Mars Colonization Done Right

DESOLATION ROAD
Ian McDonald
Pyr SF
$17.00 trade paper, available now

Reviewed by Richard, 4.75* of five

The Publisher Says: It all began thirty years ago on Mars, with a greenperson. But by the time it all finished, the town of Desolation Road had experienced every conceivable abnormality from Adam Black's Wonderful Travelling Chautauqua and Educational 'Stravaganza (complete with its very own captive angel) to the Astounding Tatterdemalion Air Bazaar. Its inhabitants ranged from Dr. Alimantando, the town's founder and resident genius, to the Babooshka, a barren grandmother who just wants her own child-grown in a fruit jar; from Rajendra Das, mechanical hobo who has a mystical way with machines to the Gallacelli brothers, identical triplets who fell in love with-and married-the same woman.

My Review: Earth can't sustain its current population in the style to which all 7 billion of us wish to become accustomed, and no one is predicting a sudden outbreak of common sense and birth prevention to bring the numbers down. What are we to do?

Move, of course. Where? More than one place. There's the Metropolis, the geosynchronous city in space reached by fixed space elevators; but that's filling up too; wherever shall we go?

Well, Mars, for one. The Remote Orbital Terraforming and Environmental Control Headquarters (ROTECH for short) consortium is created on the Motherworld, sent into a moonbelt orbit around Mars, and given a thousand years of development, has finally produced a planetary ecosystem that can sustain unsuited humans in the open.

ROTECH governs Mars as lightly as any frontier is governed. People, let loose from cities and rules, pretty much do what comes naturally. They have babies, they make farms, they organize themselves into Us and Them, and they do it all at breakneck speed without worrying too hard about consequences. When Consequences rain down from the Heavens, well, adapt or die.

Ian McDonald does in 363 pages what others do in 1000. He makes Mars come alive, he peoples it with fabulous characters (human and cyborg and robotic), he creates a logical thought experiment...how can humanity survive its inevitable wearing out of the Motherworld?...and uses it to tell us about ourselves, about what we are *actually* made of, and about what triumphs and tragedies flow naturally and inevitably from that.

I adore this book.

There.

No, really, that's it. I adore this book. You should read it, especially if you point your booger-holder at the sky when science fiction is mentioned. I don't read THAT people should read this. If you don't, then you should be ashamed of your inflexibility.

I even re-read Jane Austen recently. And liked it. So. What's that “I don't like THAT” stuff again?

The messy, beautiful India of 2047

RIVER OF GODS
Ian McDonald
Pyr SF
$26.00 hardcover, $17.00 trade paper, available now

Reviewed by Richard, 5* of five

The Publisher Says: As Mother India approaches her centenary, nine people are going about their business—a gangster, a cop, his wife, a politician, a stand-up comic, a set designer, a journalist, a scientist, and a dropout. And so is—the waif, the mind reader, the prophet—when she one day finds a man who wants to stay hidden.
In the next few weeks, they will all be swept together to decide the fate of the nation.
River of Gods teems with the life of a country choked with peoples and cultures—one and a half billion people, twelve semi-independent nations, nine million gods. Ian McDonald has written the great Indian novel of the new millennium, in which a war is fought, a love betrayed, a message from a different world decoded, as the great river Ganges flows on.

My Review: Ian McDonald. This is a name to conjure with, boys and girls. This is one fearless Irishman. This is a major major talent doing major major things. How dare he, how dare I, warble his praises when he, a white guy from the colonial oppressor state, has the temerity to write a science fiction novel about INDIA?!? There are scads of Indian writers and it's their country! Let *them* write their stories!

Codswallop.

Read the book. Then come and tell me it should have remained unwritten because of some nonsensical national pride hoo-hah.

It's got every damn thing a reader could want: A new gender, the nutes, pronoun “yt;” a wholly new form of energy harvested from other universes; a political scandal-ridden politician who falls for our main nute character, despite his long marriage, and pursues yt desperately; a civil war a-brewin' over water rights in the now fragmented subcontinental political world; aeais (artificial intelligences) that are forbidden by law to exceed the Turing Test that establishes whether an entity is human or human-passable; and, as with any law, the lawbreakers who inevitably arise are hunted by a new breed of law enforcement officers, here called “Krishna cops.” Krishna being the Original God, Supreme Being, One Source in many parts of India, there is some justice to that, one supposes.

Recapitulating the plot is pointless. This is a sprawling story, one that takes nine (!) main characters to tell. I felt there were two too many, and would entirely prune Lisa, the American physicist, and Ajmer, the spooky girl who sees the future, because those story lines were pretty much just muddying the waters for me. I thought the physicist on a quest, who then makes a giant discovery, which leads her back to the inventor of the aeais, could easily have been a novel all on its own, one that would fit in this universe that McDonald has summoned into being. I simply didn't care for or about Ajmer.

The aeais' parent, Thomas Lull, is hidden away from the world in a dinky South Indian village. Yeah, right! Like the gummints of the world would let that happen! I know why McDonald did this, plot-wise, but it's just not credible to me. He could be demoted from player to bit part and simplify the vastness of the reader's task thereby.

So why am I giving this book a perfect score? Because. If you need explanations:

--The stories here are marvelously written.

“And you make me a target as well,” Bernard hisses. “You don't think. You run in and shout and expect everyone to cheer because you're the hero.”
“Bernard, I've always known the only ass you're ultimately interested in is your own, but that is a new low.” But the barb hits and hooks. She loves the action. She loves the dangerous seduction that it all looks like drama, like action movies. Delusion. Life is not drama. The climaxes and plot transitions are coincidence, or conspiracy. The hero can take a fall. The good guys can all die in the final reel. None of us can survive a life of screen drama. “I don't know where else to go,” she confesses weakly. He goes out shortly afterwards. The closing door sends a gust of hot air, stale with sweat and incense, through the rooms. The hanging nets and gauzes billow around the figure curled into a tight foetus. Najia chews at scaly skin on her thumb, wondering if she can do anything right. -- p388

Krishan barely feels the rain. More than anything he wants to take Parvati away from this dying garden, out the doors down on to the street and never look back. But he cannot accept what he is being given. He is a small suburban gardener working from a room in his parents' house with a little three-wheeler van and a box of tools, who one day took a call from a beautiful woman who lived in a tower to build her a garden in the sky. -- p477

Some of my favorite passages I can't put here, because they contain some of the many, many words and concepts that one needs—and I do mean needs—the glossary in the back of the book to fully appreciate.

