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tachyondecay
I have a thing for demon-summoning.
Wait, that didn’t come out right. I don’t have a thing for demon-summoning. As in, I don’t like summoning demons. Actually, I’ve never summoned a demon, but I imagine that if I did summon a demon, I wouldn’t much enjoy it. However, I suppose that there is a small chance that if I do, one day, summon a demon, then I might discover I enjoy it and start off on some kind of demon-summoning kick or addiction. At that point, we could say I have a thing for demon-summoning.
What I mean to say is that I tend to enjoy stories about summoning demons. This is why the early seasons of Supernatural captivated me (I stayed for the later seasons because the narrative deepened and Castiel is awesome). The Damned Busters plays into this predilection of mine. From the get go, Chesney Anstruther isn’t happy about accidentally summoning a demon. When his refusal to make a deal—which would cost him his soul, naturally—with this demon leads to a labour strike in Hell, Chesney finds himself in the middle of a very awkward negotiation. But it works out OK for him in the end, because he gets superpowers! Except it turns out that being a crimefighter with a demon sidekick is tougher than one might think (though if your answer was, “it sounds pretty tough”, then I guess you’re smarter than me—or just a smartass).
The first part of this book, which follows Chesney’s incitement of the labour strike in Hell, is totally unlike the second part, which concerns Chesney’s time as the Actionary. I’ve read several reviews that wish the first part had been jettisoned and one review that actually preferred it to the superhero narrative. I have to side with the former reviewers: the first part of The Damned Busters is slow and a little dull. As I read it I was thinking that it would make a better short story than a novel—indeed, from what I gather from the afterword, it was a short story that Matthew Hughes then expanded. Hell going on strike was a good short-story-length gimmick, but after the initial laughter died down, it quickly became tedious.
So thank God (who is Hughes, in this case) for the sudden changing of gears. Chesney’s apology to Satan is part of the back-to-work deal. In return, Chesney gets a soul-preserving deal with a demon who becomes a kind of familiar to him. Thanks to the demon, Chesney has crimefighting superpowers and can rush about as the Actionary, saving damsels in distress and generally feeling like his fictional hero, the Driver. He tries to impress the daughter of the head of the company he works for, but in so doing he comes to the attention of her father and his ambitions to fight crime as a political gambit.
Unlike the first part of this book, the second part develops steadily. At first Hughes delivers some of the same metafictional, self-aware banter and observations that populate superheroic fiction these days. Chesney’s commentary on his evolution as the Actionary is pithy but nothing we haven’t seen elsewhere. Fortunately, Hughes seems to recognize this, and the stakes get higher. He keeps us guessing as Chesney begins to recognize there is something more going on with Paxton’s C group than just “meta-analysis” for the purposes of fighting crime. Indeed, Chesney isn’t the only person involved who has a deal with a demon, and that makes things all the more interesting.
At one point early in the book, as Chesney watches the Reverend Billy Lee Hardacre mediate between Satan and the leader of the demons’ union, he wonders if he is really the hero of the story after all. It seems like Hardacre is doing the important work. It’s a valid question at this point, because Chesney doesn’t seem like hero material. Indeed, he’s a bit of a pig. But as the story develops, so too does Chesney—he’s still a pig, but he’s a more heroic pig, a character more worthy of carrying a story like this on his shoulders. Someone who deserves to thwart evil plans of world domination.
Alas, Chesney’s development from zero to hero is the exception and not the rule. The Damned Busters suffers from flat characters all around. Aside from Chesney, they are all essentially types of one kind or another in their descriptions, dialogue, and actions. Both love interests, Penny Paxton and Melda McCall, are prime examples of this. Hughes plays up Penny as the conniving heiress who always gets her way—and that’s all she is. Similarly, Melda is the tough-as-nails yet mercurial beautician who can handle herself but is attracted to the Actionary nonetheless.
In both cases, there’s nothing really deeper going on here. Normally with minor characters we at least get a peek at their motivations. We learn about their relationships with their parents. Where’s Penny’s mother? What are Penny’s aspirations, if any, beyond hanging around her father’s office all the time? Does Melda have any dreams beyond the beauty parlour? We never get a glimpse at the person behind the character. This is a huge problem, compounded by the fact that as much as Chesney improves, he remains a frail protagonist who is, if sympathetic, not all that enjoyable a person to hang around.
The Damned Busters has its moments. It’s humourous, and Hughes is great at using characters as gimmicks and devices. However, the book lacks any characters who generate enough emotional resonance to make the story more than interesting diversion. It’s competent and enjoyable but could have been much better.
My reviews of To Hell & Back:
Costume Not Included →
Wait, that didn’t come out right. I don’t have a thing for demon-summoning. As in, I don’t like summoning demons. Actually, I’ve never summoned a demon, but I imagine that if I did summon a demon, I wouldn’t much enjoy it. However, I suppose that there is a small chance that if I do, one day, summon a demon, then I might discover I enjoy it and start off on some kind of demon-summoning kick or addiction. At that point, we could say I have a thing for demon-summoning.
What I mean to say is that I tend to enjoy stories about summoning demons. This is why the early seasons of Supernatural captivated me (I stayed for the later seasons because the narrative deepened and Castiel is awesome). The Damned Busters plays into this predilection of mine. From the get go, Chesney Anstruther isn’t happy about accidentally summoning a demon. When his refusal to make a deal—which would cost him his soul, naturally—with this demon leads to a labour strike in Hell, Chesney finds himself in the middle of a very awkward negotiation. But it works out OK for him in the end, because he gets superpowers! Except it turns out that being a crimefighter with a demon sidekick is tougher than one might think (though if your answer was, “it sounds pretty tough”, then I guess you’re smarter than me—or just a smartass).
The first part of this book, which follows Chesney’s incitement of the labour strike in Hell, is totally unlike the second part, which concerns Chesney’s time as the Actionary. I’ve read several reviews that wish the first part had been jettisoned and one review that actually preferred it to the superhero narrative. I have to side with the former reviewers: the first part of The Damned Busters is slow and a little dull. As I read it I was thinking that it would make a better short story than a novel—indeed, from what I gather from the afterword, it was a short story that Matthew Hughes then expanded. Hell going on strike was a good short-story-length gimmick, but after the initial laughter died down, it quickly became tedious.
So thank God (who is Hughes, in this case) for the sudden changing of gears. Chesney’s apology to Satan is part of the back-to-work deal. In return, Chesney gets a soul-preserving deal with a demon who becomes a kind of familiar to him. Thanks to the demon, Chesney has crimefighting superpowers and can rush about as the Actionary, saving damsels in distress and generally feeling like his fictional hero, the Driver. He tries to impress the daughter of the head of the company he works for, but in so doing he comes to the attention of her father and his ambitions to fight crime as a political gambit.
Unlike the first part of this book, the second part develops steadily. At first Hughes delivers some of the same metafictional, self-aware banter and observations that populate superheroic fiction these days. Chesney’s commentary on his evolution as the Actionary is pithy but nothing we haven’t seen elsewhere. Fortunately, Hughes seems to recognize this, and the stakes get higher. He keeps us guessing as Chesney begins to recognize there is something more going on with Paxton’s C group than just “meta-analysis” for the purposes of fighting crime. Indeed, Chesney isn’t the only person involved who has a deal with a demon, and that makes things all the more interesting.
At one point early in the book, as Chesney watches the Reverend Billy Lee Hardacre mediate between Satan and the leader of the demons’ union, he wonders if he is really the hero of the story after all. It seems like Hardacre is doing the important work. It’s a valid question at this point, because Chesney doesn’t seem like hero material. Indeed, he’s a bit of a pig. But as the story develops, so too does Chesney—he’s still a pig, but he’s a more heroic pig, a character more worthy of carrying a story like this on his shoulders. Someone who deserves to thwart evil plans of world domination.
Alas, Chesney’s development from zero to hero is the exception and not the rule. The Damned Busters suffers from flat characters all around. Aside from Chesney, they are all essentially types of one kind or another in their descriptions, dialogue, and actions. Both love interests, Penny Paxton and Melda McCall, are prime examples of this. Hughes plays up Penny as the conniving heiress who always gets her way—and that’s all she is. Similarly, Melda is the tough-as-nails yet mercurial beautician who can handle herself but is attracted to the Actionary nonetheless.
In both cases, there’s nothing really deeper going on here. Normally with minor characters we at least get a peek at their motivations. We learn about their relationships with their parents. Where’s Penny’s mother? What are Penny’s aspirations, if any, beyond hanging around her father’s office all the time? Does Melda have any dreams beyond the beauty parlour? We never get a glimpse at the person behind the character. This is a huge problem, compounded by the fact that as much as Chesney improves, he remains a frail protagonist who is, if sympathetic, not all that enjoyable a person to hang around.
The Damned Busters has its moments. It’s humourous, and Hughes is great at using characters as gimmicks and devices. However, the book lacks any characters who generate enough emotional resonance to make the story more than interesting diversion. It’s competent and enjoyable but could have been much better.
My reviews of To Hell & Back:
Costume Not Included →
Whereas delaying reading A Case of Exploding Mangoes for four years didn’t improve the experience, I am glad that I waited until now to read Muse of Fire. I recently read Much Ado About Nothing for the first time, in order to teach it to a Year 9 class, and being familiar with that play’s plot and characters definitely improved my comprehension of this Shakespeare-infused novella.
Dan Simmons banks on the continued popularity of the Bard in this book, which is set in a future where humanity has regressed under the baleful influence of a hierarchy of alien species. The vast majority of humans are labourers, eking out an existence on any number of planets. After dying, their alien overseers transport their corpses back to Earth to be entombed until the day of reckoning. Muse of Fire follows a group of humans who have escaped this dull life for one slightly more adventurous. Told from the perspective of Wilbr, a minor player, the story follows the crew of a ship of the same name as they travel from world to world and put on Shakespeare plays.
Shakespeare’s wild popularity despite the fact that his language becomes more archaic with every passing decade is a testament to his skill as a writer, and to the skill of the people who perform his plays. I suppose it’s similar to how people can enjoy an opera even if they don’t speak the opera’s language; the actions and tone of the players are a language all on their own. In the future, human civilization has fallen apart to the point that, as Wilbr explains, they no longer have their own arts; they barely have their own culture. Hence, Shakespeare is even less accessible to their audiences than it is to the audience of today.
Indeed, one has to wonder if Shakespeare would make much sense at all. Do these people know what a thane or a king even is? How much of an oral tradition preserves the past? Simmons doesn’t quite let on, which makes it difficult to judge the extent to which Shakespeare might be understood by these people. In discussing the role of Shakespeare in Brave New World with my AS Level literature class, we talked about how the people of the World State didn’t have the emotional training needed to appreciate Shakespeare, let alone the cultural baggage necessary to understand him. I can’t help but wonder if the same is true here. People’s lives seem so curtailed; can they comprehend the richness of fantasy and circumstance that Shakespeare unleashes with every line?
