A work of science fiction, but yet not clearly set in the "Culture" of his other science fiction novels, "Transition" is a clever playing on the concept of Rendition. What would this policy look like if you could "transition" people between different realities via a specialized corps of assassins, torturers, and spies. It raises many questions such as if a representative of the police breaks the law (by torturing someone for information) should that police member then be prosecuted to the full extent of the law? Should this happen if the information that they found was valuable (ie saved human lives)? A speculation on the 1% solution of Dick Cheney. The structure of the novel is somewhat disjointed, like the concept of "transitioning", where the narrative jumps around between a half-dozen or so perspectives only called by the most summary of listings; Patient 8272, the Transitionary, the Philosopher, etc. Because of all of this skipping around both in narratives and in timelines, I found it much more enjoyable to read the book in one sitting (or as close as I could get). Some books can be read slowly, in pieces, at a leisurely pace. This is not one of them. I read the first 100 pages and kept getting lost in the narrative. Once I read it without many pauses, the details fell together much easier. You shouldn't have to keep a notebook on what is going on in a novel!
Outside of that - it is an interesting story outlining the conflict between the two world views around the organization behind the transitions. That is - should we use this power to promote a narrow, human-centric world view - or should we use it for more exploritory and galactic-friendly world view. The latter, and more progressive view, is what ultimately wins out - which I guess tells us what Mr. Banks thinks of US-based Libertarians (who he calls out specifically by name). A recommended read for anyone who has enjoyed his other works, but perhaps not the first Banks' book that I would recommend a new reader.
Monday, March 21, 2011
Tuesday, November 9, 2010
Seth Hunter's "The Tide of War"
Seth Hunter's "The Tide of War" is the second volume in what is sure to be an engaging series of novels following the exploits of young, handsome, and sexually active Nathaniel Peake, the James Bond of the quarterdeck. This novel is a significant step forward in quality for Hunter, although I still found his prose to be problematic in places. For example there is the name-dropping as mentioned by other reviewers although that has diminished from the first book, but there was also an odd occurrence towards the end of Chapter 14 where two characters are mentioned as being part of the scene but are clearly not actually part of the scene; one is on another ship and the other is missing, whereabouts unknown to the reader. As with any work, these jarring events pull you out of the scene and lessen the enjoyment.
In general though, the work stands well against the Hornblower, Ramage, or Bolitho novels, but does not ultimately rise to the level of O’Brian, Renault, or Dunnett, though I do not think this was the author’s intention. Starting in England after Peake’s narrow escape from the “Terror” of revolutionary France , Nathaniel is promoted to Post Captain and sent off to the West Indies station to claim his ship. As with the first novel, there is a fair amount of spy work and intrigue before a series of obligatory, but brief sea battles to bring the narrative to an end. An enjoyable and quick read of a reasonably well crafted novel filled with workman-like prose and forgettable characters.
Monday, June 14, 2010
Tigana by Guy Gavriel Kay very much worth a second look (or read)
I didn't weep as much the second time I read Tigana as I did the first time over 10 years ago. There are few books that will still cause me to catch my breath in sections, especially ones that I am rereading, however after 10 years of sitting on my shelf it still had the power to take my breath away at least once.
Kay is a romantic writer. I don't mean that in the sense that there are a fair number of people wandering around with frilly bodices being ripped this way and that. I mean Romantic with a capital "R" as in larger-than-life people who are very earnest and feel things very deeply. The voice of each narrator sets the stage for how the reader will perceive the story. The narrator of Tigana, like Tolkien who was a very large and early influence on Kay as he was one of the contributors to The Silmarillion, is a very serious person on the whole who states things in a seriousness usually only attributed to a teen in the throes of their first love.
The story here is a very serious one. That is of a peninsula on a far planet where magic, while not quite common, is prevalent enough. This peninsula resembles a renaissance Italy where the Medici or the Borgia might reign except there is magic and two moons. There are nine provinces of the palm, which is the way that this peninsula is referred to, and as the prologue opens they are invaded from the West by one sorcerer king and from the East by another sorcerer. Each captures 4 of the provinces and achieves a stable detente with the other. In the process, the King of the west loses his son in the battle over one of the provinces. In his anger and sorrow, he casts a dreadful spell causing all who were not born there to forget the name of this province and to not even be able to hear it if it was spoken to them. A very dreadful form of historic revisionism that was inspired, so the author states in his postscript, by the Stalin/Maoist historical revisions of the last forty years.