--The concept of the book is breathtaking. Westerners don't usually see India as anything other than The Exotic Backdrop. McDonald sees the ethnic and religious tensions that India contains, barely, as we look at her half-century of independence ten years on (review written 2007) and contemplate the results of the Partition. He also sees the astounding and increasing vigor of the Indian economy, its complete willingness to embrace and employ any and all new ideas and techniques and leverage the staggeringly immense pool of talent the country possesses.

--McDonald also extrapolates the rather quiet but very real and strong trend towards India as a medical tourism destination: First-world trained doctors offering third-world priced medical care. This is the genesis of the nutes, people who voluntarily have all external gender indicators and all forms of gender identification surgically removed, their neural pathways rewired, and their social identities completely reinvented.

Think about that for a minute.

If your jaw isn't on the floor, if your imagination isn't completely boggled, then this book isn't for you and you should not even pick it up in the library to read the flap copy. If you're utterly astonished that an Irish dude from Belfast could winkle this kind of shit up from his depths, if you're so intrigued that you think it will cause you actual physical pain not to dive right in to this amazing book, you're my kind of people.

Welcome, soul sibling, India 2047 awaits. May our journey never end.




















v

Mad Hatters, White Rabbits, and Bow-Chicka-Wow-Wow

Return to Wonderland:  Grimm Fairytales Wonderland #1

Written by Raven Gregory

Illustrated by Daniel Leister and Nei Ruffino

Published by Zenescope

Reviewed by Amanda
1 Out of 5 Stars

If you've ever read Alice in Wonderland and thought, "You know what this story really needs? More tits. And viscera. Tits and viscera for everyone!" then a) you are probably a 12 year old boy who butchers his neighbor's pets in his spare time and b) this collection is for you.

This is some dark stuff and, folks, I certainly don't mind dark stuff, but this is gratuitous with no cohesive storyline and a complete and utter lack of imagination (I say this because to take Alice in Wonderland and sex it up doesn't require any great creative power--just an unhealthy preoccupation with people's "naughty bits"). Basically, Alice's teenage daughter, Calie goes to Wonderland. Calie encounters exactly all of the same experiences her mother did, only they're all portrayed with a blatant lasciviousness: Calie's built like an inflatable doll and every scene is sexually charged by playing to as many fetishes as possible. And, as if that wasn't enough, it's as though the author is trying to cram as much shockfest violence, gore, and sexuality into the pages as possible. The narrative is so busy trying to shock us that the vignettes with the Mad Hatter, the Cheshire Cat, the Queen of Hearts don't serve a real purpose--they simply provide the next platform from which to blow our minds with how daring and edgy the story is. Yeah, well, we've got another name for being sexually daring and edgy without context and storyline: porn. Because that's really what this is, in a subdued form. Whether we're talking about the violence or the sex, it's playing to a certain type of unhealthy libido in a manner meant to arouse.

Back in the real world, Alice has attempted suicide multiple times and lives in a catatonic state. In the meantime, her husband is having an affair and not just any old affair. Oh, no. We wouldn't want to miss out on an opportunity to bring out the whips and chains, would we? So he's having an affair steeped in sadomasochism. And then there's Calie's brother who is exhibiting all the classic signs of a blossoming young serial killer. It's dysfunctional with a capital D, which seems a little overboard when coupled with the level of macabre that is present in Wonderland, too. For either Calie's reality or her Wonderland experience to be dark and twisted would be fine, but the two together is too much.

A Brotherhood Born of Blood and Violence

The Sisters Brothers

by Patrick DeWitt

Published by Ecco

Reviewed by Amanda
4 Out of 5 Stars

I like reading about bad people in fiction.  And, lest we jump to conclusions, it's not because I'm a bad person myself (at least not in the torture or kill people kind of way; no, the sins in which I dabble are much more pedestrian than that), but it's because I like peering into those dark little corners of their brains.  The most frightening and fascinating realization I come to in such novels is that, really, they're much more like me than I care to admit. 

Take Pulp Fiction, for example, which may be my favorite movie of all time.  Sure, you've got some of the old ultraviolence, but what's really chilling is to see how it's part of the average work day for Jules and Vincent.  Their days are filled with conversations both philosophical and mundane, punctuated by acts of violence that they accept as part of how their world works.  When we think of men who can kill, we think of monsters, depraved beings who have no moral compass, an inability to reason.  While that is certainly sometimes the case, sometimes we find that--behind the monster--there is just a man, one who knows that what he is doing is wrong, but does it anyway: for money, for love, for power.  And what worked for Pulp Fiction is what works for The Sisters Brothers.

Charlie and Eli Sisters are two of the most feared assassins in the West, working for a shadowy figure known only as "The Commodore."  Charlie, the older brother, is ruthless and power hungry, while his brother, Eli, is a sensitive sort who is prone to violence when he becomes enraged--a tool often used by Charlie to his advantage.  Even in adulthood, Eli is relegated to the archetypal role of the younger brother, haplessly following and obeying his older brother, while occasionally challenging Charlie just to see how far he can be pushed. 

The brothers are sent by The Commodore on an errand to kill Hermann Kermit Warm, a prospector who has crossed The Commodore in ways unknown to the brothers.  Not that it matters as their job is to kill and not ask questions.  The journey there provides the brothers with adequate time to be attacked by a bear, run into a backwoods witch, visit a brothel, and encounter characters curious and strange.  As the men travel, we see them banter back and forth, every bit true siblings, alternately needling each other's quirks and weaknesses and then engaging in profound conversations about their beliefs and shared history. 

The dialogue between the brothers is the real treat of the novel--witty and peculiarly formal (think Charles Portis's characters as portrayed in the Coen version of True Grit).  As he longs for love, worries about his weight, discovers the joys of dental hygiene, and wrestles with his disdain and admiration for his one-eyed, cantankerous horse, Tub, Eli Sisters is the more relatable of the two brothers.  However, before one can become too attached to either character, a scene of needless and wanton violence reminds us that both of these men are killers and, for all the contemplation of human nature the two engage in, it proves as difficult to put down a gun as it is to pick one up. 

