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Much like zombie fiction, I tend to habitually give werewolf fiction a miss. I think it’s the pack mentality aspect that freaks me out—that and the related posturing for alpha-male dominance. But there are always exceptions to the rule, such as the Kitty Norville series. And while Bitten might be a werewolf novel, I’m given to understand that the Women of the Otherworld series embraces supernatural creatures of all stripes. If the Kelley Armstrong’s writing in the sequels is half as good as it is in this novel, then I’m eager to read them. Bitten definitely takes my werewolf prejudice and buries it deeply as Armstrong makes me care about Elena’s plight and the plight of her pack.
It helps that the novel starts with a fairly extensive prologue that’s all about Elena’s struggle to be human. I can sympathize with that. I can’t sympathize with someone struggling to be a werewolf. Elena’s life is complicated because she hasn’t fit in, even before she was bitten and turned—she bounced from foster family to foster family, and her abuse at their hands hardened her resolve to make something of her life, marry a nice guy, and be a successful human being. That all changed when the "nice guy" turned out to be a maladjust misanthropic werewolf who bit her so he could keep her. We pick up several years later, with Elena trying to live with an ordinary human guy in Toronto, despite having to Change into a massive wolf and run through the forest every week or so.
Armstrong plays fast and loose with the werewolf mythology, but to good effect. Howl at the moon? You bet. Change with the full moon? Not so much. Her werewolves have to Change roughly every seven days, though some can go longer before the need strikes, and it’s also possible to Change on purpose. In wolf form, people retain their human identities but have the instincts of a wolf layered over top—Armstrong shows us (not tells us) this early on when Elena encounters a coyote, which reacts to her with confusion because she looks like a wolf but smells human. In human form, werewolves can act human, but they have a very complicated relationship with each other. Elena belongs (or used to belong, depending on how you look at it) to the Pack, a confederation of what is basically two werewolf families. The Pack doesn’t let any non-Pack werewolves (mutts) have any territory, a source of friction that drives much of the conflict in Bitten. Elena thinks she has left the Pack, and her lover/biter, Clay, behind her. But she is recalled to help them deal with killings on the Pack’s home territory, because if they are exposed as werewolves, then that’s dangerous for everyone, Pack or no.
The first two chapters—Prologue and Human—hooked me. Prologue could have been called Wolf, for all it told us about Elena’s human life. I think this chapter is valuable for readers like me who are wary of the entire werewolf proposition. It showcases Armstrong’s writing style and eases into Elena’s behaviour as a wolf. There is confrontation but not too much conflict, and we get a good sense of who Elena is and how she is dealing with this whole "being a werewolf" thing. A fight sequence with another werewolf, or some contrived dialogue between her and a member of the Pack, wouldn’t have worked as well. Similarly, Human shows us how frail Elena’s persona is, and how she is desperate to fit in. When Philip’s mother and sister are congenial towards her and invite her to do things, when the sister accepts Elena’s offer to come up for coffee and driving her home, Elena’s joy is palpable. Again, I have yet to be able to identify with the need to run through the forest on four legs, but I definitely know what it feels like to not be sure how to act in a social situation, and I know that feeling of relief mixed with elation when you realize you’ve got it right.
After the second chapter, Elena returns to New York to answer the summons of the Pack Alpha, Jeremy. From here on out I found that the plot developed very slowly for my tastes. There were a lot of flashbacks and first-person exposition, and I kept feeling like I was waiting for the main part of the story to commence. Nonetheless, I did get a strong sense of the difficulty Elena was having in being immersed in the Pack life again. After working so hard to free herself from this dependency, she has been forced to get on it again, like an addict plunged into the middle of a drug den. The tension that she feels, torn between Clay and Philip, becomes the backdrop to her involvement in the larger struggle between the Pack and the mutts. And it’s this tension, the suspense created by her impending choice between the two men, that elevates Bitten above many similar books.
See, when it comes to novels with a straight female protagonist and two competing lovers, the lovers tend to be fairly obvious: one is bland and dependable, the other a dashing scoundrel. Yawn. In Bitten, the dichotomy is not so straightforward: Elena is truly torn between Clay and Philip, and it’s hard to say whether one is the superior choice. They are both very different choices. Armstrong does a good job emphasizing that there is no “right” choice, just two very different possible lives for Elena. And I was convinced she would go back to Philip for the entire book, right up until the end.
I’m disappointed she chose Clay.
Firstly, let’s get this clear: Clay is a douchebag. It’s probably not his fault—he’s an hereditary werewolf but was abandoned as a kid to live in a Louisiana swamp, where he would have remained feral if Jeremy hadn’t rehabilitated him. Still. Biting your fiancee is a dick move. Consent, people.
Secondly, I don’t like what Clay represents. This might be my human bigotry rearing its head again, but Philip represented life in the human world. By choosing Clay, Elena admits she belongs as a member of the Pack, which also seems to bring with it all the hierarchical, hegemonic nonsense that Pack life entails. True, she shows her resolve to remain Clay’s equal, not just his mate. But this just highlights my inherent discomfort with the patriarchical nature of the pack mentality.
Finally, did I mention Clay is a douchebag? No, but seriously, Philip is incredibly patient and understanding while Elena traipses off to New York, stays there longer than expected, and returns to Toronto with her "cousin" Clay in tow like a bad-tempered bad penny. (Note to future generations: a penny was a 1-cent coin Canadians used to have before we became uncool.) He does nothing but support her and tell her he’s there for her. He lets her have her space and secrets but also gently reminds her that he is available if she needs to talk, when she is ready to open up. He is the least developed character in this book, but he is still better than Clay.
I didn’t write the book, though, and Elena didn’t choose Philip. She chose Clay. I have to live with that. Or Google for some Elena/Philip fan-fiction. Or just live in blissful denial until I read book two. Yeah, that sounds good.
Because I am going to read book two. Even though I don’t agree with how Armstrong chose to end Bitten, it’s still a fantastic story. Now, I don’t have to read book two; this is a brilliant standalone novel. But I’d be happy to read more of Elena’s adventures. She’s a lovely protagonist with a great voice—not too smartass/sardonic, which seems to be in overabundance these days, but definitely not simpering either—and Armstrong puts her in sticky situations that require smarts and strength to resolve.
Team Philip, all the way.
It helps that the novel starts with a fairly extensive prologue that’s all about Elena’s struggle to be human. I can sympathize with that. I can’t sympathize with someone struggling to be a werewolf. Elena’s life is complicated because she hasn’t fit in, even before she was bitten and turned—she bounced from foster family to foster family, and her abuse at their hands hardened her resolve to make something of her life, marry a nice guy, and be a successful human being. That all changed when the "nice guy" turned out to be a maladjust misanthropic werewolf who bit her so he could keep her. We pick up several years later, with Elena trying to live with an ordinary human guy in Toronto, despite having to Change into a massive wolf and run through the forest every week or so.
Armstrong plays fast and loose with the werewolf mythology, but to good effect. Howl at the moon? You bet. Change with the full moon? Not so much. Her werewolves have to Change roughly every seven days, though some can go longer before the need strikes, and it’s also possible to Change on purpose. In wolf form, people retain their human identities but have the instincts of a wolf layered over top—Armstrong shows us (not tells us) this early on when Elena encounters a coyote, which reacts to her with confusion because she looks like a wolf but smells human. In human form, werewolves can act human, but they have a very complicated relationship with each other. Elena belongs (or used to belong, depending on how you look at it) to the Pack, a confederation of what is basically two werewolf families. The Pack doesn’t let any non-Pack werewolves (mutts) have any territory, a source of friction that drives much of the conflict in Bitten. Elena thinks she has left the Pack, and her lover/biter, Clay, behind her. But she is recalled to help them deal with killings on the Pack’s home territory, because if they are exposed as werewolves, then that’s dangerous for everyone, Pack or no.
The first two chapters—Prologue and Human—hooked me. Prologue could have been called Wolf, for all it told us about Elena’s human life. I think this chapter is valuable for readers like me who are wary of the entire werewolf proposition. It showcases Armstrong’s writing style and eases into Elena’s behaviour as a wolf. There is confrontation but not too much conflict, and we get a good sense of who Elena is and how she is dealing with this whole "being a werewolf" thing. A fight sequence with another werewolf, or some contrived dialogue between her and a member of the Pack, wouldn’t have worked as well. Similarly, Human shows us how frail Elena’s persona is, and how she is desperate to fit in. When Philip’s mother and sister are congenial towards her and invite her to do things, when the sister accepts Elena’s offer to come up for coffee and driving her home, Elena’s joy is palpable. Again, I have yet to be able to identify with the need to run through the forest on four legs, but I definitely know what it feels like to not be sure how to act in a social situation, and I know that feeling of relief mixed with elation when you realize you’ve got it right.
After the second chapter, Elena returns to New York to answer the summons of the Pack Alpha, Jeremy. From here on out I found that the plot developed very slowly for my tastes. There were a lot of flashbacks and first-person exposition, and I kept feeling like I was waiting for the main part of the story to commence. Nonetheless, I did get a strong sense of the difficulty Elena was having in being immersed in the Pack life again. After working so hard to free herself from this dependency, she has been forced to get on it again, like an addict plunged into the middle of a drug den. The tension that she feels, torn between Clay and Philip, becomes the backdrop to her involvement in the larger struggle between the Pack and the mutts. And it’s this tension, the suspense created by her impending choice between the two men, that elevates Bitten above many similar books.
See, when it comes to novels with a straight female protagonist and two competing lovers, the lovers tend to be fairly obvious: one is bland and dependable, the other a dashing scoundrel. Yawn. In Bitten, the dichotomy is not so straightforward: Elena is truly torn between Clay and Philip, and it’s hard to say whether one is the superior choice. They are both very different choices. Armstrong does a good job emphasizing that there is no “right” choice, just two very different possible lives for Elena. And I was convinced she would go back to Philip for the entire book, right up until the end.
I’m disappointed she chose Clay.
Firstly, let’s get this clear: Clay is a douchebag. It’s probably not his fault—he’s an hereditary werewolf but was abandoned as a kid to live in a Louisiana swamp, where he would have remained feral if Jeremy hadn’t rehabilitated him. Still. Biting your fiancee is a dick move. Consent, people.
Secondly, I don’t like what Clay represents. This might be my human bigotry rearing its head again, but Philip represented life in the human world. By choosing Clay, Elena admits she belongs as a member of the Pack, which also seems to bring with it all the hierarchical, hegemonic nonsense that Pack life entails. True, she shows her resolve to remain Clay’s equal, not just his mate. But this just highlights my inherent discomfort with the patriarchical nature of the pack mentality.
Finally, did I mention Clay is a douchebag? No, but seriously, Philip is incredibly patient and understanding while Elena traipses off to New York, stays there longer than expected, and returns to Toronto with her "cousin" Clay in tow like a bad-tempered bad penny. (Note to future generations: a penny was a 1-cent coin Canadians used to have before we became uncool.) He does nothing but support her and tell her he’s there for her. He lets her have her space and secrets but also gently reminds her that he is available if she needs to talk, when she is ready to open up. He is the least developed character in this book, but he is still better than Clay.
