Somewhere between the title of the book and the fact that it is a fantasy setting, I became convinced that The Edge of the World was set in a world that is literally flat, with a ship that literally sails off the edge. This mistaken perception is entirely my fault, and it quickly became obvious that I was wrong when I began reading the book. Just thought I would warn you in case you laboured under the same generous delusion as I did.

Instead, The Edge of the World is one of the lazier stories I've read this year. I mean, Kevin J. Anderson has himself a world with frelling sea serpents. That's badass, man! And what does he choose to do with this storytelling boon? He squanders it on a pathetic, poorly-conceived religious war that stretches on for fifteen years.

And not. A Single Thing. Happens.

Your "obvious hyperbole" alarm should be ringing by now, but I am not exaggerating too much. The Edge of the World is a long but quick read because almost nothing of any interest or importance happens in the story. Characters live and grow older. Some of them die. Some fall in love, give birth, raise children. But none of it really seems to matter.

The problem lies with the central conflict, which is so contrived that I can't take it seriously. The two major religions of the known world happen to be distributed by continent, so that the Tierrans worship Aiden and the Urabans worship Urec. An accidental fire burns down their mutually holy city, Ishalem, sparking a war between the two continents/religions. Well, not exactly a war. More like a state of mutual aggression. Both sides commit atrocities, build navies, and do some raiding of fishing villages. But neither side's leader seems to have any desire to prosecute the war to any extent. Anderson does his best to make both leaders sympathetic, multi-dimensional characters. Unlike their followers, who do their best to imitate mindless zealots and stereotype the other side as inhuman, heretical monsters, these leaders are rational men who know that both Tierra and Uraba benefit more from peace than war. It just seems, thanks to the actions of various subordinates and serendipity itself, like they have no choice in the matter.

Anderson seems to trying to comment on how easily religion can be twisted for political purposes, as well as emphasize the horrors of blind hatred at the hands of the masses. There are some truly terrifying moments when the Aidenists or the Urecari commit one atrocity or another against their heinous enemies. Ultimately, however, I don't care about either side in this religious war, because Anderson does not spend enough time making his religions convincing. Like his people, the religions themselves are paper-thin caricatures of the real thing, designed only to further the plot. This undermines their ability to make any grand point about the horrors of religious war.

It is tempting to blame this on the multitude of characters and viewpoints Anderson makes available to us. There are so many characters and so many subplots, and we jump from one to another so quickly that it is difficult to become invested in any one plot. But Anderson does the same thing in his Saga of Seven Suns series, and it's not a deal-breaker there. No, the real problems with his religious war are timing and realism.

Are we supposed to believe that the Aidenists and Urecari have lived on adjacent continents for centuries yet are ignorant of each other's societies? That's absurd. Either they would have already gone to war, or the degree of interaction between the two continents would be far greater than it is at the beginning of this book. Instead, the Tierrans and Urabans know almost nothing about each other, despite their proximity and the fact that we know the former, at least, love to trade at Uraban ports. That's not how societies work, and Anderson never offers any explanations for how such an unlikely stasis could persist.

Yet persist it does, even against Anderson's attempts at exploration. For a book called The Edge of the World, most of the action takes place on the continents of Tierra and Uraba, with precious little exploration being done. The first time the King of Tierra sends a ship out to explore the vast unknown, it gets unceremoniously wrecked by a Leviathan (which is awesome). The second time he does this, the ship doesn't even get out of port. The only real discovery that happens in this book is the result of a journey across a desert to this world's equivalent of the Far East and the Mongol Empire.

With that second failure at an exploratory expedition on Tierra's part, my enjoyment of this book really soured. Criston Vora, the only survivor of the first expedition, shows up after a decade of self-imposed hermitage just so he can go on the second voyage. And what happens? He watches the arkship burn. Harsh. I felt as if Anderson had crossed the line between confronting his characters with adversity and smacking them against a brick wall. Seriously, what is the point of making me read about not one but two expeditions that go nowhere? The loss of the first ship was fine, but with the second ship's loss, I started to wonder if Anderson really wanted to explore the rest of his world. He seems content enough, at least for the majority of the book, to spend time not waging his silly little war.

So as a book of exciting exploration and adventures, The Edge of the World is a huge disappointment. And as a book of an intense religious war filled with moral ambiguity, insane priests who think their job is to go about burning churches, and depressed sailors, The Edge of the World still manages to be bland and boring. I found the political machinations just as predictable as I found the lack of exploration surprising.

I have only mentioned one character, Criston, in this entire review. That's not to say that Criston is the only important or noteworthy character; many of the main characters are struggling to do the best they can with the plot Anderson hands to them. Criston merely served to demonstrate a point for me; otherwise, I would not have mentioned him at all. For if there is one thing I want you to walk away with from this review, it is an understanding that this book is so mired in generalities that it almost feels like it was pulled from a random story generator.

Kevin J. Anderson has never impressed me with his characterization before, and he has not changed that opinion here. I don't mean to indict him just for The Edge of the World, because even though it is an unsatisfying read, I can still tell it is a sincere effort. So yeah, you do get points for trying, but that's not nearly enough.

Some books are better left unexplored, not because they are so bad they're good or so bad they're bad but because they're so bland they aren't worth your time.

Ah, classic space opera: futuristic setting, oddball characters with oddball philosophies, and ships and science well beyond what we ken. Unlike a good deal of space opera, Nova is not a doorstopper. It is more modest in length and in focus, though not in scope. The cast of characters is small, but the events have large repercussion. Captain Lorq von Ray certainly has much in common with Captain Ahab, and obsession is an important motif in Nova. I hesitate to compare it to Moby-Dick—not because I think such a comparison is invalid but because I read Moby-Dick once, a long time ago, and don't much remember it. Instead, I'm going to grab hold of that space opera vibe and run with it.

First, a caveat. The term space opera is so hopelessly imprecise that you might not agree with how I'm using it, and that's OK. Hopefully you still understand what I'm saying about this form, even if you don't agree with my label for it.

I have a special place in my heart for space opera above other forms of science fiction. I want to attribute this in part to [b:Dune|234225|Dune (Dune Chronicles, #1)|Frank Herbert|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1172968533s/234225.jpg|3634639], which was one of the earliest science-fiction novels I read. Two problems. Firstly, Dune is more of a planetary romance than a space opera. Sure, it has huge spaceships that cover vast interstellar distances in the blink of an eye. But as the title implies, the book is much more about the planet than the space around it. Secondly, and more importantly, Dune is not the book that influenced my perception of space opera for all time; that distinction belongs to [b:The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy|11|The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (Hitchhiker's Guide, #1)|Douglas Adams|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1275622284s/11.jpg|3078186].

But this isn't a review of h2g2, and perhaps one day I'll write a review explaining why I consider it my formative space opera experience. For now, let's return to Nova and Samuel R. Delany's use of space opera. Delany has divided humanity into a tripartite society based loosely on constellation: Draco contains Earth and the richest planets in known space, and it's home to Red-shift Limited, the sole manufacturer of faster-than-light drives and company owned by Prince Red; the Pleidaes Federation is the home of operations for the rival Von Rays, and its other rich families are the "new money" to Draco's "old;" finally there are the Outer Colonies, whose only attraction are the Illyrion mines, and whose population consists mostly of working class people. If you read this and start thinking, "class conflict," then you are on the right track.

Through the expository conversations between the Mouse and Katin, Delany explains how society has changed in the 1200 years that have elapsed between his time and theirs. I loved these parts of Nova, even when they seemed ancillary to the rest of the plot. Katin reminds me a little of myself, dismissive of the past yet simultaneously yearning for its philosophical renaissances. Katin can't quite believe that we twentieth-century folk were backward enough to doubt the accuracy of Tarot; he expresses his joy that the elimination of disease has made personal hygiene unnecessary (Delany neglects to address the problem of smell). As a student of history, he has taken the ultimate plunge of falling in love with an anachronistic literary form: the novel. Katin goes around making notes—he has over twelve thousand of them now—in preparation for his novel, which he has not yet begun for lack of a subject. It's good to see that despite other changes, there will always be writers who perpetually procrastinate in their writing. Despite his deferral of the task, Katin remains obsessed with the idea of writing a novel, of creating something from a dead art form. And this obsession drives him forward to observe and take notes, eventually bringing him to Lorq von Ray's ship.