Our intrepid (and youthful) narrator, Wilbr, certainly does. He is our only window into this watered-down version of humanity, and as the plot thickens he recounts how he went from being a rather undeveloped human being to a Shakespearean actor and afficionado. His commentary on Much Ado About Nothing, King Lear, Hamlet, and Macbeth all evoke the passion for and sense of wonder about Shakespeare’s plays that demonstrate why they are so timeless. If all Simmons set out to do was write a story that celebrated Shakespeare’s work, he has succeeded.
The plot itself, unfortunately, is much less exciting. Wilbr’s troupe has attracted the attention of the aliens who lord it over humanity (the “overlords”, if you will). They get ordered to perform, again and again, for increasingly alien species who are higher up in the pecking order. At last, only Wilbr and his shallow, poorly-characterized love interest are left to perform an ad hoc version of Romeo and Juliet for “God”. And it’s all a test (of course).
Echoes of Simmons’ other work, particularly Hyperion, are evident here. There’s the humanoid manifestations of god and the questions of whether such beings are worthy of worship. There’s the transcendent or otherwise sacrificed human beings, such as the mysterious woman called the Muse who embodies the ship’s cognitive functions. And there is a sense of inevitable, eschatological doom hanging over the collective souls of the human species. It is rather heavy stuff.
But all this takes place on a very flimsy canvas of a setting. Simmons doesn’t see fit to explain much about how humanity got this way. He leaves a lot about the story’s background mysterious, such as why human corpses are always returned to Earth. Aside from the repetitive plot structure and frequent praise for Shakespeare, there is not much going on here. Similarly, the characters are nothing to write home about. Wilbr is well developed as our narrator, but the others are flat and two-dimensional, remaining loyal to the one-line descriptions Wilbr tags them with near the beginning of the story.
Plenty of interesting ideas. Excellent use of mood, atmosphere, and tone. And, of course, it’s all about how Shakespeare is the bomb (and you know he is). In these respects, Muse of Fire is an excellent novella—but as a story, it failed to capture, sustain, or really even stir my interest. Once again, I remain ambivalent about Simmons—this was not the book that could push me to one particular side of the fence.
Dan Simmons banks on the continued popularity of the Bard in this book, which is set in a future where humanity has regressed under the baleful influence of a hierarchy of alien species. The vast majority of humans are labourers, eking out an existence on any number of planets. After dying, their alien overseers transport their corpses back to Earth to be entombed until the day of reckoning. Muse of Fire follows a group of humans who have escaped this dull life for one slightly more adventurous. Told from the perspective of Wilbr, a minor player, the story follows the crew of a ship of the same name as they travel from world to world and put on Shakespeare plays.
Shakespeare’s wild popularity despite the fact that his language becomes more archaic with every passing decade is a testament to his skill as a writer, and to the skill of the people who perform his plays. I suppose it’s similar to how people can enjoy an opera even if they don’t speak the opera’s language; the actions and tone of the players are a language all on their own. In the future, human civilization has fallen apart to the point that, as Wilbr explains, they no longer have their own arts; they barely have their own culture. Hence, Shakespeare is even less accessible to their audiences than it is to the audience of today.
Indeed, one has to wonder if Shakespeare would make much sense at all. Do these people know what a thane or a king even is? How much of an oral tradition preserves the past? Simmons doesn’t quite let on, which makes it difficult to judge the extent to which Shakespeare might be understood by these people. In discussing the role of Shakespeare in Brave New World with my AS Level literature class, we talked about how the people of the World State didn’t have the emotional training needed to appreciate Shakespeare, let alone the cultural baggage necessary to understand him. I can’t help but wonder if the same is true here. People’s lives seem so curtailed; can they comprehend the richness of fantasy and circumstance that Shakespeare unleashes with every line?
Our intrepid (and youthful) narrator, Wilbr, certainly does. He is our only window into this watered-down version of humanity, and as the plot thickens he recounts how he went from being a rather undeveloped human being to a Shakespearean actor and afficionado. His commentary on Much Ado About Nothing, King Lear, Hamlet, and Macbeth all evoke the passion for and sense of wonder about Shakespeare’s plays that demonstrate why they are so timeless. If all Simmons set out to do was write a story that celebrated Shakespeare’s work, he has succeeded.
The plot itself, unfortunately, is much less exciting. Wilbr’s troupe has attracted the attention of the aliens who lord it over humanity (the “overlords”, if you will). They get ordered to perform, again and again, for increasingly alien species who are higher up in the pecking order. At last, only Wilbr and his shallow, poorly-characterized love interest are left to perform an ad hoc version of Romeo and Juliet for “God”. And it’s all a test (of course).
Echoes of Simmons’ other work, particularly Hyperion, are evident here. There’s the humanoid manifestations of god and the questions of whether such beings are worthy of worship. There’s the transcendent or otherwise sacrificed human beings, such as the mysterious woman called the Muse who embodies the ship’s cognitive functions. And there is a sense of inevitable, eschatological doom hanging over the collective souls of the human species. It is rather heavy stuff.
But all this takes place on a very flimsy canvas of a setting. Simmons doesn’t see fit to explain much about how humanity got this way. He leaves a lot about the story’s background mysterious, such as why human corpses are always returned to Earth. Aside from the repetitive plot structure and frequent praise for Shakespeare, there is not much going on here. Similarly, the characters are nothing to write home about. Wilbr is well developed as our narrator, but the others are flat and two-dimensional, remaining loyal to the one-line descriptions Wilbr tags them with near the beginning of the story.
Plenty of interesting ideas. Excellent use of mood, atmosphere, and tone. And, of course, it’s all about how Shakespeare is the bomb (and you know he is). In these respects, Muse of Fire is an excellent novella—but as a story, it failed to capture, sustain, or really even stir my interest. Once again, I remain ambivalent about Simmons—this was not the book that could push me to one particular side of the fence.
Have you made a deal with the devil? Worried about how your soul will be conveyed to its eternal torment upon the expiry of that deal? Not sure you can trust the Grim Reaper with so important a task? Never fear: the Collectors are here! And they are going to take you straight to Hell.
Chris F. Holm mashes up the concept of the damned, human soul collector with the tradition of noir pulp fiction. Sam Thornton hops from body to body, preferring to possess dead ones, all the better for maintaining his tenuous link to his humanity. He travels across the world collecting the souls of the damned at the behest of his handler, the dangerous and sexy Lilith (yes, that Lilith). But when Sam tries to collect the soul of a 17-year-old who committed triple homicide on her family, he gets serious backlash. With no idea why Kate’s soul is pure, Sam nevertheless takes her on the run and becomes a fugitive from both Heaven and Hell while he tries to sort things out.
Holm wastes no time propelling us into the main part of the story. We get a brief prologue that introduces us to the nature of Sam’s job, and then he’s off to collect Kate’s soul—a task at which he fails miserably. He finds himself in a catch-22, because failing to collect a soul is an act of rebellion that might trigger Judgement Day … yet collecting an innocent soul is also a J-Day trigger. So what’s a poor collector supposed to do?
Sam’s answer is “run like Hell” for the entire book. This gets kind of old, fast, especially when he repeatedly attempts to stash Kate somewhere “for her safety”, she refuses, and then they end up getting attacked. While I suppose this structure is reassuring, it is also very formulaic. This is the result of Dead Harvest’s central problem: namely, the stakes are the same for the entire book.
By dropping the apocalypse on us at the beginning of the book, Holm leaves the tension with nowhere to go but down. With each demon Sam encounters encouraging him to collect Kate’s soul, with each close scrape with the cops, Holm’s action-oriented writing entertains. But there is little question that, by the end of the story, Sam is going to prevail. There’s no sense that he’ll have to sacrifice—I mean, what has he got to lose? Aside from Sam, and maybe Kate, none of the other characters acquire more than one or two dimensions.
Flashbacks reveal how Sam became a collector, how a demon dragged him into the sordid business back in the 1930s. Although I wasn’t a fan of how Holm scattered these throughout the book, I’m glad they are there; I liked learning more about Sam’s backstory. That being said, I might prefer reading that novel instead of Dead Harvest.
This is a book where I really like the concept but have so many reservations about the structure and content … there are plenty of ways I can think of to improve it. I’d like to see a larger, more dynamic cast of characters. I wouldn’t mind more exploration of the mythos Holm has created for his angels and demons. Surely in his several decades of collecting Sam would have found more informants than a few piddly demons!
After some more reflection, above all else, what would have clinched Dead Harvest for me would be more meaningful exploration of Sam’s existential crisis. Holm seems to do his best to hammer home the point that it is only a matter of when, not if Sam becomes as soulless and deranged as the other Collector, Bishop. And this is the most fascinating facet of the mythos Holm is creating: how do Collectors deal with their slow descent into Hell? Do they ever meet up to compare notes? Again, Holm spends more time in “thriller” mode than he does in more meditative modes, and this makes for a much less satisfying story.
If, unlike me, you have more experience reading noir fiction, there’s a chance you’ll enjoy this book more than I did. For me, however, Dead Harvest was a hollow read.
Chris F. Holm mashes up the concept of the damned, human soul collector with the tradition of noir pulp fiction. Sam Thornton hops from body to body, preferring to possess dead ones, all the better for maintaining his tenuous link to his humanity. He travels across the world collecting the souls of the damned at the behest of his handler, the dangerous and sexy Lilith (yes, that Lilith). But when Sam tries to collect the soul of a 17-year-old who committed triple homicide on her family, he gets serious backlash. With no idea why Kate’s soul is pure, Sam nevertheless takes her on the run and becomes a fugitive from both Heaven and Hell while he tries to sort things out.
Holm wastes no time propelling us into the main part of the story. We get a brief prologue that introduces us to the nature of Sam’s job, and then he’s off to collect Kate’s soul—a task at which he fails miserably. He finds himself in a catch-22, because failing to collect a soul is an act of rebellion that might trigger Judgement Day … yet collecting an innocent soul is also a J-Day trigger. So what’s a poor collector supposed to do?
Sam’s answer is “run like Hell” for the entire book. This gets kind of old, fast, especially when he repeatedly attempts to stash Kate somewhere “for her safety”, she refuses, and then they end up getting attacked. While I suppose this structure is reassuring, it is also very formulaic. This is the result of Dead Harvest’s central problem: namely, the stakes are the same for the entire book.