I didn’t write the book, though, and Elena didn’t choose Philip. She chose Clay. I have to live with that. Or Google for some Elena/Philip fan-fiction. Or just live in blissful denial until I read book two. Yeah, that sounds good.
Because I am going to read book two. Even though I don’t agree with how Armstrong chose to end Bitten, it’s still a fantastic story. Now, I don’t have to read book two; this is a brilliant standalone novel. But I’d be happy to read more of Elena’s adventures. She’s a lovely protagonist with a great voice—not too smartass/sardonic, which seems to be in overabundance these days, but definitely not simpering either—and Armstrong puts her in sticky situations that require smarts and strength to resolve.
Team Philip, all the way.
So I don't like werewolves but do like vampires. Some of you will never forgive me, I know. Others will be happy I've taken a side. But if you hold up Fool Moon against Grave Peril, there's no contest. Dresden Files #3 is where it the magic happens. (You may groan.)
With another in media res opening, Jim Butcher plunges us back into the Dresdenverse while simultaneously expanding it even further: Knights of the Cross, ghosts and more spirits, and a look at the fabled Nevernever, complete with a faerie godmother. It sounds like too much, but Butcher makes it work.
There's a trademark cadence to every Dresden Files book that becomes clear if you read enough of them (especially in quick succession). The story takes place over a few days (although the plot extends backward several months to a demon-summoning sorcerer). Harry starts off stressed, gets more so, gets beaten down by every bad guy in sight, then figures out a way to save the day. While the pacing is predictable, the books are far from formulaic, because of the characters. With each new character, Butcher introduces an unknown element, something that changes the way Harry reacts and alters the playing field.
Murphy's role in Grave Peril is as an offscreen damsel in distress. This is one of my complaints about the book, because Murphy is one of my favourite characters, and there is zero Murphy-Dresden banter here. It irks me. Instead, Harry's stand-in sidekick is Michael Carpenter, Knight of the Cross and wielder of Amoracchius, a kick-ass holy sword. I have nothing against Michael; he's a nice guy. But he's not Murphy.
Nevertheless, Michael and his family complicate things for Harry just as Murphy's distress complicates things. Grave Peril is a perfect example of why superheroes don't reveal their secret identities to their loved ones: good villains punch the heroes in the loved ones. Harry lacks a secret identity, so the first dominoes to fall will always be his friends. But because Harry has a darker side to his powers, he can't just isolate himself from friends and family, for that way lies madness. Plus, there's another obstacle: he can't stop caring. When you get down to it, Harry will always do the right thing, even if it's not the smart thing.
Bianca, Red Court vampire with a grudge against Harry the size of a small state, makes this very clear in her gift to Harry at her ball. Oh yes, there's a vampire ball. A masquerade, even. And a dragon shows up. It's pretty awesome, it contains some of the pivotal events in the book. Most importantly, Butcher weaves character conflict and plot conflict together in the form of Harry's faerie godmother, Lea. Not only does Lea take Susan's memories of Harry from her, but the faerie also gives Michael's sword to the vampires for unmaking. The first is a tragedy that seems like a permanent, lasting one (this is not to be, but Butcher doesn't let us down on that count). The second prompts Harry to Do the Right Thing, even when it looks like it will get him and his friends killed.
Even though we know Harry will succeed (this is the Dresden Files after all), we never know the cost of each victory. In the case of Grave Peril, it is surprisingly high. Not only does This Mean War, on a personal level Harry and Susan's relationship has changed forever. I'm not talking about Susan's memory loss; no, just when you think you've figured out the tragedy Butcher plans to exact, he introduces a twist that turns the knife and makes it even more painful.
Harry emerges from this book physically whole but psychically battered. He can no longer be with the woman he loves. He's precipitated a war between the White Council and the Red Court vampires. And all because he dared to take out one sorcerer and do the right thing. Being a hero is tough. Not quitting is even tougher. Since I've read this series before, I know it's only going to get worse. And that just makes the books better and better.
My Reviews of the Dresden Files:
← Fool Moon | Summer Knight →
With another in media res opening, Jim Butcher plunges us back into the Dresdenverse while simultaneously expanding it even further: Knights of the Cross, ghosts and more spirits, and a look at the fabled Nevernever, complete with a faerie godmother. It sounds like too much, but Butcher makes it work.
There's a trademark cadence to every Dresden Files book that becomes clear if you read enough of them (especially in quick succession). The story takes place over a few days (although the plot extends backward several months to a demon-summoning sorcerer). Harry starts off stressed, gets more so, gets beaten down by every bad guy in sight, then figures out a way to save the day. While the pacing is predictable, the books are far from formulaic, because of the characters. With each new character, Butcher introduces an unknown element, something that changes the way Harry reacts and alters the playing field.
Murphy's role in Grave Peril is as an offscreen damsel in distress. This is one of my complaints about the book, because Murphy is one of my favourite characters, and there is zero Murphy-Dresden banter here. It irks me. Instead, Harry's stand-in sidekick is Michael Carpenter, Knight of the Cross and wielder of Amoracchius, a kick-ass holy sword. I have nothing against Michael; he's a nice guy. But he's not Murphy.
Nevertheless, Michael and his family complicate things for Harry just as Murphy's distress complicates things. Grave Peril is a perfect example of why superheroes don't reveal their secret identities to their loved ones: good villains punch the heroes in the loved ones. Harry lacks a secret identity, so the first dominoes to fall will always be his friends. But because Harry has a darker side to his powers, he can't just isolate himself from friends and family, for that way lies madness. Plus, there's another obstacle: he can't stop caring. When you get down to it, Harry will always do the right thing, even if it's not the smart thing.
Bianca, Red Court vampire with a grudge against Harry the size of a small state, makes this very clear in her gift to Harry at her ball. Oh yes, there's a vampire ball. A masquerade, even. And a dragon shows up. It's pretty awesome, it contains some of the pivotal events in the book. Most importantly, Butcher weaves character conflict and plot conflict together in the form of Harry's faerie godmother, Lea. Not only does Lea take Susan's memories of Harry from her, but the faerie also gives Michael's sword to the vampires for unmaking. The first is a tragedy that seems like a permanent, lasting one (this is not to be, but Butcher doesn't let us down on that count). The second prompts Harry to Do the Right Thing, even when it looks like it will get him and his friends killed.
Even though we know Harry will succeed (this is the Dresden Files after all), we never know the cost of each victory. In the case of Grave Peril, it is surprisingly high. Not only does This Mean War, on a personal level Harry and Susan's relationship has changed forever. I'm not talking about Susan's memory loss; no, just when you think you've figured out the tragedy Butcher plans to exact, he introduces a twist that turns the knife and makes it even more painful.
Harry emerges from this book physically whole but psychically battered. He can no longer be with the woman he loves. He's precipitated a war between the White Council and the Red Court vampires. And all because he dared to take out one sorcerer and do the right thing. Being a hero is tough. Not quitting is even tougher. Since I've read this series before, I know it's only going to get worse. And that just makes the books better and better.
My Reviews of the Dresden Files:
← Fool Moon | Summer Knight →
Faeries are even better than vampires. Firstly, you can actually make a deal with faeries and compel them to honour the deal. Secondly, that makes them even more deadly, because they're usually clever enough to twist the deal so it ends up harming you anyway. Just as Jim Butcher can't claim credit for vampires, he can't claim credit for faeries, but he sure can claim credit for the characters he creates to personify each species.
I hadn't noticed it before, but the antagonists from both the vampires and the faeries are female. Bianca and Mavra; Titania, Aurora; Mab, Maeve. On one hand, the overabundance of femmes fatales might be worrying. Then again, for the forces of good we have Karrin Murphy. While she's not as powerful as a vampire and certainly can't take on a faerie queen, she still kicks chlorofiend ass. Harry's lucky to have the help he does.
Summer Knight is the debut of another major theme in the Dresden Files. Harry isolates himself from his friends in an attempt to find a cure for Susan's condition. It's obvious that he can't continue in such a state for much longer; withdrawing from society is seldom a solution (unless you're Salinger). Indeed, Butcher ramps up the conflict in this book to remind us just how much Harry needs friends and allies. In Grave Peril, Harry shoulders a lot of the legwork, and the climax is his alone. The conflict in Summer Knight is on another level altogether: this time, instead of war between the Red Court and the White Council, we're talking a war between seasons, between the Faerie Courts. No matter who wins, humanity loses. Harry can't stop that alone.
Although he seems to dodge a bullet here, this isn't the end of Harry's journey. That's most evident in Harry's conversations with the faerie queens: both Mab and Aurora judge Harry by the scars they perceive on his psyche; the two Mothers were equally creepy in their evaluation. The burden of power—and the accompanying responsibility—will continue to weigh heavily upon Harry.
Are mortals meant ever to confront such power? The fates of both the Summer and the Winter Knights seem to suggest not. Easily overlooked are the changelings, the human-fae hybrids who must choose to become one or the other. Meryl chooses to troll up, preferring to sacrifice her humanity and her life to aid the cause. Lily and Fix take a different path.
I know that Harry gets more powerful as the series goes on. His encounters with various non-mortal agencies leave lasting marks on him, and he receives many mantles or grants of magic that prove a serious temptation. I don't think Harry could ever be a Lloyd Slate no matter how much power he has. Yet his weakness is his protective streak, especially for women. As we saw in Grave Peril, there is nothing Harry will not do to try to save someone for whom he cares, right up to instigating bloody war.
Butcher combines faeries with a murder mystery and Harry's own increasing desperation and destitution. It has some of my favourite parts of the Dresdenverse in it: more mythology on the faeries, a very close look at the power structure of the White Council, and great scenes between Harry and Murphy. Summer Knight does what's very difficult, and manages to keep lots of material balanced and use it to deliver lots of story. That makes it exemplary, both as a stand alone novel and as a part of the overall arc of the series.
My Reviews of the Dresden Files:
← Grave Peril | Death Masks →
I hadn't noticed it before, but the antagonists from both the vampires and the faeries are female. Bianca and Mavra; Titania, Aurora; Mab, Maeve. On one hand, the overabundance of femmes fatales might be worrying. Then again, for the forces of good we have Karrin Murphy. While she's not as powerful as a vampire and certainly can't take on a faerie queen, she still kicks chlorofiend ass. Harry's lucky to have the help he does.
Summer Knight is the debut of another major theme in the Dresden Files. Harry isolates himself from his friends in an attempt to find a cure for Susan's condition. It's obvious that he can't continue in such a state for much longer; withdrawing from society is seldom a solution (unless you're Salinger). Indeed, Butcher ramps up the conflict in this book to remind us just how much Harry needs friends and allies. In Grave Peril, Harry shoulders a lot of the legwork, and the climax is his alone. The conflict in Summer Knight is on another level altogether: this time, instead of war between the Red Court and the White Council, we're talking a war between seasons, between the Faerie Courts. No matter who wins, humanity loses. Harry can't stop that alone.