Captain Lorq von Ray is obsessed with diving into the heart of a nova to harvest Illyrion. (I think Delany should have said a supernova, as they are not the same thing, but I'm not sure how well 1960s astrophysics differentiated between the two, so we'll let that slide.) This MacGuffin substance is a group of stable transuranic elements that, for reasons never explained, are the key to faster-than-light travel. Now, you can synthesize Illyrion, or you can mine it, but both of these operations are expensive and inefficient. Lorq is convinced he can come out—alive—with enough Illyrion to flood the market. Among other things, this would devastate Red-shift Limited.

Lorq's motives for upsetting the careful equilibrium between the Reds and the Von Rays become clear in a series of flashbacks, through which we see the enmity between Prince and Lorq develop. At first it seems like the incidents that incur Prince's ire are the result of misunderstandings. The two family patriarchs do their best to inculcate friendship between Lorq and Prince, but it doesn't take. And eventually it becomes clear that Prince is psychotic. While this spoils some of the tragedy for me, it adds an interesting dimension to the conflict.

Although Lorq and Prince have a personal enmity, their status as essentially modern aristocrats means this affects the fate of entire societies. If Lorq is successful, not only will he crush Prince's company; the Illyrion mines in the Outer Colonies will be obsolete over night. Millions of workers will be displaced. Prince—or more precisely, Ruby—asks Lorq how he can do such a thing, how he can damage the structure of society and create so much chaos. Lorq claims it is a matter of survival, that he has to strike before Prince does. But this is not a fairy tale, and Lorq is not Prince Charming, come to rescue the princess.

That princess, Ruby Red, intrigues me because she's such a weak character. She seems to have no will of her own, devoting herself instead to Prince and his schemes. As "the sister," she always had the potential to bring Lorq and Prince closer together or drive them apart. Owing to Prince's psychotic tendencies, it seems inevitable that it would be the latter; any time Lorq makes any kind of overture to Ruby, real or imagined, Prince goes berserk. But as far as we can see, Ruby never makes an attempt at reconciliation. She takes Prince's hate for Lorq and makes it her own, to the point where should would murder-suicide Lorq if she had the chance:

Your are not the only one with secrets, Lorq. Prince and I have ours. When you came up out of the burning rocks, yes, I thought Prince was dead. There was a hollow tooth in my jaw filled with strychnine. I wanted to give you a victory kiss. I would have, if Prince had not screamed.

Delany never explicitly codifies the relationship between Prince and Ruby Red, so the extent of their closeness is open to interpretation. I think it's significant, however, that whenever Lorq talks about the search for a nova as a race, he refers to his opponents as "Prince and Ruby Red." But when he talks about his enemy, his rival, the person he has to defeat, he only mentions "Prince." And in the end, not to spoil it, I think that having to surrender this distinction is what defeats him.

For a race, it seems like Nova spends an awful lot of time dallying before finally arriving at the finish line. Yet this might be an illusion caused by the brevity of the book—I think the build up to the climax at the nova is the right length; I just didn't expect it to end so abruptly. We just get an epilogue in which we learn the fates of Lorq and the rest of his expedition; Delany never deals with the larger ramifications of Lorq's plan.

And unlike a lot of space opera, Nova does not involve fantastic battles between massive armadas or invasions of entire solar systems. Instead, the entire book is a series of stories about individuals, each with a different obsession, whose paths converge and clash, with consequences beyond just the scope of their own lives. More than that, it's a presentation of a fascinating future, burgeoning with so many good seeds of ideas that would later mature and flourish in other books, both those by Delany and by future contributors to science fiction.

Alas, because of this wealth of ideas, Nova never delves into any of them with much depth. Nevertheless, I think I have not covered all that Nova has to offer a reader, and I am not entirely happy with how I have discussed what I did cover. True to my conception of space opera, Delany has taken an adventuresome quest and married it to an intensely personal conflict between two larger-than-life characters, Lorq von Ray and Prince Red. The result is a gem of a novel—and like most gems, this one has its share of flaws. But that is OK, and I still like it all the same.

As a math major, reading this book prior to class often came with the burden of disclaiming, "It's not about math." And that's a little disappointing, actually, because I don't read enough books about math, especially fiction books. And The Integral Trees would make a damn good title for a math novel.

But no, Larry Niven had to go and steal the title for his own nefarious purposes. It actually took me longer than it should have taken to realize why the integral trees were named as such—I admit I did not scrutinize the diagrams very closely. They're shaped like integral signs. That's … not very impressive.

Fortunately, most of the book's worldbuilding is impressive and pretty much what I expect from the person who wrote Ringworld. I'd go so far as to declare the worldbuilding in The Integral Trees superior to Ringworld's. Although Niven's concept of a ringworld is better-known and more portable than the Gas Torus and Smoke Ring of this novel, the latter environment results in far weirder inhabitants and habitations. Getting used to how one moves around in an environment consisting of constant freefall is a bit of a challenge. But this gives Niven the opportunity to construct wonderful scenes that would usually be more at home in a fantasy story rather than a work of science fiction.

Now, I'm not one who visualizes events, even the most mundane ones, so scenes like the flight of the CARM don't fill my mind with cinematic wonder. Nevertheless, there's still plenty about the unique environment of the Smoke Ring that intrigues me, such as the changes in physiology undergone by the descendants of the original Discipline crew-members. These are people, humans with the same foibles as the rest of us, yet they are biologically somewhat different. Not only are their bodies longer, slimmer, their feet almost as skillful at manipulating objects as their hands, but their society, having developed in a ring of translucent gas, has radically different conceptions of "ground" and "sky." Science and their history prior to arriving at the Smoke Ring is more mythological than archaeological; some tribes are lucky enough to have a Scientist who has access to tapes and readers with the data of the Discipline expedition.

Although the inhabitants of the Smoke Ring have largely forgotten Discipline, Discipline has not forgotten them. The ship is controlled by the recorded personality of Sharls Davis Kendy. Niven steps away from a true "artificial intelligence" by using recorded personalities; these, along with the concepts of "storage space" and "tapes" and "readers" make for a very analog vision of the future. As a recorded personality, however, Kendy is a very interesting character. Unlike an AI, who would presumably be extremely clever and patient, Kendy is a fallible being who makes a lot of mistakes (including letting the Discipline anywhere near the Smoke Ring, though he claims he has erased that part of the mutiny from his memory). Kendy is also our only connection to Niven's distant State, a somewhat totalitarian, surveillance-based system of distributed governance. As such, the duty to recover crew for the Discipline and continue its mission is vital.

This sense of urgency and necessity runs through all the plots of The Integral Trees. This is a survival story, actually multiple survival stories, set in a fantastic environment. The protagonists are refugees who survived the destruction of their tuft more from luck than any skill on their parts; as the only remaining members of the tribe, they have to start anew somewhere. But subsequent events make this very difficult. At first the refugees have to struggle to survive in the open air of the Smoke Ring, living on little more than some bark that splintered from their fractured, forlorn tree. Soon they have to deal with other inhabitants of the Smoke Ring, another tribe that has no compunctions about capturing slaves.

Many of the main characters experience a test of loyalty as they weigh the options for survival. Minya, once a member of the Dalton-Quinn Tuft and now married to one of the Quinn refugees, enters the story as an antagonist. With the destruction of the tree, she is stranded far from her tuft with the rest of the refugees, and out of pure practicality she marries one of the two available males. After becoming a slave, Minya learns she's pregnant, though she's not sure who the father is. Nevertheless, she strives to escape and reunite with her husband, whom she has known for only a few weeks.

