N.B. September 2013: So apparently this book is a pile of plagiarism (hat tip to Ceridwen for the info). I’m not exactly going to re-read the book so I can rewrite my review in that light. But just be aware of this fact as you read the review below.

In my recent review of The Grand Design I went on about my love of science, particularly of physics. I’ll be honest: although biology is really, really cool, I also find it kind of gross. It’s full of squishy stuff, and it was my least favourite of the Holy Trinity of high school science classes (physics, biology, chemistry) for that reason. When I talk biology, I tend to gravitate toward the more abstract areas: genetics, evolutionary biology, and of course, neuroscience—once you get down to the microscopic or molecular levels, the squick factor is considerably reduced. Plus, the brain is just fascinating. It is the undiscovered country of biology: how does consciousness work? What makes us us? The brain is an amazing organ, simultaneously incredibly flexible and resistant yet also so fragile. Even as Jonah Lehrer explores the decision-making process from the perspective of cognitive neuroscience, How We Decide also reaffirms my admiration for and awe of the brain.

I learned a great deal from this book. Some of it was about football, because Lehrer opens the first chapter with an analysis of Tom Brady’s performance in the 2002 Super Bowl. Football confuses me at the best of times, but fortunately Lehrer includes plenty of other case studies: airplane disasters, debt counselling, basketball performance, etc. How We Decide is definitely a work of popular science, and it seems to be trying to appeal to the broadest audience possible. However, I approached it as someone interested in learning about neuroscience, and in this respect the book did not let me down.

The focus of How We Decide, especially in the early chapters, is on the distinction between rational decision-making and emotional decision-making. Lehrer challenges the myth that humans are “rational animals”, that our rationality sets us apart and allows us to tame unreliable emotion. His counterexample is the stunning account of people who have experienced damage to their orbitofrontal cortex (OFC). This little area of the prefrontal cortex (itself important to the process of decision-making) has a huge impact on how we decide: it is “responsible for integrating visceral emotions into the decision-making process”, and lacking it means one essentially decides based on rational criteria alone. If the myth of our rationality were true, this would result in the ultimate decision maker, completely unswayed by appeals to emotion. Instead, people with damaged or removed OFCs are indecisive: without emotional cues, they are left to analyze even the smallest decision with relentless attention to the pros and the cons. Emotion might sometimes cloud our judgement, but it can also play a vital role in impelling us.

Later, Lehrer looks at the converse, where emotion misleads one’s decision-making process. He uses high-stakes situations, such as playing Deal or No Deal, to illustrate that emotion can prevent us from choosing the better settlement. When we’re angry or feel that our pride is on the line, we can be rash, leading us to reject otherwise fair offers. Credit cards and other abstractions of money make it easier to spend money, because our emotional brain is fooled into thinking we aren’t spending all that much money at all. (Lehrer attributes the subprime mortgage bubble to this kind of thinking, and points out that this is how credit card companies sucker us in to high lifetime interest rates by using low introductory offers. If you can only take away a single piece of advice from How We Decide, try this: “read only the fine print.”)

In fact, what begins to emerge from these chapters on rationality versus emotion is a theory of automatic versus deliberative decision-making. For situations that are familiar to us, it’s best to keep autopilot on and let our unconscious do the thinking. Our brain is used to the situation, and thinking through the steps is more likely to screw us up than help (this is where Lehrer’s sports examples make a lot of sense). However, as will come to no surprise to most of us, our automatic brains are very bad at dealing with unexpected information. In particular, most people’s automatic brains suck at math. This is where rationality and a more thoughtful decision-making process becomes essential: we have to analyze the new information and figure out how to incorporate it into our model before we can proceed. If we do not, we might end up rejecting a deal that is much more lucrative than what any of the remaining briefcases might offer.

All this might sound rather obvious so far (if so, congratulations on your smartitude), and you might be thinking, but what about the science behind these conclusions? Well, it’s there, but it’s so well integrated into the book that if I start trying to tease it out and present it for our mutual amusement, I’ll probably just end up making it sound dry and boring. Suffice it to say, the second chapter is called “The Predictions of Dopamine”, and Lehrer goes into great detail through the book about the roles various sections of the brain play in decision-making, as well as how we know this—mostly fMRIs, sometimes monkey torture. And of course, it’s worth keeping in mind that none of this is as simple as Lehrer makes it out to be, and that there are probably alternative explanations—e.g., game theory, evolutionary psychology, etc. Lehrer occasionally makes reference to these, but for the most part he sticks with a very functional exploration of our brain. And that’s fine; if I want to read different perspectives, I can always seek out books on those particular topics.