Although he seems to dodge a bullet here, this isn't the end of Harry's journey. That's most evident in Harry's conversations with the faerie queens: both Mab and Aurora judge Harry by the scars they perceive on his psyche; the two Mothers were equally creepy in their evaluation. The burden of power—and the accompanying responsibility—will continue to weigh heavily upon Harry.
Are mortals meant ever to confront such power? The fates of both the Summer and the Winter Knights seem to suggest not. Easily overlooked are the changelings, the human-fae hybrids who must choose to become one or the other. Meryl chooses to troll up, preferring to sacrifice her humanity and her life to aid the cause. Lily and Fix take a different path.
I know that Harry gets more powerful as the series goes on. His encounters with various non-mortal agencies leave lasting marks on him, and he receives many mantles or grants of magic that prove a serious temptation. I don't think Harry could ever be a Lloyd Slate no matter how much power he has. Yet his weakness is his protective streak, especially for women. As we saw in Grave Peril, there is nothing Harry will not do to try to save someone for whom he cares, right up to instigating bloody war.
Butcher combines faeries with a murder mystery and Harry's own increasing desperation and destitution. It has some of my favourite parts of the Dresdenverse in it: more mythology on the faeries, a very close look at the power structure of the White Council, and great scenes between Harry and Murphy. Summer Knight does what's very difficult, and manages to keep lots of material balanced and use it to deliver lots of story. That makes it exemplary, both as a stand alone novel and as a part of the overall arc of the series.
My Reviews of the Dresden Files:
← Grave Peril | Death Masks →
This review contains spoilers for the ending of Changes and possibly other books in the Dresden Files series. It does not, however, contain spoilers for the short stories themselves in Side Jobs, so I have not marked the review with a spoiler alert.
This is how much I love the Dresden Files: not only will I buy every book as it is released, a practice I eschew for a great many other authors I still adore, but I will go to great lengths to buy that book on release day if at all possible. My experience buying Side Jobs testifies to this determination. It was a stormy Tuesday morning when I woke up and realized it was the release day for this book. By stormy, I mean torrential rain and wind that managed to knock down power lines in several places throughout the city. So not only did I make a special trip to Chapters in the rain for Side Jobs, but I negotiated around closed off streets and braved intersections where the traffic lights had no power. That is how much faith I put in Jim Butcher and Harry Dresden. When I sit down with one of these books, I know I'm going to enjoy it, and that is a nice type of anticipation to have once in a while.
So the question with Side Jobs, as it is with every Dresden Files book, is not if I like it, but how much. And let's be honest with ourselves: if you are a Dresden Files fangirl or fanboy as I am, you're going to buy this book even if it sucks. Fortunately for you, this book is a must-have for any collector of the Dresden Files, be ye fanatic or simply a casual connoisseur of the Dresden.
A few of the stories—particularly the first two, "A Restoration of Faith" and "Vignette"—are not that good, and I'm not going to talk about them. Instead, let me discuss some of the stories I liked, the story I loved, and that final novella, "Aftermath," in which we learn what Murphy goes through immediately following the events of Changes.
Some of these stories are funny. Not just snarky and entertaining in Harry's trademark, sarcastic way, but outright comedic. Part of this comes from the reasons Butcher wrote each story, such as the comedic sci-fi/fantasy anthology for which he wrote "Day Off." Yet I think it's also a side effect of Butcher writing Harry for a shorter length of story. Humour is a nice route to exploring a character, and character studies can make for great short stories, especially when paired with fantastic action sequences or descriptions, as we see in "Day Off" and "Last Call." Despite the often serious consequences in his adventures, Harry is still a very funny guy.
The stories that really shine, however, are those where Harry displays his heroism in the face of those serious consequences, even if it's sometimes chivalrous to the point of chauvinism. Two of the stories collected here, "Something Borrowed" and "Heorot," involve a fiancée or wife, respectively, being kidnapped by a monster. The monsters have different motivations (one has revenge on the mind, while the other wants to breed), and the resolutions are different as well (I loved seeing Harry team up with Gard, and I loved the action sequence in "Heorot.") But I can see how this concentrated dose of chivalry might make one uncomfortable with Harry or with Butcher; why does the wizard always have to rescue damsels in distress? Recall that even when Butcher seems to be yielding to one trope, he's subverting or averting another. Almost all of the female characters in the series are strong, either physically, emotionally, or both. You've got metaphorical Valkyries like Murphy, who shines in "Love Hurts" and "Aftermath," and literal Valkyries like Gard, who kicks ass in the same "Heorot" that pulls a damsel-in-distress on us.
One way in which the short stories deviate from the novel formula is in their perspective, which isn't always Harry's. There are two such stories in Side Jobs: "Aftermath" is one, and the other is "Backup," a novelette from Thomas' point of view. The latter is interesting for two reasons: for Thomas' viewpoint, naturally, but also because it adds to the mythology of the Dresdenverse in a way a Harry Dresden story cannot. As Butcher explains in the preface, Harry can't know about the Oblivion War, but it's a plot point that fits perfectly with other Dresdenverse lore (and tickles that part of my brain dedicated to speculating about the Outsiders, such as He Who Walks Behind, who seems to have a plan in mind for Harry). I love the mythology around the Dresdenverse, which is both creative and enduring in a way that only makes me want more.
Speaking of more, the cliffhanger in Changes definitely left me wanting more, and Side Jobs teases us with a new story set forty-five minutes after the end of Changes. The appropriately named "Aftermath," however, doesn't quite live up to the hype. This is completely understandable, because "Aftermath" is a story about Murphy and her role in Harry's life, not a story about Harry told from Murphy's point of view. So what we get is much better, actually: we get to see Murphy snap into action when she realizes there is a possibility that Harry won't be coming back from this one. And her reaction demonstrates how much Murphy has changed over twelve Dresden Files novels, how much she has grown as a character. Even as she refuses to admit Harry is dead—"There's this voice inside me that keeps pointing out that we haven't seen a body. Until I have …"—she steps into to take his place, to carry the torch, as it were, "Until Dresden gets back."
And I can think of no way more fitting to celebrate Harry Dresden and his life than that. To see so clearly how Harry has affected so many people's lives, to see Murphy and the Alphas step up and say, "It's on us now," is so moving. We have come such a long way from Storm Front, when Murphy was a detective who tolerated Harry and certainly didn't trust him. In the last ten years, they have formed a bond that is deeper than friendship (even if, as we see in "Love Hurts," it can never quite be more than that on the surface). And to see her honour and remember Harry by fighting the good fight, despite all she's been through, is awesome.
Still, "Aftermath" pales in comparison to the single best story in Side Jobs, one which surprised me. Damn you, Jim Butcher, for making me laugh and cry at the same time. When I began reading "The Warrior," I actually thought I would dislike it. Firstly, Michael has always grated on me as a character, and it's not just his constant faith in God. I love him for giving us Molly, who is one of my favourite characters, but he never quite seemed as round or complex. And then Butcher hits me with "The Warrior," which not only made me love Michael and laugh at Harry but, despite being an atheist, choke up at Uriel's homily about how Harry's actions have made the world a better place and Michael is still fighting the good fight:
That's not all that's great about "The Warrior." There are intriguing tidbits in Uriel and Harry's conversation, doors opened that I hope are later explored more thoroughly:
Finally, we have what may be my favourite moment in Side Jobs. Harry has come to the park, where Michael is coaching his daughter's softball team. And one of the girls has gone off by herself, upset because she doesn't think she's a good enough player. Harry suggests that no one can be perfect, that you can't just retreat into your house and live in Bubble Wrap. And he explains why:
I'm pretty sure there are English teachers who would kill to hear a student say that, and to watch Harry cause that to happen was both pleasant and sensational.
Side Jobs isn't perfect. It is hard for an anthology to be perfect. Still, as I said before, if you are a Dresden Files fan, you should read this. If you are a collector, you should buy this. It's a wonderful addition to the series, with some truly great stories you might not have had a chance to read, particularly "The Warrior." Although "Aftermath" might not have any of the resolution you were hoping for after Changes, I think it's an excellent story about how Murphy deals with the shock of losing one of the most important people in her life. And it's a foreshadowing of how difficulty the days are going to become—for Harry, and for those left behind.
I can't believe I have to wait until April for Ghost Story!
My Review of the Dresden Files:
← Changes | Ghost Story →
This is how much I love the Dresden Files: not only will I buy every book as it is released, a practice I eschew for a great many other authors I still adore, but I will go to great lengths to buy that book on release day if at all possible. My experience buying Side Jobs testifies to this determination. It was a stormy Tuesday morning when I woke up and realized it was the release day for this book. By stormy, I mean torrential rain and wind that managed to knock down power lines in several places throughout the city. So not only did I make a special trip to Chapters in the rain for Side Jobs, but I negotiated around closed off streets and braved intersections where the traffic lights had no power. That is how much faith I put in Jim Butcher and Harry Dresden. When I sit down with one of these books, I know I'm going to enjoy it, and that is a nice type of anticipation to have once in a while.
So the question with Side Jobs, as it is with every Dresden Files book, is not if I like it, but how much. And let's be honest with ourselves: if you are a Dresden Files fangirl or fanboy as I am, you're going to buy this book even if it sucks. Fortunately for you, this book is a must-have for any collector of the Dresden Files, be ye fanatic or simply a casual connoisseur of the Dresden.
A few of the stories—particularly the first two, "A Restoration of Faith" and "Vignette"—are not that good, and I'm not going to talk about them. Instead, let me discuss some of the stories I liked, the story I loved, and that final novella, "Aftermath," in which we learn what Murphy goes through immediately following the events of Changes.
Some of these stories are funny. Not just snarky and entertaining in Harry's trademark, sarcastic way, but outright comedic. Part of this comes from the reasons Butcher wrote each story, such as the comedic sci-fi/fantasy anthology for which he wrote "Day Off." Yet I think it's also a side effect of Butcher writing Harry for a shorter length of story. Humour is a nice route to exploring a character, and character studies can make for great short stories, especially when paired with fantastic action sequences or descriptions, as we see in "Day Off" and "Last Call." Despite the often serious consequences in his adventures, Harry is still a very funny guy.
The stories that really shine, however, are those where Harry displays his heroism in the face of those serious consequences, even if it's sometimes chivalrous to the point of chauvinism. Two of the stories collected here, "Something Borrowed" and "Heorot," involve a fiancée or wife, respectively, being kidnapped by a monster. The monsters have different motivations (one has revenge on the mind, while the other wants to breed), and the resolutions are different as well (I loved seeing Harry team up with Gard, and I loved the action sequence in "Heorot.") But I can see how this concentrated dose of chivalry might make one uncomfortable with Harry or with Butcher; why does the wizard always have to rescue damsels in distress? Recall that even when Butcher seems to be yielding to one trope, he's subverting or averting another. Almost all of the female characters in the series are strong, either physically, emotionally, or both. You've got metaphorical Valkyries like Murphy, who shines in "Love Hurts" and "Aftermath," and literal Valkyries like Gard, who kicks ass in the same "Heorot" that pulls a damsel-in-distress on us.
