Second Review (Finished December 10, 2010.)

Oh, let me count and enumerate the many and various ways I love Neil Gaiman and, in particular, American Gods. I love it because I am insecure and, at times, unsure of my love for it. I love it because it isn't perfect, yet it's still wonderful. I love it because it promises gods and gives us people, and somewhere along the way, somehow, Gaiman manages to make me cry about the death of a goddess who eats people with her vagina.

American Gods holds a special place in my heart, because it is, for me, a problematic work. I cannot remember if this is the first or second book I read by Gaiman, but it has the quixotic and peculiar quality in that I forget how much I like it after I've read it. I'll gush, like I'm doing in this review, but then a year will elapse, and I'll start thinking, "Was American Gods really as good as I thought?" And it isn't just the gushing review that triggers this—there's something dubious about the premise of the book, and the way Gaiman builds up to it, that prevents my mind from fully accepting my unconditional praise and enthusiasm for the story. American Gods is also problematic because I have read it three times now, and I am still not sure I get what it is about.

The book begins with Shadow being released from prison and subsequently being hunted down by the Call and agreeing to work for Mr. Wednesday. While Gaiman's allusions to mythology and literature are obvious, they are also a smoke-screen for the book's underlying subtlety. On the surface, American Gods is about the war between the old gods and the new. The former came to America with immigrants; the latter have arisen as society collectively starts to worship new technologies and sentiments. Now the new gods are poised to annihilate the old ones, who have been growing weaker and fading away any way. Our first indication that the story goes deeper than a mere war among gods lies with Shadow and how he reacts to his role.

Shadow is very difficult to like as a protagonist. He never quite freaks out like many of us would expect. Gods are real, OK. His dead wife is walking around because he tossed a gold coin on her grave, OK. He's made a pact with the Slavic deity Czernobog which, among other things, lets Czernobog take a hammer to his head when all is said and done. All of these incredible events are happening around him, and it rolls off him with so much water. He never quite gets to the point where showing emotion is required. For that reason, I always picture him as a big, glum sort of fellow. Then again, this should not surprise us. His name is Shadow after all, intended to be ironic because of his physically-imposing stature, but remarkably apt for his personality as well.

As a result of this emotional calmness, Shadow often seems passive, even when he is not. He seems to be going along with what the gods have in mind for him, regardless of whether it is in his best interests. Yet Shadow is actually quite assertive, and he shows a great deal of initiative. He sets his wages when considering Mr. Wednesday's offer of employment. He recruits Czernobog with his fatal checkers game, saving Mr. Wednesday a good deal of time. He uncovers the true identity of Hinzelmann in his spare time.

Shadow's apparent inaction is a symptom of a larger stillness to American Gods. There is this war going on, but for most of the book it's a cold war. Mr. Wednesday and Shadow travel across America to recruit other gods in Wednesday's battle plan, and when Shadow isn't acting as bodyguard and driver, he's hanging out in a suspiciously nice-looking village. Despite Wednesday's assurances that "a storm is coming," chapters pass in which nothing urgent seems to be happening. Shadow has ominous encounters with spooks, but it is not immediately clear how these further the plot.

It turns out, no big surprise, that this book is not really about the war between gods at all. I don't really want to include spoilers (although I don't think it's hard to figure this out, and it's rather enjoyable piecing it together), but let's just say that Wednesday's fascination with con games is very relevant. American Gods is Shadow's journey from mediocrity to an awareness of a grander mythology. His evolving role from spectator to minor player to major intervenor allows Gaiman to sink us gradually into his exploration of the interaction between immigrants, the gods and stories they bring with them, and the New World itself. Above all, he emphasizes that there is something about America that makes it inimical to gods. The buffalo man tells Shadow that "this is not a land for gods," and later on Whiskey Jack reiterates that:

"Look," said Whiskey Jack. "This is not a good country for gods. My people figured that out early on. There are creator spirits who found the earth or made it or shit it out, but you think about it: who's going to worship Coyote? He made love to Porcupine Woman and got his dick shot through with more needles than a pincushion. He'd argue with rocks and the rocks would win.

"So, yeah, my people figured out that maybe there's something at the back of it all, a creator, a great spirit, and so we say thank you to it, because it's always good to say thank you. But we never built churches. We didn't need to. The land was the church. The land was the religion. The land was older and wiser than the people who walked on it. It gave us salmon and corn and buffalo and passenger pigeons. It gave us wild rice and walleye It gave us melon and squash and turkey. And we were the children of the land, just like the porcupine and the skunk and the blue jay. . . .

"This is wild rice country. Moose country. What I'm trying to say is that America is like that. It's not good growing country for gods. They don't grow well here. They're like avocados trying to grow in wild rice country."

So beyond the eternal march of progress, and with it the rise of new paradigms and new gods who challenge the old ones, lies this sentiment that America is just not good land for gods. Thus, the title becomes a paradox: what is an "American" god? These imported deities? The new gods of technology and media? Or the land that provides?

Because they don't have the power to decide this. They don't really make the rules, though they have all become adept at manipulating them, Mr. Wednesday most of all. Humans have the power; humans create gods through their stories, their beliefs, their rituals, and their ideas. We create dark and horrible gods by killing children and worshipping their bones; we create gods of great power and great beauty. And when we stop believing in these gods, cast them aside, they lose power and begin to fade away.

I guess I don't really understand why I love American Gods so much. It's a striking journey across a landscape of beliefs and ideas. Gaiman doesn't stop very long in any one place, choosing instead to forge ahead and let us fill in the rest. It's more than a story about "old gods versus new gods." But I feel utterly unable to communicate why I love this book, why it has carved out a permanent place in my thoughts. There's just something significant to it, to the way Gaiman personifies and then nullifies gods, managing to make them both more and less than myth and legend. The result is something that is not quite a fairy tale yet is more than a thriller or a simple mystery. And it kind of haunts me.

It's just interesting, OK? Plus, the paperback edition I own is just the perfect size.


First Review

Neil Gaiman is one of my favourite authors, and this is one of my favourite Neil Gaiman books. American Gods explores some of the same tired mythologies from a refreshing perspective, transplanting them into modern America and setting them in the middle of a vast confidence game.

