Do you ever feel like you have let down a book, not the other way around? That if you had been smarter, funnier, prettier, then the book wouldn’t have broken up with you by text message and started dating your friend, who really isn’t all that much prettier than you and has terrible taste in clothing and music and restaurants anyway? No? Just me? OK. I kind of feel that way about Napier’s Bones.

I first heard of this book from a “Big Idea” piece on John Scalzi’s blog. It sounded amazing: mathematics as magic! People, called numerates, who can see and manipulate numbers. I had a coworker this summer who has a form of synesthesia where numbers move around for her, and I was really curious about this phenomenon. Derryl Murphy’s concept reminds me of that, and of course as a mathematician myself, I’m fascinated by the idea of being able to manipulate numbers in a very real way. So I was excited for this novel and bought it new a few months later.

Alas, this is one of those times when the premise is far superior to the execution.

For the first few chapters, this is an OK book. Indeed, my mathematical interests had me positively tingling as I read about Dom’s acquisition of an adjunct, the shade Billy, and his newly-minted status as a fugitive from a shadowy opponent. It was an in media res opening that promised Murphy would keep the action going right until the last page. For the most part, he delivers on this promise, which is one reason I decided to go with two stars instead of one. I have many criticisms of Napier’s Bones, but “dull” is not one of them.

The cracks are tiny but appear early. Murphy loves his exposition, and although Jenna is by no means a minor character, her primary role for the first half of the novel is as a listener to Dom’s Mr. Exposition-pants (TVTropes). The action/travel sequences are really just what happens in between the lengthy conversations in which Dom explains how numbers behave, how numerates manipulate them, how mojo enters into the equation, etc. Jenna nods and smiles. It’s the most unsatisfactory way to explore a mythology and a magical system; I wish Murphy had put as much effort into unfolding his universe as he did constructing it in the first place.

The real trouble begins about halfway through, when Jenna and Dom get rescued from near-certain death by a mysterious, defrocked priest who introduces himself as Father Thomas. It turns out that John Napier is back from the dead, has possessed someone important to Dom or Jenna, and is after some of his old artifacts in a quest for ultimate power. Fair enough. I mean, his name is in the title, so I was expecting Napier to show up—in body or in spirit—at some point, and I was pretty sure Napier’s actual bones would be an important part of the story. I have no problems with this. Once again, however, I take issue with how Murphy communicates all this information. (And I could have done without being told, almost every time his name comes up, that Napier invented logarithms. I get it.)

Father Thomas explains why it is so important for Dom and Jenna to hop on a flight he has booked them to Scotland. And then we never see Father Thomas again.

When you introduce a character for a single chapter whose only purpose is to provide major exposition and a plane ticket, you are doing something wrong.

So Dom and Jenna hop the pond to Scotland, where they gallivant across the countryside, searching for several important artifacts. They meet another ally in their quest, in the form of intelligent numbers who collectively choose to call themselves “Arithmos”. I wish I were making this up. When the talking numbers enter the story is where I draw the line and where Napier’s Bones goes from slightly flawed to outright bad. Murphy’s interesting idea about numbers being a form of magic degenerates into a messy equivocation of magic and quantum mechanics. With each chapter, he introduces new rules—and exposition to go along with those rules—and more conditions for victory (or failure) on the part of Dom and Jenna. I dislike it when magical systems don’t feel consistent but instead appear to change based on the needs of plot.

Speaking of which, the ending itself is somewhat of a literal deus ex machina, at least as far as I can tell. By the time we got that point, I was not so interested in the story any more. The plot had become hard to follow, and my emotional connection to Dom and Jenna was tenuous. This is probably the dealbreaker, in my book, even though it is the most subjective part of the relationship between reader and story. I can handle oppressive levels of exposition and poorly-constructed systems of magic. But ultimately a story is about the reader connecting to a character (or characters), and that did not happen here.

Napier’s Bones is just a mess. Its narrative is jumbled, chaotic, and confusing. Its themes are feeble and spread thinly across a book that is longer than it needs to be and still feels far too short. The “magical system” that underlies the story is unsatisfactory and, worse, feels completely arbitrary. The characters start off as interesting and actually become less well-defined as the story progresses. For all of these reasons, I had a difficult time feeling anything more than ambivalence toward this book.

Is it me? Did I do something wrong, Napier’s Bones? Am I too mathy for you—was that voice in my head going, “This isn’t why mathematics is magical!” too loud? Did I say the wrong thing in front of your parents on that one Saturday night when I was tired from a long day at work and they dropped by, despite the fact I told you to tell them Saturdays weren’t good for me, and I would prefer that they give us advanced warning so I could at least tidy up the place, because it’s not like you ever bother to do it? Just … give me a sign, please. I can change.

Maybe it’s better if I just see some other books for a while, you some other readers. We can get some perspective. A lot of perspective.

Perdido Street Station is a supersaturated story. The city of New Crobuzon teems with life as weird as China Miéville can imagine it—and he has a very flexible imagination. This is one of those touched cities so often the focus of a fantasy or science fiction novel: the city where anything can—and does—happen, sometimes with shocking regularity. In New Crobuzon, there's the law enforced by the militia, and then there's the law observed by everyone who isn't important enough for the militia to bother. There are probably more exceptions than rules.

We figure out those rules, and exceptions, as the story progresses. Many reviewers pan the complexity of Peridido Street Station, accusing Miéville of creating something so dense and haphazardly interconnected as to appear frustratingly random. It's an understandable charge. However, that alone is not a sufficient strike against the book. And I think it's a mistake to attempt to absorb everything that happens in a single reading—this a book that withstands multiple readings precisely because there is so much to it.

Of course, before one even considers re-reading a book, one must read it once. So any book so complex as to invite multiple readings should be comprehensible in the first reading, right? Again, I think it's a bad idea to go into Perdido Street Station with the expectation of comprehending every part of the plot and how it all fits together. Nevertheless, you can comprehend enough of the plots and their connections to enjoy a full story. It helps if you look at the novel from a particular perspective, which is what I'll do for the rest of this review.

At the risk of sounding reductionist, I'll look at how alliances relate the various plots of Perdido Street Station. This is an apt choice, because one of the book's themes is about the somewhat unfortunate necessity of betrayal. Our protagonists are not the most savoury of moral characters; Isaac regularly deals with criminals and engages in petty thievery. By watching the shifting alliances among the characters of the book, we get a sense of their morality, their goals, and how they affect the overall plot. Trace the flow of power, and you'll see how that power affects the story.

Isaac makes and breaks several alliances in the book, most notably with Yagharek, Lemuel Pigeon, the Weaver, and the Construct Council. His alliance with Yagharek drags the exiled garuda into the main adventure and also provides the impetus Isaac needs to invent his crisis engine. Lemuel Pigeon is Isaac's link to the underworld of New Crobuzon; it's his involvement that results in Isaac raising the slake-moth that frees its fellows and begins a reign of terror over the city. The Weaver is an ineffable entity that can literally alter reality to suit its perception of the "worldweb" of patterns. Both Isaac and Mayor Rudgutter seek the help of the Weaver, but Isaac is more successful in forging a lasting alliance, and the Weaver's participation at the climax is crucial to Isaac's plan to destroy the slake-moths. Finally, Isaac's alliance with the Construct Council is one of the most interesting alliances in the book. At first it seems like a miracle: a nascent artificial intelligence, immune to the slake-moths' hypnosis, willing to help because it wants to preserve the city as a fount of information. Yet Isaac perceives a hunger in the Construct Council that is unbridled by morality or empathy, and so he has to use the Council and cast it aside at the last moment.