One way in which the short stories deviate from the novel formula is in their perspective, which isn't always Harry's. There are two such stories in Side Jobs: "Aftermath" is one, and the other is "Backup," a novelette from Thomas' point of view. The latter is interesting for two reasons: for Thomas' viewpoint, naturally, but also because it adds to the mythology of the Dresdenverse in a way a Harry Dresden story cannot. As Butcher explains in the preface, Harry can't know about the Oblivion War, but it's a plot point that fits perfectly with other Dresdenverse lore (and tickles that part of my brain dedicated to speculating about the Outsiders, such as He Who Walks Behind, who seems to have a plan in mind for Harry). I love the mythology around the Dresdenverse, which is both creative and enduring in a way that only makes me want more.
Speaking of more, the cliffhanger in Changes definitely left me wanting more, and Side Jobs teases us with a new story set forty-five minutes after the end of Changes. The appropriately named "Aftermath," however, doesn't quite live up to the hype. This is completely understandable, because "Aftermath" is a story about Murphy and her role in Harry's life, not a story about Harry told from Murphy's point of view. So what we get is much better, actually: we get to see Murphy snap into action when she realizes there is a possibility that Harry won't be coming back from this one. And her reaction demonstrates how much Murphy has changed over twelve Dresden Files novels, how much she has grown as a character. Even as she refuses to admit Harry is dead—"There's this voice inside me that keeps pointing out that we haven't seen a body. Until I have …"—she steps into to take his place, to carry the torch, as it were, "Until Dresden gets back."
And I can think of no way more fitting to celebrate Harry Dresden and his life than that. To see so clearly how Harry has affected so many people's lives, to see Murphy and the Alphas step up and say, "It's on us now," is so moving. We have come such a long way from Storm Front, when Murphy was a detective who tolerated Harry and certainly didn't trust him. In the last ten years, they have formed a bond that is deeper than friendship (even if, as we see in "Love Hurts," it can never quite be more than that on the surface). And to see her honour and remember Harry by fighting the good fight, despite all she's been through, is awesome.
Still, "Aftermath" pales in comparison to the single best story in Side Jobs, one which surprised me. Damn you, Jim Butcher, for making me laugh and cry at the same time. When I began reading "The Warrior," I actually thought I would dislike it. Firstly, Michael has always grated on me as a character, and it's not just his constant faith in God. I love him for giving us Molly, who is one of my favourite characters, but he never quite seemed as round or complex. And then Butcher hits me with "The Warrior," which not only made me love Michael and laugh at Harry but, despite being an atheist, choke up at Uriel's homily about how Harry's actions have made the world a better place and Michael is still fighting the good fight:
I just stared at him for a moment. "But … I didn't actually mean to do any of that."
He smiled. "But you chose the actions that led to it. No one forced you to do it. And to those people, what you did saved t hem from danger as real as any creature of the night." He turned to look down at the church below and pursed his lips. "People have far more power than they realize, if they would only choose to use it. Michael might not be cutting demons with a sword anymore, Harry. But don't think for a second that he isn't still fighting the good fight. It's just harder for you to see the results from down here."
That's not all that's great about "The Warrior." There are intriguing tidbits in Uriel and Harry's conversation, doors opened that I hope are later explored more thoroughly:
Jake shrugged. "But if you hadn't, you'd have died in that harness, and he'd have died on that island."
I scowled. "What?"
Jake waved a hand. "I won't bore you with details, but suffice to say that your choice in that moment changed everything."
Finally, we have what may be my favourite moment in Side Jobs. Harry has come to the park, where Michael is coaching his daughter's softball team. And one of the girls has gone off by herself, upset because she doesn't think she's a good enough player. Harry suggests that no one can be perfect, that you can't just retreat into your house and live in Bubble Wrap. And he explains why:
I snorted. "They still make you read Dickens in school? Great Expectations?'
"Yeah."
"You can stay at home and hide if you want—and wind up like Miss Havisham," I said. "Watching life through a window and obsessed with how things might have been."
"Dear God," she said. "You've just made Dickens relevant to my life."
I'm pretty sure there are English teachers who would kill to hear a student say that, and to watch Harry cause that to happen was both pleasant and sensational.
Side Jobs isn't perfect. It is hard for an anthology to be perfect. Still, as I said before, if you are a Dresden Files fan, you should read this. If you are a collector, you should buy this. It's a wonderful addition to the series, with some truly great stories you might not have had a chance to read, particularly "The Warrior." Although "Aftermath" might not have any of the resolution you were hoping for after Changes, I think it's an excellent story about how Murphy deals with the shock of losing one of the most important people in her life. And it's a foreshadowing of how difficulty the days are going to become—for Harry, and for those left behind.
I can't believe I have to wait until April for Ghost Story!
My Review of the Dresden Files:
← Changes | Ghost Story →
I missed my Xbox while I was in England. I had access to one for the first half the year, during which time I managed to be completely disappointed by Assassin’s Creed 3. Then I moved, and Xbox-playing became a faded memory for a while. So when I came back home for the summer, one of the first things I sat down to do was play Xbox—and specifically, to play Mass Effect through from the beginning. I love this game series beyond all reason. Getting to be Commander Shepard—and not just anyone’s Commander Shepard, my Commander Shepard—and making choices that span not one but three games’ worth of story is an amazing, immersive experience. It merges my love of storytelling with my love of shooting pixels by proxy, and it does so seamlessly.
I probably shouldn’t have read You while binging on Mass Effect, though, because the juxtaposition makes it abundantly clear that playing video games is infinitely preferable to reading about playing video games.
You is a Coupland-esque sojourn through the halcyon days of 1990s game development. Back in high school and college, Russell and his friends Don, Lisa, Simon, and Darren created a video game. The other four went off to form Black Arts and make more games while Russell said, “See ya later, nerds” and tried to become a lawyer. When that didn’t pan out, he came crawling back, and the book begins with an awkward job interview. A few days later, Russell is lead game designer for the next big Realms game, because that’s life in the tumultuous world of gaming companies!
Reading You is a bit like navigating a very confusing, poorly-laid out series of identical corridors in a video game. The graphics are stunning, mind you—3D so real you think it’s going to spit at you, super-realistic physics on the blood spatters, footsteps that sound appropriate to whatever material you’re walking over. But for all these improvements, the camera never quite seems to be where you need it to be, and it seems like every single time you try to swing Lara over to the next ledge, this causes her to miss and plummet to her death. Oops. Sorry, Lara.
Austin Grossman has a background in game development, so he should know how the development process works. I do not have a background in game development, so I’m not going to nitpick. Much. Most of what he spins here seems realistic enough from what I’ve read elsewhere. The pressure and deadlines from Black Arts’ new, disinterested corporate investors is believable, as is their dismal short-staffing. That being said, the idea that Russell is suddenly the lead game designer, despite having no experience in this field and barely being able to program his way out of a cardboard box, is laughably contrived at best.
I also raise a critical eyebrow at the contention that Simon’s WAFFLE game engine is so ineffably amazing that a) nobody knows how it works and b) no one has replaced it so far. I’m familiar with the fact that, once in a while, a genius programmer comes along and creates something so tightly constructed that it’s difficult for other programmers to wrap their heads around the design and how it functions. These programs then stick around across generations of employees, legacies that “just work” and should not be prodded with a stick for any reason. So I can believe that, until now, no one has really been motivated to disturb Simon’s engine. Barely. (I’m sceptical that the engine was so amazing and ahead of its time that it has remained competitive for so long.)
But when an intentional bug buried by Simon in WAFFLE happens more frequently prior to the launch of Realms VII, Russell and crew need to find out how to fix it … by playing all the previous Black Arts games. Because they can’t just go in and tweak the engine, oh no. They have to fix the problem in the game! This is just so monumentally stupid and the kind of thing that only happens in bad hacker movies. It’s the kind of self-indulgent nonsense that sounds much cooler than it really is.
As Russell delves further into the history of Black Arts (because, remember, despite knowing these people in high school and now being the lead game designer, he has no experience with any of their games after he drifted away from them), he discovers that the bug stems from Simon’s latent daddy issues, amplified by the break in Simon’s friendship with Darren. Simon was bitter and decided to cause Y2K, or something like that. Once again, the actual over-arching plot is flimsier than any excuses game designers give for boobplate armour. And I’m pretty sure Grossman knows this, mind you—he writes games; he knows how plots like this work.
And so You reveals itself as a combination of schlocky homage to paper-thin storytelling in the name of glamourous gameplay and a breathless exploration of the nineties gaming zeitgeist. Grossman deliberately goes over the top with aspects of the plot, aiming for melodrama where drama would have been sufficient, because that’s what games (and the atmosphere around games) were like in the nineties. In this respect, I’m not sure then if You is poorly written so much as written well, but in a way that does nothing for me.
Grossman does a better job at capturing the sentiments of ex–computer nerd Russell. I wasn’t old enough back then to be part of the gaming world and understand the ambivalence felt towards the companies, like Electronic Arts and Activision, that were simultaneously propelling game design to glorious new heights and stomping upon the hacker ethos that had spurred the field in the first place. A lot of what Russell experiences in this book feels like an accurate reflection of what many game designers and gamers who had been around in the 1980s probably felt in the 1990s as technology took off and game design started to “get away” from them. When Russell visits E3, he has an epiphany that the event is not about game design; it’s marketing towards retailers. Gaming went big in a big way while he was away from the keyboard, and he’s just now understanding how corporatized it has become.
To this end, You reflects a lot of the ambivalence (or outright bitterness) we gamers feel in the present day. Grossman capitalizes on some of the nostalgia for the “good old days” when gaming was a more underground experience: 5-inch floppy disks, printing out code and then entering it into another computer by hand, all the little tricks required to fool a player into thinking they are seeing something the computer can’t actually generate. And I can’t really pretend to understand or feel this bitterness myself, only a wistful yearning for such understanding—but I can recognize it and sympathize with it, thanks in part to things like this.
So Grossman has created a story that is not particularly well-structured or well-defined, and whether that is an intentional bit of satire or just poor writing, it doesn’t work for me. Yet he has, through intention or accident, stumbled upon a key requirement in fiction, which is that it doesn’t necessarily need to be factually true, but should be emotionally true. Here, he succeeds. You is confusing as hell at times, and I admit I skimmed through maybe the last twenty pages because they were rambling and pointless. (Seriously, just skip the Coda. There is no need for it.) But it tugs on some heartstrings on a single, visceral level, which raises it in my esteem just a little bit.
There are so many ways in which this novel could be better. I enjoyed but couldn’t quite extol Soon I Will Be Invincible, and I’m inclined to be less charitable here. Grossman’s handling of character has not improved—no one in You, Russell included, has much in the way of depth, and I didn’t care about them at all. Knowing now that he has these connections to game design makes his approach to storytelling in both novels make a little more sense, but I still can’t praise either work’s story.
In the end, I don’t think you’d miss much if you skip You. If you want a better book about life in software development, read Coupland’s Microserfs and jPod.