By dropping the apocalypse on us at the beginning of the book, Holm leaves the tension with nowhere to go but down. With each demon Sam encounters encouraging him to collect Kate’s soul, with each close scrape with the cops, Holm’s action-oriented writing entertains. But there is little question that, by the end of the story, Sam is going to prevail. There’s no sense that he’ll have to sacrifice—I mean, what has he got to lose? Aside from Sam, and maybe Kate, none of the other characters acquire more than one or two dimensions.
Flashbacks reveal how Sam became a collector, how a demon dragged him into the sordid business back in the 1930s. Although I wasn’t a fan of how Holm scattered these throughout the book, I’m glad they are there; I liked learning more about Sam’s backstory. That being said, I might prefer reading that novel instead of Dead Harvest.
This is a book where I really like the concept but have so many reservations about the structure and content … there are plenty of ways I can think of to improve it. I’d like to see a larger, more dynamic cast of characters. I wouldn’t mind more exploration of the mythos Holm has created for his angels and demons. Surely in his several decades of collecting Sam would have found more informants than a few piddly demons!
After some more reflection, above all else, what would have clinched Dead Harvest for me would be more meaningful exploration of Sam’s existential crisis. Holm seems to do his best to hammer home the point that it is only a matter of when, not if Sam becomes as soulless and deranged as the other Collector, Bishop. And this is the most fascinating facet of the mythos Holm is creating: how do Collectors deal with their slow descent into Hell? Do they ever meet up to compare notes? Again, Holm spends more time in “thriller” mode than he does in more meditative modes, and this makes for a much less satisfying story.
If, unlike me, you have more experience reading noir fiction, there’s a chance you’ll enjoy this book more than I did. For me, however, Dead Harvest was a hollow read.
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Want to know the difference between the Renaissance and present-day society? If Machiavelli had written The Prince today, it would be called Ruling Principalities for Dummies. In the fifteenth century, manuals for prospective rulers took the form of profound philosophical treatises. In the twenty-first century, they're bullet-point lists bound in bright yellow covers with a cartoon on the front. Part history and part philosophy, The Prince is a glimpse into the mind of a Renaissance thinker. As much as it is an exploration of politics, it is also an exploration of personality, a fact that becomes much clearer when it's held up next to Machiavelli's other works, such as The Life of Castruccio Castracani and Discourses on Livy.
If one wants to be reductionist, one can boil down The Prince to a manual on how to keep power. Machiavelli focuses in particular on princes who are new to their principality, as hereditary princes simply need to continue the practices of their predecessors that made the people content enough not to revolt. New princes must establish control over their state, whether it's one they have recently conquered or one they've seized in a coup.
I think it's a mistake to reduce The Prince though. What sets Machiavelli apart is his style, the way he articulates his arguments and advances his philosophy for ruling a principality. He draws on specific cases, both from ancient (usually Roman) history and recent events in 15th-century Italy. Consequently, I've learned more about Italian history from The Prince than any other source. Fifteenth-century Italy was one fucked up place, and it's no wonder that Machiavelli felt the need to write The Prince.
In both The Prince and Discourses on Livy, Machiavelli makes heavy use of examples from ancient Rome. In comparing contemporary Italy to the times that preceded it, Machiavelli usually finds his own time lacking. Although he's a staunch republican, if you read only The Prince, you probably wouldn't know it. Maybe Machiavelli wrote it only as an attempt to get into the good graces of the Medicis. From the way he speaks wistfully of Rome—both republic and empire—I couldn't help but get a sense that Machiavelli's outlining what he sees as the qualities Italy needs in a leader who will restore the country's former glory. As a student of history, Machiavelli knows that Italy was once strong—and unified. Even in Discourses, Machiavelli says that only a single man can found a republic (Chapter 9: "How It Is Necessary for a Man to Act Alone in Order to Organize a Republic Anew. . ."). The Prince, then, is a programme for good leadership of a state. More than just keeping power, The Prince is about being great (a condition that Machiavelli never conflates with morality).
For those of us who live in democracies, we don't always have a clear understanding of exactly what duties occupy the mind of a prince. Machiavelli's writing has certainly been eye-opening and educational for me, simply because he comments on matters that I would never think about. Nevertheless, I have no doubt that some aspects of Machiavelli's pragmatic advice still apply. For example, chapters 17, 18, and 19 elucidate the difference between applying necessary cruelty and engendering contempt or hatred. Machiavelli is, if anything, meticulous in his reasoning. He has no scruples about "misremembering" history or, as is the case in his biography of Castruccio Castracani, outright fabricating it. But when it comes to his arguments, each one is carefully constructed and advanced in order to convince.
I have nothing but praise for this particular edition as well. It's a serendipitous Christmas gift from a friend. I had to read a few chapters of The Prince for a philosophy class, so I took the opportunity to read the entire book (and the "other writings" included here). This edition has notes at the end of every chapter that explain historical references, possible translation problems, and most importantly, mistakes made by Machiavelli. The introduction, timeline, and brief biography of Machiavelli were also helpful in providing context—as previously mentioned, I found this book an informative source of Italian history as well as political philosophy. The inclusion of both The Prince and excerpts from Discourses on Livy provides a contrast of Machiavelli's work that's quite useful. I found The Prince more comprehensive (although this could be bias, as the book only has excerpts from Discourses), but Discourses is a fascinating look at Machiavelli's republican sensibilities, as well as his thoughts on the use of religion in republics.
The Prince is essential for anyone interested in political philosophy. Machiavelli's work has retained its fame for a reason: it is both a philosophical and a rhetorical masterpiece. It's a mistake to write it off either as satire or as some sort of dark endorsement of immoral deeds. That scholars more intelligent and more knowledgeable than I still debate some of the meaning behind Machiavelli's words attests to the their complexity. As for me, while I don't think I'll be acquiring a new principality any time soon, now I feel more prepared should that happen.
If one wants to be reductionist, one can boil down The Prince to a manual on how to keep power. Machiavelli focuses in particular on princes who are new to their principality, as hereditary princes simply need to continue the practices of their predecessors that made the people content enough not to revolt. New princes must establish control over their state, whether it's one they have recently conquered or one they've seized in a coup.
I think it's a mistake to reduce The Prince though. What sets Machiavelli apart is his style, the way he articulates his arguments and advances his philosophy for ruling a principality. He draws on specific cases, both from ancient (usually Roman) history and recent events in 15th-century Italy. Consequently, I've learned more about Italian history from The Prince than any other source. Fifteenth-century Italy was one fucked up place, and it's no wonder that Machiavelli felt the need to write The Prince.
In both The Prince and Discourses on Livy, Machiavelli makes heavy use of examples from ancient Rome. In comparing contemporary Italy to the times that preceded it, Machiavelli usually finds his own time lacking. Although he's a staunch republican, if you read only The Prince, you probably wouldn't know it. Maybe Machiavelli wrote it only as an attempt to get into the good graces of the Medicis. From the way he speaks wistfully of Rome—both republic and empire—I couldn't help but get a sense that Machiavelli's outlining what he sees as the qualities Italy needs in a leader who will restore the country's former glory. As a student of history, Machiavelli knows that Italy was once strong—and unified. Even in Discourses, Machiavelli says that only a single man can found a republic (Chapter 9: "How It Is Necessary for a Man to Act Alone in Order to Organize a Republic Anew. . ."). The Prince, then, is a programme for good leadership of a state. More than just keeping power, The Prince is about being great (a condition that Machiavelli never conflates with morality).
For those of us who live in democracies, we don't always have a clear understanding of exactly what duties occupy the mind of a prince. Machiavelli's writing has certainly been eye-opening and educational for me, simply because he comments on matters that I would never think about. Nevertheless, I have no doubt that some aspects of Machiavelli's pragmatic advice still apply. For example, chapters 17, 18, and 19 elucidate the difference between applying necessary cruelty and engendering contempt or hatred. Machiavelli is, if anything, meticulous in his reasoning. He has no scruples about "misremembering" history or, as is the case in his biography of Castruccio Castracani, outright fabricating it. But when it comes to his arguments, each one is carefully constructed and advanced in order to convince.
I have nothing but praise for this particular edition as well. It's a serendipitous Christmas gift from a friend. I had to read a few chapters of The Prince for a philosophy class, so I took the opportunity to read the entire book (and the "other writings" included here). This edition has notes at the end of every chapter that explain historical references, possible translation problems, and most importantly, mistakes made by Machiavelli. The introduction, timeline, and brief biography of Machiavelli were also helpful in providing context—as previously mentioned, I found this book an informative source of Italian history as well as political philosophy. The inclusion of both The Prince and excerpts from Discourses on Livy provides a contrast of Machiavelli's work that's quite useful. I found The Prince more comprehensive (although this could be bias, as the book only has excerpts from Discourses), but Discourses is a fascinating look at Machiavelli's republican sensibilities, as well as his thoughts on the use of religion in republics.
The Prince is essential for anyone interested in political philosophy. Machiavelli's work has retained its fame for a reason: it is both a philosophical and a rhetorical masterpiece. It's a mistake to write it off either as satire or as some sort of dark endorsement of immoral deeds. That scholars more intelligent and more knowledgeable than I still debate some of the meaning behind Machiavelli's words attests to the their complexity. As for me, while I don't think I'll be acquiring a new principality any time soon, now I feel more prepared should that happen.
“Humans were dead, to begin with. There is no doubt whatsoever about that.”
That is perhaps how Dickens might have begun Saturn’s Children, if Dickens had somehow conceived of a near-future world in which humanity is extinct but its human-like robot servitors have kept on going. Charles Stross isn’t quite so economical in explaining this underlying fact, but he’s almost there. Through references to “pink goo” and “green goo” and the lack of prokaryotes and eukaroytes on Earth, Stross manages to convey how screwed up the solar system has become. And while some readers might find the obliqueness of these explanations unsettling at first, I enjoyed how they truly put me in the role of the outsider.
In Saturn’s Children, Charles Stross demonstrates his versatile mind as he presents a different take on artificial intelligence and sidesteps the Singularity. In this universe, humans never quite manage to create a viable AI from scratch. They cheat by training AIs from models of human brains, conditioning them in realtime as one might educate a child. The result is lineages of AIs with desires and drives very similar to those of their human Creators. As the book opens, humans have been extinct for over a century, but the robotic civilization is still going strong throughout the solar system.
Reading this is kind of like experiencing a twisted Disney vision of the robot future—WALL-E meets Tripping the Rift. We open on Venus, thrown into a world dominated by machines and robots of all types and descriptions. There are no humans in sight—just heavyhanded references to “Creators”. Yet the robots are all acting very human-like; even the non-humanoid ones are curiously anthropomorphic. Ordinarily this would be a huge red flag, but thanks to Stross’ explanation, it makes sense. It allows him to create a very human mystery wrapped in the trappings of robotic senses, abilities, and time-scales.