Isaac's betrayal of the Construct Council is but one of many betrayals of the alliances he makes. We're conditioned to see betrayal as something vile, but often Isaac's betrayals take the form of what he sees as necessary moral decisions. The Construct Council is one such betrayal, but it's even more explicit in how Isaac breaks his contract with Yagharek. After learning about Yagharek's crime, we see Isaac try to rationalize continuing to help Yagharek. He's caught between betraying a comrade who helped save the city and save his lover or sanctioning what, in Isaac's mind, he can only call rape. This may seem like an easy decision in the abstract, but Isaac's hesitation reveals the depth of his character, for he is human—and thus fallible.

This makes Isaac a strong protagonist, especially considering all that Miéville inflicts upon him, especially considering that he gets no happy ending. It's the harshness of the ending that causes Perdido Street Station to crystallize into a single, coherent entity. After finishing the book, I couldn't see it with a happy ending. I wish Lin had survived; I wish there was a happy-ever-after, with Isaac making lots of money and somehow enjoying his life again. But it couldn't happen. Isaac can't be the Hero of New Crobuzon, because he's not a hero. He never will be; he's too flawed. Moreover, there are no heroes in New Crobuzon. Isaac lost everything in his battle to save his city, including the life he could lead in that city, and the woman he loved.

I do regret what happens to Lin. She begins as a powerful character, just as important and as interesting as Isaac. After Mr. Motley captures her, however, her role is reduced to next to nothing. Again, in terms of alliances, Isaac and Lin's is important. They establish each other as meaningful, thoughtful characters who can see past their own species when it comes to love. They contrast each other in terms of science and art, obsession and passion, etc. Isaac would be a much weaker character without Lin, and the story itself is weaker for her absence for much of it.

On the other side of the power divide, we have the city of New Crobuzon, its government personified by Mayor Rudgutter and Secretary Stem-Fulcher. They make a shady alliance with crime lord Mr. Motley, resulting in the sale to Motley of the slake-moths—they are as much responsible for the subsequent tragedy as Isaac is. They also try to stop the slake-moths, albeit without any success. We're not supposed to like Rudgutter, of course, but we can admire him as a character, as a depiction of a corrupt city bureaucrat. We don't get a full exploration of Rudgutter's machinations, unfortunately. We do learn that New Crobuzon has an embassy of Hell, and Rudgutter seeks demonic aid in destroying the slake-moths. This part seemed more extraneous than anything else, as the ambassador from Hell neither deigns to help Rudgutter nor has any other effect on the plot. With Hell struck off the list, Rudgutter turns to other potential allies, some even less savoury.

There's almost as many creatures and species in New Crobuzon as there are streets, and it seems that the less conventional they are, the more we see them. Take, for example, the Cactacae. Living cacti? Weird! And wonderful! Much like the plot structure, it can be hard to follow the plethora of physical permutations Miéville explores in Perdido Street Station, but it's rewarding. One advantage of Miéville's voluminous verbosity is that he always chooses the most interesting words to describe physical appearance. Perdido Street Station is a delectable book in terms of diction and vocabulary.

Whether you condemn or celebrate Miéville's worldbuilding, it's clear that the city of New Crobuzon is not your typical science fiction or fantasy setting (even if it does have zeppelins from another world). It's the details that matter, and not just the amount of detail. I focused on only a sliver of the thoughts and emotions Perdido Street Station evokes for me. There's so much to consider, when it comes to the motivations of the characters and the consequences of their actions, that Miéville deserves credit for his storytelling as much as for his worldbuilding, if not more.

Four hundred years have passed since the fall of civilization As We Know It, society has reverted to a series of medieval monarchies, where technology has become magic and the genetic mutant experiments who now roam the Earth are the eponymous "demons of the past." Our protagonists are on a quest for a magical ocarina needed to refresh the magical barrier keeping more demons from escaping their four-hundred-year-old prison. Of course, soon we learn that things are not as simple as they seem....

The Days of Future Past setting of the book worked well. Erin Durante's talent lies in description, and whether it's geography or gore, she puts the right words in the right places (I loved Nadia's reactions to what we would consider ordinary technology, such as video cameras, and her descriptions of them in terms she understood). And to her credit, we learn about how the world got this way in an infodump, but only toward the end of the book. I only wish we had seen more of the setting—we get a good sense of the scenery as the protagonists take their cross-country trip to save the world, but aside from a couple of interactions with guests at a ball and innkeepers, we don't get a good sense of what society is like in this neo-medieval world. Women are evidently the fairer sex again, if Nadia's complex is any indication. What about religion? Those cross-species diseases that are mentioned near the climax of the book? Sports? The weather? In essence, The Demons of the Past has a lack of the mundane—which is always better than a lack of sensation.

Action and sensation pervade this book. Amidst steamy dialogue, Nadia is always fighting, kicking, arguing, etc. This helps keep the story—which is quite plot-driven—interesting and moving forward; there's always another conflict around the corner. In addition to classic hand-to-hand sword fighting and slightly-less classic hand-to-claw demon slaying, our protagonists battle against the elements and manipulative wizards/scientists. I truly enjoyed most of these scenes. There's almost never a dull moment—except where Nadia's concerned.

Demons of the Past really only has three characters worth discussing: Nadia, Vestro, and Andrew. I'll talk about the last two first and save my evaluation of the narrator last. Vestro and Andrew are also the competing love interests, but by the end of the book I wasn't too excited about either of them winning Nadia's heart.

Vestro is a 400-year-old kelpie (a mutant who can change into a horse). He befriends Nadia when she's a child and serves as her loyal steed in her clandestine demon-slaying adventures; in return, she doesn't tell anyone he's a "demon." He knows more than he tells Nadia, up until the end of the book, and although at first it seems like he might have betrayed her, he remains ever the loyal friend. In a way, Vestro is one of the more fleshed-out characters; he's suffered for hundreds of years and has real motives for his actions. I didn't enjoy the moodiness he exhibited for the last half of the book, however; after Nadia's petulance, it just seemed redundant.

Andrew, in many ways Vestro's opposite, is the prince and new king of the Pearl Isles. A childhood playmate of Nadia's, he spends most of the book asking Nadia to marry him in alternatively romantic and boorish ways. Whereas Vestro's is experienced and deft, Andrew is immature and heavy-handed, but we get the sense that he means well. Unfortunately, I liked Andrew much less than Vestro. He has a lot less of an excuse for being a jerk—yes, his father just died, but he's enough of a king to saddle up, lock and load, and go off on a quest for a mystical ocarina, but he can't handle being snubbed by a girl?

When it comes to the girl, I think I'd want to be snubbed by her. Try as I might, I could not get past Nadia's self-centred, childish nature. She's supposedly twenty-three, but she acts like she's twelve. I get that she's a gung ho gal who just wants to fight demons instead of playing princess—what girl wouldn't? Durante lays on the Rebellious Princess trope a little thick. Nadia's constant complaints about how the men perceive her and her ambivalence regarding Andrew and Vestro are probably my least favourite parts of this book. She has a heart of gold and tries to do the right thing (often screwing up in the process, although sometimes saving Andrew's life), which are redeeming characteristics, but her persistent whining undermines our vision of a badass Lady of War. My one caveat is that Nadia's tribulation at the very end of Demons of the Past foreshadows a possible maturation of her character in a very realistic, dramatic way; if that's the case, then I'll be mollified—but only then.

