William Gibson can write. I keep exploring this in different ways and different words as I read through Gibson’s oeuvre, but in the end it comes down to two appropriately alliterative words: William Gibson has voice and vision. He has a way with language that not every writer, even really good ones, ever manages to master. He knows how to use and manipulate words and phrases to create cultures. With this talent, he creates novels that conjure up pocket universes of our future.

Count Zero is much more spiritual and emotionally evocative than its predecessor, Neuromancer. There are three main characters and three intertwined plots. Turner is a mercenary hired to manage the defection of a scientist from one transnational to another, but he ends up with the scientist’s daughter instead. Bobby, who is attempting to establish himself as a console cowboy by the name of “Count Zero”, finds himself neck-deep in a situation far more serious than he ever desired to encounter. And Marly is a curator hunting up the provenance of an intrigue art object at the behest of a reclusive collector. At the risk of sounding reductionist, the three plotlines conveniently symbolize three of the primary themes in Count Zero: a weary mercenary confronting the emptiness of his chosen profession; a new, untested youth struggling with his coming-of-age; and a young woman pulled inexorably deeper into the grey and black areas of the art world, pulled by a man who is not entirely human anymore.

So there is no denying that Count Zero is a complex book, when one really stops to consider everything that happens in it. The language that Gibson uses can often conceal this fact, because sometimes it is difficult to follow the train of the story (or at least, I found this to be the case). There is a lyrical, almost dream-like quality to his prose; I encountered this in some of his other novels, but it seems particularly noticeable in this one. Sometimes this vagueness is advantageous. For example, Gibson does not go into detail when he explains how the consensual illusion that is cyberspace is generated, nor how the “decks” that console cowboys use work. This lends a timeless quality to the setting (though his use of the term tapes stands out as an exception).

With that in mind, then, I don’t see Count Zero as the best or the easiest of Gibson’s novels. But that’s almost like saying The Tempest is neither the best nor the easiest of Shakespeare’s plays—this is still a fine book. In particular, I love the hints and whispers at post/trans-humanism that permeate the story. They never quite overwhelm the narrative (Gibson’s vagueness can also be a consequence of the fact that he is so damned subtle). Yet they crop up at the most interesting moments. In Neuromancer Gibson raised questions regarding how an AI that is essentially an alien being would co-exist with humanity. He never quite re-visits the fate of the Neuromancer/Wintermute construct, but he drops all these tantalizing hints about strange things happening in cyberspace, not to mention the odd god inhabiting space junk in orbit.

On the other side of the divide, we have humans like Turner or Angela or even Bobby, people who have jacks that allow them to download data directly into their brain. I honestly don’t know why N. Katherine Hayles has had such an effect on me, since I only ever read a single article by her so far—but I keep seeing the motif of embodiment show up all the time in my posthuman fiction. Turner might be a cyborg, and his body might recently have undergone dramatic reconstructive surgery. But he still has a body. And so, unlike the shady Josef Virek, who is more of a construct than a human being any more, Turner is still human—or at least, seems to perform as human in a way that satisfies the rest of us. Gibson is good at asking these questions without beating them over our heads. There is a refreshing lack of pretentiousness to books like Count Zero, even as they force us to think about difficult ideas.

The second instalment in the Sprawl trilogy also recalls Gibson’s post-national corporate-driven vision of the future. In this case, it’s tech giants Hosaka and Maas Industries competing for a brilliant researcher by the name of Mitchell. He has been developing revolutionary biochip technology for Maas, but now apparently he wants to defect to Hosaka. This little game of industrial brinksmanship has its precedent in present-day industry, of course, but I suspect that few companies go to the lengths that Hosaka does, hiring mercenaries and a medical team to extract any destructive implants Maas might have installed to dissuade Mitchell from walking. In this future, the companies might not own you outright, but they almost certainly own you in any way that matters. And this vision has never been more compelling, because as Gibson himself has famously said, “the future is already here—it’s just not evenly distributed”. I can’t speak to what Gibson had in mind when he wrote Count Zero or what contemporary readers might have imagined, but it certainly resonates with some of the events that are happening globally today, such as the Occupy Wall Street movement and, in general, the growing awareness that corporations have a great deal of influence in the political process.

Although not my favourite aspect of Count Zero, its spiritual component deserves consideration as well. Science and secularism seems to go hand-in-hand these days. Certainly, I consider science’s foundation on rational principles one of the influences on my transition to agnosticism and eventually atheism as I grew to adulthood. Yet this partnership has not, historically, always been the case. Science and spirituality have a much longer history, and many science fiction authors acknowledge this fact. In this book, some of the minor characters are involved in a techno-voodoo worship of loa that inhabit cyberspace. These loa manifest at unpredictable moments and “ride” a chosen human body, a point that becomes important at the climax of the novel. Gibson declines to pull back the curtain and explain the true nature of the loa (there are certainly hints that they are related to an AI or even to Neuromancer/Wintermute itself). So it’s a worthwhile question: regardless of the existence of an actual deity, what are we going to encounter if we continue to create and inhabit digital spaces? What will happen as we allow programs to go feral, to roam, and to mix code in unpredictable ways?

I don’t always love Gibson’s novels, but I do always appreciate them. Quality triumphs over quantity, and while Gibson has not been as prolific as some of his contemporaries, his novels are always worth reading. He has a grasp on the ways in which technology challenges and changes our society, the ways we react to these changes and initiate our own. His characters feel real and always have interesting, diverse voices, whether it’s Turner, Bobby, or even a minor character like the Finn. Gibson provides a general vocabulary and dialect, but inflection and idiom are always the character’s own. Such attentiveness! Such style! Count Zero is interesting and cool, and it’s a well-written piece of science fiction. Although it did not quite manage to capture and hold my attention like Pattern Recognition did, I still enjoyed it thoroughly.

My reviews of the Sprawl trilogy:
← Neuromancer | Mona Lisa Overdrive →

It’s common to accuse a writer of writing the same thing over again. In many cases this merely means the writer sticks to variations on a theme. Sometimes, though, it feels like each novel is another installment in an iterative process designed to get at a central idea. As I continue to read William Gibson’s novels, I continue to get a better idea of the novel he is trying to write. Mona Lisa Overdrive mixes the legacy of the previous two Sprawl books with a corporate espionage–fuelled plot worthy of Spook Country. The result is a novel that bridges these two aspects of Gibson’s writing, providing a pivot around which his work revolves.

Neuromancer was fundamentally a caper. Fondly remembered now for introducing cyberspace and cyberpunk, it’s an adventure across the world and into low-Earth orbit at the beck and call of an AI seeking to escape from itself. In contrast, Count Zero is almost more grounded in the petty machinations of we lowly humans. Mona Lisa Overdrive reconciles these two universes: in the years since the events of Neuromancer, something strange has been happening in the matrix. People have noticed, and they are trying to find out. But Angie Mitchell—daughter of the late Christopher Mitchell from the previous book—has risen to no small fame of her own, and her interesting abilities with the Sense/Net have made her a target. Mona is likewise a target—because she looks like Angie. Kumiko? Doesn’t look like Angie, but as the daughter of a powerful Japanese businessman, she is a target all the same.