This book showcases Gaiman's ability to create memorable, complex characters. The protagonist, Shadow, has just been released from prison and faces the daunting task of starting a new life. Yet almost before it begins, this life is over. He falls in with Mr. Wednesday, a Norse god (unknown to Shadow) posing as a con artist. Wednesday, for that matter, is a memorable character himself, if less given to change. That's one of the themes Gaiman covers in the story, however--the inflexibility of the "old gods" and their conflict with the up-and-coming gods of technology and the information age. Caught in the middle is a human being, an average guy, just trying to make sense of it all.

A page-turner, American Gods has excellent pace, with exciting action scenes and great dialogue. I can't recall any moment when I was wishing I was doing something else or just waiting for the scene to end. There's a couple of times when I wondered what relevance a scene had to the plot, but ultimately everything fit together well.

I often recommend this book to friends who haven't read anything by Neil Gaiman before, as I believe it showcases his best abilities as a writer.

Books can be like old friends you haven't seen in a while. Your friendship has lapsed, and there's always the fear that when you do resume contact, things will be different and you'll have changed too much to remain friends. Sometimes that's true, and the two of you go your separate ways. I've mostly found, however, that it feels like no time has passed at all. As with friends, books like that feel comfortable the moment you begin turning pages. Reading them just feels right. Emotions begin to wash over you, tinged familiar but ever so altered by the passage of time, for you are not the same person you were when you first read this story. You bring to it new insights and ideas, new prejudices and preconceptions. The experience is different, new, but its power over you remains the same. Books can be like old friends, if you let them back into your life.

I don't remember when I first read Ender's Game. I know I read the novella first, in Orson Scott Card's enormous [b:Maps in a Mirror|31361|Maps in a Mirror|Orson Scott Card|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1168276083s/31361.jpg|1484033] anthology, and sometime thereafter I read the novel and at least [b:Speaker for the Dead|7967|Speaker for the Dead (Ender's Saga, #2)|Orson Scott Card|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1165651993s/7967.jpg|2327777]. It was long enough ago that I could recall the plot but not the emotions it had evoked, aside from the fact that my opinion had been positive. Time enough, then, for a re-read.

Before I knew it, I was forty pages in, then a hundred, then over halfway through the book. The plight of Ender Wiggin may be a timeless one, but Card crafts the particulars with enchanting skill. He has a scary ability to make me love him and then hate him: one minute, I'm enjoying his description of Ender's clever new tactic or a victory over a bully; the next minute, I'm reading a sobre conversation between Valentine and Peter or between Valentine and Colonel Graff.

Because that is Card's ultimate treachery. He takes the sublimely cool concept of the Battle Room, and turns it into something twisted: a training exercise for child soldiers. At times, this uncomfortable fact is difficult to remember, because often the characters don't act like children. They are "gifted," and as such are more intellectually developed then their peers. Look deeply enough into their actions, however, and you see the psychology of a child. It's there when Bonzo tries to kill Ender, and when Ender confronts the Game. In fact, it's omnipresent in Ender's case—even as he excels at his studies and at battles, Card constantly reminds us that the military is training a boy (he's six at the beginning of the book and eleven by the end) to become a killer. Is this a justified action, considering that humanity's survival may well depend on Ender's ability to defeat the Buggers?

I don't know.

Maybe I'm the only one. Maybe everyone else who has read this book has a firm opinion on the morality of Ender, of the International Fleet, of Valentine and Peter, etc. For me, however, my ambivalence is another sign of how powerful Ender's Game is. I don't mean to assert that the best books are ones that leave you indecisive. On the contrary, I laud most books for their ability to impart a persuasive philosophy (even if I don't agree with it). Ender's Game does not do this in the sense that I think it's arguing for or against the necessity of training Ender. It's dark, in such a manner that, like Lilith's Brood, it made me feel uncomfortable with myself, made me see what preconceptions I have that I'm not sure I like. So when I say, "I don't know," what I might mean is that I do know, subconsciously, but I don't want to admit the answer to myself.

Card offers a potential justification, if we want it: Ender is a child being manipulated by adults who know the real score; he doesn't know that the simulations are real battles against Bugger fleets; he doesn't know his unorthodox strategy is actually xenocide. We don't have to accept this, however. I get the strong impression that Ender does know what's going on, even if he doesn't know the particulars. He recognizes what many characters say throughout the book: "The teachers are the enemy." He has no control over his life, and the conflict in this book is not human versus alien; it's individual versus society. He worries that he's too much like Peter, perhaps even worse than Peter, hence the irony when his attempt to fail, to wash out even if it means he won't save the world, turns out to be his most crucial success.

And after that success, what then? The world has an eleven-year-old hero on its hands, a symbol so easily manipulated. And a person so empty. Regardless of its morality, the aftermath of Ender's Game underscores the tragedy of the book's premise, and whether or not Ender is culpable, he is a tragic hero. He is broken. He is alone, because he was never close enough to Peter, and while he was once close to Valentine, we see that they can never share what they had as children. They still love each other and look out for each other, but Ender's singular experience has separated him from his sister just as it separates him from the children he commands: Bean, Petra, Dink, and the like. Card strips away the glamour of the hero and shows us the burden and loneliness of being a legend. It reminds me of [b:Dune|234225|Dune (Dune Chronicles, #1)|Frank Herbert|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1172968533s/234225.jpg|3634639] in this respect.

The power of Ender's Game lies in its perception and its presentation. Ender is trying to save the world from aliens; Peter is trying to save the world from itself; Valentine is caught in between her siblings, ruing the fact that events have conspired to deprive the three of them of childhood innocence. This book is not reassuring, portraying humanity as innately good and capable of triumphing over all adversity. Nor is it pessimistic, portraying humanity as something inherently unstable. It is realistic—maybe an unusual word to describe science fiction, but there you go. To borrow imagery from the novel itself, Ender's Game takes away the gravity and forces you to re-orientate.

We’ve just entered the tail end of 2013, fast approaching the middle of decade the second of the twenty-first century. Few of the changes Charles Stross lays out in this book have come to pass, which isn’t surprising. Many of them are still possible within our lifetime, though, which is interesting.

