As with my review of Acacia, this review is a literary minefield of uber-spoilers and links to TVTropes.

Acacia's ending left a sinister taste in the air. The shining prince, Aliver Akaran, is dead. In his place his sister Corinn has retaken the throne. Nine years pass, and Aaden, her son by Hanish Mein, is growing into a fine young prince at his mother's side. Corinn herself has been busy studying The Song of Elenet, a sorcerer's handbook of sorts. She's had to make hard decisions to stay in power and quell the unrest following the defeat of the Mein. It shows.

If the Corinn of latter Acacia days was reserved and calculating, The Other Lands sees her transform from High Queen to Knight Templar, and it's really scary. Corinn is desperate for a replacement for the mist, and she commissions an alternative drug consumed through wine. It's more addictive than mist and has fewer side-effects. Sounds perfect, but since almost everyone drinks wine, it would be really easy to get a significant proportion of the population addicted—oh, and no one bothered to test what happens when someone is deprived of the drug indefinitely. But that doesn't bother Corinn as much as the possibility that some people will disagree with her.

Don't let my flippant tone mislead you, however; Corrin is not merely a caricature of the queen who goes too far. We also get to see the woman behind the queen. Corinn regularly expresses her doubts—almost regrets—about how she has to behave in order to maintain control. Her only joys in life come from Aaden and learning sorcery. And this isn't entirely her fault: Corinn has trust issues. Her mother, to whom she was especially close, died. Her father died. Her first love died. She fell in love with her enemy, Hanish Mein, then learned he was planning to kill her (should have seen that one coming, Princess). In this book, she permits herself a flirtation with King Grae, only to learn that he's involved with some peasant rebels. I can't wait to find out how she reacts when she learns that her amateur attempts at sorcery are endangering Acacia more than the league or the Auldek!

Speaking of the Auldek, Dariel's voyage to the Other Lands is the other half of this book. It's not quite as interesting as Corinn's machinations, because it offers less of an emotional purchase for the reader. Dariel is the Akaran who gets the least amount of development, almost as if Durham doesn't know what to do with him. Corinn is the scheming queen; Mena is the badass but weary warrior; Dariel is . . . I'm not sure. So Durham, through Corinn, packs him off to the Other Lands where he gets imprisoned, tortured, tattooed, and then leads former quota slaves on a raid! It's somewhat convoluted . . . but I guess it works.

Despite my reservations about Dariel's characterization, I'm pleased that Durham took us over the Gray Slopes in the second book. We learn more about the nature of the Lothan Aklun and, by extension, sorcery. The relationship between the Auldek and Numrek, as well as the reason for the Numrek's arrival in the Known World, is made clear. And these two plot points are connected, for the Lothan Aklun have fundamentally altered Auldek and Numrek society. By making the Auldek immortal yet sterile through soul transfer, the Lothan Aklun warped this warrior culture into something stagnant, dependent upon them for quota slaves to function as "children" of a sort. With the Lothan Aklun gone and the Numrek returned with tidings of a land where Auldek will be fertile and a weak people is just waiting to be conquered . . . well, the Auldek jump at the chance for some real battle, and you can't blame them. Indeed, although the Auldek are brutal and brutish, there is something earnest about their motivations. As Rialos notes, who is to say that the Acacian time for dominance hasn't come to an end? Perhaps it is time for the Auldek to reign. This hearkens to the ambiguous nature of the Akaran versus Mein conflict in Acacia. Once again the Akarans represent "the good guys," but they don't do a very good job at it.

The League of Vessels shows its teeth in this book with its fait accompli massacre of the Lothan Aklun. Back when Leodan first mentioned them in Acacia, the words were alien, disturbing: "Lothan Aklun." I pictured them as sorcerers, yes, but as terrible and incomprehensible beings. Even after the League revealed the Lothan Aklun were to the Auldek as the League is to the Acacians, I held out hope. In a way, that hope remains intact, since we didn't actually get to meet the Lothan Aklun—they were all dead by the time we finally visit the Other Lands, so they remain a mystery. But I digress: after spending all of the last book cackling about how the league is the "real power" in the world, Sire Dagon finally has some actions to back up those empty words. At first, when it's apparent that Sire Neen overstepped himself, Sire Dagon's panicked reaction seems to indicate that the league will lose just as much in the coming war as will the Acacians. But the meeting of the Senior Council belies this emotional interpretation. The league is even more cold and calculating than Corinn, who uses sorcery to turn Mena's dragon's unborn babies into killers.

Oh yeah, in what is probably the most obvious embrace of a fantasy trope yet, Mena gets a pet dragon. The moment she was carried away by the dragon during their attempts to kill it, I called that it would become Mena's companion. And I hate the fact that Corinn's manipulations of Mena and the dragon tug at my heart. I don't want the baby dragons to be beasts of war! But it's no use. It may be the most dull and conventional subplot in the book, but it still snares me with pathos. Damn you, Durham!

That is ultimately the measure of the book, is it not? Durham might be playing with very conventional tropes here, but he plays with them well. And like its predecessor, The Other Lands knows when to avert the tropes rather than embrace them. In fact, I would go so far as to say that this book is better than Acacia. It does exactly what the second book in a trilogy must accomplish: it further develops the characters, answers questions raised in the first book, and raises new questions. Above all, The Other Lands raises the stakes. There's nothing like that image of an unstoppable Auldek army or the Santoth's warning of cracks in the fabric of reality to cause a metaphorical shiver or two in the reader's spine. And I'm genuinely uncertain how the trilogy will resolve these conflicts: while it's obvious that the Auldeks cannot win, that doesn't imply an Akaran victory.

That's what I like about this trilogy. Durham is writing a historical epic. It's set in a world with magic, soul-transfer devices, and fantastical animals . . . but people are still people, and they're still greedy for glory and power. Like many other great fantasy authors (you know who I'm talking about), Durham balances epic fantasy with epic history to give us something familiar yet much more fulfilling than the bland "farmboy saves the world" fast-food fantasy that codifies the cliché.

For those who couldn't finish Acacia, whether it's Durham's expository style or just a somewhat lagging plot, this is one of those rare occasions where I endorse starting the series with the second book. The Other Lands doesn't quite "stand alone" in a strict sense; after all, it ends on a very dramatic cliffhanger. However, it is separated from the first novel by nine years, and the recap at the beginning of this book has everything you really need to know about what happened in Acacia. So in that respect, The Other Lands is the perfect opportunity to give David Anthony Durham's trilogy a second chance. And if ever there were a trilogy deserving of one, this is it.

My Reviews of the Acacia Trilogy:
← Acacia: The War with the Mein | Acacia 3 (forthcoming) →

Damn it, Mary Doria Russell made me cry again!

Culture class is once again the culprit, although this time it's Nazi anti-Semitism versus the Italian resistance instead of Jesuits and scientists versus aliens on Alpha Centauri. A Thread of Grace begins with Italy's surrender to the Allies, and from the Jewish perspective of the book, this is one of history's great ironies. It's a relief that Italy has surrendered; to be sure, this is a turning point in the war. Jews in the Italian-occupied territories were safe from the Nazis, but now the Italian army is going home. Many Jewish families choose to accompany it over the mountains, but when they arrive in Italy, they find the Germans are there too. So much for the war being over.

Irony is recurrent in A Thread of Grace, often as the companion of macabre humour. Most of this book is obvious and predictable. It's easy to guess that Claudette and Santino will fall in love; it's obvious that Stefania is the missing Steffi; when Renzo and his elderly mother team up to free Iacopo, is it really a surprise when she doesn't make it out alive? Tragedy meets the main characters at every turn, and the attrition rate is incredibly high, even for a war novel. But this irony and predictability work in tandem to ramp up the pathos. It's called foreshadowing. We know bad things will happen, because that's a given for any story, doubly so for WWII novels. But we start having an inkling of what specific fates await these characters, all of our characters. As the story draws toward a close, these foreshadowed fates tighten their grasp around our hearts, refusing to let go. Claudette, the stalwart widow; Renzo, embracing irony to the end; Osvaldo, a flawed priest with so much courage.

These are all characters worth our time and empathy. I'll admit, sometimes they seemed to blend together. (This might be a result of every character having about seven different names and endearments; now I understand why we get a dramatis personae.) But it's worth the effort to distinguish between the characters and understand their individual sorrows.

