BookReview « Christian Sauvé

The Life, Steve Paikin

Penguin Canada, 2002 paperback reprint of 2001 original, 326 pages, C$24.00 tp, ISBN 0-14-029370-1

As I write this, Canadians are in the middle dog-days of a federal election, and the first of the political party leaders’ debate is playing on the TV screen. By this time in the process, even die-hard political junkies such as myself are nearing exasperation. The modern electoral campaign is a carefully staged ritual designed to minimize surprises. Since the beginning of this year’s election, the leaders are saying the same things, polls haven’t moved an inch and we’re left to contemplate politics at their most partisan, which is pretty much the same as saying politics at their dullest. The debate is a case in point, as leaders once again trot out the same tired arguments, cross-talk without engaging in meaningful “debate” and manage to use many words to say very little. The kabuki ritual of elections isn’t fooling anyone, and it’s enough to make you wonder why anyone would ever want to go in politics.

It’s exactly at times like these that Steve Paikin’s The Life becomes essential reading. Paikin, who has long worked for Ontario’s public broadcaster TV Ontario, is not your usual pack political journalist: He hosts current-affair shows, interviews guests, writes books and produces feature length documentaries. He’s respected enough to have been asked to moderate the federal leaders’ election debate three times. A long-form journalism specialist, Paikin has the advantage of studying politicians without being caught in the trap of daily news cycles.

In The Life, Paikin deliberately steps away from the cynicism with which most people regard politicians to ask Why would anyone want to get into politics? Most of the book is a series of linked profiles, based on interviews and press clippings, describing the political life of Canadian politicians no matter their level or political affiliation. Since Paikin is based in Toronto, it’s no surprise to see that most of the profiles are about Toronto and Ottawa. In the opening chapter of the book (“The Crusaders”), for instance, Paikin discusses the careers of Lewis MacKenzie (PC/Federal), Frances Lankin (NDP/Ontario), Pam Barrett (NDP/Alberta) and Derwyn Shea (PC/Ontario).

Each politician’s life and career is told crisply, with readable prose and a storyteller’s skill. Don’t be surprised if everyone in the book comes across as a better kind of politician than you may expect: Paikin may not completely indulge in hagiography, but his aim is to present the politicians’ side of the story. The long hours campaigning, the unfair reversals of fortune due to no fault of their own; the bitter choices faced by people in power… The Life aims to present politicians as regular people stuck in a high visibility job with considerable downsides.

It’s useful to note that ten years after publication, The Life may be more interesting now than ever before. Paikin’s examples are drawn from 1960 to 2000, which may reduce the partisan sting of some of his subjects to 2011 readers. Ten years is practically forever in politics, and Paikin is careful never to assume too much political knowledge from his readers: he provides balanced context and tells stories as if readers were reading them for the first time –not an unreasonable assumption for a work of long-form journalism. I was particularly interested by the stories surrounding Bob Rae’s NDP government in the early nineties: while I may have lived through the era, Paikin presents it according to the people who lived through the tough choices of the time –his description of the anguish of NDP backbenchers forced to vote on a “Social Contract” many didn’t believe in is particularly poignant in presenting the kind of impossible choices that regular politicians must face… and pay for.

Other highlights of the book are a joint comparison of the lives of provincial premiers William Davis and Peter Lougheed; a chapter on unelected “backroom boys”; the inspiring story of Alvin Curling, first black MP in Ontario’s history; and a momentous description of how Brian Mulroney gave “Eighty Minutes” of his time to Paikin.

It goes without saying that The Life presents politicians at their best and their most amiable, but their story often kept going after the book was published. From 2011, we know the Alvin Curling’s tenure as Speaker of the House wasn’t without controversy; more crucially, we now know quite a few more things about Brian Mulroney and the Airbus/Schreiber affair than we did in 2001. (Three words: “brown paper bags.”) Do these latter-day developments invalidate Paikin’s book? Absolutely not. The point of The Life is to make us consider the possibility that politicians may be human. That despite our resentment for the power they hold (however tenuously) over our lives, they too can be regular people trying to do a job in trying circumstances. It’s to Paikin’s credit that he’s able to deliver this thesis without appearing to fawn over his subjects, by simply telling their story from their point of view.

It amounts to a book that, well, may make you look at politicians differently. As I edit this review weeks after the surprising end of the 2010 federal elections (in which Conservatives won an unexpected majority, the NDP became the unexpected official opposition and both the Liberal and the Bloc Québécois unexpectedly lost a significant chunk of votes), I do so with the renewed appreciation that elections can be exciting and campaigns may produce unexpected results. As a number of brand-new federal MPs (one of them still in his teens) swear allegiance and take on a four-year term, I can’t help but think about the lives in The Life and wonder how they feel as ordinary people thrust in the spotlight.

[June 2010: Steve Paikin’s follow-up The Dark Side purports to tell us about the less-glamorous side of the political life, and it’s reasonably effective in doing so as it tells us about political betrayals, losses and scandals. The style and tone of the book is very similar to The Life, presenting linked profiles in successive chapters. But don’t let the title lull you toward false expectations: Paikin is too much of a nice guy to present the darkest stories of Canadian politics: many times, he’ll follow the defeats of his subjects by their redemption or their success in other fields. While the book features the powerful story of Paul Dick (who attended 144 job interviews after losing his seat in the 1993 federal elections before re-entering the workforce as an entry-level stockbroker), most of the other stories seem far more optimistic. Since the book remains interesting no matter what, this isn’t much a criticism. Other the other hand, there’s a feeling that there remains a more scathing book to be written about the dark side of Canadian politics.]

Tags: Steve Paikin
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Blink, Malcolm Gladwell

Back Bay, 2007 revised paperback reprint of 2005 original, 296 pages, C$19.99 tp, ISBN 978-0-316-01066-5

Quick! What kind of book climbs up the bestseller-charts, earns more than a thousand user reviews on Amazon, gets people arguing back and forth about its relative value, spawns at least two book-length responses and becomes the darling of mid-level executives everywhere? To be fair, that’s not a lot of information to go on, but if you’re guessing “pop-sociology vulgarization with some application to business”, then you’re in the right intuitive ballpark to discuss Malcolm Gladwell’s Blink.

Six years after publication, there’s little about Blink that hasn’t already been discussed endlessly. Its central premise, that some judgements are best made in split-seconds rather than careful consideration, is counterintuitive enough to earn initial interest. After that, it’s Gladwell’s knack for readable prose that takes over: Readers are charmed by the mixture of anecdotes, selected studies, links between various disciplines and easily-digestible thought experiments. Blink is a prime example of the mini-boom in pop-sociology books that followed the success of Freakonomics, their most significant virtue seemingly being in dispensing cocktail-chatter material to middle-blow readers.

There’s little doubt that the end result is engaging from a reader’s perspective. Gladwell manages to explore uncanny pockets of knowledge in his effort to explore his subject, and so readers are given mini-primers on art history, music marketing, military war-gaming, marriage counselling and much more along the way. There’s a deluge of factoids in Blink, but it feels manageable thanks to Gladwell’s journalistic instincts in presenting information clearly and frequently referring back to previous material. Blink is a joy to read, and this ease certainly helps the reader become sympathetic to the book’s thesis.