I’ve felt rather burnt out when it comes to posthuman SF ever since my last foray into the subgenre. Postsingular just left me feeling quite cynical about the potential for such stories. I had an epiphany that I swore, in my hubris, I would never experience. Others wiser than me in the ways of posthumanism have written about it before, and I should have listened. But I was too enchanted by the siren song of nanotechnology, mind uploads, and strong AI. I had been lucky, in that I had read several great posthuman stories and very few poor ones. As I read more widely, I began to understand the conundrum that many science-fiction writers face.

Stross addresses this problem in an essay that, I believe, made it into the afterword of my edition of Scratch Monkey (I don’t have my copy at the moment, so I can’t double-check, and I don’t know if it’s available online somewhere). He remarks that, after a certain point, nanotechnology essentially becomes magic in a Clarkian, sufficiently-advanced kind of way. It’s perhaps a corollary to that adage: sufficiently advanced technology can let you escape any plot hole. (This is particularly evident in episodes of Star Trek: The Next Generation.) Once you have the ability to manipulate matter at the subatomic and quantum levels, you are essentially a wizard. This makes you very powerful, and thus from a story perspective, somewhat uninteresting. How do you threaten your protagonist when the answer to everything is, "Nanotechnology!"?

Then there’s the other side of the posthuman coin: the Singularity. Now, I don’t necessarily believe the Singularity will happen (and I think that is rather beside the point), nor do I particularly agree with the concept that the Singularity is a boring or unrealistically utopian vision of the future. It’s a mistake to refer to the Singularity in earnest as the Rapture of the Nerds, and Singularitarians who remain convinced that the Singularity will bring about the eternal prosperity of a post-scarcity economy are kidding themselves. The whole point of the Singularity is that it is a massive paradigm shift in the way humans relate to the world, to the extent that we cannot predict what society will be like after it occurs. No one mentioned the shift would make the world perfect. It’s entirely possible the Singularity could leave humanity worse off, endangered or extinct, particularly if it involves a strong AI.

This is the path that Accelerando treads. Even though Stross’ blithe use of nanotechnology frustrates me, his grounded notions of what a Singularity could mean for the human species are very appealing. This is a posthuman novel that is fun and optimistic in one sense but also twisted and dark in another. In short, it’s a posthuman novel for the postmodern age. It has flaws—particularly, I think, because of its nine-part novella-like structure—but it still packs enough punch to make it worth reading.

Accelerando, as the title implies, aptly demonstrates how certain technological innovations within the next few decades could combine to create a snowballing effect of accelerated change—a rolling Singularity, if you will, with no clear beginning or end. To name a few such innovations: simulation of consciousness, to be followed by mind uploading; weak AI based on primitive neural networks; easier and more reliable cryptography becoming tied to one’s identity, which will in turn become distributed through nanotechnology and wearable computers on one’s person. Stross demonstrates how, over the course of a single lifetime, so much can change that the world—and humanity—becomes unrecognizable.

As I said before, I’m not too impressed by the book’s near-future setting (at least for the first part) or some of Stross’ specific predictions. I’m not one to complain when an author gets such predictions wrong, but I’m wondering what motivated Stross to make such predictions about a world only twenty years from the time he was writing. Did it really seem like we would advance to that point by then? Or was it just a convenient length of time?

The specifics, and indeed the speed at which these changes and innovations occur, are immaterial to the actual point of the book. Even if it took longer for everything that happens in Accelerando to happen, the result is still the same: Earth being disassembled for computing power by the "Vile Offspring" of humanity.

Because that is the paradox of posthumanism. By definition, we cannot become posthuman until we give up that which makes us human. But if we don’t, and we elect to remain human (or even mostly human), we risk being left behind in the cognitive arms-race, so to speak, of self-enhancement. Having reached the point where we effectively control our own evolution, it is difficult for us not to walk down that path. Stross makes some interesting observations about some of the "most logical end points" for such evolutionary decisions.

It might be difficult for some people to comprehend, this idea that we would disassemble moons and entire planets for use in computing. That’s a byproduct of the public misconception of what computers are—all silicon and electrons whizzing about microprocessing units. Even though I’m aware of some of the deeper theories that underpin the subject, the various Turing this-and-thats, I admit that a lot of the jargon used in this book is beyond me. However, if you can work past this obstacle to understand that, yes, hungry posthuman intelligences will probably disassemble some or all of our solar system, then you start to realize how humanity as we know it might be threatened. If we’re not careful, we could build, design, and simulate ourselves to death.

And then there’s the cat, Aineko. It isn’t a cat so much as an AI in a cat’s body. It has become self-aware and started modifying its own programming. It has also discovered that it can manipulate humans, particularly by using its physical form’s adorable nature to catch them off guard. At the beginning, Aineko is an ally, then a trickster, and finally a thorn in the characters’ side. By the end, with its true power and nature more apparent, we can see that it has been manipulating the characters for the entire time. Once again, Stross points out that any AI, whether created by us or an accidental amalgamation of algorithms, is not necessarily going to be our friend. At worst it will be Skynet; at best it will be a helpful, God-like protector (as if we could trust it). But it will probably be like Aineko or the Vile Offspring, two examples of "amoral" and disinterested intelligences who will use humanity if it suits their purposes or ignore it as long as humanity isn’t in the way.

With Accelerando, Stross plays with a lot of high-concept ideas about the future. Not all of them will come to pass, but some of them might, if we make it long enough. Designer babies are on the way, and with Europe and the United States both investigating the secrets of consciousness, mind simulation and uploading remains a possibility for now. I’m not in love with the story that Stross tells with these concepts. The characters aren’t great—I never really sympathized with any of them, and I found the behaviour between Manfred and Pamela practically bizarre and inexplicable, shenanigans with AI cats notwithstanding. And this is by no means a "feel good" flick that will leave you burgeoning with hope for the future of the human species. But I think it has restored some of my faith in Singularity-driven posthuman fiction. It’s demonstrated that the Singularity by no means removes the obstacles facing our survival as a species. The problems we currently face might seem daunting, but we can probably overcome them. And then we’ll face more.

