Review of Boxer, Beetle by Ned Beauman

Just when you thought nothing original—truly original (I am, after all, a semi-cynical bibliophile)—could be done with Hitler and his legacy, along comes a story that blows the lid off.  Finding a crack in a secret history and tearing it wide open one utterly unpredictable page after another is Ned Beauman’s 2010 Boxer, Beetle.

Written in wry, clever prose that generates scene momentum toward the overarching storyline, Boxer, Beetle is the story of Seth Roach, a 4-foot-11, nine-toed, Jewish boxer looking to take his revenge on the idea of life in London of 1936.  Boozing, whoring, gambling and getting in fights in and out of the ring, Roach is a veritable tornado of spite and gall.  A unique physical specimen to say the least, he draws interest from would-be scientist Philip Erskine in the the early going of the novel.  Offered 50 quid a day if he can be measured and observed for eugenics research, Roach gives Erskine a slap to the face.  But erratic choices eventually drag him to the gutter, and Roach is forced to give in to the service of Erskine.  It takes learning what Erskine is doing with a colony of exotic beetles from Poland, however, for Roach to clue himself in to what precisely the word "eugenics" means...

Review of Pirate Freedom by Gene Wolfe

There are some writers who seek to be as unique as possible—and fail or succeed in trying.  And there are some who try to use as many familiar ideas as is possible.  And yet still, there are writers who try to use familiar ideas in their own unique way.  Though he has written some truly original stories, I still place Gene Wolfe in the latter category.  Inspired by fiction around him, Wolfe has tackled a number of major tropes from genre, e.g. generation starship in The Book of the Long Sun, sword and sorcery in The Book of the New Sun, Arthurian adventure in The Wizard Knight, Orwellian dystopia in Operation Ares, a ghost story in Peace—just to name a few.  It didn’t come as a surprise then, when it was announced Wolfe would be publishing a pirate novel, Pirate Freedom appearing in 2007.

Pirate Freedom is the story of Chris.  An elderly priest in our time and an apprentice monk in a Cuba of more than two hundred years ago, for the majority of the novel the reader follows the young man’s adventures as he abandons the thought of one day wearing the black to have a life on the sea.  Abandoned by his own father at the monastery as a child, when Chris is sixteen he makes the choice to leave the brotherhood with only a penny or two to his name.  Traversing the wharves of Havana, it isn't long before he is hired onto a ship commissioned to escort a galleon loaded with gold back to Spain.  The trip going smoothly, Chris signs on for the return trip.  But before the sloop can arrive back in port, things go haywire. Pirates capture the vessel and Chris is faced with a choice from the captain: join the crew or be marooned on the next deserted island.  Chris takes the third option, and it makes all the difference.

Review of To Die in Italbar by Roger Zelazny

Even uncle wiki says it: Roger Zelazny’s novels show a tendency for cosmology.  This Immortal… uses Greek mythology, Creatures of Light and Darkness Egyptian, Lord of Light Hindu—these and others show a fondness for the belief systems underpinning cultures old and new.  While more indirect, Zelazny’s 1973 To Die in Italbar dallies with the Christ myth, just in less successful fashion.

Dropped into the the middle of the action, To Die in Italbar opens on a scene of sabotage.  A man named Malacar and his furry, mind-reading, alien companion plant bombs at a warehouse, and as a result destroy innocents as well as a horde of valuable trade goods.  Meanwhile on another planet, a man named Hymack stumbles through a forest riddled with diseases.  Collapsing near death, a goddess visits and heals him.  The next day he wanders into the nearby town and begins performing his own miracles at the local hospital.  But a switch somewhere flips, and the healing suddenly turns to infection, and giving life turns to suffering, sometimes death. The townsfolk wanting to kill him as a result, Hymack is forced to flee into the forest.  When Malacar learns of Hymack and his power to infect, an idea forms, and he sets out to capture the strangely powered man for his own ill intent.  There are still others, however, with different plans in mind for Hymack. 

Review of The People's Police by Norman Spinrad

It’s perhaps an understatement to say the political situation in the US the past year or two has been a powder keg.  Strong opinion seemingly held on all sides (except the moderates, har har), innumerable fingers point in innumerable directions, attempting to assign fault for the ills that plague the country.  From “Why can’t we all love each other?” to “Divide and conquer”, the spectrum of opinion is vast even as the country’s problems appear to become worse.  Politicians and policy makers looking to button up the holes with new laws, Norman Spinrad’s 2017 novel The People’s Police asks: is an ever increasing litigious society not, in fact, the reason behind a lot of the ills?

