Reviews

January 2008

2008, Christian Sauvé

Reviewed this month:

Plus, movie reviews:


The Closers, Michael Connelly

Little, Brown, 2005, 403 pages, C$36.95 hc, ISBN 0-316-73494-2

Rejoice: Harry Bosch is back on the job, and so is Connelly. After a few uneven adventures featuring Bosch as a none-too-comfortable Private Investigator, there's a sense that everything is back on the right track as Bosch re-integrates the LAPD after the events of the previous volume. He's not being put back on the homicide table, though: this time, he's been assigned to the "Open-Unsolved" unit that seeks to close historical files left open. Partnered once again with Kizmin Rider, Bosch is asked to use his experience and his dogged determination to close the book on unsolved mysteries.

This initially seems easier than expected: As Connelly explains, investigative techniques and tools have gotten much better in the past few decades. It's now possible to analyze evidence kept in storage and match it against suspects. Thousands of such pieces still haven't been processed in the labs, and as The Closers begins, it appears that one such piece has produced a match: a flesh scraping taken from a gun used in the murder of a teenager fifteen years earlier. The DNA matches that of a known criminal with ties to the girl's neighborhood, which is even worse considering that the girl was biracial and the criminal has avowed neo-nazi sympathies.

But, of course, nothing is that simple in a Michael Connelly novel. There will be complications.

From the first few pages, Connelly proves that he's back in top shape. As skilled as ever in entertainingly presenting exposition, Connelly quickly puts together Bosch's new life: The office he works in, the easy partnership with Kizmin Rider, the renewed antagonism with Irving ("You are a retread. But you know what happens with a retread? It comes apart at the seams." [P.41]), the atmosphere inside the LAPD and, perhaps more importantly, the numerous details of an investigation abandoned before a satisfactory conclusion. The DNA match may be suggestive, but Bosch wants to make sure that they're after the right person.

Unfortunately, they find out that there's a lot more riding on this case than a simple unsolved murder. The case attracts political attention, which puts Bosch right where readers like him best: in the middle of a fight for his professional life, stuck between factions inside his own department. Not that this is the only kind of difficult situation that Bosch encounters during the investigation: a lengthy sequence following him as he goes undercover as a white supremacist proves to be one of the book's highlights.

The twists and turns are solid, and it's interesting to see that the number of violent sequences is kept to a minimum: The Closers creates its suspense through sheer procedural suspense, as clues are tracked, details are uncovered and suspects are interrogated. It ends as many Connelly novels do, with Bosch as the chump of someone else's deals.

But even as it brings Bosch out of the cold, The Closers feels like a return to top form. Faithful readers won't be surprised to find out that this novel is back to a third-person narration, leaving Bosch's inner monologue to his off-LAPD career. It's not a bad thing, since one of the complaints about Bosch two retirement novels was that it brought us perhaps a bit too closely inside the mind of Connelly's taciturn character. The narration properly places Bosch farther away from the reader, where he can be cloaked with an intriguing sense of mystery: we don't need to know what he's thinking.

And yet, it's a sens of belonging, of righting past wrongs that ends up playing an important role in The Closers. Using Bosch to the best of his abilities as a mystery-solver, Connelly touches upon the nature of criminal-fiction closure and shows that he hasn't run out of stories to tell about his best-known character.

 

Debatable Space, Philip Palmer

Orbit, 2008, 479 pages, C$14.99 tp, ISBN 978-316-01892-0

I admire the audacity of the marketing experts who allowed Debatable Space to be titled as such. Surely they must have sensed the potential here for easy jokes by silly reviewers? Debatable as in arguable, as in mixed, as in two-and-a-half-stars our of five? One imagines the lolbookcovers: "Debatable Space is debatable". Allowing a first novel to carry that title is like duct-taping a "kick-me" sign on a kid and sending him off to recess.