We all want things. Sometimes the things we think we want are not the things we really want. Usually, the wanting is better than having. These are all familiar feelings that Richard Flanagan plays with in the aptly-named Wanting. His exploration of these ideas is deft and interesting, but the book lacks an overall unity to make it truly memorable or amazing.

I’m perplexed by Wanting’s structure, which is split between the early 1840s, when Franklin was governor of Van Diemen’s Land (Tasmania), and the 1850s-60s, when Dickens is approaching the height of his popularity and discovering his own powers as an amateur performer—not to mention the allure of Ellen Ternan. It’s not so much this split that perplexes me as it is Flanagan’s desire to link these two stories of Franklin, his wife, and Mathinna with Dickens and Ternan. The parallels just aren’t there. The inside cover copy of this edition claims that “several lives become conjoined by unexpected events and tragedies”, but they really don’t.

I suppose the title should give some indication of the connection Flanagan seeks to create: desire. Lady Franklin desires to see Mathinna (and, by way of synecdoche, the Aborigine population as a whole) “civilized”. She wants, in her own well-intentioned but still racist way, to disprove the brand of racists who believe that the indigenous peoples of other lands are instinctively “savage”, noble or otherwise. Sir John Franklin goes along with his wife’s projects, mostly out of habit rather than any true interest or desire—and then he finds himself drawn to Mathinna. Meanwhile, a few decades later, Dickens grapples with feelings of self-pity and guilt as he realizes he no longer desires his wife; this gets worse when he meets the young actress Ellen Ternan and realizes he’s attracted to her.

On their own, these are two interesting stories. I could happily have read a story set in 1840s Tasmania, following the Franklins from their accession to the governorship in 1839 until their departure in 1843 and beyond. I’d have happily engaged with the complicated colonial undertones present in the attempts to civilize Mathinna and assimilate her into British culture, mirrored by the Protector’s project to do much the same to Mathinna’s entire village. Flanagan’s writing is lively; he knows how to create scenes that sustain interest, and he has a good sense of description, if not dialogue. I have no doubt he could have created something compelling.

Similarly, I was very impressed by how Flanagan handles the characterization of a fictional Dickens. That’s not something one undertakes lightly. As a literary juggernaut who has a relatively well-documented life, a massive corpus of works, and plenty of things written about him, Dickens is a character that is easy to research but probably difficult to emulate. In particular, I liked how Flanagan put words into Dickens’ mouth that I can believe Dickens might actually have said: “Unlike you, Douglas [Jerrold], she [Jane Austen] didn’t understand that what pulses hard and fast through us must be there in every sentence”. Flanagan’s Dickens comes alive and entertains me even as it educates me about Dickens’ life. It also made me really want to read some more Dickens soon, which is perhaps the biggest praise I can give it.

Yet I remain unable to reconcile these two plots. I don’t really understand why Flanagan chose to pair these two stories about desire, to interlace them in such a sterile way. And in addition to being a very short book despite this combination of two stories, Wanting is also sparse in the writing department. Though I’ve praised Flanagan’s use of description and his characterization of Dickens, I do think much of his action falls flat. There is surprisingly little dialogue in this book; he resorts mostly to telling us what people think, where they come from, what they want, instead of showing us through their actions. This makes the book feel slower and far less memorable—the difference between skimming the surface of a newly-discovered ocean and just diving straight in.

It was good in its own way, but Wanting seems to suffer from an essential flaw of structure that forever prevents it from achieving greatness in my eyes. Some ideas seem brilliant but then, in execution, don’t deliver. I’m sure it worked for some people, and if it works for you, then all the more power to you. However, none of the historical perspective or personality that Flanagan invests in this work compensates for the odd parallelism he strives but fails to attain. In the end, the overall structure of the book distracted me from the story rather than heightening my appreciation of it. I wish it had it been otherwise.

Seanan McGuire is killing it with the Hugo nominations this year. Not only is her alter ego up for a novel nomination, but she has two nominations in the same category. While I wasn’t impressed by “Rat-Catcher”, “In Sea-Salt Tears” left me with a more favourable feeling. It’s predictable and a little trite, but at the same time it has a strong emotional core. It probes ideas about personal and cultural identity within the bounds of a fantasy setting, which is exactly how speculative fiction should play out.

Liz is a selkie, waiting for her skin. With such a limited number, acquiring a skin is a rite of passage all young selkies crave. While she waits, for what seems like an interminable period, she forms a lasting friendship with a Roane girl who always arrives to observe the passing on of a skin. This girl, Annie, captivates and fascinates Liz; for the first time, Liz sees an alternative to simply waiting to be able to join her brothers and sisters in the sea. She and Annie see each other irregularly as Annie passes through town. Eventually, they move in together. But then Liz gets that fateful call, the one she thought she had been waiting for. And she has to make a choice.

This is a tragedy, and not just for obvious reasons. (I admit I made the connections regarding Annie’s identity pretty early on, but McGuire handles the reveal in a way that is fulfilling and rewarding, especially if you were paying attention to the foreshadowing.) Liz has a shot at happiness, a happiness that is genuine and not built upon the perpetuation of generations of tragedy. But she is struggling against who she is, against what seems to be a hereditary need to don one of those slippery skins and frolic in the sea. The revelation that there is a dark side to the selkie secret makes the choice all the more tragic and difficult.

A lot of stories are made by the hero or heroine's rejection of temptation, by their ability to overcome adversity and triumph despite the odds. Like many tragedies, “In Sea-Salt Tears” is about the protagonist losing. This story is powerful because of the choices that Liz makes, the triumph of cowardice over love. She is unable to break a centuries-long cycle; she is just another generation of junkie.

This is probably my favourite nominee in the novelette category and the one I’d like to see win this year.

Alternate history can often act like a soothing balm: science fiction, but of a very special type. It’s the ultimate “what-if” version of science fiction, the impossible attempt to create counterfactual stories. It is the logical conclusion to the lying that is the art of storytelling; taken to extremes, any story is alternate history. But with Other Earths, we’re on more conventional ground when it comes to alternate history. It’s exactly what it says on the cover: an anthology of stories in which something happened to cause that Earth to diverge from our own. Where Nick Gevers and Jay Lake go above and beyond their duty as editors, however, is to encourage (or insist upon) stories that tackle such divergence in very creative or unusual ways. So, while there is the requisite "Nazis won World War II" story (and even that has a neat twist), most of them are far more than simple what-ifs.