After all, “blink” judgements are a particular instance of intuition, and it doesn’t take much to be fascinated by things nobody quite understands. Nearly everyone has powerful intuitions about various things (many of them are rarely formally disproved) and yet few people can actually explain why they’ve been able to come to this conclusion. Blink circles this subject and interrogates it from various angles, some of them even contradictory.

Gladwell doesn’t forget, for instance, that blink judgements can be wrong or lazy. There’s a chapter on stereotypes and unexamined judgement that weakens the book’s thesis. Gladwell also glosses over the relationship between expertise and intuition, or how some of the most powerful intuitions are product of years of experience, reactions, course correction and re-evaluation. (Many of us are blink-experts in our own fields of work; Gladwell doesn’t insist on how intuition is not necessarily transferable across pockets of expertise.)

The relationship between unconscious decision-making and newer theories of the mind could have made for interesting material, especially when linked to practised expertise. Isn’t the goal of practice to drive skills deep in the unconscious where they can be used without conscious interference? Aren’t blink-judgements evidence for some of the most radical theory of consciousness portraying the conscious mind as a rubber-stamper of unconscious processes?

This, alas, takes us in territory that Gladwell is not interested in exploring. (Heck, in the paperback afterword of the book, Gladwell admits that he deliberately refused to use the word “intuition” in the main body of the book.) To anyone looking for a more ambitious thesis, Blink seems stuck at a basic level, delivering entertaining anecdotes without wrapping it up in a coherent theory. Latter chapters seem to disprove the worth of blink-judgements, leaving the readers to wonder where this is leading. It’s a fun book, but it quickly feels unsubstantial, even when compared to The Tipping Point.

This may server to explain why there are at least two book-length responses to Blink. Michael LeGault Think! takes the relatively more orthodox view that thinking long and hard has its own merit. But the most entertaining answer may very well be “Noah Tall”‘s Blank? The Power of not Thinking at All, a parody that overstays its welcome at 86 pages, but still pokes a few holes in the reverence with which some people still consider Blink.

But, hey, read the book and make up your mind… in three seconds or three days.

Tags: Malcolm Gladwell
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Limitless aka The Dark Fields, Alan Glynn

Picador, 2011 movie tie-in reprint of 2001 original, 336 pages, $15.00 tp, ISBN 978-0-312-42887-7

Something very strange happened in early April 2011 at the local movie multiplex: After years of meagre offerings, you could watch three relatively original –and good!- Science-Fiction movies back-to-back-to-back in a first-run theater. In-between The Adjustment Bureau, Limitless and Source Code, SF fans were treated to three decent SF movies, none of them based on big “intellectual property franchises”. It’s not entirely fair, however, to call those movies entirely original: Source Code may have been an original screenplay, but The Adjustment Bureau took its premise (and nothing else) from a Philip K. Dick short story, whereas Limitless is a halfway-faithful adaptation of Alan Glynn’s techno-thriller originally published as The Dark Fields.

The distinction between “Science Fiction” and “techno-thriller” here is a thin one: The premise of Limitless/The Dark Fields has an underachieving thirty-something protagonist discovering a secret miracle drug dramatically boosting his intelligence. Stuck with a limited supply of pills and in-between business rivals, Russian mobsters and shadowy government operatives, our hero gulps down his drugs, performs amazing feats of cognition and discovers that the world is his… if he can first take care of his biggest problems, and if the drug’s after-effects don’t kill him first.

Much as the movie is a zippy, often exhilarating portray of a mind boosted to its theoretical limits, Glynn’s novel has a snappy forward rhythm that makes it difficult to stop reading. Our narrator isn’t just endearingly flawed, he’s also smart enough to know how to use his newfound capabilities. The prose of the book is pleasant, and The Dark Fields more than provides that sometimes elusive “reading pleasure” so desired of genre thrillers. The first-person narration portrays extreme intelligence with wit and well-chosen details: the capabilities of the protagonist are almost always credible in the context in which they are presented.

The novel, set in 2001, has also aged relatively well. Now that we’re in a post-post-9/11 world, the exuberant nature of the story’s New York setting feels once again natural. Some of the technology has aged a bit during the past decade, but most of the financial lingo still holds up to a casual reading, and there are few things to immediately date the setting.

But as in most of my reviews of books adapted to the movies, I’m more interested in the differences between both interpretations of the story. For about two-third of Limitless, both the book and the novel are significantly the same. There may be a few tweaks here and there regarding the relationships of the protagonist and the presence of mysterious operatives, but the story beats remain in-sync. Amusingly enough, the film’s two big plot-holes (never borrow from Russian mobsters; always secure your source of drugs) are also softly reflected in the novel. Then the interpretations diverge: The novel takes a far darker turn, whereas the film manages to end on a triumphant note. (Before blaming Hollywood, consider this interview with both writers and their shared camaraderie.)

Many Science Fiction fans will prefer the film’s take on the subject. The topic of intelligence enhancement has often been done in SF, but usually following the Icarus plot template: That there is inevitably an accounting for artificially-obtained superpowers. That idea, at this point, is trite puritanical moralizing; isn’t it more interesting to wonder what if, indeed, you could have it all? The movie eventually chooses this path, and it feels considerably more satisfying than the increasingly paranoid descent to hell that becomes the book’s conclusion. Genre prejudice may influence readers, though: technophiles coming from SF may have no trouble with the idea of an artificial intelligence-booster leading to a better life; readers coming from the more pessimistic thriller genre may feel that the dark ending feels more natural. In either case, comparing film to novel show how a simple last-act spin can radically change the impact of a work. After seeing the fulfilling film, the novel seems to run out of ideas toward the end, ending with a whimper rather than making the most out of the elements in its possession.

But that’s the great thing about interpretations. You get to pick and choose whether you liked the original or the adaptation best. It doesn’t take super-human intelligence to create a composite story in your head that incorporates the best of both versions. In my case: The novel’s backstory and fully-researched details, with the film’s casting, pacing and triumphant ending. You may prefer different results.

Tags: Alan Glynn
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Terminal Freeze, Lincoln Child

Doubleday, 2009, 320 pages, C$27.95 hc, ISBN 978-0-385-51551-1

After years of joint bestselling success, it’s been interesting to see the Preston/Child writing duo strike out individually. This now gives the prolific duo an average of three books per year, and presumably the opportunity to try things on their own that they wouldn’t attempt in their collaborations given readers’ expectations for the team. They are, after all, seasoned writing professionals who fully understand the conventions of the thriller genre, and that usually works to their advantage.

Not always, though, and Lincoln Child’s Terminal Freeze is another example in his bibliography that shows how writers can combine original settings with familiar plot points and yet end up with disappointing novels.

To Child’s credit, it does take a long time for the disappointment to set in: As is often the case with high-concept thrillers, the first hundred pages are more interesting than the rest. We find ourselves deep in Alaska, at a research facility loosely guarded by the US Army. The first set of characters we meet are a group of scientists making the best out of global warming in studying the composition of retreating glaciers. But a sudden break in the ice reveals something far more interesting: a creature of some sort, encased in a gigantic ice cube. It doesn’t take much more to get a documentary film crew to land, taking over the camp in the name of TV entertainment. Meanwhile, vague mystical portent of doom from the local native population and a few shocking documents discovered in a long-classified official archive set the stage for the inevitable upcoming doom.