But then again, perhaps someone at Orbit had a buzz-baiting moment of candid honesty. For Philip Palmer's Debatable Space has quite a few good things running in its favor, even if most of those good things carry along a number of less-pleasant aftereffects. It's a dynamic, exuberant novel that lacks control and never quite knows when to cut it short. It's a novel with the disadvantages of its very own qualities: It's likely to be remembered as much for its problems as its virtues.

It doesn't start promisingly, as the daughter of a tyrant is captured by pirates and held for ransom in a far-future universe where post-human humanity has colonized a fraction of the galaxy. The style is slightly sharper, slightly hipper than usual, but it still feels like a familiar story. The sexual tension and the gory violence is up to the moment's excessive standards, but the rest is familiar, as if the author was merely playing with generic SF elements to tell a standard space-pirates story.

This impression never completely goes away, but fades quickly once the book delves deeper in its own plot. It turns out that the "daughter in distress" isn't what she seems, and that the pirates have other plans in mind once the ransom doesn't show up as expected. The flashier aspects of Debatable Space also become more obvious: The typographical tricks hearkening back to Ellison and Bester; the copious amount of sex and violence, the increasingly ridiculous odds faced by the characters; the intriguing references and concepts casually tossed off.

But Debatable Space has a streak of weirdness that makes it difficult to predict. At three junctures, the story is interrupted to cover the back-story of the kidnapped "princess": Lena is revealed to be a long-lived contemporary of ours, with a biography crammed with every possible adventure and occupation, from mousy academic to hard cybercop to despondent girlfriend to dictatorial president and much much more. It's too flamboyant to be taken seriously (a theme that characterizes Debatable Space as a whole), but it's certainly fun to read. As the novel unfolds, it also becomes more interesting in purely SF terms: I was particularly taken with the vision of a remote-controlled empire combining the worst aspects of cultural imperialism and consequence-free proxy usage. The "Dyson Jewels" are also a cool addition to the Big Dumb Object repertory.

But even as Palmer does his damnedest to impress the peanut gallery, he also let slip a few curious inconsistencies. His future never quite holds up for scrutiny, let it be the incompatibility between his future's advanced medicine and his stunted characters, or someone casually using a CD-Rom a thousand years in the future ("I slip the CD-Rom in the Quantum Beacon's computer"... [P.250]) as if they weren't already obsolete in 2007. Lena ability to escape media attention through her laughably numerous careers except when it suits the needs of the story also stretched the bounds of credibility.

In short, Debatable Space feels raw, prickly, audacious and visibly flawed. As entertaining as it can be (and Palmer's writing style is vivid enough to carry along its own narrative momentum), it's also too scattered and too far-fetched to be particularly credible. The author acknowledges as such in an afterword appropriately called "Debatable Science" ("Alby after all is a super-intelligent ball of flame with a lisp"... [P.478]), but it doesn't make the novel any easier to recommend without reservations. But keep an eye on Palmer's next few novels: with more control and fewer distractions, he could be part of the next generation of good British SF writers.

 

Pacific Edge, Kim Stanley Robinson

Tor, 1990, 326 pages, ISBN 0-312-85097-2

Compulsive readers like myself often end up focusing on speed rather than retention. Too many book! Not enough time! Trying to remember specific details of a story weeks after reading it can be a struggle. Fortunately, the best novels rise above this limitation: The mark of a good book can be how well it sticks in mind, fighting its memory pointers against so many forgettable titles.

And so it is that as I revise this, weeks after reading Kim Stanley Robinson's Pacific Edge, I still have vivid memories of it. Which is curious, since this is not a conventionally action-packed novel. Taking place in a pleasant near-future where humanity has largely managed to find balance with nature, this is the third novel in Robinson's "Three California" triptych. After post-nuclear (The Wild Shore) and overheating-dystopian (The Gold Coast) scenarios, Robinson tackles the old "there is no drama in utopia" nonsense by showing us how love and pride can still matter at a time of peace and abundance.