Our earnest and serious heroes must try to find a way to pit the two tyrants against each other and thus destroy them both, which of course they do. But there are ancient legends told along the way, a few deaths by overly well intentioned people who sacrificed in a good cause or for whom the climax of the events was more than they could live with.
As a sometimes serious and earnest person, I enjoyed this book immensely again the second time. The surprise turns here and there still held some magic for me. However, I can see that an earnest younger man might find this novel to be almost more than he could absorb. Thus is the power of the epic carried forward. This work was the first full work of Kay's that I had read (other than the editing of Tolkien's writing). I had read quite a bit more of his work after this and found it to be improved. Still very earnest, but with more humor, which as Shakespeare knew was the perfect accoutrement for a romantic drama.
Kay is a romantic writer. I don't mean that in the sense that there are a fair number of people wandering around with frilly bodices being ripped this way and that. I mean Romantic with a capital "R" as in larger-than-life people who are very earnest and feel things very deeply. The voice of each narrator sets the stage for how the reader will perceive the story. The narrator of Tigana, like Tolkien who was a very large and early influence on Kay as he was one of the contributors to The Silmarillion, is a very serious person on the whole who states things in a seriousness usually only attributed to a teen in the throes of their first love.
The story here is a very serious one. That is of a peninsula on a far planet where magic, while not quite common, is prevalent enough. This peninsula resembles a renaissance Italy where the Medici or the Borgia might reign except there is magic and two moons. There are nine provinces of the palm, which is the way that this peninsula is referred to, and as the prologue opens they are invaded from the West by one sorcerer king and from the East by another sorcerer. Each captures 4 of the provinces and achieves a stable detente with the other. In the process, the King of the west loses his son in the battle over one of the provinces. In his anger and sorrow, he casts a dreadful spell causing all who were not born there to forget the name of this province and to not even be able to hear it if it was spoken to them. A very dreadful form of historic revisionism that was inspired, so the author states in his postscript, by the Stalin/Maoist historical revisions of the last forty years.
Our earnest and serious heroes must try to find a way to pit the two tyrants against each other and thus destroy them both, which of course they do. But there are ancient legends told along the way, a few deaths by overly well intentioned people who sacrificed in a good cause or for whom the climax of the events was more than they could live with.
As a sometimes serious and earnest person, I enjoyed this book immensely again the second time. The surprise turns here and there still held some magic for me. However, I can see that an earnest younger man might find this novel to be almost more than he could absorb. Thus is the power of the epic carried forward. This work was the first full work of Kay's that I had read (other than the editing of Tolkien's writing). I had read quite a bit more of his work after this and found it to be improved. Still very earnest, but with more humor, which as Shakespeare knew was the perfect accoutrement for a romantic drama.
Friday, June 11, 2010
Cloudsplitter by Russell Banks is strangely dated
As I pondered what Russell Banks was trying to do in his recasting of the events leading up to John Brown's raid on Harpers Ferry, I had to remind myself that the novel was written pre-9/11. Now, I am not a person who continually refers to 9/11 as a benchmark event for all matters. "Honey, they were out of Cherrios at the store today. Must be more fallout from 9/11." However, when you are writing a novel about terrorists, particularly a novel that attempts to remold our impression of one of America's leading homegrown terrorists, I think 9/11 does have something in which to reflavor our perception of this work.
Written from the viewpoint of Owen Brown, thought to be perhaps the only survivor of the raid, it sets the narrative many years past Harpers Ferry when a scholar is attempting to write the authoritative biography of John Brown and has an assistant seek Owen out as the last man standing. Owen retells many of the events of the preceeding decade or so from his perpection as he sits in hiding in a shack in the California wilderness where he has been living in hiding from the previous fifty years.