I love how Gibson writes excellent women characters. I mentioned this a little in my review of Pattern Recognition. Can we take a moment to stop and reflect on the fact that Gibson features great women in all of his novels? Molly/Sally, Chevette, Marly, Chia, Hollis, and Cayce (my fav). It’s not a fluke. Gibson is proof that a white man can not only write women like they are people (because they are), but he can do it over, and over, and still write good books. And he’s been doing it since the 1980s.

This is relevant to Mona Lisa Overdrive in particular because of how three main characters are targets, as I explained above. Angie and Mona are being constantly manipulated, one by her corporation and the other by the people plotting to kidnap her. Kumiko (who is 12) has been shipped off to London—literally halfway around the world—because it should be safer for her, yet she gets embroiled in the power plays there and finds herself on the streets with a semi-sentient biochip personality guiding her. (I don’t think it’s an accident that the youngest of these three women also fares the best and, in the end, exhibits the most independence and resilience.)

Gibson once again shows his ability to quickly establish a character with some broad but careful strokes. Mona in particular spends time ruminating on her days in Cleveland, and we quickly get a sense of the experiences that have shaped her as a person. I wish we had more time to spend with her; of all the characters in the book, hers feels like it had the least time to develop. Kumiko learns a great deal in London; Angie is gradually coming out of her shell; Slick is shocked, I would say, out of the torpor he has fallen into in Dog Solitude. Mona, arguably eponymous, is afforded only the briefest of opportunities to shine.

The ending is both open-ended and curious. I’m fascinated by the dual culmination: Mona becoming Angie, Angie joining Colin and the Finn and Bobby, echoes and whispers again of that Centauri intelligence first hinted at in Neuromancer. Gibson frustratingly refuses the play the game: there’s so much more story he could tell, but he leaves off—that’s not the story he’s telling here. This is not a book about AI evolution or posthumanism so much as it is a book about the way that people’s lives can be influenced by the most esoteric and indirect events. There are times when Gibson’s characters, though always with agency, seem to lack much power. Even Sally—aka the venerable Molly Millions—is manipulated, by someone else who is himself manipulated by a higher power. Where does it stop? It probably doesn’t, is the implication. And so even as our technologies advance and we hurtle forward towards our bright and grimy future, we continue manipulating each other at the same fundamental levels we have for thousands of years.

I enjoyed Mona Lisa Overdrive as an adventure. It’s fast-paced, a little emotional and brutal, and very engaging. It’s not as adept as some of Gibson’s other novels at portraying the strange, usually unanticipated consequences of our exploration of digital technology and cyberspace. That’s OK, though. I don’t mean to discount this novel for that, only underline that within the margins of tolerance that define a “Gibson” novel, this one adheres to some parameters more than others.

My reviews of the Sprawl trilogy:
← Count Zero

Really, it’s my fault that mathematics gets such a bad rap.

And by me, I mean math teachers in general. And by math teachers, I actually mean the pedagogical paradigm in which most of us are embedded, and the questionable premises of the educational system that encourages such pedagogy. Math anxiety is often caused by general test anxiety, combined with a lingering sensation that there is “one right answer,” as well as a misunderstanding what math is and how we use it. Other factors: parents communicating anxiety/resisting innovative ways of teaching, and a generalized anti-intellectual snobbery in our society in which those who are interested in how the world works are “geeks” and “nerds.” (This is independent of the fact that, in recent years, geekdom and nerdery has become trendy. Capitalist structures might be co-opting the symbols and fashions of geek culture, but that doesn’t translate into broader tolerance or embracing of geek interests.)

With How to Solve the Da Vinci Code and 34 Other Really Interesting Uses of Mathematics (I hate the title), Richard Elwes sets out to make some of the most important fields or problems in math more accessible to the layperson. This is a worthy goal. From the titles of his other books, it looks like this is Elwes’ pet cause: he likes to break mathematics into small but fascinating facts, problems, or ideas that he can explore in five-minute chunks. As a result, this is the sort of book you can dip in and out of, say at bedtime, for a number of evenings. You don’t have to remember a lot or pay attention to a plot.

Nor does Elwes demand much in the way of memory or understanding. He covers some of the basics of algebra in the earlier chapters, but even understanding those is not a requirement. This book doesn’t so much teach you mathematics as it describes the different types and fields of mathematics and some of the most interesting results or problems from them. Perhaps the most complicated concept you really want to understand is prime numbers: if you know what those are, then you’re good.

Some of Elwes’ explanations are great. Within this are many “standard” explanations that I’ve seen before and skimmed—that being said, I am a mathematician and a math educator and a math enthusiast, so what’s familiar to me is not necessarily familiar to you, and this might be someone’s first exposure to Russell’s paradox or the theory of sets or graph theory. So that’s not a negative in my book, just an observation that the more mathematically-inclined have likely come across most of the content here, in one place or another.

On a related note, I want to stress that this really is a survey of mathematical results. Some chapters are longer than others, but none go into the type of depth one wants for a truly comprehensible explanation of what’s going on. To reiterate: you won’t learn a lot of math here; you’ll learn about math. Also valuable and important, but it’s a keen distinction.

For me, some of the highlights were: Chapter 7, “How to unleash chaos” (chaotic systems and strange attractors); Chapter 15, “How to arrange the perfect dinner party” (Ramsey’s theorem); Chapter 18, “How to draw an impossible triangle” (non-Euclidean geometry); Chapter 19, “How to unknot your DNA” (knot theory); and Chapter 23, “How to build the perfect beehive” (2D/3D tesselation and packing). I like these chapters because they taught me something or reminded me of something I had forgotten, or Elwes’ explanations are particularly thoughtful and useful. For example, the knot theory chapter doesn’t just talk about knots—as the title implies, he mentions DNA, enzymes, proteins, etc. It’s a reminder that mathematical discoveries end up having applications in places you wouldn’t suspect.

That’s another thing that this book does well. In chapters such as the one on the four-colour theorem, or Benford’s law, Elwes emphasizes two important and related things about mathematics. Firstly, mathematical discoveries don’t always happen in isolation or as strokes of genius. We tend to tell those stories, because they are exciting. But for something like Benford’s law or the four-colour theorem, the discoveries build on decades (or centuries) of work. Several mathematicians independently notice something cool, make a conjecture, fail to prove it, and discard it—only for another generation to succeed where they didn’t. Math is a progressive, ongoing effort.

And something we don’t make clear often enough in the classroom is that new mathematical research is still ongoing at a furious pace. We present math as an accomplished, finished product: here’s how you find the missing side of a triangle; the Babylonians knew how to do it, and now you do too! But like science, mathematics isn’t a stable set of knowledge. It behoves us to raise awareness among the general public of how people research math and what we still research. Elwes points to the Clay Institute’s Millennium Prizes as one example. He also mentions a few other questions that remain open problems. While it’s true that genuine mathematics research is not for the faint of heart or the interested amateur, that tends to be true of any specialized discipline. Math is not necessarily more difficult or special in this regard.

