Reviews

February 2006

2006, Christian Sauvé

Reviewed this month:

 

Warrior Class, Dale Brown

Berkley, 2001, 473 pages, C$10.99 pb, ISBN 0-425-18446-3

As long as Dale Brown will continue to write more novels in his increasingly unworkable series, his fiction will continue to suffer. Warrior Class, like Brown's last few books, is no exception to this trend: at best, it's a grab-bag of ideas made weaker by the necessities of serial fiction. At worst, it showcases why Brown has lost the place he enjoyed at the top of the techno-thriller writers' pantheon.

Plot-wise, it's another re-thread of the usual: Once more in this comfortably post-Cold War Browniverse, US interests and world peace are indissociably threatened when a Russian gangster seizes an advanced warplane to ensure his own plans for private economic supremacy. It's up to Patrick McLanahan, again, to fight the good fight using his high-tech toys and a complete disregard for the protocols of military engagement.

But in what feels like a breath of fresh air, there are consequences to this type of cow-boy mentality. As the novel slowly opens, we're introduced to a new US President: Thomas Nathaniel Thorn is Kevin Martindale's successor and as befits his name, he proves to be quite a thorn in the heel of the US military. A third-party governor from eeevil liberal Vermont, Thorn is not much for official ceremonies but truly enjoys Transcendental Meditation. What more, he's ready to sharply reduce the size of the armed forces and reveal confidential information to the public. Surprisingly enough, Brown resist the temptation to paint him as a foolish villain (though this may come later in the series).

Meanwhile, Patrick McLanahan is sitting pretty in Nevada as the operational chief of the top-secret high-tech "Dreamland" facility. When tensions erupt in Eastern Europe, he's fast up on a plane trying to do what he does best: breaking direct orders. When things turn sour, only a presidential gambit saves him from certain death. Unsurprisingly, he finds himself nudged toward the civilian life as soon as he lands. This, of course, just won't do...

From the above, you may suppose that this is a significant entry in the McLanahan saga, and you would be half-right: On some aspects, Warrior Class shows some promise and excitement. McLanahan has often defied orders without consequences, so it's only too fitting to see him suffer from the fallout once in a while. His trajectory out of active service surely won't be allowed to stand for more than a volume or two , but it's a development that could be interesting. (Indeed, by the end of the novel it's only too obvious that Brown is indulging into one of the favorite fantasies of many right-wing writers: A private armed force that can pretty much kill whoever it wants without any kind of paperwork.)

But there are problems, and many of these spring from the uneasy interaction between reality and Brown's universe. It's bad enough that an author's note at the beginning of the book has to explain what fictional constraints were introduced in previous books, only to be followed with three pages of "real-world news excerpts". A significant problem is, of course, that Brown gets to keep what he likes and ditch what's inconvenient; there's a mention of what happened in Day of the Cheetah even despite the fact that Brown's 1988 novel was clearly a story that took place in a world where the USSR made it intact to 1997!

But even overlooking the problems in trying to stick to a series well beyond its best-by date, Warrior Class has problems of its own. As with most of the latest Brown novels, it spends too much time with "the enemy" even as the emotional strength of the novel is with the American characters: Little of what's discussed by the antagonist is relevant to the rest of the novel. McLanahan himself doesn't make an appearance in the first fifth of the novel, a delay that highlights the narrative's padded nature more than anything else. A number of subplots go nowhere and do nothing, bringing along a few supporting characters: You really have to work hard at extracting the good from the bad in this bloated excuse for a military novel.

It doesn't get any better later on, as fancy gadgets work alongside realistic military hardware. Brown has never been at his best portraying realism: Chains of Command tried to stick as closely as possible to reality, and it was a singularly dull novel. On the other hand, Brown's earlier deftness with fancy hardware has lately metastasized into an unwieldy habit of reusing the same gadgets over and over again. Here, the silly "Tin Man" suits make a return appearance and the result is more ridiculous than exciting.

As callous at it may sound, Brown's next, Wings of Fire, should be worth a read if only to find out how he'll handle 9/11's major reality reset. How will he square Bush, al Quaeda and the rest with increasingly fanciful tales of big bombers and super-powered suits? Of course, he could choose to ignore it completely and go even deeper in his dead-end universe... which wouldn't be surprising.