Claudette is, as I mentioned before, a widow. Well, she starts as a precocious fourteen-year-old, marries young, and becomes a widow. The war takes from her all her family, beginning with her mother (though she doesn't acknowledge it for a long time), then her father, and finally her newfound husband. Before he leaves her to turn himself in for the "crime" of killing several Nazis who were gang-raping a young woman, he and Claudette conceive a child. Lest you accuse MDR of any false sentimentality, however, I'll disabuse you right now: the child is prematurely born and dies soon after. This is not a book about miracles; it is a book about humility in the face of great catastrophe.

Renzo is one of my favourite characters. He is the trickster of the group, always ready with a confidence game or deception to trip up the Germans. In particular, he loves disguises, to the point of establishing an alternative Aryan identity of "Ugo Messner." This leads him to an unfortunate and ironic end at the hands of his fellow countrymen, who recognize him only as Ugo and not Renzo when the time comes to punish the Germans who don't manage to retreat. But it's not all fun and games for Renzo. There is a deeper sadness about him, a melancholy made evident by his attachment to alcohol. He is literally and deliberately drinking himself to death over his guilt for bombing a Red Cross hospital in Abyssinia. The action continues to haunt him as he helps coordinate the resistance. Renzo is a man for whom happiness comes only in the momentary joy that accompanies children playing; long-lasting contentment and peace, he knows, is forever beyond his reach.

Schramm is less likable, in that he is a former Nazi and readily confesses to sharing some of their ideology. It's not clear how much of that ideology he has renounced; certainly he struggles with long-held views on the mercifulness of euthanizing the mentally ill and weak. His most memorable scene is a confrontation with Mirella. First he reassures her that malnutrition was not the cause of her second child's Down's syndrome. Then he goes on, unfortunately, to mention that the child's accidental death was a blessing, for no one with Down's syndrome could live a fulfilling life, and children with such conditions just drive families apart. Mirella fumes at such an assertion. Schramm doesn't mean to upset her or to proselytize Nazism. He's just internalized, through his medical training, these beliefs, to the point that they are present and on the tip of his tongue.

I could go on at length about other characters, but the above three were my favourites. It's a shame that MDR did not extend their complexity and depth to her antagonists. The Germans representing the occupying forces are a joke. Von Thadden is the intelligent but oblivious general who moves for mysterious reasons and ends up dead because of it. Reinecke is the competent but unimaginative aide. And Arthur Huppenkothen (AH!) is the caricature of an uptight Gestapo who takes his loyalty to the Führer and the Vaterland entirely too seriously. Even the tone in which these characters are written is bumbling and supercilious. This is something that could work well in another type of WWII novel, but it really undermines the emotional chord that MDR maintains throughout the rest of the book. I just can't take von Thadden or Huppenkothen seriously, even if they are villains who order reprisals against civilians.

Likewise, the Italians and Jews we meet are reluctant heroes or neutral to the partisan cause. Just once I would have liked to see a collaborator, someone who sided with the Germans out of fascist solidarity. Battista comes close, being a fascist and somewhat temperamental, but it's clear he's closer in allegiance to the partisans than to the Nazis. This is a peculiar omission in an otherwise well-rounded story.

The plot, you'll notice, I've largely avoided discussing, because it's not at all remarkable. It's just the minutiae of these characters' struggles to survive under German occupation and repel the Germans from Italy. There are a few memorable scenes, such as Schramm's aforementioned confrontation with Mirella and the subsequent scare with the undetonated bomb. For the most part, however, they are generic misfortunes. This seems to be an artifact of how MDR wrote the characters to stand for all refugees and all partisans; A Thread of Grace is an unapologetic microcosm for the humanity and succour the Italians extended to the Jews. I just wish the characters were more reified, less archetypal.

Yet I found myself tearing up at the end of the book. It's not sappy, and it isn't even very sentimental. MDR does her best to pull out all the stops; the protagonists lose family, friends, and fortune. This unrelenting commitment to the worst possible scenario makes the book work, preserves the eponymous "thread of grace" as an act of compassion, limited in its abilities rather than a panacea. It's not going to work out all right, and pretending otherwise would be insulting. A Thread of Grace is moving precisely because it acknowledges this part of the tragedy of World War II. It is a reminder that when big gestures fail and fixing the problem isn't possible, sometimes you just have to do what you can. Sometimes it won't be enough. But once in a while, you make a difference.

This may not be evident, but I tend to avoid historical fiction set during World War II. I'm not sure why: it's an obvious (perhaps too obvious) source of material for exploring the human condition. I'm not squeamish about the details of the Holocaust. Maybe it's just that a lot of World War II fiction focuses on the battles, the military strategy and tactics, and it's military fiction that I'm avoiding. In the last month, however, I read Time's Arrow and The Kindly Ones, both of which are memoirs to an extent; now I'm reading A Thread of Grace. Compared to Martin Amis, Jonathan Littell gets at least one thing right: he tells the story in roughly chronological order. And you know what, Amis? It works better that way. Unfortunately, The Kindly Ones eludes the masterpiece status being accorded to it by some reviewers. Maybe it deserves more credit than I'm willing to give it, but some of the critical acclaim it has received is just . . . silly.

The back cover of my edition has a blurb from Kirkus Reviews: "Littell's apocalyptic ending is like nothing else in the literature. . . . The closing is a tour de force. But so is the entire book . . . with not a wasted word." That is serious hyperbole for any book, and it's outright preposterous for this ponderous 983-page novel. A book this thick does not get the benefit of a doubt. And the page count is only the beginning, for The Kindly Ones shelters monstrous multi-page paragraphs—in fact, I think no paragraph is under one page in length, and I counted one as long as seven pages. If the scope of this novel is broad enough to stretch from occupied France to the Russian front, the level of detail dives down toward the infinitesimal. This book is a prime example of why I have a "literary pretentious" shelf at all.

Of course, pretentiousness and ponderousness are not ipso facto bad. Still, there is a reason that all fiction must elide certain parts of the narrative; it's simply impractical to include every detail about every event from the beginning to the end of the story. An author chisels a good narrative from a block of wild, untamed story, wrapping it in perspectives and limitations until we can comprehend the tale. The skill requires knowing which parts to remove as well as which parts to keep (and a good editor helps too). As with any rule of writing, it's permissible to bend or break this one. But I'm sceptical The Kindly Ones earns such permission. It's obvious that Littell has done his research, and this results in an immersive depiction of Nazi Europe I have not often encountered. Nevertheless, for every harrowing description of the treatment of prisoners or the twisted veneer of civilization in Berlin, there is a passage submerged in a quagmire of impenetrable military jargon from which the glossary at the end provides no relief. Reading this book is a little bit like going to war against it.

Though the book itself may sometimes forget this fact, The Kindly Ones is a memoir. Maximilien Aue is an officer in the SS, but he is not a soldier, not in the classical, warrior sense. He is a bureaucrat, a legal scholar—an intellectual, which is always an interesting and controversial word. There is plenty of violence, death, and bloodshed, but this is not a book about the battles or the strategy. Aue himself, when quizzed on these subjects, reminds people that strategy isn't his department: he's a paper-pusher who, for some reason, often ends up too close to the firing line, whether literal or metaphorical. Most importantly, Aue offers us—or seems to offer us—the perspective of a Nazi soldier who does not unreservedly hate all Jews and want to wipe them from the face of the Earth. Yes, he works toward this goal, but only because it's a logistical necessity toward winning the war—or so he claims. Whether or not Aue's apathy toward anti-Semitism is genuine, Littell does manage to create a complex picture of German attitudes toward the Holocaust. He emphasizes that the Nazi treatment of Jews extended to other demographics as well. Most importantly, amid the rabid and stereotypical Jew-hating Nazis he includes soldiers and citizens who, far from hating Jews, regret and lament the Führer's Final Solution. In a way, these people's existence is even more terrifying than the existence of villains like Hitler and Himmler—they are a reminder that supposedly rational and reasonable individuals recognized how wrong the Holocaust was and still did nothing about it. Sure, we can demonize every SS man and claim that they were all pure evil. Yet that, in my opinion, diminishes the sincerity with which we remember the Holocaust. It is a manufacturing of an Other where there is none, an attempt to distance ourselves from those who committed these atrocities. Rightly horrified by the Holocaust, we declare, "Only Others could have done this, only monsters," because it reassures us that we do not possess any such darkness within ourselves.

