Taking a closer look at King's short and sweet side

Master storyteller and bestselling author Stephen King is known for his doorstop length books; in fact, it's something the critics love to lambast him for and King himself has referred to his condition as "literary elephantiasis". All I know is, you could really mess someone up with a few whacks across the head using the hardback edition of IT or the uncut edition of The Stand. Today, I want to take a step back from the epic novels that double as concealed weaponry, and throw a spotlight on King's short but sweet ebook experiments.

Mile 81
Stephen King
Scribner, 2011  

Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

Many readers have been underwhelmed by this one: too short to be a novella, too long to be considered a short story, King fans have been left feeling he'd written a tepid, and ultimately forgettable, little piece. The reception has been split though, because many other fans enjoyed it immensely. I am lucky enough to fall into the latter category.

Even before picking it up I was predisposed to love it. It's King after all, and it had been a while since I'd been able to indulge in my addiction. You could also say this story acted as the prime motivator for me to finally get myself an eReader, seeing as how Mile 81 was only released as an ebook and I wouldn't get to read it otherwise.

Because a car features prominently in the story, comparisons have been made to Christine and even From a Buick 8. I wasn't really reminded of either of these though. If it felt familiar it was because it got me thinking about King's short story “The Raft” (from Skeleton Crew), which I adore and find myself re-reading every few years. Like the mysterious oil slick in that story, the car in Mile 81 just appears out of nowhere. Where it comes from, how or why it got there, doesn’t matter so much as what happens next.

The story instantly engrossed me as did the cast of characters who all find themselves arriving, for one reason or another, at the deserted Mile 81 rest stop. King makes it look all so easy – the abandoned building is the perfect setting for a malevolent force to set its web and draw in all the victims it can. Almost immediately, we know there is something sinister afoot (it is King after all), but it isn’t immediately obvious from what direction the threat is going to come from. It’s hard to steel yourself when you don’t have that vital piece of information. The subsequent dread this creates is palpable. Then, when you finally know where the danger is coming from, the dread doesn’t cease, but escalates exponentially; by this time we have characters to care about and it becomes that desperate feeling of “watch out! Oh no! Don’t do that!”

Do I think this is the best thing King has written? Of course not. But I do think it’s memorable. It tickled my heebie-jeebies bone and left me wanting more. Whenever I’ve been away from King for a while and I finally get to read something new, it is the best feeling in the world (like slipping into my beat up old Levis or that ancient pink sweater with holes I can’t seem to throw out even though my boyfriend has threatened to burn it). It’s comfort. It’s coming home. It’s sitting down with an old friend. I felt all of those things reading this little gem, and I hope if you do pick it up, you’ll feel some of that too.

In the Tall Grass
Stephen King & Joe Hill
Scribner, 2012

Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

Well, well, well, what do we have here? A bona fide horror story my friends and Constant Readers, sprouted from the father/son imagination team of Stephen King and Joe Hill. This story is not without its problems (and won't be suited to everyone's tastes). It is ghoulish and a tad gory, and depending on your sensibilities you may be disgusted, even offended. But before it goes there it is a magnificent piece of storytelling steeped in dread and what I like to call, epic creep. One reviewer has likened it to Open Water meets The Ruins and that's not inaccurate. There is a Mile 81 vibe as promised, but I was reminded more of King's earlier classic short stories such as "Children of the Corn" and "The Raft" and if I had to pick a movie, The Blair Witch Project.

Getting lost in tall grass is one of my most primal fears. And I don't mean grass that comes up to your waist (icky enough), but grass that is over your head and obscures the view of what's in front of you. Stuff lives in grass. Entire ecosystems of crawly, stinging biting things. Then there's mud and dew and pollen and mice and snakes and well... you get my point. I don't want to be there. No way.

The first half of this 60 page short story is so very strong in the way it taps into our claustrophobic fear of becoming lost. As humans we are very good at -- not to mention very attached to -- knowing where we are at any given moment in space and time. Our evolutionary sense of well-being depends on it. Strip it away and we quickly lose our shit. Panic, fear, frustration, they all come bubbling to the surface as we projectile rage against the environment that has conspired against us in such an unforgivable betrayal. What is that tree doing there? That wasn't there before. I thought the river was to the east of us. I'm sure the car is just over the next hill there.

