Review of Unfinished Tales by J.R.R. Tolkien

What do the following works have in common: M. John Harrison’s Viriconium Nights, Ursula Le Guin’s Tales from Earthsea, Ian McDonald’s Cyberabad Days, Kim Stanley Robinson’s The Martians, Robert Silverberg’s Majipoor Chronicles, and George Alec Effinger’s Budayeen Nights? They are not only all collections, they are also collections featuring stories set in an established world, binding the larger pieces together like cement. (In the case of Harrison’s Viriconium, we must make that plural: worlds).  Poring over the wealth of material available for the posthumous publication of J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Silmarillion (1977), Tolkien’s son, Christopher, tabbed, compared, analyzed, and made extensive notes of it all, and three years later published Unfinished Tales (1980).  Like the aforementioned author’s collections, it fills in holes, covers backstory, and all around creates a broader, rounder view of a world, in this case the inimitable (though often attempted) Middle Earth. Therefore, those looking for The Lord of the Rings 2: Sauron Strikes Back should be aware: Unfinished Tales is most similar to the mythic stylings of The Silmarillion and the informational appendices of The Lord of the Rings than the novel itself. 

           

Unfinished Tales is for the scholar, the connoisseur, the nerd of Middle Earth.  Frodo, Gandalf, Sam, Bilbo, Gimli, Aragorn—all get brief mention, but are far, far from being the cornerstones of the collection.  Unfinished Tales can thus be broken into three essential parts: 1) the tales and myths, legends and stories Tolkien had written in the background of the major works that are confluent with Middle Earth history yet insular.  For readers simply interested in reading more from Tolkien’s imagination, they will satisfy. 2) bits of history, including geographical descriptions, royal lineages, histories of friendships and marriages, maps, etc.  These are for the reader who revels in worldbuilding.  And 3) the foot notes.  Covering a tremendous range of side commentary, Tolkien includes his father’s scribblings in the margin, alternate versions of the stories at hand, cross-indexing, analysis, supposition, as well as explanations and descriptions how or why the information is important to the larger scheme of Middle Earth.  Though dad’s writings occupy the majority, the foot notes occupy a significant portion of the book.  (There are even a couple of occasions wherein the foot notes are longer than the story itself.)  These additional notes, analysis, and commentary are for the reader with “Frodo lives!” tattooed on their forehead.

Review of The Physiognomy by Jeffrey Ford

Looking back through history, some of mankind’s most intriguing pseudosciences are those that draw connections between appearance and value.  Judging the human book by its cover, phrenology and physiognomy purport to be able to measure morals through the dimensions and attributes of body.  Somehow maintaining plausibility for centuries, it wasn’t truly until the turn of the 20th that the practices were quelled from the public eye.  But what a tool of power it would have been.  A malleable concept if ever there were, a king or high-minded official might condemn a person based solely on the dimensions of a nose—even if their own physical characteristics fit that of a murderer or rapist.  Taking the idea and putting it to use in fiction, Jeffrey Ford’s 1997 The Physiognomy (re-released by Open Road Media in 2015) is the redemption of one such high-minded official.  His story defining the word ‘malleable,’ it’s about as swimmingly macabre as dark fantasy gets.

Cley is a physiognomist living in the Well-Built City.  A despicable, bilious, narcissistic criminal of an official, he is the right-hand man of the city’s even more despicable ruler, the sorcerous Drachton Below.  Falling out of favor at the outset, however, Cley is sent on a punitive assignment to a small mining town in the distant, dirty reaches of the realm to weed out the thief of a strange white fruit.  With miners petrifying in the blue dust they collect each day, demons in the nearby forest, a beautiful young woman with greater physiognomy talent than he, and a strange thing calling itself the Traveler haunting his dreams (or his reality), Cley’s time in the town of Anamasobia spins his already bizarre world to the surreal. Catching the thief is only a doorway to stranger things.

Review of The Grace of Kings by Ken Liu

Ken Liu’s first published story appeared in 2002, and over the next eight years only five additional stories appeared.  A fire lit beneath him after, however, since 2010 Liu has been a machine.  An astonishing eighty pieces of fiction published in the five intervening years, the only thing more amazing is that none of these works was a novel.  But finally in 2015 Liu has emerged in long form.  A major switch in terms of style, The Grace of Kings, book one in the Dandelion Dynasty series (trilogy?), is perhaps the least and most expected story that could have emerged.

A sense of humanism grounding the storm of short fiction Liu has produced to date, The Grace of Kings is likewise rooted in history, society, culture, and the interaction among them.  Looking at cycles of power, the effects of war on a large, multi-ethnic archipelago, and the choices the people at the top face as time moves forever forward, the novel is, however, a significantly more in depth examination of these ideas than anything Liu has produced to date—a 650 page examination, in fact.

