BOOK REVIEWS

2001, Part G: July 2001

2001, Christian Sauvé

Featured this month:

 

 

The Night's Dawn Trilogy
Peter F. Hamilton

A Second Chance at Eden, 1997, 420 pages
The Reality Dysfunction, Part 1: Emergence, 1996, 586 pages
The Reality Dysfunction, Part 2: Expansion, 1996, 572 pages
The Neutronium Alchemist, Part 1: Conflict, 580 pages
The Neutronium Alchemist, Part 2: Consolidation, 596 pages
The Naked God, Part 1: Flight, 2000, 778 pages
The Naked God, Part 2: Faith, 2000, 778 pages

(All of the above are the American editions published by Warner Books)

 

Six books. 4000+ pages. A cast of hundreds. Techno-jargon. The Dead coming back to life. Oh no, the Night's Dawn trilogy isn't for sissies. Even reasonably fast readers such as myself basically have to plan ahead for a month's worth of reading time in order to get through it all. Is it all worth it? Absolutely.

I mean, let's face it: In its quest for literary legitimacy and critical consideration, Science-Fiction has indeed become a more respectable literature with poignant characters, enjoyable prose and complex plotting. Unfortunately, along the way we seemed to lose the very thing that had initially attracted us to the genre: Big ideas, high adventure and stakes that made the galaxy look small. Sure, pulp SF space opera was fast, cheap and out of literary control, but at least it was a blast. Why wouldn't it be possible to use the new facets of SF and stuff them with some of that old space-opera fun?

I'm not sure if that's what Peter F. Hamilton intended when he sat down to write the Night's Dawn trilogy, but the woozy cozy feeling of grandiose fun is what I'm keeping in mind after completing the trilogy. The sheer bulk of the work makes it a reading experience unlike any other.

It begins laboriously, of course. You can't just rush into a brand-new interstellar universe in a hapzard fashion, and Hamilton is careful in establishing the various threads of the story. Be careful, however, in assuming that initially important characters will remain so. Indeed, one of the most enjoyable scenes in the whole trilogy is seeing one sympathetic but over-abused character simply say "That's it! I did my job and now I quit!" then disappear from the rest of the story.

In a relatively short time (that would only be 600 pages, mind you), the fascinating framework of Hamilton's universe and the most important characters are established. That's crucial, given that these very same characters form the bulk of the Night Dawn trilogy's continued appeal. Whether we're with our stalwart hero Joshua Calvert, our innocent rich girl Louise Kavanagh, our delightful Lord of Ruin, our detestable antagonist Quinn Dexter or most of the rest of the hundred-plus dramatis personae, Hamilton makes us care for most of them. (With exceptions; however hard I tried, I couldn't get interested in any of the Hippie-Possessed characters or the Valisk habitat.) In any case, don't be worried about the size of the cast; they're introduced in a very organic fashion, sometime so smoothly that you only later realize how important some bit-players eventually become.

Indeed, it's hard not to be impressed by how smoothly Hamilton sets up his various players, whether he's introducing characters or explaining the political complexities between the various empires that interact in his universe. Some of the best moments in the trilogy are in fact alliances shifts and other spectaculars that depend almost exclusively on the various forces that Hamilton himself sets up. We're not talking chamber drama; we're talking massive space battles, planets disappearing, the dead returning to life and stars exploding.

Sounds juvenile? Don't be so sure. While pulp space-opera often read like the scribblings of a bright overenthusiastic teenager, Hamilton comes to the genre with an approach that benefits from decades of increasing genre maturity. He brings to the story a sheen of complexity and sophistication, both technical and emotional: The systems he describes are all-too fallible and interdependent, the psychology of the characters is multi-layered and never quite predictable. (Though the caricatural pure evil of Quinn Dexter does get tiresome after a while) This is a space-opera from the nineties, and the easy simplistic solutions of earlier decades don't work. (Well, shouldn't work: The conclusion of the trilogy is deus ex machina, but not unsatisfying so. There is considerable progress made on all fronts by this point in the story, and the characters are allowed to resolve their conflicts by themselves.)