This conceit Aue seeks to refute. Almost immediately he explains that, regardless of his flaws (and there are oh so many) he is still a human being:

But I don't think I'm a devil. There were always reasons for what I did. Good reasons or bad reasons, I don't know, in any case human reasons. Those who kill are humans, just like those who are killed, that's what's terrible.

The tragedy is not that extremist bigots exist but that ordinary people will, given the proper motivation, follow those bigots and participate in disasters like the Holocaust. War is terrible precisely because it is not a natural disaster, an act of God that we can neither prevent nor mitigate. War is a human action, an evil perpetrated on humans by humans. And few humans can ever say that they will never kill, regardless of the circumstance:

You can never say: I shall never kill, that's impossible; the most you can say is: I hope I shall never kill. I too hoped so, I too wanted to live a good and useful life, to be a man among men, equal to others, I too wanted to add my brick to our common house. But my hopes were dashed, and my sincerity was betrayed and placed at the services of an ultimately evil and corrupt work, and I crossed over to the dark shores, and all this evil entered my own life, and none of this can be made whole, ever.

This passage affected me the most. It's a reminder of the uncomfortable truth of my own humanity. I'm not saying I'd sign up for the SS and start marching and saluting the Führer. But maybe I wouldn't be brave enough to stand against it. And certainly, given the right circumstances, I could be driven to kill.

So Littell reaches into the core of my being . . . on page 24, barely 2 per cent of the way through this epic. Yes, everything after this point is downhill (although not evenly so; there are various crests and troughs along the way). There are several reasons for this decline, but one in particular relates to Littell's theme of ordinary people participating in extraordinary atrocities. Aue insists that he is "a man like other men, I am a man like you. I tell you I am just like you!" Except he isn't. At the extreme end, Littell has decided to rehash the Oresteia with Nazis. Aue is a psychopath. He murders his mother and stepfather, and later, several more people in cold blood. I'm willing to attribute these over-the-top actions to the bullet he takes through the brain while in Stalingrad. Still, he was having fantasies about his sister long before he joined the SS; they just intensify as the war goes on and Aue becomes increasingly unhinged and unpredictable. I don't begrudge Littell his Greek allusions or Aue's psychological baggage—but they do bely any claim that Aue is somehow "like us."

Honestly, though, I didn't get the point of Aue's baggage. If we want to get Freudian, we're supposed to believe it all stems from animosity toward a harsh, and later absentee, father. He resents his mother for not breastfeeding him (he was allergic to her milk). And his frustrated, unrequited desire for his sister has fouled any notion of heterosexual intimacy; rather, he seeks sodomy with other men in an attempt to feel closer to his sister through the act of penetration. But what's the point of the hallucinatory, unreliable flashbacks and memories that Aue recounts to us? Is this Littell's way of justifying Aue's solitary nature (why does this need to be justified)? Or does Littell include this out of the sheer disturbing fascination it provokes? This part of the story culminates in Aue's complete surrender to his fantasies while occupying his sister's empty house in Pomerania. Aue has spent the last week wandering his sister's house while naked, masturbating in the woods, and experiencing . . . scatological perturbations. Thomas, arguably his only friend, comes to retrieve him. The Russians have advanced almost past this point, and their return to Berlin becomes a flight from the encroaching enemy. But by this point in the novel, I'm skimming, and I've lost any sense of sympathy or empathy for Aue.

If Maximilien Aue were the only thing The Kindly Ones had to offer, it would be a sorry excuse for a novel. Fortunately, Littell's prose supplies solutions as well as problems. Aue shows us aspects of the war that, if not undocumented in fiction, certainly escape the history books. In school, I learned about World War II as a series of episodic battles, culminating in V-E and V-J days. Perhaps necessarily simplistic, this presentation ignores the quotidian operations behind the front. The two most captivating parts of this slow-paced story were Stalingrad and the latter half of Berlin. In both cases, Aue was involved in administrative work. Normally that would be dull, but in this case it provides a perspective on the war effort to which I am unaccustomed.

Also, there are some serious ruminations on ideology and methodology in this book. Aue has a nice conversation with a Communist prisoner, who compares National Socialism to Communism: both are deterministic and assert the existence of an objective enemy. These philosophical digressions are a welcome interlude from the jargon-laden descriptions of military activity. Now if only the dialogue was separated by paragraphs . . . ugh.

And while Aue did not impress me, and Thomas was very transparently opportunistic, there were two characters who found a place in my heart. Both met untimely ends. Voss, a linguist who befriends Aue, is the least evil Nazi I've ever seen. He's a specialist in Indo-Germanic languages, but he's using the war as an excuse to plunder rare texts from the libraries of occupied countries. (OK, this might be an evil act, but when you're up against "killing all the Jews," even the destruction of cultural heritage pales in comparison.) Piontek, Aue's driver, is loyal and competent. He reminds me a little of another character, Ivan, who protects Aue while he's in Stalingrad. Piontek is a grunt, and thus doesn't have much personality of his own, but along with Thomas and Helene he is one of the few people with whom Aue has any sort of healthy comradeship. The emphasis there is on "healthy." Aue's experiences during wartime are, for the most part, distinctly unhealthy. And he's right to blame the war—after all, what is it good for? Yet the war can't be entirely to blame, and Aue never does seem contrite, just crazy.

The Kindly Ones consists of many serious, worthwhile ideas suspended in a robust but tasteless broth of prose. Is it too long? Well, it does itself no favours by being this length, and a shorter book would probably earn more leniency (I'm not saying the system is fair). To condemn it on length alone is a shallow assessment, though. The Kindly Ones isn't just overly long; it's messy, so merely cutting out material isn't going to remedy much. There are fascinating and moving parts to this book, enough so that it's not a total loss. But I can't be much more enthusiastic than that, nor can I really recommend it to others. And that's where the length becomes the true issue: pages are investments, and for all of Littell's obvious research and effort, The Kindly Ones is an investment that provides little return.

I have a question, for you, dear reader of this review: how many times in your life have you encountered a novel printed entirely in sans-serif font? I'm willing to bet the number you come up with is, if not "zero," then very low indeed—on the higher end, perhaps, if you read more self-published/POD fiction than I do. Reason Reigns is the first book I can ever recall reading in sans-serif font, and until now, I've given scant thought to the fact that the publishing industry adheres to a serif standard for its novels. I'm not sure how well the science supports the position that "serif fonts are easier to read," but it's certainly true that thanks to this nearly universal usage of them, I am used to serif fonts in my novels and conditioned to expect them. I don't expect novels to deviate from this, and when they do, it becomes that much harder to pay attention to the story, because all the while I'm worrying about the typeface. Thus, when I opened Reason Reigns and found a sans-serif bonanza, I was stymied.

That feeling didn't go away.

This is probably my fault. I somehow got it into my head that this was a book about the conflict between reason and irrationality, that it was set in a world at a time roughly analogous to our Enlightenment. Now that I think about it, the odd cadence and syntax of the back cover copy should have alerted me that this book is something else entirely. That being said, it took me until page 3 to realize exactly what was going on.

It should not come as a surprise, especially if you've read my reviews of The Sword of Truth series, that I'm not a fan of Objectivism, mostly because I find it rather silly. So when I realized that I had stumbled onto a thinly-veiled treatise on the subject, a hitherto-silent voice in my brain suddenly begun yelling, "Run away, Ben! Run away now!" Unfortunately, I am stubborn and hate to give up on a book, so I persevered.

This is the tale of my miraculous survival and inexorable defeat.

One good thing came out of my attempt at reading Reason Reigns: I have a lot more respect for Terry Goodkind as a writer. He might lay on the philosophy in large gobs of speeches, narration, straw men, and Mary Sues, but he can actually tell a story. Say what you might about the series, and especially its protagonist, some of the Sword of Truth books aren't that bad. They are at least readable.

The book opens—as far as I can tell, because the abstract diction made it difficult to follow what was happening—with a doctor refusing to provide medicine, which he invented, that is the only known cure for a deadly disease. His reason?

"As I will not be ruled by a single human being, neither will I forfeit my rights to the public. An emperor has no claim on me; neither does a poor man. Need is not a claim."

As the movie trailer voiceover might say, "In a world where doctors do not take the Hippocratic Oath … one man stands against all those who would dare live without paying him for the privilege!" And, let me be clear, this doctor, Ari Hugo, is supposed to be a good guy. We're supposed to be cheering for someone who sits around cackling about how awesome it is that those darn poor people haven't violated his right to make a profit off his medicine. Somewhere, the shade of Charles Dickens is having a conniption.