How to Solve the Da Vinci Code is not the warmest of math books I’ve read. Elwes’ tone is conversational, yes, and has a hint of humour to it. However, the broad strokes of his descriptions necessarily make them less personal than they might otherwise be. He tells a story in most of the chapters, but it’s not with the same level of vivacity that other authors often employ. Instead, his style is one step up from an encyclopedia article. Again, this isn’t really a positive or negative in and of itself—it depends on what you want from a book like this. I, personally, want to know more about the author. I want to know where they’re coming from, what interests them, and hear them tell the story of mathematics from their perspective. We don’t get that here—Elwes never inserts himself into the text—and I feel like that’s unfortunate. But others might find it more objective and informative.

Would I recommend? Not for someone like me, who has read a lot of math books and studied math. For neophytes and laypeople? Maybe, depending on the person. I’d rather find a book that gets them more excited about one specific thing, rather than throw everything at them like Elwes does here. Maybe this book is best for someone who already likes math, has a passing interest or understanding of it, and wants to sort of survey the field and see what kinds of things are out there. In that case, there’s definitely 35 good ideas here.

I don’t know how I first got into Star Trek, but I owe almost the entire trajectory of my life to it. I’m not exaggerating. Aside from my interest in teaching (and even that might have been influenced by Star Trek’s love for exploration and knowledge), that TV show profoundly influenced my decisions. The first online community I joined was a Star Trek roleplaying group. Connections I made on that community led to other communities—though not Goodreads, which I joined because an offline friend recommended it to me.

But my interest in science fiction, both literature and television, definitely started with Star Trek. I can remember getting a shiny new 13” TV in my room after my first TV, which I inherited from the living room, finally stopped working completely. (Shortly after I inherited it, the TV would begin to lose its picture after a few minutes of operation, and the picture would only come back after you turned it off to let the tube cool down. Since I had a bedtime back then, I neither retreated nor surrendered and settled for using the TV like a very big radio, just listening to TVO before falling asleep.) I was really excited to get cable in my room, because I knew I would be able to watch Space, Canada’s specialty science fiction/fantasy channel, whenever I wanted. And Space was constantly broadcasting Star Trek.

I avoided the later series at first; they seemed too shiny and weird compared to the simple and straightforward stories on the original series. My opinion nowadays is somewhat reversed—my favourite, if pressed, is probably Deep Space Nine, but all of the series have their strong points and their flaws. However, every time I catch an episode of TOS again, I am impressed by just how good of show it is. Star Trek did what great science fiction should always do, which is present compelling moral dilemmas and ask questions relevant to what presently concerns our society. I learned a lot about life from Star Trek, and I also learned a lot about the 1960s.

So this is my background when it comes to What Star Trek means to me. I suspect many people have similar stories—if they’re older, the story might involve conventions, meeting a future partner, etc. This special bond we have with Star Trek is one of the reasons why I was so excited about Redshirts. (The other reason, of course, is that I’m a fan of John Scalzi.)

I’m going to go ahead and assume you’re familiar with what a redshirt is, or that if you weren’t, you clicked through to the TVTropes page in that link and did some quick research.

Here’s a one-line, hopefully not spoilerish review: if you despise meta-fiction and books that break the fourth wall (or even look at it funny), don’t bother. If you like meta-fiction, and particularly commentary on science-fiction television, you will like Redshirts.

This is a difficult novel to review without going into spoiler territory. I’m going to try it anyway. However, I am going to talk about a few things in the last paragraph or two that are borderline spoilers. For that reason, if you absolutely want to remain spoiler-free for this book, just stop reading.

Ensign Andrew Dahl is fresh from the Academy and assigned to the Universal Union’s flagship, the Intrepid. From the very beginning, he notices that everyone on the ship behaves strangely. Specifically, people who go on an away mission with a senior officer tend to come back dead. And then there’s the Box, which makes no sense…. Dahl starts to suspect there is something sinister happening, and he tracks down the reclusive Ensign Jenkins to confirm this. But Jenkins has an even crazier theory about what’s happening on the Intrepid. And when Dahl decides it has to stop, the solution will involve time travel, universe-hopping, body-switching, celebrity wrangling, and an intense amount of genre savviness.

With Redshirts, Scalzi hits all the right notes as he satirizes the typical plot of a Star Trek episode. This extends beyond the redshirt trope—he also looks at how absurd it is to send all the senior staff on away missions, particularly when some of them are the navigators:

“It’s a good thing you heal so fast, considering how often you get hurt,” Dahl ventured.

“I know!” Kerensky said, suddenly and forcefully. “Thank you! No one else notices! I mean, what the hell is up with that? I’m not stupid, or clumsy, or anything. But every time I go on an away mission I get all fucked up. Do you know how many times I’ve been, like, shot?”

“Three times in the last three years,” Dahl said.

“Yes!” Kerensky said. “Plus all the other shit that happens to me. You know what it is. Fucking captain and Q’eeng have a voodoo doll of me, or something.” He sat there, brooding, and then showed every sign of being about to drift into sleep.

“A voodoo doll,” Dahl said, startling Kerensky back into consciousness. “You think so.”

“Well, no, not literally,” Kerensky said. “Because that’s just stupid, isn’t it. But it feels like it. It feels like whenever the captain and Q’eeng have an away mission they know is going to be all fucked up they say, ‘Hey, Kerensky, this is a perfect away mission for you,’ and then I go off and, like, get my spleen punctured. And half the time it’s some stupid thing I have no idea about, right? I’m an astrogator, man. I am a fucking brilliant astrogator. I wanna just … astrogate. Right?”

I love this exchange between Dahl and the Chekov-analogue Lt. Kerensky. It succinctly examines the foolhardiness of sending unqualified bridge officers on away missions even as it makes Kerensky, who is a minor character, seem all the more human—it’s not like he wants to be the Worf (TVTropes).

(As an aside, however, the exchange also highlights something that really annoyed me while reading, which is Scalzi’s persistent use of “he said–she said” dialogue tags when it’s not really necessary. We can follow a conversation between two people.)

If Redshirts were merely a romp around a Star Trek-like starship where Scalzi could point out how ridiculous everything is, it would be a fun book but rather pointless. Instead, Dahl decides he wants to do something about what’s going on—and while I can’t reveal the precise nature of what’s happening, he decides the best solution is to steal a shuttle, kidnap Kerensky for plot armor (TVTropes), and use the gravitational slingshot around a black hole to go back in time to an alternate universe.

(I apologize if that last sentence induced an ill-timed nerdgasm.)

Unfortunately, this is about where the book, at least for me, starts to run out of steam. (What an oddly outdated idiom considering the subject matter.) Time travel is difficult in the best of circumstances; Scalzi’s treatment never really gets beyond the fish-out-of-water antics of Dahl and his friends trying to navigate through the weirdness of California in 2012. There are a lot of scenes played for laughs, and in the one case where Scalzi foreshadows something particularly important, it’s clusmy and comes out of nowhere (for those who have read the book, I am referring to the burrito excuse at the beginning of Chapter 19).

What rescues Redshirts is actually something that runs through the entire novel and finally comes to the fore at the end: a sense of profound waste, of loss. It begins with the prologue and the senseless death of Ensign David. It continues with Finn’s exhortation for Dahl to find a way to make this stop. It ends with the Hail Mary scheme involving Ensign Hester. These events are tragic counterpoints to the comedic aspect of the redshirt phenomenon: Scalzi humanizes these characters, makes most of them individual enough for us to appreciate their loss as people instead of plot fodder. As a result, even though the bulk of this novel consists of humourous dialogue and hilarious circumstances, its substance is a lot more serious and more rewarding.