I probably shouldn’t have read You while binging on Mass Effect, though, because the juxtaposition makes it abundantly clear that playing video games is infinitely preferable to reading about playing video games.
You is a Coupland-esque sojourn through the halcyon days of 1990s game development. Back in high school and college, Russell and his friends Don, Lisa, Simon, and Darren created a video game. The other four went off to form Black Arts and make more games while Russell said, “See ya later, nerds” and tried to become a lawyer. When that didn’t pan out, he came crawling back, and the book begins with an awkward job interview. A few days later, Russell is lead game designer for the next big Realms game, because that’s life in the tumultuous world of gaming companies!
Reading You is a bit like navigating a very confusing, poorly-laid out series of identical corridors in a video game. The graphics are stunning, mind you—3D so real you think it’s going to spit at you, super-realistic physics on the blood spatters, footsteps that sound appropriate to whatever material you’re walking over. But for all these improvements, the camera never quite seems to be where you need it to be, and it seems like every single time you try to swing Lara over to the next ledge, this causes her to miss and plummet to her death. Oops. Sorry, Lara.
Austin Grossman has a background in game development, so he should know how the development process works. I do not have a background in game development, so I’m not going to nitpick. Much. Most of what he spins here seems realistic enough from what I’ve read elsewhere. The pressure and deadlines from Black Arts’ new, disinterested corporate investors is believable, as is their dismal short-staffing. That being said, the idea that Russell is suddenly the lead game designer, despite having no experience in this field and barely being able to program his way out of a cardboard box, is laughably contrived at best.
I also raise a critical eyebrow at the contention that Simon’s WAFFLE game engine is so ineffably amazing that a) nobody knows how it works and b) no one has replaced it so far. I’m familiar with the fact that, once in a while, a genius programmer comes along and creates something so tightly constructed that it’s difficult for other programmers to wrap their heads around the design and how it functions. These programs then stick around across generations of employees, legacies that “just work” and should not be prodded with a stick for any reason. So I can believe that, until now, no one has really been motivated to disturb Simon’s engine. Barely. (I’m sceptical that the engine was so amazing and ahead of its time that it has remained competitive for so long.)
But when an intentional bug buried by Simon in WAFFLE happens more frequently prior to the launch of Realms VII, Russell and crew need to find out how to fix it … by playing all the previous Black Arts games. Because they can’t just go in and tweak the engine, oh no. They have to fix the problem in the game! This is just so monumentally stupid and the kind of thing that only happens in bad hacker movies. It’s the kind of self-indulgent nonsense that sounds much cooler than it really is.
As Russell delves further into the history of Black Arts (because, remember, despite knowing these people in high school and now being the lead game designer, he has no experience with any of their games after he drifted away from them), he discovers that the bug stems from Simon’s latent daddy issues, amplified by the break in Simon’s friendship with Darren. Simon was bitter and decided to cause Y2K, or something like that. Once again, the actual over-arching plot is flimsier than any excuses game designers give for boobplate armour. And I’m pretty sure Grossman knows this, mind you—he writes games; he knows how plots like this work.
And so You reveals itself as a combination of schlocky homage to paper-thin storytelling in the name of glamourous gameplay and a breathless exploration of the nineties gaming zeitgeist. Grossman deliberately goes over the top with aspects of the plot, aiming for melodrama where drama would have been sufficient, because that’s what games (and the atmosphere around games) were like in the nineties. In this respect, I’m not sure then if You is poorly written so much as written well, but in a way that does nothing for me.
Grossman does a better job at capturing the sentiments of ex–computer nerd Russell. I wasn’t old enough back then to be part of the gaming world and understand the ambivalence felt towards the companies, like Electronic Arts and Activision, that were simultaneously propelling game design to glorious new heights and stomping upon the hacker ethos that had spurred the field in the first place. A lot of what Russell experiences in this book feels like an accurate reflection of what many game designers and gamers who had been around in the 1980s probably felt in the 1990s as technology took off and game design started to “get away” from them. When Russell visits E3, he has an epiphany that the event is not about game design; it’s marketing towards retailers. Gaming went big in a big way while he was away from the keyboard, and he’s just now understanding how corporatized it has become.
To this end, You reflects a lot of the ambivalence (or outright bitterness) we gamers feel in the present day. Grossman capitalizes on some of the nostalgia for the “good old days” when gaming was a more underground experience: 5-inch floppy disks, printing out code and then entering it into another computer by hand, all the little tricks required to fool a player into thinking they are seeing something the computer can’t actually generate. And I can’t really pretend to understand or feel this bitterness myself, only a wistful yearning for such understanding—but I can recognize it and sympathize with it, thanks in part to things like this.
So Grossman has created a story that is not particularly well-structured or well-defined, and whether that is an intentional bit of satire or just poor writing, it doesn’t work for me. Yet he has, through intention or accident, stumbled upon a key requirement in fiction, which is that it doesn’t necessarily need to be factually true, but should be emotionally true. Here, he succeeds. You is confusing as hell at times, and I admit I skimmed through maybe the last twenty pages because they were rambling and pointless. (Seriously, just skip the Coda. There is no need for it.) But it tugs on some heartstrings on a single, visceral level, which raises it in my esteem just a little bit.
There are so many ways in which this novel could be better. I enjoyed but couldn’t quite extol Soon I Will Be Invincible, and I’m inclined to be less charitable here. Grossman’s handling of character has not improved—no one in You, Russell included, has much in the way of depth, and I didn’t care about them at all. Knowing now that he has these connections to game design makes his approach to storytelling in both novels make a little more sense, but I still can’t praise either work’s story.
In the end, I don’t think you’d miss much if you skip You. If you want a better book about life in software development, read Coupland’s Microserfs and jPod.
I’ve read a few of Anne Perry’s Charlotte and Thomas Pitt novels now, in no particular order. This is one of those mystery series, much like Lindsey Davis’ Falco series, where I’m content to dip in and out of the canon as I may. I’m fascinated by Victorian literature and life in Victorian England, and Perry has impressed me with her Victorian mysteries in the past. Midnight at Marble Arch is no exception. In this instalment of the series, Charlotte and Thomas go up against a serial rapist who uses his influential connections to escape justice. Not only do they have a complicated web of deceit to untangle, but they must confront the prejudices around rape that colour the case—prejudices, sadly, that have not necessarily diminished in 120 years.
I have to say, I wasn’t expecting something quite so dark and intense from this book. The cover copy revealed that the central crime would be a rape/murder; however, as Thomas and Charlotte investigate, they uncover more rape. Charlotte and then Thomas are incredulous; they had no idea rape was so common a phenomenon. Perry does an excellent job portraying the various attitudes towards rape and the victim-blaming that would be prevalent in a time when the idea of a young, unmarried woman being left alone with a young man would be most improper.
My favourite scene is probably when Charlotte visits a luncheon at someone else’s house. She is with a few other women, and they discuss current affairs, as acquaintances might do. The failed Jameson Raid of 1895 is on everyone’s minds; Jameson himself stands trial, and the women’s husbands have various business interests in South Africa that are threatened by the botched raid. Their discussion takes the form of veiled debate with layers of enforced politeness, and I love how Perry captures the colonial attitudes that everyone carried to some degree. It’s fun watching Charlotte advance a relatively enlightened position while the others take issue with her refusal to unwaveringly support British interests. The the subject once again turns to the rape of Catherine Quixwood and the death of young Angeles Castelbranco, who was also raped, and we see how even the women engage in victim blaming. Perry pulls no punches as she shows the social stigma surrounding rape.
So I found myself getting viscerally upset and angry at this book. It’s not anything Perry does. It’s more because all of these attitudes are ones that still exist to some degree, and, amazingly, still have cachet in mainstream society. We have definitely gotten better and investigating and prosecuting rape, but we are nowhere near good enough. Too many rapes still go unreported, and rape culture still remains a disturbing norm. It really puts things into perspective when I hear people spouting arguments that sound more appropriate coming from someone at the end of the nineteenth century, not the beginning of the twenty-first.
As far as the mystery goes, Midnight at Marble Arch is more of a Victor Narraway than a Charlotte and Thomas Pitt mystery. Narraway, at the widower Quixwood’s request, looks into the case further, bringing Thomas in when he needs some additional assistance. The case is connected to Pitt’s official duties in the Special Branch in the slimmest of manners.
I need my mystery novels to have a certain elegance of structure to them, which this one lacks. The protagonists spend too much time dithering and discussing theories without much gathering of fact. They reiterate and retread the same scenarios, same discussions about rape, several times. When Pitt finally went out to Bryanston Mews to do some digging of his own, I was overjoyed. When Narraway interviewed other characters, I was intrigued.
I suppose the courtroom scenes towards the end were supposed to be dramatic, but I found them a little melodramatic and contrived. Similarly, the resolution of the mystery was extremely rushed—and then the book just ends. No wrap-up, no explanation. We learn who did it, and Pitt and Narraway confronts the perpetrator, and that’s it.
Midnight at Marble Arch is a sadly uneven novel. Perry has a lot of high concepts that she expresses well. However, the crucial component is the mystery, which does not fare as well. I find myself liking the book for reasons that have nothing to do with it being a mystery—and that’s OK. But I suspect that for longtime fans and for people who approach this wanting another strong mystery, Midnight at Marble Arch will be more disappointing than delightful.
I have to say, I wasn’t expecting something quite so dark and intense from this book. The cover copy revealed that the central crime would be a rape/murder; however, as Thomas and Charlotte investigate, they uncover more rape. Charlotte and then Thomas are incredulous; they had no idea rape was so common a phenomenon. Perry does an excellent job portraying the various attitudes towards rape and the victim-blaming that would be prevalent in a time when the idea of a young, unmarried woman being left alone with a young man would be most improper.
My favourite scene is probably when Charlotte visits a luncheon at someone else’s house. She is with a few other women, and they discuss current affairs, as acquaintances might do. The failed Jameson Raid of 1895 is on everyone’s minds; Jameson himself stands trial, and the women’s husbands have various business interests in South Africa that are threatened by the botched raid. Their discussion takes the form of veiled debate with layers of enforced politeness, and I love how Perry captures the colonial attitudes that everyone carried to some degree. It’s fun watching Charlotte advance a relatively enlightened position while the others take issue with her refusal to unwaveringly support British interests. The the subject once again turns to the rape of Catherine Quixwood and the death of young Angeles Castelbranco, who was also raped, and we see how even the women engage in victim blaming. Perry pulls no punches as she shows the social stigma surrounding rape.
So I found myself getting viscerally upset and angry at this book. It’s not anything Perry does. It’s more because all of these attitudes are ones that still exist to some degree, and, amazingly, still have cachet in mainstream society. We have definitely gotten better and investigating and prosecuting rape, but we are nowhere near good enough. Too many rapes still go unreported, and rape culture still remains a disturbing norm. It really puts things into perspective when I hear people spouting arguments that sound more appropriate coming from someone at the end of the nineteenth century, not the beginning of the twenty-first.