You can't expect a 4000+ pages story to be simple, and indeed the plotting can get hilariously convoluted at times, though never quite unbelievable. Such a large story-space allows Hamilton to cover a lot of thematic ground, so don't be surprised to go from horror to romance to action to contemplation in a short time. Surprisingly enough, Hamilton is able to juggle all the balls at once and seldom strikes a false note.

Best of all for a series of this size is the impression that it's compulsively readable. Not only are characters compelling in themselves, but Hamilton has polished his prose until it can be read seamlessly, and with enough repeating information to keep everyone up-to-date even though they're not paying enough attention. It's bad enough to split a series in six thick books; it would be unbearable to make the reader fight his way through it.

But no fighting here; once the initial volume is read, the rest is smooth sailing, with occasional pauses for whooping when the heroes make another nick-of-time escape. Indeed, Hamilton's Confederation is like an onion whose layers a peeled away as we progress in the story. Human and alien historical conspiracies are revealed even as a full intergalactic war is in full progress and the very metaphysical nature of the universe is explained. It's a heady trip, well worth the investment. (Though I'm still not sure that all the pieces -with a particular emphasis on the "ghosts"- fit together.)

Two other books form a loose addition to the Night's Dawn Trilogy. While I haven't yet bought The Confederation Handbook, a "non-fiction" look at the universe created by Hamilton for the series (too expensive in British import), I can give a marginal recommendation to his related short story collection A Second Chance at Eden. Bringing together seven stories set before the start of the trilogy, A Second Chance at Eden helps to flesh out some events mentioned as background in the other six books. Most notable are the title novella, a murder mystery incidentally describing the events leading up to the foundation of Edenism, and "Escape Route", which features Joshua Calvert's father in an unrelated but enjoyable "empty alien ship" adventure. (That last novella is hilariously spoiled in The Naked God). I also liked "Sonnie's Edge" and "The Lives and Loves of Tiarella Rosa", but couldn't muster any interest for the other three stories. Your mileage may vary. You may read the collection before starting the trilogy, though be warned that the trilogy is generally easier to read.

Being someone who naturally avoids long series, I was unaware of how deeply you could invest yourself in a multi-volume story. How the various character threads cross each other in delightful coincidences. How you could really get to care about them through countless adventures. How deeply you could establish a universe. How just darn good it is to lose myself in a story for weeks at a time, rather than read in a day or two and throw back the book on my shelves. A great feeling, and I didn't even have to pick up a fat fantasy trilogy.

In short, the Night's Dawn trilogy gets a strong seal of approval from the offices of this reviewer, through an unbeatable combination of readability, imagination, complexity, respect for the audience and some wonderful characters. Sure, it'll take a while before you're done reading, but trust me. It's all worth it.

 

 

The Tetherballs of Bougainville
Mark Leyner

Vintage, 1997, 240 pages, $16.95 Can. tp, ISBN 0-679-76349-X

I initially thought about writing this review Mark Leyner-style, filled with madcap concepts, sophisticated language, memorable epigrams and a variety of formats. But, hey, I'm no Mark Leyner and that's why he's the one selling books by the thousands and I'm the one writing these review for an obscure web site that no one reads.

I'm not saying that his style is inimitable; I'm just saying that you'll end up crazy trying to do so. I'm trying to say that my brain will melt down before producing something every as remotely amusing as his stuff. Heck, I'm saying that if ever Leyner tracked me down as a pathetic imitator, he'd be quite capable of booting my pathetic butt single-footedly. And that would be humiliating.

So allow me to be blandly conventional and try a traditional review. But not too much of a traditional review, otherwise it still won't make sense and I'll have wasted thirty minutes of my time.

Look, even a plot resume won't make sense: Our thirteen-year-old protagonist (Mark Leyner, in what's presumably a non-autobiographical role but we can't be sure) is bothered by the fact that he's got to miss school in order to attend his father's execution. He tries to pass time by writing a screenplay (which must be delivered the next day, given that it's already won a prize) and hitting on the prison warden. Alas, the execution goes wrong, his father is put on New Jersey State Discretionary Execution (NJSDE) protocol, the warden responds to his advances and he still hasn't come up with a title for his screenplay. I mean, who'd consider this an actual plot?