And then there are the codas. The story itself is short, so Scalzi decided to include some extra material in the form of three additional stories: one each in first, second, and third person. These stories explore what happens after the conclusion of the story itself, following three specific minor characters and the ramifications of Dahl’s actions. They’re very well done and definitely enhance the story. The first coda, written in the style of a series of blog posts, is a little long. The third coda, although touching, is a little trite. But I loved the second one; it was moving and addressed questions the story left open that really deserve a second consideration.

This is the part with somewhat spoilery comments.

Redshirts is reminscient of plenty of other stories, several of which Scalzi lampshades in the first coda. This includes Stranger than Fiction, the movie that made me realize what a great actor Will Ferrell is. It also reminds me of the Supernatural episode “The French Mistake” (its title an allusion, of course, to the venerable Blazing Saddles) and also of Sophie’s World, a novel I absolutely adore. I unabashedly love meta-fiction, and Redshirts feels like a Sophie’s World without the didactic approach to philosophy. There’s still philosophy aplenty to be had, but Scalzi assumes his reader is erudite enough to understand what words like “teleological” imply without stopping the narrative to explain them. I like that.

I love certain parts of Redshirts because they appeal to my membership in geek culture. They know the right code words to use, the right poses to strike, and so they meet my approval. But I don’t love Redshirts itself. It’s a good book, and I heartily recommend it to people who, like me, are fans of deconstructing shows they love. Like many such deconstructions, however, the gimmick of the story proves far more memorable than the story itself.

I’m enjoying my re-read of the Temeraire series, as I work to get caught up to the most recent volumes. It’s interesting to see how my opinions have changed since my first reading. As with the previous book, Throne of Jade, I have reduced my rating for Black Powder War. Maybe I’ve grown harsher in my old age. Maybe I was just caught up in enthusiasm for dragons the first time I read this book. Whatever the reason, this time around, I’m not ready to give Black Powder War four stars. It is another good instalment in Temeraire and Laurence’s adventures, but it is not an impressive book by itself.

Naomi Novik continues to deliver exciting new settings and adventures in each book. Throne of Jade relocates Laurence and Temeraire to China, where we learn a great deal about Temeraire’s origins and nature as a Celestial. In this book, Laurence and Temeraire are preparing to return to England but must divert through Istanbul to pick up a couple of eggs the government has purchased from the Ottoman Empire. Shenanigans ensue, of course, and eventually they find themselves stuck in Prussia while Napoleon and his forces beat the Prussian troops soundly at every turn.

This is definitely the kind of series for people who want a little fantasy but mostly history in their historical fantasy. Aside from dragons, there is very little difference between our world and Laurence’s. Though it’s different in China, in most of Europe, dragons are essentially war machines—that is, their existence has not changed much about society or technology beyond how countries wage war. And while Napoleon might have dragons, so too do the other countries, so the presence of dragons has not significantly shifted the course of the Napoleonic wars all that much. Even dragons are not presented as explicitly magical—it’s all science.

Black Powder War continues to develop the nascent thread of abolitionism and liberated ideals that Temeraire seizes upon in Throne of Jade. Having seen how dragons co-exist more congenially with humans in China, he is anxious to spread such reforms to the rest of dragonkind. Novik works this element of his character into the background for the rest of the plot: at various times, we hear about how Temeraire has been “spreading dissent” and deviant ideas to dragons from other countries’ armies. Poor Laurence, who believes human slavery is wrong, is gradually coming to the same understanding about dragons—but an entire lifetime of being raised to view dragons as useful beasts, albeit beasts who talk, is difficult to overturn. In this way, Novik captures a sliver of what it might have been like to be a supporter of slavery in the late eighteenth/early nineteenth centuries: to many people, it was not actually a moral question; it was just the way things were. Laurence, far more cognizant of the challenges Temeraire would face in obtaining dragon civil rights, is just having trouble conceptualizing how to get from where they are now to where Temeraire envisions they could be—just as many people were convinced that slavery, while wrong, was an economic necessity, and that society would collapse without it.

We also get to see Laurence’s independent and critical faculties develop further. He is far away from any source of authority in Her Majesty’s Government. In China he was technically at the service of the diplomats there. Yet in both Istanbul and, later, Prussia, he finds a dearth of superiors to whom he can report. Laurence has to make his own decisions about how to proceed based on the limited information he has. At the same time, it becomes clear that the British government, with so many (figurative) eggs in so many baskets, is making tactical decisions that might, potentially involve hanging Prussia out to dry to protect its own interests. This is something that Laurence understands as a tactician but abhors as a man of honour, and those two parts of him have to reconcile somehow.

There is a little less character development of the supporting cast in this book. A few get killed off. We get a few humorous moments in which Laurence once again feels awkward that Roland is a girl, soon to be a young woman. Granby figures more prominently, because as the senior officer under Laurence, it would be his dubious privilege to try to harness the dragon egg should it hatch before they return to England. All in all, though, this is very much a book about two things: Temeraire’s growing concern with rights, and a massive trek across eastern Asia into Europe.

This series would probably do fine as an HBO, Game of Thrones–style miniseries—though I shudder to think how HBO would put in the gratuitous nudity. The first two books would have exciting naval battles and the exotic locale of China. This one would contribute montages of breathtaking mountain vistas: snow-covered alpine passages, daring escapes from avalanches, and the tortuous trip through the scorching deserts of western Asia into Turkey. Novik makes it all look so easy, and consequently, it is easy to forget that this book spans two continents and several different biomes, finally ending in the bitter night of the North Sea.

You should definitely read this series. You should definitely start at book 1. This book is another great instalment in the series—not a great book by itself, but just enough of a fix for fans to keep you hooked and reading. And really, that’s what I want from a series. It has some interesting subtext, a very meticulously-researched and depicted historical setting, and characters I like. Novik has a good thing going here, and I’ll keep reading.

My reviews of the Temeraire series:
← Throne of Jade | Empire of Ivory →

Most of my first review of Empire of Ivory stands, so rather than rehash that, I’ll just comment on where my opinion has changed or things I noticed that I didn’t mention in the first review.

I’ve mentioned this in previous reviews, but Laurence is just such a delightful character. I think we’ve gotten used to seeing caricatures of women from the turn of the nineteenth century simply based on Jane Austen’s celebrity. It’s refreshing to see Naomi Novik capture the thoughts of a English gentleman of the same time period.

By most standards, Laurence is a pretty good guy. He stands up for what’s right, is against slavery, and as we see at the end of the book, will go all the way when he and Temeraire and dragonkind are against the ropes. Yet Novik does a good job making sure that, as progressive as he might be, he is still a product of his times. He is still slightly scandalized by the presence of women serving in the Aerial Corps, even if he has managed to accept it as a necessity. Watching his reactions to Jane and Emily Roland, to Catherine Harcourt’s pregnancy, is great. We get to see him try to reconcile his entire upbringing, which taught him to regard women as the “weaker sex,” fit for childbearing and little else, with his experience as an officer in the Corps, fighting alongside Harcourt and Emily and Jane.