Demons of the Past is like a meal too rich in dessert; it has plenty of action sequences and tasty descriptions, but it lacks the meat of three-dimensional characters. While I enjoyed the secret society/conspiracy theory component of the plot, the machinations and divisions of loyalty could stand to be more complex and morally ambiguous than they were depicted. This is a good book in that it serves its purpose to lay the ground for the rest of the Damewood trilogy, but the next two books will need to improve if Durante hopes to elevate Damewood beyond average adventure fantasy.

Yay, Ramsay is back! Not that David Staunton was a terrible narrator, but I will always, always have a soft spot in my heart for that irascible old teacher, descended from Scots and obsessed with saints. And now here he is, back to narrating the book. Sort of.

Although Ramsay is technically the narrator, he is consigned to the frame story, and Magnus Eisengrim (or Paul Dempster, back when he was from Deptford) takes centre stage. World of Wonders is notable if only for the fact that most of the paragraphs begin with an opening quotation mark, as the majority of the story gets retold via dialogue—almost a monologue, in fact, though there are crucial points where the listeners to Eisengrim's tale interrupt and interject.

The book takes its title from the carnival that abducted Paul on that fateful day back in Deptford. This event, combined with the interest in prestidigitation that the young Ramsay had awakened, would set Paul on the trajectory for the rest of his life. We get to learn what makes Magnus Eisengrim so different from anyone else, especially when it comes to his utter lack of a formal education and his ignorance of any culture or literature that is not Biblical. Much as various characters entered and exited the lives of Dunstan Ramsay and David Staunton in the first two books, each one shaping the narrator in some way, we see the effects each character in Magnus' autobiography have on his own life.

Yet I should not neglect the frame story. Ramsay explains that they are all at Sorgenfrei, Liesl's estate, to finish filming a biopic about the famous French conjurer, Robert-Houdin. Magnus happens to be portraying Robert-Houdin, and they determine that it would be best if he provides some subtext, in the form of an autobiography. Magnus is at that point in his life, Liesl observes, where he is feeling confessional, and so they gather around him to hear his tale. We hear an interesting life story, but we also get a meditation on the art of autobiography.

I think it's fair to compare the Deptford trilogy to the works of [a:John Irving|3075|John Irving|http://photo.goodreads.com/authors/1257375547p2/3075.jpg], in that both Davies and Irving tend to focus on recounting the lifetime of a single main character, subsuming plot to the character's own development. However, the Deptford trilogy is a lot more meta and self-aware. In Fifth Business and The Manticore, this is particularly obvious in Ramsay's discussion of saints and David's flirtation with Jungian psychoanalysis. Now with World of Wonders Davies focuses on how we perceive ourselves, and, in particular, how we tell our life stories. Throughout Magnus' confession, his listeners interrupt him to discuss not only what he tells them but how he tells it, how he portrays his younger self and how he editorializes the story. It just so happens—through one of those miracles of coincidence owing to an author's creative license—that the producer of the film, Ingestree, knew Magnus in one of his previous lives. Magnus recognized this the moment he saw Ingestree, but Ingestree only realizes it as Magnus starts telling his story. So we get a parallel account of parts of Magnus' life through Ingestree's eyes. Each of them potrays the other in a rather unflattering light, and each admits his own past self was an ass. Whether you wish to believe such contrition or choose, instead, to believe that each is secretly fuming at how the other portrayed him is ultimately up to you.

So the art of autobiography is ultimately an unreliable one. That probably isn't a big shock, but Davies does explore this theme in a masterful way. And he connects the main story and this theme to the overarching plot of the trilogy. Other reviews insist that the central question—the "mystery," if you will—of the Deptford trilogy is, "Who killed Boy Staunton?" I have to disagree, however, because I just can't get worked up about that. The Deptford trilogy is not a mystery series, and while the question is of interest to some of the characters, it's of little relevance to us as readers.

No, what I find more interesting is how the death of Boy affected the other characters: David, Ramsay, and even Magnus. In the coda to A World of Wonders, Ramsay broaches the question again as he, Liesl, and Magnus are having a nightcap in bed. They discuss Liesl and Magnus' roles, for Liesl was the voice of the Brazen Head of Friar Bacon that answered the question David shouted in that crowded theatre. Magnus was probably the last person who saw Boy Staunton alive, for Boy gave him a ride back to his hotel after Ramsay introduced them on that fateful night. And Magnus recounts what Boy said about Ramsay. I really liked hearing that, because it provided access, albeit second hand, to a narrative perspective we had lacked so far: the voice of Boy Staunton himself. Ramsay portrays him in an unflattering light in Fifth Business, and as much as I love Ramsay, he is hardly an unbiased narrator. It was good to hear another perspective on my favourite character in this series, especially one that suggests alternative motives for why Ramsay introduced Magnus to Boy and why he had kept that stone for so long.

Ultimately, the trilogy is not about answering, "Who killed Boy Staunton?," though in the end, it does answer the question. It is instead an incredibly intricate, interconnected telling of lives, love, and relationships. It has a subtext grounded firmly both in Jungian analysis and in interesting perspectives on the flexibility of art, autobiography, and education. Each book in the trilogy is amazing in its own peculiar way, and though I think Fifth Business remains my favourite, its dominance is by a small margin. The Manticore was a fascinating look at psychoanalysis and how our mind casts others as characters in our own stories. World of Wonders continues this autobiographical theme, always questioning its own premise for existing: that of a single, central character relative to whom everyone else has a mere supporting role.

This is the type of book where there are few passages I feel like quoting outright, mostly because they are not as profound when taken out of context, but I wish I could somehow distill the entire book into a quotation-sized passage for others to read. It's just that good, that essential—by which I mean, this trilogy conveys emotions and meaning that seem obvious when one encounters them, but that, until one encounters them in this form, might never occur to one at all. World of Wonders and the rest of the Deptford trilogy is a labour of love that in turn has taken on a life of its own. What Davies has done here is what literature should do, what it does best: tap into something deep, dark, and true about the human psyche and dredge it up for the world to see. He has exposed us, all of us to the light of introspection and critical thought. His characters are neither good nor bad but complex quagmires of passions, obsessions, recriminations and doubts; they are people, and through them we think more about ourselves.

I started re-reading Fifth Business because I remembered liking it. I had read the other two books, but they had not left as much as an impression. Now, having finished the entire trilogy for a second time, I cannot overstate my appreciation of it enough. This is a work I consider a truly timeless classic, and I am very glad I took the time to re-experience it at this stage in my life. In a year, or five years, or a decade from now, however long it is before I re-read it again, I suspect I will get something different out of it. I am certain, however, that its importance and significance to me will not diminish.

My Reviews of the Deptford Trilogy:
← The Manticore

In everyone’s life there is always at least one door. You know the door I mean. It’s the one that you’ve never opened, even though you’ve always wanted to. It could be the front door of the creepy, abandoned house at the end of your street. It could be the strange door at the top of the stairs in your school, the one that doesn’t lead to the roof and probably leads to a boring storage closet but might—just might—lead to another world entirely. It could even be … a wardrobe. These are the doors of possibilities.