In the spirit of this book’s subject matter, I’ll acknowledge a bias in my decision to like this book. How We Decide lends support to a lot of positions I personally endorse. For example, Lehrer points out that, “people with a genetic mutation that reduces the number of dopamine receptors in the ACC [anterior cingulate cortex] … are significantly more likely to become addicted to drugs and alcohol”. This belies the contention that addiction is a choice rather than a disease and that addicts simply lack sufficient “willpower” to improve their lives. I’m not saying that we should just drug everyone based on his or her neurological profile—but certainly understanding biological factors that influence our tendencies can help us combat negative tendencies, such as addiction. (Lehrer and I also share a mild disdain for economics and attempts to play the stock market like it’s a predictable phenomenon.)

If there is a theme to How We Decide, it’s that we often suck at making decisions. Not only do we have numerous biases left over from evolutionary adaptation and social inculcation, but the complex interplay between conscious and unconscious decision-making means sometimes we relegate decisions to a part of our brain that isn’t particularly suited to them. Lehrer’s theme, however, is that not all is hopeless: by being aware of these biases, by thinking about how we think, we can mitigate them and improve our ability to make decisions. It turns out that how we decide is influenced a great deal by thinking about how we decide.

And so that’s why I loved this book. It is an excellent scientific look at decision-making through both anecdotal and empirical evidence. (The former is, of course, worthless in a court of science but invaluable in the court of opinion.) Moreover, How We Decide is useful, offering salient advice about how to improve one’s ability to make decisions. I don’t doubt that many people will dislike this book, or at least Lehrer’s style or his derision for economics, but I do highly recommend you give it a try.

Some science fiction revels in its immersion in the futurescape, that unknowable presentation of technology and society that seems so distantly related to our own. Utopian fiction likes to posit that we will somehow overcome our vices (though, for the sake of story conflict, discover wonderful new ones). Dystopian fiction does the opposite, amplifying our vices with scary new methods of oppression, while also offering the hope of an easy dismantling of the totalitarian bureaucracy, very often by a plucky young protagonist who doesn’t know any better.

So, it’s kind of nice when someone like Karen Traviss offers up science fiction that throws such comfortable ideas out the window.

City of Pearl offers no easy answers. There is no magic formula that persuades antagonists to change their mind, no way to smooth over relations and create a happily-ever-after. From the moment Shan sets down on the planet around Cavanaugh’s Star until the moment the other human ship arrives, everything just seems to get worse, despite all her efforts to make it better. In the end, Traviss makes one question whether one person can ever be enough against the inexorable tide of folly that seems to follow our species around.

This is a postcolonial novel. Science fiction is one of the best settings for postcolonialism, as City of Pearl demonstrates. It’s too easy these days to think that colonialism is "over", that just because the "colonies" are gone the attitudes don’t remain. Traviss shows that colonialism is an ongoing process, one that would extend into space travel if it possibly could. This is a story about how corporations have colonized our heritage and pushed people out into the stars, only to come chasing after them, waving patents and injunctions like so many smallpox-infected blankets. The psychic and physical destruction wrought to Bezer’ej by humans and isenj in the name of “survival”, “commerce”, or any other totem, is no different from the way colonizers of the past and present have asserted and continue to assert their rights while trampling on those of indigenous people, be they inhabitants of a continent on Earth or the bezeri in this book.

Shan is our window into this world. She exists to provide a facet of nuance to an otherwise bleak morality play that indicts humanity’s expansionist ethos. I love that Shan is so far from perfect there’s no point in measuring. She is flawed, and so human and conflicted in her choices and actions. Ostensibly an agent of “the man”, a government enforcer of bureaucracy and regulation, she nurses a wilder, more rebellious side that agrees with what some of the eco-terrorists she represses are trying to do. This is all supposed to be moot when she takes the 75-year journey away from Earth to a distant planet. But with the arrival of Actaeon, everything comes crashing down. Shan is forced to act, perhaps rashly. Yet she remains our rock, our only point of sympathetic reference, because so many of the other humans in this book seem to be fucking awful.