The effects of Hurricane Katrina and 2008’s economic recession not hard enough on New Orleans, in 2020 another recession hits: the Great Deflation.  Once again due to overeager money lenders delivering loans that buyers cannot repay, the Big Easy finds itself in a poor way as the value of the dollar plummets.  Criminal activity is on the uptake as tourism—the main source of income for the city—is on the down.  Enter Luke Martin, a swamp rat who pulled himself up by the bootstraps hard enough to get a high school diploma and an invitation to police academy.  He is given the task of establishing a new precinct on the edge of the Alligator—New Orleans least lustrous side—and does so with gusto.  Around this time a woman named Marylou becomes inhabited by a loa and starts her own daytime tv show, Mama Legba and her Supernatural Krewe—the show’s popularity only increasing by the day.  And among the city’s elite stands, J.B. Lafitte, a hometown entrepreneur with his hands in a lot of pies, including local prostitution, souvenir shops, and gambling houses.  But he also has the interest of the city at heart, so when election time comes, and the northern half of Louisiana confirms its extremely conservative candidate for governor, Lafitte cooks up his own local candidate—a very liberal one, to say the least.  With a little help from Martin’s newly formed police group, as well as Mamma Legba herself, things might be looking up for the Big Easy, that is, if the National Guard doesn’t get called in…

Review of The Summer Isles by Ian R. Macleod

Despite it’s half-century of age, George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-four still gets a lot of air time in relation to political brainwashing and totalitarianism.  An extreme novel, it resorts to violence in converting the mindset of Winston Smith to believe 2+2 = 5, begging the question: what of the majority—the people who support the Party but did not need violence as motivation?  Where is the passivity inherent to such socio-political states, the subtlety of the human condition which allows oppression to become the norm?  After all, rarely are real-world governments as overtly tyrannical as Big Brother.  Jumping in to the gap to paint tyranny in a verisimilitude poignant, sobering, and realistic is Ian R. Macleod’s brilliantly penned The Summer Isles (2005).

A work of alternate history, The Summer Isles sets itself post-WWI in a scenario in which England lost the war.  John Arthur, a powerful right-wing politician, has come to power in the aftermath, and begun implementing conservative policies.  At the outset of the novel, the aging Griffin Brooke, former teacher of John Arthur, is drowning in self-pity.  Hope for a meaningful relationship lost as he wallows in the memories of a long ago affair, he takes a bigger hit when told by his physician that terminal lung cancer will end his life much sooner than expected.  An academic career at Oxford running stale and perpetual wariness at revealing his homosexuality taking its toll, Brooke consigns himself to his fate and elects to take a drastic measure in his last days on Earth.  The idyll of the summer isles is not far off.

Review of Last Year by Robert Charles Wilson

It’s normal enough to open a book review by making a general observation about the common nature of this or that trope in fiction, and then go on to introduce a book that twists said trope in some fashion. Perhaps there are too many notches on my reading belt, but many a time I have read such reviews, read the book in question, then thought to myself “In fact there is nothing really unique about the novel…  It is a blatant representation of the trope, only the details of setting or character differ slightly….”  Thus, while no two grains of sand may be alike, standing on a beach they all look the same.  Robert Charles Wilson’s time travel novel Last Year (2016) is standing on the beach—the perfect metaphor for the most appropriate place to read the book.

Jesse Cullum is a strapping young man employed as security by The City, a specialized urban area constructed in the Illinois prairie in the mid-19th century by 21st century tycoon August Kemp.  Kemp having constructed a time portal between 2016 and 1877, The City contains hotels and other accommodations for people from the future to visit the past, and likewise provides tourist attractions for locals to come and see wondrous things from the future, such as helicopters and smartphones.  Cullum saving the life of President Ulysses Grant from a would-be assassin in the opening pages, the follow-up investigation reveals a trickle of illegal guns from the future, somehow being trafficked through the time portal.  Cullum a hero as a result, he is given a raise and assigned the task of finding the source of the guns.  Meeting 21st century agent Elizabeth DePaul in the process, together the two get to the bottom of the smuggling ring.  But that is only the beginning.  Political agitators and Kemp’s secret ambitions, as well as ghosts from Cullum’s past rising to the surface, things heat up for Cullum, and fast.  Time seems to hold no influence on greed and payback.

Review of The Thing Itself by Adam Roberts

Tucked into the middle of Ian Whates’ 2014 anthology Solaris Rising 3 is Adam Robert’s short story “Thing and Sick”.  Garnering little to no notice, it tells of two researchers sitting out long nights in Antarctica on a SETI project.  Together they maintain radios and machinery, cables and computer programs, but their free time serves only to widen the divide between their personalities.  One an introverted Kant fanatic, the other a more extroverted, pop culture kind of guy, trouble brews when the latter agrees to sell the former one of his personal letters from their weekly mail drops.  Possessing just the right tinge of something-else-ness to make the story science fiction, I thought “Roberts amalgamates philosophy, suspense, the isolation of Antarctica, and a minor character study in a truly compelling story. And the last line?  Beautifully slingshot.”  The slingshot, apparently, was into a novel.  In 2015 Roberts revealed the arching shot, titled The Thing Itself.