Novik similarly draws out realistic-seeming behaviour from the British government in terms of its weaponization of the disease afflicting British dragons. (Although Laurence rightly frames this as genocide, if we accept that dragons are sentient enough to be soldiers rather than mounts, this is also an instance of biological warfare.) Obviously Britain didn’t have dragons in the real Napoleonic Wars … but if they did have them, this totally seems like something they would have done. It’s believable, in so much as anything in a book with dragons can be believable.

I also liked Empire of Ivory better this time around—not enough to increase its rating to four stars, but enough that I will retract my comments about its pacing. Maybe it was just the mood I was in this time around, but I enjoyed the time that Novik lingers in each setting.

As we progress in the series, the biggest motif, of course, is the relationship between Laurence and Temeraire. This is essentially How to Train Your Dragon for adults. In previous books, Novik mostly explores whether Laurence and Temeraire are meant to be together, or whether their association is an aberration. She transposes them into different settings that allow each to explore what they might become without the other. Now, at the end of Empire of Ivory, Laurence establishes beyond any shadow of a doubt that his loyalties are to Temeraire first, beyond even the British Empire he has served so faithfully. It’s a romantic notion, one all the stronger for the three books that have preceded this one.

I love this series. As with many such series, so far none of the books are particularly amazing, but together they add up to a diverting and rewarding experience. Dragons and Napoleon. Seriously, what more can you ask for?

First Review (November 15, 2009)

I've finally read all the Temeraire books published to date, albeit out of order. Sometime early next year I hope to re-read them, in order, at which time I can probably write better reviews. It has been ages since I read [b:Black Powder War|91989|Black Powder War (Temeraire #3)|Naomi Novik|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1407090510s/91989.jpg|2004018], and I read [b:Victory of Eagles|891593|Victory of Eagles (Temeraire, #5)|Naomi Novik|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1327942237s/891593.jpg|3102331] this year, so I was in the interesting position of knowing how this book ended but not how it began. Despite this continuity snafu, I still enjoyed Empire of Ivory.

Disease is killing the dragons of Britain. Without some form of cure, Britain's Aerial Corps will be devastated and Napoleon will be able to invade without much difficulty. Fortunately, Temeraire was exposed to the disease before, when he and Laurence were in Africa, and they set off to Capetown to find a cure. Only they find something much more . . . for in Africa, as in the rest of the world, there be dragons.

Empire of Ivory is a nice change of pace for the Temeraire series, as the main antagonist is not Napoleon or a similarly megalomaniacal villain. Unfortunately, Novik doesn't always compensate for this lack of external conflict. Parts of the book were slow—indeed, the middle and the very end were the best, with everything around those parts feeling like filler at times. After a strong opening amidst an intense retreat back to Britain, the story calms to a low simmer, dangling before us some philosophically interesting points on the parallel between dragons and human slaves, trying to tide us over until the real action begins. It takes too long to send Laurence and Temeraire off on the quest for the cure, which we know is going to happen, too long to get there, and too long to get the cure.

The discovery of the Tswana empire makes the retrieval of that cure difficult. Now, I loved Novik's portrayal of the Tswana empire and its dragons for two reasons: once again we get to see a unique way for a people to treat the dragons with which it coexists, and the veneration of dragons as ancestors continues the commentary on how the British treat their dragons.

The Tswana believe that spirits of their ancestors will reincarnate in the form of a dragon—not randomly, but only if certain rituals and procedures, such as telling the unhatched dragon about its former life, are observed. As a result, dragons grow up believing they are former humans, believing that those alive are their descendants. This is a powerful bond, the result of which is a more unified dragon-human nation than we've ever seen, China included. The dragons and humans of Tswana are literally one people. They work together to achieve massive feats of engineering and agriculture, cultivating the cure that Laurence and Temeraire so desperately seek. But they carry a grudge against those, the slavers, who would sell their people as stock.

In China, we see dragons and humans co-existing as equals. According to intelligence from France, Lien is succeeding in bringing Napoleon around to a similar viewpoint. He's widening the streets of Paris so she may perambulate down them, and he's beginning to integrate French dragons into French society—perhaps not anywhere near par with China, but certainly more than Britain has been doing. The Tswana have done something similar, a third case study, if you will, that supports Novik's running theme: the better dragons are treated, as equals and not as servants, and the better they protect their country. China's aerial corps is largely considered superior to most nations'; France's is improving daily; and the Tswana destroy three British settlements in Africa after Laurence's incursion provokes them, fielding more dragons than anyone ever thought existed on the continent. Clearly there's a correlation between dragon care and dragon military performance, an incentive for the government of Britain to buy into Temeraire's philosophy of human-dragon equality. And this is a much better way to criticize the slave trade than simply using dragons as a straight metaphor for slaves. Novik's instead proved a more general case that applies to both dragons and slaves.

Oh, did I not mention the slave trade subplot? Laurence's father has tapped Laurence as a public figure to stand toe-to-toe with Lord Nelson, who's doing a fine job of opposing any abolitionist legislature that makes it to the House of Lords. Laurence is all for abolition but not too keen on being the movement's figurehead.

Two freed slaves, the married Mr. and Mrs. Reverend Erasmus, accompany Laurence to Africa as missionaries. Then, in a bizarre twist I didn't quite buy, Erasmus gets killed and we learn that Mrs. Erasmus is apparently from the Tswana empire, captured as a child. Yes, the Tswana have dragons, but they're still prey to other tribes, who act as proxies for the slavers. Go figure. I found the actions of the Tswana characters somewhat uneven: presumably they had some inkling of the existence of British settlements on the coast before, right? Why wait to destroy them until now?

This unevenness crops up a good deal in Empire of Ivory. Laurence and Temeraire triumphantly return to Britain with the cure, at which point the government reveals that, surprise, it's already spreading the disease to the French in a mass dragon genocide scheme. Because we didn't see that coming. Still, it lets Temeraire and Laurence commit treason, which is awesome, because . . .

. . . it's fresh. Empire of Ivory is slow because it's very safe. Aside from the simmering slave-trade subtext, there's little that rocks the series boat until the very end. Now Laurence and Temeraire are traitors, who have willingly returned to England to face punishment. And as I know from reading Victory of Eagles, this isn't something that can be dismissed so the series can reset to status quo. It's a serious ethical dilemma that required Laurence to choose: take a stand against genocide and commit treason against the country to which he's sworn loyalty, or go along, play the good soldier, and watch the dragon to whom he's become attached commit treason to save his people. Everything's different now, and I love it. I just feel that, as great as the ending was, there were better paths to getting there than the one taken by Empire of Ivory.

My review of the Temeraire series:
← Black Powder War | Victory of Eagles →

We arrive at the last of the introductions to the original five Animorphs: Marco, no last name (as usual). He is, in our Animorph boy band, the Funny One (not the Pretty One, though he might try to sell you on that). (Debate which of the other Animorphs are which boy band stereotype in the comments!) He has spent the past four novels providing comic relief, sometimes at the most inopportune times, and generally being a dick to Tobias and Rachel, because he is scared shitless the Yeerks will kill him and leave his dad alone.