From the self-absorbed, self-righteous scientists to the distant governments of Earth, the other humans in City of Pearl make me ashamed of my species. And I think that’s what Traviss is going for. This is not a "yay, humanity!" book. Unfortunately, it seems all too realistic a prediction of what could happen if interstellar colonization becomes possible. Any hope that the past few centuries of history and hindsight have changed us for the better is fatally misplaced.

That’s not to say that the antagonists are one-dimensional. Some of them certainly seem that way on an individual basis. But there are plenty of people, like Eddie and Lindsay, who are grey areas. Neither antagonist nor protagonist, they are free agents who aid or act against Shan based on the dictates of their consciences, which might differ from her own. Lindsay’s character arc particularly fascinates me. She begins by supporting Shan, even when Shan’s actions start to become extreme from the others’ points of view. But as her own sense of authority erodes in proportion to her pregnancy, Lindsay begins to question whether Shan’s morality is the best for the mission. Aras’ decision to save Shan’s life by infecting her with the c’naatat compounds the problem, for when Lindsay finds out it could have saved the life of her infant, she flips out. And, on balance, it seems obvious that Shan and Aras have the right of it when they defend their decision. But that doesn’t lessen the emotional impact of the event, or make Lindsay’s pain any less real.

The climax is a harsh lesson that often there is no easy answer to these vast dilemmas. There is no easy way for Shan to shake off c’naatat and avoid a hearing regarding her actions as expedition leader. There is no easy way to deal with the political tangle of Earth governments getting cozy with the isenj even as the colonists have become closer to the wess’har. Instead, the situation just gets messier and messier, until something has to give.

City of Pearl isn’t exactly about colonizing a planet as it is not colonizing it. It’s the story of how being 75 years away can mess up the best laid plans of governments and politicians. It’s the story of how individuals make mistakes and try to make amends, and sometimes it’s just not enough. It’s messy and tragic, occasionally funny, and very entertaining.

I have fond memories of this trilogy from my youth. Or, more likely, of parts of this trilogy, both because in my rebellious heyday I read things out of sequence like it was nobody's business (because it wasn't) and because my library is very fond of buying books 2 and 3 but not book 1. So I can't recall if I ever read Newton”s Cannon, but it seemed like a good place to restart my journey through the Age of Unreason. Finding it for 30 p at a library sale was just icing on the cake—it even has that sweet transparent jacket cover for paperbacks that many UK libraries use!

But I digress.

As a mathematician, I am required to be fascinated by Isaac Newton. You should be too, even if you aren’t a mathematician. The man was incredible. In addition to his contributions to math, physics, and astronomy, he was also the head of the Royal Mint and of the Royal Society. He was also, by all reports, a bit of a dick towards his friends and peers. And don't you dare get in a priority dispute with him, because he will cut you, and then he’ll write the anonymous review congratulating the report (by a committee he heads up) that finds in his favour.

Still digressing.

It’s an open secret, though, that Newton had some strange ideas. He saw his contributions to astronomy and optics as interesting hobbies, but he was really keen on alchemy and mysticism. In this series, Greg Keyes seizes upon this as the jumping-off point for a creative alternate history: what if our universe actually worked in the alchemical, classical sense of Greek and Renaissance descriptions? Gravity is merely one of many “affinities” that matter displays; rather than vacuum, we really do have luminiferous aether, and electric lights are instead devices that separate aether and lux. In this world, philosopher-alchemists create cannonballs that turn the walls they hit into glass and pairs of machines (aetherscribers) that communicate instantaneously with each other across the world.

Newton’s Cannon follows two protagonists: a young Benjamin Franklin and Adrienne de Mornay de Montchevreuil. Yep, Benjamin Franklin. Only after he gets himself in trouble with a nefarious warlock-type dude, Benjamin flees Boston for London, hoping to apprentice himself to Isaac Newton, who at this late stage in his life has entered a rather deep episode of paranoia. Meanwhile, in France, Adrienne hides her “improper” (for a woman) interests in science, acting as the supposedly bored secretary to an overzealous mathematician who hopes to drop a comet on London. She catches the eye of an immortal Sun King, Louis XIV, who has plans to make her his wife. Before Adrienne can refuse, she becomes involved in a conspiracy to kill the king.