Positively non-standard in structure and form (a refreshing break from the glut of less-than-inspiring sf currently flooding the market), The Thing Itself extends the story of the two Antarctic researchers, Roy Curtius and Charles Gardner, to make the short story a prologue for the two’s later experiences in life, as well as the wild array of tributary fiction.  Missing toes and disfigured by frostbite, Gardner is unable to return to normal life in the UK after his time in the Antarctica with Curtius.  He descends into bad relationships and alcoholism and ends up working at a landfill for years before he is contacted by a scientist from a cutting edge institute.  Lured to the facility with promises of monthly compensation, car, and living quarters, it isn’t long before the secrets of the institute start revealing themselves.  Curtius living in a mental institution, he demands to see Gardner before he will reveal to the institute any of the advanced SETI programming he wrote while in Antarctica.  Gardner finally agreeing to meet with Curtius, it turns out to be a decision he will regret.  Reality slipping steadily away underfoot, the thing itself becomes as muddied as it does lucid.

Review of Moonglow by Michael Chabon

Michael Chabon’s 2000, Pulitzer Prize winning The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, is a brilliant piece of Americana.  Telling the story of two immigrants through the lens of the mid-20th century comic book binge, the only thing topping the prose was the earnestness and relevancy of the humanity portrayed to the culture it sprang from.  Sixteen years later, Chabon proves the 20th century is still a major go-to for his work.  Moonglow published in 2016, it brings to the table every ounce of Chabon’s prose talents and understanding of the human soul through the lens of a country’s history which helped shape its today. 

A personal, largely biographical parallel to his own grandfather’s experiences and adventures growing up in the US throughout the 20th century, dying in the 80s, Chabon once again uses language in rich, clever fashion to tell a story with whole heart.  Moonglow is character and story driven.  Switching time frames between brilliantly detailed set pieces, the reader gains a patchwork understanding of what made grandpa Chabon tick, his effect on the future generations of his family, and the cultural and social spheres encountered just beyond the personal.  Grandpa’s obsession with spaceship models, his meeting with a rector in Germany amidst the final days of WWII, his hunting of a python at an old age community in Florida, the first time he met his future wife, his throwing of a cat from an upper floor window—these and many other scenes show a truly talented writer at work.  Taking the quotidian and making it uniquely human for the delicate quirks of the people involved, indeed, Chabon’s talent is one many writers dream of but so few have.

Review of Metronome by Oliver Langmead

Likely the most common first impression of Oliver Langmead’s debut novel Dark Star is the fact it is written in epic verse. But surely what keeps asses in the seats is the strong story complemented by stronger visuals. A dark backdrop offset by flashes of neon and static as the detective noir spins its web, it is a book that can be enjoyed from several angles. Not giving in to gimmick (thankfully), Langmead, for his follow up novel, abandons epic verse but sticks to his strong suit. Evoking image and scene splashily, Metronome (2017, Unsung Stories) features adventures and quests through dreams, the aesthetics continually inching toward fireworks.

But Metronome begins innocently enough. James Manderlay is a client at a home for the elderly. A former songwriter, he collects paltry royalty checks while trying to keep his sanity in a place seemingly full of people off their rockers. The age and steadiness of his hands betraying his daily tasks, it seems only in dreams do they respond completely to his commands. Nightmares lurking in dark corners, his travels through dreams seem more often escapes rather than journeys. That is, until he meets a man killing nightmares, and is given a strange but useful compass. The dreams taking more concrete shape in the aftermath, nights become less dark and more adventurous.

Review of The Red Tree by Caitlin R. Kiernan

If ever there is a novel to ignore the cover, one would most certainly be Caitlin R. Kiernan’s 2009 The Red Tree.  What’s depicted seeming to indicate the novel is a faceless drop in the contemporary fount of YA slush, in fact, it is anything but.  A mature offering without the teen angst portrayed on the cover, Kiernan takes her novel to the next level by bringing to bear writing chops she had primarily been known for in short fiction into her long fiction, telling a very personal, human story in the process.  Any homage to horror or Weird, or acts of poignant catharsis, are just icing on the cake.

Sarah Crowe has moved to Rhode Island in an attempt to escape a disastrous relationship and kick start a long overdue novel.  Renting an apartment in an old, creaky farmhouse, Crowe has trouble settling in from the beginning.  The shadows in the basement are dark, and something in the air doesn’t feel right.  Making matters worse is Crowe’s discovery of an unpublished manuscript amidst the farmhouse’s clutter describing the history of a seemingly malevolent tree on the property.  A massive red oak, the author of the manuscript, in fact, eventually hung himself from it.  But pushing things over the top is that an artist takes up residence in the farmhouse’s attic.  The new novel may never get written given the circumstances, so best to pick up pen and paper and write down one’s thoughts and experiences, as strange as they are around the red tree.