Dinner Time!

Hannibal
NBC
Thursdays
by Kemper

Hannibal Lecter was the original foodie.

Thomas Harris’ brilliant crime-thrillers Red Dragon and The Silence of the Lambs showcased an unforgettable cannibal serial killer and were adapted in film versions with Michael Mann doing the first one as Manhunter, and  the movie version of SotL becoming an instant classic.  However, a bad thing happened after that.

Hannibal Lecter got popular.

With everyone joking about fava beans and a nice Chianti after the second movie hit it big, it was just a matter of time until the good doctor made another appearance, but the follow-up novel delivered by Harris was a gore-soaked mess that tried to transform Hannibal into some kind of anti-hero by pitting him against someone supposedly worse than him in the character of a wealthy disfigured former victim of the psychiatrist.  (And let’s not even talk about what Harris did to Clarice Starling in that one.)

The film based on that one did well at the box office but took a critical beating.  Then someone remembered that Anthony Hopkins had never played Hannibal in Red Dragon so a competent but uninspired second movie of it was put together and rolled out, but it didn’t rake in the cash.  Shortly after that, Harris completely sold out his best known character by cobbling together an origin story in novel and screenplay that flatly contradicted much of what we’d been told about Hannibal.  When Hannibal Rising hit theaters, it didn’t have the benefit of Hopkins so it crashed and burned with critics and audiences.

This is where Hannibal had been left.  A once great villain that had been overexposed by clumsy attempts to cast him as some kind of righteous avenger and defender of culture by munching on rude and tasteless people.  Meanwhile, scores of books, movies and TV shows had done their own versions of genius serial killers and tortured souls chasing them with the help of high-tech forensics.  Hannibal had sparked a trend and became a complete cliché in the aftermath.

Which is why doing a TV series as a prequel to Red Dragon seemed like such a terrible idea.  Hannibal wasn’t even going to be the first serial killer from a series of books to hit television since Dexter had been working that turf for years.  With it being on the worst rated old broadcast network in NBC instead of an ediger cable network, this just seemed like it’d end up as another sorry chapter in the sad descent of Hannibal Lecter.

Wrong.

Producer Bryan Fuller, best known for creating clever and quirky shows that get cancelled before their time like Wonderfalls, Pushing Daisies and Dead Like Me, came up with the idea of using some of the back-story in the novel Red Dragon to give us a new interpretation of Hannibal, and it looks like he‘s both taking the story back to it‘s roots while putting new twists on the old characters.

In the pilot episode Apertif, Will Graham (Hugh Dancy) teaches criminal profiling at the FBI training academy.  After a string of college girls are kidnapped and killed in Minnesota, Will  is recruited by Jack Crawford (Laurence Fishburne), the head of the Behavioral Science Unit, to help find the killer.  Unfortunately, the empathy and imagination that enable Will to put himself into the mind of a killer also result in borderline social disorders and make him unstable so Crawford brings in prominent psychiatrist Dr. Hannibal Lecter (Mads Mikkelsen) to hold Will together long enough to get the job done.

That story should sound familiar to fans of Harris, but it’s what Fuller and company have done with stray bits of back-story from that one that made this pilot so good.  Red Dragon started with Will Graham retired after nearly being killed while capturing Hannibal.  Lecter is in custody and delights in tormenting Will with observations that he’s so good at finding serial killers because he’s one at heart.  We never got see Will or Hannibal in their primes so this show is filling in a significant gap.

Like the best adaptations, Fuller knows when to break away from the source material.  Will and Hannibal never worked together in the book (It seems like this might be an idea Fuller picked up from the second film adaptation.), and Will was not a bundle of near-crippling social anxieties despite his issues.  There’s a critical event that’s part of Will’s history that is shown in the pilot, but with the new factor that Hannibal is not only present, he engineered it.  Fuller has also gender flipped a couple of characters like Freddy Lounds going from ugly male sleazy tabloid journalist to an attractive female sleazy crime blogger.

The show’s stunning visuals (Inspired by Fuller's love of The Shining) are haunting like a woman impaled on the antlers of a deer head or a field of decomposing bodies sprouting mushrooms in the second episode.  These effects are also used well to show us how Will’s mind works.  The Red Dragon book notes that Will pictures a silver pendulum swinging and stopping to clear his thoughts.  In the show, a line that sweeps back and forth is used to depict how Will filters out everything he doesn’t want to see to work a crime scene.

Dr. Lecter probably has a recipe for the 
mushrooms that Will found in the woods.

All of this has made the first two episodes good, but what elevates them to great is the way that Fuller has handled the main characters, and despite the show’s title, it’s Will, not Hannibal who has been more of a focus so far.  Hannibal doesn’t even show up until halfway through the pilot, and that proves that Fuller knows what makes Lecter work.  Where the last couple of books and films tried to make Hannibal the main character, the first two books are better with Will Graham and then Clarice Starling in the lead while Hannibal is the boogeyman who frightens and torments them.

Since this is before he‘s been caught, this version of Hannibal has to seem somewhat normal, and Mikkelson does a great job of playing him as just a little off. Not so much that anyone would think he’s a serial killer, but enough to let the audience know that Hannibal is a shark swimming among schools of fish.  When a blubbering patient drops a used tissue on his table, the momentary flicker of distaste that Mikkelson flashes makes you wonder if the guy is going to make it out of the room.  Just showing Hannibal preparing and serving food to other people is enough to make a viewer’s skin crawl.  Fuller has taken what could be a disadvantage in audience familiarity with Lecter and turned it into a way to generate tension just by having him around.

It also allows them to focus on the more sympathetic character of Will, and this is another great performance for the show by Hugh Dancy who completely sells the idea of a man so sensitive that it could make him crazy.  Will is a guy who compulsively saves stray dogs, but there’s some real darkness lurking there, too.  His empathy can put him into the crime scenes to the point of detailed imaginings of killing people yet he can also feel the suffering of the victims so it’s a double-edge sword.