Initially, I was interested in knowing what events happened to cause Owen to be the only survivor. I admired Banks' ability to not let me know where he was going. I knew that Owen would suvive, but what would cause him to abandon his father at that critical time. Banks gave us many possible reasons, but when the novel finally wound its way to that part of the story, I was disappointed with the pragmatic and non-climactic handling of that event for which we had followed the author for the previous 700+ pages. As a reader, I was left with the everyman-ness of that decision. That I would make a similar decision in the same circumstances. It was disappointingly pragmatic and caused me to question why Owen would continue to beat himself up for it for the next fifty years. From the story, he had so many other things to feel guilty over - a rape of a Irish street girl, the accidental killing of a good friend by his hand, the coveting of his friend's wife. These are events that he had control over - unlike his leaving under fire at Harpers Ferry - and thus should feel more guilty about. As someone nearing middle-age, I know that I feel the most guilty for the things that I could have controlled rather than the things that happened that were bad but were basically out of my control.
But this still brings me back to what Banks was trying to accomplish with the novel. It is a well-crafted work. The 750+ pages whirl by. He neither lapses into an overly colloqial voice nor attempts to modernize and thus anachronise the speech. A nice balance, I thought; one in which I was able to believe I was hearing the story told to me 50 years after the events described. It was quite a stretch to believe that Owen could have written it. It was so well written, in the first person, that it would be hard to believe a man with no formal education, who had been living in hiding and seclusion for almost his entire life, could write so well or with such a breadth of vocabulary.
John Brown was recast many times in the 150 years since Harpers Ferry. First as a devil (by the south), then as a martyr (by the north), then as a crazy, deluded religious simpleton. This had been the prevailing opinion for a hundred years - however Banks' novel and other works at the same time have caused people to view him in a different and more sympathetic light and this was the part I struggled with the most. I do believe that it would be incorrect to view Brown as naive and/or crazy. Religous, yes. A terrorist, certainly. But in a post-9/11 world, it is near impossible for me to empathize with someone who believed that violence was ever a proper method of changing public opinion. The man who swings first always loses.
I think the Brown story has many aspects that could have been reviewed and I think it would be interesting to look at many what-ifs in that context. But I think Banks really missed an opportunity to highlight that violence is not an acceptable way to get people's attention to an issue. If he had written it a few years later, I wonder what he would have had Owen Brown say.
Written from the viewpoint of Owen Brown, thought to be perhaps the only survivor of the raid, it sets the narrative many years past Harpers Ferry when a scholar is attempting to write the authoritative biography of John Brown and has an assistant seek Owen out as the last man standing. Owen retells many of the events of the preceeding decade or so from his perpection as he sits in hiding in a shack in the California wilderness where he has been living in hiding from the previous fifty years.
Initially, I was interested in knowing what events happened to cause Owen to be the only survivor. I admired Banks' ability to not let me know where he was going. I knew that Owen would suvive, but what would cause him to abandon his father at that critical time. Banks gave us many possible reasons, but when the novel finally wound its way to that part of the story, I was disappointed with the pragmatic and non-climactic handling of that event for which we had followed the author for the previous 700+ pages. As a reader, I was left with the everyman-ness of that decision. That I would make a similar decision in the same circumstances. It was disappointingly pragmatic and caused me to question why Owen would continue to beat himself up for it for the next fifty years. From the story, he had so many other things to feel guilty over - a rape of a Irish street girl, the accidental killing of a good friend by his hand, the coveting of his friend's wife. These are events that he had control over - unlike his leaving under fire at Harpers Ferry - and thus should feel more guilty about. As someone nearing middle-age, I know that I feel the most guilty for the things that I could have controlled rather than the things that happened that were bad but were basically out of my control.
But this still brings me back to what Banks was trying to accomplish with the novel. It is a well-crafted work. The 750+ pages whirl by. He neither lapses into an overly colloqial voice nor attempts to modernize and thus anachronise the speech. A nice balance, I thought; one in which I was able to believe I was hearing the story told to me 50 years after the events described. It was quite a stretch to believe that Owen could have written it. It was so well written, in the first person, that it would be hard to believe a man with no formal education, who had been living in hiding and seclusion for almost his entire life, could write so well or with such a breadth of vocabulary.