Review of Lagoon by Nnedi Okorafor

Robert Heinlein’s Stranger in a Strange Land is one of genre’s more divisive offerings.  Loved or hated, it tells of an alien arriving with a message of universal love and the religious, political, and social reaction as a commune of belief is created around it.  Heinlein painting the scene in black and white, his ideas are presented via contemptuous satire, rendering the novel largely a soapbox—the reason behind said reader discord.

Enter Nnedi Okorafor’s 2014 Lagoon.  About aliens who arrive in Nigeria bearing a message of love, likewise all manner of chaos is unleashed as they spread knowledge of their mission.  Lagoon is significantly different from Heinlein in tone and attitude, however.  Rather than bludgeoning the reader with jaded cynicism, Okorafor presents the social and political issues Nigeria is dealing with in candid fashion while integrating the alien viewpoint, arriving at something greener, something more holistic than just the disparaging dichotomy of Heinlein.  Her commentary may sometimes be (indirectly) cutting, but Lagoon remains a warm, parental novel—the strong hand of love—that is more constructive than destructive.  Not just Heinlein’s stick, Okorafor also offers the carrot. 

Review of Europe in Autumn by Dave Hutchinson

The European Union very well may be the most interesting social experiment ever attempted by mankind.  Taking almost a billion people with differing culture, language and belief, not to mention centuries of unending feuds and wars, and unifying them under a single government is an act unprecedented in world history.  In many Europeans’ eyes, however, it’s just that: an experiment, nothing certain about future coherence.  A thought experiment which sees “Europe calving into icebergs”, Dave Hutchinson’s 2014 novel Europe in Autumn (2014) locates an atypical espionage thriller on the continent post-EU.

From Scottish independence to Silesia’s secession from Poland, Europe in Autumn is set in a Europe recognizable culturally yet fragmented politically.  Rudi is an Estonian chef working in Cracow, who finds himself faced with an interesting and profitable proposition after his restaurant absorbs an evening’s destruction from a group of drunk Hungarian mafia.  His Estonian passport giving him access to polities in Europe where Poles are not allowed, he completes a simple mission into Germany and returns safe and sound.  That step his first into the world of cross-border information trafficking, it isn’t long before the information begins tracking him too, fully exposing just how intricate and complex the relationship between government and the individual truly is across the freshly shattered European continent.

Review of The Last Coin by James P. Blaylock

(Cue eager 1950s’ advertizing voice.)  Looking for something new?  Tired of that steady diet of popular fantasy with the same dichotomies, the same sense of style, the same touch points?  Need something fresh, something outside the mainstream of genre?  A plot that goes none knows where?  Characters so obtuse they’re normal?  Imagination of the most esoteric?  If this is you my friend, then look no further than the incomparable Mr. James P. Blaylock!  Fabulist extraordinaire, he mixes a drop of the supernatural into the mundane affairs of Joe Average to create a concoction most quirky—and pleasing for it!  Run, run, run to your corner bookshop and pick a book today!

After such a review introduction, I should pause to note the above tone is all in good fun, but the message is real; Blaylock is the scribe for the reader looking for something outside the fantasy norm.  His oeuvre unique across the spectrum of speculative fiction, one may choose almost anywhere (save the middle of series, or course) and walk away satisfied.  Take for example his delightful 1988 The Last Coin—as consistent, individual, and delightful as the day it was published.

Review of The Investigation by Stanislaw Lem

Sherlock Holmes may very well be the world’s most famous detective (Watson would definitely hit the top ten for sidekicks).  King of logic and master of sly, where others see only flying pigs and water flowing uphill, the British recluse of Baker Street peers through the slush of misinformation to the jagged line connecting the dots of reality. This latter word significant, the underlying premise to all of Holmes’ cases is that a solution exists—an explanation that satisfies all the questions and parameters of the case in our real world, nothing fantastical about it.  Arthur Conan Doyle a brilliant writer, his creations, however, were fiction; in real life not all cases go solved and not all mysteries that life presents are unraveled.

A Scotland Yard case the perfect premise, in 1959 Stanislaw Lem penned The Investigation as a means of digging at the reasons behind this juxtaposition between fiction and reality.  A bodysnatching mystery of the most metaphysical, Lem racks up a high score for being a prime student of literature, from detective noir to Dostoevsky, and being incredibly insightful into the uncertainties of perception that dance and drum, hide and manifest themselves in the human brain as it encounters this little thing we call life.