Artistic themes are all over Harris‘ books, and it's almost as if the killers that Will chased were creating their own gruesome forms of expression, and that Will was the only critic who could correctly interpret it.  There’s a great bit in Aperitif in which another dead young woman has been discovered.  Will is almost offended at the crime scene, not because of it’s graphic nature, but because it’s immediately obvious to him to be the work of a copycat who harbored none of the oddly tender feelings he picked up on at the previous killing.  He dismisses it instantly as an art expert would an inferior forgery, and what adds another dimension is when it’s strongly implied that Hannibal killed this woman simply to get Will pointed in the right direction by showing him the opposite of what he should be looking for.

Even creepier, we aren’t sure what Hannibal’s agenda is in this.  He finds Will interesting, but is the doctor trying to push him into darker corners to see if he can turn him from ‘critic’ to ‘artist’?  Hannibal could be just toying with him while staying inside the FBI’s inner circle of serial killer experts for his own purposes, or he could genuinely think he’s aiding Will by his own twisted logic.  We don’t know yet, but we know what Hannibal is and some idea of where it ends up thanks to Red Dragon so the prospects are horrible to think about.

With only a couple of episodes aired and so-so ratings, there’s still a distinct possibility for this show to become yet another Fuller series cancelled before it’s time.  It’s also hard to tell how long they could sustain this concept.  At some point, it’s going to be ridiculous if a couple of serial killer experts like Will and Crawford can’t recognize the one under their noses.  However, Fuller claims that he has a plan for couple of 13 episode seasons at least so hopefully this smart new interpretation of a 30-year-old story will get a chance to deliver on the potential it’s showing in the early stages.

If nothing else, it’s turned an old and tired villain into something new and terrifying.

Kemper will never eat mushrooms again after viewing the second episode of Hannibal.  You can read his review of Red Dragon at his blog.

Up Jumped the Devil

The Death of Bunny Munro
Nick Cave
Faber and Faber, 2009
Anthony Vacca's rating: 4 out of 5 stars

I am conflicted. On one hand, Nick Cave is one of my top ten favorite musicians. For over thirty years he has consistently made some of the best emotionally and physically visceral music ever to come tearing, and sometimes aching, its way of the electric shiver of a set of speakers. The man can sing about capital letter Love in a way that will turn any person equipped with something resembling a heart into a believer; but he can also thrash and foam like a maniac about the erotic bliss of banal and lowercased murder. Age has not tempered the man. He can do the arena rock (There She Goes My Beautiful World), and then turn around and throw a dirty old man punk rock boogie your way (No Pussy Blues), and then stick his tongue firmly in cheek and strut his way through a playful poke and prod at a bible story favorite (Dig Lazarus, Dig). What I am saying here is that the man is versatile, confident, and staggeringly literate in his ability to craft a hell of a song. The same is true in every way about Nick Cave’s approach to writing a novel.

And here comes the conflict: as much as I love Nick Cave’s music, having finished reading this, his second novel (twenty years later after And the Ass Saw the Angel I am left wondering how many wonderful novels we could have had from the man if his calling had been that of a novelist first instead of a musician. Because, yeah, The Death of Bunny Munro is a wonderful book. It’s disturbing, tender, articulate, funny, monstrous, profane, humane, and everything else I could ever ask for from a single book.

Bunny Munro (could this be a respectful nod to the then recently departed John Updike and his own great creation of Harry "Rabbit" Angstrom?) is damned. We know this from the first sentence on. And we also know, even if Bunny’s own self-awareness fails him on about all fronts imaginable, that there is no one to blame for Bunny’s fate except himself. His problem is not that he is married to a long-suffering, and emotionally-disturbed wife or that he has a precocious and loyal little son charmingly named Bunny Jr.; Bunny’s problem is that he can’t stop trying to fuck anything with a vagina even if it is at the expense of everything he should hold dear.

I saw the film Shame last year, which was a powerful rumination on sexual addiction and what exactly it means to be a human being that interacts and forms relationships with others, and let me tell you this: I like sex as much as the next sane, non-repressed person, but living a life resembling anything like the shit that Michael Fassbender’s character from the aforementioned flick or that Bunny Munro goes through…well, there’s a reason why I just used the word shit.

Bunny will gladly tell you that his favorite thing in the whole wide world is a woman’s vagina: any and all vaginas. He wants to be inside them all. This is why in the first chapter of the book we find Bunny sitting in a sleazy motel room with a black hooker while he tries to talk his wife down out of a panic attack on the phone. She wants her husband to come home, but Bunny tells her he can’t because he is still out on the road selling his company’s beauty products from door to door. This is what we call a lie, because Bunny is only a few miles away from his home where his wife gets calls about Bunny’s dying father and there’s the sound of a thousand birds fleeing a burning peer right outside her window that’s driving her insane. Bunny promises his wife he will be home early in the morning, but it is late in the afternoon by the time he finally does; after he fucks a random waitress, of course.

This is the kind of man Bunny Munro is.

After a series of misfortunate events, the novel really gets rollicking when we find Bunny back on the road once more, selling his cosmetic wares all over Brighton (that’s in England) with little Bunny Jr. in tow. If I had to describe the plot of this novel then I would have to say here that it is a road-trip novel about fathers and sons. But that makes it sound so pedestrian and there is nothing ever somewhat resembling that word when it comes to something Nick Cave has created.

For one, Nick Cave weaves an encroaching apocalyptic funk throughout the novel by constantly reminding Bunny and the reader of a maniac who is terrorizing public spaces, his body painted red and horns jutting out of his skull. This is far from being just a prank because the bodies of women are starting to turn up, their bodies ripped to pieces by a pitchfork. No matter where Bunny goes he can’t escape seeing news coverage of the madman on TVs and in newspapers. He does his best to ignore the news story and the sense of dread it is welling up inside him, but he can’t help but notice that the killings are getting closer and closer to Brighton. And Bunny knows that the killings are coming home to him.

Also, Bunny is fairly certain that a ghost is haunting his every movement.