The setting and its atmosphere are a good chunk of Terminal Freeze’s early interest. The idea of a group of scientists working high above the Arctic Circle in one of the most isolated places in the world is good for a suspense story, and the sequence in which a character goes into a recently-declassified government archive to uncover an unexpected secret is the type of good foreboding sequence that any thriller ought to have. Even as the plot pieces slowly come together, the arrival of a documentary crew and the subsequent look behind the scenes of a supposedly “documentary” shoot are good to keep up our interest. (“You, scientist: look amazed! Everyone else, act as if you’re seeing the creature for the first time!”)

Then it gets really familiar really quickly. The large frozen cat that the scientists think they can glimpse in the ice proves to be something far more dangerous, and before long we get characters dying left and right, pursued in a military station by… a monster.

That’s the point where readers can be forgiven for thinking “Really? Another monster thriller?” and losing interest in the novel. Because, despite the interesting setting, Terminal Freeze soon succumbs to the theorem of converging premises and ends up feeling like countless monster movies of the past, with a small group of humans (scientists, soldiers, entertainers) doing their best to kill something that escapes the usual laws of nature. A too-quick look at ice-trucking (a topic which would probably sustain a novel of its own) isn’t enough to save the latter half of Terminal Freeze from terminal boredom. It’s trivially easy to guess who’s going to become monster-chow; it’s considerably harder to actually care about it. The epilogue contains a revelation that will only be interesting to readers who aren’t used to Science-Fiction –which, to be honest, is probably most of the book’s audience: Child keeps writing SF novels disguised as thrillers, but uses those elements so loosely that they become frustrating to genre fans. (It also helps if Child’s readership has a short memory, because Terminal Freeze ends on a note similar to the epilogue of his own previous Deep Storm.)

Terminal Freeze completes its dramatic arc by ploughing into the ground after a promising launch. After four solo Child novels, this isn’t much of a surprise. As a writer, his gift is for scene-setting… not plot development: Child follows genre conventions so faithfully that he doesn’t have room to breathe once he starts developing his stories. All of his previous novels, from Utopia to Death Match to Deep Storm are blessed with great premises, but they all falter into more conventional novels by the time the second act rolls around. The narrative momentum created in the first half of the book is usually enough to sustain readers through the less-interesting conclusions, but only just so. Maybe there’s something to be said for the combined strengths of collaborations.

Tags: Lincoln Child
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Among Others, Jo Walton

Tor, 2010, 302 pages, C$28.99 hc, ISBN 978-0-7653-2153-4

I have the good fortune to count Jo Walton amongst my acquaintances, and I only name-drop because I want to establish some credibility when I say that Among Others is a book much like Jo Walton herself: Smart, kind, funny, perceptive and unapologetically in love with written Science-Fiction and Fantasy. The book itself is a subtle fantasy, a tribute to the power of reading as self-actualization and, I suspect, a fair chunk of autobiography as well.

Taking place in-between Wales and England, Among Others brings us back to the savage days of 1979-1980 in diary form. Our narrator/heroine, Mori, is not in the best of circumstances. She and her twin sister may have saved the world from the evil that is their mother, but not without consequences: her twin sister is dead, her mother hates her, and she’s been exiled to a boarding school in accursed England, far from home and the fairies that have come to be her companions. Mercifully, Walton doesn’t go back in time to explain the backstory, instead focussing on Mori’s life at the boarding school and the difficult process of reintegration as she comes to grip with the death of her twin sister, one diary entry at a time.

As a fantasy novel, Among Other is subtle to the point of being almost deniable. The fairies that occupy post-industrial Wales are neither good nor bad, but they certainly use Mori for their own end. When she completes a ritual to shut down a poisonous factory near her town, it doesn’t crumble to dust as much as it closes down the next day, causing thousands to lose their jobs in the process. Later, when Mori wishes for a group of like-minded people to ease her loneliness, she ends up discovering a local SF book club. Magic, in Mori’s world, may be about rejigging cause-and-effect as much as it may be a metaphor for taking control one one’s destiny. (Daydreaming between chapters of the novel, I found myself tangentially wondering about those people for whom everything seems to go right –it doesn’t take much to imagine them as unconscious magicians in a universe that allows for subtle nudges to destiny.)

A sufficiently blinkered reader could read Among Others as fanciful realism, but that’s missing the point of Walton’s affectionate blend of teenage memoirs, genre references and non-metaphorical fantasy elements. While the paper-heavy ending has enough thematic resonances to make any book-lover purr aloud, it’s a real, albeit unconventional fantasy. Any other kind of reading is being wilfully obstinate.

This being said, Among Others is most rewarding as a novel aimed at genre readers. Mori, seeking reintegration in the absence of her twin sister and isolated by her exile to a boarding school, soon turns to the local library and the available genre fiction. As a diary of an omnivorous teenage reader, Among Others is filled with in-jokes about classic Science Fiction and Fantasy as Mori reads a book every two days and jots down notes to herself. It’s also, perhaps more crucially, an uplifting homage to books and to readers and how even lonely introverts can find a community and a place in the world. Mori is a tough, resilient, sympathetic protagonist –the things she brushes off would traumatize most so-called “normal” people, and her genre-influenced mindset is another tool she uses to understand her environment. Among Others will be a comforting read to anyone who spent a lot of time in libraries as a teenager, and those who even today, as fully-functional adults, can recall how they were shaped by their reading.

It all amounts to a lovely novel, fascinating in the details as much as it’s interesting in its overall dramatic arc. I suspect that Among Others is designed to appeal first and foremost to avid readers; casual fans of fantasy may not find as much here to love as those who have undergone extended loneliness like Mori. At the same time, it’s a fantasy novel that deals in shades of meaning, subtle moments and complex characters. It’s satisfying from beginning to end, and it lends itself to fascinating conversations. It’s an ideal novel for book-clubs and book lovers.

But don’t tell Jo I wrote that, as I have a contrarian reputation to maintain.

Tags: Jo Walton
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One of our Thursdays is Missing, Jasper Fforde

Viking, 2011, 362 pages, C$30.00 hc, ISBN 978-0-670-02252-6

Jasper Fforde is not what we’d call an ordinary writer, and his novels are not what we’d call ordinary fiction. Euphemistically called a “writer of humorous fantasy”, Fforde is constantly willing to engage in a playful exploration of genre fiction. His novels feature characters breaking out of their novels, communications by footnotes, time-travel from one volume to another, an exploration of genre fiction as a grand library, cheerfully absurd parallel universe and more meta-fictional jokes than can be listed on a single bibliography.

The fifth entry in the “Thursday Next” ended, as faithful readers may recall, with a heck of a send-off: the Bookworld threatened by a serial killer, a dirigible going down in flames and Thursday radioing back to headquarters that they may have a problem.