Like its predecessors, Pacific Edge follows the adventures of a none-too-bright young man living in Orange County, along with his friends and family. It also features an older "Tom Barnard" to coach our protagonist and a shadow narrative that stands halfway outside the novel as counterpoint and explanation.

Plot-wise, Pacific Edge is chiefly concerned about environmental issues and sentimental matters. Our characters live in a sustainable community, so ecological issues constantly hover above their heads as vital elements of their lives. Half of the novel's plot strands revolve around the protagonist discovering and fighting against a corporate takeover of water rights, a battle that earns him the enmity of several powerful opponents. To complicate matter further, romantic complications arise when an old flame takes an interest in him after leaving an influent member of the city council who is also part of the takeover. This may be utopia, but there are still important issues to get passionate about.

Fans of Robinson's writing will be delighted to read his usually skillful prose, which navigates a tough path between plot, characterization, political speculation and sweeping description. Robinson takes risks that would destroy a story in the hand of lesser writers, and the result is just as compulsively readable as his other books. The particularity of Pacific Edge is how it's set in a future where the fate of the planet is never in doubt. This is a local story, taking place between a few participants, where baseball games, bicycle rides, community projects and ersatz families carry much importance. The way Robinson holds our interest with those comparatively small stakes is astonishing.

In fact, some of the best moments of the book are nothing but characters experiencing their own world. The book opens with a radiant sequence in which the protagonist of the book cycles down a mountain, feeling as if nothing bad can happen: "Man! What a day!". At the other end of the story, the same protagonist laughing after realizing that "he was without a doubt the unhappiest person in the world." [P.326] Small moments, but exactly the kind of writing to stick in mind for a while.

I may prefer The Gold Coast for its manic narration and its sense of redemption, but Pacific Edge seems to be the strongest volume in Robinson's triptych. Eighteen years after publication, it's still relatively unique in that it touches upon environmental issues without too much preaching, tackles emotional issues not often found elsewhere in Science Fiction and presents such a sense of utter serenity that even being the unhappiest person in that world seems preferable to many happy lives in this one.

It doesn't take much more to wonder where all the utopias have gone, and whether we'll ever build one of our own. Humans born when this novel was published are now able to vote, but it hasn't aged a wink since then. Great books do more than stick in mind: they keep their own relevance even as the years go by.

 

The Family Trade, Charles Stross

Tor, 2004, 303 pages, C$34.95 hc, ISBN 0-765-30929-7

Most polls prove it: the single biggest reason why people pick up books by specific authors is because they are already familiar with their work. In an American market where 100,000 books are published every year and most people don't read even one book per month, why should casual readers take a gamble on unproven authors when they can just buy a "name" book knowing what to expect?

Of course, some authors make an effort to avoid being pigeonholed. Although Charles Stross is better known for idea-crammed Science Fiction, he consciously diversified genre, publisher and readership with The Family Trade, delving into so-called fantasy for Tor Books. His process was even amusingly codified on his blog as "Five rules for cold-bloodedly designing a fantasy series". But when a quintessential Science Fiction writer like Stross feels free to play in another genre, no one should be surprised if some of his established strengths carry through the genre frontiers.

So the result is a book labeled as fantasy, but conceived according to the rigor of hard-SF. Miriam Beckstein is a Boston-based high-tech/business journalist, but her latest scoop is more trouble than her bosses can stand: she finds herself fired and sent home. Coincidentally, an artifact from her past unlocks a latent ability to travel between parallel worlds, at the price of terrible headaches.

It's a promising setup, but it's what Stross does with it afterward that transforms The Family Trade from a run-of-the-mill fantasy ("Plucky orphan discovers that she's rich and powerful in another world") to an excellent start to an ongoing series. Whereas lesser writers may have dawdled in describing the wonders of discovering another parallel universe, Stross thinks harder: The parallel world is still at a medieval-era level of development, and taking advantage of world-walking isn't simple when there's another culture and language to learn. But it gets better, because Miriam is far from being the only world-walker, and the rest of her family really doesn't want her running around without supervision. Miriam may be fearsomely intelligent (there are no "you stupid heroine" moments here), but her opponents are just as crafty in their own way, and her continued existence depends on a web of complex political alliances more than her family's filial bonds. Further revelations make it even clearer that the source of the family fortune is not legal, and that other families definitely want Miriam to die.