But it is hard to feel too sorry for Bunny, because he is constantly at his worst behavior. As he and Bunny Jr. drive around all day, spending nights at cheap motels and having every meal in fast food joints just as ubiquitous, we see just exactly how shitty a dad the man is. He leaves his kid in the car for hours while he goes to visit the homes of women whose names are on his list of interested customers, and when he is not trying to hawk his ridiculous sounding creams and ointments, he is seeing if maybe he can talk whatever women is in front of him into a quick screw. Because this is how Bunny sees women (and I do mean any and all women): they are vaginas with some immediate potential to be entered. It does not matter how old or unattractive a woman is, when Bunny sees them he is immediately thinking of them in terms of fucking. This does make for a lot linguistic feats on the part of the author, as he thinks up another colorful expression or play on words to talk about Bunny and his nearly constant erection.

In fact, it is the humor that saves this book from being utterly harrowing (and it is plenty enough harrowing, still). Cave does a similar trick like Martin Amis, in that, he is constantly placing Bunny in absurd and humiliating situations that the character completely deserves. One of the funniest running gags in this book (and one which Cave apologizes for in the afterward of the novel) is Bunny’s obsession with the singer Avril Lavigne. Cave sums it up nicely in this sentence right here: "Bunny is almost positive that Avril Lavigne possesses the fucking Valhalla of all vaginas." So if you can’t find humor in a dirty, middle-aged man beating off to this ridiculous notion of Avril Lavigne as the end-all be all sex object, then this book might not be for you.

Don’t think this book is all grotesquery and gallows humor, because Cave is also melancholy and generous in his portrayal of Bunny Jr. When Cave writes about how Bunny Jr. loves his father for no reason greater than the fact that Bunny <i>is</i> his father, the prose makes you ache. If anything, Bunny Jr. is the collateral damage throughout this whole story. We watch as he tries to understand exactly who this man is that is supposed to be his father. The boy is smart—he spends his time cooped in the car reading through an encyclopedia—but is too young to realize that he is or find comfort in the fact. What Bunny Jr. wants is for his father to love him back and be proud of having him as his son. Unfortunately for Bunny Jr., his father is a cad.

A quick post script: For the five-star experience, get a copy of this book on audiobook. Nick Cave reads the novel himself, and there is nothing like hearing Cave’s exact and lyrical way of speaking, as he keeps the story moving at a rapt pace. Plus, the audiobook features an original score of music composed by Nick and Warren Ellis of the Bad Seeds (Nick Cave’s backing band). The score divides each chapter as well popping up every now and then at moments in the text where the music adds a surreal urgency to the events at hand. There’s also neat sound effects placed throughout the reading, so that when Bunny walks into a room with a flickering light there is also that all too distinct sound for us to hear right along with him. It all adds up to make a unique and unforgettable experience.

Also posted on GoodReads

K.W. Jeter

Who is K.W. Jeter? I’m four books into this author’s oeuvre and I’m still not sure I have a grasp on what a “novel by K.W. Jeter” is going to be about or how it is going to feel or how it will connect stylistically or thematically with his other novels. And you know what? That is not a bad feeling. It is actually a rather thrilling feeling.

Here’s what I know. His first published book was Seeklight (1975). He coined the term “Steampunk” for his novels Morlock Night (1979) and Infernal Devices (1987). He wrote what was arguably the first Cyberpunk novel, Dr. Adder (1984 – although written many years prior to its publication date). He has also written various sequels to Star Wars, Blade Runner, and Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. My jury is still out on that last factoid; I’ll put a pin in it and think about it later. He is perhaps most at ease when detailing squalid, blighted, unpleasantly hallucinatory urban landscapes. And according to my best friend Wikipedia, Jeter is known for his “literary writing style, dark themes, and paranoid, unsympathetic characters”.

He’s a happy combination of an interior writer concerned with the psychological clockwork of his strikingly cipher-like main characters and an exterior writer who knows how to craft a propulsive narrative, build tension, and deliver exciting action set pieces. He is one of those authors who seems positively disinterested in delivering characters that the reader can like, love, admire, or even empathize with as a fellow human. That disinterest creates a certain remove, a distance between reader and narrative that can feel alienating. In a good way? Well I suppose it depends on the reader. It certainly gave me the space to contemplate what exactly was going on beneath his novels’ dark surfaces.

The man knows how to write! Wikipedia pegged his writing style as “literary” and although I agree, I fear that may give a person the wrong impression of his style. He is not a wordy or verbose writer; far from it – his style is sinuous and hypnotic and, perhaps key to seeing him as a kind of jack-of-all-trades, he adjusts it to fit the topic on hand. His psychological thriller Dark Seeker combines kitchen sink realism with murky, hallucinatory dread. His cyberpunk classic Dr. Adder is all about harsh, brutal, snarky spikiness. Seeklight feels like a tense and often inexplicable fever dream. And in the wonderfully entertaining and comic Infernal Devices he manages to juggle plush, pitch-perfect Victorian language with moments of bizarrely anachronistic ‘modern’ dialogue spilling out of the mouths of a couple mysterious characters. I may have issues with some of his novels but I have no issue whatsoever with his skill and expertise at crafting quality prose and challenging narratives. Jeter’s cup runneth over with pure talent.

So perhaps there is a connecting factor between the four novels I’ve read… namely, those cipher-like main characters. When I think of his “protagonists” (and the quotes are definitely there for a reason), I get the feeling of there is no there there. Dr. Adder’s blank and sleazily ambitious young entrepreneur, Seeklight’s mild and vaguely tabula rasa boy-on-the-run, Infernal Devices’s blandly hollow and prim Victorian everyman, Dark Seeker’s drug-addled victim and former predator-who-wants-to-forget-the-past… each one is not just alienated from the world around them, they are alienated from themselves, from what makes them function and move forward, from what makes them who they are. Posing the question Who are you?  to any of these characters would probably get you a big question mark in return. They don’t know and often the reader doesn’t end up knowing either.  Each of them is a distinctly unsettling blank canvas, but one that I would hesitate to paint upon, let alone project any specifically human motivations or emotions. That canvas is better blank; it is meant to be an empty space; it is meant to trouble you. Perhaps it is covering something up that is better left unseen.

Following are some synopses and a few comments about the novels I’ve read so far.