If you were expecting a sequel to that particular moment, however, expect to be mystified: As One of Our Thursdays is Missing begins, we’re dealing with an entirely different Thursday: The written one, portraying the “real” Thursday Next’s adventures within Bookworld. Never mind continuity, especially when Bookworld itself is remade into a geographically-based metaphorical island. (There’s a map.) The new plot is that the real Thursday Next is missing, and the written one feels compelled to take a leave of absence to find her. Among other perils, the written Thursday has to leave Bookworld to go investigate in the real world… becoming a human for the first time, and trying to figure out how the real Thursday lives from the clues left to her in the fictionalized novels in which she plays the real one.

Yes, the meta is quite heavy with this one.

Fortunately, it’s all handled with Fforde’s usual light-hearted flair. The rules of the universe having changed (there are several hilarious excerpt to “Bradshaw’s BookWorld Companion” to help us along the way), and re-learning them alongside the similarly-befuddled Thursday isn’t too painless. Fforde’s usual invention is on display as he features a robot companion, a dangerous mimefield, a battle in micro-gravity, peace talks between warring genres, a trip upriver in a rigidly-defined subgenre and more meta-fictional games than you can quite grasp at first. (One word: Toast.)

The highlight of the book, however, has to be the sequence in which the written Thursday is thrown into the real world. Suddenly, life becomes far more complicated for someone who has to get used to gravity, heartbeats and the rest of real life that never makes it into fiction. It’s not a brilliant piece of invention, but it’s a neat and revealing take on the venerable “visiting alien asking what it means to be human” trope.

It’s all amusing and eminently readable, but in-between the inventions and wordplay there’s a real question as to whether Fforde has simply given up on the continuity of his series (if continuity was ever his intent) and where the series can go from here. But that may not be much of a concern given the twists and turns that Fforde has provided in his series so far. It does feel like a discontinuity, though, and it will be up to the next volume to patch things up: Fans can hope to get a satisfying closure to the fifth volume, but at this point the entire series is really in Fforde’s very unusual hands.

Tags: Jasper Fforde
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Gideon’s Sword, Douglas Preston & Lincoln Child

Grand Central, 2011, 342 pages, C$29.99 hc, ISBN 978-0-446-56432-8

We all know that book reviewers are useless: nobody pays attention to them, they’re wasting their time writing for little artistic or commercial reward and they wouldn’t exist at all if books went away. Still, it doesn’t mean that they’re always wrong.

When reviewers started muttering that the Preston/Child thrillers featuring Aloysius Pendergast had grown stale and repetitive, they were probably echoing something that Preston/Child themselves knew. Thriller readers thrive on a moderate amount of novelty, and after ten novels featuring the character (eight of them published between 2002 and 2010), a creatively refreshing break seemed in order. As it happens, Preston/Child aren’t giving up on Pendergast (an eleventh novel is slated for later in 2011), but they are broadening their horizons a bit, not only through their individual novels, but also through a new series featuring brand-new character Gideon Crew.

Crew exists in the same universe as Pendergast (they’re linked by eccentric billionaire Eli Glinn), but he’s a substantially different protagonist. Whereas Pendergast in the archetypical wizard, Crew is a trickster: He manipulates people like others hack computers. Whereas Pendergast will gain entry to a building by showing his FBI pass and blustering through, Crew will dress up, impersonate someone else and sneak past security undetected. There’s probably an interesting crossover event in the future for both characters, but for now Gideon’s Sword is a chance for Preston/Child to focus on a new protagonist.

As with many origin stories, it takes a while for the throat-scratching to end. A lengthy prologue sets up Crew as a genius with a burning desire to avenge his betrayed father. Once the vengeance is complete, however, he gets both an offer and a sentence: Eli Glinn has noticed the subtlety of Crew’s vengeance, and wants to hire him as a freelance operator on complex cases. At the same time, Crew is told that he’s got an incurable medical condition. One that will suddenly kill him within a few months; a few years at most.

But there’s little time for Gideon to reflect on his death sentence. Before long he’s involved in a breathless race around New York City to find out what he can about a mysterious Chinese scientist and the string of numbers he whispered after a car crash. Taking full advantage of their NYC playground, Preston/Child end up taking a closer look at a lesser-known feature of the city; Hart Island, where unidentified bodies and body parts from all of New York City are buried. (For some extra adventure, go to the authors’ web site for an unauthorized tour of the area.)

It all amounts to a novel that feels lighter and faster-paced than the last few Preston/Child’s Pendergast novels. Crew, being younger and unencumbered by Pendergast’s upper-class upbringing, is more impulsive and failible. His methods are different, and by renewing their cast of character, the authors also clean up the atmosphere of their book.

It’s not a complete success, though: Gideon’s Sword is designed to be less weighty than the Pendergast novels, and it does feel less substantial. While the plot moves faster, there’s less of it, and while that prevents Preston/Child from overusing some familiar plotting devices, it also makes Gideon’s Sword feel a bit lightweight compared to their other novels. Plot-wise, there’s a bit of unpleasantness when Crew gets someone else killed by his actions –since the series is to continue (Gideon’s Corpse is scheduled for January 2012), one would expect a bit of remorse to surface. But when it comes to future instalments, one has to wonder about Gideon’s built-in expiration date. Either he’s slated to die, bringing an unsatisfying end to the series, or Preston/Child will find a rabbit in their bag of tricks to save Gideon from his timely end. Let’s wait and see which way it will go.

In the meantime, despite a few odd criticisms, Gideon’s Sword does feel like a welcome break from the Pendergast routine. It’s not entirely a triumph, but it’s not a failure either, and it does provide the kind of entertainment that thriller readers are expecting. But really; seeing the Preston/Child name on the cover, you don’t need the dubious advice of a book reviewer to tell you so.

Tags: Douglas Preston, Lincoln Child
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Hard Landing, Lynne Heitman

Onyx, 2001, 424 pages, C$9.99 mmpb, ISBN 0-451-40972-8

I have a strange sense of humour, so when I looked over my stack of things to read in order to stock up for an imminent series of plane flights, my eye naturally gravitated toward Lynne Heitman’s Hard Landing, a book whose covers promised plenty of airborne mayhem. (“Fasten your seat belts.”) Where better to appreciate the white-knuckle thrills of aviation gone wrong than from within a plane? As you can guess, I’m not a nervous flyer…

But the first surprise of Hard Landing it how little of it takes place on planes. Sure, there’s an airplane crash distantly mentioned in the prologue. Otherwise, though, this is an aviation thriller with both feet planted on the ground: It begins as thirty-something narrator Alex Shanahan lands at Boston’s Logan airport. She’s supposed to start as the manager of operations for Majestic Airlines the next day, but the local union has decided to show her a lesson, and before she can even take off her high heels, Alex abruptly has to manage a crisis manufactured by her own employees.

It doesn’t get any better as the crisis is resolved and Alex formally takes on the reins of her new job. Not only is she taking over from a predecessor who committed suicide, there are plenty of reasons to believe that it wasn’t suicide. The union seems controlled by professional slackers; higher management is less than helpful; there are probably traitors in her office; Majestic Airlines’ recent history is both complicated and troublesome; and her efforts to find the truth are putting her in danger.