OK, we didn’t learn that last part until now, so I guess we should cut Marco some slack.

Seriously though, dude’s mom just vanished two years ago. No body. No note. We learn why—turns out she is Visser Freaking One, or at least that’s the rank of the Yeerk in her head. And now she is back on Earth, or at least parked in orbit, apparently just to rile up the incompetent but deadly Visser Three in an intergalactic game of “Come at me, bro.”

The whole Visser One/Visser Three power struggle subplot is both hilarious and painful. I get what Applegate is trying to do. It’s clever and definitely done in a way kids will understand. But I still don’t quite see what the objective is for Visser One. She claims she has come back to check up on the invasion of Earth, and then she has her personal Hork-Bajir guard let the Animorphs escape from Visser Three’s Bladeship to embarrass him … and then what? What is her game plan?

Oh, god, Applegate has me hooked and asking questions just like a teenage kid. You win this time, Katherine.

I’m sure that the “Visser One is Marco’s mom” is a twist that past!me never saw coming. Even reading it now, it isn’t obvious—from the way Marco recounts his mother’s disappearance, the reader might assume she was taken as a Controller. But even once Ax breaks the news that Visser One is in town, the connection isn’t there until they are aboard the Bladeship.

Speaking of Ax, let’s talk about our newest boy band member (I guess he’s the Alien One?).

I love human!Ax and his obsession with food, and the confusion that he creates in his first-ever trip to the mall is hilarious.

Despite comic relief not coming from Marco, Ax displays the warning signs of being a plot device for Applegate’s use (TVTropes), when it turns out that he just so happens to know how to build a Yeerk distress transmitter out of spare parts. I’m not saying it’s improbable, just that it’s very convenient.

Also, in the ongoing lexicon of dated references, they went to Radio Shack. That was still a thing. (Note that I live in Canada; Radio Shack abandoned us in 2004, morphing into “the Source by Circuit City” and generally sucking even more. I hear it isn’t doing great in the States these days either.)

Lastly, the ants.

Applegate deserves a lot of credit here for continuing to push the envelop of how she explores morphing ability. It’s not enough for the Animorphs to just turn into animals. She’s always trying to find new ways to describe the experience, and in the end, to explore what it means to be human, as opposed to being a different creature. Her depiction of the Animorphs’ time as ants here is amazing in its breadth and creepiness. From their Kafkaesque horror as they find themselves subsumed into the hive mind of the ant colony instincts to the existential terror as they are nearly torn limb-from-limb by other ants, the Animorphs do not have a good time.

And that’s before Visser Three captures them and nearly discovers their secret.

So the Animorphs get captured (because their brilliant plan goes horribly awry and none of us could have seen it coming)—boo! But they get away—yay! But Marco’s mom is Visser One—boo! But Ax is a pretty human who likes food—yay! But everyone is psychologically scarred from trying to morph ants—boo! But Marco’s dad seems to have snapped out of his pity-fest and is trying to get his old job back—yay!

Next time, Jake becomes a Controller, and shit gets real. We’ll look at the Animorphs’ first real grapple with the moral complexities of war and what, I would argue, is their first real victory.

My reviews of Animorphs:
← #4: The Message | #6: The Capture →

N.B.: As always, this review does not contain spoilers for this book, but there are significant spoilers for previous books in the series.

All right, I am going to swim against the tide here and come out in unabashed admiration for A Feast for Crows. This book has had to bear an incredible burden: not only has it been "the most recent book" in the Song of Ice and Fire series for six years, but it is infamously "half a book" in the sense that it only follows roughly half of the series' main characters. Plus, with Martin's prediction that there will probably be seven or so books in the series, we're starting to get into the territory where some people level charges of "middle book syndrome". These factors combined, along with some probably justified criticism over certain stylistic elements of the book, mean that A Feast of Crows has largely gotten a bad rap. Undeservedly so, I say!

Increasingly I feel like my reviews of this series are becoming, in part at least, responses to other reviews and reactions, both from fellow Goodreads members and from fans and critics at large. And this feels quite appropriate for a series that has garnered such appeal, both from die-hard fans of fantasy and now, thanks to the acclaimed HBO series, mainstream readers as well. It's appropriate that we are having conversations about these books and analyzing them—if some universities have Beatles studies and Buffy studies and Harry Potter studies, then I totally support a curriculum based on studying A Song of Ice and Fire. Also, I just can't think of any other way to review these books, because I feel like I could blather on about the exact same topics I've discussed in my previous reviews of the books in this series. So I'm going to spare you from that and instead argue why A Feast for Crows is not the best book in the series but also far from the worst.

I'm not going to touch this whole "Martin is taking too long to write the books!" issue with a three-metre ninja/pirate-proof pole. No, sir. No way. Neil Gaiman and, more recently, John Scalzi have eloquently explained why we should not expect Martin to "write faster" or believe that Martin is somehow deviously twisting his moustache and milking the series for as much money as possible. Of course, you are welcome to the natural anticipation and impatience that accompanies any series while waiting for the next forthcoming book. (I, for example, am drooling an embarrassing amount over the new Dresden Files book, and going through withdrawal because I have been trained to show up at Chapters in April for them.)

Only slightly less notorious than the lengthy delay in the release of A Dance with Dragons is the afterword to A Feast for Crows, "Meanwhile, back on the wall…". It's in this afterword that Martin informs his readers why we don't see Daenerys, Jon, Tyrion, et al in A Feast for Crows and, worse still, expresses his devout hope that those characters will return in the next volume next year. OK, so one year became six, and here we are. Old fans and newcomers alike seem to target the structure of A Feast for Crows as a major reason that it is, apparently, "the weakest book of the series":

Most of Crows’ problems stem from Martin’s decision to divide the story by geography, and focus mainly on the action in Westeros that takes place south of the Wall. That means that the dwarf, Tyrion Lannister, Martin’s greatest creation, is missing. So are Jon Snow and Daenerys Targaryen. Not only are you losing fantastic, multidimensional characters with whom we’ve traveled for hundreds and thousands of pages, you lose the heart of the story. As far as I can tell (and I’m sure I’ll be wrong), Martin’s endgame seems to point towards two events: the struggle at the Wall against the onslaught of the walking dead (the song of Ice); and Daenerys’ struggle to reclaim the Iron Throne with the help of her dragons (the song of Fire). Neither of those crucial points get any play in Crows. Instead, it’s 700 pages of B-side.

This is a very interesting and cogent observation from Matt's review. For the most part, I agree with his basic analysis—although, I'd like to add that the "song of fire" can also refer to Stannis and Melisandre's Lord of Light, and the battle between the forces of darkness and the forces of light that we see developing on the Wall. However, I disagree that Martin's choice of POVs to include in A Feast for Crows loses "the heart of the story" and results in "700 pages of B-side".

