Paris Noir

Aurélien Masson, Editor
Akashic Books
Reviewed by: Nancy
4 out of 5 stars

Summary

Paris Noir takes you on a ride through the old medieval center of town with its winding streets, its ghosts, and its secrets buried in history. This is more than an homage to the crime genre, to Melville and Godard, it’s also a lush introduction to the very best in French fiction.

Brand-new stories from: Marc Villard, Didier Daeninckx, Jean-Bernard Pouy, Salim Bachi, Christophe Mercier, Jerome Leroy, DOA, Laurent Martin, Herve Prudon, Patrick Pecherot, Dominique Mainard, and Chantal Pelletier.

My Review

Paris is a wonderful place to visit. I love the city for its grandeur, its palaces, museums, monuments, breathtaking views, restaurants, cafes, its rich culture and history. It is a dynamic, international and happening place. Being a tourist, however, is not the same as living, working, raising a family, and making friends in another country. “The City of Light” has a dark underbelly, particularly for those who do not speak French well and have difficulty assimilating into a new culture, those who are poor, or those not in the best of health. If you are young, healthy, strong, flexible, and financially sound, you can probably survive most anywhere.

Unlike Delhi Noir, the stories in this collection were all translated from the French language. I wish I had better knowledge of foreign languages, but in the meantime I am thankful for those translators who enable me to read and enjoy a wider variety of literature.

Even though I’ve visited Paris a number of times, the stories in this collection show the city and its inhabitants in an entirely different light.

It was a fun and worthwhile trip!

Here are the standouts in this collection:

Marc Villard’s The Chauffeur - Bad people get what’s coming to them, and the hooker stays alive. Gritty and sweet.

Chantal Pelletier’s The Chinese Guy - Beautiful descriptions of spring, flowers and food from the perspective of a mentally disturbed woman who becomes obsessed with a Chinese guy. One of my favorites.

Salim Bachi’s Big Brother - Highlights the lives and struggles of Algerians who live in Paris and how darkness and violence inhabits the soul of one man who feels unjustly treated by society.

Jean-Bernard Pouy’s The Revenge of the Waiters not only has a great title, it is a sad and humorous story that vividly portrays the lives of average working people and the inhabitants of old buildings about to be knocked down. A group of waiters are very concerned about an old jogger who seems to have gone missing and are determined to find him.

Dominique Mainard’s La Vie en Rose is a sad and gripping story about an aspiring author who wants to write a crime novel, but needs help understanding what could drive a murderer to kill. With help from his journalist friend, he gathers information about a brutal murder of a young girl and interviews an old man who may or may not know something about the crime.

Though the stories varied in quality, they were all enjoyable and entertaining.

Also posted at Goodreads.

No God Can Shun His Destiny--Even If It Means Wearing Hollister

Antigoddess
by Kendare Blake
Published by Tor Teen

3 Out of 5 Stars
Reviewed by Amanda 

**I received a free copy of Antigoddess from Tor in exchange for an honest review.**

After centuries, the Twilight of the Gods has arrived.

Already fallen from Olympus, now more mortal than god, each deity is dying in a manner peculiar to their power. Athena, goddess of battle and intelligence, is being slowly suffocated by the feathers of her sacred bird, the owl. The feathers fill her lungs and sprout beneath her skin. While many of the gods are resigned to their demise and see their end as a final whim of Fate, Athena, along with the swift Hermes (who is being consumed by his own rapid metabolism), seeks the counsel of Demeter and finds that a war is brewing. Led by Hera, some gods are determined to survive--even if it means slaughtering their own kind. Their only hope? A teenage girl named Cassandra--no mere mortal, but the reincarnation of Cassandra of Troy, prophet, sister of Hector, and love of Apollo.

The first in a trilogy, Antigoddess (and let's just go ahead and get this out there--this is a baffling and terrible name for the book) is an entertaining, if uneven novel that is the latest offering in the young-adult-if-only-we-were-supernatural genre.