As much as we hate it, getting lost is pretty much a universal human experience. It's probably happened to all of us at one time or another, even if it was for a very short period of time in a new city or on a short hike in a national park. King and Hill take that germ of an idea and run with it like mad lunatics in an asylum. This is a supernatural horror story, so if you like realism and stories that "could really happen" this might not be your thing. I wasn't entirely satisfied with the explanation of what is really going on in the tall grass, but enjoyed the first half of the story so much I'm willing to overlook that here. Plus, the story is just so well-written. It's tightly coiled prose with some great phrasing and sentence structure.

Imagine being a fly on the wall for the father/son conversation such a collaboration requires. There are a few things that happen that made me want to scream: "Okay, whose idea was that?! Fess up!" I guess part of the fun is in trying to guess, and perhaps never knowing. These guys work good together though, and I'm looking forward to many more collaborations (fingers crossed).

Will Christopher Baer's Phineas Poe Trilogy.

Two of my more recent posts on Shelf Inflicted have been spotlights thrown on an author's series.  I took a look at a few Duane Swierczynski books and then just two weeks ago, posted my thoughts on Chris F. Holm's Collector books.

I thought this week I'd throw up three books from author Will Christopher Baer.  An incredibly underrated and criminally unknown neo-noir series about an unwilling hero and a deadly woman.  Check it out my thoughts after the jump.

The Forbes 25 Reviewers - #4 Wendy Darling

Today's guest is Wendy Darling.  Wendy also posts at The Midnight Garden.

How did you discover Goodreads?
A friend of mine prodded me to join for ages, and I finally opened an account in late 2009. I didn't start using the site until 2011, however--but now I can't imagine being without it. I use it for cataloging, sorting, as a quick temperature checks at bookstores if I'm considering a book, and of course, it's an invaluable resource for reviews that are relatively free of influence from outside factors.

What have been your most memorable Goodreads experiences?
That's a loaded question. I've met so many passionate fellow readers on GoodReads, and I've learned about many books I never would have heard about otherwise--and how sad my life would have been without those books in it! Even though I'm a former reviewer for Publishers Weekly, I weigh the opinion of people I've gotten to know much more than I do reviews by mainstream publications.

On the flip side, reviewing books on this site has also shown me incredibly ugly, self-centered behavior that's affected me both personally and on principle. I wish authors and readers alike respected review space that belongs to someone else. I welcome polite discussion, but I will never understand how people can be so vicious and demeaning over a mere difference in opinion. And I wish GoodReads took a stronger, if not more active, stance on abusive behavior.

Name one reviewer not in the Forbes 25 that people should be aware of.
I almost never consent to interviews, but this is the question that made me want to respond this one. Seeing the top 25 profiles in Forbes was fun, but there are countless reviewers who will never make that list who write extraordinary reviews. Here are just some of the people whose reviews I always pay special attention to when they pop up in my feed:

I adore Thomas. He writes thoughtful, quietly lovely reviews, mostly for YA, classics, and literary fiction. He's just graduated from high school so I'm hoping we don't lose him completely to his studies (I know, so selfish!), and I like that he also talks about issues he thinks are important on his blog The Quiet Voice.

I am also very fond of both Matthew Hunter and Mark Letcher. I can always count on them for interesting perspectives on quality young adult literature, and we've had some fun discussions over our favorite books, including The Golden Compass.

My cobloggers K and Tonya are my absolute favorite reviewers, however. I've read some of their beautiful reviews literally half a dozen times because I love the way they write and I respect their opinions so much. Kindred spirits, those two.

What was your initial reaction to Amazon buying Goodreads?
I don't think this move came as a surprise to anyone who was been paying attention, so my reaction was resignation. I understand it from a business perspective, but as the site has developed into such a huge marketing tool for authors and publishers, I've become less and less convinced that its members' rights are protected. As a result, I'm less and less invested in the site as well.

Still, I hope that GoodReads is true to its position that there will be no major site changes as far as the way reviews are displayed, voting systems configured, etc. I admit to cynicism about that in the long term, however, since there's already been interesting opacity in the ways reviews are hidden (and who knows what else) anyway.

How many books do you own?
Is this a real question?! Thousands.

Who is your favorite author?
This probably comes as a surprise since I'm known for mostly reviewing YA, but my favorite living author is Sarah Waters. She writes literary fiction with strong feminine themes, many of which are set during the Victorian era. I've been saving one of her books for years, because it's only one I haven't read yet and it'll be awhile before her next one is even announced.

What is your favorite book of all time?
*disapproving stare*

I refuse to answer that question. But I will refer you to my "favorites of all time" shelf if you really need an idea. I also keep shelves of yearly favorites.