In “This Peaceable Land, or, The Unbearable Vision of Harriet Beecher Stowe”, Robert Charles Wilson examines how abolition might have occurred had the American Civil War been diverted (if Douglas had won the presidency instead of Lincoln). War is a tragedy. Yet peace through appeasement can often be fraught with landmines of its own. This story reminded me a little bit of the classic Star Trek episode, “The City on the Edge of Forever”. In that episode, Kirk inadvertently saves the life of a woman who would go on to preach pacifism in pre–World War II America, allowing fascism to sweep in and take power. In Wilson’s alternate 1870s, slavery has still died out, but it was a result of economic and social change rather than the hard-and-fast, morally-based abolition decreed by the Emancipation Proclamation and related documents. It’s a story with a very obvious moral; I can see myself teaching it to some of my students. That being said, I would have been interested to skip forward a century and see how this affects the civil liberties movements of the 1950s and 1960s.

“The Goat Variations” is a clever tale that centres around George W. Bush’s actions during September 11, 2001. He received a lot of flak for continuing to read My Pet Goat to schoolchildren after being informed of the attacks on the World Trade Towers and the Pentagon. But really, what else was he supposed to do? Jeff VanderMeer explores this question from a very sympathetic perspective, as his particular Bush’s exposure to a psychic alternate-realities machine allows him to experience the tree of all Bushes’ actions from that moment onwards. It’s a little psychedelic but very cool.

Stephen Baxter’s “The Unblinking Eye” is alternate history of the Mesoamerican stripe. Columbus fails to rediscover the New World from the European perspective, and the Inca develop into a technologically superior power, Guns, Germs, and Steel be damned. This is a very short and punchy story told from the perspective of a few people who are privy to the movements of the players without actually being players themselves. It’s very much a “what-if” that doesn’t really explore its consequences too thoroughly, content more with the ironic shout-outs to historical personages who have been altered along the way (Newton known for proving that the Earth is only thousands of years old by back-calculating from the Bible, Darwin a theologian instead of the first evolutionary biologist, etc.).

“Csilla’s Story” features many stories-within-a-story in a modern paean to the power of storytelling and oral history. Theodora Goss creates a fantastical group of dispossessed and persecuted in order to mirror the loss of culture (and its preservation through storytelling) that many groups have historically faced. I found this a much more moving and impressive story than it probably should be, by all rights.

Liz Williams also includes magical elements in her alternate history “Winterborn”, which features a protagonist who speaks to the genius loci resident in rivers and streams. There’s also a half-faerie queen on the throne of seventeenth-century England. I was rather underwhelmed by this story, which I would have liked to be so much better. It’s one of those stories where the plot doesn’t seem to become more than a murky, amorphous blob. The setting is intriguing, but that’s about it. It’s notable, and regrettable, that of the 11 stories in this anthology, only two among them were by women. I don’t begrudge the other authors their place in this collection, but it would have been nice to see some attempt at parity.

“Donovan Sent Us”, by Gene Wolfe, is the requisite “Hitler wins” story that is contractually required by all publishers. It involves two American soldiers sent to infiltrate a German prison camp in London and rescue Winston Churchill. I like how Wolfe analyzes some of the fallout of the United States failing to enter World War II, not to mention the general cynical twist that the story takes. However, I didn’t find the story terribly entertaining or enchanting. It’s technically skilled but lacks a certain vivacity to keep me hooked.

“The Holy City and Em’s Reptile Farm” mixes Templars with Vegas for a very odd alternate take on religion. Greg van Eekhout’s protagonists wind up stealing the Holy Grail and using it to prop up their failing reptile farm! It’s cute and much more action-oriented. Like many of the stories, the point of divergence from our own Earth is not very prominent; van Eekhout is more concerned with telling a good story within this universe of his.

Paul Park’s “A Family History” doesn’t really work for me, sorry to say. It’s told in a negative hypothetical syntax, “They would not have, she would not have, …” and the affectation here doesn’t appeal to me or hold my interest. I admit I skimmed most of this story.

Some of the stories are more about alternative realities than they are stories within alternative realities. “The Goat Variations” probably falls into this camp, and the label applies to these three stories as well. In “The Receivers”, two army officers who once manned listening post stations discuss how they can hear the music that they might have written, had they become composers instead of joining the army in this reality. “Dog-Eared Paperback of My Life” is the longest story in this collection, nearly a novelette in its own right. It fascinated me against my will; I didn’t want to like it, but I had to know how it ended. Finally, Benjamin Rosenbaum finishes the book with “Nine Alternate Alternate Histories”. It isn’t actually a story so much as a list, and I’m ambivalent about it. On one hand, it’s clever; on the other hand, it is also a little boring. Though its place at the end makes sense, I was also rather tired by the time I reached it and probably didn’t give it the attention it deserves.

Other Earths is a varied but somewhat uneven anthology. I’m struggling with whether I would call it diverse … I think the stories are very diverse, but I’m sure the editors could have collected some that were weirder if they really wanted to. As it is, if you are looking for some short alternate history stories, then this collection is for you. It showcases some of the possible paths of alternative history to good effect.

So here we are again, almost one year later. Another Newsflesh novel nominated for a Hugo. I’ve decided that everything I want to discuss about this book takes me into hella spoilers territory. So that spoiler flag I put on here? Don’t ignore that if you were thinking I was kidding. I wasn’t. From here on out, we will be knee deep in zombie guts and spoilers. If you want a non-spoilery review, check out Kemper’s well-articulated reasons for this book’s mediocrity. I particularly agree about the lack of actual zombie combat. What’s up with that?

I don’t remember exactly how I felt about Feed after reading it, but I think I liked it but did not see it as a remarkable, Hugo-winning book. It had an interesting take on zombies and bloggers but was hobbled by less-than-stellar plot. Deadline, in my opinion, improves upon the pacing and structure of Feed quite a bit. However, its plot and characterization fall into the same old traps—and this time, the zombie honeymoon is over. And I’m coming for braaaaaains.