 

The Charm School, Nelson DeMille

Warner, 1988, 630 pages, C$10.99 pb, ISBN 0-446-35320-5

As we uncertainly make our way through this fifth year of the current self-proclaimed "war on terrorism", it's good to remember that it wasn't always so. That barely twenty years ago, everyone was looking anxiously at the Soviet Union as the potential source of nuclear Armageddon. Now, of course, we know better: The Soviet bear turned out to be a paper tiger, a third-world country with a nuclear arsenal and not much else.

But as of 1988, paranoia and cold war thrillers were still hot viable commodities. The Charm School, an espionage thriller set deep behind Russian borders, may seem a charming antiquity today --but it must first be viewed through its historical context before being criticized as a relic of another era.

It begins with an American student, as he makes his way through Russia on his own set of wheels. A chance encounter allows him to see something he shouldn't know about, rolling the plot into motion. Before long, intelligence officers inside the American embassy are alerted to the horrible secret, and plunge neck-deep in a vast conspiracy. DeMille being DeMille (see Up Country), he can't resist the temptation of using his novel as an excuse to travel and probe the depths of late-Cold War Russia.

The Charm School has both its good and less-good aspects, but one of the highlights of the book -indeed, one that has survived intact through what we now know of the defunct Soviet Union- is to be found in its depiction of the USSR as a joyless place barely subsisting above poverty levels. Through its investigating protagonists, DeMille takes us deep in Russia, from the tourist spots of Moscow (which, I gather, DeMille visited) to the rural countryside. DeMille nails down two important aspects of the experience; first, the sheer backward nature of a place where electricity is still a tenuous privilege; second, the domination of a totalitarian regime where anything can happen to anyone on a whim from the upper hierarchy. Nearly twenty years later, The Charm School is a time capsule dedicated to a defeated enemy: Let's just hope that things are better over there today.

The not-so-good parts of the novel come when the Vast Conspiracy is exposed, the one that directly threatens America's very own social fabric. Knowing what we know about the relative strengths of both societies, especially given the problems described by DeMille elsewhere in the novel, it seems unlikely that the Charm School could have had even a minimal impact on America. (Heck, some will say that home-grown Americans are far more likely to behave stupidly on their own than due to a Vast Conspiracy. Indeed, it remains to be seen if a Soviet-penetrated US would end up more like Canada than Russia.)

But it's a constant strength of DeMille's writing skill that we're more than able to overlook this dated piece of hysteria. (If there's something to overlook, naturally; readers with a good knowledge of Cold War clichés and rumors will just read the back cover blurb, guess the conspiracy, raise their shoulders and read on anyway.) The first half of the book is a quick and impeccable espionage thriller full of trade-craft details and slices of life in an embassy. Protagonist Sam Hollis is a tough-guy that clearly represents the early prototype for such latter-day DeMille heroes as Plum Island's John Corey or The General's Daughter Paul Brenner, minus the polished sarcasm. The relationship he has with Lisa Rhodes is also emblematic of DeMille's male/female character dynamics, though Up Country keeps coming back to mind thanks to the "travelogue in a totalitarian regime" aspect. (This being said, I keep going back up DeMille's early bibliography and finding those elements over and over again. Don't be surprised if an upcoming review ends up saying something about earlier characters being early drafts for Sam Hollis.)

If the novel suffers from a third-quarter slowdown (in which description takes the place of action), DeMille's terrific prose is delicious enough to keep us reading without pause. Fans of the author already know all about the addictive nature of his plotting: The Charm School is no exception to the rule. It helps that the ending is both suspenseful and mournful, allowing both personal triumph and political hard edges. As a novel, The Charm School has aged relatively well, especially when compared to other similar novels of the era: It counterbalances its wilder moments with enough careful accuracy to make the final result seem worthwhile. Even today, it remains an essential piece of DeMille's work.

 

The Singularity is Near. Ray Kurzweil

Viking, 2005, 652 pages, C$42.00, ISBN 0-0-670-03384-7

Let's get something out of the way: I'm a singularitarian. I believe in technological acceleration and its effect on society. The historical evidence seems clear enough: I hop in anticipation of the upcoming impact of what Joel Garreau calls the GRIN technologies (Genetics, Robotics, Informatics and Nanotechnology) I may not believe in the strong version of the Singularity (the so-called "Rapture of the Nerds" after which everything is supposed to be sweet and perfect), but I've read too much SF not to anticipate fundamental changes in my forecast lifetime. Even before cracking page one, I approached Ray Kurzweil's The Singularity is Near as confirmation, not persuasion.