What are your thoughts on ebooks?
They're fantastic. I think they are marvelous for urgent post-midnight purchases, for travel, and for pleasure reading. But I will never give up physical copies, and if I really love a book I've read electronically, I still need a hard copy for my shelves.

What are your thoughts on self-publishing?
I think it's amazing that we're living in an age when it's so easy for readers to easily access new work without waiting the typical years between acquisition and traditional publication. The problem is, part of that time is usually spent on polishing manuscripts with the input of professionals, and to be honest the majority of the self-published work I've read feels like the raw material for a good book rather than a finished piece. (We won't even talk about the vanity work that should have stayed locked away on would-be writers' hard drives.)

That being said, I've read some really great books that were originally self-published, including And All the Stars, Angelfall, and The Sea of Tranquility. Katja Millay shared her extraordinary publishing story with us recently, by the way--her self-pubbed book was picked up by Simon & Schuster after being live for just three weeks. It's interesting to see how publishing landscape continues to evolve, as a result, the way we readers evolve as consumers, too.

Deliverance

James Dickey
Delta
Reviewed by: Nancy
4 out of 5 stars

Summary

The setting is the Georgia wilderness, where the state’s most remote white-water river awaits. In the thundering froth of that river, in its echoing stone canyons, four men on a canoe trip discover a freedom and exhilaration beyond compare. And then, in a moment of horror, the adventure turns into a struggle for survival as one man becomes a human hunter who is offered his own harrowing deliverance.

My Review

I saw this twice, once in the late 80’s and again in 1996, shortly after my husband and I got married.  I loved the movie both times I saw it, even though my husband found it utterly boring and not nearly as thrilling as Southern Comfort.  Over time, the scenes that stood out the most for me were the dueling banjos and the hillbilly rape.

Right after reading the book, I watched the movie a third time.  The first thing I noticed was that the film was quite faithful to the book.  There were significant differences, of course, mostly with the character of Ed Gentry.  The book was told entirely by him, not just the events that occurred following Ed and his friends’ preparation for their remote white-water adventure, but his thoughts about work (too much), his family (too little), and his feelings about life which bordered on the too philosophical.  

“The studio was full of gray affable men who had tried it in New York and come back South to live and die.  They were competent, though we demanded no very high standard from them, and when they weren’t working at layouts and paste-ups they would sit tilted back from the drawing board with their hands behind their heads, gazing at whatever same thing was there.”

Yawn….let’s face it, most people’s jobs are boring.  Unless you’re in a creative profession of some sort, or a circus clown, I’m not that interested in reading the nitty-gritty of people’s jobs.  Really, it’s enough for me to know that you work (or not).

Then again, the reader needs to get a glimpse of this humdrum aspect of the men’s lives.  It contrasts so sharply with their wilderness adventure, the remote landscape, the feats of strength, and the strong bonds of men trying to survive.

This was written in 1970, so I understand that men were the primary breadwinners and work was a large measure of their success, while women earned less than half their salaries and were encouraged to take secretarial classes rather than pursue more lucrative business careers. 

 

“The women were almost all secretaries and file clerks, young and semi-young and middle-aged, and their hair styles, piled and shellacked and swirled and horned, and almost every one stiff, filled me with desolation.  I kept looking for a decent ass and spotted one in a beige skirt, but when the girl turned her barren, gum-chewing face toward me, it was all over.”

 

If you can get past the blatant sexism and the dated feel, this is a really good story that explores in depth the wild and unpredictable nature of man and environment.  I loved the vivid descriptions of the harsh and beautiful landscape, the turbulent water, and the enormous physical challenges undertaken by Ed and his companions.  The character descriptions were rather sketchy, but this is not a book so much about people’s lives, but how they deal with adversity.  There is a strong sense of camaraderie here, no wishy-washy feelings or sentimentality.   This is a brutal, harrowing story that drags at times, while at other times I wanted more.

It is well worth reading and an excellent film too.

Also posted at Goodreads.

The Forbes 25 Reviewers - #5 Kat Kennedy

Today's guest is Kat Kennedy.  She also posts at Cuddlebuggery.


How did you discover Goodreads?
Through a hole in the time space continuum that landed me on the internet. Trapped on Earth with nothing better to do, I thought I'd look up Gerbils. That got boring fast so books were a close second in my search history. This led me to Goodreads. I've been trapped here ever since. Help.

What have been your most memorable Goodreads experiences?
The time I received an email from you, Dan Schwent. What took you so long?! I had my people contact your people and everything.