***

SEEKLIGHT

Science fiction pulp or sweaty nightmare made real? You be the judge! Seeklight is about the son of a so-called traitor, his flight across a curiously lifeless colony full of curiously lifeless humans, his slow movement into understanding of his purpose and his powers. It has clones and fake angels and screamingly murderous robots. It has a low-key and downbeat style. It has a female character who in any other novel would be a romantic interest, but in this one is just as mindlessly, frustratingly, monomaniacally small-minded as every other character. It has a kind of theme: HUMANS ARE FUCKING MISERABLE BUGS. They are not worth the effort of saving them.

Jeter is not interested in making you happy and he is not interested in letting you understand the ins & outs of the human condition. He wants you to know about entropy, about the inherent piggishness of human nature, about quests that go nowhere, and answers that deliver questions that have no answer. He wants you to understand there is actually no hope. I hate that message and I didn’t particularly like this book. But I also really respected it, its choices and its insularity and its bleak and rather pure logic. Color me impressed! Alienated and saddened, but impressed.

***

DR. ADDER

E Allen Limmit is a disaffected young man, fresh off the giant-mutated-chicken farm, once a soldier and later the manager of the farm's mutated-chicken-whore brothel. A somewhat bland and often irritable lad with vague ambitions to be somebody, do something, whatever, just getting the hell off of the farm. Limmit travels to "The Interface" - a terminally seedy street that functions as a meeting place for the degraded, drugged-up, fuck-happy denizens of the counties Los Angeles and Orange. And he has brought a terrifyingly effective death-weapon with him - an instant-massacre machine. Woot! Guess who gets caught between a rock and a hard place.

The novel has admirable chutzpah when it comes to the sheer imagintion on display - the seedy 'Rattown' of L.A., the sewers beneath it, the mind-numbing & hypocritical lifestyle of O.C., the casually bizarre chicken farm, various vividly characterized cast members, a tremendous dream-battle, gruesome & revolting sexuality, a bloodbath on the Interface, even an extraterrestrial Visitor... all quite strikingly stylized, all of these things practically popping off of the page.

As I mentioned earlier, it is perhaps the first cyberpunk novel, being completed in 1972. It certainly has that grim, tarnished, dirty urban feeling that is key to the subgenre. It has the nonchalant violence and misanthropy, the cynicism, the snark. Its narrative includes violent corporate interests, casual murder & slaughter, bad-trip imagery, and a strange kind of psychic pre-internet that exists somewhere in between the mind and the electromagnetic static of radio waves & television transmissions. It is certainly a distinctive book: angrily snappy, grimly jokey, gleefully vindictive. An adventure and an excoriation.

***

DARK SEEKER

Poor Mike Tyler has a problematic past: once a part of a group of pretentious college kids devoted to a pretentious professor slash guru slash svengali, these kids and their prof decided to take it to the next level by regular ingestion of the highly illegal drug The Host - which apparently induces both hallucinatory effects and shared empathic group connection. The Host is 24/7 and it also features visions of a pointy-teethed lil' guy who wants you to kill kill kill. Its hallucinogenic qualities make participants want to tear limbs from bodies, bathe in blood and laugh like hyenas. Unfortunately for Mike, not only does The Host stay in your system permanently, but now a member of the group has come out of the woodwork to recruit Mike back in. Will more zany slaughter hijinks ensue?

Kids, just say no to drugs!

Jeter's individualistic vision encompasses the Los Angeles landscape of freeways and strip malls, a grim and sour misanthropy, the need for his characters to escape from various dark pasts, and a fairly expert use of parallel narratives that comment on each other in intriguing ways. And - surprise, surprise - this novel also demonstrates an ability to write compassionately about well-meaning and empathetic supporting characters. Okay, well, two supporting characters. The rest are miserable bugs. And the protagonist... an eerie, unnerving cipher. Of course. Jeter's gotta be Jeter.

***

INFERNAL DEVICES

Steampunk, ahoy! This is a retro-chic thriller full of tricky clockwork mechanisms, foggy nights and cobblestones, demented aristocrats and dodgy lower class types, inhuman creatures from the sea and their barely human half-breed spawn, creepy flights into darkness and sudden escapes, two brassy mercenaries who are strangely familiar with 20th century slang, and an automaton who comes equipped with all of the wit, intelligence, and sexual drive that his original human model - our strangely bland hero - appears to lack.

The writing is luscious and rather gleefully sardonic. It winks at you while delivering its narrative thrills in a delightfully vivid, semi-archaic purple prose package. And hey, it almost feels like Jeter is even sending up his own traditionally enigmatic heroes. The key to the mysteries swirling around the oddly placid protagonist is his very stolidity. That blankness is actually the answer to the mysteries behind Infernal Devices' central conundrums and contraptions. Clever! And the climax is a literal climax. Ha!

A Song of Ice and Fire: George R.R. Martin's Never-Ending Story

As I pack my bags and settle my affairs before I embark on my journey to my new home, the tent city on George R.R. Martin's front lawn, I think back to how it all began... 

I swore it would never happen to me. I was bound and determined not to read the Song of Ice and Fire for a variety of reasons.

1. I am not a huge fan of today's fantasy novels, never-ending doorstop fantasy series in particular.
2. The series is not yet finished and I don't want to be Dark Towered into waiting years between books or having Martin pull a Robert Jordan and die without completing it.
3. Hype. Anytime someone tells me I have to read something, I almost always dig my feet in and resist. One of these days, I'll stop being stubborn when people recommend me books. Sure, most of them read probably 20% as much as I read in a year but there are reasons why certain books sell thousands and thousands of copies.

So after my girlfriend and I blazed through the first season of Game of Thrones in a weekend, I figured it was time to cave in and give it a try. My fears were unfounded. The Game of Thrones took over my life while I was reading it. Even after watching the first season of the TV series, I couldn't be bothered with things like cleaning house and eating properly. I was captivated by the tale of the Lannisters, the Starks, the Targaryens, and the rest.

  A Game of Thrones by George R.R. Martin
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

When the King comes to Winterfell, Ned Stark soon finds himself given the post of Hand to the King by King Robert. All is not well in Winterfell, however. Stark's son is gravely injured and signs point to the King's wife's family, the Lannisters. Stark will soon find out that when you play the Game of Thrones, you either win or die...