But that book is not written for me. It's written for well-educated people who may understand how technological progress is accelerating, but don't read Science Fiction and aren't familiar with Vernor Vinge's concept of the ever-accelerating technological singularity. It's written to convince politicians, entrepreneurs and other decision-makers that there's a new future knocking at our doors, a new future that has nothing to do with the weak beer of STAR TREK or, for that matter, most of the conventional visions of things to come.

It's no accident if almost half of The Singularity is Near is spent looking at the historical evidence of technological acceleration. Kurzweil's background is in computer science, and arguments derived from progress in transistor size, density and cost make up a backbone of his thesis. See Moore's Law, for instance, which lives on despite ever-dire predictions of its obsolescence. See the rapid adoption of cell phones, the Internet, DVD and MP3 players in far less than a decade, compared to dozens of years for television and automobiles. Everyone knows that technological progress is increasing. The only question is; what's the destination?

Kurzweil then continues his exploration of What We Know in biological science, establishing to his satisfaction that there is nothing special about consciousness, hence the inevitability of its recreation in an artificial medium. My lack of familiarity with neurobiology made this chapter significantly less accessible than the others, but its intent remains crystal-clear: it clearly establishes the background for Kurzweil's vision of the Humans 2.0: Re-written DNA, redesigned bodies, enhanced intelligence, transferable consciousness, artificial intelligence and so on. Whew.

This is old stuff for SF fans, but what's important about Kurzweil's book is how it's developed from the ground up, from real-world headlines onward. The Singularity is Near bridges the gap between SF fantasies and real trends, grounding speculations in palpable trends. (iPods as drivers for the Singularity. Discuss.) This is a book that can dropped in boardrooms, one that plants stakes in the consensus vision of the world.

And an optimistic vision it is. At a time when the space age is historical, when the coming energy crunch is so worrisome, when ecological collapse seems all too likely, the idea of ever-increasing progress seems quaintly anachronistic. It won't be an easy road, warns Kurzweil (amongst many other chills, The Singularity is Near posits a positively alarming solution to the gray goo problem), but it's an inspiring one.

Richly argued and accessibly written, The Singularity is Near takes its place alongside (and building upon) previous futurology books such as Future Shock, and The Engines of Creation --along with a dash of The Physics of Immortality. It has already sold widely and created its own talkstorm of argument for or against the Singularity, recoming a standard reference text on the subject.

As previously stated, I'm already convinced. Belief in the Singularity often boils down to, well, faith: Do you believe in progress, or not? There are certainly enough hints and trends pointing away from the Singularity, not the least of them being the Fermi Paradox: If intelligence is so common, if the Singulariy is so inevitable, why haven't we seen any evidence of alien Singularities? Kurzweil's pat answer ("We're obviously the first! Ta-da!") is one of the most unsatisfying aspects of the book.

But the Singularity can also be a self-fulfilling prophecy. Books like this one, by suggesting what can happen, are an important part of how we collectively define where to go next. Have a look.

 

The Shark Mutiny, Patrick Robinson

Harper Torch, 2001, 493 pages, C$10.99 pb, ISBN 0-06-103066-X

Faithful readers of these reviews already know how little I think of Patrick Robinson's so-called military thrillers. Bad plotting, lousy characters, awful prose: Frankly, I just keep reading them because they make me laugh and point. And so it struck me, a third into The Shark Mutiny, how much better the whole series would be as a sitcom. One thing led to another, and pretty soon I was writing an episode for...

CRAZY NAVY!

Episode 4: The Guppy Mutiny

We open on ADMIRAL MORGAN, the lovable old coot who's the hero of this series. MORGAN is snappily dressed in a red, white and blue suit made out of American Flag fabric, an outfit that blends seamlessly with the decoration of his office. His white beard is cut in a fashion halfway between Uncle Sam's and Colonel Sanders. Reading the newspaper, he sees something that makes him look up abruptly.

Morgan: Kaaathy!

From the cheers and clapping from the audience, we know it's already a series catchphrase.

Kathy enters the office. She is a "spectacular redhead who, for three years, have refused to marry him." [P.58]

Kathy: Oh Admiral! Have you called me to ask me in marriage?

Morgan: Yes, damnit!

Kathy: I told you before, darling; not before you're retired!

Morgan: Grrr! This flirting is making me want to nuke someone!

Kathy: And how is that different from your usual sunny disposition, darling?

Morgan: Good point, but I still want to nuke someone. Who's our enemy today?