As far as the mystery goes, Midnight at Marble Arch is more of a Victor Narraway than a Charlotte and Thomas Pitt mystery. Narraway, at the widower Quixwood’s request, looks into the case further, bringing Thomas in when he needs some additional assistance. The case is connected to Pitt’s official duties in the Special Branch in the slimmest of manners.
I need my mystery novels to have a certain elegance of structure to them, which this one lacks. The protagonists spend too much time dithering and discussing theories without much gathering of fact. They reiterate and retread the same scenarios, same discussions about rape, several times. When Pitt finally went out to Bryanston Mews to do some digging of his own, I was overjoyed. When Narraway interviewed other characters, I was intrigued.
I suppose the courtroom scenes towards the end were supposed to be dramatic, but I found them a little melodramatic and contrived. Similarly, the resolution of the mystery was extremely rushed—and then the book just ends. No wrap-up, no explanation. We learn who did it, and Pitt and Narraway confronts the perpetrator, and that’s it.
Midnight at Marble Arch is a sadly uneven novel. Perry has a lot of high concepts that she expresses well. However, the crucial component is the mystery, which does not fare as well. I find myself liking the book for reasons that have nothing to do with it being a mystery—and that’s OK. But I suspect that for longtime fans and for people who approach this wanting another strong mystery, Midnight at Marble Arch will be more disappointing than delightful.
Mélusine suffers from two narrators: Felix Harrowgate and Mildmay the Fox. I say “suffers” because Monette switches between the two perspectives more frequently than Bill Nye drops mad science truth. Each chapter is about thirty or fifty pages in this paperback edition, but perspective can happen as often as once every page. Sometimes the characters barely get a few paragraphs in before Monette switches to the other narrator. Consequently, instead of feeling like I’m watching two separate stories develop and wondering how they will come together, I feel like I’m watching really badly edited shaky-cam footage from two separate camera crews.
Neither of these narrators particularly captured my interest or sympathies. Felix is a wizard. Wizards are cool, right? Except that, by about page 3, Felix was in major depression mode. Instead of talking to his lover about it, he flees to the sanctuary of the wizard who once abused him and raped him. The wizard abuses him and rapes him again, and Felix goes back for more, claiming that he simply “can’t help it”.
I’m given to understand that this is a realistic pattern of actions for an abuse victim to take: leave, temporarily, and then surrender to what they perceive is an inevitability. So I’m not trying to demean or diminish the horror of the abuse victim’s experience here. Rather, I take issue with the fact that, by beginning the story here, Monette makes it really difficult for me to understand and sympathize with Felix. We don’t have his backstory and his full relationship with Malkar; we don’t understand what brought him to this point. All we can do is snap hungrily at the litle crumbs Monette throws at us and hope that it’s enough to see us through until the end of the book, when she makes that part clear.
Generally, it’s a good idea to begin at the beginning of the story, which often means skipping over the boring parts in a character’s early life. Sometimes, though, a little context is necessary to keep the reader on side. I mean, Monette bothered to include a prologue that—as far as I can tell—has nothing to do with the plot in particular. That seems like pages well spent!
Oh, and Mildmay? At first his jargon annoyed me, and I suppose you should take that as a compliment for Monette’s ability to capture distinct voices for these two narrators. Gradually, his story did come to interest me, and his voice became less annoying. I suspect this happened at the same time Felix started going mad and his sections became sparser and less interesting. (Madness from a first-person perspective is hard to do effectively.) Mildmay’s sanity, in contrast, seemed to at least offer the prospect of moving this story forward.
Mélusine is named after the city in which the first half of the book takes place. The book isn’t really about the city, though. Monette has clearly created an interesting world populated by a vast and diverse cast of cultures, not to mention a number of competing schools of magic that all view each other with suspicion of the taint of heresy. She doesn’t spend much time explaining these various schools, though, and while I appreciate the dedication to keeping exposition to a minimum, there’s something to be said for fleshing out a world beyond dropping an unfamiliar name here and there. There is a fine line between exposition and description, where dropping too much of the one leads to forgetting too much of the other.
Maybe it’s too much for me to expect a book titled after a city to be about that city. Mélusine is more about how Felix and Mildmay meet, the secret they discover that brings them together, and then the journey they take to uncover Felix’s past. Unfortunately, that journey is boring. There are no monsters to slay, no detours, no quests. They stumble across another empire, book passage on a ship, get shipwrecked, and wind up … exactly where they wanted to be!
This entire book feels like filler, like the setup for the real story. In the first act, Felix’s master uses Felix’s bound power to break the Virtu, a magical MacGuffin that allows the wizards of Mélusine to focus their spells more effectively. This is obviously a Big Deal, a kind of magical terrorist act. The fallout from this act, however, remains unclear and unresolved. We don’t know if Felix is supposed to play a role in repairing the Virtu. We don’t know if Felix will ever confront his former master and exact revenge. All we know is that Felix and Mildmay are together, and Felix isn’t exactly mad any more (maybe).
A lot of stuff seems like it happens in this book, but make no mistake: nothing happens. This is a book whose plot consists of dragging two characters across a world that is poorly-described while switching viewpoints faster than a cat can regret jumping into a bathtub.
There is a good story lurking somewhere in here, with characters who can do it justice. But it needs more exposition, more patience with characterization, and less patience with plotting. Mélusine really just needs to breathe. It doesn’t do that, and that makes it very difficult for me to praise.
Neither of these narrators particularly captured my interest or sympathies. Felix is a wizard. Wizards are cool, right? Except that, by about page 3, Felix was in major depression mode. Instead of talking to his lover about it, he flees to the sanctuary of the wizard who once abused him and raped him. The wizard abuses him and rapes him again, and Felix goes back for more, claiming that he simply “can’t help it”.
I’m given to understand that this is a realistic pattern of actions for an abuse victim to take: leave, temporarily, and then surrender to what they perceive is an inevitability. So I’m not trying to demean or diminish the horror of the abuse victim’s experience here. Rather, I take issue with the fact that, by beginning the story here, Monette makes it really difficult for me to understand and sympathize with Felix. We don’t have his backstory and his full relationship with Malkar; we don’t understand what brought him to this point. All we can do is snap hungrily at the litle crumbs Monette throws at us and hope that it’s enough to see us through until the end of the book, when she makes that part clear.
Generally, it’s a good idea to begin at the beginning of the story, which often means skipping over the boring parts in a character’s early life. Sometimes, though, a little context is necessary to keep the reader on side. I mean, Monette bothered to include a prologue that—as far as I can tell—has nothing to do with the plot in particular. That seems like pages well spent!
Oh, and Mildmay? At first his jargon annoyed me, and I suppose you should take that as a compliment for Monette’s ability to capture distinct voices for these two narrators. Gradually, his story did come to interest me, and his voice became less annoying. I suspect this happened at the same time Felix started going mad and his sections became sparser and less interesting. (Madness from a first-person perspective is hard to do effectively.) Mildmay’s sanity, in contrast, seemed to at least offer the prospect of moving this story forward.
Mélusine is named after the city in which the first half of the book takes place. The book isn’t really about the city, though. Monette has clearly created an interesting world populated by a vast and diverse cast of cultures, not to mention a number of competing schools of magic that all view each other with suspicion of the taint of heresy. She doesn’t spend much time explaining these various schools, though, and while I appreciate the dedication to keeping exposition to a minimum, there’s something to be said for fleshing out a world beyond dropping an unfamiliar name here and there. There is a fine line between exposition and description, where dropping too much of the one leads to forgetting too much of the other.
Maybe it’s too much for me to expect a book titled after a city to be about that city. Mélusine is more about how Felix and Mildmay meet, the secret they discover that brings them together, and then the journey they take to uncover Felix’s past. Unfortunately, that journey is boring. There are no monsters to slay, no detours, no quests. They stumble across another empire, book passage on a ship, get shipwrecked, and wind up … exactly where they wanted to be!
This entire book feels like filler, like the setup for the real story. In the first act, Felix’s master uses Felix’s bound power to break the Virtu, a magical MacGuffin that allows the wizards of Mélusine to focus their spells more effectively. This is obviously a Big Deal, a kind of magical terrorist act. The fallout from this act, however, remains unclear and unresolved. We don’t know if Felix is supposed to play a role in repairing the Virtu. We don’t know if Felix will ever confront his former master and exact revenge. All we know is that Felix and Mildmay are together, and Felix isn’t exactly mad any more (maybe).
A lot of stuff seems like it happens in this book, but make no mistake: nothing happens. This is a book whose plot consists of dragging two characters across a world that is poorly-described while switching viewpoints faster than a cat can regret jumping into a bathtub.
There is a good story lurking somewhere in here, with characters who can do it justice. But it needs more exposition, more patience with characterization, and less patience with plotting. Mélusine really just needs to breathe. It doesn’t do that, and that makes it very difficult for me to praise.
A few weeks ago, Bruce Sterling shared his thoughts on hacking and activism three years after first discussing the Wikileaks scandal. One thing he said really stuck with me:
It’s sad because he’s right. And I think we are moving in that direction.
In Rainbows End, Vernor Vinge capitalizes on a lot of upcoming technology that is quite hot today (but, when this was published seven years ago, made him slightly ahead of the curve). One particular novum is the proliferation of wearable computing surfaces. Not only are there flexible touchscreens, but one can get virtually any type of clothing with embedded microprocessors, haptic feedback, and sensors. (Vinge does not go into how people make use of Internet-enabled underwear, but I think we all know.) This isn’t actually science fiction—it’s science fact. Google Glass is just the first step towards the contact lenses that Vinge’s characters use. I see 2025, the book’s setting, as a totally realistic time-frame in which wearable computing becomes ubiquitous in the richer countries.
And when that happens, when you are literally wearing a camera on your body (one that can pan 360°), conventional ideas of privacy as we know it are over. Vinge portrays this perfectly when he demonstrates how easy it is for Miri and her gang to track Robert when he is in public (i.e., not at home). Having ambient intelligence in one’s clothes and in public spaces will be a great boon, but it will also usher in the perpetual surveillance society. (The upside, if you can call it that, is that everyone has access to this surveillance, not just the government.)
As you might be able to tell, Rainbows End struck a topical chord for me. I wouldn’t say this made me enjoy the book more, but it definitely made me sit up and take notice. I began to track the way that Vinge explores the logical consequences of his technological extrapolations in order to see how it compares to what I observe in society today. In this respect, as a work of social science-fiction, Rainbows End is absolutely fascinating. It’s also, unfortunately, rather shallow.
Vinge gives us a world that is completely believable. Machines are all iPod-like tethered appliances with “no user-serviceable parts inside”. Teenagers in 2025 are much teenagers kids in 2013, in that they have their own dialect of slang and jargon that adults can barely penetrate. Wearable computer has also cemented the place of augmented reality, and teenagers are the digital natives of that brave new virtual multiverse. But for all these broad strokes, Vinge never really convinces me that the world has changed much as a consequence of all this technology.