Grad Jeffer, apprentice to the Scientist of the Quinn Tribe, finds himself apprenticed to the Scientist of the tribe that captures and enslaves the refugees. He is in that delicate position of collaborator: still a slave, but trusted and accorded with privileges beyond an ordinary slave's position; liked, essentially, by no one. Jeffer, as a Scientist, has the corrupted remnants of the Discipline crew's knowledge, as well as the tapes and reader to go with it. But this doesn't preclude his own crises of conscience, first when he is plotting and initiating a rebellion that results in the murder of a Scientist, and then later when he is conversing with Kendy aboard the CARM. Jeffer may not be the leader of Quinn Tribe, but he is an authority figure, and for much of the book he functions as a leader while the tribe tries to escape from the slaver tree.

And finally, we come back to Kendy, for whom the question of survival is twofold. Firstly, on a personal level, he wants to continue his mission. Babysitting the Smoke Ring civilization until it reaches a level that he can jumpstart and control must be boring. And as we learn early in the book, his memory capacity is severely limited, so he is constantly editing old memories to make room for new ones. How long can this go on before he is no longer himself? Or has that already happened? Secondly, Kendy needs to fulfil one of his missions: ensure the survival of the State. Although the Discipline's primary mission was to seed planets with the materials that would form complex life, every such ship is also a little pocket of the State, completely able to refound the State should it cease to exist elsewhere. The fact that the crew has so thoroughly mutinied and abandoned the values of the State must be incredibly galling for Kendy.

Or at least, that's the sense I get from his chapters. Reading The Integral Trees takes effort, and not just because of the odd setting. Niven teases us by offering very little exposition; almost everything about the Smoke Ring society is explained through action and a little dialogue. Once in a while, particularly during Kendy's chapters, we'll get longer infodumps, but they never go into the detail I'd like. We don't learn that much about the State, just enough to suggest a totalitarian government. The result is a very tight book focused only on telling a story about these characters and not concerning itself with other, secondary characters. Indeed, I can count on one hand the characters who feel real or three-dimensional to me, and even that might be a stretch.

This is the same problem I experienced in reading Ringworld. Niven is a very clever, creative writer with a fertile imagination. His characters, however, are flat, almost set pieces at times. And sometimes the interactions between them just don't feel real at all. Minya and Gavving's marriage really irked me at first; they've known each other for a day, and she proposes to him. I suppose this is justifiable by pointing out that this society has evolved for five hundred years, and so customs are bound to be different from our own. But it's not just the stark pragmatism at work here—that's a quality I really do see as emerging from the evolution of a society in free-fall. It's a question of loyalties, of dependencies and relationships. Some of the other characters also have a quick change of heart, convenient for Niven and the plot but problematic from the reader's perspective. Consequences for being an antagonist are almost invariably a slap on the wrist and, if you're lucky, marriage! By the time the refugees escape, with some now-converted antagonists and some allies in tow, it seems like there are lots of loose ends that Niven simply decides to truncate rather than resolve. This mutability in the dynamics between characters makes it very difficult to become invested in one character or another's survival, and that sort of pathos is essential to a good survival story. And since The Integral Trees is a survival story….

There are some brilliant things about this book, not the least of which is its superiority to Ringworld when it comes to worldbuilding. I thought that part of the back cover summary was an editor's hyperbole; it's not. Alas, that's not enough, not even for Niven. The story is basic, well-structured, but short when it comes to an emotional connection. It's stunted. Ringworld suffers from similar shortcomings, but it's still superior in that respect. Fortunately, they are both on the shorter side for science fiction, so you can easily make that decision for yourself.

It's no secret that I love absurdist humour, and the British do absurdism better than most. From Monty Python to Blackadder to Douglas Adams, Britain does it best. The Hitman Diaries attempts to continue this national tradition of elevating the obscure, the mundane, or the morally ambiguous into absurd and hilarious situations that entertain and enlighten all at once. Danny King doesn't quite succeed in this respect, and I'm not really sure what to make of this book.

I have reservations, but none of them are about the opening chapters. Our hitman, Ian Bridges, is having a date with a woman who works at a local candy shop. On their way out of the restaurant, two drunken patrons accost Ian, and before he can think better of it, his instincts take over and he shoots them dead. Then, of course:

I swung round once more and immediately found my final target. I was just about to pull the trigger when I suddenly remembered she was my date.

"I'm sorry," I told Janet, the gun a bare three inches from her forehead. "I'm a hitman."

"I won't tell anyone," she blubbed and covered her mouth with her little chubby hands.

"I know," I said. "I know you won't," then blew her brains out. People always say they won't tell anyone when there's a gun to their head but they always do. I lowered the automatic and took a moment out to let what I had just done sink in.

A minor misunderstanding results in three murders. King establishes Ian's prowess at dating (zero) and how integral being a hitman is to his being (so much so it's automatic). In the process of transporting these bodies to his boat for disposal, Ian attracts the attention of three more people, so of course he has to silence them too. Suddenly, in 20 pages, Ian has already killed six people—none of them assigned hits. The next time he speaks to his contact in the organization, we learn that this is not the first time it's happened:

"Please don't tell me you rubbed her out again!" he said, shaking his head, unable to look at me.

"It wasn't my fault. I couldn't help it."

"You couldn't help it? You took some bird out for dinner and you couldn't help murdering her. What's wrong with you, are you some sort of nutcase or something?"

"Look, I was compromised, I had no choice. Don't worry, everything's all right. There was no problem." …

… "What about your connection?"

"Other than buying papers and the odd chocolate bar from her, there isn't one." I told Logan about how I asked her out. About how I'd followed her home and asked her well away from the shop, the security cameras and anyone that knew her, and as I did so I couldn't help but wonder if I'd done that by accident or design. Design probably. Not with the intention of killing her, you understand, I probably just didn't want anyone seeing me asking a fat bird out. Or, more likely, I didn't want to risk the possibility of anyone seeing me getting blown out by a fat bird.

Not only does King juxtapose the grim job of a hitman with Ian's inability to connect to women (or even respect them), but, as he later confirms, he makes it clear that Ian is a sociopath (or, as Logan puts it, a nice "clockwork psychopath"). His instinct is to solve a problem by eliminating the people involved, contain the situation. He subconsciously follows this pattern in his daily life. And he has a hard time connecting to people emotionally, has had this problem his entire life.

It's mostly coincidental that I've read two books with sociopath first-person narrators in the past month. Unlike I am Not a Serial Killer's John Cleaver, however, Ian is comfortable with his role in life. He isn't a serial killer either. Rather, he has been moulded by some unscrupulous villains into an on-demand killer. And the over-the-top humour just as often reinforces this fact rather than hiding it. At one point, Ian lists all the various methods for killing people that come to his mind, and then goes on to examine some of the more common methods, such as stabbing or shooting, in greater detail, listing their advantages and disadvantages. His tone is practical, almost dismissive, which makes it very funny, but also very dark. This is a man who knows how to kill people, does it for a living, and doesn't feel guilty about it.

So how is Ian ever going to get a girl?

Ian's search for love seems to be the central plot of The Hitman Diaries, if a central plot it has. From poor candy-counter Janet to Angela to Adelaide, Ian doesn't have a lot of luck with women. He has issues with his dead mother, with whom he is constantly having conversations (although when he mentions this to Adelaide, he also says he's aware that she's dead and he's not actually talking to her). Oh, and he kills people for a living. Coupled with his inability to connect to people in general, this makes it difficult for Ian to have a stable relationship. I'm not sure I'd say that Ian is misogynistic, because as a sociopath I don't think he really hates anything, including women. He is just brutally honest when evaluating the women in his life: Janet is a "fat bird;" Angela is too devoted to her Alzheimer's-affected mother; Adelaide has a poor choice in roommates. He sees other people and their relationships in a stark, almost economical sense; where we might see a sweet girl who is a little overweight or a woman who is caring for her ailing mother, Ian sees people with liabilities.