Jimmy Ramshawe enters the room. He is a young earnest intelligence Lieutenant with a slight Australian accent.

Jimmy: Sir! I have uncovered evidence that the Iranians and Chinese are planning to mine the strait of Hormuz and block the worldwide transport of oil!

Morgan: Hot diggity dawg! What's your evidence, lieutenant?

Jimmy shows a stack of invoices.

Jimmy: Receipts for Russian underwater mines, sir! It stands to reason that if they bought it, they'll use 'em!

Morgan: What an enlightening insight in contemporary tactics! But wait- you speak like a foreigner!

Jimmy: I'm from Australia, sir! But I'm good enough to be privy to American secrets! My father is a kick-ass Admiral! I'm dating the ambassador's daughter!

Morgan: Do you want to nuke someone too?

Jimmy: Er... what normal boy wouldn't, sir?

Morgan: Good stuff! You're all right! Kaaathy! Get me a secret camera in the Chinese navy briefing room!

Behind him, the wall reveals a video screen. It lights up to a meeting of Iranian and Chinese officials.

Chine Official: Death to America! Bwa-hah-ha!

Iranian Official: Whee! Death to America!

The screen is replaced by a view of the globe between China and Iran.

Morgan: Damn! I'm "always completely mistrustful of the men from the Orient!" [P.138] What fiendish plot are they planning? Where will they strike next?

A courier brings a message to Jimmy, who reads it before shouting out.

Jimmy: Sir! A tanker just exploded in the strait of Hormuz!

Morgan: (shrugging) Eh, that happens.

Another courier.

Jimmy: Sir! Another tanker just exploded in the strait of Hormuz!

Morgan: (shrugging) Well, what can you do?

A third courier.

Jimmy: Sir! Another tanker blew up!

Morgan: It's war! Yay! Send the entire American fleet to the Persian Gulf! We'll teach them to mess with our imperialistic stranglehold on the world supply of oil! Kaaathy!

Kathy: All done, darling. Anyone can now walk from the UAE to Iran on top of our carriers!

Morgan: But I still haven't nuked anyone today. Why can't I get any satisfaction? We've gone too long without nuking someone! Let's hit that oil refinery! Get me the bestest of the best SEALs!

Kathy: How about just a good one?

Morgan: No! The bestest of the best!

Kathy: How about any one of the US Navy's superbly trained SEALs?

Morgan: NO! I SAID I WANT THE BESTEST OF THE BEST!

Kathy: All right.

A tall blond Aryan man is delivered in the room with a forklift. He remains ramrod-straight throughout.

SEAL #1: US NAVY SEAL! SIR YES SIR!

Morgan: Soldier, "these guys are not just stepping lightly on our toes! They're running us over with a fleet of [flippin'] rickshaws, and I'm not having it!" [P.158] So go ahead and nuke'em.

SEAL #1: SIR YES SIR!

The forklift retreats along with Navy Seal #1.

Morgan: Good thing done.

A moment passes, and then: Another courier.

Jimmy: Sir! The raid is a complete success! Parts of the refinery are headed for orbit, and the other parts are going straight to the center of the earth! We've created a new volcano and killed thousands of civilians!

Mrogan: "Consider the sound made by a cupful of gasoline on a bonfire just before you toss a lighted match into it –and then multiply that sound by around 40 million. That's loud." [P.54]

Jimmy: But two of our SEALs died! Including the bestest of the best!

Tears fill Admiral Morgan's eyes.

Morgan: That devastates me. I loved that man like no others, at the possible exception of Ted Kennedy. In a strictly heterosexual way, of course.

Jimmy: Of course, sir.

Morgan: This makes me so angry, I just WANT TO NUKE SOMEONE!

Another courier.

Jimmy: Sir! China has invaded Taiwan!

Morgan: Yes! Nuke'em!

Kathy: But darling! All of our forces are near the Persian Gulf!

Morgan: Curses! The mines were a trap! Foiled again by these devious foreigners!

Jimmy: Um, sir? What about our forces in Japan, the Philipines, Diego Garcia-

Morgan: Shut up, Jimmy! I'm trying to figure out why China would invade Taiwan.

Jimmy: Because this ends what they see as forty years of internal rebellion from a rebellious splinter group they never formally acknowledged because it also claimed to be China's official government?

Morgan: That's poppycock, son! It's obvious to everyone that they invaded Taiwan for the precious treasures in their national museum

Jimmy: What- what? Treasures? Where did that come from?