Okay, so it's way more complicated than that but it's hard to write a teaser for an 800+ page kitten squisher like this.

I read an interview with George R.R. Martin where he mentioned liking historical fiction but hating knowing the ending before he started. Game of Thrones feels way more like historical fiction than it does fantasy. While there are magical elements, they don't dominate the story. The story is the battle for the throne of the seven kingdoms and intrigue behind the scenes by various factions. It feels way more like Pillars of the Earth than it does epic fantasy.

For me, the main strengths of the Game of Thrones are the characters and GRRM's willingness to do horrible things to them. While fantasy is usually about good vs. evil, nothing is so black and white in the Game of Thrones. King Robert is a man with a drinking and whoring problem. Ned Stark fathered a child out of wedlock. The Lannisters are a bunch of well-meaning scumbags. Jon Snow looks down upon his companions because of his noble upbringing.

As for GRRM's willingness to do horrible things to his characters? Don't get too attached to anyone. There were several shocking deaths in Game of Thrones and I'm told it gets worse from here on out. I can't wait for someone to settle Joffrey Lannister's hash!

For me, one of the marks of a good book is if it makes me want to rush out and write something similar. It happened with the Dark Tower, Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser, Elric, Hyperion, Amber, and now this. Speaking of Amber, Martin thanks Roger Zelazny in the acknowledgments. I already knew he and Zelazny were close. Now I'm wondering if the machinations in Game of Thrones were in any way inspired by the ones of the family in Amber.

Differences between the book and the first season of the show are pretty minor. One thing that really stood out was that a lot of the characters were younger in the book. Also, there weren't so many women being taken roughly from behind in Martin's text. Other than that, it was mostly chronology and a few minor scenes that were missing.

That's about all I can say since I don't want to give too much away. This book is a monstrous tome but it didn't feel like it. There's always something going on and everyone better watch their backs. After all, Winter is Coming...

A Clash of Kings by George R.R. Martin
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

In the wake of King Robert's death, four men lay claim to his crown. The Mother of Dragons builds her khalazar as magic slowly returns to the world. Jon Snow braves the wilds beyond the Wall. Tyrion Lannister struggles to hold the power behind the Throne. And Winterfell harbors a viper in its midst...

Like I said before, it's hard to write a teaser for a book this size. Look at it! You could club a narwhal to death with it if you were so inclined.

The epic of The Song of Ice and Fire continues to unfold in the second volume. Robb Stark, the King in the North, continues his campaign to avenge his father and take the Iron Throne. His sister Sansa remains in King's Landing, still betrothed to the vile Joffrey. Arya, well, she has quite a bit going on. Jon Snow continues being my favorite character as he ventures beyond the wall, probably marking him for death sometime soon. I'm wondering if the Starks will ever be reunited.

In non-Stark news, Tyrion Lannister continues being the best character in the series and pulls the strings behind the scenes. The conflict between Robert's brothers Stannis and Renly came to a head much earlier than I thought. Jaime Lannister is still in the clink and I'm hoping he and Robb Stark get more screen time in the next book. And Theon! What a colossal douche! Cercei Lannister has a lot more facets to her character than I originally thought.

Much like the last book, most of the action happens near the end. I love the constant intrigue behind the scenes. The battle of Blackwater Bay was my favorite battle in the series so far.

Since I read this without seeing season 2 of Game of Thrones, I'm looking forward to the following events being depicted on the show:
1. Jon Snow beyond the Wall
2. Tyrion's dialog with Cercei early on
3. the battle of Blackwater

That's about all I have to say. I liked Clash of Kings almost as much as the first book.
A Storm of Swords by George R.R. Martin
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Three kings contend for the throne and King Joffrey's wedding day grows near. Can he hold the throne with Robb Stark and Stannis Baratheon nipping at his heels?

Yeah, that's a woefully inadequate summary but it's not laden with spoilers, either.

The third installment of Weddings, Beddings, and Beheadings is my favorite one so far. Martin outdid himself this time.

First of all, there were quite a few deaths in this one. I wasn't expecting Robb Stark to go out like that. Tywin and Joffrey more than had it coming, however. The Red Wedding was pretty surprising, as was the trial by combat for Tyrion's fate. Speaking of Tyrion, his wedding to Sansa was also quite unexpected. I'm still not sure where things are going with Davos Seaworth but I'm already itching to find out.

Jon Snow continued to be my favorite character, from his stint with the wildlings to his defense of the Wall to his imprisonment and eventual election to commander of the Night's Watch. The prospect of Snow becoming Lord of Winterfell is an intriguing one and I'm anxious to see how it unfolds.

Another plotline I'm particularly enjoying is that of Arya and the Hound. The Hound could easily be a scene-chewing villain but is a surprisingly deep character. Arya is shockingly bad ass for a preteen.

One character I'm surprised I've grown to like is Jaime Lannister. He's an arrogant unapologetic bastard and I love him for it. I'd read a whole book of Jaime's exploits.

Also, how about Petyr Baelish? What a bastard!

I'm giving this five stars with an exclamation point next to it.

A Feast for Crows by George R.R. Martin
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

The throne of the Iron Isles is contested. Queen Cercei conspires to keep King Tommen's young queen from influencing him. Jaime Lannister adjusts to having only one hand. Sam Tarly and Gilly head south. Brienne quests for the missing Stark daughters. Littlefinger holds the Vale. A lot of stuff happens in Dorne. Arya Stark continues being one of the more interesting characters in fantasy...

After a years-long void, the Song of Ice and Fire returns. Well, they can't all be home runs. Sometimes you have to settle for a triple.

Aside from the lack of Jon Snow, Dany and the dragons, and one Tyrion Lannister, I enjoyed A Feast for Crows as much as the previous volumes. At this point, Jaime Lannister is hot on the heels of Arya, Jon Snow, and Tyrion as my favorite character. I could read a few hundred pages of Jaime Lannister walking around being an asshole. Sam got some time to shine and I think he'll do big things before the series is over. I love what's going on with Arya. I still don't care about Sansa or Catelyn Stark.