In-between the rest, her efforts to settle, make friends and deal with a failed romance also take up their share of time. Alex’s first-person narration goes from one crisis to the next, credibly portraying a good woman thrown-in well over her head. By the time she’s plotting with some disgruntled workers to expose a conspiracy with far-reaching impact within her own company, Hard Landing has managed to become a gripping tale without many of the usual plot drivers of airline thrillers. Even by limiting her plotting to the ground, Heitman manages to wring a considerable amount of narrative energy from a sympathetic narrator, major problems and an unusual look at an aspect of commercial flying that most of us forget about.

Because, let’s face it: few travelers actually think about the complex logistics of airlines operations until they go wrong. But Heitman (herself a writer with considerable experience in the airline business) is able to quickly sketch the enormous amount of stress in coordinating the activity behind the counter and under the planes. Hard Landing should appeal to fans of procedural thrillers and docu-fictive novels such as Airport: It’s a painless and fascinating look at an entirely new world, and it’s almost instantly credible.

It’s also effective at setting an actual story within that world. Hard Landing may not be quite the hard-edged thriller promised by its cover: It does blend in quite a bit of romance, manages its private investigation in a distinctly feminine fashion (a chunk of the mystery hinges on discovering that Alex’s predecessor dealt with a lonely-hearts operation) and, as previously mentioned, spends very little time in the air. But the result is a pleasant surprise rather than a disappointment: It’s an unusual, pleasant low-key thriller, and it more than held up my attention on four successive commercial flights. I may even have smiled a little bit more than usual at the folks behind the counter.

Tags: Lynne Heitman
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Cowboy Angels, Paul McAuley

Pyr, 2011 reprint of 2007 original, 363 pages, C$20.00 pb, ISBN 978-1-61614-251-3

Like most enthusiastic readers, my overall tastes may not change much, but there are definite ebbs and flows at the edges. Freakishly attentive readers of these online reviews have probably noticed how much non-fiction I’ve been reviewing over the past two years, and that does reflect a broad tendency in my reading habits. As I may have explained elsewhere, SF is a bipolar genre currently undergoing a depressive phase, filled with cookie-cutter copies of the same impending apocalypse, or the same retro-idealized alternate realities. Unsurprisingly, I’m having a harder time even identifying five good SF novels per year.

Still, I’m always willing to acknowledge that I haven’t read everything, and here Pyr runs to the rescue by reprinting Paul McAuley’s Cowboy Angels, four years after its original British release. Since I hadn’t been able to secure a final copy of the novel in the years since its publication (A trip to the UK netted me an autographed edition I latter discovered to be an Advance Reader’s Copy, and I tend to avoid reading those as a matter of principle), I was really looking forward to this one. McAuley may be an uneven writer, but when he’s good he’s really good. Fortunately, this is one of his good books. From the very first few pages, I was hooked: Writing in a style best described as a muscular revival of cold-war espionage thrillers, McAuley grabs on to a good idea and uses it to explore a fascinating theme.

In the world of Cowboy Angels, a sliver of the multiverse in which Alan Turing moved to the USA has managed to discover the secret of travel between parallel dimensions. Letting no good imperialistic opportunity go to waste, this has led to an aggressive program of American power projection. Bringing democracy, technology and favourable trade deals to other version of itself, the “Real” United States has spent most of its time between 1963 and 1980 using a mixture of special personnel and military forces to impose its idea of freedom over other worlds. As the novel begins, however, the appetite for such adventures has run out: Jimmy Carter has been elected on a platform of gradual retreat, and the veterans of The Company are looking at semi-voluntary retirement.

But not all Company personnel are willing to go gently into the night, and when protagonist Stone is asked to come out of peaceful retirement to apprehend an ex-colleague gone rogue, he eventually learns of an ambitious plot to move the “Real” United States back to empire-building. It gets quite a bit wilder after that, with big ideas thrown around in-between obvious parallels between the Real and the faltering imperial ambitions of modern-day America. No wonder the novel took a while before being published in the US…

If nothing else, Cowboy Angels reached me at the exact right time, as I was thirsting for a novel of that calibre. It’s a well-handled SF thriller, with big ideas, plenty of real-world thematic resonance, tough-guy characters and a few vertiginous twists that put the sense of wonder back in science-fiction. For all of its world-weary tough-guy cynicism adapted from Cold War thrillers, Cowboy Angels is also packed with intriguing riffs on SF concepts, blending them into a series of revelations and ironies fit to activate the cognitive rush characteristic of the best Science Fiction. The ending is a bit too abrupt to deliver full satisfaction to the bruised characters, yet perfectly-timed from a thematic point of view.

The rapid pacing, tough characters and high stakes won’t fail to please readers looking for old-fashioned Science-Fiction adventures. McAuley, whose fiction is usually dour, has a bit of fun in this novel (the version of reality closest to ours is called the “Nixon Sheaf” and it doesn’t look quite as bad as some of the alternatives) and the result is refreshing. While I don’t expect most readers to be as receptive to this novel as I was while reading it, Cowboy Angels now easily finds a place on my list of the top-five SF novels of 2008.

[Coda: I seldom blend creative discussions with my reviews, because my own novels are both unpublished and unpublishable, but I happened, in 2008, to write a novel that tackled many of the issues raised by Cowboy Angels using more or less the same starting premise. As a result, I thought about that parallel universe/imperialism combo a great deal more than the average audience for this novel. Reading Cowboy Angels, I was amused to see that we’d used some of the same devices and rationalizations to limit the scope of our multiverse. I was even more pleased to note that we both went in different directions from the same premise, and that as a result I didn’t spend most of my time thinking “Aaargh, he’s doing it better than I did.” It made the latter-book twists even more fun given that they sprang from more or less the same place. Trust me; there’s no higher praise that praise coming from someone who worked on something similar.]

Tags: Paul McAuley
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It’s the Crude, Dude, Linda McQuaig

Doubleday Canada, 2004, 346 pages, C$35.95 hc, ISBN 0-385-66010-3

As the Bush years recede in the back-mirror like a feverish nightmare, much of the activist non-fiction of the time is starting to date. Or is it? Because the factors that allowed the Bush administration to overreach still exist. Society hasn’t changed all that much; the same people are still active in other roles; and it’s not as if the new US administration has made spectacular changes to correct many systemic excesses. The United States is still an imperial economic power (a soft one, but still…) no matter the party in the White House.

So when Linda McQuaig, from the vantage point of 2004, asks whether oil was the reason the United States invaded Iraq, it’s not a provocative question that somehow stopped being relevant the moment Obama took office; it’s a prism through which we can look at the global oil industry, how it reached its position of political prominence and whether there’s anything to be done before the oil runs out.

(The answer to the original question, to just about any non-Republican, is: Of course it was about the oil. Just as the invasion was about power projection, about shock capitalism, about ideological proof-of-concept, about showing off military capabilities, about daddy issues, about pure domination after the humiliation of 9/11: All of those reasons are true (including “bringing democracy to the Middle-East”)… and there’s no reason that only one of them would be valid.)