It's undeniable that certain characters have become fan favourites, particularly Tyrion, Daenerys, and Jon. I myself have expressed my love for these three characters; as I said in my review of A Storm of Swords, I'm on Team Daenerys, unless Jon and Sam join forces to take over Westeros. (And here's a tantalizing hint: it's possible to interpret some elements of A Feast for Crows as foreshadowing that Daenerys ultimately accedes to the Iron Throne, or what's left of it.) Even Martin, who created all of these people, calls Tyrion his favourite. But Martin's ensemble cast is an element I've pointed out and praised in previous reviews: there is no main character, or no set of main characters. Our elevation of certain characters to stardom is a creation of our own minds, for Martin has forsaken such discrimination and embraced Shakespeare's adage that "all the world's a stage", turning his characters into the players that populate and motivate a much wider, richer drama.

At least, that's how I interpret it. I suppose it's a little insulting to suggest that if you are dissatisfied with A Feast for Crows you are reading it wrong. And there are plenty of other reasons to find the book disappointing—for example, unlike the previous two books, there is much less overt bloodshed and there are fewer battles; once again, we have returned to the dialogue-heavy, intrigue-centred world we saw in A Game of Thrones. Nevertheless, I suggest that if you can adapt to Martin's subversion of our conventional way of thinking about main characters, then it is possible to interpret this book as something other than a B-story episode. Instead, Martin focuses on the fallout from A Storm of Swords, and particularly how it affects Southern Westeros, which is the home of six of the seven kingdoms.

George R.R. Martin is scary good at a lot of things, and choosing the titles of his books is one such talent. A Feast for Crows, like all of the Song of Ice and Fire novels, is exactly what the title implies: since the Battle of the Blackwater concluded, the civil war has been conducted at a large remove from King's Landing. Thanks to the pact between the Lannisters and the Freys, Robb's rebellion has been prematurely terminated, and aside from Riverrun, the river lands are once again in the hands of the Iron Throne. The North, while not exactly quelled, is not an immediate problem. King Stannis has removed himself to the Wall, and although he poses a threat, he is once again quite distant from King's Landing. But with Tywin Lannister dead, Tyrion missing, and Jaime down a hand, we are treated to families divided and loyalties torn asunder.

At the beginning of A Song of Ice and Fire, the Lannisters and the Starks were each unified in their hatred of each other. Lannisters fought against Starks and vice versa. Now the Lannisters begin to turn on each other: Tywin treated all three of his children like shit in A Storm of Swords, and now Jaime and Cersei bicker even as the latter proves desperate to find and kill Tyrion. Although nominally still the most powerful family in Westeros, and the power behind the Iron Throne, the Lannisters' position is precarious. The Tyrells are the new Lannisters in town: unified in their quest for more power, with their own brother-sister pairing of beautiful young queen and shining knight of the Kingsguard. The Lannister sun might actually be setting, and it's very interesting to observe Cersei's actions in this book.

Cersei utters that famous line in the first book: "When you play the game of thrones, you win or you die." And it's ironic, because with each book I'm more and more convinced that Cersei really sucks at the game of thrones. She's by no means as bad at it as Ned Stark (who shouldn't have trusted Littlefinger), but Tyrion and then her father both ran circles around her. Now, in A Feast for Crows, she makes a series of increasingly-poor decisions, and their result is almost the opposite of what she had intended. Cersei's missteps don't come from a lack of cunning or guile so much as what I perceive as inattentiveness and negligence on her part. The demise of Joffrey and Tywin in quick succession, and Tyrion's roles in those deaths, have hit Cersei hard. Her manic concern for the wellbeing of Tommen is palpable. With her network of trust shattered, she is casting wildly about for people she can make into her creatures, and this causes her to reject some of those who are closest to her, such as Jaime and Kevan. Perhaps the most telling sign of her negligence comes from Cersei's hasty deal with the new, zealous High Septon. Thus far, the new High Septon has refused to endorse Tommen as King, a ceremonial yet important gesture. He craftily agrees to do so in exchange for Tommen reversing an ancient decree that disbands the Faith's own militant order. Cersei, with her Tommen-centric blinders on, agrees readily and thinks she has solved multiple problems with a single conversation. Unfortunately for her, it is all too easy to predict how this decision is going to come back to bite her, and it does.

The Lannisters are the most prominent, and probably the most interesting, example of the eponymous, metaphorical feast for crows, but there are so many more. The Greyjoys fight over their Seastone Chair even as they begin raiding Westeros in earnest. Jon does appear briefly in this book, in a scene with Sam, whom he sends with Maester Aemon to Oldtown and the Citadel. Sam is going to train to be become a maester. His adventures during the journey to Oldtown via Braavos, however, demonstrate the extent to which Jon's elevation to Lord Commander is straining their relationship. Jon dispatches Sam and Aemon as part of a calculated, reasoned decision that is far from the passionate bastard we first met on the Wall. And finally, there is a whole new subplot in Dorne around Prince Doran, his vast family, and the Princess Myrcella.

In the first three books, Martin chronicled the downfall of the Seven Kingdoms through the machinations, misjudgements, and malfeasance of the powerful Houses. With A Feast for Crows, he focuses on the infection that has now set into the gaping wound left behind by civil war. He shows us that not only are the powerful families fighting amongst each other, they are actually turning on their own. Moreover, he is eager to demonstrate that this corruption and decay is widespread throughout Westeros and endemic to a system devastated by war. And that's why this fan does not view the Brienne chapters as a waste of time. Brienne's story is pivotal to this theme of corruption and decay, because she is our eyes into the effects of war on the peasantry and common folk. As she travels through the outlaw-ridden riverlands in search of Sansa, we see the chaos and destruction left behind by armies on the move. Brienne also falls in with a wandering septon, and he delivers a passionate anti-war speech about how battle breaks men and condemning the fact that the majority of an army never understands why they are fighting; it fights only because it is commanded to fight by its lord.

This commoner's perspective is something that has largely been absent from the series so far, and I think it's very important. It emphasizes the folly of a hereditary power structure and belies the idea that any family has a "right" to rule. The common people don't fight because they care who is king; they fight because their lord chooses a side—and the lord chooses, more often than not, out of avarice and opportunity rather than loyalty and honour. While battle claims lords and knights as well as common folk, notice that those lords who survive, such as Edmure Tully, become well-treated hostages. The common people who survive are sent home—or worse, just left wherever the army happens to be where it disbands, which could be nowhere near home—and told to get on with their miserable existence. So allow me to amend Cersei's famous saying: "In the game of thrones, nobility wins, dies, or becomes a hostage; the common folk always lose."

A Feast of Crows suffers from a combination of poor timing and what is admittedly a significant departure from the established structure of the narrative. Yet these qualities alone are not sufficient to earn it the label of "weakest book of the series". If you want my opinion (and this is my review, so I don't really know whose opinion you'd expect except mine), A Clash of Kings was the weakest book. In particular I found the sheer number of characters and POVs daunting and messy. Maybe that's why I found A Feast for Crows so refreshing. Although it is somewhat heavy on dialogue—and no, I don't know what a groat is either—I enjoyed the opportunity to get inside each character's head for longer periods of time. For me, the structure of A Feast for Crows was unusual, but it was also a boon. This book certainly has its share of weaknesses, as well as a myriad of strengths I did not have a chance to extol in this review. Overall, however, I think it continues in the tradition Martin has established, one of rich detail and a canny complexity, that makes A Song of Ice and Fire so compelling and beloved.