The next paragraph goes on:

Many appreciated Ari's principled stance which was in keeping with the individual rights enshrined in the island's Constitution. But some vowed to destroy him. Each thought, "Ari is a danger to our cause and to society. He must be stopped!"

And this is really where the problems with the book, in terms of its incoherent style, become apparent. In a lighter book that aims for the absurd, like Liberation: Being the Adventures of the Slick Six After the Collapse of the United States of America, this type of melodrama might work. However, it is regrettably, gobsmackingly clear that Ilyn Ross and Reason Reigns are utterly serious. More's the pity.

It's also vague. It speaks of antagonists to Ari's cause as if they are a nebulous, unseen force that threaten him at every corner. And it tells me nothing about either Ari's supporters or his opponents, except that apparently in the world of Reason Reigns, if you disagree with someone, you are morally obligated to "destroy" them.…

Moving on to page 4, we arrive at my next "WTF" sticky note: a conversation between Lola, Ari's ten-year-old daughter, and a classmate:

"It's good to be humble."

"Why?"

"Everybody says so."

"I am not humble," Lola declared. "I respect and love myself. I always do my best because I don't ever want to feel low and small."

Lola's classmate realized that self-love was the hallmark of a good person.

This is the point where I realized the Objectivist subtext. We have a ten-year-old girl telling her classmate about how the best thing to do is "love oneself" and condemn modesty.

Reason Reigns employs flashbacks that are mercifully labelled in large letters at each chapter heading. It starts in the present in what is essentially a prologue, then it jumps back forty years and works its way back to the present day over about fifty pages. This type of narrative structure is fine, ordinarily, but the same problems I had comprehending the plot made it difficult to distinguish between any changes in the time period. Every chapter, every set of characters, every single conversation, sounds very similar. It's bland.

So a few chapters down the road, we get to learn how Ari married the woman who becomes Lola's mother. Let's watch:

The lady saw Ari enter the bookstore. His confident bearing caught her eye. She looked at him closely and felt attraction for the first time. He had an athletic, six-foot-five-inch frame, ruddy complexion, short, dark, wavy hair, and a strong face with a perfectly chiseled nose. The lady approached and engaged him in a conversation. She looked into his eyes. They conveyed a powerful intelligence. She fell in love.

"I am Ari. You must love reading. You know a lot about books."

"I work here. I am Glenda."

"Glenda, may I invite you for dinner?"

So Ari has the physique of a Greek god. Good to know. Oh, and following this conversation, Ari and Glenda get married after 4 days, and that's when they learn each other's last names.

No one talks like that. It's the exact opposite of natural conversation, at least among people who are older than five. Stilted dialogue is a big problem in Reason Reigns. Here's some more:

"Jaya is now forty-four years old." Ari remembered details. "Jon Ray is the policeman's son. He is twenty-one years old. Who is the bride?"

This is As You Know exposition in its rawest form. Ari is stating facts like he's some kind of computer program. He's not human. While I like to entertain the notion of "love at first sight" and wholly support authors who choose to include it in their fiction, Ari and Glenda's relationship tests even my credulity. They fall in love and get married after 4 days? With nary a fight or disagreement between them? It's not believable. You might even call it … unreasonable.

So yeah, I'm not a fan of Objectivism, but that is far from my only (or even my major) objection to this book. I should be able to read a book whose themes I disagree with and, if not enjoy it, at least finish it. I did it for The Sword of Truth. Unfortunately, beyond its questionable philosophical underpinnings, Reason Reigns just isn't a good novel. The prose is lacklustre in a phenomenal way; the dialogue is stilted; the characters are flat and unbelievable.

Reason Reigns fails at telling a story. A story is more than narrative, more than plot, and certainly more than theme. It is the expert combination of all of these ingredients, and more, into something that sways us both by reason and by emotion. One cannot successfully tell a story using logos alone. That makes for a dry, brittle thing. Adding ethos—which Reason Reigns sorely lacks—would help too, for strong characters aid one's rhetoric even as they bolster and support the story itself. Above all else, however, one cannot forget pathos. We have to feel for the characters, to sympathize if not empathize with their plight, to understand their sorrow and their suffering. Otherwise, without that emotional connection, the story is an empty husk.

I couldn't finish Reason Reigns. I made it through fifty-six pages, and then I decided I'd had enough. When I give up on a book, it's not because I dislike its plot (although that's usually part of the problem). No, I like to finish my books, and since I joined Goodreads I have only given up on three. When I give up on a book, it's usually due to an incompatibility between the way the book was written and the way I like to read. Often this isn't a reflection on the book's quality—I could not, for the life of me, finish Blindness, even though I know many people find it a poignant tale.

In this case, my rejection is a reflection on the book's quality.

Reason Reigns is a painfully earnest endeavour. Putting aside my reservations about Objectivism for a moment and treating this book only as evincing motifs of rationalism, there is potential here. I find the idea of reifying the forces of rationalism and anti-rationalism in the form of political entities really fascinating. But the "Big Idea" of a novel is never going to be sufficient for the novel to succeed. Success requires also a proportional level of skill. And sandwiched as she was in my reading between the consummate skill of Robertson Davies, China Miéville, and Ursula K. Le Guin—all of them masters of their craft—Ross' shortcomings in this area are all the more apparent.

Few authors manage to win me over the way Karl Schroeder has done. After the mediocre Sun of Suns, Venera Fanning's con game in Queen of Candesce impressed me enough to do an almost complete about-face. So it was with eager anticipation that I started the third book in the Virga series, anxious to find out what will happen to Venera; her husband, Chaison; and the pirate sun builder, Hayden Griffin.

The world of Virga is always a factor in the action of Pirate Sun, but like Queen of Candesce its role is subtler and off centre-stage. Much of the plot revolves around protecting Virga from an incursion by Artificial Nature. However, until the climax of the story, Virga's role manifests natural as all the differences one would expect from living inside a massive fullerene sphere. I can never quite visualize the action (but I'm not very good at that with books set on Earth anyway), but I don't feel left behind. Schroeder never misses a beat in exploiting the unique nature of such a setting, but he doesn't let it become too overwhelming.

More disappointing are the characters. The jacket copy made it clear that Chaison was going to be the main protagonist, yet I hoped against all odds that Venera, when she figured in the prologue, would play a more pivotal role. She was won me over in Queen of Candesce. Alas, Chaison and Antaea are the focus of Pirate Sun, and neither of them are as interesting or profound as Venera. Chaison is not in the same intellectual weight-class as his wife. He is a brilliant military tactician, but his strategy is somewhat wanting. And, I don't know, he just seems a bit . . . dull, stodgy. Antaea is more intriguing, but like Chaison, she lacks a certain gumption that makes Venera a successful heroine. Antaea begins the story on a mission to rescue her sister, despite its possible cost to Virga. She never really seizes the day and steps up. In fact, as if Schroeder subconsciously recognizes what's missing from this story, Venera does play a small but significant part in the climax.

To an extent, Schroeder attempts to recreate the plot of the previous book. Like his wife, Chaison's struggle is one to return home to Slipstream. He has limited resources, plenty of enemies, and his allies have other commitments that could quickly become conflicts of interest. Where Venera's journey was about identity, Chaison's seems to concern duty and honour—and that's where it falls flat. Chaison et al have to traipse about Falcon for a while, seeking a means of escape. Along the way they get involved in a defence of Stormcloud, a Falcon city being threatened by another nation. Chaison becomes one of the leaders of a resistance, banding together with the people of Stormcloud and a circus strongman named Corbus. And unlike the delightful, complex con game that dominates the political landscape of Queen of Candesce, this part of Pirate Sun just feels so random.

So it's a good thing most of the book is fun. That doesn't excuse its flaws, but it mollifies my discontent. Also, Schroeder elaborates on the juxtaposition between technologically-primitive Virga and the Artificial Nature-dominated world outside. As foreshadowed in the previous books, Virga is both sanctuary and potential battlefield for the entities of Artificial Nature. One lifestyle is rough, unfettered, and often unjust. The other is austere, impersonal, and alien. Schroeder shows us why both approaches—absolute embrace of advanced technology and absolute rejection—are unsuitable. In the former, you lose yourself, your identity and your consciousness. In the latter, you lose freedoms, as well as devices that raise the quality of life.