Morgan: Hush, little boy! Look at the screen!

Another view of the Chinese and Iranian officials.

Chinese admiral: "WANT TREASURE BACK! WANT TREASURE BACK!" [P.278]

Morgan: See?

Jimmy: I humbly stand corrected.

Morgan: You better be. Kathy, anyone else to nuke?

Kathy: Well, the Chinese are still in Taiwan.

Morgan: Right! Let's nuke Taiwan! Kathy, get me the red button!

Jimmy: Sir? Wouldn't it be better to sent a SEAL team?

Morgan: You're right son! I loves them SEALs! Get me the bestest of the best SEALs!

Kathy: Dead, darling. Don't you mean the second-best of the-

Morgan: BESTEST OF THE BESTEST MEANS STILL ALIVE, KATHY!

Kathy: Working on it.

Another SEAL is hauled in the office.

SEAL #2: SIR YES SIR!

Morgan: Go destroy stuff. Try not to get killed.

SEAL #2: SIR YES SIR!

He exits.

Morgan whistles, waiting for a big boom. Finally, a communication comes onto his screen.

SEAL #2: Admiral Morgan! We've got a problem, sir!

Morgan: Have you destroyed stuff?

SEAL #2: SIR YES SIR!

Morgan: Then what's the problem?

SEAL #2: The commander of our submarine had gone nuts! He thinks he's the reincarnation of some French loser!

Morgan: Wow, that's crazy.

SEAL #2: What should we do, sir?

Morgan: Ask him if he can nuke part of China for me.

A pause.

SEAL #2: He says no.

Morgan: Crazy! Shoot him!

A gunshot is heard.

Morgan: Outstanding work, sailor! You just saved us eighty pages of a stupid last act that has nothing to do with the rest of this story.

He closes the screen and wipes his hand.

Morgan: And that's another triumphant day for American hegemony.

He puts his hands on his hips and strikes a triumphant pose.

Jimmy: But Admiral! Taiwan is still held by the Chinese!

Morgan: Who cares? It'll all be forgotten in time for the next episode.

A final courier.

Jimmy: But sir! 9/11! Afghanistan! Iraq! Terrorists are the new enemy! Our imagined world of 2008 as seen from early 2001 doesn't even make sense any more!

A pause as Morgan thinks it through.

Morgan: Yay, a new enemy to nuke! Come on, Jimmy and Kathy, let's bellow our favourite song!

They lock arms and begin high-stepping, singing the series' signature FUN-DAMENTALIST ANTAGONISTS! musical number.

Curtains descend.

 

On, Adam Roberts

Gollancz, 2001, 388 pages, C$24.95 tp, ISBN 0-575-07177-X

What little that I've read of Adam Robert's fiction so far has been heavy with two distinguishing characteristics. First; some gentle stylistic exploration (the implicit ur-narrator in Stone and Salt, for instance) and second; a thirst for world-building. While On doesn't do much in terms of stylistic experimentation, it's certainly side-heavy with one strange environment.

In young protagonist Tighe's life, everything revolves around the Wall. The Wall on whose ledges he and his village live, seeing the sun ascend all day long, not knowing much about what's above, below or to the side of them. Gravity is paramount, especially when cattle (or people) fall off the ledges. This is not a prosperous life: humanity, in this novel, has been reduced to subsistence living, clustered in theocratic tribes. Tighe is supposed to be quasi-royalty in this village, but the first few chapter only show us a teenager unable to fit in a group that can't afford secrets or dissent. Perhaps inevitably, he comes to fall off the edge of the Wall.

And so his picaresque adventure begins. Miraculously saved from a hard landing lower down the Wall, he heals and is then sent off to war, soldier in an army bigger than he could ever imagine. Through his adventures, we come to understand the world, discover its secrets and go through a number of most excellent adventures. Precariousness, Adams tells us in an accompanying note, is the keyword of this novel: Tighe's position is never secure, never stable, never comfortable. He is thrown from an adventure to the other: few of his companions stick around for more than a few pages. Many die horribly.