Actually, it was the time Manny Rayner wrote a book of his Goodreads reviews and had me review it on Goodreads. It was so meta, my mind exploded.

Name one reviewer not in the Forbes 25 that people should be aware of.
I'm not entirely sure who the Forbes 25 are. Is this a cult? Was I invited? I do love a good cult. But one reviewer I think is great and doesn't get enough credit is Sarah from Saz101.com.

What was your initial reaction to Amazon buying Goodreads?
Shock. Horror. A brief stint of hunger followed by some vague stomach twinges. Then I just stood silently for an entire day making this face:
http://media.tumblr.com/tumblr_majcfsw7pe1r191qj.gif

How many books do you own?
At last count 350. I don't know. Books are very transient creatures in my house.

Who is your favorite author?
This is an evil question. How do I answer such a thing?

Veronica Rossi.

Wow. That was surprisingly easy...

What is your favorite book of all time?
Ask me to pick my favourite child, why don't you? (My daughter)

On The Jellicoe Road by Melina Marchetta is the closest that I come. But I'll have you know that this could have easily devolved into a list of my favourite 100 books, broken into genre and listed in alphabetical order based on the author's name.

What are your thoughts on ebooks?
They are much more compatible with my ereader than physical books are.

What are your thoughts on self-publishing?
That I'm grateful it has brought me some of my favourite books. Actually, so has traditional publishing! I guess I'm forced to love them both. Unlike my children.

Any literary aspirations? 
I aspire to read great literature.

World War II Alternate History...but GOOD!

HITLER'S WAR (The War That Came Early #1)
HARRY TURTEDOVE
Del Rey Books
$16.00 trade paper, available now

Rating: 4* of five, all for the delicious idea

The Publisher Says: A stroke of the pen and history is changed. In 1938, British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain, determined to avoid war at any cost, signed the Munich Accord, ceding part of Czechoslovakia to Hitler. But the following spring, Hitler snatched the rest of that country and pushed beyond its borders. World War II had begun, and England, after a fatal act of appeasement, was fighting a war for which it was not prepared.

Now, in this thrilling, provocative, and fascinating alternate history by Harry Turtledove, another scenario is played out: What if Chamberlain had not signed the accord? What if Hitler had acted rashly, before his army was ready–would such impatience have helped him or doomed him faster? Here is an action-packed, blow-by-blow chronicle of the war that might have been–and the repercussions that might have echoed through history–had Hitler reached too far, too soon, and too fast.

Turtledove uses dozens of points of view to tell this story: from American marines serving in Japanese-occupied China to members of a Jewish German family with a proud history of war service to their nation, from ragtag volunteers fighting in the Abraham Lincoln Battalion in Spain to an American woman desperately trying to escape Nazi-occupied territory–and witnessing the war from within the belly of the beast.

A novel that reveals the human face of war while simultaneously riding the twists and turns that make up the great acts of history, Hitler’s War is the beginning of an exciting new alternate history saga. Here is a tale of powerful leaders and ordinary people, of spies, soldiers, and traitors, of the shifting alliances that draw some together while tearing others apart. At once authoritative, brilliantly imaginative, and hugely entertaining, Hitler’s War captures the beginning of a very different World War II–with a very different fate for our world today.


My Review: The "Master of Alternate History", per his jacket copy, takes on one of the most popular subjects in all of alternative hitory: WWII. Equaled in numbers of treatments only by the American Civil War, WWII is a target rich environment for armchair historians to play with: Operation SeaLion succeeds (invasion of the UK); the 1944 coup against Hitler succeeds; the 1940 US election returns an isolationist President and the UK reaches terms; Battle of Midway goes the other way; Japan doesn't get nuked, much loss of life in conquering it; etc etc etc blah blah blah. Since 2001, I've read the nasty, hostile, but very interesting posts on the old USENET group soc.hist.what-if, so it takes a LOT to get me interested in something about WWII. Turtledove's fame in the field wouldn't be enough to entice me, I assure you, since I can't *abide* one of his most popular series about aliens landing on earth during WWII.