It's fascinating to watch Ian balance his work with his almost-nonexistent social life, and much of the tension in The Hitman Diaries arises from the collision of the two. This is pretty standard when you're writing about something like the life of a hitman, and while I don't want to spoil the ending, you can probably figure out how it goes just from that hint. And Danny King's writing is mostly up to the task; it is perhaps even the best part of the novel, containing the type of witty social commentary that I love.

So why can't I love The Hitman Diaries more? I've been pondering that question for a week. I think, as with many genre-straddling books like this one, the problem lies within the combination of genre elements. The Hitman Diaries doesn't quite work as a love story between Ian and Adelaide. The complications that arise from his profession never congeal into a real conflict until much too close toward the end. None of the characters, besides Ian, are in any way multidimensional or well-rounded.

This is a book that, when viewed from one angle, looks complete and satisfactory. Turn it slightly, however, and you will quickly see how thin it is. There are great lines in this book, many more than what I've quoted here. I loved reading about Ian's assignments, listening to him describe how he will stake out a target and plan the assassination. I liked reading about his relationships too, and their invariably messy ends. But I needed more of both of these elements, and The Hitman Diaries doesn't deliver on that.

We have arrived at the end of a second trilogy, and I'm feeling regret—but not in a good way. Kushiel's Mercy at first seems like everything we need to send Imriel and Sidonie out in style. This is the culmination of Imriel's adventures, his final chance to sever himself from the taint of traitor's blood. And it's the final chapter in a slow, simmering love story.

Going into Kushiel's Mercy, Carey has set up two expectations. Firstly, we're going to see the resolution of Sidonie and Imriel's declaration of love. Secondly, Imriel will have to find his mother and bring her back to Terre d'Ange for execution. We knew he would have to do this ever since Melisande went missing back in Kushiel's Scion, and he acknowledges it just before Ysandre sets him the task. This is a difficult mission, and a perfect one with which to conclude Imriel's trilogy. It's so damn perfect, in fact, that I totally didn't see the twist coming; I was just so intent on contemplating the search for Melisande.

The twist is brilliant. Well, OK, I'm not a big fan of how Carey makes all her characters, including Phèdre and Joscelin, carry a big aggressive Idiot Ball for the entire novel. And the way Carey sets up the stakes, it's pretty obvious that Imriel is going to emerge the hero of Terre d'Ange, avert civil war, and dispel any notion that he could ever be the traitor his mother is. So this brilliant twist sows the seeds of its own mediocrity. Let us leave that aside, for the moment, and instead look at some of the better consequences of Carey's plotting.

The only way for Imriel to get close enough to the resident wizardy bad guy is to change his face. But wizards are good at detecting that sort of magic, so the transformation has to be good enough to fool the wizard—so good that it will fool Imriel as well. And this means that for the first time ever we see a shift in narrative perspective; as Imriel takes on the identity of Leander Maignard, so too does his narration. His voice changes noticeably, acquiring the haughty, dismissive, and enthusiastic attitude of Leander and dropping a lot of Imriel's moodiness. It is, in a way, quite refreshing. And it's fun, too, to see Imriel's new personality fall for Sidonie all over again.

But there's only so much of Imriel-as-Leander we can take before we need Imriel again. My patience was beginning to wear thin just as Carey instigated his restoration. When it happened, I remember looking at how much of the book was left and thinking, "Now what?" I was sceptical that there was enough story left to cover nearly 400 pages. In the end, Carey makes a good effort at it, but Kushiel's Mercy is a very messy book with a very messy plot.

Astegal, the Carthaginian general who initiates the mind-altering, princess-kidnapping plot, is an idiot. He's supposed to be some kind of military genius, but it seems like he failed to do the research when it comes to Terre d'Ange. Firstly, he chose to make an enemy of Imriel. This is a man who went halfway across the continent, nearly freezing to death in the process, to avenge his slain wife. This is a man raised by a woman who carries in her head the Name of God. This is a man who's on a first-name basis with the Master of the Straits. You do not mess with Imriel de la Courcel (unless you're Sidonie). Of course, villains always think they have the super-special plan that will finally dispatch the hero, so Astegal's audacity is justifiable in this sense.

His second mistake is less understandable. Having freed Sidonie of the enchantment enamouring her with Astegal, Imriel gets around to asking if she's pregnant with Astegal's child:

"No," Sidonie smiled wryly. "I married Astegal in Carthage. The rites were all Carthaginian. There was no invocation beseeching Eisheth for fertility." Her expression turned quizzical. "And I never said a word about it. I must have known, somewhere deep inside me, that I didn't love him."

So let me get this straight, Astegal: you go to all this trouble of working a spell that convinces everyone in the City of Elua, including Sidonie, that you and Sidonie are in love. You and your wizard ally have obviously put considerable thought and preparation into this plan. And having executed it successfully, you proceed to marry Sidonie and try to impregnate her—quite vigorously, she says. Yet at no point do you bother to learn or recall that D'Angeline women, and only D'Angeline women, can only become pregnant by first saying a prayer to their fertility goddess.

That, my good evil general, is a very big detail to overlook. If you still had a head, I would advise you to smack it right now. But Imriel and Sidonie took that from you, because you suck at your job.

What can I say? I like antagonists who present a credible threat, and Astegal never does. Even when it's a given that the hero will succeed, it's still possible to make the reader worry about the price involved. Carey does this in Kushiel's Chosen, where Phèdre meets with failure after failure, only succeeding near the very end, with a lot of help. Imriel faces no such difficulties. All he has to do is blunder forward through the story, trusting that the plot will take him to a successful conclusion.

While I'm being curmudgeonly, let me comment on the absurd amount of sex in Kushiel's Mercy. I haven't discussed the sexuality in this series much since Kushiel's Dart. It's a complex issue that would make a great paper for some English student. The central precept of D'Angeline society is "Love as thou wilt." This applies not only to selection of sexual partners but to the practice of sex itself. Sidonie and Imriel spend the first part of Kushiel's Mercy exploring BDSM, which is more mainstream in D'Angeline society than it is in ours. It's only natural that Imriel and Sidonie have some intense reunion sex after he rescues her from Astegal's enchantment. But it seems like these two drop their clothes every few pages, dallying often enough that their encounters tax even Carey's ability to vary her descriptions.

On a deeper level, I'm having a hard time deciding how much of the sexuality in this series is just an excuse to write sex scenes. The D'Angeline attitude toward sex may seem more permissive, but Carey shows us only a narrow slice of that world. BDSM was also Phèdre's thing; making it Sidonie and Imriel's thing makes me wonder if this is more about Carey's preferences for writing sex scenes than it is any thematic statement about sexuality. Another review of Kushiel's Justice expressed disappointment that the series hasn't featured gay male characters. There are allusions to such relationships, but unlike Phèdre's liaisons with Melisande and Nicola, we have yet to see it explicitly depicted. On the surface, it appears that Carey is conforming to the double standard that girl-on-girl is hot but guy-on-guy is not. However, it's important to remember that Imriel has legitimate baggage from his time in Daršanga; some of his experiences have left him with terrible memories associated with having sex with men. So I was pleasantly surprised to see Carey write a sex scene for Imriel-as-Leander and another man. So maybe this elision is not deliberate on Carey's part. Nevertheless, the seemingly-unrestricted sexuality of this series is actually much narrower than it initially appears.

We have come to the end of the second trilogy of this series. Just as Imriel has come of age beneath the shadow of his mother's deeds, this trilogy will forever be judged against the first one. And the problem with that comparison is that the two trilogies really are very similar. Rather than depart from the formula of the first three books, Imriel's adventures continue along lines similar to those of Phèdre, albeit with less Earth-shattering consequences. But no one has ever succeeded by lowering the stakes from previous stories! This trilogy, and Kushiel's Mercy, fails to break new ground or go to the next level, whether it's in the sex, the relationships, or the political intrigue that snares these characters at every turn. Kushiel's Mercy particularly is very messy, with antagonists who aren't the least bit threatening and a plot sabotaged by the sappy romance between Sidonie and Imriel. I think it's perfectly possible to read this book and thoroughly enjoy it (if you're sleep-walking through it), but this is not the conclusion to a trilogy that I was expecting.