In between learning the social rules of her second universe and defeating assassination attempts, Miriam turns her business experience into a plan to profit from her ability. Complications quickly pile upon further complications, making The Family Trade a lively and sometimes-unpredictable read.

Stross's typical strengths are a mixture of accessible prose, fascinating ideas and a willingness to engage with social and economic issues. All of those traits are admirably deployed in The Family Trade, resulting in a mesmerizing reading experience. This is a terrific first volume in an ongoing series, although impatient readers should be warned that this is really the first half of a tightly-linked two-volume set: Get both The Family Trade and its follow-up The Hidden Family if you want to reach a satisfactory conclusion to Miriam's initial adventure.

But Stross fans already know that everything the man writes is gold: In the past five years since Singularity Sky, Stross has established himself as a solid and reliable writer whose books just keep on getting better and better. Now even the most reluctant anti-fantasy readers can pick up this series without fear of disappointment. And as Stross cold-bloodedly designed, this is a series with quasi-limitless potential. If Stross can keep up the density of plot developments, this is going to be a wild ride.

 

Getting to Know You, David Marusek

Subterranean Press, 2007, 297 pages, US$40.00 limited hc (US$25.00 regular hc), ISBN 978-1-59606-088-3

The worst thing anyone can say about David Marusek's Science Fiction is that there isn't enough of it.

For a writer whose bibliography dates back to the mid-nineties, Marusek's output so far has been scarce and precious: Barely a dozen stories since 1993, and at least two of them rank amongst the finest SF stories published during the nineties. Marusek fans finally got their wish for a novel in 2005 with Counting Heads, the first volume in a projected series. With Getting to Know You, Subterranean Press brings together Marusek's portfolio of stories, and if the result can feel familiar to fans of the author's much-anthologized best pieces, it's also a strong argument in favor of writers who put quality above quantity.

Getting To Know You opens with an introduction in which Marusek briefly discusses his relationship to short stories, highlighting the experimental nature of their writing, and how "you wouldn't exactly call me a prolific short story writer" [P.14] He also adds that five of the stories in this anthology are set in the same universe as Counting Heads.

Marusek's best-known story so far is probably "The Wedding Album", which made a splash upon publication in 1999, was widely nominated for a number of award and eventually won the 2000 Theodore Sturgeon Award. The same story opens Getting To Know You, and it's an inspired choice: In the span of a novelette, Marusek manages to set up an affecting human drama, several vertiginous perspective shifts, at least one scene that's as hilarious as it's spectacular, and a future history that still hasn't been explored by the rest of Marusek's writing in this universe. It's one of the finest SF short stories published during the nineties, and it's a good anchor for this volume. It also a decent introduction to the type of dense, humane, unflinching Science Fiction that typifies Marusek's work. There are a lot of very exciting ideas here, but also a number of unsettling scenes and tragic destinies. Marusek's fiction can have the manic energy and inventiveness of golden age SF, but it's certainly not so nostalgic when it comes to the consequences of the technologies he explores. The mixture of peppy toys and downbeat fates echoes through the entire anthology.

"The Earth is on the Mend", for instance, is pure post-apocalyptic fiction, almost mainstream in its purposeful lack of ideas. "A Boy in Cathyland" settles the fate of a minor character in "The Wedding Album" in a manner that will not please readers of the original novella. Neither tale stand out against their heavy competition elsewhere in the collection. Neither does "Listen to Me" later on, though "My Morning Glory" is short and terrifying in its implications. (For a measure of Marusek's merciless humor, consider that he calls it "my only story with an unalloyed happy ending" in his story introduction. It's all a matter of perspective, of course. Marusek would get along splendidly with Peter Watts.)