Keyes mixes the historical animosity between English and French with the pressures and changes brought about by Newton's discoveries. Louis’ lengthy reign has prompted rebellion, in addition to the war with England, resulting in a France strained to the limit. Newton's discoveries have attracted the attention of strange, inhuman entities—creatures we might call angels and demons—whose intentions towards humanity are far from good. Throughout the book, we get the sense that everyone (except maybe Newton) is messing with forces beyond their understanding.

Both storylines take a while to get going. Ben spends a great deal of time trying to work at his brother’s printing shop before plot conspires to ship him off to London. Likewise, Adrienne spends a lot of time orbiting movers and shakers before becoming one herself. It’s hard for me to say which one interested me more; I suppose what kept me going was just curiosity regarding the bigger picture. In that respect, Newton’s Cannon remains coy. Much changes, but very little is revealed about what is happening behind the scenes.

It’s worth sticking out. There’s plenty of action scenes to keep one’s interest going. But the payoff is less than what I expected, considering the very cool world Keyes has created here.

Invisibility is one of the best superpowers, in my opinion, though it also requires a little wiggle room to be truly often. For instance, invisibility where you have to get naked to work the power can be … awkward. Similarly, I wouldn’t want to be invisible permanently, or invisible to myself! That would also lead to no end of problems. In Look’s case, he isn’t invisible per se (except on camera, for some reason that I don’t really understand). But he is the eponymous “Boy Who Cast No Shadow”, a global phenomenon, and this causes no end of problems for him.

I’d love to like this story. It’s heartfelt and generally intriguing. Olde Heuvelt creates two intriguing characters, each with their own particular unique problem, who somehow manage to lose themselves in each other. I sympathized with Look and with Splinter, lamented their inevitably tragic ending. Unfortunately, “The Boy Who Cast No Shadow” also has a few bumps and rough edges that require some critique.

Let’s take it as a given that Look indeed casts no shadow and that Splinter is somehow, impossibly, a living boy made of glass. This is science fiction (or fantasy), and your story doesn’t have to be believable, just consistent. So I’m confused why people can see Look in person but not on camera. He isn’t visible on X-ray machines either (the rays “fall through him”), implying that he does not reflect X-rays. Fair enough. But cameras record the reflection of visible light. If he were transparent to the light the camera picks up, he should be transparent to everyone else as well, even if they are looking right at him.

Olde Heuvelt also glosses over much of Look and Splinter’s relative celebrities. At the beginning of the story, Look goes on about how he has been on Oprah, how the United States government has kidnapped him and experimented him, etc. Now he’s attending an ordinary school like an ordinary boy. Splinter doesn’t seem to have that level of celebrity (glass runs in his family), but I’m surprised that, considering his fragility, he’s allowed to attend a mainstream school at all. Obviously he needs to in order to meet Look and have these adventures, but that makes the situation a little more contrived than it should have to be.

If you can work past these nitpicks, then “The Boy Who Cast No Shadow” is moving, a modern day tragedy about dealing with difference. Olde Heuvelt uses the form to his advantage, and I can see why this has garnered a nomination. It’s not quite my cup of tea though.

This story was very depressing. Like, bleak pits of despair depressing. Chuck Wendig takes all the good things in the world and beats them up for their lunch money, which he then spends on drugs and alcohol for underage victims of abuse. Sympathy is almost required for Atlanta Burns, but at the same time, it’s difficult to like reading about her life. Shotgun Gravy is a perfect exercise for readers who like their noire extra black.

I’m not particularly fond of the clipped style of sentence structure Wendig uses. It would have been more tolerable had the book been in first person, but with a limited, third-person narrator, the style seems more artificial. I admit to being addicted to long, meandering sentences that belong more in Victorian novels than they do in contemporary works. Nevertheless, the staccato beats that pepper Shotgun Gravy tried my patience. Combined with the dark subject matter and dark tone in general, I spent much of the book wondering why I bothered to keep reading.

It’s not that it’s like a train wreck. I could have looked away.

It’s not that there’s something ultimately rewarding or redeeming about Atlanta’s story. There isn’t. She doesn’t undergo any great epiphany as a result of helping victims of bullying. If anything, things get worse for her.

I don’t really know why I kept reading. I just did. Then I went ahead and read Bait Dog too, and that wasn’t exactly a bucket of laughs either.