I’ll hand it to Mira Grant: Deadline is definitely action-packed and fast-paced, though for every “action-packed” scene, I suppose there is an accompanying scene of painfully slow dialogue and exposition as everyone stuffs more wads of cotton into their ears. The plot is convoluted owing in no small part to the fact that everyone in this book sucks at communicating. It seems like every time someone has something important, perhaps even life-saving, to say, they decide it would be better to sleep, or eat, or do something else and defer the conversation for the morning. Because that always ends up so well. And then when they do have a discussion, it seldom advances the plot or provides much new knowledge. Instead, the team has to go to some kind of nefarious research facility to hear the same thing, only this time from someone in a lab coat.

So Deadline is fast-paced, but a lot of those pages are boring and somewhat unnecessary.

Speaking of unnecessary, let’s talk about Shaun for a moment. I’m not a psychologist, so I won’t pretend to understand how people react to death of loved ones and deal with grief. But I do think that the reaction of other people to Shaun’s reaction to Georgia’s death is unrealistic (at best). Setting aside the fact that Shaun hears Georgia’s voice in his head and admits he is probably crazy, we’re supposed to believe he has spent the past year moping around and doing nothing and no one has told him to snap out of it? I understand that the might not snap out of it, but the level of accommodating that his colleagues are being is unbelievable. In ordinary times, maybe I would buy it, but this is a post-apocalyptic zombie-infested wasteland. You want everyone on your party functioning optimally. Shaun “I hear dead people” Mason is not functioning optimally, and he should not be in charge.

I suspect my experience with Shaun as a narrator is likely what other people feel when they cringe at Harry Dresden as a narrator. I love Harry; I love his smartass observations and dry, sometimes self-deprecating humour. To me, his voice is something that makes the Dresden Files books come alive. But I know some people can’t stand him, and thanks to Grant, now I can empathize. Shaun is not a very good narrator. His repetitive reminders of the prevalence of blood tests, the genesis of Kellis–Amberlee, the adoptive nature of him and his sibling all become so much noise. And meanwhile, I am asking, “Shaun, why are you wasting time visiting various CDC facilities when you could just post the information to the Internet?”

That’s the problem with not going full cyberpunk. Feed was innovative in the sense that it really tried to portray what a zombie apocalypse might be like in the post-Information Age. The combination of geographical upheaval and increased physical isolation to reduce the risk of transmission definitely increases the potential role of the Internet in everyone’s life. But it behoves authors to consider how this affects everything and not just certain plot points that might benefit from it.

Conspiracy thriller wisdom in the Internet age is pretty clear: when in doubt, leak it online. Shaun et al have contingencies in place to leave encrypted backups with friends and frenemies alike, ready to distribute the keys in case they don’t safely return. That’s prudent and great. And I understand the need to keep this information quiet and seek out second opinions personally in order to avoid alerting the conspirators that you’re on to them. However, once your cover has been blown and they know that you know, why not release it all online? Post it everywhere, and make everyone party to the secret. It worked for another science-fiction conspiracy (TVTropes).

Instead, Shaun and friends plan some kind of midnight ride on the CDC facility in Memphis. And Shaun decides to do it on a motorcycle. Yes, he wears Kevlar, but that’s beside the point. It is not acceptable to go riding into a potentially zombie-heavy situation on a motorcycle. Does Shaun potentially have a death wish? Sure, maybe—hence why I said above that he shouldn’t be in charge. But all his friends, instead of stepping up and standing up to him for his own good, step aside as if everything is normal, and let him ride his motorcycle to his death.

Well, kind of. He gets better. So does Georgia, at the very end. Yay for cloning and memory transfer! I’m not actually all that bothered by this twist, or by Shaun’s own miraculous survival. In order for this series to succeed, the Kellis–Amberlee mythology needs to evolve; the potential for a cure is the next logical progression. I don’t begrudge Grant making her main characters an integral part of that.

Lastly, I guess I should talk about the incest. It makes sense, if one considers the family situation in which George and Shaun grew up. Their parents were attention-hounds, constantly seeking validation from the media and audiences in the form of ratings. This led them to treat George and Shaun as a means to an end, a commodity and resource rather than actual, you know, flesh-and-blood beings. With such distant affection from their adoptive parents, it makes sense that George and Shaun would look to each other for intimacy. Combined with the fact that I imagine it’s harder to be intimate, physically or emotionally, in this world, and I can see how the potential existed for that relationship to ignite into something more than just sibling love. That being said, I have to agree with those reviewers who found it dubious that Georgia wouldn’t mention it in her own narration. There’s unreliability in one’s narrator, and then there is just gaping omission.

Deadline was easy to read, and that’s something. I’ve focused almost exclusively on what didn’t work for me with this book, but the truth is that I could see it working for other people—many of these objections are quite subjective. I’m not convinced of Shaun’s mettle as a narrator, and I’m sceptical that Grant can deliver a resolution to this conspiracy that will satisfy me (conspiracy thrillers rarely do). And, as I said before, the honeymoon is over. The best things about Deadline were also the best things about Feed, and I need my novels to evolve as a series goes along, not stay the same. If it were up to me, I might not bother picking up Blackout—but I suspect it will be on the nominations list for next year’s Hugo awards, in which case we’ll be doing this all over again.

See you next year!

My reviews of the Newsflesh trilogy:
← Feed | Blackout →

So, here we are again. Mira Grant is back for one last kick at the Hugo novel can with Blackout, the last in her Newsflesh trilogy. All the mysteries are cleared up, all the questions answered. Georgia and Shaun Mason are reunited to kick zombie butt one last time and fight back against the government corruption that has put the entire world at risk. Sort of. I think.

Actually, this book is kind of a mess.

My opinion of the Newsflesh series has much in common with another very popular science-fiction series, The Hunger Games: each successive book has been less satisfying and less coherent. There's no question that Grant is trying hard or that she has a story to tell, but what she has produced here leaves much to be desired.