There's a lot here we've seen before: the co-dependent mortal/immortal love affair (it's always baffling to me when immortal creatures fall in love with nubile young teenagers; one would think the passing of centuries would make a relationship with anyone susceptible to Bieber-fever a tedious proposition at best), the requisite showdown at a house party, and the battle lines drawn between two supernatural armies whose collective fate rests on the shoulders of a human who is more than she appears to be. And while I know it will not bother the target audience, to have the gods appear as young adults is problematic to me. No explanation is given as to why they seem to be perpetually stuck in the Proactiv Skin Care years. In my imagination, Athena (my favorite goddess) has always loomed like an Amazon, tall, strong, mature. To think of her with tattooed wrists and purple streaks in her hair? Hermes sporting Hollister? Apollo in a hoodie? By Hades's balls, I'd rather French kiss Cerberus than think of the majesty of gods reduced to trendy mall fashion.

Buuuuttttt . . . having said all that, there's an undeniable charm to what Blake's peddling here and it's far more successful than the Percy Jackson series. Sure, the gods lack characterization, but haven't they always? And, sure, they sometimes behave like mortals, but that's always been part of their appeal. Treading like giants and with powers beyond human comprehension, they still fell prey to very human weaknesses: love, hubris, envy. Blake also knows her stuff and it's fun to see her weave the tale of Troy into a modern day setting as Hector, Andromache, Odysseus, and Circe's coven make appearances alongside Hera, Aphrodite, Poseidon, Artemis, and Apollo. Throw in a cyclops, a Nereid or two, and an author with a sharp sense of humor--well, you could find worse ways to spend a Saturday afternoon.

When the Rules of Narrative Steer your Life Just Roll with It

Ares Express

Ian McDonald

Spectra Books

Reviewed by: Terry 

4 out of 5 stars

Wow! There’s really something special about Ian McDonald’s Mars books. McDonald’s Mars is a place I love to visit in all of its crazy, off the wall, illogical glory. I’ve rarely seen the numinous, and irrational, nature of magic so well displayed in fantasy books, let alone in a sci-fi one (the exception would have to be Sean Stewart who is also expert at such depictions, though in a very different vein). Despite the strangeness of McDonald’s Mars (which as I noted in my review to _Desolation Road_ smacks heavily of magic realism) I’ve rarely seen such a consistently envisioned and joyfully painted world. This book was a hell of a lot of fun and it even taught me a few things: 1) Hell hath no fury like a failed art student; 2) If something is going to run your life it might as well be the Rules of Narrative, they just might save your life; 3) Feisty and Resourceful (But Cute With It) Heroines can kick some serious ass; 4) If you’re going to do it at all, do it widescreen; and 5) never underestimate the power and resourcefulness of grandmothers. But I think I’m getting a bit ahead of myself here.

_Ares Express_ is a sequel of sorts to McDonald’s aforementioned foray into a wild and wonderful terraformed Mars. In this outing we are introduced to the life and times of one of the great tribal-trains that travel across the Martian frontier as we jump on board the Catherine of Tharsis and meet our feisty and resourceful (but cute with it) heroine Sweetness Octave Glorious Honey-​Bun Asiim Engineer 12^th. As a member of the leading clique in the multi-family domiety of this rolling city all she dreams about is driving the train that her family has run for 11 generations. There’s only one small problem, she’s a girl…and everyone knows that girls don’t drive. Luckily for Sweetness the universe, and more specifically the Powers of Narrative, have something more in store for her and after she crosses paths with a certain Green Man nothing will ever be the same.

There are a few things you may need to know. First off, this ain’t Mars like you’ve ever seen it before (well, expect for the previous volume of course) as the past and the future collide in strange and wonderful ways. This Mars is circled by a glittering moonring composed of godlike AIs who manformed the world in the first place and are now worshipped as the angelic hierarchies of God the Panarchic and his sometimes almost-human saints. The planet is criss-crossed by the great rail lines of the Bethlehem Ares railroad and its multitude of behemoth engines, while its skies are dotted with great floating airships. Each city, village, and town is more strange than the last, whether it’s the interconnected megalithic city-states of the originally settled Grand Valley that lie under the glittering diamond Worldroof, or the tiny lotus-eating hamlet of Solid Gone under its literal cloud of deadening apathy. And the kids! When they’re not dreaming of manning the orbital defense stations or becoming reality shaping cineastes they’re listening to that outlandish music put on by Glenn Miller and his Orchestra. I guess if you’re going to terraform your world with quantum computers that scrutinize the expanse of the multiverse in search of the best of all possible worlds as part of their planetary engineering you shouldn’t be surprised if things start shading into magical realism. In short if there’s one thing McDonald seems to know it’s a sensawunda and he builds it into the very fabric of this world and then turns it up to eleven. It struck me at one point that his Mars books are kind of like a Terry Gilliam movie (though better written): they’ve got that zany, manic surface of ‘anything-is-possible’ and off the wall characters with an underlying core of emotion.