When these two worlds collide, people begin taking sides. The home guard is charged with preserving the status quo. Others, including Antaea's group within the home guard, want to destroy the field that Candesce emits to inhibits computers. Some people, like Venera and Chaison, happily exploit what little they know to their own advantage, even though they don't have a particular desire to see Virga altered by the return of advanced technology. But the key to Candesce is, I suspect, much like Pandora's Box. We haven't seen the last of Artificial Nature.

Everything I read about the Virga series mentioned it was a trilogy, or at least strongly hinted that. Nothing told me to expect a fourth book. But when I finished Pirate Sun, I found myself wanting more—both because I didn't feel like everything was concluded, and because I had enjoyed the book. So I'm pleased to see that Schroeder has written a fourth book, and that Hayden Griffin figures more prominently in this one. Hayden's role as the mastermind behind Aerie's new sun is mentioned, but that's it. He doesn't even get a cameo. And although the ignition of Aerie's illicit sun is concurrent with the climax, the struggle to construct it all happens offstage. We don't see any of the setbacks, any of the resistance or obstacles that Hayden has to overcome.

That's the impression I get about the Virga series in general. It sounds like there's a lot of interesting stuff happening offstage. Pirate Sun is another great return to the unique world of Virga, but like the first book in this series, Schroeder's characterization and plot fail to live up to the great environment he has constructed for them. While the plot and politics do leave me wanting more, Pirate Sun also cooled somewhat my ardour toward Karl Schroeder. He's convinced me that he has big ideas about technology and humanity's future, created one of the most fascinating science-fiction environments I've ever encountered. I just wish his novels were as epic as that environment deserves.

My Reviews of the Virga series:
← Queen of Candesce | The Sunless Countries (forthcoming) →

Do you want to live forever? Most people would say yes. I have to confess immortality tempts me as well. But as with most wishes, this one needs conditionals and caveats to make it truly comfortable. After all, you wouldn't want to be immortal but keep ageing, right? And being immortal alone would really suck, watching everyone else grow old and die as you remain the same. There are basically two ways to solve the ageing problem: either find a way to stop the body from ageing, or find a way to replace the body with a new, identical one—a clone.

In The Possibility of Island, Michel Houellebecq explores the second option. And as for loneliness? Well, he takes a somewhat novel approach, eliminating the need for society altogether. In his future, neohuman clones only interact for intellectual purposes, spending the rest of their time pondering, philosophizing, and writing a commentary on the notes of their predecessors. This is the legacy of the cloning project championed by a cult, the Church of Elohim. It begins as a sort of parody of a benevolent Scientology. The cloning is a side project, but it finds its way to the forefront of the Church's platform. Soon, the Church finds itself a major player and in a position to alter the species for better or for worse.

Watching a cult grow in status and become a world religion has never been so fascinating. Foremost in my mind when a cult gets involved is a question about its leadership: are the leaders true believers, or are they merely using the cultists for more cynical ends? Houellebecq is quick to reveal that most of the Church of Elohim's power structure doesn't really believe in its mythology; he leaves us in the dark about the Prophet for a while. Yet the answer to my question is, intriguingly, both: as the Church's cloning goals become more of a priority, its mythology falls away to reveal that its leaders are true believers—believers in immortality through cloning, that is. And this belief is just as disturbing and dangerous as any other religious zeal, engendering radical shifts in morality, behaviour, and even perspectives on suicide. One of our narrators, Daniel1, interprets these changes as yet more signs of humanity's inexorable decline. Filtering them through is own perspectives on life and its purpose, he decides that, well, there really is no worthy purpose in life, and future generations of humanity are doomed in short order.

The Possibility of Island excels at evincing this depressing manifesto. Daniel1 isn't just complaining about growing old; he shows us why growing old sucks. In one of his most evocative passages, he explains just what sucks about mortality and laments the inevitability of generational conflict. As an individual, Daniel1 is an ass and a misanthrope. There are plenty of books about people who are growing old and having a difficult time adjusting. Few books deal with the ageing populations of developed countries on a systemic scale. Houellebecq, through Daniel1's cutting commentary, touches on how growing old affects society at large. Because when you can replace your degenerating body with a fresh clone, why bother getting old at all?

Of course, the immortality promised by the Church's cloning process is another lie. Once one's DNA is on file, innumerable copies of one's youthful body can be assembled, yes. But memories, or more specifically, the ability to preserve them, remain elusive. Hence Vincent's idea, inspired by Daniel1's own memoirs, for every member of the Church to record a "life story" for his or her clone successor to read and annotate. The Church's cloning process preserves you no better than your blog does.

Thus does the only hope of escaping the nihilistic fate as outlined by Daniel1 turns out to be an even worse trap. Cloning immortalizes you, but it doesn't preserve you. Twenty-five generations later, an entity exists thanks to your DNA, its personality influenced, to some extent, by your life story. But it's not you; it's not even human. It's a consciously tweaked neohuman, a passionless, unempathetic being as distant from humanity as the primitive creatures who, during its lifetime, still lay claim to the name "humans." Surprise, surprise. Immortality is not what it's cracked up to be.

This is not a feel-good book. That at least should be obvious very early in the book. The suffering of Daniel1, Daniel24, and Daniel25 happens not for some greater purpose, nor even to offer hope. To the very end, Houellebecq is unapologetic in his declaration that, sometimes, it doesn't always work out: "I had not found deliverance," Daniel25 declares. It's true that he has changed. He is no longer the passionless neohuman who began his commentary. Unfortunately, that's not enough. Even as he looks at a sunset and grieves over the death of his clone dog, Fox, there is no hope for a better future. The sentiment of these final pages is not hope but a bitter futility and a crushing sense of loneliness.

But there's something missing in between Daniel1 and Daniel24. Within Daniel1's lifetime—within only a few years—the Church of Elohim supposedly becomes a big deal, elbowing out Christianity and every other religion except Islam, taking centre stage. I'm not sure I can believe that. Yes, the promise of cloning is tempting, but it's not like they have much in the way of a demonstration yet. Change in religious belief, much like scientific paradigms, rely as much on generational change as anything else. In his rush to condemn humanity and let Daniel1 chronicle the beginning of something new, Houellebecq gets ahead of himself.

I happen to disagree with his theme as well. His lengthy and erudite descriptions of why ageing and humans both suck are captivating nonetheless. At the end of the book, I was seriously not looking forward to getting older, and any latent desires to have children were flickering, imperilled. I can't bring myself to be that cynical. From an evolutionary perspective, we are just gene vectors. Even so, there's more than one way to ensure the continuance of one's genes. If an organism recognizes it won't mate, it can devote itself to ensuring relatives, who also carry some of its genes, mate. Besides, we're human. Screw evolution; it's a great algorithm for adapting life to new environments. But we can set our own priorities, or we can at least try. I refuse to believe that life, sex or otherwise, ends at forty. But maybe that's wishful, naive thinking on my part.

Daniel1, unfortunately, doesn't even try. His ego is fragile enough that the moment good-looking younger women begin looking elsewhere, he folds and becomes a useless waste of space. All he can do is use his money to hop from Paris to Andalusia and back, periodically visiting Vincent and the Church, flirting with religion. Apparently writing, producing, or performing just isn't the same if it doesn't result, even indirectly, in sex. Daniel1, despite his ability to provide cutting commentary on society, is lazy and wired for unhappiness.

It's Houellebecq's prerogative to create his main character this way. Yet it also strikes me as cheating. He sets out to write a post-apocalyptic elegy for humanity and describe why conventional mortality is so awful, but he gives himself a head start by having a character who is pre-disposed to feel that way. Rather than prove his case in general, Houellebecq has only shown that disconnected fifty-year-old misanthropes feel this way. His descriptions and diatribes on the futility of human survival are numerous and moving, but don't let these fool you. In Daniel1 he's just set up a straw man to advance his thesis. Daniel1 does not become a convert; he starts the book as a true believer. From the beginning, he is jaded.

I'm at a loss when I admit that this book reminded me of Kafka on the Shore. Maybe it's the obsession with incest. Perhaps, as with Kafka, I just didn't really get the cultural and philosophical allusions Houllebecq makes here. The Possibility of an Island is like a neglected beach, with little gems scattered here and there among otherwise unimpressive sand. It's up to you whether you think it's worth your time to hunt for them.