Identity, and the effect of power relations on identity, are a major component to Saturn’s Children. The protagonist, Freya, is a sexbot who had the misfortune to roll off the production line long after humans died out. Unable to fulfil her original purpose, she subsists on odd jobs. Then, she takes a courier job that turns into a spy thriller—that is, she swallows the red pill.
Yes, robots have jobs. As Freya says, tongue-in-cheek, it’s a robot-eat-robot world. Energy is the ultimate commodity, because it takes energy to power robots and energy to escape the gravity wells of planets and travel throughout the solar system. Robots who can’t make ends meet end up having to sell themselves, becoming “slave-chipped” property of aristos, a robotic parody of an aristocratic class. Stross recreates a very human power dynamic in these inhuman beings, maintaining the economic pressures that lead people to make desperate decisions to avoid destitution.
Freya’s identity is far more fluid than any ordinary protagonist’s has a right to be. She is not exactly a unique person; she is a member of a lineage of robots all booted from an original personality template. She and her siblings can exchange soul chips, which allow them to relive each other’s experiences and gain new memories and abilities. As Freya wears the soul chip of her sib Juliette, who was mixed up in the same shady business Freya gets involved in, Freya finds herself becoming more like Juliette. A few different versions of Juliette surface throughout the story. Combined with the threat of being captured by her enemies and slave-chipped, the fragility and mutability of Freya’s identity, freedom, and autonomy are at the forefront of the story.
These are all a microcosm for the larger problem in this robot civilization, the major difference between the robots and their Creators. Robots lack the rebellious autonomy of the masters they emulate. Humans raised robots to be obedient, to serve. Now humanity is no more, but that subservience has never been removed from the robot psyche. It is a psychic wound that gnaws on the collective unconscious of robot society, fuelling strife that manifests in many interesting ways, such as some people’s attempts to resurrect humanity (and its associated biological ecosystem) and herald in a new age of Creator rule.
At times, Freya seems so close to being a passive player in this larger drama that I neared critical frustration. Everyone else is pulling her strings, and she always seems six steps behind, reacting instead of acting. Nevertheless, she manages to take proactive steps on occasion, and in the final act of the book she truly comes into her own and starts calling the shots. At least one reviewer has expressed reservations about Stross’ choice to use the first-person perspective. However, I can’t imagine this working with any other perspective; an unreliable narrator is necessary for him to pull off the kinds of twists he does. These twists underscore the complicated nature of identity for beings who can swap memories and are themselves the echoes of someone else’s mind.
Saturn’s Children is that perfect mix of science fiction, mystery, and spy thriller. It has all sorts of amazing, thought-provoking concepts; yet never does Stross lose sight of the story. Once or twice, the depth of the mystery becomes convoluted enough to confuse … but that’s a price worth paying for first-class writing and a compelling main character who, despite being inhuman, still grapples with the same existential issues we have—plus a few I’m glad we don’t.
That is perhaps how Dickens might have begun Saturn’s Children, if Dickens had somehow conceived of a near-future world in which humanity is extinct but its human-like robot servitors have kept on going. Charles Stross isn’t quite so economical in explaining this underlying fact, but he’s almost there. Through references to “pink goo” and “green goo” and the lack of prokaryotes and eukaroytes on Earth, Stross manages to convey how screwed up the solar system has become. And while some readers might find the obliqueness of these explanations unsettling at first, I enjoyed how they truly put me in the role of the outsider.
In Saturn’s Children, Charles Stross demonstrates his versatile mind as he presents a different take on artificial intelligence and sidesteps the Singularity. In this universe, humans never quite manage to create a viable AI from scratch. They cheat by training AIs from models of human brains, conditioning them in realtime as one might educate a child. The result is lineages of AIs with desires and drives very similar to those of their human Creators. As the book opens, humans have been extinct for over a century, but the robotic civilization is still going strong throughout the solar system.
Reading this is kind of like experiencing a twisted Disney vision of the robot future—WALL-E meets Tripping the Rift. We open on Venus, thrown into a world dominated by machines and robots of all types and descriptions. There are no humans in sight—just heavyhanded references to “Creators”. Yet the robots are all acting very human-like; even the non-humanoid ones are curiously anthropomorphic. Ordinarily this would be a huge red flag, but thanks to Stross’ explanation, it makes sense. It allows him to create a very human mystery wrapped in the trappings of robotic senses, abilities, and time-scales.
Identity, and the effect of power relations on identity, are a major component to Saturn’s Children. The protagonist, Freya, is a sexbot who had the misfortune to roll off the production line long after humans died out. Unable to fulfil her original purpose, she subsists on odd jobs. Then, she takes a courier job that turns into a spy thriller—that is, she swallows the red pill.
Yes, robots have jobs. As Freya says, tongue-in-cheek, it’s a robot-eat-robot world. Energy is the ultimate commodity, because it takes energy to power robots and energy to escape the gravity wells of planets and travel throughout the solar system. Robots who can’t make ends meet end up having to sell themselves, becoming “slave-chipped” property of aristos, a robotic parody of an aristocratic class. Stross recreates a very human power dynamic in these inhuman beings, maintaining the economic pressures that lead people to make desperate decisions to avoid destitution.
Freya’s identity is far more fluid than any ordinary protagonist’s has a right to be. She is not exactly a unique person; she is a member of a lineage of robots all booted from an original personality template. She and her siblings can exchange soul chips, which allow them to relive each other’s experiences and gain new memories and abilities. As Freya wears the soul chip of her sib Juliette, who was mixed up in the same shady business Freya gets involved in, Freya finds herself becoming more like Juliette. A few different versions of Juliette surface throughout the story. Combined with the threat of being captured by her enemies and slave-chipped, the fragility and mutability of Freya’s identity, freedom, and autonomy are at the forefront of the story.
These are all a microcosm for the larger problem in this robot civilization, the major difference between the robots and their Creators. Robots lack the rebellious autonomy of the masters they emulate. Humans raised robots to be obedient, to serve. Now humanity is no more, but that subservience has never been removed from the robot psyche. It is a psychic wound that gnaws on the collective unconscious of robot society, fuelling strife that manifests in many interesting ways, such as some people’s attempts to resurrect humanity (and its associated biological ecosystem) and herald in a new age of Creator rule.
At times, Freya seems so close to being a passive player in this larger drama that I neared critical frustration. Everyone else is pulling her strings, and she always seems six steps behind, reacting instead of acting. Nevertheless, she manages to take proactive steps on occasion, and in the final act of the book she truly comes into her own and starts calling the shots. At least one reviewer has expressed reservations about Stross’ choice to use the first-person perspective. However, I can’t imagine this working with any other perspective; an unreliable narrator is necessary for him to pull off the kinds of twists he does. These twists underscore the complicated nature of identity for beings who can swap memories and are themselves the echoes of someone else’s mind.
Saturn’s Children is that perfect mix of science fiction, mystery, and spy thriller. It has all sorts of amazing, thought-provoking concepts; yet never does Stross lose sight of the story. Once or twice, the depth of the mystery becomes convoluted enough to confuse … but that’s a price worth paying for first-class writing and a compelling main character who, despite being inhuman, still grapples with the same existential issues we have—plus a few I’m glad we don’t.
MultiReal picks up right where Infoquake leaves off. Natch has successfully demonstrated the revolutionary new product to the masses—and now the Defense and Wellness Council wants control. He refuses and goes on the run (several times) while his fiefcorp dissolves into bickering and bureaucratically-induced chaos. Oh, and infoquakes continue on the Data Sea.
As with many middle books in a trilogy, MultiReal is one endless spiral of bad luck for the protagonists. From the red tape and threats thrown at them by Magan Kai Lee to the deleterious effects of the black code on Natch, it seems like our heroes can’t catch a break. Eventually, the stress snaps the bond between Natch and his second-in-command, Jara, who is disillusioned with his petty selfishness. With Jara in control of the fiefcorp and Natch essentially forced out, the two of them go their separate ways, with the spectre of MultiReal floating in the Data Sea like some kind of digital child caught in a divorce.
Edelman captures some of the tension and philosophical difficulties inherent in a government’s pursuit to control new technologies. Len Borda makes a convincing zealot, one who believes that control is the only way to ensure stability. Like many real-life politicians, he fears the development of technologies or other innovations that he can’t regulate. On the other hand, MultiReal is dangerous, because of how it controls what people perceive as reality, what they remember and how they react. Its usage takes a physical toll, and it is not just a toy. This book is much clearer on what MultiReal does and how it can be used, and it’s a little scary.
But it’s not that scary, mostly because—as Natch tries to point out to Brone—it doesn’t scale. There is just no way that everyone could have their own set of infinite realities; the computing power doesn’t exist. Managing the infinitely branching realities of a single person seems mind-boggling enough to me. Similarly, MultiReal is a powerful weapon, but it is still limited. It might let someone dodge bullets, but they can only do that for so long. Eventually they will get exhausted and get back to square one.
Edelman manages nevertheless to get me thinking and to help me articulate my own philosophies. I came down strongly in the, “Release MultiReal to everyone, unlimited choice cycles!” camp, and my position did not waver. Information really does want to be free, in my opinion, so it is just a matter of time before that scenario becomes reality (and I mean the reality). Might as well get it over with. While I don’t always see eye-to-eye with the libertarian ideals of limited government, there are moments in the history of innovation when government cannot effectively manage the social change precipitated by new technologies. All it can do is ride out the storm as best it can—or, failing that, fold in upon itself as society experiences the turmoil of revolution.
It would be nice to see that, or anything like that, happening here. Unfortunately, MultiReal is mostly talk. It is incredibly slow-burning—oh, there are plenty of action sequences, and a lot of plotting and strategizing on the part of both sides. Yet none of this seems to come to much. Natch drifts in and out of hiding; Jara and the fiefcorp debate how they should proceed without his leadership; Borda and Kai Lee alternately cackle and threaten each other. It’s a maddeningly flat plot structure that leaves me simultaneously enthusiastic and frustrated! There were moments, such as when Natch held his finger on the button at the meeting of the Prime Committee, threatening to release MultiReal to the public, when I could cheer. For the most part, though, all I could manage was a resigned apathy.
And I can’t say this book did much to improve my opinion of Natch. He’s not a nice person. To be fair, Edelman showed us how he got that way in Infoquake. But I can’t muster much in the way of admiration or respect. Plus, Natch is much more reactive in this book. He runs away, licks his wounds, makes quick decisions based on what other people try to do to him. There is little of that lateral-thinking fiefcorp master whose scheming got him to the number one spot on Primo’s overnight. At least that Natch could move some pages!