My door is set inside a hill that overlooks Port Arthur Collegiate Institute. If you’ve passed that way, going down Red River and then Waverley Road, you know the door I mean. I don’t know what it leads to, but from the outside it is every bit as enigmatic as a door of possibilities needs to be. (For some reason, I don’t have a photo. I’ve asked a friend to rectify that for me.)

We seldom end up opening these doors. But sometimes, they open anyway.

Neverwhere is a tale of one such door opening for Richard Mayhew. When first we meet him, he is about as bland a protagonist as you might like: the overrepresented, boring middle-class man working a numbers job at a big London firm. He’s about to marry someone not at all right for him. In every respect, Richard’s life is OK—but it is also dull, dull, dull. Then he helps Door, a girl on the run for her life. She exits his life just as quickly as she enters, but as her name implies, she leaves behind a crack—a sliver, really—in Richard’s life, one just wide enough to let him fall through it into London Below. His life in London Above is no more—he never existed—and as he is forced to come to terms with this fact, Richard discovers there is more to London—and more to life—than he ever suspected.

Neil Gaiman is one of those writers who excels sublimely at reminding us of the fantastic latent in the world around us. His fantasy is escapism at its best. Most of his stories plunge people from the real world into skewed versions of reality. In Coraline, the eponymous protagonist ends up in an alternative version of her house where her parents can’t boss her around; in American Gods, Shadow finds himself embroiled in an apocalypse—but no one else seems to notice. And then there’s the Sandman series, replete with visits to dreamworlds, Hell, and eternal planes outside space and time.

Throughout these travels, Gaiman weaves the language of storytelling itself into his worlds. The worlds are constructions of language as much as—if not more than—attempts at self-consistent realities. In American Gods, the rules change based on prayer and belief, with gods rising and fading away depending on how much stock humanity puts in their stories. In Mirror Mask, the world in Helena’s drawings becomes real—but only just. So while much of Gaiman’s fantasy might reasonably be called “portal fantasy,” he’s not just writing stories about people hopping to other worlds. His worlds are of the more symbolic, more metaphorical variety, their inhabitants determined by myth and story.

The characters of Neverwhere exemplify this standard. The Marquis de Carabas, much like Mr Wednesday from American Gods, is a scoundrel of no small authority. He has power, because he has been around long enough to accrue it and has survived—no mean feat in a world where the rules always seem to be changing. His is the grey world of honour and favours; though not a bad person by any means, there is the implication that he would not be as helpful were it not for the favours he collects in return.

As usual, however, I think Gaiman excels at the secondary characters. Take, for instance, his introductory description of Mr. Croup and Mr. Vandemar:

There are four simple ways for the observant to tell Mr Croup and Mr Vandemar apart: first, Mr Vandemar is two and a half heads taller than Mr Croup; second, Mr Croup has eyes of a faded, china blue, while Mr Vandemar’s eyes are brown; third, while Mr Vandemar fashioned the rings he wears on his right hand out of the skulls of four ravens, Mr Croup has no obvious jewellery; fourth, Mr Croup likes words, while Mr Vandemar is always hungry. Also, they look nothing alike.

That last sentence transforms an otherwise workaday description into entertaining prose. And Gaiman repeats this feat throughout the book. In this way, London Below takes shape. It’s not as well-defined as London Above, or Middle Earth, or Narnia—again, this is a fantasy world created as a reflection of the city it lies beneath. Gaiman reminds us time and again that history of London is, much like the city itself, practically a palimpsest. London sprawls, like some twisted and tangled old growth forest, far beyond its original, ancient limits. There are places so old and forgotten that they have passed from the annals of history and into the realm of myth—and it is in these interstices where Gaiman paints the places and people of London Below.

London Below works on Richard Mayhew in a reversal of pathetic fallacy. His journey through this bizarre reflection of London as he seeks to help Door find who murdered her parents is an opportunity for him to grow up, to find who he is and develop the confidence required to assert it. The first glimmer of this happens during Richard’s first brush with London Below, as he rescues Door despite his fiancée’s protest that they will be late for a fancy dinner. In that moment, Gaiman telegraphs everything one needs to know: Richard, despite his situation, has within him the capability to be heroic; Jessica, despite her breeding and intelligence, is painfully not right for Richard. (“Someone else will be along; someone else will help her” indeed!)

That’s just the beginning. London Below works on Richard, changing him inexorably in the way that only a fantastic situation can. At every turn, he is confronted by a problem that is entirely outside his comfort zone. He has to compromise, because no matter how much he tries, there is no making sense of the experience. He learns he just has to go with it, to be brave, to take chances because it’s what’s right—and, as Anaethesia’s disappearance makes clear, make every decision count for something.

Richard reminds me a great deal of another well-established British doormat: Arthur Dent. Arthur begins The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy in similar straits. All he wants is his home back—but he loses it, and then loses his planet, and finds himself stuck in a brave new world where everyone else knows the rules and he can’t even figure out the name of the game.

Which leads to the most important consideration: why do we need Richard at all? After all, Door is arguably the heroine of the book. It’s her family that was brutally murdered; it’s she who must defeat the bad guy using both her unique portal-opening ability and her intelligence and guile. Why couldn’t Gaiman just write the story from Door’s point of view? It’s been done in other fantasy novels, where the author doesn’t have the benefit of a character from the “normal” world to act as the reader’s intermediary.

While a “Door’s adventure” version of Neverwhere might work as a story, it would lose that essential message about becoming lost and finding oneself. Door has lost her family, true, and must rediscover her purpose and niche in London Below. Yet, having been born there, she is still of London Below in the most indigenous sense of the word. Richard, on the other hand, has made that transition; he has fallen through the cracks and landed hard. That pain, and the necessity to adjust and learn virtually a new language, is what gives Neverwhere its flavour. This isn’t just a story about facing off against two ageless assassins and their mysterious employer in a twisted, fairytale-esque London. It’s about all those people you pass on the street, the ones in the corner of your eye, who just fail to catch your attention. It’s about all those doors never opened.

Most of us probably aren’t as whiny as Richard or Arthur, but we’ve all been there. We’ve all lost things, or suddenly found ourselves completely out of our depth. At the same time, there is something thrilling—something so vivid—about being out of one’s depth. Gaiman captures that sense of wonder so inherent in fantasy and distils it through his wonderful, loquacious characters and his whimsical, mythical descriptions of setting.



Photo by Jessica Reinnika, used under a CC-BY license.

And we arrive now at the final instalment of my reviews of the Godspeaker trilogy. Picking up soon after the end of The Riven Kingdom, Hammer of God is the epic battle between Mijak and Ethrea, between Hekat and Dmitrak (for Mijak) and Zandakar and Rhian (for Ethrea). Portents, prophecies, faith, and family are all important parts of this book, as Karen Miller propels her plot towards its final, brutal confrontation.

Miller spent the first two books building up Mijak as not just a credible threat but an overwhelming, nigh-invincible one. Not only are they aligned with demons and practising human sacrifice, but the people of Mijak are just fierce (and not in the fashion way). Time and again, Rhian or other Ethreans moan about how, with no standing army, Ethrea will fall before the Mijak warhost without mounting any real resistance.