I am very excited for HTML5. My experience with web design began in March 2004. I was young(er than I am now), and I decided to make a personal website on GeoCities. It was a gaudy affair that reflected my lack of design skills and made use of notorious elements like <marquee>. In the years that followed, I learned about web standards and accessibility. Now my websites still reflect a lack of design skills, but at least they're accessible! So I'm happy that HTML5's specifications are being developed with accessibility and web standards in mind, as well as a healthy dose of realism when it comes to browser implementation. We're never going to get a pure and perfect Web. Let's see how close we can come though.

Jeremy Keith is also excited for HTML5, and that excitement is evident in HTML5 for Web Designers. From page 1 to page 85, Keith succinctly communicates the good, the bad, and the unfortunate about the HTML5 specification. He touches on almost every important part of HTML5, including what may be the most pertinent question right now: can we use HTML5 today? (The answer is yes. I am using it on my site.)

Almost every review I've read comments on this book's length. Its length is a selling point, as the A Book Apart website advertises it, and it is also a weakness. Owing to the book's brevity, I can easily review each chapter, and then I'll conclude with an explanation of why, on balance, the quality in these pages truly does exceed their quantity.

The first chapter is the "brief history of markup" chapter that seems obligatory for every book on HTML. Every author gets to put his or her spin on the rise of the Web, the browser wars, the arrival of AJAX and Web 2.0, etc. That's not a bad thing, and for those of us who are familiar with that history, it is always good to review. When discussing HTML5, a good knowledge of where we have been is essential. HTML5 is an attempt to create a markup language for the Web that puts our past behind us while embracing the legacy it has left. Hence, in designing HTML5, WHATWG wants to curtail future "browser wars" by involving browser developers in the process. At the same time, we can't just ignore what we already have in HTML 4.01. It's a delicate balancing act, and the opening chapter reminds us of the challenges involved.

In chapter 2, "The Design of HTML5," Keith focuses on how HTML5 differs from HTML 4.01, XHTML 1, and XHTML 2. He throws out a lot of the catchphrases making the rounds in the development community ("pave the cowpaths"). Aside from that, the changes he notes are fascinating examples of immediate relevance to web designers, e.g., the irrelevance of doctypes, the new rules regarding the anchor element, and the hooks into JavaScript APIs. That last one is really cool, because it is the change about which I've heard the last. And then Keith admits that these are "completely over [his:] head," so he won't be covering him! Not that I blame him. They sound over my head as well.

Chapter 3, "Rich Media," covers three new elements in HTML5 that are making waves: <canvas>, <audio>, and <video>. Keith looks at each in turn, exploring the advantages, disadvantages, and state of implementation with major browsers. Since my web design seldom involves multimedia, I haven't tried out these elements for myself. It's great to see demonstrations like Detexify, which shows off the power of <canvas>. I like that Keith addresses the shortcomings of the implementations of these elements thus far, e.g., <audio>'s inconsistent format support. HTML5 for Web Designers is effusive about HTML5 but also realistic.

I was really looking forward to the chapter on "Web Forms 2.0." Indeed, this was one of the reasons I bought the book. I haven't worked with forms in HTML5 yet, and the improvements to form controls look pretty cool. Keith once again does an adequate job summarizing the changes to forms. I was somehow expecting . . . more, so chapter 4 left me feeling underwhelmed. However, I think this is the result of a misunderstanding on my part about what HTML5 offers for forms rather than a flaw in this book.

The last two chapters, "Semantics" and "Using HTML5 Today," are similar in content and significance, so I will address them together. These chapters are perhaps the most important in the book, but they are also the most redundant. There are many great online resources on HTML5 already; indeed, Keith links to a lot of them, including the fantastic HTML5 Doctor. So what Keith does in these chapters is little more than reiteration of what I've already read. I learned a few new things, but most of the content in these chapters is covered in more depth on sites like HTML5 Doctor.

That is the trade-off to having a brief book. HTML5 for Web Designers is just a summary of what HTML5 offers. It doesn't claim to be anything more, and for designers who are unfamiliar with HTML5, this will probably be enough. As someone familiar with some of HTML5 and unclear on other parts, I found this book useful but not quite as enlightening as I had hoped.

Should you buy it? You can definitely learn everything you'd learn from this book elsewhere, and perhaps just as quickly, for free. That being said, sometimes it is useful to have a reference book nearby. HTML5 for Web Designers is a beautifully-designed reference book, and it obviously won't take up much shelf space. Keith's writing is clear and entertaining. So the book's quality ultimately comes down to your expectations. Be realistic about what you will get from an 85-page book, and you will find this satisfactory.

Last month I reviewed Galileo's Dream, in which I waxed philosophical about the attraction of certain historical individuals. Like Galileo, Christopher Columbus is another giant who captures our imaginations. Although he did not "discover" North America, Columbus did spearhead expeditions that brought the utility of North America to the attention of European powers. And the rest is, as they say, history. Columbus helped to change the world, but what we know about Columbus the person is not always clear. Unlike Galileo's Dream, Waiting for Columbus presents not a historical figure but a personality based on facts known about Columbus' life. A history professor who undergoes a traumatic event adopts the identity of Columbus. His intriguing story contains the clues needed to unlock his real identity.

Waiting for Columbus shares a lot in common with a mystery. The main characters (even Columbus, although he would deny it at first) are all fixated on discovering Columbus' true identity. There is even an Interpol investigator on the trail of a missing man, and his search eventually leads him to Columbus. Yet make no mistake: this is not a mystery. It is instead a romance, in the sweeping, historical sense of the word.

Columbus repeats throughout the book, "Trust the teller, not the tale." This refers to the shifting nature of his narrative's landscape. Mixed in with references to 15th-century Spain are anachronisms like laptops, handguns, telephones, and Starbucks. Actually, I enjoyed these anachronisms more than I expected: they made me wonder what historical events would be like if we transposed the people to a modern day setting. I love it when books push me down a tangent.

But I digress. Columbus is an unreliable narrator, and we must follow Consuela as she tries to puzzle out some sort of meaning from his stories. When he asks us to trust him, if not his story, Columbus means that his stories might not be accurate, but what he is saying with the stories is important to his state of mind. As Emile discovers, some of the characters and locations in Columbus' story are real people and places he visited prior to arriving at the institute. Others, as Balderas deduces, are composites of several people or fragments of a single person. Trofimuk nicely balances what we learn about Columbus from his story with what we learn from Consuela and Emile's private investigations. Again, this is not a mystery, but it has elements of mystery to it.

Like Consuela, I couldn't help but fall a little in love with "Columbus." Trofimuk's portrayal of Columbus the historical figure is indubitably sympathetic, but he can get away with this because it's precisely not a historical work; rather, this Columbus is one man's appropriation of the Columbus mythos, which he then revises to fit his own psychology. The Columbus we see is the brilliant dreamer, as passionate about discovery as he is about women, driven to explore and find a western route to India and China. We feel the blow that is every setback, every delay, every naysayer. And parts of the Columbus mythos that are not generally considered fact—such as the misconception that Columbus was some sort of revolutionary for thinking the Earth round—suddenly become important, symbolic.

This marriage of symbolism and history says a lot about storytelling, and that is the principle attraction of Waiting for Columbus. Trofimuk consciously and deliberately plays with metaphor and character in a transparent manner. One of my favourite elements of the story is the unconsummated love between Columbus and Isabella. It reminded me of a short story I read back in my first university English course: "Christopher Columbus and Queen Isabella of Spain Consummate Their Relationship (Santa Fe, A. D. 1492)," by [a:Salman Rushdie|3299|Salman Rushdie|http://photo.goodreads.com/authors/1217934207p2/3299.jpg]. That story was my first exposure to Rushdie and impressed me enough to seek out more of his work. It was also a very postmodern narrative, with different perspectives and a style that is almost verse instead of prose. In both cases, Isabella's love for Columbus plays a pivotal role in getting him funding and ships. "I need to put an ocean between this queen and that foolish navigator. I needed to stop this lust in me. It was the only way," Isabella says in Waiting for Columbus. And in "Christopher Columbus and Queen Isabella," Columbus dreams,

Yes! She knows it now! She must must must give him the money, the ships, anything, and he must must must carry her flag and her favour beyond the end of the end of the earth, into exaltation and immortality, linking her to him for ever with bonds far harder to dissolve than those of any mortal love, the harsh and deifying ties of history.