MultiReal, like the first book in this series, is a fun science-fiction thriller that asks some good questions about how technology is changing our lives. It’s definitely my cup of tea, and it presents the kind of deep implications of computers and posthumanism, the questions about governance and religion and autonomy that seem so topical these days. However, it doesn’t stand out against the rest of the posthumanism, post-governance crowd, and wow me with its unique characters or extremely memorable twists and turns. It’s a competent but not compelling example of its ilk—and I must say I’m interested in how the trilogy turns out, but I’m not getting my hopes up for any big surprises.
My reviews of the Jump 225 trilogy:
← Infoquake | Geosynchron (forthcoming)
As with many middle books in a trilogy, MultiReal is one endless spiral of bad luck for the protagonists. From the red tape and threats thrown at them by Magan Kai Lee to the deleterious effects of the black code on Natch, it seems like our heroes can’t catch a break. Eventually, the stress snaps the bond between Natch and his second-in-command, Jara, who is disillusioned with his petty selfishness. With Jara in control of the fiefcorp and Natch essentially forced out, the two of them go their separate ways, with the spectre of MultiReal floating in the Data Sea like some kind of digital child caught in a divorce.
Edelman captures some of the tension and philosophical difficulties inherent in a government’s pursuit to control new technologies. Len Borda makes a convincing zealot, one who believes that control is the only way to ensure stability. Like many real-life politicians, he fears the development of technologies or other innovations that he can’t regulate. On the other hand, MultiReal is dangerous, because of how it controls what people perceive as reality, what they remember and how they react. Its usage takes a physical toll, and it is not just a toy. This book is much clearer on what MultiReal does and how it can be used, and it’s a little scary.
But it’s not that scary, mostly because—as Natch tries to point out to Brone—it doesn’t scale. There is just no way that everyone could have their own set of infinite realities; the computing power doesn’t exist. Managing the infinitely branching realities of a single person seems mind-boggling enough to me. Similarly, MultiReal is a powerful weapon, but it is still limited. It might let someone dodge bullets, but they can only do that for so long. Eventually they will get exhausted and get back to square one.
Edelman manages nevertheless to get me thinking and to help me articulate my own philosophies. I came down strongly in the, “Release MultiReal to everyone, unlimited choice cycles!” camp, and my position did not waver. Information really does want to be free, in my opinion, so it is just a matter of time before that scenario becomes reality (and I mean the reality). Might as well get it over with. While I don’t always see eye-to-eye with the libertarian ideals of limited government, there are moments in the history of innovation when government cannot effectively manage the social change precipitated by new technologies. All it can do is ride out the storm as best it can—or, failing that, fold in upon itself as society experiences the turmoil of revolution.
It would be nice to see that, or anything like that, happening here. Unfortunately, MultiReal is mostly talk. It is incredibly slow-burning—oh, there are plenty of action sequences, and a lot of plotting and strategizing on the part of both sides. Yet none of this seems to come to much. Natch drifts in and out of hiding; Jara and the fiefcorp debate how they should proceed without his leadership; Borda and Kai Lee alternately cackle and threaten each other. It’s a maddeningly flat plot structure that leaves me simultaneously enthusiastic and frustrated! There were moments, such as when Natch held his finger on the button at the meeting of the Prime Committee, threatening to release MultiReal to the public, when I could cheer. For the most part, though, all I could manage was a resigned apathy.
And I can’t say this book did much to improve my opinion of Natch. He’s not a nice person. To be fair, Edelman showed us how he got that way in Infoquake. But I can’t muster much in the way of admiration or respect. Plus, Natch is much more reactive in this book. He runs away, licks his wounds, makes quick decisions based on what other people try to do to him. There is little of that lateral-thinking fiefcorp master whose scheming got him to the number one spot on Primo’s overnight. At least that Natch could move some pages!
MultiReal, like the first book in this series, is a fun science-fiction thriller that asks some good questions about how technology is changing our lives. It’s definitely my cup of tea, and it presents the kind of deep implications of computers and posthumanism, the questions about governance and religion and autonomy that seem so topical these days. However, it doesn’t stand out against the rest of the posthumanism, post-governance crowd, and wow me with its unique characters or extremely memorable twists and turns. It’s a competent but not compelling example of its ilk—and I must say I’m interested in how the trilogy turns out, but I’m not getting my hopes up for any big surprises.
My reviews of the Jump 225 trilogy:
← Infoquake | Geosynchron (forthcoming)
I swear I’ve read some of these before, but they’re the type of books that are made of the same mould. Marcus Didius Falco is a “private informer” in the first-century Roman empire. Recently back from a stint in Britain on the emperor’s business, Falco finds himself in jail for crossing the emperor’s chief spy. Thanks to his mother and his girlfriend, he gets his freedom—and a new apartment—and immediately sets about acquiring a new case. He has to shadow and investigate a gold-digger, Severina Zotica, who might also be a black widow.
Lindsey Davis’ characters are flip, and none is more flip than Falco himself. Not even a rat-infested prison can get this guy down. Brutal enforcers, bullies, and threats? Falco laughs in their faces. A slim volume and short chapters add to the sense that this is a light read. As far as mysteries go, Venus in Copper comes down decidedly in the “fun” category.
Also, the mystery is a sideline to the book’s chief strength. I like mysteries—they were my first genre love, even prior to science fiction. However, I find that mysteries are at their best when they are intensely interested in exploring the fallibility of the human condition that leads people to commit murder (or any other crime). Davis does this only in the most shallow ways, examining who stands to benefit from Hortensius Novus’ murder without really digging into the psychology behind it. Her characters, because of their flip and foppish behaviours, don’t have the depth required to make them into compelling heroes or villains.
It’s a good thing, then, that Venus in Copper has more going for it than its murder mystery. Rather, it’s the book’s setting, Davis’ mastery of milieu, that makes it so enjoyable. Davis does an excellent job of depicting how similar life in ancient Rome was to contemporary Western living. There were divisions based on class, wealth, and lineage. There were letting agents and landlords and tenants. There were big dinner parties and concerns about making good impressions on one’s in-laws. Davis manages to impress us with the efficiency and complexity of Roman society, despite its primitive technology compared to us—and she does this without being pompous or overbearing about it. Rather than heap majestic descriptions of architecture or politics on us, she delivers bite-sized explanations, narrated by Falco, of everything we need to know. It’s very cool.
There is nothing here that makes Venus in Copper stand out as an amazing mystery or an amazing novel. But it combines my interest in ancient Rome with my love of mystery, and in so doing earns a lot of credibility with me right away. Davis doesn’t disappoint, and while it might not be as psychologically thrilling as I would like, it’s still entertaining and worthwhile. I’m not sure going to make an effort to read the entire series in order, but I’ll definitely pick up any of the other books if I happen to encounter them. (In fact, I have book one as well … I just didn’t realize this was book two when I started reading it.)
Lindsey Davis’ characters are flip, and none is more flip than Falco himself. Not even a rat-infested prison can get this guy down. Brutal enforcers, bullies, and threats? Falco laughs in their faces. A slim volume and short chapters add to the sense that this is a light read. As far as mysteries go, Venus in Copper comes down decidedly in the “fun” category.
Also, the mystery is a sideline to the book’s chief strength. I like mysteries—they were my first genre love, even prior to science fiction. However, I find that mysteries are at their best when they are intensely interested in exploring the fallibility of the human condition that leads people to commit murder (or any other crime). Davis does this only in the most shallow ways, examining who stands to benefit from Hortensius Novus’ murder without really digging into the psychology behind it. Her characters, because of their flip and foppish behaviours, don’t have the depth required to make them into compelling heroes or villains.
It’s a good thing, then, that Venus in Copper has more going for it than its murder mystery. Rather, it’s the book’s setting, Davis’ mastery of milieu, that makes it so enjoyable. Davis does an excellent job of depicting how similar life in ancient Rome was to contemporary Western living. There were divisions based on class, wealth, and lineage. There were letting agents and landlords and tenants. There were big dinner parties and concerns about making good impressions on one’s in-laws. Davis manages to impress us with the efficiency and complexity of Roman society, despite its primitive technology compared to us—and she does this without being pompous or overbearing about it. Rather than heap majestic descriptions of architecture or politics on us, she delivers bite-sized explanations, narrated by Falco, of everything we need to know. It’s very cool.
There is nothing here that makes Venus in Copper stand out as an amazing mystery or an amazing novel. But it combines my interest in ancient Rome with my love of mystery, and in so doing earns a lot of credibility with me right away. Davis doesn’t disappoint, and while it might not be as psychologically thrilling as I would like, it’s still entertaining and worthwhile. I’m not sure going to make an effort to read the entire series in order, but I’ll definitely pick up any of the other books if I happen to encounter them. (In fact, I have book one as well … I just didn’t realize this was book two when I started reading it.)
I read the Foundation novels when I was younger, probably around the same time that I began getting into science fiction and fantasy in grades 7 and 8. I read a lot of Asimov, both because there was a lot of him in my suspiciously well-stocked public library and because … well, he wrote a lot of books. I read about the Foundation, psychohistory, his Three Laws of Robotics … everything and anything Asimov, if I could check it out with that brilliant plastic card, I would devour it. I can’t remember if this is my second or third time reading Foundation, but when I saw this well-preserved copy at a used bookstore, I decided now was a good time to revisit.
My reading tastes haven’t changed all that much since I was twelve, but the way I read and critique what I read obviously has. To twelve-year-old me, Foundation was a fascinating and amazing story about how psychohistory—which is like psychology on steroids—can be used to manipulate the fate of human society in the far, far future. On re-reading it, I realize that Foundation probably resonated quite a bit with Dune, the first real seminal SF book I read as a child. More on that later though.
To twenty-three-year-old-me, Foundation is a fascinating but not necessarily impressive story about how psychohistory can be used to manipulate the fate of human society in the far, far future. There is no question in my mind that this book or its successors deserve their status as classics and juggernauts in the field of science fiction. However, as stories, and particularly when it comes to Asimov’s writing, they are just not that great. I’m going to attempt to reconcile this disparity.
This is a slim volume, and I read it over the course of a single night. Foundation is very easy to read. Firstly, as a collection of short stories more than an actual novel, with each story featuring a completely different cast and plot, it breaks into easy chunks that are independent of each other. I could have read each one as a bedtime story over the course of a week if I had the patience (and a bedtime). Secondly, none of the stories feature much in the way of action or description; if you look carefully, they are almost entirely dialogue. Asimov is fond of didactic conversations between various ideologically different characters, over the course of which he reveals both exposition and plot. It only works precisely because each story is self-contained, but it works, and it means I don’t have to pay much attention as my eyes move down the page.
So we have five short stories that are mostly dialogue. With very little description or narration, Asimov doesn’t create much of a physical presence of the Foundation universe. I say this as someone who routinely doesn’t visualize images—but I do rely on descriptions to give me a sense of physicality. The characters in these stories are, for me, even less well-defined talking heads than usual.