Plus, what about the form? The Tetherballs of Bougainville is made up of narration, a brochure, newspaper articles, biographical sketches, a complete screenplay and a really long movie review. This scattershot approach to writing shouldn't come as a surprise for anyone who's read other material by Leyner, from the gloriously fluid form of Et Tu, Babe? to the loggorheatic wordblender of I Smell Esther Williams. But Leyner has learned a lot since his early days, and one of the most surprising things about The Tetherballs of Bougainville is how well it flows.

Indeed, it flows at such a compelling pace that you shouldn't be surprised to find yourself whooping and barking through the whole book in a single sitting. It's not a recommended way to read the book (you may find your landing back in the real world to be jarring), but it can be done with a disconcerting ease.

Reviewers beware; it's nearly impossible to review the book without re-reading lengthy portions of it when looking for specific details. It's inevitable, so just accept it.

And it's a book worth re-reading; the weirdness and density of the humor is such that you're bound to miss some on the first pass (or blow a mental fuse and have to stop). Highlights include a droll NJSDE brochure, the origin of most modern literature, the description of a three-hour oral sex scene, the artwork used by the young Leyner for auto-gratification and a small SkriptMentor software review. I'm not making any of those up; Leyner is.

The result, as you may guess, is not only a memorably weird book, but also Leyner's second-best book. (Hey, I loved Et tu, Babe?) Approachable but uncompromisingly weird, The Tetherballs of Bougainville is exactly the type of book you want to share with everyone around, not only to make them read something great, but most amusingly to see the reactions of those who just won't get it.

 

 

The Shift
George Foy

Bantam Spectra, 1996, 515 pages, $17.95 Can. tp, ISBN 0-553-37544-X

The reviewer wakes up. For a single moment, his life is bliss, mostly because he doesn't realize what a pathetic life he leads. Still smiling from his oniric tryst with Sarah Michelle Gellar, the reviewer managers to slide out of bed before waking up.

Looking outside the grimy windows of his apartment, he sees that things are worse than ever. Microsoft has plastered another hideous billboard on the building across the street, extolling the new consumer-protection features of Windows TJ designed to disallow any potential illegal activity. The reviewer knows that will transform the computer in little more than a Microsoft-approved silicon brick; he's spent the last week re-installing his own machine.

He looks at the book on his reviewing slate and groans. George Foy's The Shift, as undistinguished a piece of cyberpunk SF it's possible to publish. The reviewer doesn't have a clue what to say about the book that will sustain a full-length review. He decides to sidestep the issue and go take a shower.

Things haven't improved after the shower, nor the breakfast. On the streets outside, wild bands of illiterate barbarians are fighting pretentious pseudo-intellectuals. It's a battle the reviewer wants everyone to lose. As the spicy smell of tear gas wafts through the broken air-conditioning unit, the reviewer sits down at the computer to make another stab at writing the review.

His first approach is pure grade-school classic: Reword the back cover blurb, adding a few meaningless details that show he's read the book. It's not a satisfying experience: Not only does it offend his sense of creativity, but The Shift doesn't offer anything compelling to write about. By this time, everyone has read a few dozen books in which a well-off character is brought down in the "real" world. Everyone's had their fill of obsessive virtual reality creators who come to like their creation more than the real world. Everyone's sickened of those oh-so-clever "virtual monster crossing in the real world" plots. Oh, and evil corporations aren't anything new.

He deletes most of the plot résumé and graduates to a higher level of hack work; maybe it's possible to waste a few words on the place of The Shift is the overall literary pattern of the SF genre? As quickly as he seizes upon this notion like a drowning man, he realizes it's not going to work. The Shift's historical legacy and significance is null and void. It simply regurgitates the clichés of the cyberpunk genre in a nearer future. It does attempts to do something more realistic and closer to mainstream fiction, but the net effect is soporific for any genre reader. Maybe someone coming in fresh from outside Science-fiction will like it. But that's not the reviewer's audience.