My Reviews of Kushiel's Legacy:
← Kushiel's Justice | Naamah's Kiss (forthcoming) →

I don't recommend using fiction novels, particularly thrillers, as any kind of diagnostic test. That would be like diagnosing yourself with lupus after matching up symptoms to a patient on House. Still, if Dan Wells' look at the psychology of a boy who worries he's going to turn serial killer is anywhere near accurate, it's a little reassuring, because now I know I am not a serial killer.

I shall sweep that niggling issue of accuracy aside. Firstly, it's not all that essential, for reasons I'll explore later. Secondly, I'm not really qualified to address it, and I don't want to keep interjecting caveats every second sentence. Indeed, I am not the most ardent advocate of psychology in general. It is a very young field of science (and it took some convincing on the part of several friends that it is a science at all), and the human condition is so remarkably complex that psychology can't give us all the answers, at least not right now. So we can't construct a profile that will describe every serial killer. And not every sociopath is going to be a serial killer or even be at risk of becoming one. Wells himself emphasizes this with the interaction between John and Dr. Neblin. Nevertheless, it is still interesting to explore that potential, at least in one individual, to pursue a mode of action so foreign to everyday society.

That's really the draw of serial killers, right? I'm not actually much of a serial killer enthusiast myself. I have neither read nor watched that other serial killer series, somewhat from a lack of inclination but not out of any dislike for the concept. I understand the source of fascination though, and it's something Wells captures at the end of the first chapter:

"Not murderers," I said, "serial killers."

"That's the difference between you and the rest of the world, John. We don't see a difference."

On a moral level, John's Aunt Margaret is correct. However, I think most of us do make a distinction between serial killers and murderers; psychology certainly does. We're fascinated by the grisly act of killing another human being, yes—even single murders draw our attention—but serial killers are fascinating because their motive does not come from sudden passion or from a premeditated plan to remove someone perceived as an obstacle or a threat. Serial killers kill out of compulsion, out of a desire that, by definition, is something human. And if it's human, it means we might have it too—maybe not as much, maybe not as strong, but still there, lurking. So we compartmentalize, categorize, classify. Serial killers become something else, something inhuman, something Other. And as much as the Other frightens us, it fascinates us too.

Wells capitalizes on this by playing off our expectations of a serial killer as the Other. This is why the psychological verity of the portrayal of John Wayne Cleaver is not a big issue. It doesn't matter whether John is going to turn serial killer or not; all that matters is that the audience expects this of him. Notice, moreover, that the only character convinced John will be a serial killer is John (well, and Max, but that's really irrelevant here). Dr. Neblin, the only character with a degree in psychology, is not convinced of this. Neblin reminds John at every opportunity that his choices are his own; even if John has antisocial personality disorder, he's not destined to become a serial killer. Only John, a fifteen-year-old boy who is obsessed with reading about serial killers, tells us he thinks he is going to become a serial killer. And if that doesn't scream "unreliable narrator," I don't know what does.

So as its title honestly informs us prior to reading, I am Not a Serial Killer isn't a book about a serial killer! It's about a young man who thinks he will become a serial killer. And that makes it much more compelling than just another serial killer novel. There is tension over how John's perception of himself will contribute to the resolution of the plot. Will John kill the Clayton killer? Is John the Clayton Killer (unreliable narrator remember)?

From other reviews I've read, some people are very disappointed with the supernatural twist. At first, as a science-fiction fanatic, I wasn't sure what the problem was. So it wasn't what you were expecting? Boo-hoo. If every book were exactly what you expect every time, that would make for boring reading! However, upon further reflection, I think I understand the sense of betrayal these reviewers express. We already have the presence of one Other in the book; another Other feels like too much. Revealing that the Clayton Killer is a "demon," as John calls it, and not an "ordinary" human, distances us further from the killer, and thus from John's struggle to find and deal with the killer while preserving his own humanity. It acts as a cold shower to our suspense-laden aphrodisiac. Killing another human is wrong, full-stop. Killing a demon though? That's morally acceptable, perhaps even a moral obligation! Despite John's warnings that any such act, even one committed against a demon, is going to unleash his own inner monster, the ethical dilemma is no longer as compelling once we know the death of another human, even a serial killer, is taken off the table.

I wish the ramifications of Mr. Crowley's actions were addressed more thoroughly. Toward the end, we get more sympathy for the devil: Mr. Crowley never used to kill so many people; he just killed a single person and took their entire body. Now, however, he has a human wife, whom he loves, and he is maintaining his body in a piece-meal fashion for as long as possible so he can continue being with her. And when John finally dispatches him, Crowley begs John not to reveal the truth, especially not to Kay. John complies (who would believe him any way?), and everyone else gets to continue living under the illusion that Mr. Crowley was a harmless old man. So I can definitely sympathize with Mr. Crowley, a little, but still: he was killing people. Kind of not acceptable. I would have liked a little more exposition from Crowley than the one speech he gives John over the phone.

For John's plight, however, Mr. Crowley's demonic nature is significant. Here I'm choosing to trust John's story, at least the basics—you could definitely get all postmodern and interpret the "demon" part as some figment of John's imagination. Let's just be literalists for a moment.

Most significantly, once John learns that Mr. Crowley is a demon and the killer, he realizes he is not dealing with a serial killer. In fact, for a book you might assume is about serial killers, no actual serial killers make an appearance. Yes, Crowley kills multiple people, but he does it for a logical reason, not out of the kind of compulsion to kill we established as the defining characteristic of the serial killer. This actually provides a better reason for John to continue investigating the murders. If the Clayton Killer were just an ordinary human, the police could probably catch him or her. After all, that's their job. But the police are stereotypically unable to handle supernatural threats. John is the only one who knows the true nature of the killer—and, additionally, the identity of the killer—so it's his moral obligation to stop Mr. Crowley. To do that, however, John fears he will cross his own ethical line and enjoy the chase too much, enjoy the killing, even of a demon, enough to unleash that compulsion he thinks he has avoided so far.

In the end, John's mother eventually learns the truth, which leads to a moment that is more cathartic than compulsive on John's part. It's a healthy ending, not too melodramatic and not too sinister. There is foreshadowing that this is not the end of John's obsession with serial killers, since this is the first book in a trilogy. I am Not a Serial Killer stands alone, so don't worry about being committed if you read it. That being said, I think I would welcome a sequel. There are some unresolved issues with John's dad that could use a stage, and John's continued emotional development—his relationships with his mother, aunt, sister, and Brooke—could be interesting. When it comes to characterization, Wells' prose is a little flat—then again, we are dealing with a sociopath as the narrator, so perhaps that is justifiable.

I am Not a Serial Killer is not about serial killers, which will disappoint some people. Once you get beyond that, however, what remains is a compelling story about a young man who worries he could be a serial killer, and his struggle against his inner demons even as he fights outer ones. In other words, it's about being a teenager. With demons.

So you wrote a highly-successful trilogy. Congratulations! What now? Well, you could write a sequel trilogy: new narrator, same old world and intrigue. Some writers want to milk the cash cow for all it's worth. Other writers, like Jacqueline Carey, create worlds compelling enough to justify returning to them time and again. Sinking into Kushiel's Scion is like having an old friend come to visit: all the things that you remember are there, but time has passed, and with it has come change. So you get to know each other again, laugh over old jokes, and share new ones.