Secondly Story (with a capital S) and its relation to human lives is integral to this, um, story. There’s a very self-conscious artifice to this "story as Story" aspect that McDonald revels in and in order to get the most out of it you’re going to have to buckle in for the ride and not worry too much about the rules of probability. For the duration of the narrative the main character *is* a story and McDonald examines not only the way this impacts her life, but also how we need and use stories to give our lives meaning (and shape)...even if it is someone else’s story. Ultimately we are all ‘trapped’ by our lives to some degree, that formless shifting thing that is shaped by both our decisions and apparent blind luck (or lack thereof), and which only seems to gain a shape when we look back on it (and force it to adhere to one). One begins to wonder if the lucky ones are those whose lives truly do form stories in the strictest sense of the word, or whether it’s a mixed blessing at best.

Finally, be aware that it’s a wild ride. Once the Powers of Narrative take control of your life and invest it with Purpose you’d better be prepared for an adventure. In this regard I was once again impressed with McDonald’s truly cinematic style, a style that, while full of gosh-wow moments and hair-raising exploits straight out of an action movie piled one on top of the other, he still manages to couple with meaningful substance and interesting characters. Throughout the tale of Sweetness Octave Glorious Honey-​Bun Asiim Engineer 12^th McDonald likes to both meet and invert our expectations of the Hero. First of all she is female, not generally the norm for stories in this genre (at least back in the day), and secondly despite being ‘the hero’ she is not always invested with full agency, being driven hither and yon by the dictates of narrative. The latter might sound like a bad thing, but as I mentioned above if you buckle yourself in you should enjoy the ride and Sweetness is certainly resourceful and spunky (but cute with it) enough to win us over. An interesting side element to her story is the fact that while she certainly attracts her fair share of members of the opposite sex (and is in no doubt as to her own attractiveness) she is never an irresistible lure to any of them. One after the other each of her plethora of prospective mates turns out not to be ‘the one’, though they all serve necessary functions in her story. They are ultimately very much an adjunct to Sweetness’ heroism, though still required for its fruition. They are the helpers who aid in, or dudes-in-distress that define, her heroism. It was an interesting inversion of some of my expectations.

I haven’t even talked about the main story arc, despite its obvious centrality to a story about Story, but suffice it to say that it involves disappointed ambition, thwarted desire, the destabilization of governments and, ultimately, a threat to the very fabric of reality. The villain is top-notch (how can you not be with a name like Devastation Harx?), if a bit behind the scenes, and the many surprises, twists and turns that comprise the plot are fully satisfying. Things move from the personal and particular to the general and universal and then back again as Sweetness’ personal rebellion sends shockwaves into the wider world and those in turn circle back to affect her closest family and friends. All in all it’s a lot of fun and certainly has cemented Ian McDonald as one to watch for me. I have to admit though, in looking at his wider catalogue, that it seems he veered away from this kind of balls-to-the-wall fun and went in for much more issue-oriented sci-fi in many of his other works. Not a bad thing, but I’m curious if I’ll like these supposedly ‘serious’ books half so much as I did these two grand adventures in a Mars that can never be.

Also posted at Goodreads

The Thin Man

The Thin Man by Dashiell Hammett
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

An inventor goes missing and his mistress winds up dead. Former detective Nick Charles wants nothing to do with the case but keeps getting drawn in. With his plucky wife Nora, can Nick get things sorted out so he can get back to his drinking?

The Thin Man was not at all like I expected. After reading the exploits of Sam Spade and the Continental Op, I expected more of the same. The Thin Man is much more humorous than Hammett's earlier works and I found myself liking it quite a bit.

Nick Charles, former detective, is quite a character. He's smart, sharp witted, and he likes the sauce. He's such a raging alcoholic that Matthew Scudder and Nick Stefanos once staged an intervention for him BEFORE they got off the sauce. "Nick, we like week-long benders as much as the next guy but you might have a problem..."