"Yurek Rutz, Yurek Rutz, Yurek Rutz" is a bit heftier, as an epistolary tale that exploits Marusek's unusual living conditions in Alaska and provides a few smiles. Echoes of the tale provide one of the very few grins in "VTV" a story with "no redeeming value" (writes the author as introduction) that goes for broke in an effort to alienate the reader from human society. There's a clever setting up of expectations in the way Marusek describes a media gone out of control in service of an audience that can only be roused of its complacency with spectacular blood-letting.

"Cabbages and Kale or: How We Downsized North America" and "Getting to Know You" will be more familiar to Counting Heads readers, as they look at other facets of Marusek's imagined universe. Both tales are told with an energetic, falsely-funny tone that belies surprisingly disturbing implications.

But for Counting Heads flashbacks, the ultimate is to be found in "We Were Out of Our Minds with Joy", a line-edited version of which makes up the first part of Marusek's first novel. It's still a triumphant story, a strong novella and a Science Fiction masterpiece that bursts with invention even at a time where post-Singularity tales are multiplying. Readers with fresh memories of Marusek's novel will probably skip this story, but not including it in this anthology would have been ridiculous, especially since it allows scholarly readers to see the slight changes between the originally published version and the one that made it in the novel.

Those lucky enough to be able to afford the limited signed edition of Getting to Know You will also get a small chapbook reprinting "She Was Good, She Was Funny", a 1994 thriller tale (then published in Playboy magazine) featuring a philandering narrator, a jealous husband, and the implacable Alaskan climate. A perfect little desert on top of a sumptuous meal. The story may not be science-fiction, but it's recognizably by Marusek with its clever conceit and curiously triumphal ending.

If Getting to Know You proves anything, it's that much like Ted Chiang, Marusek's slow-but-steady pace has its advantages: His short story output is solid, and show a skilled writer working at a consistent level. But there's more to this book that a collection of stories loosely bound together: From the recurring themes, approaches and tonal beats in his stories, we get a far more representative portrait of Marusek's fiction than one could glean from either Counting Heads or his best-known stories in isolation. A love and respect for Alaska; a jokey kinetic tone that hides darker undercurrents; an accessible, even compelling writing style; an enthusiasm for ideas that doesn't shy away from their appalling consequences: These are what makes Marusek a writer to watch, even if the pace of his publications can be trying at time.

So, when is his next novel due in bookstores?


Rewired: The Post-Cyberpunk Anthology, Ed. James Patrick Kelly & John Kessel

Tachyon, 2007, 424 pages, US14.95 tp, ISBN 978-1-892391-53-7

One of the most endearing traits of Science Fiction as a genre is its almost pathological need to examine itself for new trends. Commentators steadily scour new publications for trends, recurring leitmotivs and emerging clichés. When The New Thing proves to be difficult to identify, they go back to The Formerly New Things and kick them around for inspiration. But the sad truth is that cyberpunk remains the last coherent SF movement, its shadow still looming over genre criticism fifteen years after it was clinically declared dead from embarrassment.

One suspects that the deathbed conversation over cyberpunk will keep on going until the entire genre is absorbed by the singularity, and then be carried over by intelligence much vaster than ours yet still punier than John Clute. In the meantime, any pretext is good enough for a post-cyberpunk reprint anthology like Rewired.

The choice of anthologists isn't accidental: Both James Patrick Kelly and John Kessel were active writers in the heydays of cyberpunk –although whether they were part of the movement or opposed to it as "humanists" depends on who you speak to.

Students of genre history will have a lot of good material to digest in Rewired: Not only does it come with a lengthy introduction discussing the characteristics of "Post Cyberpunk" ("PCP") SF, it's also peppered with excerpts of correspondence between cyberpunk chairman Bruce Sterling and Kessel, in which both authors tackle issues surrounding the movement and its aftermath.