Imriel is really the only logical choice for narrator of this trilogy. He belongs to the next generation, and although he is third-in-line to the throne of Terre d'Ange, he is first-in-line to inherit the political turmoil set in motion by his exiled mother, Melisande. It's fitting from a dramatic perspective as well, for Imriel is Phèdre's adopted son, a successor of sorts for her. The son of the antagonist of the previous trilogy is the protagonist of the new trilogy, and his first order of business is related to exactly that issue: who the hell is Imriel de la Courcel, and is he good?

I kept on waiting for something to happen in this book. At each turn I expected someone—Imriel—to get kidnapped or beaten or framed for a crime. That last one sort of happens, and it is a minor if important event. I was looking for something big, something that would incite action and drive the rest of the plot, much like Imriel's kidnapping drives the plot of Kushiel's Avatar. That kind of plot bomb is absent from Kushiel's Scion. Most of the book covers the span of years prior to Imriel's coming-of-age, at which point he leaves for the university at Tiberium. Then, in the second movement, if you will, we get some action that influences Imriel's outlook, prompting him to return to the City of Elua for the book's recapitulation.

Now I realize I was doing what many other reviewers have done, which is compare Kushiel's Scion to Kushiel's Avatar. I think it's natural to want to compare two consecutive books in a series, and from the perspective of writing quality it's a valid comparison to make. Nevertheless, Kushiel's Avatar is the concluding volume in a trilogy, and as such its plot is constructed differently from Kushiel's Scion, which is the beginning of a trilogy. It's far more apt to compare this book with that other beginning, Kushiel's Dart. Indeed, then we see the similarities emerge.

As Kushiel's Dart does with Phèdre, this book quickly covers a number of years during Imriel's youth. Imriel is of noble birth, but both our narrators are outsiders to nobility, for he was raised as an orphan and a goatherd. Moreover, both of them have psychic burdens they will bear for the rest of their lives: Phèdre, of course, is Kushiel's chosen; Imriel has Daršanga, as well as the shadow of his mother's betrayal hanging over his deeds. Kushiel's Dart is Phèdre's coming-of-age novel, the story of how she comes to terms with who she is and ends up embracing a life into which she has been manipulated by Anafiel and Melisande. Likewise, Kushiel's Scion is Imriel's story of growing up. He is part of the Courcel family yet not a part, part of the Shahrizai family yet not a part. Restless from this sense of not belonging, he eventually strikes off beyond Terre d'Ange to seek some sense of direction. It's not adversity that Imriel needs; it's reassurance that he can be good, that he is not a slave to fate.

As far as the change in narrators goes, I think they're really interchangeable. Phèdre was a great narrator, and so is Imriel, because they're both Carey narrating with a single voice, one which uses a somewhat archaic, stilted vocabulary and syntax. I don't mean to say that they are the same person, and if you replaced Imriel with Phèdre, you'd definitely have a very different story. Yet the style of narration remains the same, which is both reassuring and a little disappointing.

Also much the same are the politics. I love the politics in this series. Carey achieves the proper balance between national interests, like the Alban succession issue, and the conspiracies among families and houses, like Bernadette de Trevalion's plot to murder Imriel. One of the reasons I find historical fiction so fascinating is its ability to portray that dynamic between the massive national conflicts and the smaller, personal conflicts that drive individuals. Epic fantasy can accomplish the same thing, and Carey is an excellent example of this. Ysandre may trust Imriel, love Imriel as her cousing; but as the queen, she has certain obligations. Obtaining justice is not as simple as accusing the guilty party and presenting evidence, not when such accusations might breed more distrust and discontent. As he matures, Imriel recognizes that this is part of being nobility. Instead of choosing to reveal Bernadette's plot, he blackmails her into secrecy in an attempt to prevent future blood feuds.

If anything, I wish there had been more politics. Most of the intrigue centres around the Unseen Guild, a secret society that manipulates events in Europa for its own purposes. This is the society that taught Anafiel Delaunay the ways of espionage. Imriel encounters the Guild in Tiberium, personified as Claudia Fulvia, wife of a Roman senator. They are just as interested in him as he is in them: having a Crown Prince of Terre d'Ange, someone who is third-in-line to the throne, in their organization would be incredibly beneficial. Imriel stumbles upon the Unseen Guild while trying to discover who taught Anafiel. Soon, however, he becomes obsessed with learning more about the Guild and their relationship to his exiled mother.

Honestly, the problem with having the Guild as adversaries (I'm deliberately avoiding the less neutral term of "antagonist") is that they're so damn shadowy. Aside from Claudia, and perhaps Canis, we don't knowingly meet any other Guild members. As a rule, I am suspicious about enemies who operate behind the scenes—they smack of plot device. To Carey's credit, the Guild is not the one that rides to Imriel's rescue when Lucca comes under siege. Still, they are far from a compelling addition to the canon.

As the first book in a trilogy, Kushiel's Scion captures the introductory flavour of Kushiel's Dart. Unfortunately, it lacks a big central conflict. Even the latter book has one in the form of the Skaldian invasion. The siege of Lucca is a major turning point in Imriel's life, but it lacks the gravity of previous events in the Kushiel series, where every book, including the first one, left Europa altered in some fundamental way. So in that sense, Carey did not meet the standards she set in her previous trilogy. But I'm not saying it's bad, and I'd venture that it's something more than good. In terms of characterization, which is a parameter I rank highly (often even higher than plot), this is a great book. For those who have read the first trilogy and are aching to return to Terre d'Ange, I don't think you'll be disappointed. I know, I miss Phèdre too. But every generation must eventually cede new adventures to the next one, and it's Imriel's time now.

My Reviews of Kushiel's Legacy:
← Kushiel's Avatar | Kushiel's Justice →

Imagine, if you will, that your body was home to thousands of nanotechnological devices. These devices are the hardware platform for software that controls anything from your heartbeat to your eye colour—the miraculous field known as bio/logics. With the right programming, you can enhance your senses, expand your memory, or cripple your body.

What if Apple decided which bio/logics programs you could run in your body?

That's the question I couldn't get out of my mind as I read Infoquake. David Louis Edelman has taken the typical cyberpunk route, and his Earth of the future is a fractured map of semi-anarchy. Instead of nation-states with centralized governments, individuals subscribe to L-PRACGs, "Local Political Representative Association of Civic Groups." L-PRACGs vary across a spectrum of governmentalism/libertarianism. People may also belong to creeds, which are sort of the secular successor to religion: organized ethical belief systems. Unlike L-PRACGs, however, many creeds hold actual power. The days of government are gone, and creeds, corporations, and the "Defense and Wellness Council" are the new players.

Bio/logics is the centrepiece of Infoquake. It's a software industry, the workhorse of the economy, and for people like Natch, it's almost a way of life. Anyone with the right equipment can create bio/logics programs and sell them on the Data Sea. There are certain entities that play quality control: Dr. Plugenpatch sets standards that any respectable bio/logics program must meet; the Defense and Wellness Council will act against anything perceived as a serious threat. Nevertheless, "black code" is still out there, and people do get infected. This isn't just a computer virus or a malicious phone app: black code can stop your heart.

So there are some elements who want to see a stronger centralized authority for the administration of bio/logics programs (and there are some elements who want the industry even more de-regulated and de-centralized). This reminds me of a similar ideological battle happening in the software industry today. Apple is by no means the only company guilty of this, but it's certainly the poster-child: only Apple gets to decide what runs on the iPhone. Of course, there are alternatives to the iPhone. But what if there weren't? What if one company had the monopoly over what programs literally ran your bodily functions, controlled what you perceive and remember? That is a very scary scenario.

It's also not quite what Infoquake is about. The theme is present in the conflict between Creed Surina and the Defense and Wellness Council, but the MacGuffin of MultiReal is so much more. It's a new technology, and new technology always scares those invested in the status quo. But it's also a catalyst for discussions about the world Edelman has created.