The title of the book gives away McQuaig’s answer, and her demonstration runs through the book along three lines of argument. The first and strongest thread details public evidence that oil was very much on the White House’s mind when it planned the invasion of Iraq. A map, showing Iraq’s oil fields in great detail, in unearthed from the documents prepared by the task force on energy formed during the summer of 2001 –a task force headed by none other than Dick Cheney, perhaps pointing the way to a quick and easy way for the US to assert direct control over vast reserves of oil. Few non-Americans ever really believed the official reasons for going to war; McQuaig’s book (published in the US two years after first appearing in Canada) may be preaching to the converted, but it does so with evidence.

The second line of argument demonstrates the western world’s complete reliance on oil. A chapter dedicated to the SUV may seem like an odd digression, but it, too, is a way to study the way North-American political interests have been subservient to the oil lobby. The SUV, born out of a regulatory loophole allowing those vehicles to avoid the energy-efficiency standards set for cars, is a symbol not only of the excesses of its host society, but also the way the oil industry usually gets what it wants in preserving its sources of profit. Nothing new here for those who have paid attention (McQuaig’s mention of Canada having passed the Kyoto accord echoes sourly considering what happened since 2004), but still well-argued.

Finally, the third strand of the book is a historical overview of how oil has been used politically since its rise as an energy source. From the takeover of Middle-Eastern energy reserves by parochial western interests to the rise of OPEC, McQuaig describes in detail the kind of nasty realpolitik that happens once you strip away all pretence at kindness from diplomacy: When oil becomes essential to the survival of a nation, it will do whatever it takes to control it. In this light, the invasion of a country for its oil reserves seems like a continuation of foreign energy policy by other means.

From the viewpoint of 2011, not much has invalidated McQuaig’s conclusions. Numerous oil shocks and a steady rise in the price of gas have shown the western world’s overreliance on the stuff. At long last, however, we’re finally seeing the first glimmers of hope. Kyoto may be dead, but the electric-powered Chevrolet Volt won “Car of the Year” awards. The results of America’s adventure in Iraq may not have been a success for US oil interest after other countries snapped up Iraqi oil contracts in 2009… but this would be the first time US efforts in Iraq didn’t quite turn out like first intended.

If this sounds preachy, well, it is. But you can guess from the irreverent title that It’s the Crude, Dude is not dry nor too pretentious for a book of its kind. Both the first and the last page of the book contain well-chosen profanity, and McQuaig, a journalist/columnist with six previous books to her credit, knows how to write entertainingly. Sure, it’s a book for left-leaning readers… but as such, it does its job.

Tags: Linda McQuaig
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Zoo City, Lauren Beukes

Angry Robot, 2011 reprint of 2010 original, 413 pages, C$8.99 mmpb, ISBN 978-0-85766-055-8

Given the tottering stacks of stuff to read that I’ve got looming over me like so many unfulfilled obligations, it’s not as if I’m actively looking for reading recommendations. I’ve got enough reading fuel in the basement to last me for years; why should I pick up something new?

Because new is cool, that’s why. When the 2011 Arthur C. Clarke shortlist was announced, the only book on the list that intrigued me was Lauren Beukes’ Zoo City, and the drumbeat of a few fervent fans within the SF blogosphere was enough to convince me that I should check it out.

The number one reason given by its fans was that the book was different, and they’re not exaggerating. Set in an alternate world’s Johannesburg, Zoo City is a fresh take on urban fantasy: In a world where serious criminals are made conspicuous thanks to the visible presence of an animal familiar that grants them special powers, our narrator investigates the disappearance of an up-and-coming pop-star. Narrator Zinzi December is neither wealthy nor virtuous: not only is she confined to the titular ghettos where despised “zoos” end up, one of her many sidelines involves writing 419 scams for credulous first-worlders in order to pay her drug dealer.

As far as contemporary fantasy takes on noir plots go, Zoo City is a bit of a gem. Beukes being South African herself, the setting of the novel is vividly rendered, and quickly comes to become one of the novel’s most appealing aspects. Her journalistic training also serves her well in depicting the various overlapping classes that make up Johannesburg, and how they interact. Our heroine Zinzi may not be wholly original in the urban fantasy subgenre, but she comes close: poor black South African women with attitude aren’t exactly familiar protagonists, and her inner monologue is refreshingly different from anything else published lately. Even considered purely on its non-fantastic aspects, Zoo City does very well as a thriller set in an unfamiliar environment.

But the point of the novel is that it’s fantasy, and it’s Beukes’ treatment of her premise that makes Zoo City equally satisfying as a genre novel. Not much of the premise is over-explained, but thanks to hints left in the narration and pieces of world-building scattered in the interstitial pieces between chapters (including one of the most creative use of a fake IMDB listing I’ve seen so far), we gather that something strange happened during the nineties, and that semi-sentient animal companions suddenly started appearing next to criminals. The specifics of the change remain poorly understood (something that may annoy readers unwilling to completely let go of their disbelief), but two things are clear: familiars give their owners special powers, and if the familiar dies… the owner dies as well in a spectacular fashion. For SF&F readers who enjoy playing with an idea in their head, there’s plenty of interesting material here to think about. (Worry not; genre precedents such as Pullman are explicitly name-checked in acknowledgement.)

Fortunately, Zoo City doesn’t make the mistake of letting the concept being the novel’s sole reason for existing. This isn’t one of those pocket-universe SF novels where the plot ends up tied to the fantastic premise and where mysteries about the world are solved at the same time as the protagonist finds the solution to a smaller scale enigma: Zinzi just deals with the world as it affects her, even as her investigation lands her in dangerous situations. She’s got plenty of complicated relationships, and those play out convincingly even in a world where animal familiars are commonplace.

Still, there’s little else to say here but: Good story, well told. Plenty of imaginative elements, slick writing, interesting plotting and a satisfying combination of unusual setting, clean prose and matter-of-fact social relevance. It’s both new (in atmosphere and ideas) and comfortingly familiar (in plotting mechanism and writing style): I had a really good time with this novel (despite a far more conventional ending than I expected) and gladly join the small army of Beukes fans. I’m thinking that Zoo City deserves a few nominations, that Beukes is fast coming up as a writer to watch, and that I ought to read her first novel Moxyland in a hurry. And that, fellow readers, is why we shouldn’t let our stack of things to read dictate what we actually end up reading. There’s a lot of new stuff out there, just waiting to be discovered as soon as we step off the beaten path.

Tags: Lauren Beukes
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The Eyes of the Dragon, Stephen King

Signet, 1995 reprint of 1987 original, 380 pages, C$7.99 mmpb, ISBN 0-451-16658-2

When it was first published in 1987, Stephen King’s The Eyes of the Dragon seemed like a significant departure for the author. Occasional exceptions aside (such as the first novel in the Dark Tower cycle, or The Talisman), audiences had been conditioned, through the first fifteen years of King’s career, to expect adult horror fiction, not a fantasy fairy tale seemingly aimed at younger readers. Now, of course, King’s brand is associated with a variety of dark fantasy subgenres; The Dark Tower did much to expand his perceived repertoire, and it’s no accident if that series is closely related to The Eyes of the Dragon, all the way to a common antagonist.