This book is far too long. This in and of itself is not a cardinal sin. You know what is? Making your book too long because you have pages upon pages where nothing is happening. I was lucky enough to read this in electronic form, albeit a PDF of a print version that was apparently 630 pages or so. It took me a few days, because I had trouble gaining traction. A book set in a post-apocalyptic zombie universe should be fast-paced and gripping. A political thriller about a conspiracy to conceal the truth behind a deadly pandemic should be tense. And the truly terrible thing about Blackout is that, for a few shining moments, it manages to be all these things. Grant demonstrates, sporadically, she is capable of the backstabbing betrayal, the cliffhanger smash cuts to another character, the heart-to-hearts prior to a massive sacrifice. But just when you think the book is finding its footing and about to really get started, it stumbles, and all the tension fizzles.

I'd be interested in seeing an inverted image of Blackout, a negative-space version of the book. That is, I'd like to see all the scenes that happen off the page and none of the scenes actually on the page. Because I kind of think the former might be more interesting than the latter. Case in point: towards the end of the book, we learn that the evil megalomaniacs at the CDC are keeping the President in check by holding his wife and kids hostage. But it's OK, because the Secret Service has a plan to rescue them when Georgia and Shaun are ready to help expose the conspiracy. George says, "Do it" and then marches off to confront the CDC baddie. A few pages later, the Secret Service reports that it has been done.

Earlier in the book, it takes hundreds of pages for the gang not to make it to Florida and capture some live mosquitoes for their resident mad scientist. We get pages upon pages of the gang driving their van through Seattle. When it comes time for them to break into the CDC building there, we don't see it. We see the ending and the aftermath, but the actual break-in is a handwave off the page. Similarly, when it comes time for the Secret Service to launch their rescue op, we see none of it, and it goes off without a hitch. Consequently, such an easy time of it made me feel like the resolution to Blackout was more contrived than it should have been. I'm not saying it is contrived, but that's what it feels like because of the way Grant handwaves what should, by all rights, be a conflict-ridden and difficult operation. (If it weren't, why did the Secret Service wait all this time to do it?)

This weird inversion of action and exposition is a problem throughout the book. There isn't much actual zombie combat in Blackout. We hear about a lot of zombie combat, but again, we don't get to see much of it. Instead, the characters prefer to spend their time chewing the scenery and yelling at each other. I've never seen such a dysfunctional group of people who nevertheless insist upon letting a crazy guy lead them and who only relieve him of the duty of command after the crazy guy's sister actually comes back from the dead to speak to him instead of just speaking to him as a voice in his head. If these are the people we need to depend upon to save the world, I am not optimistic for our chances.

The lack of zombie combat is problematic, because my appreciation of the Otherness of this world deteriorated as a result. Grant goes on ad nauseum about the necessity for blood tests and decontamination and how everyone lives in fear. Yet by not actually showing us much in the way of threatening zombies, she sends mixed messages. The constant threat of danger that was suspended over the characters' heads in Feed isn't present here. The world has become boring, a known quantity, and Grant does nothing to raise the stakes to change that. (Because those freakish mosquitoes that can act as a vector for the zombie virus? Yeah, that all happens off page.)

In fact, the more I pick at the 2041 of Blackout, the more problems I have with it. In my review of Deadline, I remarked that the series makes a mistake in "not going full cyberpunk". That is to say, Grant takes the importance of the Internet in a post-zombie apocalypse world as a given. She elevates and speciates bloggers, making them the heralds of the brave new world. Yet she never quite conveys how blogging has evolved in thirty years. I understand that, having suffered a zombie apocalypse, innovation might be slower and technology might not change as swiftly. But if human society has truly taken refuge online to the extent that bloggers are eclipsing old media, there should be social and mimetic differences from the Web of today.

This doesn't seem to be the case: Grant uses blogging as a plot device, with pithy epigraphs at the beginning of each chapter. She fails to explore how blogging as a medium has evolved--and I'm not talking about the new requirements to pass firearms tests to become a journalist. In the past few years, cyberpunk has emerged as somewhat of an unrealistic projection of where technology might take society. Regardless, what it did really well was envision a world so different that it is a little bit alien. Blackout doesn't achieve this. Instead, 2041 is unbelievably like 2013, but with zombies.

And we only really have Shaun and Georgia's word on all this. What I mean is, Grant remarkably restricts our exposure to different viewpoints in this new world. We never get a sense of the bigger picture; there is seldom a minor character who isn't mixed up in this conspiracy who can simply offer a slightly different perspective on events. Grant tells us (there's that verb again) time and again that bloggers in general, and Shaun and George's crew specifically, are influential. Apparently George is so important that the CDC simply has to bring her back from the dead with some incredibly expensive cloning. We are told that "the people" are outraged when the Masons expose some government wrongdoing or when Shaun and George make a broadcast from the battlefield. Somehow, though, amidst all these pages of nothing happening, Grant doesn't actually find time to show us any of this outrage.

It's such a shame, because this is not an awful series. There is a good story in here struggling to escape a very convoluted and often contrived plot that makes only a little more sense than the characters who ostensibly drive it. Blackout should have been the triumphant conclusion to a thrilling zombie trilogy. Instead, it seems to have inherited all of its predecessors' problems and very few of their strengths. The result is a book that doesn't deliver what it promises. Sadly, this is all too representative of the series as a whole, which dreams big but never quite manages to achieve the heights to which it aspires.

My reviews of the Newsflesh trilogy:
← Deadline

The description of The Shadow of the Wind reminds me of Foucault’s Pendulum, another literary-themed thriller in which the protagonists find that the events in a conspiracy-theory manuscript they acquire are coming true. When ten-year-old Daniel acquires a book, also called The Shadow of the Wind, he attracts the attention of all manner of mysterious people who want the book—or its author—including a disfigured man going by the name Lain Coubert, the name used in Daniel’s book by the Devil. As Daniel grows into adulthood, he continues to search for more information about the book’s author, Julián Carax. With each step, he becomes drawn a little further in to a decades-old tragic love story worthy of an opera house.

I’m a sucker for books about books, stories about stories. It’s not just the meta-fictional component that gets me, though I do love that. It’s the comfortable celebration of a shared tradition, a reminder that authors too are readers and understand that singular feeling of holding, caressing, opening, a book, of turning its pages and consuming it word for word before reverently replacing it on the shelf to await its next celebrant. Much like Umberto Eco, Carlos Ruiz Zafón gets it, and in nearly as elevated and sublime language.