So the majority of this book concerns the struggle to cobble together that resistance. Before she can create an army, Rhian must secure permission from the trading nations that do business with Ethrea—part of its treaty with these nations prohibits the development of an army. She also needs to persuade these nations to lend their fleets to her cause. But the threat of Mijak is far-off and far from apparent. And even if it weren’t, Rhian would still have to deal with the ambassadors’ prejudices against her age and sex. She has a hard enough time with her own dukes, and even her husband.

I’m ambivalent about the way Miller deals with Rhian and Alastair’s relationship in this book. In many ways it feels like a rehash of what happened in The Riven Kingdom. It would be nice to see Alastair’s character develop further—though, to be fair, he starts to come round by the end.

Theirs is not the only relationship that seems trapped in a complicated epicycle of quick-tempered indignation. Rhian and her dukes (especially when discussing Han or Zandakar), Dexterity and Ursa, Hekat and Vortka, all display the same characteristics. Miller’s characters, when angry, always seem to be angry in exactly the same way.

Once again, Hammer of God strikes me as somewhat longer than ideal. As with the characters’ relationships, the plot orbits a very complex yet very repetitive set of conditions. It just seems like there isn’t actually as much story here as there should be for a book this size. I was eternally waiting for Miller to get on with it, for Mijak to show up, and for the battle to begin.

Yet when an author builds up an enemy as virtually unstoppable, it’s very difficult to then defeat that enemy without a clunky deus ex machina or equivalent. Miller has already waded deeply into such territory by invoking prophets and miracles, but she stops short of declaring everything destined and ordained. Rather, God sends a little help, but we have to do the rest.

Somehow, she manages to avoid making her resolution too clumsy. Instead, it comes down to the personal conflict between Zandakar and his surviving family members. He tries to reconcile with them rather than kill them, and his inability to do so is both tragic and essential for the conclusion of the story. Zandakar is the only one who can stop the Mijak warhost, turn it around, and return to remake Mijak in a more beneficent image. It all makes sense. I love it when endings make sense.

As far as conclusions to a trilogy go, Hammer of God does what one would expect. However, it drags on a little longer than it should. I can’t praise it for keeping me on the edge of my seat. Neither can I complain that it’s boring, confusing, or poorly written. Like a good deal of fantasy, it’s a series I’ve enjoyed but not one that will stick with me in much detail. Empress presents a high barrier to entry for a lot of readers, but the other two books definitely change the tone and footprint of the series.

My reviews of the Godspeaker trilogy:
← The Riven Kingdom

We all have triggers, certain topics in our beloved genres that instantly make us sit up and pay attention. Artificial intelligence is one such trigger for me; identity is another. (Both touch on philosophy of the mind, a field that fascinates me, and I suspect this is why they intrigue me.) There is scant AI in Chasm City, but there is plenty of reflection on identity and the ramifications of using technology to alter one’s identity. As every other review notes, this book is part of the Revelation Space universe but stands alone; one does not need to read any of the other novels to enjoy it.

I often spend most of a review discussing the main character and my reaction to them. In this case, I suppose that would be Tanner Mirabel—but it’s more complicated than that. Tanner has left the backwater world of Sky’s Edge in pursuit of Argent Reivich, a cold-hearted killer. Tanner wants revenge after failing to protect his employer’s wife from Reivich. Since humanity hasn’t discovered superluminal travel in this universe, Tanner’s only option for following Reivich to the burgeoning Yellowstone is reefersleep—stasis aboard a relativistic-speed ship. When he awakes, he has the characteristic amnesia of someone who has spent time in reefersleep. Gradually, Tanner’s memories click back into place—but it’s more complicated than that.

Along with his own memories, Tanner begins having intense, realistic dreams that remember parts of the life of Sky Haussmann, the vilified founder of Sky’s Edge. Hundreds of years ago, Sky took command of one of the four generation ships en route to Sky’s Edge—then, Journey’s End. In a calculated move to reach the planet before any of the other ships, Sky jettisoned all of the sleeping passengers. Long dead (crucified, in fact), Sky’s memories somehow survive in a kind of virus that a cult passes on to travellers. Infected, Tanner spends the entire book reliving parts of Sky’s life in chronological order.

Chasm City is a long book. So by breaking it up with these episodes—as well as similar flashbacks to Tanner’s time with his employer and his employer’s wife—Reynolds makes the pacing more bearable. Tanner’s actual hunt for Reivich always seems to meet obstacles and get him side-tracked in true action-movie fashion. He gets thrust into a “Most Dangerous Game” hunt (as the quarry), then he gets rescued, betrays his rescuer, goes on a fact-finding mission, hooks up with his rescuer again, etc. The plot doesn’t follow a straight line or even some kind of zig-zag path towards finding Reivich; it seems more like a kind of drunken, slightly off-kilter spiral towards the final confrontation. Of course, by that point the true nature of Tanner’s complicated identity issues has been revealed, changing everything.

Seriously, I seldom see such masterful sleight-of-hand. Reynolds pulls off a reveal both complicated and potentially corny enough that it could have ruined the entire book. As it is, it deepened my enjoyment of Chasm City immensely. Suddenly this was no longer a simple tale about a super-soldier assassin on a quest for revenge. Instead, it was about a conflicted and very broken man slowly rediscovering his identity and realizing how little he understands about himself.

Reynolds touches on several of the typical reactions to the manipulation of memory—how, thanks to that manipulation, Tanner is no longer the man he was or the man he is pretending to be but actually a new person altogether. It raises all sorts of questions about the implications that memory-scanning and -altering technology has for individuality and personhood. Am I me, or a copy of me—an instance of me running on a particular platform? If I tweak my memories, do I destroy who I am? We see this latter phenomenon in people who suffer from diseases like Alzheimer’s—but what if we willingly added or subtracted memories rather than lost them indiscriminately and uncontrollably? Would it be any different?

More than raising (and offering some answers to) these questions, Reynolds provides an action-packed story in the process. I came to quite enjoy the Sky flashbacks. Sky’s story develops in parallel to Tanner’s, with its own arc, conflict, motivations, etc. There are links that tie the two narratives together, with more hints at the underlying mythology of the Revelation Space universe. And the sinister transformation of Sky from somewhat innocent child to an outright anti-hero is fascinating in a cold way. Having recently finished another novel about a generation ship, I was struck by certain similarities (though I much prefer how Reynolds handled it).

It’s a good thing that the main character (or characters, I guess, since Sky’s story is almost a novella in its own right) is so multi-dimensional and complex. Chasm City lacks many compelling minor characters. The likes of Quirrenbach, Zebra, Chantarelle, etc., are more distractions than anything—interesting and memorable names, to be sure, they seem to surface and then evaporate to fit the needs of the plot. Perhaps one of the reasons I enjoyed Sky’s narrative so much was the relative straightforwardness of the plot compared to the digressions that dominate Tanner’s. Whatever the case, there are certainly issues here with characterization; I can ignore them, though, because the rest of the book is just so good.

Somewhat different from Revelation Space—and that’s probably a good thing—Chasm City delivers an interesting mix of mystery, thriller, and philosophy. It is definitely a shining example of what good science fiction can be, proof that one can engage with meaningful issues without sacrificing story. Definitely something you want on your to-read list.