If you like this sort of thing, there is no reason to avoid it. Wendig is skilled at character studies in self-loathing. (To be honest, though, I found the minor characters less than three-dimensional.) Shotgun Gravy is about Atlanta’s slow road towards the on-ramp towards the service entrance for a detour near the road to recovery. As a result, it’s a slow but tightly-packed narrative, and those who stick it out will be rewarded.

If you prefer puppy dogs and rainbows though, this is not the book for you.

(This is a rather brief review, but my review of Bait Dog is slightly more extensive.)

Bait Dog follows on from Shotgun Gravy, which I gave a very cursory review. I can easily say I liked this better than Shotgun Gravy, not for its tone or characters or even content but simply because it had a deeper, more intriguing mystery. Chuck Wendig turns Atlanta Burns into Encyclopedia Brown: Pet Detective. She agrees to find someone’s missing dog because she needs the money; the bad guys from the first book have used their pull with the bank to get her and her mother’s farmhouse foreclosed. What Atlanta doesn’t realize is that she will soon become mixed up in underground dog fighting and once again fight for her life, not just the lives of adorable puppies.

Remember how in my review of Shotgun Gravy I mentioned that you should avoid it if you like puppy dogs and rainbows? Yeah, that goes double for Bait Dog. I would not be surprised if Wendig goes after rainbows in the third book.

Still, this book benefits from having a more structured story. What begins as Atlanta grieving for her best friend’s apparent suicide—which she refuses to believe is anything other than a set-up—quickly turns into a mystery involving missing dogs and white supremacists. Once again, Wendig doesn’t sugarcoat anything. The same unvarnished hatred and cruelty and racism from the first book washes up here, with some animal cruelty thrown in for good measure. You might need to wash your e-reader after reading this.

While some of Wendig’s minor characters remain fairly one-dimensional (Atlanta’s mom, for example), he does have a go at fleshing out others. Chomp-Chomp, aka Steven, becomes more chaotic neutral in this book. He aids Atlanta at several turns. Similarly, Shane is now Atlanta’s sometime sidekick, and while she tries to shield him from the harshest parts of this case, she obviously values what support he can provide.

Perhaps the biggest change in Atlanta is that little sliver of hope for healing. She has friends—well, had, until Chad died, and now she only has a friend—friends who were “normal” in the twisted, messed up definition of normal one can apply to the diverse ecosystem of adolescence. For the first time in several years, Atlanta is forming meaningful relationships with people who don’t want to hurt her. In this light, Bait Dog is the universe attempting to slap her down again.

Without spoiling too much, I’m happy to report that it largely does not succeed. That doesn’t mean Atlanta always wins … I’d say she mostly gets what she wants, but not without fighting tooth-and-nail for it. Things seldom go according to plan, and more than once she finds herself fighting with her back against the metaphorical wall, no matter how well-prepared she thought she was.

Much like Shotgun Gravy, Bait Dog is a difficult book to enjoy for all its bleakness. I feel a little hypocritical saying this, because dark stories don’t have to be difficult to enjoy: A Fine Balance cut me up, yet it is one of my all-time favourites. However, the latter differed both in setting and style, and Mistry includes many humorous and uplifting moments amid the downturns of fate. Wendig also has humour, but for the most part it is like a postmodern abstract painting: black upon black.

Thaiburley. The City of a Hundred Rows. Nestled in a vast but somewhat unexplored world, Thaiburley is the centre of this story, almost a character itself. From the Pits and Kat to the Heights and the Prime Master, characters of different backgrounds have gradually come together to face the greatest threat this city has seen in ages. They’ve grown and changed in ways they didn’t think was possible. Though I haven’t always been the most enthusiastic reader of this series, Ian Whates leaves no doubt of his skill at plotting and executing a tight story arc. City of Light and Shadow is a fitting conclusion to this trilogy, in that it remains representative of the flaws that have propagated through it.

Whates wastes no time picking up where he left off in the last book. Unfortunately, it has been half a year since I read City of Hope and Despair, so it took a while for me to get up to speed. I was really looking forward to the answers that would come with Tom and Mildra meeting Thaiss … except they didn’t, not really. Instead Whates opts for vague revelations and leaves a lot open to interpretation. I can’t really fault him for this; he presents it in a sensible way. But this stifled exposition is one of my first regrets about the ending of this series: it seems like there is such a rich world here, but we never get to see much of it.