The bits with the Iron Isles and Dorne got a little wearisome, feeling like Martin might have wanted to keep the biscuit wheels on his gravy train for a little while longer. Still, I liked where things went despite not involving any of my favorite characters.

It's a testament to Martin's skill that he has made me care about the Lannister twins, first Jaime and now Cercei. I'm chomping at the bit to find out Cercei's fate and to see if Brienne is really dead.

On a final note, there were way too many characters whose names started with the letter E in the same chapter. Mix it up a little, George.

Four stars, although I'd probably give it a high three if I'd been one of the people who had to wait years between books.

A Dance With Dragons by George R.R. Martin
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Stannis Baratheon marches on Winterfell from the Wall. Daenerys's empire is threatened from within. Tyrion finds himself enslaved. Cercei finds herself in chains. The Crow's Eye desires Daenerys for his own but so do several other would-be suitors. And Jon Snow faces dissent from his brothers of the Watch...

In the latest installment of Incest and Intrigue, more of the pieces are placed on the board. Daenerys can't trust anyone. Jon Snow can't trust anyone. Iron Lords cannot trust their own brothers. Sellswords in general cannot be trusted. In short, no one can trust anyone while the Game of Thrones is being played.

This one had its share of memorable moments, both good and ill. I really like how Arya's story is developing but I don't see how it's going to tie back into things. The revelation of Young Griff's true identity was a game changer and its repercussions will be felt in the next couple books. I liked that Brienne is still alive and that Jaime Lannister chose to follow her instead of rushing to Cercei's defense. Jon Snow getting knifed on the Wall by his sworn brothers didn't sit well with me. I'm really hoping he's still alive come next book, whenever that may be.

It looks like Theon is headed for redemption but I'd rather see him dead or taking the black. Bran is progressing nicely. Whatever happened to Ricken and that bastard of Robert's that isn't Gendry? And who is Cercei's new champion Robert Strong, the Mountain, perhaps?

And that brings us to our current situation.  I honestly don't think Martin will be able to wrap things up in two more books, not with all the balls he has in the air. Plus, it would be all too easy for him to throw more players into the mix to keep the saga going. Still, with A Song of Ice and Fire, George R.R. Martin has made an Oathbreaker out of me. I once swore I'd never get caught up in a neverending fantasy series. In fact, I believe I said I'd rather eat my own testicles. However, I'm pretty caught up in this one.

So, what happens now?  Even if they split books 3-5 into two seasons each, the Game of Thrones television show is going to catch up with the books in a few short years.  Then what?  I've heard that Martin is considering adapting the novels set in the GoT world for additional seasons.  Also, he's wanting to work on other projects.  Maybe it's time to farm out some of the work to a James Patterson-style sweatshop of authors.  Just give each one a couple characters and an outline and let 'er rip.  Either that or die before the series is finished.  Whichever you're more comfortable with, George.

Now if you'll excuse me, I'm off to join the tent city.  I'm hoping to get a spot next to the garbage cans so I can get first dibs on any discarded fragments George sees fit to bless his subjects with.  Or maybe I'll try to fight my way close to the house and pray I'll get a glimpse of the king himself when he chances by one of the windows...

Lives of Tao

The Lives of Tao by Wesley Chu
Dan's rating: 4 of 5 stars
Publisher: Angry Robot
Price: 7.99
Available: est. April 30th

When secret agent Edward Blair is betrayed and killed, Tao, the alien symbiont that lives within him, must find a suitable host to continue the centuries long war between his faction, The Prophus, and their archenemies, the Genjix. Too bad he winds up inside overweight IT worker Roen Tan instead. Can Tao whip Roen into shape before the Genjix find him?

When Angry Robot offered an ARC of this book in their weekly newsletter, I jumped at the chance to request one. Two alien factions waging war against each other using humans as hosts and pawns? What's not to like?

Nothing, as it turns out. Lives of the Tao is an engaging read from start to finish. Roen's journey takes him from being an overweight, weak-willed shlub to a major player in a war for Earth's future. Not bad for an IT guy who hasn't had a girlfriend in ten years.

The relationships in Lives of the Tao are what drives the story forward, most notably Roen's relationships with Tao, the alien living inside his head, and Sonya, the Phophys host assigned to help Tao whip him into shape.

It's a fun read. One of my favorite parts is how Tao related a paragraph or two of the history between the two Quasing factions, the Genjix and the Prophus, at the beginning of each chapter, sometimes paralleling events in the story.

The ending, while somewhat predictable, was perfect for the story and left it open-ended enough for future adventures of Roen and Tao. Four easy stars.

Also on Goodreads

The Detectives of the 87th Precint (and Their Creator) Work Under Pressing Deadlines

First published in 1958, this is the eighth entry in Ed McBain's 87th Precinct series. By this point, the main characters were fairly well-established and needed no introduction, but the book itself is something of an oddity in the series in that most of the books have the detectives of the 87th working at least a couple of cases. This book focuses on a single case, worked by all of the detectives over a the course of a long and frustrating twelve-hour day.

As the team assembles in the morning, a young boy delivers a printed message to the desk sergeant. The man who wrote the message announces that he is going to kill "the Lady" at 8:00 that evening. The detectives have no idea if this is a practical joke or not, but naturally, they have to take the threat seriously.

In a desperate race against time the detectives work along parallel tracks, trying to determine the identity of the victim and that of the man who intends to kill her. As always, McBain provides an interesting and entertaining ride, although this would not rank among the better books in the series.

In a new introduction, McBain explains that he wrote the book under a deadline, in just nine days. His contract provided that he had to produce a manuscript of 180 pages--no more, no less--and that is exactly what he did. In order to do so, though, he added a lot of filler to what otherwise could have been a fairly short novella. There are a lot of extended descriptions of the weather and of various characters where McBain is obviously just attempting to fill space in an effort to hit his 180-page target and to get the book done as quickly as possible.

In less capable hands, this schedule would have almost certainly produced a book that would hardly be worth reading. But McBain is so good that even a book written under this kind of pressure turns out to be very entertaining and demonstrates what a talented and prolific writer could do "back in the day" when pulp novelists regularly produced several books a year. I wouldn't recommend that someone new to the series start with this book, but fans of the series will want to seek it out.