His wife, Nora, sticks by her man, even if he probably smells like a distillery most of the time due to all the alcohol he consumes. The one-liners each of them fire off are infinitely more interesting than the plot. I'm pretty sure the plot is only here for Nick and Nora to bounce lines around and give them something to do between drinks.

The writing is top notch for the era as well. As always, once I forgave Hammett for not being Raymond Chandler, it was off to the races. Quotable lines abound:
“Nora: "How do you feel?"
Nick: "Terrible. I must've gone to bed sober.”

“Nick: "Don't you think maybe a drink would help you to sleep?"
Nora: "No, thanks."
Nick: "Maybe it would if I took one.”

The plot was suitably serpentine and the interplay between Nick and Nora kept me engaged throughout. The rapid-fire dialogue was by far my favorite part of the book. Didn't Nick and Nora's dynamic in The Thin Man inspire J.D. Robb's In Death series? It's a shame Hammett didn't write more Nick and Nora books. Four stars.


Also on Goodreads

Reviewed by James L. Thane
Four out of five stars

Englishman Terry Sheffield and American Sarah Morton conduct a trans-Atlantic relationship after meeting on a vacation in Costa Rica. While Terry is visiting in the U.S., they get married in Vegas, but then Terry has to return to the U.K. to complete the paperwork that will allow him to live and work in the U.S.

Six months after Terry and Sarah last saw each other on their honeymoon, the paperwork is completed, Terry has left his old life and his job in England and has landed a new job at a biotech firm in California. He lands in San Francisco and hurries off the plane, anxious to be reunited with Sarah and to begin their new life together.

Except that Sarah doesn't show up at the airport.

Terry calls her cell phone several times, but gets no response. Finally, he reluctantly takes a shuttle to their new home, but Sarah isn't there either. Terry reports her missing, but the local sheriff is skeptical and wonders if Sarah is simply a bride who's already decided she made a mistake and run off. In the alternative, is it possible that Sarah, an investigative reporter, is working on a story that has taken her away from home?

None of those explanations make any sense to Terry, especially since Sarah has not even returned his phone calls. Obviously, he is thinking the worst. While waiting for something to break, Terry has no choice but to report to work at Genavax, his new employer. But after being heavily courted by the company, he gets a distinctly cool reception. He'd asked Sarah to check out the firm before accepting their job offer and he soon learns that in the process, Sarah had antagonized some of the company honchos. At the moment, they are not very happy with Terry or his wife.

To make matters worse, in sifting through the papers Sarah left at home, Terry discovers that she was investigating the murders of several women who apparently died at the hands of the same serial killer. Is it possible that Sarah fallen into the hands of the killer as well?

This is a very taut, well-told tale with any number of unexpected twists and turns. Even people who read a lot of thrillers are certain to be surprised on several occasions. Terry Sheffield is a very sympathetic character and the reader inevitably gets caught up in his struggle to find his missing wife while at the same time he tries to adapt to a new job and to life in a new country. Simon Wood should attract a lot of new fans with this book.

Delhi Noir

Hirsh Sawhney, Editor
Akashic Books
Reviewed by: Nancy
4 out of 5 stars

Summary

Brand new stories by: Irwin Allan Sealy, Omair Ahmad, Radhika Jha, Ruchir Joshi, Nalinaksha Bhattacharya, Meera Nair, Siddharth Chowdhury, Mohan Sikka, Palash K. Mehrotra, Hartosh Singh Bal, Hirsh Sawhney, Tabish Khair, Uday Prakash, and Manjula Padmanabhan.

The eyes of the world are gazing at India—the world’s largest democracy. But the books you read about this Asian giant only show part of the picture.

Delhi Noir’s fourteen original stories are written by the best Indian writers alive today—the ones you haven’t yet heard of but should have. They are veteran authors who have appeared on the Booker Prize short list and budding geniuses who your grandchildren will read about in English class. Delhi Noir is a world of sex in parks, male prostitution, and vigilante rickshaw drivers. It is one plagued by religious riots, soulless corporate dons, and murderous servants. This is India uncut, the one you’re missing out on because mainstream publishing houses and glossy magazines can’t stomach it. offers bone-chilling, mesmerizing takes on the country’s chaotic capital, a city where opulence and poverty are constantly clashing, where old-world values and the information age wage a constant battle.