Here, however, we have something that really piques my interest. It's an actual historical possibility: Chamberlain of England and Daladier of France refuse to hand over Czechoslovakia instead of buying themselves a little longer preparation time by waving bye-bye to their ally as they did on our timeline. (The antique USENET convention for representing alternative history events is to do this: *WWII means the MODIFIED version of the war, where WWII is understood to be the one departed from by the modified version; henceforward, if you see the asterisk, that's what it means.) So *WWII starts in 1938, not September 1939. Poland isn't the first country attacked, and in fact ends up allied to Germany in opposition to its very long-term enemy Russia. The *Spanish Civil War (remember now!) is run by a General Sanjurjo, instead of Franco; the man died for his vanity in OUR reality (called OTL in USENET terms, so again: "OTL" = Our Time Line, the world we learned about in history books). This means for some very cogent reasons that the *Spanish Civil War isn't over when *WWII begins, and there are some significant results from that. The *Japanese, busy raping China into submission as in OTL, realize that one of their longterm ambitions is in easy reach: The conquest of Siberia, with its **astonishing** riches, to add to Manchuria. It's all very plausible, and it's all very tidily constructed.

What Turtledove usually does, he does here: He tells his story through the lens of many different viewpoints on all sides of every conflict. He makes sure the reader sees through American, Russian, Czech, French, Spanish, Japanese, Jewish eyes what the causes and results of *WWII are. All that tidy construction feels quite fragmented, and seems to be an excuse for chaos. In fact, this book could simply not have been written had Turtledove not had a tight and complete grasp of the facts he's departing from, in order to create the modified world. His success is close to complete.

Oh, but the price one pays for following so many, many characters. Nothing ever gets more than set up; the payoff is pages and pages away, several stories of great interest intervening, and sometimes the action sounds quite repetitive because after 40pp the author or his editor thought it'd be a good idea to give a little review of where we left, for examply, Luc Harcourt and Sergeant Demange. Wearing. Action-slowing. Not usually necessary, IM(never-very)HO. But nonetheless, the suspense manages to build, because unlike the OTL history of WWII, the *WWII has events in it we never even heard of! I like that. I like that I can trust Dr. Turtledove to build those events from sound conjectures. And most of the time, I overlook the little inconsistencies (a character bound for Romania suddenly turns up in Berlin, no explanation offered). I like alternative history because I like OTL history, and I like seeing what a storyteller can do with the astoundingly rich vein of material there is in any historical account.

But will this book make converts among those who have not drunk the historical Kool-Aid? No, on balance, I suspect not. I'd never suggest that someone start reading alternative history here. But for those of us already In The Cult, it's a damn good outing and the beginning of a series that promises some very rich rewards.


This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

More Than an Adventure Tale

Nation

by Terry Pratchett

Published by HarperCollins

Reviewed by Amanda
4 Out of 5 Stars

Young Mau is a boy living on an island he knows only as the Nation. He has been sent to the Boy's Island where he must survive until he can, using only the tools of the island, build a canoe that will take him on the return voyage to the Nation. By doing so, he will prove that he is a man and the village will celebrate as he sheds his boy's soul and takes on his man's soul.

Except, when he returns, there are no fires. There are no feasts. There is no one to welcome him home. What is there is death, destruction, and the dawning realization that the Nation, a powerful island tribe, has now been reduced to a population of one. If Mau dies, then the Nation--its heritage, its ancestors, its religion--will die, too.

This book had two strikes against it when I picked it up: 1) it's marketed as young adult and 2) my one foray into Pratchett's writing, The Color of Magic, was underwhelming. So Nation was a very pleasant surprise. This isn't young adult literature in the sense that it's written strictly for a younger audience, but I think it has been labeled as such because the protagonist is young and, now that no one is there to perform the rituals that will draw his man's soul to him, wonders if he'll always be more than a boy but less than a man.

What seems to be a deceptively simple adventure tale on the surface has levels of complexity as it explores issues tied to colonialism, existentialism, feminism, and racism (and one must admit that's an impressive collection of "isms"). As Mau works tirelessly to bury the bodies at sea according to custom, he begins to--as so many do after a traumatic and life-altering crisis--question the gods and everything he's ever been taught to believe in. This confrontation with the void is complicated by the fact that Mau suddenly hears what may be the voices of the gods speaking directly to him. When he comes into contact with whites, he questions whether or not his people, who seemed to have everything, were really inferior savages.

Now, if all that sounds terribly tedious and didactic to you, WAIT--THERE'S MORE! There's also action, adventure, romance, and humor. There are tsunamis, shipwrecks, mutineers, kings, secret passages, sharks, beer, cannons, and a foul-mouthed parrot. And there's a damsel who can take care of herself, thank you very much.