For example, what do people do? How has wearable computing, ubiquitous surveillance, and self-driving cars changed the job market? There are occasional references to elderly people retraining because their jobs no longer exist. But Miri’s parents are conveniently military. Aside from academics, we don’t really see many other professions or trades in play. I think this is a shame. While it does not behove an author to give everyone a tour of their entire world, they do need to show off enough for it to feel tangible. I believe that the technology in Vinge’s future could exist and work like it does, but I’m not as convinced he explores the consequences as fully as he could.
Rainbows End combines a fish-out-of-water story with the threat of an international conspiracy to control the world through subliminal viral engineering. We learn almost immediately that a character who is ostensibly a good guy is actually a bad guy, a revelation that I found was a flattering form of dramatic irony—oh, you trust me, the reader, enough to let me in on this from the start? The antagonist’s motivations are a little melodramatic, in the sense that I understand where they come from, but I’m not sure that I can believe a single person would actually undertake a project of this scale.
There are also rumblings of nascent artificial intelligence in the persona of Rabbit. I won’t go into spoiler territory by explaining any further, but I will say that I was disappointed. (This is probably the least realistic technology as well; I find the predictions of 2050 for an AI far too optimistic.) It’s not that I was disappointed by how Vinge clears up the mystery so much as, again, he doesn’t seem to explore much of the consequences.
A part of me wonders if this is meant to be satire. If that were the case, a lot more would make sense. Robert’s one-dimensional surliness, Rabbit’s behaviour, the villain’s one-dimensional megalomaniacal power trip … this would all be excusable, laudable even, if Vinge were satirizing, as a form of commentary, the society that he sees us becoming. The gross and excessive use of force during a university protest would demonstrate how we are growing used to the escalation of police action. The digitization of books through destructive shredding would, in its very absurdity, demonstrate how our obsession with the newest, greatest digital technology can be shortsighted.
And part of me really hopes this is satire, because if not, then it’s a flat book. It’s full of brilliant ideas and a scarily believable depiction of the distribution of technology in twelve years … but as a story, and that is the essential metric, it barely registers.
Alas, as with so much in this book, Vinge does not quite convince me that this is a satire. It might be the marketing, which seems content to sell this as a straight-up techno-thriller. Or it could be the few, genuine attempts at tragedy—the way that Alice and Bob’s relationship is on rocky ground because she has gone back into the military’s dangerous just-in-time training program, the fact that Lena still won’t return Robert’s letters.
I don’t regret reading Rainbows End, for it was a reliable romp through a pre-Singularity vision of the future. It pushes some of my technophilic geek buttons, and as far as the plot goes, it is at least coherently written. I just wish its characters had been more captivating and its story much more meaningful.
Even the electronic civil lib contingent is lying to themselves. They’re sore and indignant now, mostly because they weren’t consulted — but if the NSA released PRISM as a 99-cent Google Android app, they’d be all over it. Because they are electronic first, and civil as a very distant second.
They’d be utterly thrilled to have the NSA’s vast technical power at their own command. They’d never piously set that technical capacity aside, just because of some elderly declaration of universal human rights from 1947. If the NSA released their heaps of prying spycode as open-source code, Silicon Valley would be all over that, instantly. They’d put a kid-friendly graphic front-end on it. They’d port it right into the cloud.
It’s sad because he’s right. And I think we are moving in that direction.
In Rainbows End, Vernor Vinge capitalizes on a lot of upcoming technology that is quite hot today (but, when this was published seven years ago, made him slightly ahead of the curve). One particular novum is the proliferation of wearable computing surfaces. Not only are there flexible touchscreens, but one can get virtually any type of clothing with embedded microprocessors, haptic feedback, and sensors. (Vinge does not go into how people make use of Internet-enabled underwear, but I think we all know.) This isn’t actually science fiction—it’s science fact. Google Glass is just the first step towards the contact lenses that Vinge’s characters use. I see 2025, the book’s setting, as a totally realistic time-frame in which wearable computing becomes ubiquitous in the richer countries.
And when that happens, when you are literally wearing a camera on your body (one that can pan 360°), conventional ideas of privacy as we know it are over. Vinge portrays this perfectly when he demonstrates how easy it is for Miri and her gang to track Robert when he is in public (i.e., not at home). Having ambient intelligence in one’s clothes and in public spaces will be a great boon, but it will also usher in the perpetual surveillance society. (The upside, if you can call it that, is that everyone has access to this surveillance, not just the government.)
As you might be able to tell, Rainbows End struck a topical chord for me. I wouldn’t say this made me enjoy the book more, but it definitely made me sit up and take notice. I began to track the way that Vinge explores the logical consequences of his technological extrapolations in order to see how it compares to what I observe in society today. In this respect, as a work of social science-fiction, Rainbows End is absolutely fascinating. It’s also, unfortunately, rather shallow.
Vinge gives us a world that is completely believable. Machines are all iPod-like tethered appliances with “no user-serviceable parts inside”. Teenagers in 2025 are much teenagers kids in 2013, in that they have their own dialect of slang and jargon that adults can barely penetrate. Wearable computer has also cemented the place of augmented reality, and teenagers are the digital natives of that brave new virtual multiverse. But for all these broad strokes, Vinge never really convinces me that the world has changed much as a consequence of all this technology.
For example, what do people do? How has wearable computing, ubiquitous surveillance, and self-driving cars changed the job market? There are occasional references to elderly people retraining because their jobs no longer exist. But Miri’s parents are conveniently military. Aside from academics, we don’t really see many other professions or trades in play. I think this is a shame. While it does not behove an author to give everyone a tour of their entire world, they do need to show off enough for it to feel tangible. I believe that the technology in Vinge’s future could exist and work like it does, but I’m not as convinced he explores the consequences as fully as he could.
Rainbows End combines a fish-out-of-water story with the threat of an international conspiracy to control the world through subliminal viral engineering. We learn almost immediately that a character who is ostensibly a good guy is actually a bad guy, a revelation that I found was a flattering form of dramatic irony—oh, you trust me, the reader, enough to let me in on this from the start? The antagonist’s motivations are a little melodramatic, in the sense that I understand where they come from, but I’m not sure that I can believe a single person would actually undertake a project of this scale.
There are also rumblings of nascent artificial intelligence in the persona of Rabbit. I won’t go into spoiler territory by explaining any further, but I will say that I was disappointed. (This is probably the least realistic technology as well; I find the predictions of 2050 for an AI far too optimistic.) It’s not that I was disappointed by how Vinge clears up the mystery so much as, again, he doesn’t seem to explore much of the consequences.
A part of me wonders if this is meant to be satire. If that were the case, a lot more would make sense. Robert’s one-dimensional surliness, Rabbit’s behaviour, the villain’s one-dimensional megalomaniacal power trip … this would all be excusable, laudable even, if Vinge were satirizing, as a form of commentary, the society that he sees us becoming. The gross and excessive use of force during a university protest would demonstrate how we are growing used to the escalation of police action. The digitization of books through destructive shredding would, in its very absurdity, demonstrate how our obsession with the newest, greatest digital technology can be shortsighted.
And part of me really hopes this is satire, because if not, then it’s a flat book. It’s full of brilliant ideas and a scarily believable depiction of the distribution of technology in twelve years … but as a story, and that is the essential metric, it barely registers.
Alas, as with so much in this book, Vinge does not quite convince me that this is a satire. It might be the marketing, which seems content to sell this as a straight-up techno-thriller. Or it could be the few, genuine attempts at tragedy—the way that Alice and Bob’s relationship is on rocky ground because she has gone back into the military’s dangerous just-in-time training program, the fact that Lena still won’t return Robert’s letters.
I don’t regret reading Rainbows End, for it was a reliable romp through a pre-Singularity vision of the future. It pushes some of my technophilic geek buttons, and as far as the plot goes, it is at least coherently written. I just wish its characters had been more captivating and its story much more meaningful.
I am so confused. It was all going well until the last few chapters, and then the story metamorphosed into a bizarre garden of shards of reality, and I lost the plot entirely.
Singularity and post-Singularity fiction does not seem to be my friend these days! In Newton’s Wake, the Singularity—which Ken MacLeod refers to as “the Hard Rapture” here—happens, and a vast percentage of the Earth’s population are involuntarily uploaded to machines. The AIs bootstrap themselves into faster-than-light starships and leave the Earth behind. Fast-forward a few centuries, and the survivors have picked themselves up by their bootstraps. They have reverse-engineered FTL, and some of them have even started to monopolize the network of planet-bound wormholes (“planetgates” perhaps?) for commercial advantage. Every so often, they come across the remnants of their posthuman cousins—incredibly dangerous machines that seem to enjoy eliminating ordinary humans (I assume because we smell bad and have terrible taste in television)—and all hell breaks loose.
It was all going so well until the ending. The barrier to entry is very low. We start with Lucinda Carlyle, a headstrong young woman in the clan of Carlyles who control the planetgates (I’m making it a thing, OK?). She takes a “combat archaeology” team to a hitherto unexplored planet, only to discover it’s got a hitherto unknown human settlement. And yes, posthuman war machines.
So Lucinda inadvertently causes a conflict of interstellar proportions, which I think is a pretty neat way for our protagonist to screw things up. And it promises to make for an exhilarating adventure. Indeed, things really pick up when Lucinda finally leaves Eurydice and finds her way back to her family, who are understandably pissed off by her mistake. She undertakes a suicide mission (literally, she dies and then her memory backup is decanted into a fresh body) to make herself feel better. It doesn’t work, but it does allow MacLeod to provide some very clunky exposition to keep the plot churning on.
Mind uploading is probably the big novum here in Newton’s Wake. It’s what led to the Hard Rapture, and it continues to be a point of contention among the various factions of humanity. Indeed, Eurydicean society is founded based on the schism between the Returners (who wanted to return to Earth and resurrect all the uploaded minds) and Reformers (who basically didn’t). Some factions, like the Carlyles, are all about resurrection. Others, like the Knights of Enlightenment, do not subscribe to that philosophy. The factions aren’t all that impressive. They all have silly names—Knights of Enlightenment, America Offline, and DK (Lucinda doesn’t know what it stands for). They are cardboard-cutout, their representative characters mostly one-dimensional stock characters to help the protagonists on their journey.
In addition to mind uploading, MacLeod includes some subtler ideas if you are willing to pay attention. For instance, Lucinda constantly references the Chronology Protection Conjecture as justification for FTL and planetgate travel. MacLeod speculates on the possibility that sufficiently advanced artificial intelligence can install itself at the quantum level, essentially controlling the universe as “quantum angels”. At this point, we’re getting into the fantasy side of posthuman fiction—but it’s still ridiculously cool.
I kind of which MacLeod had explored some of the consequences of the Hard Rapture more thoroughly instead of making the war machines into faceless, killer robot antagonists. This, combined with the relative shallowness of the antagonists, makes for a very unfulfilling conflict. Similarly, though the identity crisis that is part-and-parcel of mind uploading and resurrection gets mentioned, MacLeod never really expands on it, despite Lucinda dying and coming back for the first time.
Prior to reading it, I was suspicious of how thin Newton’s Wake was. Was it really possible to have a post-Singularity story in slightly more than 300 pages? Indeed it is, but it isn’t necessarily a good one.