There is one exception: Asimov creates a strong physical presence for Trantor in “The Psychohistorians”. (It is notable that this is the only story not originally published with the rest but rather written for inclusion in this volume as a kind of preface to the others.) Gaal Dornick’s amusing country bumpkin awe at the scope and mechanization of Trantor is both evident and edifying:
These are perhaps the most verbose, in terms of description, and most effective two paragraphs in the entire book. With it, Asimov establishes the nature of this empire of which Trantor is the centre. This is a vision of a humanity that has replaced nature with machinery at every opportunity. Trantor is so urbanized, so built-up, that it has layers upon layers descending deep beneath the surface. Most of its inhabitants are frightened by the notion of a sky. (Notice, too, how Asimov mentions “the busy traffic of billions of men”. It’s almost too easy to take shots at Foundation for the complete absence of female characters. Nevertheless, the latent sexism in the language of the time creates an unintended, almost dystopian effect for more modern readers. It’s not just a neglect or sexist portrayal of women; it implies a complete negation of women!)
So, Trantor is the bloated, corpulent symbol of human civilization in this great and bountiful empire. It is the Rome of the galaxy, and as Foundation opens, it is in the midst of its own decline and fall. The parallels between Trantor and Rome are unmistakable. Asimov has translated Rome’s decline from Earth to a galaxy-spanning empire. Trantor loses control of the provinces, which fracture into their own kingdoms. The stories themselves are told from the perspective of Foundation members in those provincial territories, with only the barest hints that the Empire itself remains intact, albeit ailing, at the centre of the galaxy.
Asimov’s doomed empire is a reminder of the impermanence of things, particularly of those instituations who have reached the point of senesensce where they no longer believe they are vulnerable. But Hari Seldon, a psychologist and mathematician, can see the decline happening, can predict the timeline of the fall, and has developed a revolutionary science he wants to use to shorten the subsequent chaos and get humanity back on its feet as quickly as possible. To this end, he manipulates the Empire into setting up the eponymous Foundation with the nominal goal of creating a vast encyclopedia of knowledge that it will preserve during the Dark Ages.
The science that lets Hari get this done is psychohistory. It is a way of predicting the future by using pyschology to anticipate the behaviour of large groups. It’s not as crazy as it sounds—large systems often behave more predictably than smaller, individual components within those systems. On the other hand, it’s crazy to believe that a single person can develop some kind of mathematical way of predicting what will happen centuries hence. Psychohistory would suffer from the same flaw as any other attempt at futurism: there is no way to account for the unknowable. Seldon starts from a set of initial conditions and works forward along deterministic and probabilistic paths … but how can he account for external forces—the sudden discovery of aliens, or an intense gamma ray burst destroying Terminus, or something of a similarly unforeseen magnitude?
Yet science fiction is all about saying what if? What if we had faster-than-light travel? What if aliens visited us and gave us telepathic cheese graters? So, in that grand tradition of what if, let us just ask what would happen if we could predict the future to that degree of accuracy. Let us assume we could manipulate the rise of a new Empire, as Seldon has orchestrated, from the ashes of the old one. It helps that, in this book, all the stories take place relatively close to the end of Seldon’s life (all about within two centuries). I believe the later books are set much further into the future, which is where serious deviation from Seldon’s plot would occur. Indeed, if I remember correctly from my blurry memories of the sequels, Seldon anticipated that and came up with a kind of monumental “reset” to compensate for such drift. Asimov is a cheeky but clever fellow, isn’t he?
I’m also intrigued by the parallels between Foundation and Dune, which was published after this book. Dune and its subsequent novels really a lot on the prescience of Paul Atreides and his descendants. Paul becomes obsessed with leading humanity down the “Golden Path” that will prevent its stagnation, and his son takes up that quest in a rather extreme way. Prescience in Dune bears many similarities to psychohistory—namely, it doesn’t work as well if people are aware of the predicted future, and it creates a sense of hopelessness, of being manipulated: “to know the future is to become trapped by it”. Whereas Frank Herbert confines prescience to the bailiwick of a small group of people, at least during the first few books, Asimov establishes that psychohistory is useless when applied to individuals. So I find it interesting that, in every story, it is an individual character who drives the plot towards its successful Seldonian resolution.
Each story, with the exception of the introduction, follows the same mould. The protagonist realizes a Seldon crisis approaches and begins plotting how best to steer the Foundation through it successfully. He has several conversations with people who doubt there is a crisis, or who criticize the protagonist’s inaction, insisting that the Foundation should be more aggressive. Finally, the protagonist reveals how, by doing nothing, their options have dwindled to a single course of action that somehow makes everything OK.
True, the resolution is a consequence of Seldon successfully predicting the way various galactic factions would behave. But because of the perspective Asimov takes here—a lone mayor on Terminus, a self-satisfied trader on a mission, etc.—it feels like the resolutions owe more to a single individual. So, what gives? Is Seldon lying about psychohistory’s utility for individuals? Is Asimov just clumsy here? Or am I reading into it too much?
Also, at no point does Asimov really examine whether Seldon’s vision for the future is the correct or moral one. During the early days of the Foundation, seen in “The Encyclopedists”, there are certainly calls to abandon the idea that the Foundation is being protected by the Emperor back on Trantor. Later, younger generations who don’t really respect the caché of Seldon’s legacy argue that the Foundation should use its knowledge to become the dominant power in that part of the galaxy—screw the current or future Empire! The protagonist at the time, Salvor Hardin, gives those characters the equivalent of a ruffling of the hair and a, “Oh, you kids and your silly imperialistic dreams!” before proceeding to navigate through the next Seldon crisis. Never does he seriously engage in a dialogue about whether Seldon is right. Why should there be another empire—why not a democracy? Why have a centralized civilization for humanity at all? Who is Hari Seldon to say what should become of humanity after the Fall?
I’m disappointed by Asimov’s lack of engagement with these deeper issues of the future of humanity. He certainly doesn’t lack for vision; these stories prove what a magnificent sense of scope he has for thinking about the future of our species. It just seems, however, that he is more interested in showing off the nifty concept of psychohistory than he is in looking at the political or sociological ramifications of the societies he portrays. This is what separates Foundation from being a truly great book, in my opinion.
If Foundation doesn’t make the grade, then why is it still a classic? All sorts of reasons—timing, publishing bias, the phase of the moon and the sun spot cycle and the baseball trading card racket…. I don’t know why it’s a classic, but I agree with that status. Foundation showcases how science fiction, given a single fascinating concept like psychohistory, can start asking questions about the trajectory of human civilization. It starts raising questions about self-determination, of individuals and of the species. And it makes for some interesting conversations between characters who are being manipulated by a man several decades deceased.
So, I’m giving Foundation three stars. The quality of its writing, its weak characterization and description, and my reservations about the depth of its philosophy would ordinarily result in a paltry two-star rating. Nevertheless, I can’t shake the fact that there is something resilient about this book, something that allows it to bear the psychic weight of being a cornerstone in science-fiction’s canon. For that reason, it deserves recognition.
My reading tastes haven’t changed all that much since I was twelve, but the way I read and critique what I read obviously has. To twelve-year-old me, Foundation was a fascinating and amazing story about how psychohistory—which is like psychology on steroids—can be used to manipulate the fate of human society in the far, far future. On re-reading it, I realize that Foundation probably resonated quite a bit with Dune, the first real seminal SF book I read as a child. More on that later though.
To twenty-three-year-old-me, Foundation is a fascinating but not necessarily impressive story about how psychohistory can be used to manipulate the fate of human society in the far, far future. There is no question in my mind that this book or its successors deserve their status as classics and juggernauts in the field of science fiction. However, as stories, and particularly when it comes to Asimov’s writing, they are just not that great. I’m going to attempt to reconcile this disparity.
This is a slim volume, and I read it over the course of a single night. Foundation is very easy to read. Firstly, as a collection of short stories more than an actual novel, with each story featuring a completely different cast and plot, it breaks into easy chunks that are independent of each other. I could have read each one as a bedtime story over the course of a week if I had the patience (and a bedtime). Secondly, none of the stories feature much in the way of action or description; if you look carefully, they are almost entirely dialogue. Asimov is fond of didactic conversations between various ideologically different characters, over the course of which he reveals both exposition and plot. It only works precisely because each story is self-contained, but it works, and it means I don’t have to pay much attention as my eyes move down the page.
So we have five short stories that are mostly dialogue. With very little description or narration, Asimov doesn’t create much of a physical presence of the Foundation universe. I say this as someone who routinely doesn’t visualize images—but I do rely on descriptions to give me a sense of physicality. The characters in these stories are, for me, even less well-defined talking heads than usual.
There is one exception: Asimov creates a strong physical presence for Trantor in “The Psychohistorians”. (It is notable that this is the only story not originally published with the rest but rather written for inclusion in this volume as a kind of preface to the others.) Gaal Dornick’s amusing country bumpkin awe at the scope and mechanization of Trantor is both evident and edifying:
He could not see the ground. It was lost in the ever-increasing complexities of man-made structures. He could see no horizon other than that of metal against sky, stretching out to almost uniform greyness, and he knew it was so over all the land-surface of the planet. There was scarcely any motion to be seen—a few pleasure-craft lazed against the sky—but all the busy traffic of billions of men were going on, he knew, beneath the metal skin of the world.
There was no green to be seen; no green, no soil, no life other than man. Somewhere on the world, he realized vaguely, was the Emperor’s palace, set amid one hundred square miles of natural soil, green with trees, rainbowed with flowers. It was a small island amid an ocean of steel, but it wasn’t visible from where he stood. It might be ten thousand miles away. He did not know.
These are perhaps the most verbose, in terms of description, and most effective two paragraphs in the entire book. With it, Asimov establishes the nature of this empire of which Trantor is the centre. This is a vision of a humanity that has replaced nature with machinery at every opportunity. Trantor is so urbanized, so built-up, that it has layers upon layers descending deep beneath the surface. Most of its inhabitants are frightened by the notion of a sky. (Notice, too, how Asimov mentions “the busy traffic of billions of men”. It’s almost too easy to take shots at Foundation for the complete absence of female characters. Nevertheless, the latent sexism in the language of the time creates an unintended, almost dystopian effect for more modern readers. It’s not just a neglect or sexist portrayal of women; it implies a complete negation of women!)
So, Trantor is the bloated, corpulent symbol of human civilization in this great and bountiful empire. It is the Rome of the galaxy, and as Foundation opens, it is in the midst of its own decline and fall. The parallels between Trantor and Rome are unmistakable. Asimov has translated Rome’s decline from Earth to a galaxy-spanning empire. Trantor loses control of the provinces, which fracture into their own kingdoms. The stories themselves are told from the perspective of Foundation members in those provincial territories, with only the barest hints that the Empire itself remains intact, albeit ailing, at the centre of the galaxy.