My Review

Once again, I have sought out another book from the Akashic series of short stories that takes place in a variety of cities around the world. I am still in the mood for dark, short stories, so Delhi Noir was the perfect choice.

I have never been to India, and based on this collection of stories, I'm not sure if I want to go. It is chaotic, crowded, loud, corrupt, poor and dirty. There is also amazing architecture, natural beauty and good food, even the cheap stuff you get at the roadside stalls. I'm very glad for my literary journey to Delhi. The stories were vivid enough to give me a glimpse into a culture very different from my own, even if they show humanity at its worst.

I'm a little disappointed that out of the 14 contributors, only 3 of them are women. Nevertheless, their stories are outstanding.

Manjula Padmanabhan's Cull is the very last story and one of my favorites in this collection. More speculative fiction than noir, it is very dark and would make an excellent novel. It shows the callous disregard people in power have for the poor residents of the Acres and it shows how strong and resourceful the poor can be.

"From the bottom of the pit, all roads lead up. So in one sense, this is an extremely positive place to be. Rich people throw away things at such a rate that for us, living in the dump, we only have to wait long enough before whatever we want comes sailing out of the sky - for free! Cars, food, books, furniture, machinery, medicine, bottles toys - you wouldn't believe how much gets thrown away. And very often in its original packing. So we're not complaining. We take what we need, repackage the rest, and send it back out."

Radhika Jha's very humorous How I Lost My Clothes effectively highlights the contrasts between the rich and the poor of Delhi and shows how a new set of clothes can change one druggie's perspective on life.

Meera Nair's Small Fry shows a glimpse of the harsh life of a 15-year-old street boy as he looks for a fast way to make some money. Crime, corruption and greed make this one a top-notch story.

And now the men:

Omair Ahmad's Yesterday's Man was not one of my favorites in this collection, but I did enjoy the detectives working together to solve a case involving the 1984 mass murder of Sikhs, an event I have little knowledge of, but plan to explore further.

Irwin Allan Sealy's Last In, First Out, told from the perspective of a rickshaw driver, very vividly describes the city of Delhi and some of its beautiful and more secluded spots, where young lovers like to retreat. Unfortunately, sexual assaults are rampant here and the rickshaw driver decides to take matters into his own hands.

Ruchir Joshi's Parking is probably my least favorite in this collection. The corrupt, perverted cops annoyed me and I couldn't care about a single character.

Nalinaksha Bhattacharya's Hissing Cobras features another corrupt police officer who wants to charge a woman with a crime he has no proof she committed, so he blackmails her. He picked the wrong woman to mess with. I loved this gritty and satisfying story.

Mohan Sikka's The Railway Aunty is not about someone's aunt. This term is used to refer to older female family friends or neighbors. A heady mix of greed and lust. Terrific story.

Siddharth Chowdhury's Hostel was utterly creepy and voyeuristic. I don't mean that in a good way.

Palash Krishna Mehrotra's Fit of Rage shows the effects of unrestrained male anger. Very disturbing, but well-written and compelling.

Hartosh Singh Bal's Just Another Death is an interesting story about a reporter trying to survive in a changing industry. Death is secondary.

Tabish Khair's The Scam. A shoe-shine boy and woman engage the curiosity of two journalists.

Hirsh Sawhney's Gautam Under a Tree is a sad and moving story about a former journalist who accepts an assignment to write about the murder of his friend who was a political activist. This is a dangerous undertaking, as he well knows.

Uday Prakash's The Walls of Delhi is another favorite of mine. Ramnivas the sweeper comes across stacks of money hidden in a wall where he's cleaning. He uses this money to provide a better life for his family and entertain his mistress. Of course, there are consequences to making it big the easy way.

A worthy collection. Up next, Paris!

Also posted at Goodreads.

Banned Books Week, Censorship, and the High Price of Apathy

CHRISTIAN NATION: A Novel
Frederic C. Rich
W.W. Norton
$25.95 hardcover, available now

Rating: 4.5 appalled, terrified stars of five

The Publisher Says: “They said what they would do, and we did not listen. Then they did what they said they would do.”