But people don't read reprint anthologies for the introductions: many of them read it for the table of content. For beyond the empty "post-cyberpunk" claims (yes, yes, SF has absorbed the lessons of cyberpunk; can we move on, now, please?) Rewired is most interesting as an attempt to define a canon for modern science-fiction. The choice of pieces is not accidental, and even a quick glimpse at the content of the book will reveal a number of proto-classics that have a good chance to form the SF canon of the last dozen years.

Many of the big names of recent SF are there, even when the stories themselves may or may not be the most representative of their work. There's even an odd dash of exoticism is calculated to make Science Fiction look like a genre with literary respectability. Hard-SF favorite Greg Egan ("Yeyuka") sits next to the red-hot Cory Doctorow ("When Sysadmin Ruled the Earth") and underrated veteran Walter Jon Williams ("Daddy's World"), while Jonathan Lethem and Gwyneth Jones lend their respectability to the exercise. There's a bit of something for everyone in this anthology, even for those who know the corpus: It's hard to avoid re-reading the brilliance of David Marusek's "The Wedding Album", Charles Stross' techno-heavy "Lobsters" or Bruce Sterling's still-amusing "The Bicycle Repairman".

Meanwhile, like all good reprint anthologies, Rewired offers the chance to read some stories that may have escaped first notice: Paul Di Filippo's "What's Up, Tiger Lily" is a fun romp that proves again why Di Filippo remains one of the genre's most overlooked short story writer.

Even though, it's hardly a perfect anthology. Some choices seem motivated by variety and/or notoriety, leading to puzzling selections. William Gibson's "Thirteen Views of a Cardboard City"? Hmmm. And, of course, there's never any accounting for taste either for the anthologists or the reader: Paolo Bacigalupi's "The Calorie Man" and Christopher Rowe's "The Voluntary State" still seem as overrated as when they were nominated for the Hugo. Your mileage, as they say, may differ.

But if you forget about the "post-cyberpunk" marketing hook, Rewired more than holds its own as a reprint anthology of recent material. The names on the cover offer a good and recent overview of the genre, the table of content features a a few diamonds and that's more than enough to make Rewired a welcome contribution to the ever-lasting genre discussions.

[June 2008: Noted without further comment: Tachyon Publication seems to be developing a line of reprint anthologies seemingly designed to re/define genre movements. After Rewired, the last few months have seen the publication of The New Weird and Steampunk. One awaits Infernocrusher.]

 

Ice Station, Matthew Reilly

St. Martin's, 1999, 513 pages, C$9.99 pb, ISBN 0-312-97123-0

When I write that some writers should be praised for their insane genius, I'm specifically thinking of Matthew Reilly. You can keep paying tribute to your literary prodigies, your award-winning wordsmiths and your tortured artistes: Meanwhile, I'll be sitting in the corner whooping it up with one of Reilly's pedal-to-the-metal action thrillers.

Seemingly written for those who think that Hollywood action blockbusters are too slow and sedate, Reilly's novels explode out of their premises, multiplying action sequences at the carefree expense of believability. It's as if a Hollywood screenwriter was unleashed from the bounds of budgetary concerns and insurance liability: Suddenly, unbridled excesses and can-you-top-this action sequences become mere chapters in books that delights in exhausting the readers. Reilly's novel are amoung the best in applying action movie mechanics to the novel form, and while the result won't be for everyone, it's a hugely enjoyable way to pass time.

Ice Station may have been Reilly's first professional publication (Contest was initially self-published; though re-worked and republished later on) but it already showcases Reilly's characteristic style. Taking place in Antarctica, it initially describes how a team of Marines investigates the mysterious disappearance of nearly all personnel from a US research station. Things soon spiral out of control as the Marines are attacked from all sides: There's a killer in the station, strange lifeforms in the pool at the bottom of the base, and enemy forces closing in on the surface.

But that's still mere prelude to the sheer insanity of the novel as it develops all of these threads. Because there's something very dangerous about Wilkes Station where most of the action takes place: something buried deep in the ice, and something that several governments are clearly ready to fight over... or destroy if they can't have it.