Asimov’s doomed empire is a reminder of the impermanence of things, particularly of those instituations who have reached the point of senesensce where they no longer believe they are vulnerable. But Hari Seldon, a psychologist and mathematician, can see the decline happening, can predict the timeline of the fall, and has developed a revolutionary science he wants to use to shorten the subsequent chaos and get humanity back on its feet as quickly as possible. To this end, he manipulates the Empire into setting up the eponymous Foundation with the nominal goal of creating a vast encyclopedia of knowledge that it will preserve during the Dark Ages.
The science that lets Hari get this done is psychohistory. It is a way of predicting the future by using pyschology to anticipate the behaviour of large groups. It’s not as crazy as it sounds—large systems often behave more predictably than smaller, individual components within those systems. On the other hand, it’s crazy to believe that a single person can develop some kind of mathematical way of predicting what will happen centuries hence. Psychohistory would suffer from the same flaw as any other attempt at futurism: there is no way to account for the unknowable. Seldon starts from a set of initial conditions and works forward along deterministic and probabilistic paths … but how can he account for external forces—the sudden discovery of aliens, or an intense gamma ray burst destroying Terminus, or something of a similarly unforeseen magnitude?
Yet science fiction is all about saying what if? What if we had faster-than-light travel? What if aliens visited us and gave us telepathic cheese graters? So, in that grand tradition of what if, let us just ask what would happen if we could predict the future to that degree of accuracy. Let us assume we could manipulate the rise of a new Empire, as Seldon has orchestrated, from the ashes of the old one. It helps that, in this book, all the stories take place relatively close to the end of Seldon’s life (all about within two centuries). I believe the later books are set much further into the future, which is where serious deviation from Seldon’s plot would occur. Indeed, if I remember correctly from my blurry memories of the sequels, Seldon anticipated that and came up with a kind of monumental “reset” to compensate for such drift. Asimov is a cheeky but clever fellow, isn’t he?
I’m also intrigued by the parallels between Foundation and Dune, which was published after this book. Dune and its subsequent novels really a lot on the prescience of Paul Atreides and his descendants. Paul becomes obsessed with leading humanity down the “Golden Path” that will prevent its stagnation, and his son takes up that quest in a rather extreme way. Prescience in Dune bears many similarities to psychohistory—namely, it doesn’t work as well if people are aware of the predicted future, and it creates a sense of hopelessness, of being manipulated: “to know the future is to become trapped by it”. Whereas Frank Herbert confines prescience to the bailiwick of a small group of people, at least during the first few books, Asimov establishes that psychohistory is useless when applied to individuals. So I find it interesting that, in every story, it is an individual character who drives the plot towards its successful Seldonian resolution.
Each story, with the exception of the introduction, follows the same mould. The protagonist realizes a Seldon crisis approaches and begins plotting how best to steer the Foundation through it successfully. He has several conversations with people who doubt there is a crisis, or who criticize the protagonist’s inaction, insisting that the Foundation should be more aggressive. Finally, the protagonist reveals how, by doing nothing, their options have dwindled to a single course of action that somehow makes everything OK.
True, the resolution is a consequence of Seldon successfully predicting the way various galactic factions would behave. But because of the perspective Asimov takes here—a lone mayor on Terminus, a self-satisfied trader on a mission, etc.—it feels like the resolutions owe more to a single individual. So, what gives? Is Seldon lying about psychohistory’s utility for individuals? Is Asimov just clumsy here? Or am I reading into it too much?
Also, at no point does Asimov really examine whether Seldon’s vision for the future is the correct or moral one. During the early days of the Foundation, seen in “The Encyclopedists”, there are certainly calls to abandon the idea that the Foundation is being protected by the Emperor back on Trantor. Later, younger generations who don’t really respect the caché of Seldon’s legacy argue that the Foundation should use its knowledge to become the dominant power in that part of the galaxy—screw the current or future Empire! The protagonist at the time, Salvor Hardin, gives those characters the equivalent of a ruffling of the hair and a, “Oh, you kids and your silly imperialistic dreams!” before proceeding to navigate through the next Seldon crisis. Never does he seriously engage in a dialogue about whether Seldon is right. Why should there be another empire—why not a democracy? Why have a centralized civilization for humanity at all? Who is Hari Seldon to say what should become of humanity after the Fall?
I’m disappointed by Asimov’s lack of engagement with these deeper issues of the future of humanity. He certainly doesn’t lack for vision; these stories prove what a magnificent sense of scope he has for thinking about the future of our species. It just seems, however, that he is more interested in showing off the nifty concept of psychohistory than he is in looking at the political or sociological ramifications of the societies he portrays. This is what separates Foundation from being a truly great book, in my opinion.
If Foundation doesn’t make the grade, then why is it still a classic? All sorts of reasons—timing, publishing bias, the phase of the moon and the sun spot cycle and the baseball trading card racket…. I don’t know why it’s a classic, but I agree with that status. Foundation showcases how science fiction, given a single fascinating concept like psychohistory, can start asking questions about the trajectory of human civilization. It starts raising questions about self-determination, of individuals and of the species. And it makes for some interesting conversations between characters who are being manipulated by a man several decades deceased.
So, I’m giving Foundation three stars. The quality of its writing, its weak characterization and description, and my reservations about the depth of its philosophy would ordinarily result in a paltry two-star rating. Nevertheless, I can’t shake the fact that there is something resilient about this book, something that allows it to bear the psychic weight of being a cornerstone in science-fiction’s canon. For that reason, it deserves recognition.
City of Hope & Despair jumps between two narratives. Tom, the street-nick turned unlikely hero with the ability to hide himself and others in plain sight, sets off as part of a small expedition upriver. Back in Thaiburley, Kat, her sister, and the Tattooed Men hunt the Soul Thief. Meanwhile, there is the distinct impression of a ticking clock, as a mysterious calcifying disease afflicts those in the city who have magical talent.
Whates flicks back and forth between these narratives so much that it might make your head spin. This works to the book’s advantage, however. I found myself getting tired of both stories. After a short time with Kat, I’d wonder what Tom and friends were up to outside of the city. Similarly, too long with the anaemic Tom, and I was yearning to see Kat get up to trouble. City of Hope & Despair suffers from a serious case of “grass is always greener” syndrome, but Whates still manages to make it work, barely.
Tom, fresh from saving the city with his ambiguous superpowers, is off on a quest. Yes, it’s quest time in City of a Hundred Rows world! Tom’s party includes the cunning assassin, Dewar; the intriguing Thaistess (priestess), Mildra; and a super-strength Kayjele named Kohn. With brains, spirit, and brawn backing him up, Tom travels upriver. It’s not entirely clear what they are seeking (good old Prime Master of Thaiburley and his amgiuous explanations again), but legend has it that not only is the river the source of the city’s magic but there is a goddess at the source of the river! So there!
In the city, Kat is chasing a Soul Thief. This malignant entity hunts people with magical talent and literally sucks them dry of it. It preys on the poor of the lower city, and so far the authorities have done nothing to stop it. So Kat and her band of antiheroes, the survivors of the vicious gladiatorial pits, are trying to fill the void. Eventually they hatch a half-baked scheme to use people with talent as bait. It doesn’t quite go as planned (thanks to some interference from local gang members). In the end, Kat has to make a deal with the enemy she knows to hunt the enemy she doesn’t.
Lurking behind these two stories, like a spider at its web, is the prime master. I love this guy. I hate that I love this guy, because he is bad for the plot like trans fat is for your heart—it can taste so good, but it is going to kill you one day. The prime master is one of those characters who has more answers than the reader—almost but not quite an author avatar—and manipulates other characters from behind the scenes. He confronts the mysterious bone disease that is attacking the talented of Thaiburley. It seems clear that he knows more about Tom’s quest than he has let on to Tom. And he personally gets involved in Kat’s hunt for the Soul Thief—though he has ulterior motives for sending her on a joint expedition with the Kite Guard into the Stain.
Tom, on the other hand, I still can’t bring myself to love. He’s just so plain and transparent. Whates gets into his head, and it’s full of the fluffiness of youth without any of the flaws. It’s true that Tom is no warrior. When it comes to his personality, his character, there are no flaws. He’s a nice guy who, in a high school setting, would probably get beat up a lot because he’s just so nice it’s sickening.
I’m conflicted about Kat. I like her, but I think Whates leans too much on the stereotype of the “strong, damaged badass girl” without seriously exploring it. To his credit, he gives Kat and her sister an interesting and fairly deep backstory about their childhood in the Pits. Kat’s adversarial relationship with her sister figures prominently in this book, coming to a head during the climax of her plot and resulting in a change to Kat’s status that will leave her uncertain and unbalanced in the next book.
City of Hope & Despair definitely has a lot going on, which isn’t quite the same as saying it has a lot going for it. Much like the first book, this one seem to reach for but never quite grasp the story it wants to be. I’m disappointed that it didn’t quite live up to my expectations, but after re-reading my review of the first book and thinking about it some more, I shouldn’t be surprised. Though this is a competent, complete story that sets the scene for what promises to be an intense third volume, City of Hope & Despair does not rise to the level of fascinating or epic.
Whates flicks back and forth between these narratives so much that it might make your head spin. This works to the book’s advantage, however. I found myself getting tired of both stories. After a short time with Kat, I’d wonder what Tom and friends were up to outside of the city. Similarly, too long with the anaemic Tom, and I was yearning to see Kat get up to trouble. City of Hope & Despair suffers from a serious case of “grass is always greener” syndrome, but Whates still manages to make it work, barely.
Tom, fresh from saving the city with his ambiguous superpowers, is off on a quest. Yes, it’s quest time in City of a Hundred Rows world! Tom’s party includes the cunning assassin, Dewar; the intriguing Thaistess (priestess), Mildra; and a super-strength Kayjele named Kohn. With brains, spirit, and brawn backing him up, Tom travels upriver. It’s not entirely clear what they are seeking (good old Prime Master of Thaiburley and his amgiuous explanations again), but legend has it that not only is the river the source of the city’s magic but there is a goddess at the source of the river! So there!
In the city, Kat is chasing a Soul Thief. This malignant entity hunts people with magical talent and literally sucks them dry of it. It preys on the poor of the lower city, and so far the authorities have done nothing to stop it. So Kat and her band of antiheroes, the survivors of the vicious gladiatorial pits, are trying to fill the void. Eventually they hatch a half-baked scheme to use people with talent as bait. It doesn’t quite go as planned (thanks to some interference from local gang members). In the end, Kat has to make a deal with the enemy she knows to hunt the enemy she doesn’t.