And yet, nearly 25 years after its first publication, the distinctiveness of The Eyes of the Dragon remains, and so does its interest. From the first sentence (“Once, in a kingdom called Delain, there was a King with two sons”…), we understand that this is going to be a different kind of reading experience: The story is told as a fairy tale, by a narrator whose presence couldn’t be more obviously felt. Taking place a long time ago in a country far away, this is a story of a weak king, an evil magician, and two princes. Tired of waiting for his chance at power, the mage eventually frames the good prince for his father’s death, sets up the weaker prince on the throne and set about to take from the kingdom of everything of value. Fortunately, a cunning plan is in the works…

But plotting isn’t the main feature of this novel, which is best appreciated as a storytelling exercise. Reportedly adapted from stories King told his children, The Eyes of the Dragon sometimes feels like a self-imposed dare: different subject matter, different tone, and different rhythm. The narration becomes its own reason to read the book, as King spends the first half of the book providing us with the backstory, the characters and the motivations. The narrator is omniscient, but only to a point: He frequently addresses the readers to tell them that he has described everything as it happened, but the audience should make its mind as to what it means. Meanwhile, the story is told with its own special charm, and the novel quickly gains the trust of its readers from the start. It is, in other words, a lot of fun to read.

It’s also misleading to keep referring to this as “a fairy-tale for kids”: While the setting, vocabulary and sentence structure may seem destined to a younger audience, King doesn’t limit himself to simple sentiments or emotions in the telling of the story. The words are simple but the thoughts aren’t, and The Eyes of the Dragon may work better as a fable for grown-ups, creating a sentiment of nostalgia for bedside storytelling while managing to address adult concerns. There’s more depth to the book than expected, and a lot of sympathy for the fully-sketched characters.

Where The Eyes of the Dragon doesn’t work so well is in its pacing: Ironically, the novel gets a great deal less absorbing once the plot moves forward. Rather than focus on the protagonists and the palace intrigue, it dissipates by changing focus and following minor characters. Those characters aren’t so minor in that they are reportedly meant to portray King’s children in the story, but they do send the novel in another, less interesting direction just as it should move toward its conclusion.

Still, the overall impact of the book is strong, and it cements the notion that Stephen King is not just a gifted writer, but one who has continued to try new things along the way. King scholars will better understand the relationship between The Eyes of the Dragon and the rest of the King universe (most particularly his fantasy work) but you don’t need to be a King aficionado to appreciate this book and what it attempts to do.

Tags: Stephen King
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The Forever Machine, Mark Clifton & Frank Riley

Carroll & Graf, 1992 reprint of 1954/1981 original, 351 pages, C$5.95 mmpb, ISBN 0-88184-842-5

In a better world, I would be able to discuss The Forever Machine more substantially than simply describing it as “the most forgettable novel to ever win the Hugo Award”. Compared to other great Science Fiction novels honoured by a Hugo, Mark Clifton and Frank Riley’s They’d Rather be Right (which formed the basis for the slightly-reworked Forever Machine) simply doesn’t sustain comparison. Even looking at its 1954 contemporaries, you get classics like Mission of Gravity, The Caves of Steel, Double Star, Childhood’s End, The Space Merchants, Fahrenheit 451… a good chunk of essential reading for the dedicated SF fan.

Meanwhile, The Forever Machine is… a story of its time. It stinks of 1950s attitudes and prejudices, while failing to deliver much in terms of contemporary SF wonders. Explaining why it won the Hugo isn’t difficult for people who voted for it at the time: while Riley never had much of a writing career, Clifton (who recently won the Cordwainer Smith Rediscovery Award, given out annually to unjustly-forgotten writers) was a reasonably prolific writer in the SF magazines at the time: The Internet Science-Fiction Database lists nearly a dozen stories published in a handful of publications during 1952-1953, including two stories set in the world of The Forever Machine. Keeping in mind that the total number of people to attend the Clevention Worldcon in 1955 (when the Hugo was awarded to this novel) was 380: it doesn’t take much to see how a then-hot writer would, thanks to a novel serialized in the top SF magazine of the time would earn enough votes to get the prize. Furthermore, it’s not as if more recent Hugos show a better track records at picking the best-of-the-best either. (Hominids, anyone?)

But let the past remain the past and consider The Forever Machine as a novel sealed in a time capsule and sent in the future by fifties fandom as a novel they thought would be worth a read by their descendants. 56 years later, what do we have? As seen from today’s perspective, the efforts to build a really big computer and then feed it all known facts to create an emergent AI (dubbed “Bossy”) are kind of amusing. (But then again, we did the same, called it “Google” and mostly use it for entertainment.) Where the story gets a little bit crazier is when Bossy figures out how to rejuvenate a test subject. (“My instructions, regarding therapy, were to find all tensions of any nature, and remove them” [P.176] says the computer.) From Artificial Intelligence, the novel turns into a consideration of immortality… but only if you can make it past the unselfconscious sexism that permeates the novel alongside mentions of cable cars, and plastic tape for data storage. The universe of the novel is one where fathers “thrash” their misbehaving kids, women are either housewives or secretaries, and “public opinion” is basically what a mass of white middle-aged male house-owners think. The rejuvenated character of Mabel is treated in a patronizing way that shows the infantilization of women at the time. Against that background, a story of emergent singularity (have a telepath invent an AI, and immortality for all soon follows!) definitely seems strange, maybe sufficiently so to still warrant a trip to Fifties middle-class America.

But I’ll stop short of leveraging this back-handed compliment into a recommendation. While there are interesting little bits here and there in the narrative, the entire novel is almost perfectly forgettable. It dissipates quickly after completion, to the point where you’d be challenged to come up with specifics only days after reading it. This is my second encounter with the novel (which I first read in 1999), and I remembered little of the previous attempt; I don’t expect to remember much of it when/if I read it again, and the lack of substance in this review will, I hope, serve as a warning to my future-self contemplating a re-read.

When I started systematically reading all Hugo-winning novels in the mid-nineties, it took me years to find a copy of They’d Rather be Right, and even then it was loaned to me for a few hours during a science-fiction convention. Now, thanks to the internet, the book isn’t as hard to find as it once was. Furthermore, every few years, a publisher figures out that this is one of the few Hugo-winning novels to be out of print and reprints it. So, even ignoring that illegal copies are available only a Google search away, there isn’t much of an excuse for being unable to find the novel. Whether you’d want to read it as more than an exercise in list-checking is something I will leave to others to decide… despite my hearty endorsement of list-checking.

Tags: Frank Riley, Mark Clifton
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Clubland, Frank Owen

St. Martin’s Press, 2003, 323 pages, C$36.95 hc, ISBN 0-312-28766-6

One of the reasons why I can’t stop reading non-fiction books these days is the renewed realization that the world is vast and contains an infinity of interesting things. No matter how tightly the subject is defined, there are more than enough interesting narratives out there to keep anyone reading forever.

For instance, you wouldn’t necessarily expect the mid-nineties New York club scene to be be interesting enough to sustain a hardcover book… and you’d be tragically wrong.

Frank Owen was there at the time, and Clubland is a fascinating report on what he witnessed. He’s not a big part of the story that plays out, but he’s not entirely detached from it either. It starts as he buys a new popular drug, Special K, from a distinctive dealer. This scene is important, but it takes about a hundred pages to understand why.