Both stories play with the Columbus mythos in a way that highlights how we view and romanticize history and historical figures. Regardless of the true nature of their relationship, history has inexorably linked Columbus and Isabella, just as he dreams she desires in Rushdie's story. We will never know whether she does this out of love, as Waiting for Columbus depicts, or simple recognition of the advantages a successful expedition would bring to Spain. But really, it is better that way, is it not? We like the ambiguity, the ability to envision different reasons for history.

It's these moments of playful storytelling that catch Waiting for Columbus at its best. Trofimuk infuses the book with the atmosphere of a lazy day in August. The sky is always tinged with the orange of sunset, and there's plenty of wine to go around . . . that is how reading this book feels. He has a great capacity for description; of particular note is his attention to the sense of smell. Writers often neglect smell, either using it only sparsely or when it's pertinent to the plot or just forgetting it entirely. So I like when an author like Trofimuk comes along and makes smell a seamless part of the scene. It really does add another dimension of sense to the story.

Also, I appreciate the positive portrayal of a psychiatric institution. So much fiction involving institutions focuses on the negative, on the abuse by other patients and staff, on the ineffective or misguided treatments. There's no doubt such problems exist and should be written about, whether in fiction or non-fiction. But I like seeing the other side too, the positive, successful side. In the beginning of Waiting for Columbus, the director of the institute is Dr. Fuentes. He is the stereotypical disinterested psychiatrist who has no time for indulging Columbus' stories. However, halfway through the book Fuentes gets written off, and Trofimuk introduces the more personable and sympathetic Dr. Balderas, as if to say, "That's enough of that: here's how we'll do things from now on." There is never any doubt that this man only thinks he is Columbus; there is no hint of a plot or conspiracy on the part of the institute. And this certainty gives Trofimuk the freedom to tell the story of "Columbus" however he wants.

I cannot specify when I became immersed in this story. At first I had trouble reading more than a chapter or two at a time; it was interesting but not engrossing. At some point, however, the story clicked, and I needed to learn what happened to Columbus. The ending, alas, did not live up to my sudden increase in expectation. After waiting so long to learn about "Columbus'" identity and watch him recover, the book tails off, finishing the story very abruptly. We get no coda that tells us what happens to Consuela or to Emile, and Trofimuk speeds through an overview of how "Columbus" reintegrates with his new self. It is not a disaster, just a discordant note in the symphony.

Waiting for Columbus surprised me, because I did not think I would like it quite as much as I did. I picked it off the New Books shelf at my library on a whim. What I thought would be an OK story about a patient in a mental institution turned out to be a complex, poetic exploration of story and history. It is a wonderful tale of a Christopher Columbus who never was.

Every science fiction fanatic, especially one as young as myself, has a list of classic science fiction books that he or she has yet to read. One's definition of classic can vary; it's not the content of the list that matters but its existence as a personal measure of our "SF street cred." I have read [b:Dune|234225|Dune (Dune Chronicles, #1)|Frank Herbert|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1172968533s/234225.jpg|3634639] and Starship Troopers, and plenty of Asimov pre-Goodreads. Until now, however, Fahrenheit 451 has eluded me. Today I remove it from my list.

Something about Ray Bradbury's style gives me pause. I am having trouble determining what. The best I can do is compare him to Philip K. Dick. Montag reminds me of Deckard from Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?. Both men are bounty hunters, of a kind, who have begun to question the ethics associated with their job. Both have wives whom they once loved but who are now distant and disconnected, more comfortable with artificial stimulation (the television-like "walls" and the Penfield mood organ, respectively) than their own husbands. And like Do Androids Dream, Fahrenheit 451 is a creative masterpiece but not a technical one.

Montag is a tragic hero who undergoes a Heel Face Turn. He has been having doubts about his job as a fireman for some time now, and an alarm that results in a woman burning to death causes the ultimate crisis of conscious. Back at home, he reveals to Mildred that he has sequestered some twenty books in the air ducts of their home. He has never read them—never more than a line or two—but he wonders. And as a result, he is losing his faith in the firemen and censorship for which they stand. Thanks to the secondary characters of Clarice and Faber, Montag soon realizes that he is no longer happy living as he does. He needs to take a stand, even if it means becoming a fugitive.

Montag is a great character, and he pretty much carries the book on his shoulders. The other characters exist only in a Jungian sense, playing the role of various archetypes that help shape Montag's emerging personality. Mildred simply wants to preserve the status quo. She is more interested in her televised "family" than in the real world. Chief Beatty is who Montag could be if he refuses the call. Beatty was exposed to book knowledge but has utterly rejected it; he is essentially a fireman zealot. Faber is the opposite of Montag, a man of intellect instead of action. Similarly, Clarisse is full of the vivacity and energy that Montag wants. Where Faber is analytical and cautious, Clarice is emotional and adventurous. Montag will need attributes from both to survive.

Interpreting Fahrenheit 451 only as an adventure story is a mistake. It's not that good an adventure story. However, interpreting it as the personal journey of Guy Montag is more fulfilling, because Bradbury allows the reader to rediscover the importance of reading through Montag's journey. And here is where Bradbury excels, for he communicates the power of books succinctly and eloquently: "who knows who might be the target of the well-read man?"

Because that is the key: opponents of book knowledge are afraid of the well-read person. Knowledge is power, because the well-read person is armed with the facts and rhetorical ability to refute arguments. Censorship is never about trying to protect a population or preserve innocence, despite what its advocates claim. It is always about fear, fear that if someone communicates an idea, other people might pick it up, carry it like a banner, and bring the revolution. Censorship is just another means of control.

Books are one means of defeating censorship, but they are not the only means. I'll be the first to admit that books are sexy. There's something so attractive about a well-bound book: its poise, its smell, the crispness of its pages . . . sorry. Anyway, Bradbury reminds us that a book is just a container for ideas:

It's not books you need, it's some of the things that once were in books. The same things could be in the 'parlor families' today. The same infinite detail and awareness could be projected through the radios and televisors, but are not. No, no, it's not books at all you're looking for! Take it where you can find it, in old phonograph records, old motion pictures, and in old friends; look for it in nature and look for it in yourself. Books were only one type of receptacle where we stored a lot of things we were afraid we might forget. There is nothing magical in them, at all. The magic is only in what books say, how they stitched the patches of the universe together into one garment for us.

This speech of Faber's to Montag is my favourite passage of the entire book. It expresses both the joy I find in reading and a truth that bibliophiles should always remember: in this case, the medium is not necessarily the message.

Classics, owing to their legendary status, can be difficult to review. After all, if they are classics, they are almost tautologically good, yes? Or, sometimes there is a subversive thrill that comes from tearing into a classic with as much criticism as it can bear. In the case of Fahrenheit 451 it is easy to see why it's a classic. And I won't try to judge whether it deserves such status. Instead, I shall just cross it off my list. I don't regret reading it. However, Fahrenheit 451 is, in my opinion, a good example of the distinction between classic and great work.

Sometimes the best twist is not a surprise. Jeffrey Eugenides could have concealed the nature of Cal Stephanides' condition, could have saved it for a big reveal and dropped only tantalizing hints throughout the narrative. Instead, he announces that Cal is an intersex man upfront, and then proceeds to tease us for the rest of the story. Eugenides makes the reader into a participant in Cal's indulgent memoir instead of an audience; we're in on the secret, and we watch and wait eagerly for the moment of revelation for young Calliope. With this bond, Eugenides covers three generations of a Greek family that immigrates to the United States from Turkey. From grandparents with a terrible secret to parents who just yearn for the normative mediocrity of suburban life, Middlesex deserves acclamation for its sweeping scope. Unfortunately, other parts of the book detract from this otherwise-impressive work.

Middlesex is at its best when confronting generational change. Lefty and Desdemona's flight to the United States marks the end of an era and the beginning of the next. Their son, Milton, experiences a similar paradigm change as the civil rights movement reshapes Detroit in the 1960s. The contrasting reactions of grandparents and parents to this change says a lot about assimilation into American culture. Lefty and Desdemona, particularly Desdemona, never feel truly at home in the United States. In the face of so much strife, they have romanticized their peaceful life in Bithynios, and nothing quite measures up against that standard. While they find joy (and headaches) in their children, integration into American society is always elusive at best.