I really like the idea of Thaiburley. I like the tantalizing backstory that Whates dangles before us in this book. I like the idea that it’s a largely neutral, cosmopolitan place amid different kingdoms and empires. Dewar’s story arc in this novel follows the machinations of one such kingdom as Thaiburley’s internal conflicts weaken its political might. Nevertheless, everything about the world outside of Thaiburley still seems murky and ill-defined. And Thaiburley itself, while established in structure and character, has so many more secrets. So, I regret that we didn’t have a chance to explore the city in the way that it truly deserves, or to really tour the larger world that Whates has created.

So Tom becomes a bit of a superhero in this book, unlocking the true extent of his powers under the tutelage of Thaiss. When he returns to Thaiburley, he receives new marching orders. Once again, Tom is a pawn rather than a player. This is by design, however, with Tom reflecting on this characteristic throughout the story and attempting to make decisions based on his own desires. I appreciate this method of circumventing Tom’s passivity, even if it doesn’t seem entirely effective from my perspective as a reader. Tom is still basically connecting the dots of the plot points, and while there is a good reason for that, it doesn’t make the overall plot any more interesting.

Meanwhile, Kat is leading the Tattooed Men, working in an uneasy alliance with the Kite Guard to kill the Soul Thief. Got it? Kat gets short shrift in this book. Though present for most of the action with Tom, I don’t feel like her character develops much further. She exists more as a participant but less as a perspective character, something that I regret. Much like the missed opportunities to further flesh-out his world, Whates doesn’t use some of his principal protagonists to their full potential.

Really, City of Light and Shadow just feels rather messy. There are too many dangling threads that get tied off in inelegant or somewhat rushed ways. The overall result feels like a cross between handwaving and deus ex machina, the latter of which is literally true in a few cases. There is a wonderful, beautiful, compelling story lurking between these pages … but it’s not quite there, like a sculpture that isn’t quite true to life but could be. That’s what frustrates me so much about this series. They aren’t bad books, but they could so obviously be better.

I’d still recommend this series, but I’m not sure who is the best candidate to become a fan. These are uneven books. But at least Whates tries and strives for greatness, so while the stories might be a little messy and the characters not quite developed, there is no doubt that he has set his bar high and aimed for it. And that I can definitely appreciate.

My reviews of the City of a Hundred Rows series:
← City of Hope & Despair

I’m trying to think of how many other books’ sequels are more notable than the books themselves. The Dark is Rising is the second book in the sequence, yet it was the one that got adapted into an apparently awful film, and it was the one that gave its title to the entire series. I suppose I can see why. Of the first two books, it more stereotypically conforms to the monomyth and has that “epic” quality one desires in “epic fantasy”. Over Sea, Under Stone is firmly a juvenile adventure, whereas the threats and dangers in The Dark is Rising are more potent and terrifying. I complained about the lack of such terror in my review of the first book, but I can’t make that complaint here.

Will Stanton is turning eleven years old. He discovers he is the last Old One, a group of incredibly powerful, immortal beings who fight against the Dark in the name of Light. Much like the recent era of Doctor Who, The Dark is Rising delights in using its title as a catchphrase. We are repeatedly warned that the powers of Dark will be at their strongest soon. Will can defeat them, but only if he finds the six signs required to complete the “circle”. Merriman Lyon (Great-Uncle Merry from the first book) pops in and out to help Will and offer him some guidance, but it’s mostly Will’s show. Sort of.

Gamers like to refer to some video games as having sequences “on rails”, which means an action sequence where the player has little to no control over their movement but full control over their weapons (for example, being on a moving train that takes them along a pre-determined route while they fight off bad guys). These sequences have threats, and often failure modes if the player can’t react fast enough or eliminate enough baddies within a certain time limit. Thus, rails sequences aren’t inherently bad, and they don’t necessarily squelch the enjoyment or tension in a video game. But they can be tricky to do well, and they can often be frustrating.

The Dark is Rising feels like one big story on rails, for both Will and the protagonist. The threats are manifest in a way they weren’t in Over Sea, Under Stone. But the fortuitous outcome all seems so obvious, so pre-destined, that the tension is almost zero. Will seems to recover the signs without much effort on his part. I don’t mean to sell him short, because he does have moments of autonomy that make him shine. For the most part, though, Cooper doesn’t want to take off the training wheels on her hero. Will only makes the mistakes he is allowed to make, the perfect mistakes for a young, untrained hero to make. And the result is character development that feels very artificial and formulaic.