So ends the first chapter of this brilliantly readable counterfactual novel, reminding us that America’s Christian fundamentalists have been consistently clear about their vision for a “Christian Nation” and dead serious about acquiring the political power to achieve it. When President McCain dies and Sarah Palin becomes president, the reader, along with the nation, stumbles down a terrifyingly credible path toward theocracy, realizing too late that the Christian right meant precisely what it said.

In the spirit of Philip Roth’s The Plot Against America, one of America’s foremost lawyers lays out in chilling detail what such a future might look like: constitutional protections dismantled; all aspects of life dominated by an authoritarian law called “The Blessing,” enforced by a reconfigured Internet known as the “Purity Web.” Those who defy this system, among them the narrator, live on the edges of society, sustained by the belief that democracy will rise to triumph over such tyrannical oppression.

My Review: It's Banned Books Week, so we are well advised to think about what the ability to ban a book really means. In Rich's novel, banning a book is no longer a concern. The apparatus of theocracy has taken over the libraries. Nothing so trivial as banning A book is necessary, slate entire areas of human knowledge for destruction. Pulp those books that don't tell the story you want told. Knowledge dies, after all. We saw that after the fall of the Roman Empire. The only libraries were in monasteries, and the only works supposed to be preserved were dogmatic, didactic christian texts. Fortunately, some subversives hid works by Lucretius, Epicurus, Juvenal, Suetonius, in their stacks. As theocracy self-destructed, as all -ocracies (including dem-) inevitably do, sharp-eyed secularists found these works and brought them out into the public gaze for the first time in as much as a millennium. (For more about this, see my review of The Swerve.)

Think about that. For a millennium, a thousand years, knowledge that might have led the world out of pervasive hunger, away from destructive hatred and war over trivia, was hidden away so it would at least survive as words on paper. It couldn't be discussed, because it couldn't be read. It was banned. Very effectively and efficiently banned. When the ban was lifted, the world's best brains went into overdrive and they've never slowed down since.

Yet we still, after this excellent example of the benefits of freedom of thought, freedom of expression, freedom from the fear that censorship breeds, we still have to fight the well-meaning, well-intentioned, and always wrong "moral protectors" and "nicey-nice police." It doesn't have to start big, and in fact, that is author Rich's point in this novel. His story, of a subversive in the Christian Nation, a convert to the Church of God in America from the losing side in the Seige of Manhattan, starts with the run-up to the 2008 election. In Rich's horrifying nightmare, McCain and Palin won, and then they did what they said they would do: They "restored American to a Christian Nation." They used your smartphone with its eternal connection to communication satellites to track you. It's the law that you must have it on you. It's the law that every device you use must be connected to the Purity Web (which we call universal wi-fi connectivity, and long for!) that your every utterance or interface with another person be monitorable.

Imagine how many gigaflops of information this state collects. And sifts. And uses against its citizens, but only in the kindest of spirits and in the expectation of their draconian rules and totalitarian controls bringing all souls to the Rapture as pure as is possible.

This kind of nightmare is all too possible. Look at the Taliban in Afghanistan. Look at the rhetoric coming out of the Tea Party. No, no, says the complacent and lazy citizen, who can't be bothered to vote for school board members or participate in electioneering, no way can that happen here.

“The biggest mistake that we can make is that we don’t believe that they believe what they say. And for many of them, they do mean exactly what they say," says author Rich in his Politico.com interview from this past July. Look at the Texas school textbook adoption wars over presenting creationism as a scientific theory. All of those folks are elected...by the few who bother to show up, and those are usually the wingnuts from the religious right with an agenda to impose.

This novel is set in a world that didn't happen, where the battle against censorship costs lives. Those lives are lost because, in that world like this one we live in, so very many of us can't be bothered, don't want to, are too tired or bored or stressed or lazy to, stand up and say NO MORE when censorship is proposed or imposed. And Rich, a high-powered financial industry lawyer, works with the kind of people whose money-making and self-interest are tightly bound up with the trends in thought and speech around the world. In short, if he doesn't know from the inside whereof he speaks when he speaks about the consequences voicelessness, of stifled freedom to speak and think as one desires, no one alive does.

Start where you are. Do what you can, what you're capable of doing. Fight the small battles and, win or lose, the war's course will change. Maybe you'll even live long enough to be glad that you did. I only hope you won't live long enough to regret that you didn't.


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