Daniel finds The Shadow of the Wind in the Cemetery of Forgotten Books. This is a secret library in Barcelona, which preserves books that might otherwise be lost through the ages. Members choose one book that speaks to them, take it from the library, and swear to safeguard it for life. The Cemetery itself does not play a large role in the plot of the story, but it’s the idea that is so potent.

I can remember being a ten-year-old in a library. My public library was fairly well-lit, but the stacks still seemed to loom over me in a foreboding manner. I can remember the intoxicating feeling of rushing through row after row, hunting for that perfect summer read. Libraries are a manifestation of that celebration of reading. I love books in all forms, be they storebought or borrowed, given or received, paper or digital—but there is something almost sacred about the institution of the library. They are a reminder that reading is a shared experience: “in the shop we buy and sell them, but in truth books have no owner”. And though it does not feature heavily in the rest of the story, the Cemetery of Forgotten Books captures this sentiment. Daniel, thanks to his bookstore-owning father, already has a love for reading, but his experience in the Cemetery transforms that into a sense of guardianship over books. And his discovery of Julián Carax provokes a deeply insatiable curiosity that will forever alter his life.

Daniel’s search for Carax forms the backbone of the plot, but it is not centre stage at first. Instead, Ruiz Zafón focuses on Daniel’s adolescence. It’s not until his hopes are dashed and he abandons his first love that he throws himself into finding out more about Carax. From there, he begins picking at the various threads that have a way of surfacing. Alas, much like a ball of yarn, the more he picks at it, the faster it unravels. Soon there are players coming out of the woodwork, and Daniel and his ally Fermin find themselves stranded amidst enemies who all want one thing: Carax.

As the story continues, we become just as obsessed as Daniel in finding out the truth about Carax. Is he alive or dead? In Paris or Barcelona? What happened to Penelope, his own doomed love interest? Ruiz Zafón continually comes up with clever new ways to reveal this backstory, introducing new characters who play a part or hitherto undiscovered documents that provide crucial testimony. Also, some of these characters have ulterior motives that make them less-than-reliable, meaning that Daniel (and the reader) are exposed to multiple versions of a story, none of which might be true. Daniel and Fermin are half-detectives, half-historians as they try to piece together the truth.

There is no magic in this book, yet I cannot shake the feeling I get only when reading magical realism. (It’s almost an itch created by the juxtaposition of so much realistic storytelling with minor assaults on the suspension of disbelief.) The Shadow of the Wind is not fantasy, but it feels magical. It has that whiff of the mythical to it—there isn’t enough ill will in this book for it to work as anything other than fiction. Even the villain, as twisted and sadistic and threatening as he might be, is a melodramatic caricature. The resolution is one of heroism and daring and self-sacrifice. And there is a happy ending, despite all the sinister malevolence that looms over these pages, for that is only appropriate in a book that celebrates the triumph of love and passion over pettiness and revenge.

I don’t consider this a very long novel, but it seems to be longer than it is. It has a meandering, fractal-like structure that will not appeal to some people. Reading The Shadow of the Wind demands both patience and an abundance of stillness; though there is plenty of action and suspense in this story, you have to be willing to immerse yourself in the moment and the richness of Ruiz Zafón’s prose. (As always, I have to praise the translator, Lucia Graves, for deftly rendering that richness in a language I comprehend.) He switches effortlessly between lengthy but captivating descriptions of the Barcelona streets and quick, witty dialogue between his characters. Despite being self-indulgent at times, he never strays to the point of including extraneous exposition: The Shadow of the Wind is one of the most tightly-written meandering books I’ve ever read.

I love books like that. I love books that you can wander around inside, that you can get lost inside, just like a library. The Shadow of the Wind encourages you to experience, to sit and stay for a while, as it dazzles and delights with each chapter.

Sometimes you just know you and a book aren’t going to get along. I debated giving Of Blood and Honey a miss after a few chapters, and I’m still not sure I made the right call to soldier on. I finished the book, and I kind of understand the plot. To say that I enjoyed it or got much out of the story would be an overstatement, though, and that’s a shame. Stina Leicht is a good writer, and the book itself is not poor. It just wasn’t what I was expecting or what I needed.

The marketing hype for this book doesn’t do it any favours, because it implies a tone and supernatural emphasis that simply isn’t present here. This is the first in a series called The Fey and the Fallen. There are Fey, and there are Fallen, but they are few and far between. The cover copy, the reviews, the author promotional material I saw … it all promises an epic conflict between these two supernatural sides, set amidst the chaos and recrimination of 1970s Ireland. I was all for that. Instead, Of Blood and Honey is more about the chaos and recrimination of 1970s Ireland, with a main character who happens to be of Fey descent.

Liam’s Fey blood allows him to transform into a werewolf-like creature when threatened, as well as providing a few other perks. As he navigates his way through a rocky adolescence, ending up in jail a few times before marrying his childhood sweetheart, Liam knows he is different. He doesn’t understand how different, however, because his mother and the town priest, Father Murray, have concealed the true identity of his father from him. Liam ends up joining a cell of the IRA and committing terrorist acts in the name of Irish independence. All the while, his father hovers on the sidelines, committed to protecting Liam and Liam’s mother from his own Fallen enemies.

I feel bad complaining that too much of the book focuses on Liam and the independence conflict. I don’t want to minimize the importance of that conflict to history, and I knew it would be the setting for this book going into it. Nevertheless, it was overwhelming compared to the scant supernatural elements that Leicht invokes. Be warned that this is more historical than fantasy, and be happy if that is what you want.

Also, I had a difficult time feeling much sympathy for these characters. My favourites were probably Father Murray, and maybe Liam’s mother. Though I don’t fault Leicht’s style, it doesn’t quite work for me.

Perhaps the best thing I can say about Of Blood and Honey is that it provides a very detailled, personal account of what it’s like to be involved in the Irish independence conflict. And there happen to be Fey in it. A bit. And Fallen angels. Kind of.