Lurking behind these two stories, like a spider at its web, is the prime master. I love this guy. I hate that I love this guy, because he is bad for the plot like trans fat is for your heart—it can taste so good, but it is going to kill you one day. The prime master is one of those characters who has more answers than the reader—almost but not quite an author avatar—and manipulates other characters from behind the scenes. He confronts the mysterious bone disease that is attacking the talented of Thaiburley. It seems clear that he knows more about Tom’s quest than he has let on to Tom. And he personally gets involved in Kat’s hunt for the Soul Thief—though he has ulterior motives for sending her on a joint expedition with the Kite Guard into the Stain.
Tom, on the other hand, I still can’t bring myself to love. He’s just so plain and transparent. Whates gets into his head, and it’s full of the fluffiness of youth without any of the flaws. It’s true that Tom is no warrior. When it comes to his personality, his character, there are no flaws. He’s a nice guy who, in a high school setting, would probably get beat up a lot because he’s just so nice it’s sickening.
I’m conflicted about Kat. I like her, but I think Whates leans too much on the stereotype of the “strong, damaged badass girl” without seriously exploring it. To his credit, he gives Kat and her sister an interesting and fairly deep backstory about their childhood in the Pits. Kat’s adversarial relationship with her sister figures prominently in this book, coming to a head during the climax of her plot and resulting in a change to Kat’s status that will leave her uncertain and unbalanced in the next book.
City of Hope & Despair definitely has a lot going on, which isn’t quite the same as saying it has a lot going for it. Much like the first book, this one seem to reach for but never quite grasp the story it wants to be. I’m disappointed that it didn’t quite live up to my expectations, but after re-reading my review of the first book and thinking about it some more, I shouldn’t be surprised. Though this is a competent, complete story that sets the scene for what promises to be an intense third volume, City of Hope & Despair does not rise to the level of fascinating or epic.
Darkness Falling chronicles the struggle of several survivors as they realize they probably should have paid attention to that last zombie movie. It’s the end of the world as we know it, and genre savviness is nowhere to be found.
I checked out about halfway through the first act. I love reading on my tablet, but it’s so easy to get into the rhythm of tapping to turn the page, skimming through each page as you slowly realize that no, it doesn’t get better. I hoped, in vain, that something would magically change about this book—that an actual, complex character would show up, or that we would get any kind of explanation for what was happening. Instead, it was more random running, and yelling, and conversation, and things that might zombies or aliens or zombie-aliens. And I just didn’t care.
I will hand it to Peter Crowther: he has tried not to retread any single path. At the beginning, when Ronnie’s wife and others disappear from the plane in a flash of light, I nodded and said, “Rapture. This must be a Rapture story!” Later, as the disappeared began returning and acting on autopilot, I said, “Ah-hah! This is a zombie Rapture story! Now we’re talking!” Matters just got more confusing from there, though. So, while Darkness Falling combines several well-used tropes to create an interesting new mixture of problems for its protagonists, it doesn’t quite make the combination work. Crowther is a good author who manages to create tension and suspense as his different groups awaken to the new reality of their situation and desperately struggle for survival.
A great author, however, would be able to do this while simultaneously dropping clues about the story behind the crisis. I’m not even asking for a full explanation by the end of the book—it’s OK to keep the reader in the dark, as long as one leaves enough hints that an invested reader could start making educated guesses. (Observe, for instance, the level of speculation surrounding the various mysteries in A Song of Ice and Fire. It is practically an entire academic sub-field now; soon enough universities will be able to issue degrees in Westerology.) Crowther neglects this side of the writing for the pulse-pounding, heart-thumping thriller aspects. And I can grok the need for thrilling speed, but I still need that deeper mystery.
I also need characters who mean something to me. Despite its thrilling second and third acts, Darkness Falling builds with all the speed of a sloth stuck in molasses. Crowther alternates among three or four different groups of protagonists, such as Ronnie and Angela (soon to joined by Karl) on the plane; Virgil and his victims; Rick and Geoff; and so on. As the event—whatever it is—happens, each of these groups discovers how alone they are and struggles to survive, finally meeting up towards the end of the book. Until then, however, there is a lot of duplication of information and dialogue, as various characters in each group go through the same, “Oh shit” moments of introspection. If Crowther had made his groups more diverse, included a wider variety of people from different countries, genders, and backgrounds, then this might have been more enlightening. Since most of the characters are from the same general socioeconomic background, their reactions and personalities are just so similar that it gets repetitive.
Overall, I struggled with an oppressive sense of ennui as I read Darkness Falling. I’m getting rather bored with the zombie apocalypse. I’m certainly done with reading about tough-as-nails small-town Americans banding together to survive disaster. There is just nothing, nothing at all about this book that stands out, grabs me, and urges me to keep reading. It’s either so bland and standard as to be uninteresting or so broad and uninvestigated as to be unintriguing. Why should I want to learn anything more about this darkness phenomenon if it means I have to wait until the next book? I’ll go read a book about zombies exploring space, thank you very much. (Is there such a book? Call me!)
I read several reviews that compare this book to a Stephen King novel. I can see why, and an unexpected consequence of this experience is that I now have more respect for King’s writing. I didn’t love Under the Dome; its characterization was weak and stereotypical, and the book was far too long. Regardless, King still knows how to write at a level that, at least in this book, has eluded Crowther. I didn’t necessarily like his characters or even find them that convincing, but I still remembered most of their names. And his story, even if not awesome, still made a kind of twisted sense. I can’t say as much for Darkness Falling.
Oh, and I’m not crazy about books whose titles are X Falling, where X is anything from “darkness” to “mutant bear politicians”. The only thing worse is X Rising. (I groaned when I turned the last page of this ebook and saw that the sequel was called Darkness Rising. I see now that the title is instead Windows to the Soul. Thank goodness for small favours.) I’m not sure who started this awful trend, but if I find out, I will … write a sternly worded letter of some kind.
This has been a somewhat scattered review because, to be honest, not enough of the contents of Darkness Falling have stuck with me in the less-than-24-hours since I finished reading it. This isn’t the kind of bad book where I become so furious that I begin taking notes and bookmarking quotations to use later on in an excoriating review. No, I’m afraid this is the other, less enjoyable kind of bad book that is merely bland and just not for me. Would it be for you? I’m not sure, but even if zombie-alien-Rapture-small-town-apocalypses are on your to-read list, there is probably a better example somewhere out there.
I checked out about halfway through the first act. I love reading on my tablet, but it’s so easy to get into the rhythm of tapping to turn the page, skimming through each page as you slowly realize that no, it doesn’t get better. I hoped, in vain, that something would magically change about this book—that an actual, complex character would show up, or that we would get any kind of explanation for what was happening. Instead, it was more random running, and yelling, and conversation, and things that might zombies or aliens or zombie-aliens. And I just didn’t care.
I will hand it to Peter Crowther: he has tried not to retread any single path. At the beginning, when Ronnie’s wife and others disappear from the plane in a flash of light, I nodded and said, “Rapture. This must be a Rapture story!” Later, as the disappeared began returning and acting on autopilot, I said, “Ah-hah! This is a zombie Rapture story! Now we’re talking!” Matters just got more confusing from there, though. So, while Darkness Falling combines several well-used tropes to create an interesting new mixture of problems for its protagonists, it doesn’t quite make the combination work. Crowther is a good author who manages to create tension and suspense as his different groups awaken to the new reality of their situation and desperately struggle for survival.
A great author, however, would be able to do this while simultaneously dropping clues about the story behind the crisis. I’m not even asking for a full explanation by the end of the book—it’s OK to keep the reader in the dark, as long as one leaves enough hints that an invested reader could start making educated guesses. (Observe, for instance, the level of speculation surrounding the various mysteries in A Song of Ice and Fire. It is practically an entire academic sub-field now; soon enough universities will be able to issue degrees in Westerology.) Crowther neglects this side of the writing for the pulse-pounding, heart-thumping thriller aspects. And I can grok the need for thrilling speed, but I still need that deeper mystery.
I also need characters who mean something to me. Despite its thrilling second and third acts, Darkness Falling builds with all the speed of a sloth stuck in molasses. Crowther alternates among three or four different groups of protagonists, such as Ronnie and Angela (soon to joined by Karl) on the plane; Virgil and his victims; Rick and Geoff; and so on. As the event—whatever it is—happens, each of these groups discovers how alone they are and struggles to survive, finally meeting up towards the end of the book. Until then, however, there is a lot of duplication of information and dialogue, as various characters in each group go through the same, “Oh shit” moments of introspection. If Crowther had made his groups more diverse, included a wider variety of people from different countries, genders, and backgrounds, then this might have been more enlightening. Since most of the characters are from the same general socioeconomic background, their reactions and personalities are just so similar that it gets repetitive.
Overall, I struggled with an oppressive sense of ennui as I read Darkness Falling. I’m getting rather bored with the zombie apocalypse. I’m certainly done with reading about tough-as-nails small-town Americans banding together to survive disaster. There is just nothing, nothing at all about this book that stands out, grabs me, and urges me to keep reading. It’s either so bland and standard as to be uninteresting or so broad and uninvestigated as to be unintriguing. Why should I want to learn anything more about this darkness phenomenon if it means I have to wait until the next book? I’ll go read a book about zombies exploring space, thank you very much. (Is there such a book? Call me!)
I read several reviews that compare this book to a Stephen King novel. I can see why, and an unexpected consequence of this experience is that I now have more respect for King’s writing. I didn’t love Under the Dome; its characterization was weak and stereotypical, and the book was far too long. Regardless, King still knows how to write at a level that, at least in this book, has eluded Crowther. I didn’t necessarily like his characters or even find them that convincing, but I still remembered most of their names. And his story, even if not awesome, still made a kind of twisted sense. I can’t say as much for Darkness Falling.
Oh, and I’m not crazy about books whose titles are X Falling, where X is anything from “darkness” to “mutant bear politicians”. The only thing worse is X Rising. (I groaned when I turned the last page of this ebook and saw that the sequel was called Darkness Rising. I see now that the title is instead Windows to the Soul. Thank goodness for small favours.) I’m not sure who started this awful trend, but if I find out, I will … write a sternly worded letter of some kind.
This has been a somewhat scattered review because, to be honest, not enough of the contents of Darkness Falling have stuck with me in the less-than-24-hours since I finished reading it. This isn’t the kind of bad book where I become so furious that I begin taking notes and bookmarking quotations to use later on in an excoriating review. No, I’m afraid this is the other, less enjoyable kind of bad book that is merely bland and just not for me. Would it be for you? I’m not sure, but even if zombie-alien-Rapture-small-town-apocalypses are on your to-read list, there is probably a better example somewhere out there.