and nestled in between two novels whose names have been lost to time immemorial was a thin gray book with a picture of a strange yellow alien on it, the generic sci-fi type reading Clans of the Alphane Moon*. While at the time I was too young, I remembered it, and later on, when I was in my heavy metaphysical/literary phase**, my dad said that I might find the book entertaining and cited a rant by one of the characters on how everything seems interconnected and planned. Unfortunately, at the time we had misplaced the copy of the book, and when I found it, I was hard in the grip of several interlibrary loans and didn't feel like I had time for it, so it languished in a drawer. 

      Years later, when I went to Hawaii to study librarianism (sadly back-burnering you, Dear Readers****, in the process), I got a job in the reference department and as fate (or indeed synchronicity) would have it, Clans of the Alphane Moon was the first book I found in the literature section. I grabbed it and took it out right on the spot. And it is entertaining, though it is also much, much more.

     Clans of the Alphane Moon tells the story of Chuck Rittersdorf, a CIA roboticist tasked with operating and writing code for propaganda androids in Communist countries, said countries meaning everything that isn't the United States of America. His wife-- a cold, businesslike borderline psychotic named Mary-- has just started a ruthless divorce campaign to take his house, his money, and his children away from him. He now lives in an apartment building with a meddling-yet-well meaning Ganymedean slime mold named Lord Running Clam and tries to stave off thoughts of suicide with a slowly-evolving plan to kill his wife via android while she's on a science mission to the titular moon, Alpha II M3. 

And then things get weird.

        Alpha II M3 is a former mental hospital-cum-penal colony where the Terran influence collapsed and the psychotics organized themselves into clans based on their mental disorders: Manics, Paranoids, Schizophrenics, Depressives, Hebephrenics, Obsessive-Compulsives, and Polymorphics. Mary, a psychologist, is there to evaluate them and try to bring the colony back under Terran control before things get out of hand. They're especially interested in the Manics, as their mania is resulting in highly-advanced technology, and the Paranoids (or Pares), who overanalyze everything to the degree of setting up meticulous political systems and tactical plans. 

       Meanwhile, on Alpha II M3 itself, the clans are convinced that Earth is watching them, ready to attack at any moment. They're insane, heavily armed thanks to the Manic clan, and they aren't going to be re-institutionalized by their former masters without inflicting heavy casualties. They are aided by schizophrenic "Prophets" and "Saints" whose delusions are augmented by actual psychic powers and precognitive abilities. And worst of all, they're all absolutely right.

      All of this, along with a TV comedian who has a hidden agenda and a group of Alphane weapon dealers in his pocket, is about to collide in what could be a highly probable bloodbath all over the moon. 

And if you couldn't tell from that plot description, Dear Readers, it's a comedy. And a particularly funny one at that. No, I'm not making this up. 

   It is also one of the best books I've read this year, hands down. Dick has always handled characters and irrationality the best out of anyone, so a Philip K. Dick book about irrational characters is already getting a running head start. But it's the way he makes everything sound so sane, from a moon ruled by a caste system of psychotics to a slime mold who can't help but resort to telepathy and blackmail to fix someone's life. You never start to question the machinery that runs the book, as Rittersdorf is such a believable schlub and everyone around him plays out as if they have their own self-interests, but they all go through Rittersdorf, thus making him important and also showing why. The character interactions also do a great deal in making the central characters (Rittersdorf and Running Clam) the most sympathetic in the book, as they are the only two people not trying to use anyone or manipulate the situation. It got to the point where, as I was reading it, I'd become so attached to one character that when they died, I actually cried "Noooo!" out loud. The death was such a shock, and such a sudden thing, that it managed to generate pathos without any hint of tawdry emotional manipulation.

    Another reason the book is much better than its parts is the pacing. Rittersdorf's adventure doesn't seem to flag until the last few scenes, and even then, it's still urgent enough to keep one interested. While the start is a trifle slow, it soon pitches full-tilt like the first drop on a roller coaster and doesn't stop until it reaches the end. Even when the characters are talking, there's still a tense, nervous, frantic energy. The dialogue, the characters, and even the slower parts of the plot all contribute to the tension and energy of the book. And the slow parts aren't even that slow. When the plot starts to move, it moves, and even the slow parts move at a quick pace. There's a seduction scene in Clans that doesn't even stop, ripping through the action almost as quickly as the participants do the deed itself.

   Furthermore, the dialogue is paced just as fast as the book, and just as sharp as the humor. There are lines in almost every scene that made me smirk, and two scenes that actually made me laugh out loud. I was in a library at the time and on-duty, which was probably not the best place to be, but hey, it gave me something to brighten up my day. This is nothing new, as Dick has always had interesting dialogue, but it's worth a mention because it makes the crazy machinery behind the book work.

   And finally, the underlying themes are actually decent and worth exploring. Dick has a way with writing insane characters, and a way of writing the sane people so that they're just as crazy. It comes as a surprise, and a funny one at that, when one of the characters who has exhibited signs of being from any one of the clans is declared completely normal to everyone's absolute shock. But that isn't the only theme Dick explores. He also deals with depression and loss of stability in one's life through the story of Chuck Rittersdorf and his wife Mary, both of whom feel the impact of loss when they decide to separate and start divorce proceedings. The intimate, wrenching detail and the feeling of helplessness are very true to life, as well as the well-meaning people who try to get them back on track with their lives, only to cause hopeless disarray. 


     But this is a book with flaws, and most notably, the flaws are that when they finally get around to the big showdown on the moon, the pacing finally does flag. It's sad to see it happen, and more to the point, it takes away from the book. While this is a book that thrives on breakneck speed and insane chases, that it slows down near the end in the middle of a tank battle is inexcusable. It is, however, a tiny, tiny flaw. Especially compared to how absolutely brilliant the rest of the book is. Yes, it may have weak points, and it's not the best Philip K. Dick book, but Dick on his worst day (I'm looking at you, VALIS) utterly buries the competition.


     So in the end, should you read it? Of course you should. It may not have the heavy nature of other books, but it's beyond enjoyable, and touches on some very human themes. And it's funny in the wickedest, blackest way possible, managing to laugh at political assassination and suicide as equally as it does the twisted romantic comedy plot surrounding Chuck and Mary Rittersdorf. It's a book that should not be missed, nor dismissed as simply a laugh. And it is arguably one of the best books I've read this academic year. Yes, you should read this book. Yes, you should take it out of the library. I may not go so far as to buy it, but there is nothing like it in fiction, and for that it deserves your scrutiny.




Next time: Caius finally gets around to Empire State, Fool On The Hill, and possibly The Pilo Family Circus, since that review has been sitting in a cloud server somewhere just waiting to be finished.

* See above image. The book does not contain in any form a nude albino woman with a mohawk licking an alien from Alpha Centauri, but the rest of it is pretty bang-on the money.

** Yes, I had a pretentious college student reading phase. It lasted for four or five years and surprisingly did not include Catcher in the Rye, which was required reading in my high school at the time and which every rational person hated to death. It did, however, contain Ulysses, Ayn Rand, Thomas Pynchon, and William S. Burroughs, so it still counts. So there***.

***William S. Burroughs is still really, really cool, though. Thomas Pynchon, too, in certain doses.

**** All three of you