I wouldn't so far as to say that world-building is one of Science Fiction's unique pleasures (Fantasy does it too, in addition to countless historical novels, or even stories set in unfamiliar societies), but On certainly plays the game with a lot of energy: You get used, eventually, to a vertical world and what it implies. This being said, I was never particularly convinced by elements of the basic premise, despite a laborious technical appendix detailing the how and why of On's particular situation. (In particular, I kept wondering where water would come from: On horizontal worlds like ours, aquifers are replenished by gravity, which just isn't possible in On.) Vertical worlds aren't completely new (K.W. Jeter's Farewell Horizontal comes to mind, for instance, though that was set on an artificial environment where verticality definitely wasn't normality), but they have rarely been as all-encompassing as this one. Despite my resistance to stories set in primitive settings, I actually went along with the ride, oohing and aahing whenever Adams wished.

It helps that Adams is a slick professional whose prose clicks effortlessly. There is good forward momentum, and a number of very good scenes: I'm still quite creeped out by a sequence in which one of Tighe's friend is eaten alive by a Very Large Bug. Sure, On often has the disconnected feel of a novel made out of various vignettes, but it's reasonably fun to read and seems to be heading somewhere. The prose is uncluttered and it's almost short enough to avoid overstaying its welcome.

Almost, I said. It may be just a bit too short and leading a bit too far, in fact: the last fifty pages turn into a very different story, one that starts, then stops, then starts again. The last chapter has a curiously unfinished feel to it, almost as if we'd reached the end of the book but not the story. It's a arguable choice given how the rest of Tighe's adventures also carry this unfinished feel, but it still feels incomplete. Maybe even silly, if you look at it the wrong way.

This ambivalence may serve to explain how I'm left neither disappointed nor impressed by the novel. Original premise aside, it's a competent story that is well-handled without any pyrotechnics. Pure mid-list SF, which isn't necessarily a bad thing. But the lack of stylistic flourishes makes me yearn for Adams' other efforts. Maybe Polystom, the next one on my list, will be more ambitious.

 

The Curse of Chalion, Lois McMaster Bujold

Harper Torch, 2001, C$10.99 pb, ISBN 0-380-81860-4

I approached Lois McMaster Bujold's The Curse of Chalion by reminding myself of the old conundrum about an irresistible force encountering an immovable object. Regular readers know that I'm not a fan of generic fantasy. Books in that genre first have to convince me to overcome my usual prejudices and only then can they start being evaluated on their own merits. On the other hand there's Lois McMaster Bujold, who has rarely written something I haven't liked. Even her most ordinary efforts, like Diplomatic Immunity, are comfortably above the average SF novel. She masters characterization like few others and her prose style is so smooth as to be irresistible.

And yet, most of her fiction output has been set in the "Miles Vorkosigan" SF universe. How would she do in a brand-new setting? While The Curse of Chalion is not her first foray in full-length fantasy (her little-known novel The Spirit Ring claims that honour), it seemed to mark not just a change of genre, but a new step in her career. (From Baen, she switched to Harper Collins for this novel and all latter ones; plans to return to Baen and Miles Vorkosigan, are as of yet unknown). So how did she do? How did I do?

Turn out that the immovable object was moved: The Curse of Chalion easily overcame my usual objections against fantasy in mere pages, and got better as it continued. It starts and ends with great characters; the rest naturally takes care of itself.

The standout hero of this story is Cazaril, an experienced warrior with plenty of scars: Abandoned by his own side, he returns to familiar grounds as the story opens, trying to find a new place for himself with scarcely nothing more than rags on his back. Fortunately (and "fortunately" is a word that plays heavily in a story dominated by gods), he still has a few friends: Before long, he finds himself assigned to be secretary-tutor to a princess. But there is a reason why his own side left him rotting in a foreign country: secrets that influential people still don't want made public...

For its first half, The Curse of Chalion isn't much more than palace intrigue with fantasy trappings. I write this as if it's a bad thing, but it means a compulsively readable thriller thanks to Bujold's capable hands. Cazaril is many things, but he is first a dependable character: The novel revolves around him (indeed, he's the only viewpoint character) because he's such a bedrock of common sense. Strong, battered, seasoned to the point of flippancy against impossible odds, he makes his choices and sticks to them whatever the consequences. It's page-turning stuff, even if the "fantasy" label seems a bit weak.

And then something quite wonderful happens, turning the entire novel into something else. It's not really a twist given how we don't learn anything that overturns previous assumptions. But The Curse of Chalion suddenly delves far more deeply into the nature of its mythology, with very real religions and associated magical powers. Cazaril himself is transformed by this turning point, elevated to a position that is at odds with everything he's known this far. And yet, he keeps pushing back, always fighting for what he swore to do. Romantic themes are gradually weaved into the story, alongside some more intrigue and high-level strategy. It ends as you may wish for, with a battle and a triumph.