If there is fulfilment to be had here, then it’s in the inevitable empathy one must have for Will. He is thrown out of his depth quite quickly, and he hits the ground running. Say what you will about Harry Potter, he had it pretty easy. He got the guided tour of Hogwarts. Will turns eleven, gets told he is an Old One, and within a few days he has to save the world from the near-infinite power of the Dark. And he can’t talk to anyone about it. Harry had Ron and Hermione. Will only has Merriman, who as inconstant presence at best. He can’t tell his siblings why the farmer’s daughter is evil; he can’t explain that the horrendous snowstorm the countryside is experiencing is a result of evil’s waxing power. Will is completely alone.

Will’s adversaries, the Rider and, later, the Walker, prey upon that chink in his psychological armour. They bring to bear the age-old “you can never hope to defeat the power of the dark side” speech, and it starts to wear Will down. He perseveres every time, and he succeeds every time--and as I said above, it’s not surprising he does. But it’s still fun to watch him struggle against the emotional toll this is taking. This is particularly true at the climax of the book, when it seems that Merriman has deserted him and Will has to choose between vanquishing the Dark or saving his sister.

The Dark is Rising is indubitably better than Over Sea, Under Stone, though the latter has plenty going for it. Neither, though, has convinced me it’s worth being called a classic. The story and characters have changed, but there is still an overwrought, painfully obvious quality to the writing--the disharmonious sounds of Cooper trying so very hard. Great writing isn’t effortless, by any means. But mediocre writing is usually very hard indeed.

My reviews of the Dark is Rising sequence:
← Over Sea, Under Stone | Greenwitch →

Greenwitch is the third in Susan Cooper’s The Dark is Rising series. It unites the protagonists of the previous two books. Will Stanton meets Barney, Simon, and Jane. Together, they foil the latest plot of the Dark, which involves stealing a secret artifact from the Greenwitch. This entity is a construct of twigs and leaves built by the women of Trewissick in an elaborate, night-long ceremony. They assemble the Greenwitch, then the men of the village cast it over the cliff and into the sea below. This is supposed to bring renewal for the fisherman. But the Greenwitch has the secret that will decipher the Grail, and things are more complicated.

My critiques of this book are quite similar to how I felt about the previous books. Cooper writes well considering her audience; I can understand how children would be captivated by the types of danger that Simon, Barney, and Jane face. (Will still kind of bores me.) Nevertheless, the level of conflict and sense of peril remains steady for most of the book. We never learn what the terrible consequences might be if the Dark retrieves the secret. As with previous books, the Gandalf-like figure of Merriman haunts the outskirts of the pages, dispensing vague advice, like “Beware the Greenwitch”. It’s up to the children to muddle through as best they can, skirmishing here and there with an ancient of the Dark.

I’m confused by Will’s presence. It seems like he’s only there to receive the message deciphered from the Grail at the end of the book—I can’t think of anything else he does that is instrumental or that any of the Drews could not do themselves. If that’s his only reason for being there, it’s not a very good one. This character was good enough to shoulder the burden of sole protagonist during the previous book in the series, but here he fades into the background, because Cooper doesn’t give him that much to do.

The Drews aren’t that much better off, mind you. Though they have a little more in the way of an "adventure", there is less time dedicated towards showcasing their prodigious problem-solving skills. In general, Greenwitch seems rushed. It’s a short book, so if Cooper had paced it more slowly and given the plot more bulk, I don’t think it would have suffered for length.

Nothing about Greenwitch grabs me and makes me want to think about it in more depth or ruminate on the adventures these children have. Though technically well-crafted, it just lacks that spark that makes it noteworthy compared to all the other novels of its ilk out there. It’s a good example that it’s not enough to be able to write a good story; there need to be elements that stand out.

My reviews of the Dark is Rising sequence:
←The Dark is Rising | The Grey King →

I’ve gradually been making my way through China Miéville’s back catalogue. He’s one of those authors who is prolific, but not in a terrifyingly fecund sort of way. I feel like I can play catch-up without being overwhelmed. Well, without being overwhelmed by the number of titles to read. Miéville’s characteristic, crafty style means that I might be overwhelmed in other ways.