And that's the wonderful thing about this book. It causes the reader to think while being entertained. And Pratchett accomplishes all of this without being preachy or trying to substitute his answer for your own. In fact, his message seems to be that you must have faith in something--whether it's a god, a science, or a nation. As long as what you believe in is good and furthers mankind, your faith is not wasted. Perhaps his stance is best summed up by one of the characters:

Everything I know makes me believe Imo [the god of the islanders] is in the order that is inherent, amazingly, in all things, and in the way the universe opens to our questioning. When I see the shining path over the lagoon, on an evening like this, at the end of a good day, I believe . . . I just believe. You know, in things generally. That works too. Religion is not an exact science. Sometimes, of course, neither is science. (366)

In Nation, as in life, there are no easy answers, but, as in life, it's one helluva ride.

Meet the Shelf Inflicted Staff - Trudi

Today's guest is one of Canada's most dangerous reviewers, Trudi. Trudi also posts at Busty Book Bimbo.

How did you discover Goodreads?
One of my librarian friends joined in 2008 and sent me an invite. I accepted and it was love at first sight.

What have been your most memorable Goodreads experiences?
Reading the reviews has become a valued part of my reading life -- some have made me laugh so hard it felt like I might've broken something, and a few have made me cry (but I'm not telling which ones). This site has also brought some seriously funny, seriously smart people to my attention and it's been a real delight getting to know them better through the books they love (and hate).

Name one reviewer not in the Forbes 25 that people should be aware of.
My pal Carol and fellow zombie enthusiast.

What was your initial reaction to Amazon buying Goodreads?
Remember Nancy Kerrigan after the knee-capping incident? Yeah, like that (only more dramatic). I'm getting over it gradually. The more I drink, the better Amazon looks. I'm just going to stay drunk from now on.

How many books do you own?
I've moved around lots and was a student in one form or another until I was 32, so a lot of my books got purged over the years. My physical "owned" library has been whittled down to about 70 of my most precious darlings, including a few first editions by Stephen King that I'll be buried with just in case it's BYOB (bring your own book) on the other side.

Who is your favorite author?
Stephen King. My mom loved him and I started reading him when I was 10. I've been a Constant Reader ever since. His books are the soundtrack to my life and when I need a comfort read, it's his books I inevitably turn to.

What is your favorite book of all time?
Oh jesus, really? I can't pick one. I have about 30 that are constantly jockeying for position. The Book Thief by Markus Zusak holds a special place in my reader heart though.

What are your thoughts on ebooks?
Love them. I'm much more of a story junkie than a book junkie, if that makes sense. I'll take a good story any way I can get it -- big screen, little screen, around a campfire, in a song, I don't care just tell me a story and make it a good one. Ebooks have made it even easier to get to the stories that I want to be reading, and to even discover some authors that would have withered away in obscurity without the ebook revolution. Physical books can be a beautiful, precious commodity and I don't see them going extinct ever, but ebooks have their place too. They're not the enemy.

What are your thoughts on self-publishing?
Let's face it. There's a river of crap out there and some huge, dickish egos behind it. But if you're really courageous, and willing to take a paddle and head upstream, diamonds in the rough are waiting to be disovered. Never before have the barriers between author and reader been so few, the access so direct. No longer are authors strictly dependent on big publishing houses to deem their work "worthy" to go to market accompanied by a sexy publicity campaign. Authors and readers are doing it for themselves these days, and I for one think it's a beautiful thing. However, this should be writ law and punishable by death: No author should self-publish until he or she has read King's On Writing. And use the goddamn spell check! It was invented for a reason.

Any literary aspirations?
I think I make a much better reader than I would a writer. Inventing stories is so much work and takes so much time, time that could be spent reading. I'm the junkie in this relationship, not the dealer. I'm satisfied with my reader high, just keep the cooks in the kitchen and the meth on the streets, yeah? Heisenberg blue.

What is your ideal super villain lair?
The recently revealed Men of Letters bunker on the CW's Supernatural. It's underground, it's a library, it has a firing range and a kitchen. It's the perfect place really to launch a campaign for world domination.

DC Hardcore, 1940's Edition

The Big Blowdown

George Pelecanos

St. Martin's Press (1996)

Anthony Vacca's rating: 4 out of 5 stars

 

 

The sad truth about modernism? It failed.

 What do I mean by that? Well, if you’ll allow me to sum up the goal of the movement in a very simplified manner, then modernism was about artists—in this particular case, authors—trying to create works that would let people know how horrible a thing World War I was and how no one must ever let a thing like that happen again.

 Came to pass that things didn’t quite work out that way, and so most of these authors went headlong into various modes of self-destruct. That’s why authors like Woolf, Hemingway, and Faulkner (just to name a few) didn’t take too long in putting an end to their time here in a world seemingly perpetuated by misery.