My Reviews of A Song of Ice and Fire:
← A Storm of Swords | A Dance with Dragons →

It didn’t take me long to understand why this book received such acclaim and is still regarded as a classic. The Moon is a Harsh Mistress is an emblem of political science fiction. Robert Heinlein manages to take the idea of a penal colony on the moon and turn it into a romantic story of political revolution. This is an idea that has been explored repeatedly since this novel was published, but those stories almost all owe a debt to this one.

Manuel/Manny/Man O’Kelly-Davis is a computer repair technician. He was born on Luna to transported parents. He’s also the only person, Loonie or Terran, who knows that the central lunar computer is sentient. He calls it Mike. And along with an old exiled professor and a political firebrand from Hong Kong Luna called Wyoming, Mike and Manuel plan and launch a revolution against the Terran-controlled Lunar Authority that runs their lives.

Manuel isn’t actually all that interested in revolting, at least not at first. (Truthfully he probably gets into it because he wants to “bundle” with Wyoming, and he knows the Prof.) He is a self-described apolitical, like, he tells us, most Loonies. (We could have a conversation about unreliable narrators and whether Manuel tells us the truth. Frankly, though, I don’t think Heinlein was interested in that level of deconstructionism. It would have gotten in the way of his fantasy.) Initially, Manuel is happy enough with the status quo: when Mike breaks, or just tries something it thinks is a joke, Manuel gets called in to fix it, and gets paid to do so. Life is actually pretty good.

But it’s all an illusion, because everyone is going to starve and die in seven years unless they take over the joint! Or at least, that’s what Mike tells them. And Mike wouldn’t lie to them just because he thinks it’s funny, would he? Mike totally isn’t into pull practical jokes … oh, shit.

The “character” of Mike is my favourite thing about The Moon is a Harsh Mistress. Heinlein has written here one of the earliest representations of classical strong AI (this predates HAL 9000 by a couple of years). Yet this book is decidedly not about AI in the sense that cyberpunk and Singularity fiction focuses on AI. Mike is merely a plot device, as well as part of Heinlein’s extended political metaphor. However, the fact that Heinlein relies on the abilities of a networked central computer to make the lunar revolution successful probably says a lot about the extent to which he viewed such a revolution as possible in contemporary terms. As Manuel reflects at one point, Mike is their ace in the hole: a shadowy, unseen figure whose presence is nevertheless always felt. Without Mike, everyone would be out of luck.

Mike evolves throughout the story too, as portrayed through its increasingly adept grasp of language, tone, and voice. Some of this evolution is directed by Manuel, but much of it is an organic consequence of Mike’s role in the revolution and its portrayal of “Adam Selene.” Maybe it’s my background with Singularity fiction, but I kept waiting for Mike to turn on our poor revolutionaries.

It’s important to remember, too, that this book was written before we ever visited the Moon. We had some grainy pictures, and we had managed a couple of low-Earth orbits and a spacewalk—and most of that was courtesy the Soviets. (Although the Soviet-inspired dialect that the Loonies use and other Soviet influences on the setting provide a convenient way to allude to revolutionary Russia, I can’t help but feel like Heinlein is also reflecting the zeitgeist. Up until the end of the 1960s, it must have felt like the Russians were dominating the Space Race, and Heinlein’s future reflects that.) But we didn’t really know what it was like to travel through space, much less live in it.

Heinlein makes much of the idea that the 1/6th-g gravity of the moon means we couldn’t live there long before permanently adapting to it, preventing us from returning to Earth. Turns out we can live in microgravity for at least a year without permanent ill effects (though one must convalesce and rebuild muscle after coming back). But Heinlein didn’t know that. Interestingly, a great deal of Luna’s economy revolves around the harvesting of ice, and in that respect Heinlein was a little prescient: the presence of ice, while proposed and perhaps suspected in his time, has only been confirmed much more recently.

So working within the bounds of what he knew at the time, and some speculation, Heinlein creates a fascinating vision for what a lunar colony might be like. Although he employs technology like laser guns, he also invokes more realistic—and, in my opinion, more frightening—weapons, such as using rocks accelerated down Earth’s gravity well as ballistic missiles. Heinlein shows that science is often cooler than science fiction.

Are there uncomfortable libertarian politics that threaten to overwhelm the story? Yes. It took me most of a week to read this book, despite it not being very long, because it is on the dry side. Between Manuel, the Prof, and Wyoming, we get enough political theory sandwiched between the action to fill a slim textbook. Regardless, I soldiered on, because I wanted to know where we ended up. After the revolution succeeded, would heads roll?

Similar to his politics, Heinlein’s portrayal of gender roles is dubious at best. Though women like Wyoming, or Manuel’s senior wife, Mimi, are presented as capable and having agency, they are nevertheless always subject to the male gaze. Heinlein explores alternatives to conventional marriage—namely, polyandrous arrangements like the idea of the line marriage Manuel is involved in—and depicts slightly different sexual mores. Yet any credit he might deserve for such things is diminished by the fact that his particular brand of 1960s sexual liberation is little more than a smokescreen for male fantasies of women as sexual objects. Heinlein tries to explain that the imbalance of genders in lunar society means women have the “power” to choose men. In actuality, this means women are always presented in the novel as objects of sexual desire who frustrate or reward men capriciously. I’m trying and failing to come up with a woman character who isn’t defined somehow by a relationship to a man—Hazel comes close, but ultimately gets pigeonholed into being a sexual object for Slim as well as the “mother” figure to the Baker Street Irregulars. But no, there are no women judges, no women politicians, nothing like that.

So, ultimately, Heinlein’s diverting sexual politics here just go to show that, when you get right down to it, you can have all the weird gender stuff you want, but it doesn’t matter if you forget that women are people too. The default in this book is still very much “heterosexual male,” and that’s what makes it problematic.

With these two things in mind, I can see why some don’t enjoy The Moon is a Harsh Mistress at all, and I didn’t enjoy it unreservedly. Rather, I appreciate Heinlein’s artistry and skill at science fiction as a setting and as a vehicle for political storytelling (even if I find the actual politics somewhat strange). There’s a curious mixture of intelligence and romance here, so it’s capable of grabbing at both head and heart. The tension between these two modes, however, results in a story that vacillates most disharmoniously even as it impresses with the scope of its ambition.

Everything that I said for Angels & Demons applies to The Da Vinci Code as well. I will, however, admit that Dan Brown's writing has noticeably improved between the two books. For that reason alone, if you somehow have to read one of the two, I'd probably recommend this one. But you're better off not reading either of them.

It would not be nearly half as bad if Dan Brown just did one thing: throw out that stupid "fact" preface. One reviewer explains it far better than I can: this is worse than a fluffy beach read, because beach reads don't insist that their conspiracy theory fiction is fact. The Priory of Sion was founded in 1956, not 1099. The history of Christianity, history of the Bible, and etymology of the Holy Grail are far more complicated than Dan Brown makes it seem, and at some points, he blatantly misrepresents the history of the Church. Once again, it's not the nature of these fabrications: fiction is good. But fiction claimed to be fact does no favours.

I think I'm done with Grail myths and Templar fiction. Time for some fresh conspiracy theories.

My Reviews of the Robert Langdon series:
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