I made the mistake of taking my form tutor group to the library. I was excited, because it was the first day the new school library was open to students, and I’m stressing independent reading with my tutor group this year. I call this decision to visit the library a mistake only because you can’t let me loose in a library and not expect me to get a few books. In this case, I saw Un Lun Dun prominently featured on a shelf and decided this was a good opportunity to sample Miéville’s "young adult" novel. I was not disappointed.

I don’t number Miéville among my favourite authors, but I would certainly call myself a fan. I don’t always enjoy his books, but they never fail to impress me with their quality—there isn’t a bad Miéville book, so much as there are books I liked and books that just didn’t appeal to me, personally. His commitment to creating strange worlds that are nevertheless somewhat recognizable is second to none, and Un Lun Dun is another perfect example of this consummate craftsmanship.

Deeba and Zanna are school-age children dealing with the natural school-age issues. That is, until animals start talking to Zanna. Then they find their way into Un Lun Dun (UnLondon), where everyone regards Zanna as the Shwazzy, the Chosen One, who will deliver the abcity from the terrifying sentient Smog that threatens it. Unfortunately, the prophecies turn out to be … well … wrong. And though the Chosen One can’t save UnLondon, Deeba, through a great deal of persistence and no small amount of cleverness, does her best.

Deeba is a strong contender for my Favourite Protagonist of 2013, if I had such an award, which I don’t. She is, of course, the UnChosen One. She is listed in the prophecy book only as the “funny” sidekick to the Shwazzy. When Zanna doesn’t exactly turn out as everyone hopes, it’s Deeba who finds her way back to UnLondon. And from that point, she calls the shots. No one else takes her aside and patronizes her because she is a young woman. She decides who to befriend. She decides they’re going on a quest for the six items that will help them defeat the Smog, and when that starts taking too long, she decides to jump straight to the final item. She assesses the situation and decides when they will take risks. When her allies, who are older and often more powerful and sometimes even wiser, run out of ideas and the situation seems hopeless, it’s always Deeba who comes up with a new perspective, a new strategy.

I don’t want to make Deeba sound perfect. She makes plenty of mistakes and missteps, which she then has to fix later. I just want to stick this book in the face of everyone captivated by the Bella Swans of the young adult protagonist world. Bella swoons, mopes, and faints. Deeba fights, plans, and outwits. The difference is stark, and it’s encouraging to know there are some brilliant and inspiring protagonists out there for young adult readers to find. Plus, they get to experience the dazzling nature of Miéville’s worldbuilding.

Anyone who has experienced any of Miéville’s other imagined worlds will immediately find UnLondon familiar. Other writers have explored the idea of abcities, perhaps most notably Neil Gaiman in Neverwhere. Miéville gives Gaiman a shout-out in his acknowledgements, so evidently he found Neverwhere somewhat influential. Both authors depict a fantastical “other London” grown from the dreamstuff and discards of Londoners present and past. Both books explore, to some extent, the idea of belonging and not belonging, of destiny versus free will. However, Neverwhere is an adult novel, while Un Lun Dun is decidedly adolescent. Whereas Richard Mayhew deals with the problems of a fiancee and a working man, Deeba struggles with friendship, loyalty, and the more basic and intense relationships formed in adolescence. In this sense, though the novels are somewhat similar in tone and ideas, they are different enough to be complementary and entertaining on their own merits.

Both Gaiman and Miéville like to twist language for their own purposes (and they love puns, especially for place names). Yet Gaiman focuses more on historical motifs while Miéville prefers to manipulate nature. Hence, UnLondon features an explorer that is a parakeet in a birdcage atop a man’s body, a forest inside a house, creatures called “Utterlings” formed from words themselves, etc. Miéville enjoys playing “what if” games with the reader, as he does in his other books, and it always just leaves me a little bit jealous that he has such an amazing imagination.

In some of his other books, Miéville can let his fantastic concepts get away from him. As a result, the books earn a reputation of being inaccessible or inscrutable. I haven’t always found this to be the case, but I can see why some might. Un Lun Dun is an antipattern in this regard. I don’t know if it’s because Miéville is doing something differently to target a slightly younger audience, or if it’s just a consequence of the nature of the story. But this is among the less confusing of his works, and as such might be a suitable introduction, particularly for those younger readers who are nevertheless ready to sample his other books after this one.

Un Lun Dun is one of the best books I’ve read this year, and it’s now one of my favourite books by China Miéville.