Still, I remains of two minds about the book's (over)use of chance and coincidence as plot drivers. On one hand, it becomes a real thematic element of the novel's meditation over the role of gods in a world where their influence cannot be denied. What are mortals but mere puppets? On another hand, some of the plot developments still stretch credulity and do knock some structural supports out of the story. On yet another hand, most of those coincidences would have been perfectly fine in a novel twice its length showing the details preceding The Curse of Chalion... but that doesn't necessarily mean that I would have enjoyed reading it all. In the end, it's better to nod along and consider all of it as divine intervention.

What's not so attributable to divine intervention, however, is Bujold's gift for characters and effortless prose. The Curse of Chalion is professional-level fantasy, attractive to even non-fans of the genre. In the age-old question, we now know that irresistible is stronger than immovable.

 

The Ghost Brigades, John Scalzi

Tor, 2006, 317 pages, C$31.95 hc, ISBN 0-765-31502-5

Writer/blogger John Scalzi made quite a splash in early 2005 with the release of Old Man's War, a straight-up military Science Fiction novel that went on to very successful sales and favourable critical acclaim. Barely a year later, the sequel The Ghost Brigades is already available on bookstore shelves, raising all sorts of questions about Scalzi's superhuman writing skills.

Not the least of which is "how does he manage to keep it up?" Old Man's War wasn't cutting-edge SF, but it could boast of compulsively readable prose and a roaring rhythm. At a time where unputdownable is as overused as it's ungrammatical, Scalzi is the real deal: someone who can deliver a fast, fun SF story that remains accessible and doesn't take you for an idiot. With Old Man's War, he showed that he could do it once; with The Ghost Brigades, he proves that he can do it again.

Set in the same universe as Old Man's War, The Ghost Brigades takes a step deeper into the inner workings of the Colonial Defence Forces first introduced in the earlier book. A minor character gets a more substantial supporting part here, though the hero is entirely new in more ways than one: Jared Dirac is a force-grown clone, originally meant for a top-secret imprinting experiment, but then recycled in the CDF's special forces . Meant to be someone else, he has to confront who he's supposed to become.

While The Ghost Brigades can't duplicate the delicious feeling of discovery that so characterized Old Man's War (this time, we're familiar with the universe and with Scalzi himself), it's easily just as good in terms of narrative efficiency: Jared's training is less military than social, and his subsequent combat adventures are enhanced by a different personal dimension than Old Man's War's John Perry. Scalzi is skilled in quickly raising a number of issues related to his chosen theme of identity and consciousness: while some of them will feel old-hat to a number of veteran SF readers, they're discussed so briefly that they don't linger too long..

As is the case with nearly all of Scalzi's writing to date (and here I'm lumping together his fiction alongside things like his blog and The Rough Guide to Sci-Fi Movies), the prose is crystal-clear. Moments of humour are well-handled, along with a number of sly reversals --such as a good part of the first chapter. But don't think that The Ghost Brigade is one big funny romp: One of the most satisfying aspects of the book is how it explores the darker side of the series' universe, with its unforgiving realities (ie; let's kill them before they kill us) and complicated politics. Doubts are raised as to the righteousness of the CDF (and never quite dismissed), simultaneously taking in account some of my problems with Old Man's War and showing the way toward a third volume in the series.

Scalzi shows a good grasp of the genre's gadgets and conventions, acknowledging a number of authors here and there while manipulating techno-military jargon with fluid ease. It's important to note that Scalzi, while immensely respectful of the military, doesn't share the rigid right-wing politics of many military SF writers: As a result, his fiction is filled with nuances and caveats that simply make it more interesting to read. Alternatives are discussed and characters genuinely anguish over their actions. As a result, even liberals come to understand when it's time to lock up any doubts and fire at full automatic.

As good as it is, The Ghost Brigades comes with a few caveats: It is a bit on the thin side and may be more appropriate as a paperback than a full-price hardcover. As entertaining as it is, it also raises an interesting question: When will Scalzi try his hand at a more ambitious project? As coldbloodedly professional as he appears to be in his approach to his career, I doubt that he will suddenly drop everything else to produce an insanely ambitious 500-page work of art ready to challenge, say, Ian McDonald's River of Gods. But I wonder. I wonder because I've seen what he's capable of doing (twice) and I can't wait to see him tackle bigger and better things.