My reviews of the Revelation Space series:
← Revelation Space | Redemption Ark →

In case you haven’t heard yet, I love hard science fiction, particularly in space opera form. I could digress into some hefty analysis of how designations like hard are loaded terms that only exacerbate science fiction’s precarious position in the genre ghetto—but I won’t. Suffice it to say, I’m referring to stories that use advanced but plausible technology for technology’s sake, stories whose events span millions, if not billions, of years and can affect the lives of countless planets throughout the galaxy. In space opera, “epic” is a given.

There is no doubt in my mind that Alastair Reynolds is one of the premiere authors of hard science fiction. He is highly qualified in this area: with a doctorate in astronomy, he knows his science and puts that knowledge to good use. Not every scientist automatically writes good science fiction, of course, because the other key component is the ability to write well. Reynolds does this too. In my last review, I postulated that, in general, the realism of a scientific explanation is inversely proportional to its detail. In Revelation Space Reynolds does not explain how Conjoiner drives work (they are a mystery) or go into the details of how reefersleep slows the body’s metabolism for those long journeys at relativist speeds. These technologies just work. Instead, Reynolds excels at mapping out the consequences of these semi-plausible capabilities: what would happen if humanity spread out into the galaxy at sublight speeds?

Well, for one thing, the galaxy would stop being such an empty place. The Fermi paradox is the central question of Revelation Space, and Reynolds has developed a somewhat chilling resolution: intelligent life evolves fairly often, but something (or someone) eliminates it whenever it achieves spaceflight. Archaeologist Dan Sylveste discovers evidence that the extinct Amarantin might have been capable of spaceflight. He is the leader of a fledgling colony on Resurgam, former homeworld of the Amarantin. The expedition was supposed to be temporary, but Sylveste has developed an obsession with the Event that eliminated the Amarantin, convinced that it could have some bearing on humanity’s survival. This tension between him and rival factions on Resurgam drives political intrigue throughout the novel, as Sylveste’s enemies stage a series of coups that change his fortunes dramatically.

Meanwhile, Nostalgia for Infinity arrives in orbit. A lighthugger, a vessel capable of accelerating to relativistic velocities, Nostalgia is crewed by some unscrupulous techheads who spend most of their time in reefersleep as they flit between the stars. Sylveste has dealt with this crew before, working with them to cure their captain of a vicious plague that merges cybernetic and organic components. Now their captain is sick again, and they have returned to seek Sylveste’s help—by any means of persuasion necessary.

Naturally the two parties strike a deal: Sylveste agrees to help them, and in return they will assist him in a small expedition to a planet orbiting the system’s companion star. But there is an alien force aboard Nostalgia that threatens all of them even as it manipulates events for its own, unknown ends. Reynolds shows us multiple perspectives, making it difficult for us to choose sides. True, Sylveste is a jerk of the highest calibre, but Reynolds balances this by kindling our curiosity about what he is about to discover. In general, I loved the characterization in this book. The characters are all flawed, all prone to making mistakes that come back to bite them in the ass. All of the main characters are the victims of manipulation in some way: Sylveste by both his wife and her father, not to mention his father; Ilia by her captain and the other two Triumvirs; and Khouri by the mysterious Mademoiselle who coerces her into assassinating Sylveste. Reynolds then takes the intrigue up to eleven, because all the best laid plans go awry in spectacular, plausible ways that keep the book interesting.

Revelation Space is both a mystery and a guessing game, and Reynolds carefully keeps us in the dark while feeding us enough hints to keep us tantalized and interested. Sometimes he doesn’t quite succeed. Most novels are typically weighted with the pacing toward the end, as they should be for an appropriate climax. But the weighting is really lopsided here. Despite plenty of action scenes prior to the climax, we get very little in the way of resolution or closure of the mystery until the end, when it arrives as a neat and tidy infodump. Fortunately, Reynolds redeems himself by giving Sylveste a genuinely threatening moment of crisis with a solution that was beautifully foreshadowed. The climax of the book might seem rushed in places, but trust me: once you get there, you will be impatient to learn what happens, and you won’t be disappointed.

The asynchronous nature of events also poses a challenge for the reader. The narrative jumps between different time periods quite a bit, and it is very difficult to remember “when” events are taking place. The headings at the beginning of each chapter don’t help, in part because the chapters are so long (and in this edition, not separated by a clean page break) that it’s difficult to remember what the heading read in the first place! So there were times when the action in the book was confusing, and I made the executive decision just to keep going and hope it would work out. I can do that, because I can hold on to the larger picture, to the mystery of the Shroud and the extinction of the Amarantin. Others might find such perseverance a more daunting task.

I really want to discuss Reynolds’ resolution to the Fermi paradox, so here come the spoilers. In Revelation Space, a great galactic war occurred billions of years ago. It wiped out most sentient species and changed others beyond recognition. Emerging from the Dawn War, as it was called, the Inhibitors were some kind of machine-like or machine-symbiotic species. As their name implies, they wanted to stop something—in this case, they were determined to prevent another Dawn War by eliminating sentient species as they arise. To this end they placed numerous curiosities near star systems that could give rise to life, hoping these curiosities would attract the attention of a new spaceflight society and alert the Inhibitors that it was time to make another house call.

The theory that we are isolated in the galaxy because intelligent species destroy themselves and others is not new, and it has some compelling arguments for it. Yet Reynolds never really explains why the Inhibitors adopted this motivation. The only possibility that comes to mind is that they are acting out of some kind of perverse desire to save pre-spaceflight species: the Dawn War was so destructive, with entire star clusters being used as weapons, that I suppose even nearby pre-spaceflight species were destroyed as collateral damage. So the Inhibitors allow intelligent life to develop until it reaches a stage where it could begin acting on the galactic scale—and then they say, “time’s up.” It sounds reasonable enough, I suppose, but that’s just my own interpretation. I’d love to hear if anyone else walked away from Revelation Space with a different impression.

There’s a lot going on in Revelation Space, much more than I chose to discuss here. Along with relativistic ships, metabolic stasis, and galaxy-wide extinctions, Reynolds includes plenty of other neat science-fiction tropes: computer simulations of dead people, cybernetic implants, neutron stars re-purposed as computers, and so on. And Reynolds doesn’t always touch on the implications of all of these technologies, which is a wise choice: if he did, Revelation Space would be thrice as long and probably twice as boring! Although not perfect, Revelation Space displays the careful thoughtfulness that makes Reynolds so apt at writing hard science fiction and space operas, and I look forward to continuing this series.

My Reviews of the Revelation Space series:
Chasm City → (forthcoming)

Jane Austen and I have had a rocky relationship. I respect her as a writer and believe she deserves a place in the canon of great English authors, but I sometimes wonder if she is overhyped. When it comes to Sense and Sensibility, it has a lot of Austen's trademark wit, but as a first novel it also has the immaturity and inexperience of a writer learning the craft. So with Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters, Ben H. Winters has an opportunity to take a promising tale of two sisters and ameliorate it with his marine menaces. Indeed, this is probably the intention, but as I'm going to emphasize over and over again, it did not work out that way.

Before I launch into my main criticism, I want to note two errors that jumped out at me while I read. The first is excusable, or at least explainable. The second, not so much. Both are good examples of the carelessness that plagues this book.

The first error is in the first paragraph of Chapter 9. The Dashwoods have arrived at Pestilence Isle and are settling into their new home. As part of these activities, "they had strung the encircling fence with garlands of dried kelp and lamb's blood, which Sir John Middleton had proscribed as the surest method to ward off" sea monsters. Rather than proscribed, which means forbidden, I think the word Winters intends is prescribed. The two words are antonyms in meaning but only one letter apart. Hence, this is probably just a rather unfortunate typo. Copy editors are human too. (Well, most of them.)