Which makes it all the more troubling that the first hint of MultiReal, indeed of anything mentioned on the back cover, comes almost halfway into the book! After briefly introducing us to the main characters, Edelman devotes the majority of the first 250 pages to Natch's childhood and backstory. It's all very interesting—indeed, it ended up being the more interesting half of the book—but there is a lot more exposition in Infoquake than need be. And that doesn't include the myriad appendices of terms, timelines, and people. Infoquake has one too many infodumps.

What Edelman has done isn't so much worldbuilding as it is construction of a vocabulary of the future. Dr. Plugenpatch, L-PRACG, hives, creeds, geosynchrons, ConfidentialWhisper, connectible, ROD, OCHRES, Data Sea . . . the list goes on. All this terminology makes this future seem functional. Yes, at times, it is overwhelming, but more because of the concepts than the jargon itself. I never felt overloaded by the terminology—and the glossary is useful—but I did have trouble grokking multi-projections, the nature of the Data Sea, and even bio/logic programming itself. Optical code? I have trouble visualizing in general, so I'm not sure I could even program holographically!

It's possible that my predilection for programming predisposes me toward partiality for Infoquake. I'm not sure how a non-programmer would enjoy it, although I think there's definitely more to the book than just a new way of creating software. This is a brave new world with new rules and new mores. And to see that, you need look no further than Natch.

Nominally our protagonist, Natch is still somewhat of a cipher even after Edelman divulges his backstory. I am still not sure what makes him better than his opponents, except that the narration is biased in his favour. Natch is a shrewd businessman and is as ruthless as many of his competitors. He has no qualms about using dirty tricks to get what he wants. It's one such trick that brings him to the attention of Margaret Surina, who lures Natch and his fiefcorp into taking the reins of the MultiReal project. Even though he has no idea what it is, not even its name, prior to taking the job, Natch has a feeling that this is what he has been looking for his entire life, a purpose, a direction.

I never quite warmed to Natch, and I'm sure this is intentional on Edelman's part, because Natch is not a hero. He's not meant to be a hero. Infoquake isn't about the underdog struggling to free the masses from the thumb of the institution, although that conflict is definitely there. No, Natch is another character in a drama no less than the fate of human society itself. We as readers might not care about what direction Natch pursues, but he might influence the course of the entire human species—MultiReal is that important, and Edelman convinced me of that if nothing else. Natch's world is already so different from ours and posed to get much weirder, yet it's still dealing with the same ideological issues that plague us today.

So I'm conflicted about Infoquake. On one hand, it's a mess of exposition, backstory, and unresolved plot. None of the characters are particularly compelling. On the other hand, there were still times when I couldn't stop reading. The idea bio/logics and its crucial place in society is just so fascinating that it shines despite the book's other flaws. Sometimes one great idea is all you need. But it helps if you have a little more than that.

Reading this book was like reading someone's plot summary of this book. I can't tell if it's Maria V. Snyder's writing or worldbuilding at fault; regardless, the outcome is the same: we are never fully-immersed in this story. Like a stage play, Poison Study is a diorama with two-dimensional scenery and live actors. The only thing keeping the fiction from tumbling down is that thin fourth wall.

Ixia is a former kingdom that suffered a coup d'etat just before Yelena was born. Throughout the book we hear horror stories of monarchy and how life under military discipline is better. I'm sure there's both truth and fiction in such propaganda, but not having seen the kingdom of Ixia, I can only judge its successor state. Now divided into eight military districts, creatively designated MD-1 through MD-8, Ixia is ruled by Commander Ambrose. Together with his generals, who each administer a district, the Commander (as he is called) crafted the military-like Code of Behaviour. Ixia is really serious about the rule of law, and there are no exceptions to the Code. Everyone works, everyone wears uniforms, and every punishment for every infraction is predictable. This really sucks for Yelena, who killed someone in self-defence, since the punishment for murder of any kind is execution.

On its surface, Ixian society is interesting. However, it is as much a fantasy as the magic that later appears in the book. I can easily imagine a military coup followed by an unrelenting Code of Behaviour. But to have such a code cover every possible infraction? I doubt we can ever develop such an iron-clad law that we would have no need of lawyers. Human behaviour is too dynamic, too intricate, to ever fully classify in such a manner. And humans are so creative—both when it comes to good acts and bad ones—that it wouldn't be long before someone ends up in front of the Commander for a crime as-yet unanticipated.

When it comes time for the plot to rescue us from plot summary, Poison Study struggles but doesn't find a niche. And this isn't actually a problem of plot so much as one of characterization. In particular, the two villains, Brazell and Mogkan, fall squarely into the sinister, moustache-twirling Snidely Whiplash school of villainy. In fact, nearly every antagonist in Poison Study is a brute, an idiot, or both. The exceptions are usually characters who turn (either from face to heel or vice versa), e.g., Valek and Rand. Valek begins as the stern, somewhat antagonistic master who will not hesitate to replace—i.e., kill—Yelena should she prove unsatisfactory as the food taster. He warms to her (understatement). Rand is the former king's cook, now the Commander's cook, who has gambling problems that make him beholden to a traitor. He also warms to Yelena (understatement laced with tragedy). These characters, in addition to Yelena, demonstrate that Snyder can write good characters, so Brazell and Mogkan rankle me even more. They just make all the classic villain mistakes, and Yelena's victory seems to owe more to those mistakes than any particularly clever planning on Yelena's part. I don't like those kinds of endings, and Yelena was definitely clever enough to win on her own.

To be fair to Snyder, I really liked Yelena, and she almost makes Poison Study worth reading. Her dilemma is real even if her world is not realistic. She has few allies and fewer friends, and she's still trying to run away from her past. Snyder's intriguing magic system doesn't get a lot of development in this book, something I assume gets remedied in Magic Study. Yelena's need to hide her magic is not, itself, a source of much suspense—we've all seen it before. But Snyder pairs this with a need to learn and develop her powers lest they overload her, which would be fatal to Yelena and dangerous for other practitioners. Thus, not only does Yelena have to keep her abilities secret from her magic-sensing master, but she has a year to develop them or face assassination by an Ixian sorceress. It's a tight deadline, and that is suspenseful.

I must admit, I was rather expecting Poison Study to have more to do with poison than magic. This isn't a criticism of Snyder, because it's her choice how to write the book; my interpretation of the title and the teaser just led me to expect something else. And it didn't quite prepare me for the sudden romance near the end—again, however, Snyder foreshadowed it and developed it throughout the story. So consider this a caution, not a criticism.

No, Poison Study is not a bad book. Unfortunately, watching Yelena reclaim her life—literally—and vanquish her personal demons, saving the country as bonus, is marred by a very pedestrian narrative style. The exposition is not so much dry as it is utilitarian. By focusing only on what is relevant to her plot and not on how Ixian society would realistically function, Snyder creates a world that serves its purpose but nothing more. It's the type of worldbuilding that is perfectly acceptable for entry into the country club of worlds, but only just, and all of the fancy-dressed well-to-do worlds look down on this one. And so do I.

Here we go again. I had no intention of reading Dan Brown's new Robert Langdon novel; torturing myself twice was enough. However, my mom gave it to me for my birthday last year—and my birthday is in a week, so I have delayed long enough. I'm not going to apologize for this review, and if you like Dan Brown's novels in any way, you might well be offended.

When considering how I would review this, the question that I had to conquer was: why so much vitriol? What makes other factually-inaccurate thrillers excusable while I crucify Dan Brown thrillers? There must be some reason that The Lost Symbol is exceedingly bad, even by the standards of people who believe a book can just be a "beach read." If no such reason exists, then I'm just hating on Dan Brown to be cool, and that's . . . not cool. Fortunately, there are plenty of reasons for my vituperation of The Lost Symbol.