Review of Soldier of Sidon by Gene Wolfe

After finishing his landmark Book of the New Sun series in the 80s, Gene Wolfe branched out in a new direction; going from a science fiction/fantasy cum confirmation/subversion of epic fantasy, to ancient Greece and a soldier with a head wound that has destroyed his short term memory. Wolfe produced two novels that seemed like bookends on a simple but profound shelf of ideas.  Featuring Greek gods, a realistic presentation of life in the Greek archipelago more than 2,000 years ago, and a man coming to terms with a new perspective on life, Soldier in the Mist and Soldier of Arete are a natural pair opening and closing an enchanted and enchanting window in the soldier Latro’s life.  It was thus something of a surprise when, seventeen years later, Wolfe produced a third Soldier novel, Soldier of Sidon (2006).  Some surprises are welcome, however, even if their genesis is only partially explainable.

Riverland calling him, at the outset of Soldier of Sidon Latro sets out on a merchant’s journey down the Nile with an old friend, Muslak, and some new friends.  One a river wife hired in northern Egypt for the journey, Myt’ser’eu proves delightful, yet mysterious female company.  But not as enigmatic as some of the other men, women, and creatures he encounters.  Egyptian deities just as perceptible as the Greek, Latro’s journey finds him meeting a jackal-headed men, a wax lady, and animals of dreams and nightmares—black panthers, snakes, and crocodiles among them.  People and gods still playing games with Latro, the beleaguered mercenary in semi-retirement must again attempt to peer his way through what he perceives and what his scroll tells him he perceived to make sense of what his eyes and heart tell him is reality.  A temple in the southern reaches of Egypt near Ethiopia purported to be able to cure his memory issues, once again Latro pins his hopes on his own will and the powers of the divine—even if they are of a human age older.

Review of Coyote Rising by Allen Steele

Coyote, Allen Steele’s 2002 novel describing humanity’s first attempt at colonizing the stars, was a solidly written story of planetary exploration.  Mankind’s first steps awkward and uncertain on the new world, the narrative unfolded in terms of discovery and adaptation.  It also ended on a major surprise: the Collectivists on Earth had arrived to implement socialism on the desperately libertarian people who remained alive.  Working with the idea humanity has settled Coyote to the point day-to-day survival is ensured, the follow-up, Coyote Rising (2004), unfolds in terms of the political interplay between the two groups: the original colonists, headed by Robert E. Lee, and the Collectivists who landed after, lead by the imperious Louisa Hernandez.  Fireworks literally and figuratively closing the show, it’s an equally enjoyable if not more cohesive novel than Coyote that takes the freshly colonized planet to its next cycle of human existence.

Using the same narrative style as Coyote, Coyote Rising is, to its benefit, a series of short stories, novelettes, and novellas conjoined at plot to tell the story of the first colonizers fight against the oppression of the second wave. Starting small with the story of a middle-aged woman newly arrived on Coyote who must eke out existence on the outskirts of a dirty, fragmented society, afterwards minor events and seemingly small scale happenings escalate the situation on the planet to the point both sides end up in open war—the penultimate story a politically simplistic yet gripping telling of Coyote’s socio-political fate that features viewpoints representing all sides of the overarching story.  It pays off nicely.  Almost Keith Roberts-esque in his vectoring of these stories toward the underlying plot, Steele shows superb narrative control, allowing the character details, setting, and plot of each story to be individual yet ultimately focused on larger issues at stake on the planet, culminating in a satisfying conclusion. 

Review of Boneshaker by Cherie Priest

Steampunk is an intriguing sub-sub-genre of fantastyka.  Ian Macleod’s The Light Ages, Thomas Pynchon’s Against the Day, Paul Di Filippo’s Steampunk Trilogy, and William Gibson and Bruce Sterling’s The Difference Engine are books that dig at the political and social ideas resulting from alternate technological versions of history.  But there is another side for which socio-politics are but another color on the palette of a more aesthetic, action-oriented experience.  Mechanical body parts, dirigibles, steam power, and a 19th century-esque setting are just some of the most recognizable tropes featured in Alastair Reynolds Terminal World, Scott Westerfeld’s Leviathan, Tim Powers’ The Anubis Gates, Gail Carriger’s Soulless, and James Blaylock’s Homnculus.  Running with the visually-focused side, Cherie Priest’s 2009 Boneshaker touches the major points of steampunk with motherly sentiment.

Boneshaker’s first few pages start off a bit, well, shaky.  Opening on a historical synopsis, it tells of Leviticus Blue (great name) and his boneshaking machine that one day in the 1850s went mad and tore its way beneath the earth, managing to loot Seattle’s biggest banks in the process.  Rupturing veins of poison gas en route, a madness settled upon the residents in the resulting atmospheric milieu, a madness mitigated only by the construction of a massive wall around the city. The living and the living dead trapped within, those on the outskirts have been left to squeak by however they can, the entire region in tatters.  With the Civil War burgeoning in the south, the Pacific Northwest is primed to fall into chaos.