Still, until the last few chapters, I was willing to give this a solid three stars. The inscrutability of those chapters soured me on the entire book. I can be a careful reader when I want to be, and I still don’t understand what happened—who was where, on what side, or for what reason. From the moment that Kevin drags Lucinda out of meeting on Eurydice, I am completely lost. I seldom feel like this, and when I do, it’s usually in an abstruse work of ego-stroking disguised as postmodern literary fiction.
What bothers me the most is that, because I don’t understand what happens at the end, I don’t understand how Lucinda has changed. Obviously she has become wiser. But exactly who is she working with and what is she working towards now? What was the point of the events at the end of the book? Newton’s Wake robs me of the closure every reader deserves upon reaching the very last page. And that, regardless of how intrigued I was at the beginning, is something I cannot abide.
Singularity and post-Singularity fiction does not seem to be my friend these days! In Newton’s Wake, the Singularity—which Ken MacLeod refers to as “the Hard Rapture” here—happens, and a vast percentage of the Earth’s population are involuntarily uploaded to machines. The AIs bootstrap themselves into faster-than-light starships and leave the Earth behind. Fast-forward a few centuries, and the survivors have picked themselves up by their bootstraps. They have reverse-engineered FTL, and some of them have even started to monopolize the network of planet-bound wormholes (“planetgates” perhaps?) for commercial advantage. Every so often, they come across the remnants of their posthuman cousins—incredibly dangerous machines that seem to enjoy eliminating ordinary humans (I assume because we smell bad and have terrible taste in television)—and all hell breaks loose.
It was all going so well until the ending. The barrier to entry is very low. We start with Lucinda Carlyle, a headstrong young woman in the clan of Carlyles who control the planetgates (I’m making it a thing, OK?). She takes a “combat archaeology” team to a hitherto unexplored planet, only to discover it’s got a hitherto unknown human settlement. And yes, posthuman war machines.
So Lucinda inadvertently causes a conflict of interstellar proportions, which I think is a pretty neat way for our protagonist to screw things up. And it promises to make for an exhilarating adventure. Indeed, things really pick up when Lucinda finally leaves Eurydice and finds her way back to her family, who are understandably pissed off by her mistake. She undertakes a suicide mission (literally, she dies and then her memory backup is decanted into a fresh body) to make herself feel better. It doesn’t work, but it does allow MacLeod to provide some very clunky exposition to keep the plot churning on.
Mind uploading is probably the big novum here in Newton’s Wake. It’s what led to the Hard Rapture, and it continues to be a point of contention among the various factions of humanity. Indeed, Eurydicean society is founded based on the schism between the Returners (who wanted to return to Earth and resurrect all the uploaded minds) and Reformers (who basically didn’t). Some factions, like the Carlyles, are all about resurrection. Others, like the Knights of Enlightenment, do not subscribe to that philosophy. The factions aren’t all that impressive. They all have silly names—Knights of Enlightenment, America Offline, and DK (Lucinda doesn’t know what it stands for). They are cardboard-cutout, their representative characters mostly one-dimensional stock characters to help the protagonists on their journey.
In addition to mind uploading, MacLeod includes some subtler ideas if you are willing to pay attention. For instance, Lucinda constantly references the Chronology Protection Conjecture as justification for FTL and planetgate travel. MacLeod speculates on the possibility that sufficiently advanced artificial intelligence can install itself at the quantum level, essentially controlling the universe as “quantum angels”. At this point, we’re getting into the fantasy side of posthuman fiction—but it’s still ridiculously cool.
I kind of which MacLeod had explored some of the consequences of the Hard Rapture more thoroughly instead of making the war machines into faceless, killer robot antagonists. This, combined with the relative shallowness of the antagonists, makes for a very unfulfilling conflict. Similarly, though the identity crisis that is part-and-parcel of mind uploading and resurrection gets mentioned, MacLeod never really expands on it, despite Lucinda dying and coming back for the first time.
Prior to reading it, I was suspicious of how thin Newton’s Wake was. Was it really possible to have a post-Singularity story in slightly more than 300 pages? Indeed it is, but it isn’t necessarily a good one.
Still, until the last few chapters, I was willing to give this a solid three stars. The inscrutability of those chapters soured me on the entire book. I can be a careful reader when I want to be, and I still don’t understand what happened—who was where, on what side, or for what reason. From the moment that Kevin drags Lucinda out of meeting on Eurydice, I am completely lost. I seldom feel like this, and when I do, it’s usually in an abstruse work of ego-stroking disguised as postmodern literary fiction.
What bothers me the most is that, because I don’t understand what happens at the end, I don’t understand how Lucinda has changed. Obviously she has become wiser. But exactly who is she working with and what is she working towards now? What was the point of the events at the end of the book? Newton’s Wake robs me of the closure every reader deserves upon reaching the very last page. And that, regardless of how intrigued I was at the beginning, is something I cannot abide.
Tanya Huff is another one of those Canadian authors I’ve shamefully never read until this year, but now I’m making up for that! Gate of Darkness, Circle of Light, which I read in the Of Darkness, Light, and Fire omnibus (yay, Oxford comma!), is Huff’s first published novel and the third one she wrote. In many respects this is evident from the novel’s plot and characterization. Nevertheless, it’s evidence that, even back then, Huff was on the track to being a strong voice in urban fantasy.
Gate of Darkness, Circle of Light is set in a hot summer in Toronto, presumably sometime in the late 1980s. It’s exactly what the title advertises: the forces of Darkness, personified in the form of an Adept of the Dark, have broken through the barrier that keeps heaven and hell out of the Earthly dimension. By upsetting the balance in this manner, the Adept of the Dark allows our protagonists to summon a counterpart, an Adept of the Light. Together, they form a group—a “circle”, if you will—to take on the Adept of the Dark and stop him from opening a gate (“of darkness”, if you will) that would, you know, be apocalyptic and all that.
You don’t really get much more basic with a fantasy plot than that. Most fantasy, stripped down to its bare parts, is just the struggle of Good versus Evil, Light versus Darkness. Huff makes this struggle explicit, with the Adept of the Dark tempting the various protagonists by trying to offer them deals (or threatening them) until they either give in or refuse and stay with the Light. There isn’t much in the way of moral ambiguity here. So you need to have a particular kind of tolerance for this type of fantasy to enjoy what’s happening.
Let’s assume you do. I did. I discovered that I really liked Rebecca. From the beginning, Huff uses her omniscient third-person perspective to portray the patronizing way people often treat those labelled as mentally-disabled by failing to recognize how they are more capable than they appear. It makes me think about the way I interact with mentally-disabled people—and I like it when a book makes me think.
The other characters, unfortunately, are less interesting. Roland is a typical twenty-something who isn’t interested in “getting a real job” but would rather busk with his guitar. (I’m not being critical of that attitude, just tongue-in-cheek of the way Huff so slavishly portrays the trope here.) He turns out to be the necessary Bard, and I admit that he goes on a pretty cool sidequest that allows him to develop more maturity and self-respect. However, he just never feels as genuinely interesting as Rebecca.
Then there’s Daru, whom I wish we learned more about. She appears after about the first third, and she plays an important role in the climax. Along the way we learn that she has remained strong-willed and determined despite the tendency of the social care system in which she works to beat down both those who run it and those who use it. But halfway through the book, it seems like Huff isn’t sure what to do with her until the climax, so she just sort of gets sidelined until she’s needed.
The climax literally involves a deus ex machina, which is not entirely inappropriate given the plot. However, I think the best adjectives I could choose for Gate of Darkness, Circle of Light would be “straightforward” and “uncomplicated”. This is not a novel that will tie your brain in knots. It doesn’t ask complicated questions or pose vast moral dilemmas. It’s straight up, winner-take-all Light versus Darkness, with the corresponding Adepts of the respective forces irritatingly nice and sickeningly charismatic.
I don’t mind that type of fantasy, though it isn’t my favourite aspect of the genre—it’s a little boring. But I suspect that many writers of fantasy go through a phase like this early on, influenced as most of us are by Christian mythology and juggernauts like Tolkien and Lewis. Huff is clearly still finding her legs here, but Gate of Darkness, Circle of Light makes her potential obvious.
Gate of Darkness, Circle of Light is set in a hot summer in Toronto, presumably sometime in the late 1980s. It’s exactly what the title advertises: the forces of Darkness, personified in the form of an Adept of the Dark, have broken through the barrier that keeps heaven and hell out of the Earthly dimension. By upsetting the balance in this manner, the Adept of the Dark allows our protagonists to summon a counterpart, an Adept of the Light. Together, they form a group—a “circle”, if you will—to take on the Adept of the Dark and stop him from opening a gate (“of darkness”, if you will) that would, you know, be apocalyptic and all that.
You don’t really get much more basic with a fantasy plot than that. Most fantasy, stripped down to its bare parts, is just the struggle of Good versus Evil, Light versus Darkness. Huff makes this struggle explicit, with the Adept of the Dark tempting the various protagonists by trying to offer them deals (or threatening them) until they either give in or refuse and stay with the Light. There isn’t much in the way of moral ambiguity here. So you need to have a particular kind of tolerance for this type of fantasy to enjoy what’s happening.
Let’s assume you do. I did. I discovered that I really liked Rebecca. From the beginning, Huff uses her omniscient third-person perspective to portray the patronizing way people often treat those labelled as mentally-disabled by failing to recognize how they are more capable than they appear. It makes me think about the way I interact with mentally-disabled people—and I like it when a book makes me think.
The other characters, unfortunately, are less interesting. Roland is a typical twenty-something who isn’t interested in “getting a real job” but would rather busk with his guitar. (I’m not being critical of that attitude, just tongue-in-cheek of the way Huff so slavishly portrays the trope here.) He turns out to be the necessary Bard, and I admit that he goes on a pretty cool sidequest that allows him to develop more maturity and self-respect. However, he just never feels as genuinely interesting as Rebecca.
Then there’s Daru, whom I wish we learned more about. She appears after about the first third, and she plays an important role in the climax. Along the way we learn that she has remained strong-willed and determined despite the tendency of the social care system in which she works to beat down both those who run it and those who use it. But halfway through the book, it seems like Huff isn’t sure what to do with her until the climax, so she just sort of gets sidelined until she’s needed.
The climax literally involves a deus ex machina, which is not entirely inappropriate given the plot. However, I think the best adjectives I could choose for Gate of Darkness, Circle of Light would be “straightforward” and “uncomplicated”. This is not a novel that will tie your brain in knots. It doesn’t ask complicated questions or pose vast moral dilemmas. It’s straight up, winner-take-all Light versus Darkness, with the corresponding Adepts of the respective forces irritatingly nice and sickeningly charismatic.
I don’t mind that type of fantasy, though it isn’t my favourite aspect of the genre—it’s a little boring. But I suspect that many writers of fantasy go through a phase like this early on, influenced as most of us are by Christian mythology and juggernauts like Tolkien and Lewis. Huff is clearly still finding her legs here, but Gate of Darkness, Circle of Light makes her potential obvious.