Let's start with those so-called "facts" and "research" that are supposed to elevate this thriller into some sort of work possessing "culture" (whatever that is). No matter how you weigh this book, even if it's to ten decimal points, most of it is exposition. And dull exposition at that. Yes, some of Langdon's explanations about Masonic history are relevant to the plot. But most of these "facts" are just Dan Brown trying to show off how much research he did. For example, when a woman recognizes Langdon by his trademark turtleneck-sans-tie, Dan Brown mentions for our edification:

Neckties had been required six days a week when Langdon attended Phillips Exeter Academy, and despite the headmaster's romantic claim that the origin of the cravat went back to the silk fascalia worn by Roman orators to warm their vocal cords, Langdon knew that, etymologically, cravat actually derived from a ruthless band of "Croat" mercenaries who donned knotted neckerchiefs before they stormed into battle. To this day, this ancient battle garb was donned by modern office warriors hoping to intimidate their enemies in daily boardroom battles.

This paragraph might be defensible as character development, but Dan Brown is still showing off. There's really no reason to include it. At least he gets the etymology correct here—later, Langdon will ruminate on how we sign our letters "sincerely" because sincere comes from the Latin sine cera, "without wax." The OED tells me: "there is no probability in [this] old explanation."

I won't try to list all the factual errors in The Lost Symbol. That would bore both of us. The necktie is my paradigm case. Suffice it to say, Dan Brown's claims about factual accuracy annoy me, because they are so obviously false. The denouement of The Lost Symbol, once the thriller part of the plot is over, exists only so that Dan Brown can go on for another fifty pages about the Masonic secrets of Washington and how they promulgate a New Age syncretic philosophy. As a result, people who read this book looking for didactic fiction will come away with a wildly-skewed view of history and philosophy. People who want a thriller, on the other hand, should stop after chapter 125. People who want a good thriller should just stop, period, because they won't find one in this book.

Let's talk about philosophy now, as well as facts. The Lost Symbol focuses on Noetics. Dan Brown's lamentable and laughable author's note, titled "Fact," claims that "All rituals, science, artwork, and monuments in this novel are real." This is technically correct, in the sense that Noetics does exist . . . but it's not really a science. This is apparent at the end of chapter 7: "The truth was that Katherine was doing science so advanced that it no longer even resembled science." If your science no longer resembles science, then you aren't doing science any more. (Also, if your science lasts longer than four hours, please call a doctor.)

No, contrary to his lip service to factual accuracy, Dan Brown is content to repeat misconceptions and misrepresentations of science and philosophy if it fits his purposes. Now, if this were a work of science fiction, and Noetics was presented as some future development of human science, then I could go with it. However, Dan Brown is claiming Noetics is credibly a science in the present day. It's pseudoscience, or more appropriately, philosophy.

The distinction between science and philosophy is, admittedly, somewhat vague, especially the further back in time we go. However, this does not support the tiresome myth that The Lost Symbol repeats. As Peter puts it, "The scientific wisdom of the ancients was staggering . . . modern physics is only now beginning to comprehend it all." Two paragraphs later, we get a horrendously inaccurate explanation of quantum entanglement followed by a claim that this phenomenon is equivalent to the universal sense of "one-ness," that all things are interconnected, espoused by innumerable ancient philosophies. Even if such an equivalence were evident, it does not follow that "the ancients" (a laughably broad label) understood quantum entanglement theory in the sense that we do today.

Dan Brown is being very sneaky here in his support for this argument. Just prior to the entanglement theory discussion, Katherine says, "you already told me that the Egyptians understood levers and pulleys long before Newton." This sentence makes an implicit connection between the Egyptian use of levers and pulleys and Newton's explanation of how levers and pulleys function according to his laws of force and motion. Yet applying technology is very different from explaining why that technology functions. The Greeks also knew how to use pulleys and levers, but Aristotle's explanation for gravity was that all things want to return whence they come, hence everything falling back to Earth. This explanation is wrong, but it didn't preclude the continued use of pulley-and-lever technology. (For that matter, Newton's theories are also "wrong" in the sense that they have been superseded by Einstein's theory of general relativity. But Newton's formulas are much simpler and usually accurate enough for anything being done at a local level.)

If I sound didactic, it's because I'm trying to undo some of the damage done by The Lost Symbol. You might not think its portrayal of science matters, but when millions of people read a book that claims "all science presented here is real," perpetuating a mistaken view of how science functions is irresponsible. It's also lazy, because then it leads to remarks like this:

Katherine's work here had begun using modern science to answer ancient philosophical questions. Does anyone hear our prayers? Is there life after death? Do humans have souls? Incredibly, Katherine had answered all of these questions, and more. Scientifically. Conclusively. The methods she used were irrefutable. Even the most skeptical of people would be persuaded by the results of her experiments. If this information were published and made known, a fundamental shift would begin in the consciousness of man.

This is a classic example of Dan Brown's personal style of hyperbole, which dates back to the anti-science conspiracy at the core of Angels & Demons. There are three problems with the above passage. Firstly, the claim that science can ever be "conclusive" or that a scientist's methods result in "irrefutable" evidence. That's not how science is, at least right now, is wired. Scientists love to design hypothesis and then try to falsify those hypotheses, because proving something wrong means you can cross it off the list (and learn a lot during the investigation). Moreover, we are constantly tinkering with and tweaking scientific theories. No theory emerges spontaneously from the (nonexistent) ether, and no theory remains unchanging. Secondly, scientific discoveries do not change the world overnight. New results have to be confirmed, reproduced, reviewed . . . it takes time. Fundamental changes happen, but they take time. Finally, it's not the "most skeptical of people" Katherine has to worry about convincing. It's the irrational people. Aristotle might have opined that human beings have a rational principle, but I'm tempted to say he was wrong about that too (Aristotle was wrong about a lot of things!). It doesn't matter how "irrefutable" her evidence is; there will still be certain people who reject science in favour of . . . yeah.

It's just bad, OK? Dan Brown has no respect for science and no respect for research, since he lazily puts in whatever exposition he wants, accurate or not, and then claims it's all real anyway. In attempting to be sensational, Dan Brown succumbs to laziness, both in his research and his presentation of that research. And that's really all The Lost Symbol is: a tedious, lazy presentation of research about Masonic symbolism. I'm not certain how I can properly convey how much of this book is exposition and how little is actually plot.

If you have read my reviews of Angels & Demons and The Da Vinci Code, then you'll know that my primary complaint is that the two books are the same book, with some names and places changed. The Lost Symbol almost succumbs to this problem, although there are some notable differences. For instance, the erudite character with a physical disability is not the evil mastermind this time. Also, Dan Brown decided to skip any kind of intelligent puzzle in this book, opting instead of cheap tricks with boring reveals ("Oh, I was looking at the tattoo upside down. D'oh!"). Somehow, The Lost Symbol manages to be even worse than the preceding Robert Langdon books. Langdon continues to be a transparent author avatar—if you have any doubt of this, just compare Langdon's turtleneck-tweed ensemble from any of this three books with the author photo. Katherine Solomon is a transparent hot female scientist—sorry, pseudoscientist. The Lost Symbol is perhaps the worst book I have read, worse by far than The Art Thief and perhaps worse than The Expected One.

I don't know what Dan Brown's next novel is, but I don't want to read it. It disappoints me that The Lost Symbol is so successful, but I don't want to be one of those literature snobs who shakes his fist, saying, "Why can't the public see they're reading crap?!" But there is a big difference between popularity and literary quality.

I'll conclude with a shout-out to [a:Umberto Eco|1730|Umberto Eco|http://photo.goodreads.com/authors/1217498277p2/1730.jpg]. Eco is a semiotician and author of Foucault's Pendulum. If you're interested in conspiracies, that's the book you should be reading. Intelligent and sublime, it is not merely a conspiracy thriller. Unlike Dan Brown, Eco does not display contempt for his readers by including lazily-researched "facts." Instead, he creates a fable that is part conspiracy, part literary criticism, part philosophy, and wholly entertaining and enchanting. It is everything Dan Brown's novels are not, and if you have read this review prior to reading The Lost Symbol, I sincerely urge you to put down the Dan Bron novel and pick up an Umberto Eco one instead.

My Reviews of the Robert Langdon series:
← The Da Vinci Code