But to be blunt, the real crime is not the loss of these great minds, these old men and women: the real bitch is that we sent so many more young men to die in places they never even knew existed.

 Kids like Pete Karras and Joe Recevo. These two boys, best friends and natives of Washington DC, went to fight their separate wars overseas; and by the dumb chance, managed to come back home to resume their God-given rights of finding that American Dream.

 In James Crumley’s Dancing Bear, the author writes, “I have learned some things. Modern life is warfare without end: take no prisoners, leave no wounded, eat the dead--that's environmentally sound.”

 I bet Karras and Recevo would be hard-pressed to argue with that logic; because even though the two have returned as “heroes” neither are really prime candidates for good citizen material. So the two find work collecting for a local thug named Burke. But where Recevo seems content living off being a bully towards all the local businessmen, Karras isn’t cut out for the line of work. If anything, Karras is playing at being a gangster so he can avoid getting a real job with all those boring responsibilities that seem to go along with being an adult; and, of course, so he can keep hanging out with his best friend Recveo, driving cool cars, catching boxing matches, chasing women, you know, all the ways two buds have a little bit of fun in the late 1940’s.

 That is until Karras finds out the hard way that being a gangster doesn’t really mean you can also be nice and carefree. And so, physically and emotionally humiliated, Karras finds himself working as cook at a local diner.

 And here’s when the book gets good. The diner is owned by Nick Stefanos, a name any casual Pelecanos fan will recognize. But no, this isn’t the Nick who narrated that amazing trilogy of PI novels (A Firing Offense, Nick’s Trip, and Down By the River Where the Dead Men Go) but instead this is his grandfather, “Big Nick.” This is the man who would one day shape Nick into the deeply moral man will one day become. Even though little Nick isn’t here for the action of this book, we get to see first-hand what kind of man his grandfather was and why it is he revered the man.

 In fact, these are my favorite parts of the book. Nick’s Bar and Grill is one of the first establishments in the city to make the change over to being a place ran by a white man that has an African-American clientele. In Washington DC of the 1940s, this is no small feat. Nick runs his restaurant with a casual pride that is hard not to admire. He treats every person he meets fairly, and in turn is liked by most people. And when Karras it at his lowest in life, it is Big Nick who gives him a job so he can feed his young wife and child, but also he is the one who helps Karras learn how to walk like a man again.

Karras knows that he owes this man a lot, so when that local thug Burke decides that Big Nick needs to start paying him protection money, there’s Karras ready to fight at his side. The only trouble is that in Burke’s corner is also Karras’s childhood friend Joe Recevo.

The novel ultimately becomes a struggle of identity for these two men as they try and figure out the nature of themselves and what they are willing to fight for. But Pelecanos does not let his sights end there. The author sets out to create a panoramic of his beloved city by inserting various other plot threads that interweave with this tension between the gangsters and Big Nick’s crew.
Another childhood friend of Karras’s, Boyle, is a cop who wants to make it big by being the one to catch the maniac who has been cutting up prostitutes over the past couple of years.

There is also a country boy who has come to the city to find a sister that has gotten herself mixed up with heroin and a nasty pimp. The kid becomes quickly lost in the city lifestyle but soon finds a set of friends when he starts working at Big Nick’s for money to live off of while he hunts for his sister.

 These threads are interesting but neither mystery offers unexpected revelations to the story. Neither feels tagged on, however. Instead, the hunt for the sister and the hunt for the serial killer help to further flesh out Karras and Recevo as well as push events to their ultimate bullet-ridden climax.

And while all the crime fiction elements of this novel are satisfying, the true joy comes from the character studies of Karras and Recevo. The war waged between the two becomes the war of self, as Karras must assess just what exactly is his life. And let’s not forget the atmosphere in this novel: Pelecanos brings the different sections of his city alive with a fistful of sights, smells, and, of course, sounds, via dozens of references to all the different genres of music starting to develop in the post-war years. (You can see Pelecanos is having the most fun when Karras finds himself talking jazz in a dangerous black night club.)

The Big Blowdown is the first of four books that make up the author’s DC Quartet, where he maps out the past half-century of the city’s history. In earlier books, such as Shoedog, I made claims that Pelecanos was just doing his best imitation of authors he idolized, like Elmore Leonard. The easy comparison here would be with James Ellroy who rewrote the last fifty years of American history as a crime novel. But although Pelecanos’s novel shares some similarities with the Demon Dog’s work, the Big Blowdown is wholly a unique work by a unique voice within the crime fiction canon.