I cannot quite as easily dismiss the second error. Later in the book (Chapter 46), Marianne is planning her new life without Willoughby: "I shall learn engineering; I shall study hydrology and biology and aeronautics; I shall endeavour to understand Mendel's principles and comparative zoology." Managing that last resolution would be quite an accomplishment, because Gregor Mendel, an Austrian monk known for his experiments with heredity and generally credited for discovering genetics, won't be born until five years after Austen dies. So the Marianne of Sense and Sensibility wouldn't know about Mendel. To be fair, Winters never specifies when this book takes place. Maybe it takes place in a later part of the nineteenth century, after Mendel starts his experiments. Yet this explanation is unsatisfactory for two reasons: firstly, Mendel's work didn't garner much attention until the early twentieth century; secondly, even if the Alteration changed that and led to an earlier realization of genetics, moving the time period forward even by fifty years would place Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters into the Victorian era. And I think that would make for a different tone of book. No, the easiest explanation seems to be that Mendel's mention is an anachronism. It only took me a few seconds to check Mendel's birth date on Wikipedia. What is Winters' excuse?

That question, while pertinent, probably will not bear much fruit. Instead, let's consider two complementary questions. Does the sea monsters story need Sense and Sensibility or could it have worked on its own? Conversely, is Sense and Sensibility helped or improved in any way by the addition of sea monsters? Spoiler alert: the answer to both questions is "no."

Prior to reading this book, I was under the impression that the eponymous sea monsters were anomalies. They are actually much more than that. Some time prior to the story's start, the Earth's oceans experienced an "Alteration," and all marine life became hostile toward humankind. Ocean voyages now hold great peril; even living near a lake is dangerous. Forget Sense and Sensibility for a moment: the Alteration is a great starting point for an alternate history novel set in Regency England! Considering Britain's status as a naval power, a far-flung empire, and an island, there would be plenty of interesting developments as a result of the Alteration. So many questions to explore, characters to create . . .

. . . and it's all wasted on Jane Austen. No offense meant to Austen, of course. But in trying—and I do emphasize that word, trying—to graft the plot and characters of Sense and Sensibility onto his Altered England, Winters misses the mark. Instead of creating a story truly worthy of such a fantastic setting, he tries to stretch a story that wasn't made to fit this canvas—and oh, how it shows.

Take, for example, the cause of the Alteration. Winters throws out some half-hearted speculation. Henry Dashwood dies pursuing the source of a poison stream he believes the cause. Sir John Middleton believes the Alteration is a curse upon England by one of the victims of British imperialism; he has devoted his life to finding the primitive tribe responsible, with no success. Edward Ferrars favours a theory that blames Henry VIII's split with Catholicism. All these sound interesting, but under scrutiny they all fall apart. The Alteration's name (indeed, the very fact that it has a Name) suggests that the oceans were not always like this. So there should be a simple way to test, say, Edward's theory about Henry VIII: what do written records say about ocean voyages prior to Henry's reign? Surely a calamity as great as the Alteration would be recorded: "June 7, waters calm. June 8, the dolphins killed my first mate. God help us all!" I find it very difficult to believe no one knows when the Alteration began. The poison stream and tribal curse theories are also rather silly, but slightly less so, and I suppose the latter works well as a background for Sir John. It just galls me that Winters takes such an off-handed approach to what may be the most important question in his universe.

There's also something suspect about the number of people who spend their time near or on the ocean, considering its dangers. Let's start with Pestilence Isle. Sir John lives on an archipelago off of Devonshire, specifically on Deadwind Island, and he lets a cottage on Pestilence Isle to the Dashwood women. It makes sense that Sir John would live on a tiny island. He's an adventurer, and he likes danger. But why would he put women needlessly in danger by giving them a cottage on a smaller island where he doesn't live? Why would the Dashwoods ever agree to live there? As the frequent sea monster attacks show, the decision is practically suicidal. And don't get me started—yet—about what happens to Margaret.

Moving on: Sub-Marine Station Beta. Actually, I kind of see how this one makes sense. It may be—nay, it is—stupid to build a gigantic dome habitation at the bottom of the ocean off the British coast and then invite all the upper class people to spend the winter there. If this were a James Bond movie, Sub-Marine Station Beta would be part of a trap by the villain. (It would also feature an awesome underwater fight scene, in which Bond dispatches several baddies and a couple of sharks. But I digress.) However, Sub-Marine Station Beta is consistent with the British attitude of stalwart arrogance in the face of adversity. In a time of war, which this is, the British keep those upper lips stiff and like to show that they remain steadfast. How better to show that you do not fear the enemy than building a stronghold in the middle of his or her territory? Sub-Marine Station Beta is an exercise in nationalism and a display of bravado. It's also rather stupid.

The icing on the implausibility cake, however, are the pirates. Are we supposed to believe that there are outlaws who subsist by taking some of the few ships that survive sea monster attacks? And that these ships themselves somehow avoid succumbing to those same attacks? I love reading about pirates, but they are the most obvious example of something included in this book because it's cool instead of its potential contributions to the plot.

No, when I look at it this way, it is a shame that Winters had even to try to follow an outline of Sense and Sensibility in writing this book. It is a waste of a world that could have been so much more. And all of these flaws read like they are the result of carelessness, of unintentional neglect caused by starting with the idea of "it's Sense and Sensibility, but with sea monsters" and then throwing everything at the book to see what sticks. I kind of feel sorry for the setting.

Having determined that the sea monsters suffer at the hands of Sense and Sensibility, can we say the same in reverse? Yes, indubitably. Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters does not merely besmirch its source material's good name; it follows Sense and Sensibility down a dark alleyway, beats it senseless, and then slinks away to commit more crimes against Austen's oeuvre.

Harsh much? I thought so too, at first. I wanted to find this book amusing. I wanted to chuckle at how Winters cleverly transposes the class humour and familial squabbles of Austen's characters into this Altered England. The more I read, however, the more I realized that Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters does not just fail to live up to its source. I could handle that. But no, it's much worse. This book actively dismantles everything that makes Sense and Sensibility great English literature.

Nineteenth-century English society holds our interest in part because its class system is very different from the way contemporary society is stratified. But it's not enough merely to mock or to belittle this difference. To successfully satirize Regency England, one must deconstruct its customs and culture and examine why our contemporary society finds it humorous. Otherwise, all you're doing is pointing and laughing; on a scale of sophistication, that is barely above toilet humour.

As its title specifies, Sense and Sensibility is about the balance between reason and emotionalism. Elinor, with her calculating and practical ways, embodies sense; Marianne, the emotional and impulsive one, sensibility. Winters pays lip service to these differences as he develops the plot along the same lines as the original novel. While the developments in relations between characters, sea monster attacks aside, are the same, the emotional and thematic significance of these relationships are mangled in translation. For instance, I never feel the angst of Elinor's realization that Edward, whatever their feelings for one another, is unavailable. Winters develops this, cashes in on the irony, and even makes Lucy Steele a sea-witch. But all the window dressing gets in the way of the nuances at play among Elinor, Edward, and Lucy. Similarly, Marianne's obsession with Colonel Brandon's face adds nothing to the character's obsession in the original novel with his age.