 

The Dark Wing, Walter F. Hunt

Tor, 2001, 468 pages, C$10.99 pb, ISBN 0-765-34069-0

[January 2007: I wrote the following while cranky. This is one of those reviews that tell you more about the reviewer than the work being discussed. While I stand behind my disappointment with the novel, I acknowledge that the sarcastic riffs below are unfair to the author.]

Now here's an interesting achievement: A military Science Fiction novel that isn't, and a book with plenty of annoyances that somehow kept my interest until its increasingly dull ending. I still wonder how that happened.

At first glance, Walter F. Hunt's The Dark Wing is straight-up military SF with all the obvious clichés of the sub-genre: Bad aliens, imperial government, military heroes, big space navies and so on. Comparisons with the Honor Harrington series are too obvious: It took an entire sub-genre to raise this novel, and at first there isn't much to distinguish it from countless other run-of-the-mill SF adventures.

The imperial system of government is particularly grating, especially given how it seems to accompany every single "space navy" series: To heck with representative democracy! One yearns for Victorian England all over again as the good old macho way of fighting wars. But that's also lazy wordbuilding: Why bother with the complex accountability mechanisms build into our modern governance systems when it's much, much easier to set up an emperor thanks to some nebulous historical event, and give that emperor a big shiny navy to play with? No one will be surprised to learn that right-wing politics are also featured as a necessary plot point: As The Dark Wing begins, those pesky unreasonable aliens have just invaded human space again, thanks to the wussy "peace agreements" signed by the cowardly hippie politicians, clearly showing that the only good alien is a dead alien. This is familiar to the point on contemptuousness, especially when an admiral is tasked with the final solution: complete xenocide to get rid of the problem. Hey, it's the only way to be sure.

But The Dark Wing is a long book. A very long book. Eventually, most of the novel's early assumptions are overturned. The human campaign of extermination against the aliens, for instance, is entirely too successful, leading the aliens to believe that a long-held prophecy is taking shape. (...sigh... what is it with those alien prophecies in SF? Heck, what is it with those nice square alien monolithic societies in which pretty much every single alien believes the same thing, without any differences in sub-culture, age or education?) Before you know it, the human characters have to play nice so that the entire alien race (no kidding: the entire alien race) don't commit ritual suicide out of dishonoured spite.

More alien characters also mean more alien passages with nouns that seem randomly pecked on the keyboard. I often speed-read those passages and this habit didn't do me any harm in The Dark Wing, where dozens of pages are wasted on things that could be summarized far more interestingly from the human point of view. (I call it the italics skip: If it's longer than two or three lines and it's in italics, chances are that it's not useful material, probably duplicates the human-side information and can thus be skimmed with minimal loss of context.)

Of course, the more the aliens become familiar, the less the author will be willing to blast the living smithereens out of them. And in an unusual switch from my usual goody-goody yearnings, I ended up mourning this lack of xenocide. I've read enough stories in the past in which big bad aliens suddenly become our fuzzy friends that I'm in the market for a novel that promises and delivers a full, undiluted, even-the-alien-dogs-and-chickens massacre. If they're so bad, let them stay bad and let's indulge in our basest instinct of extermination. Worked against the Neanderthals, I believe: let's try it again.

(Oh yes, I'm being inconsistent in the very same review. Try it; it's pure joy.)

To heck with Ender's guilt, to heck with my objections to standard military SF: Let's kill some bugs. But then the novel has this wonderful moment in which part of the rug is pulled under our feet, and all we're left wondering is What, what? What just happened here? How is that possible? Lighting-fast reflexes of deduction honed by years of reading SF quickly allow us to deduce that there's a third player in this game, one pulling off a neat game of solitaire with humans and aliens as puppets. This is also the point where The Dark Wing switches gears from military to mystical –not a switch that I fully endorse (I use "mystical" as a reliable synonym for "gibberish"), but one that certainly realigns the novel in another direction.

But that direction is to be found in another novel, because for all of the book's 450+ pages, its latter half grinds to an anticlimactic halt. It all becomes setup not just for another volume, but for three more books in a series that may or may not end there. At this point, I just don't know if I'm tempted to go further. The story so far has too many twists and turns to dismiss out of hand. But the annoyances are real (if contradictory) and I doubt that they'll smooth over in the course of a four book series. What little I've read about the other books doesn't inspire confidence either. I suppose I'll let the power of used book sales guide me in making a decision...