John Brown was recast many times in the 150 years since Harpers Ferry. First as a devil (by the south), then as a martyr (by the north), then as a crazy, deluded religious simpleton. This had been the prevailing opinion for a hundred years - however Banks' novel and other works at the same time have caused people to view him in a different and more sympathetic light and this was the part I struggled with the most. I do believe that it would be incorrect to view Brown as naive and/or crazy. Religous, yes. A terrorist, certainly. But in a post-9/11 world, it is near impossible for me to empathize with someone who believed that violence was ever a proper method of changing public opinion. The man who swings first always loses.
I think the Brown story has many aspects that could have been reviewed and I think it would be interesting to look at many what-ifs in that context. But I think Banks really missed an opportunity to highlight that violence is not an acceptable way to get people's attention to an issue. If he had written it a few years later, I wonder what he would have had Owen Brown say.
Monday, May 31, 2010
Vlad Taltos' latest adventure - IORICH - by Steven Brust
The Iorich is a fictional animal representing Justice and Retribution created by author Steven Brust to enliven his continuing adventures of the erstwhile assassin Vlad Taltos. Baronet Taltos, an Easterner (read: human), is part assassin, part sorcerer, part witch, and complete wise-cracking and irreverent protagonist living amidst the much longer lived Dragaereans. A semi-feudal place where sorcery levitates castles, and nobles belong to one of seventeen houses named for the local fauna. The eponymous Iorich personifies Justice, thus the Iorich house run the legal system, the criminal court, and form the staff of advocates.
The story begins with Vlad not far from the capital, where he has been on the run for double crossing his own house - the Jhereg, a house of Greed and Corruption. He finds out that his friend Aliera has been arrested on a capital crime and for which she had long been engaged to the wide knowledge of all. Vlad must return, at significant risk to himself, to unravel why she would be arrested now for something she had been doing for years. There must be more to the story that he had heard from afar. And indeed there was quite a bit more before it winds itself down to a a fairly predictable ending. However, we do not read Brust's Dragaerean novels to enjoy unexpected endings. Brust spent many years rewriting the D'Artagnan novels of Alexandre Dumas pere. He has honed his already formidable skills in plot and dialogue by immersion in the works of an acknowledged master. His wit does get the better of him occasionally, mostly through self-referential inside jokes, but these are few and the comedic gems are highlighted at the end with "Deleted Scenes" in which Brust shares with s some scenes that were supposedly edited out of the novel. Most are funny without any context and even more humorous in context.
For those that have not visited the world of Mr. Brust yet, I recommend it however perhaps in one of the three or so omnibus editions currently in print. For those that are already familiar with his work, you will neither be surprised nor disappointed.
The story begins with Vlad not far from the capital, where he has been on the run for double crossing his own house - the Jhereg, a house of Greed and Corruption. He finds out that his friend Aliera has been arrested on a capital crime and for which she had long been engaged to the wide knowledge of all. Vlad must return, at significant risk to himself, to unravel why she would be arrested now for something she had been doing for years. There must be more to the story that he had heard from afar. And indeed there was quite a bit more before it winds itself down to a a fairly predictable ending. However, we do not read Brust's Dragaerean novels to enjoy unexpected endings. Brust spent many years rewriting the D'Artagnan novels of Alexandre Dumas pere. He has honed his already formidable skills in plot and dialogue by immersion in the works of an acknowledged master. His wit does get the better of him occasionally, mostly through self-referential inside jokes, but these are few and the comedic gems are highlighted at the end with "Deleted Scenes" in which Brust shares with s some scenes that were supposedly edited out of the novel. Most are funny without any context and even more humorous in context.
For those that have not visited the world of Mr. Brust yet, I recommend it however perhaps in one of the three or so omnibus editions currently in print. For those that are already familiar with his work, you will neither be surprised nor disappointed.
Saturday, May 15, 2010
What to write about...
It makes sense to me to start the exercise of writing on writings I've read with a listing of works that I would like to share my opinions on. Thus here is my draft of works that I'm interested in rereading in order to better share my thoughts or works that I'm in the process of reading initially that would fall into the same category. Look for blog thoughts in the future on these works:
Tigana - Guy Gavriel Kay
Bridge of Birds - Barry Hughart
Cloudsplitter - Russell Banks
Iorich - Steven Brust
Tigana - Guy Gavriel Kay
Bridge of Birds - Barry Hughart
Cloudsplitter - Russell Banks
Iorich - Steven Brust
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