The revelation of Lucy's identity as a sea-witch also bothered me. Specifically, Sir John explains why sea-witches must take human form:

. . . the only certain way for a sea witch to prolong its foul existence is by consuming human bone marrow, which is therefore, to them, the most precious of elixirs. Hence their occasional appearance, in the guise of attractive human women, among the terrestrial world—where they make love to an unknowing man, marry him unawares, and then, when the opportunity presents itself, kill him and suck out his marrow.

It is the last sentence that presents a problem: why bother marrying the man before feeding upon him? Surely it would be more effective to jump his bones (literally) and skip the tiresome courtship. In fact, why bother with a man at all? Why not just subdue some children and feed off of them? It might seem like I'm nitpicking, but I think these are reasonable questions about something that involves the motivations and actions of an important character.

At about the point where the situation at Sub-Marine Station Beta becomes dire, it dawned on me that the scope of Winters' narrative is entirely unsuited to Austen's original story. Sense and Sensibility is, like all of Austen's work, an intimate novel that uses a few families to portray all of English society in microcosm. Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters is about a couple of girls crying about guys, kicking sea monster ass, escaping a doomed underwater city, and then witnessing the rise of an apocalyptic Leviathan. The plot has suddenly become much bigger than the original story, dwarfing the characters and their problems, which are supposed to be centre stage.

And . . . Margaret. What the hell? I have no idea what Winters was trying to do with Margaret's—I can only call it a "seduction" by the island. The whole subplot of Margaret discovering an entire species of subhumans who have existed "since the dawn of time" and worship the Leviathan is unnecessary and, frankly, uninteresting. Once again, like Lucy the sea-witch and the cause of the Alteration, Winters has included something that probably seemed like a good idea but, taken together with the entire work, just adds clutter and confusion.

Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters promises that it "blends Jane Austen's biting social commentary with ultraviolent depictions of sea monsters biting." An examination of this very blend belies this claim. I do not doubt the sincerity of the claim; it's clear that Winters and Quirks Classics have tried very hard to do justice to Austen's novel. In some ways, it would be better for everyone if this were some pernicious attempt to mock the source material—as it is, I feel a little pity for Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters. Its mistakes are made in a labour of love, but they are born from carelessness that could easily have been avoided.

It’s really neat that the Of Darkness, Light, and Fire omnibus contains both urban fantasy and classical fantasy. Not a lot of combined editions will do that. It showcases Tanya Huff’s wider abilities, and it also provides a nice change of tone if one is reading the two novels back to back. It can also make the task of comparing the two books somewhat more difficult. Even after a few days of thinking on it, I’m still not sure whether I prefer The Fire’s Stone to Gate of Darkness, Circle of Light.

Back in the day when I was all up in the David Eddings stuff, I picked up a copy of his The Rivan Codex. It’s essentially a cookbooks for constructing your own fantasy world. He lays out exactly how he went about creating the various political and economic systems of each of the countries that appear in the Belgariad/Mallorean world by taking existing cultures and societies and adapting them. It provides interesting insight into one possible way of creating a fantasy world, and it’s also a potent reminder that it’s very easy to fall into the trap of cookiecutter fantasy characterization.

The Fire’s Stone is, at times, almost laughably like this. The three protagonists are literally a fighter, a mage, and a thief (TVTropes alert). They go off on a quest to retrieve the eponymous stone, which magically protects the city of Ischia from being consumed by a volcano. Because, you know, it’s totes a good idea to build your city near a volcano and then rely on magic to protect it. Along the way, they do the typical fantasy quest things, including drinking in taverns and fighting pitched battles. (And then there’s the Shoi, the stereotypical “magical romantic nomad” analogues.) (TVTropes)

In a way, I find this book very reassuring, because it reminds me of the kind of stuff I was writing when I was much younger and was just beginning to grasp the idea of cliché. Which is not to say that The Fire’s Stone is clichéd, just that, by contemporary standards, it is definitely more loyal to the usual classical fantasy tropes than subversive. This is not a bad thing, and Huff plays it in the right way to create a compelling narrative. But there is never really a time when The Fire’s Stone will leap off the page and surprise you.

There are a few clunky components that almost made me cringe. I really wanted to like Chandra, because she is so committed to remaining independent and preserving her agency. She is also a whiny sixteen-year-old girl who spends much of the novel displaying incredible skill but then stamping around and declaring, “Of course not! I’m a Wizard of the Nine!” as if that’s her answer to every possible question she could ever be asked. (“Would you like fries with that?” “I’m a Wizard of the Nine!” “What time is it?” “I’m a Wizard of the Nine, do you expect me to tell time?”) She is remarkably single-minded. I found this very annoying, though to be fair, Huff does a good job showing that this is part of the process of her developing into a more mature, open-minded individual.

The antagonists of this book are remarkably laid back. The king who organized this heist is quite concerned about the idea that an incompetent prince and a thief (who got caught, so, you know, probably incompetent) are on their way to steal back the Stone. The wizard who actually has the Stone? Not so much. And, apparently, despite having the power of the Stone, not much of a match for our heroes.

If it seems like I’m speaking in very generalized terms, that’s because it’s so easy to generalize here. Huff has all the components down, but she has yet to be able to season the dish with a sufficient amount of her own original creations. The Fire’s Stone is a very skilled but bland work.

I did enjoy the development that Darvish undergoes. He begins as a fairly boorish drunkard who, despite being permanently intoxicated, doesn’t seem to have any problems in bed. (Mind you, he’s a prince. He can probably afford some good wizardry, if you know what I mean.) Forced to step up for the good of the kingdom, Darvish changes for the better. The change is gradual, and Huff depicts the struggle he has to remain clean after giving up drinking. It gets to the point when, in the climax, he almost slides all the way back down the slope.

I also enjoyed the slight twist to the standard romantic pairing that we’d usually see in this type of book. Darvish is bisexual, and initially he’s quite taken with Aaron the thief. Aaron has scome cultural taboos about that, and it takes him a while to overcome that prejudice. Meanwhile, Chandra has been betrothed to Darvish against her will, and without ever meeting him. She is committed to remaining pure and free from distraction (“I’m a Wizard of the Nine!”)—good luck with that one.

Tradition would dictate that, over the course of their quest, Darvish’s nobility and self-sacrifice would soften Chandra’s heart and cause her to love him and want him despite her resistance. Instead, Darvish and Aaron grow closer, while Chandra does some soul-searching and decides she can marry Darvish, for the good of her kingdom, and not sleep with him (especially if Darvish has someone else to keep him comfortable instead). It’s all very complicated and decidedly not traditional, which is awesome.

Despite being more rigorously cookiecutter in some aspects, I’d probably say I prefer The Fire’s Stone over Gate of Darkness, Circle of Light. I don’t know whether this is a bias of classical fantasy over urban fantasy, or if it’s more to do with the specifics of the plot and characters involved. Maybe it’s that I expect people in urban, contemporary settings to feel more “real” and less stereotypical, whereas it’s easier to get away with the fantasy character-class approach in a classial setting.

Regardless, The Fire’s Stone won’t be making any of my “best of” lists any time soon. But I think that it’s one of those books that would make sense as an answer to someone who asked, “What is a fantasy novel?” I could hand them this story and tell them, “It goes something like this,” and suddenly they would understand. And really, I think sometimes that can be sufficient.