The reviewer remembers his mother's advice to find at least something nice to say about the book. But he can't just write that the prison segment is quite good. Or that the conclusion ties up everything nicely. A good conclusion doesn't expiate the busload of clichés that preceded it. Nor does a rather good prison novella redeems a 500+ page borefest.

The reviewer knows he's screwed up. By spending most of the month reading the massively enjoyable Night's Dawn trilogy, he's run out of time to fill up the usual wordage. So now he's stuck dredging up what he would normally read and forget away. There is no way out.

So he puts his fingers on the keyboard.

But then, a team of corporate anti-terrorists operatives bursts in his room and kills him in a hailstorm of gunfire.

It is, ironically, a happy ending.

 

 

Quicksilver
Judith and Garfield Reeves-Stephen

Pocket Books, 1999, 728 pages, $9.99 Can. pb, ISBN 0-671-02854-5

Location, location, location. It's not just a good idea for real-estate investment or the localization of a new business; it's almost a prerequisite for a really good thriller. Look at that most meanly efficient thriller machine, the action film: DIE HARD wouldn't be so great if it wasn't for being set strictly in an office tower. EXECUTIVE DECISION did wonders inside an airliner. And what would SPEED be without a bus?

The list of interesting locations in which to set a thriller has to include the Pentagon, the iconic and practical location of American military power. One of the biggest buildings in the world, the Pentagon's myth invokes endless military secrets, fantastic security, international relevance and a primo terrorist target.

This is where Quicksilver comes in. Ignore the great teaser about a novel super-weapon having far more destructive effects than predicted: it is, as you may expect, merely a pretext to the real meat of the book, which is a terrorist takeover of the Pentagon.

As you may also expect, the solution to this problem will rest squarely on the shoulders of plucky underdogs; a marine-in-training, an electronic nerd and his aggressive ex-wife. Together they'll... well, they'll obviously triumph, but the fun is all in the pudding.

The Reeves-Stevens husband-and-wife writing duo had, after years of undistinguished Star Trek novels, knocked out one solid book with Icefire, one of the best technothrillers of the late nineties. They're back with Quicksilver, bringing the same creative imagination, limpid narration and uncomplicated characterization to their second technothriller. The result, as you may expect, is another steady fun read in the Clancy genre, with more invention and less useless fat than Clancy's current work.

The Pentagon is a fantastic setting for a thriller, if only through the discovery of the building. Relatively old (built in the 1950s) by office building standards, the Pentagon is currently being completely renovated (a "Slab-to-Ceiling" work) and the Reeve-Stevens have a lot of fun throwing random construction obstacles in the way of their protagonists. But more than that, it's the labyrinthine layout, the security measures, the forgotten basement areas, the arcana of the building that engrosses the reader as much as the overall plot of the book. The authors make full use of their setting, as competent thriller writers very well should.

Naturally, the various gadgets used by protagonists and antagonists alike are fun and interesting. The "Looking Glass" gadget in particular promised much, even though it's taken out of action early on. The central MacGuffin of the book is credible, original and suitably powerful. And as for the identity of the terrorists... well, I haven't seen anything like it in a long while. Good stuff, supported by plausible research. Hey, shouldn't the opening diagrams be classified Top-Secret?

Going beyond location and gadgets to the actual plot of the book, well, we can't ask for much more, from a presidential escape to an impressive apocalyptic finale. Tension is gradually increased, and if you're not careful you'll end up reading much more of the book in a single sitting than you'd want to.

In short, technothrillers fans have a lot to look forward to with Quicksilver. While a bit less original than Icefire with the standard building-taken-over-by-terrorist template, it's a bit more mature (viz the dismissal of the UFO-nut character in Quicksilver versus the jarring references in Icefire) and focused. The edges are polished and the result is a solid, thick read that will amply satisfy countless beach readers.

[September 2001: As with so many other novels, the September 11 terrorist attack on the Pentagon suddenly takes out a lot of fun out of this thriller. "Well", I blackly reflected in the heat of the events, "there goes the schedule for the slab-to-ceiling renovations."]