It's not easy being a god

War in Heaven

David Zindell

Voyager

Reviewed by: Terry
4 out of 5 stars

David Zindell’s space opera books, that started with the stand-alone _Neverness_ and continued with his “Requiem for Homo Sapiens” trilogy (of which this volume is the conclusion), always scratch that itch I have for Dune-like space opera. You’ve got the baroque world-building of a far, far future of humanity in an interstellar diaspora that combines elements of medieval and pre-industrial societies with ‘magical’ technology and gleaming ships that fold space; you’ve got bizarre human enclaves (sometimes almost reminiscent of Jack Vance, though with less obvious caustic humour) so that societies of warrior-poets, pilot-mathematicians, scientist-philosophers, autist-savants, and priest-kings all rub shoulders in a bewildering and colourful throng; you’ve got philosophical ruminations on the purpose of life, the tragedy of love, and the power of hate; all-in-all its heady stuff that hits that sweet spot in my belly that little else seems able to satisfy.

I’m at a bit of a loss for how to appropriately review this book though. It’s the third book of a trilogy (the other two of which I have not reviewed) all of which are built upon the initial stand-alone book _Neverness_. I can’t say much about this volume’s plot without rehashing much of what came before and thus committing spoiler to the Nth degree. Perhaps plot-wise it is enough to say that our hero, Danlo wi Soli Ringess (the son of _Neverness_'s hero Mallory Ringess), has returned from his great quest into the Vild carrying not only tidings of hope, but also of possible doom for the cosmos. Not only is a rogue star-killer ship searching for the ancient homeworld of the Order of Mystic Mathematicians and Other Seekers of the Ineffable Flame in a quest of vengeance, but the very gods themselves (super entities of moon-sized brains and ‘bodies’ that stretch across solar systems) are at war with each other, some vying to destroy, others to save, the galaxy. To top it all off Danlo’s oldest and dearest friend (also his greatest and most dangerous enemy) has taken control of the Way of Ringess, the religion that worships Danlo’s father as a god, and threatens the balance of the universe with his own mad scheme. So far, so epic, right? Well, the book more or less lives up to this potential as we move into the final phase of the story that Zindell built up over two other volumes (three including the initial story of Mallory Ringess himself). 

This final volume of the story reminded me most strongly of Herbert’s work in _Dune_. As in the Dune series there are many ruminations on a ‘Golden Path’ for humanity and the dangers of prescience when applied to human action (though Zindell seems to have a much more optimistic take on its uses than did Herbert). Also, like Herbert’s Muad’Dib, Zindell’s Danlo (and Mallory before him) partakes of the traits of both god and man. The travails of this power, along with the ability to turn the multitudes of humanity loose in a religious frenzy upon the galaxy, are examined in Zindell’s work no less than Herbert’s (though in ways that differ enough to make this an interesting examination instead of simply a rehash). This does mean, however, that there are often times when Zindell slips too far into his pseudo-philosophical/mystical ruminations (as Herbert did himself) as Danlo finds himself continuing his own personal quest to near-godhood. I imagine it’s hard to deal with these themes, especially within the grand scale of space opera, without falling into the trap of excessive explication and over-extended internal monologues from time to time, but be aware that they are here in case that kind of thing annoys you. All in all, though, the tension of the many threads of the story is held together by a fairly quick-paced plot and world-building that truly seeps out of the pages. There is more than enough tragedy in this series to sustain several epics, and the sheer scale of the possible (and actual) destruction on display screams “SPACE OPERA!” in flashing neon...but that’s a plus in this genre. There are times too, when Zindell’s creation of a pacifist hero, while interesting in itself, can grate on the nerves (for me at least). While Danlo’s devotion to the principle of ahimsa (“Never to kill or harm another, even in thought”) may be noble, the ends to which he is apparently willing to take this principle sometimes stretched my credulity…but then maybe I’m just a cynic. Still and all if you’re in the market for truly epic space opera that tackles trans-humanism, galaxy spanning star-faring, wars to end all wars, planetoid computers, and hints of man’s progress towards godhood (and yet still manages to ruminate on things at a truly human scale: tragedies of life and death, the intertwining elements of love and hate, and the conundrum of violence vs. pacifism) then crack open the first stand-alone volume, _Neverness_ and see what you think of the universe Zindell has created. If that wets your appetite then I would urge you to continue on with this truly kitten-squishing epic of galaxy spanning philosophical adventure.

Also posted at Goodreads