One scene from Lefty and Desdemona's first year in the United States comes to mind. Lefty gets a job working the assembly line at a Ford plant, and two men from "the Ford Sociological Department" visit the house at which he's staying. They inspect it and interrogate Lefty on his personal hygiene habits, the implication being, as an immigrant, that Lefty is somehow less clean (and thus less civilized) than an American. What makes this scene so memorable, for me, is my reaction to how wrong it felt. Discrimination is by no means absent from the workplace today, but I can only imagine the outcry of privacy advocates and libertarians were Ford or another corporation to do something like that today. It is not just wrong but creepy.

And what of the incest between Lefty and Desdemona? I have seen some reviewers question the connotations of Eugenides choosing inbreeding as a vector for Cal's condition. But it is a valid choice, and the incest is not just a means to Calliope's end. It plays a subtle but important role in Lefty and Desdemona's marriage, and it provides Desdemona with a feeling of personal responsibility for Cal's condition.

The brother-sister dynamic is a big deal at the beginning of the book. Lefty and Desdemona, once they move past the "will-we-or-won't-we" stage by surviving the burning of Smyrna, choose to invent new identities for themselves, meet as strangers, and get married while aboard their ship to the States. As Cal puts it when recounting this portion, they did this not to convince other people, but to convince themselves. Despite being attracted to one another, they remain full of misgivings. Lefty seems to have an easier time of it than Desdemona. Eugenides never fully explains why this is, but I suspect it has to do with how Lefty and Desdemona matured differently as adults. Lefty's personality is attracted to risk, to the forbidden and exotic. He rejects the two eligible women in Bithynios because they are bland. But what could be more exotic than one's own sister? We see Lefty's propensity for gambling recur throughout the story. Conversely, Desdemona was raised to take care of her family. She promised their mother she would find Lefty a bride. This paradoxical solution enables her to continue to care for Lefty and fulfil her promise to their mother, but Desdemona never quite reconciles her incest with her religion-centred morality. Her longevity compared to the rest of her generation is almost a form of punishment that allows her to see the fruits, Cal, of her actions.

It seems like a small detail, but it is fitting that the one American product to seduce Desdemona is the soap opera. Although we (and that includes a healthy helping of me) love to denigrate soap operas for their melodrama, wince-worthy acting, and plodding, predictable writing, that doesn't change the universality of soap opera's stories. Sure, they might be stories on drama steroids, but they are unabashedly about the conflicts caused by relationships. For Desdemona, who had only one brief attempt to find a niche for herself outside her household or her church, I can see how this type of television would be appealing. (There are volumes to be said about the attracting, deserving or not, that soap operas have for certain people. I am not the one to say it. Go find someone's thesis from the nineties.)

As Cal's narrative shifts focus from Lefty and Desdemona to Milton and Tess, we get to see how the children of immigrants navigate their identities, which are bridged between two cultures. With Tess this process is not as visible. She begins as a very independent and precocious girl. She agrees to marry Father Mike, but she feels a little guilty for preferring going to movies over helping in the war effort. After marrying Milton and having children, she takes on a much more traditional role as caregiver; unlike Milton, however, she embraces both her Greek and American identities. She is somewhat similar to Desdemona, but with her mother's willingness to accept cultural and technological change.

Milton's decision to join the Navy, his refusal to learn Greek, and his reticence about Orthodox religion are all reactions against his parents, attempts to affirm his American identity at the expense of his Greek one. It is somewhat ironic, then, that he uses his ethnicity to bootstrap his hot dog stand business—but even this he does with the capitalist zeal of an American. For Milton, the struggle is all about achieving that illusive model of the "American family"; constantly he strives toward normality. Eugenides has Cal list Milton's yearly Cadillac not just out of a perverse prosaic desire but to demonstrate a point. A new car is a symbol of status and money; its purchase is an act of consumption in a consumer culture. Similarly, Milton is the driving force behind the family's move from their home in urban Detroit to a suburban neighbourhood with elitist (and discriminatory) real estate rules. He is both running away from the racially-diversifying nature of their old neighbourhood and running toward the dream of a normative American life.

Milton's racism is interesting. One might think he would be more understanding, being a member of an ethnic minority himself and aware of the double standards applied to such citizens. Cal never mentions Lefty and Desdemona inculcating Milton's racism, so it seems to be something he acquired through society. Milton internalizes the institutionalized racism as yet another way of assimilating. I am not asserting that this is the only factor in Milton's racism, just relating my interpretation of his actions. No doubt his beliefs were greatly influenced by other events he witnessed, particularly the riots that resulted in the destruction of the Zebra Room.

What this all means in the context of the story is that Cal is more than just an unusual child. For his grandparents (or at least Desdemona) Cal is a judgement. For his parents, Cal is an anomaly in their carefully-constructed American life. The reactions of Milton and Tess to learning their daughter is intersex are consistent with their characters: Milton seizes upon Dr. Luce's assurances that Calliope can be "normal"; Tess focuses more on Calliope's physical and mental wellbeing. Eugenides foreshadows this conflict with the stereotypically-rebellious yet ambiguously-named Chapter Eleven, who exits the story after quarrelling with Milton over politics and values, returning more because of Cal's disappearance than any mended relationship. It is clear that Milton loves his children and is ferociously protective of them, as demonstrated ultimately by his fatal car chase with Father Mike. Yet he is also wary of anything that hints of abnormality or eccentricity, hence his argument with Chapter Eleven and his emphasis on the "treatment" aspects of Calliope's condition.

It might seem like Middlesex is two separate narratives, one of generations of immigrants and the other of an intersex man, soldered together. Indeed, that might even be the way Eugenides initially developed it. However, the former narrative has a very profound impact on the latter, influencing how Calliope feels after learning of her condition, as well as how Cal feels as he recounts this story to us thirty years later.

This is where Middlesex begins to lose me. Eugenides goes to a great deal of trouble to make present-day Cal a sympathetic character who seems like a real portrayal of an intersex individual. After building up to the grand reveal—to Calliope—the pacing suddenly unravels. Cal runs away and has a number of episodic encounters that influence his perceptions of gender. Compared to the rest of the book, these episodes are hurried and un-nuanced in nature. Clearly there is more to the formation of Cal's new identity than the few months spent as a runaway after discovering his condition. Aside from some oblique mentions of past girlfriends by the narrator, however, we don't get to see that. Our reward for patiently awaiting the big reveal does not materialize. And what Eugenides does give us, although true to the letter of our agreement, does not live up to its spirit.

Calliope discovers the "truth" of her condition, rather than the garbled facts communicated by her parents and Dr. Luce, when she sneaks a glance at Luce's medical report. Of course, she does not understand much of the terminology or its context. Her own fumbling research into this subject does not help matters, for Webster's Dictionary is not the most gentle educator. So Calliope learns that even though she has been raised as a girl, and Dr. Luce believes she has a feminine gender identity, her chromosomal sex is XY. So she's a boy, right? That seems to be the line of reasoning she employs implicitly in her runaway note: "Dr. Luce . . . is a big liar! I am not a girl. I'm a boy. That's what I found out today."

It is almost plausible. But are we really supposed to believe that Calliope, with little to education in matters of sex, gender, and genetics, decides chromosomal sex is the overriding factor in her gender identity? Or are we supposed to conclude that reading Luce's report, which contains all the various lies and fabrications Calliope makes to cover up her attraction to women, provokes an epiphany: "No, no, I'm not a girl! I'm a boy; I've always been a boy!"? I don't know, because Cal doesn't tell us. After spending an entire novel in the brain of an omniscient first person narrator, Cal fails to confide in us at his watershed moment of revelation. This ambiguity is greatly unsatisfying. Maybe I'm not reading close enough, but Eugenides does not seem to drop any hints that Calliope entertains a male gender identity during her childhood. By unconditionally assigning Cal a male gender identity without any internal conflict or justification, as far as I can tell, Eugenides is being as single-minded as Dr. Luce in his interpretation of sex and gender.

If Middlesex is supposed to be an exploration of intersex, it fails, because I don't know what it is trying to say about intersex. When it comes to matters of gender, Cal just decides he is male, with no insight as to why, despite his role as the narrator. When it comes to society's lack of acceptance for intersex individuals, we get a couple of token encounters: some ruffians call him a "freak", and then he falls in with a freak sex show operation in San Francisco. Having come so far, Middlesex approaches the intersex issue but fails to follow through. It is shame, for the generational narrative underlying the first parts of the book is well-done and was so very promising for the rest of the story.