For Clubland is, in many ways, structured like a drug trip.

The first third is the high. Here, Owen takes his time to clearly identify his subject. Within mid-nineties New York club culture, he focuses on four different individuals: One-eyed Canadian-born club owner Peter Gatien, imaginative promoter Lord Michael Caruso, unhinged party animal Michael Alig, and shady small-time thug Chris Paciello. All four men intersect in oft-surprising ways during that time. But for the first hundred pages of Clubland, everything feels like a great night out: Gatien’s clubs are the toast of the town, and the rave culture of the mid-nineties seems to herald a happy kind of lifestyle the likes of which hadn’t been seen since Disco’s heyday. Esctasy is the drug of choice, and uninhibited self-expression on the dance floor seems to be without consequences.

Unfortunately, this temporary reprieve soon turns dark. The second third of Clubland is where the high peaks and transforms itself in an acute case of paranoia and madness. Gatien’s successful clubs attract enough drug dealers to interest federal authorities. Caruso helps Alig become his own exuberant self after a repressed childhood, but Alig ends up accidentally killing the very same dealer who sold Special K to Owen during the prologue. For a chapter or two, Clubland changes gears: After a lengthy stretch of objective reporting, Owen comes back to the forefront as he describes his own efforts as a journalist for the Village Voice to find and expose a murderer. Nightmares abound as the club culture turns sour, sometimes with hilariously awful results:

…the most notorious of Alig’s outlaw events took place in the back of a moving eighteen-wheel big rig outfitted with a sound system, a bar, and a disco ball. “Rudolph and Michael Alig dare you to ride the Disco Truck,” read the invitation for what would become a nightmarish journey around lower Manhattan. Two hundred partygoers climbed into the back, and, as they soon discovered, the truck had little in the way of suspension. As a consequence, the disco ball fell and smashed. Then the sound system toppled over. There was precious little air, so people started to faint, while others began to cry. Partygoers pounded on the wall of the truck, begging to be let out, but the coked-up driver in the front failed to hear their cries for help.” [P.132-133]

As horrible as this excerpt sounds, I can’t help but giggle uncontrollably at the idea of an out-of-control Disco Truck.

While this is going on, Chris Paciello begins his unlikely rise from New York mob relations to the top of the Miami club scene, befriending a number of celebrities (including seemingly-wholesome Sofia Vergara, who even tried to help him pay bail when he was arrested) and changing the nature of East Coast music along the way. The last third of Clubland feels like the letdown phase of a drug trip as the crazy stories and violent excesses all turn to numbing series of accounts and consequences: Gatien, Alig and Paciello all do time in the courts, some of them landing in jail for what they have done. Meanwhile, the New York club scene dissolves and the temporary scene that Owen chronicles in his book seems to disperse. (Whether this is truly the case I’ll leave to the partygoers who were there, and are better able to talk about what else was going on at the time.)

Clubland may not be a deep and meaningful examination of world-changing events, but it’s certainly an entertaining look at a unique culture that briefly blossomed and fell apart. It’s a terrific read, and a powerful reminder that all sorts of horrible and beautiful events are taking place around us, even when they escape our notice at the time

Tags: Frank Owen
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The Five Greatest Warriors, Matthew Reilly

Pocket Books, 2011 reprint of 2010 original, 574 pages, C$9.99 pb, ISBN 978-1-4165-7758-4

Consistency is usually a good thing for authors and their readers. Writers accumulate fans thanks to their particular set of strengths, after all, and the path to popular success is capitalizing on the reason why buyers will pick up books by authors they like. Matthew Reilly has developed a reputation as the novelistic equivalent to a big-budget action-adventure movie director: He writes novels as if they were action movies with an unlimited budget, and dangerous spectacle is his stock in trade.

Still, there’s something to be said against too much consistency. The Five Greatest Warriors is the third novel in the “Jack West Jr.” series, but while I reviewed first volume Seven Ancient Wonders a few months ago, I found nothing interesting to say about sequel The Six Sacred Stones given how similar it was to its predecessor. This third entry isn’t all that different from the second one and what had been a lack of variety now becomes a bit of a problem.

Tough audiences that readers are, there’s a fine line between consistency and self-repetition, and The Five Greatest Warrior tiptoes a bit too close to the edge. The blend of high-tech action theatrics with mysterious ancient fantastic settings and low-grade mysticism that seemed so interesting in The Seven Deadly Wonders now seems like more of the same, repeated again.

The biggest problem of the Jack West Jr. series so far is the inherent problems in having a sequel to world-saving heroics. Once characters have saved the world once, what’s to do for an encore? Save it again? Reilly’s oft-stated wish to go faster and bigger with each successive novel runs into self-defeating diminishing returns. Little can surprise these characters now, and rehashing yet another set of ancient mysteries coupled with mystical cosmic alignments can get less and less forgivable.

The formula that seemed so crazy (in a good way) at first glance can now seem crazy (in a bad way) when it’s repeated again with minor variations. Lessening the blow somewhat is that The Five Freatest Warriors is a wrap-up of the plotline introduced in The Six Sacred Stones: Nobody really relieved that Jack West Jr. was dead when, at the end of the previous volume, he leaped into a pit. Not only is he alive and healthy in this sequel, but he wraps up the adventure even though, at nearly 1200 combined pages, it feels far too long for its own good.

At least the action set-pieces are, as usual, ingeniously constructed. As West and his group keeps unearthing fantastic ancient sites, we get to go inside a tower set in a Mongolian crater, run around a massive Japanese complex, and give a spectacular send-off to the 747 that starred in the series so far. Massive inverted pyramids are found everywhere, and helpful diagrams will make it easier for readers to keep up with Reilly’s videogame-influenced imagination.

Sceptics should be warned that The Five Greatest Warriors is definitely not the book that will change their minds about Reilly’s work: His narration is still just as full of exclamation points, one-word paragraphs and cliffhanger chapter endings (If you want to speed-read Reilly’s work, simply glance at the last sentence of each chapter. All action, no filler.) Maybe there’s an argument to be made for readers to let a generous amount of time elapse between every book of the Jack West Jr. series: Its thrills operate on a too-similar level to sustain close comparison, so a bit of distraction can work wonders for those coming back to Reilly’s universe.

Still, it works. Reilly can stuff more imaginative concepts in a disappointing novel than most other reality-bound writers can manage in a handful of theirs. (In this volume, his idea for “living human tombs” manages to strike a nerve.) The series may look like a bunch of dumb action thrillers, but Reilly repurposes a lot of historical research, trivia and coincidences for his own purposes. For all his faults, he knows what he’s trying to do and reading his self-interviews at the end of each book is worth the trouble if only because he manages to pre-empt most of the basic criticism about his own novels. Referring to the Jack West Jr. as contemporary epic fantasy pretty much says it all, really.

The interview also outlines the rest of the series, down to “The One Something Something”. I’m not in any hurry to see the rest of the sequence, but keep in mind that this may be about satiation more than disappointment. Let Reilly write something else for a moment, and in a few years, who knows, I may be in the mood again for that kind of spectacular blow-em up action thriller.

Tags: Matthew Reilly
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