But geopolitical considerations are mere background information when the shooting begins. Close-combat heroics, hovercraft demolition derbies, mutants, three successive waves of elite attackers, nuclear-powered weaponry and high-tech gadgets are only some of the elements that give Ice Station its hard-edged charm. The characters are secondary at the exception of protagonist Shane "Scarecrow" Schofield (who later goes on to star in three more of Reilly's novels), but the centerpiece action sequences are very well-done. Reilly's special genius is that he understands the mechanics of an action sequence: the impossible situations, the small accumulation of mini-objectives, the ratcheting tension in every twist and turn, the cool little ideas that help the protagonists fight their way out of desperate odds...

I suspect that few serious critics will be kind toward Reilly's work: He does cheat and lie to his readers in order to crank the tension, and the over-the-top ridiculousness of his accumulating action will be lost on anyone who's not already a fan of kinematic action. But there's a lot of clever genre-bending in Ice Station, which earns some distinction by being one of the few thrillers to set up an extraterrestrial element, then tops it with an even less likely development that manages to keep the novel in the realm of the techno-thriller.

So, no, Ice Station will never get any respect, but it doesn't really need any: As a techno-thriller, it wipes the floor with the shattered corpses of most other novels of its genre. Reilly's talent is in his visceral understanding of what make a story move, both at the sentence-by-sentence and the structural level. He is, not insignificantly, a thriller writer with is own distinctive style, and that should be enough to earn him enough faithful readers to enable him to write whatever he wants. Insane geniuses deserve their own dedicated followers, you know.

 

The Keep, F. Paul Wilson

Tor, 1981 (2006 reprint), 403 pages, C$4.99 pb, ISBN 0-765-35705-4

I'm always impressed when the years move on and leave certain books unaffected. To the dismay of anyone trying to write for posterity (if there's such a thing when there are bills to pay), decades can be very unkind to any kind of fiction. Beyond contemporary settings, there are dozens of ways for books to be stuck in time: outdated social assumptions, unfashionable prose or crude genre conventions. Even in Science Fiction or Fantasy, setting a story in the future or the past doesn't necessarily erase the mark left by the writer's present. So imagine my surprise to find out that F. Paul Wilson's The Keep still feels just as fresh today as when it was published in 1981.

There's a trick, of course: The version of The Keep I read isn't the version that was published twenty-five years ago. It's been reviewed, retouched and reprinted, validated and enhanced along the way like few other early-eighties horror novels have been. Dig deep enough, and you will even find that it was adapted for the big screen in 1983 by none other than director Michael Mann. (Good luck seeing it, though: The film is conspicuously absent from DVD format catalogs, and rumor has it that Mann himself isn't too keep on reviving it.)

Then there's the detail that the book was written to be a World War 2-era supernatural thriller, already taking it further away from instantly-recognizable contemporary cultural references. At a time where horror novels simply required a monster and people to slaughter, Wilson aimed for more ambitious targets by reaching back in time and space to set his monster/haunted-house story in 1941 Romania. When a group of Nazi soldiers occupies an isolated keep deep in the Transylvanian Alps, they awaken something out for their blood, at a determined pace of one death per night. Terrified, they ask for help; alas, the elite reinforcements prove ineffective. Desperate, they end up reaching out to an expert on local legends, a wheelchair-bound intellectual who happens to be Jewish. But even the scholar and his daughter don't suspect the repercussions of what has been unleashed in the keep...

One of the reasons why this book is still in print today is that it forms the cornerstone of Wilson's Adversary cycle, which also spawned Wilson's "Repairman Jack"series. While The Keep initially looks and feels like a particularly ornate vampire story, Wilson has a larger framework in mind, and the barest hints of the menace are revealed in this first volume. Suffice to say that this isn't a mere vampire at play, and that the roots and consequences of the novel won't be limited to 1941.

But the best reason for the novel's continued popularity is that it's slickly written and a hugely enjoyable page-turner. Wilson's prose is clean and compelling, and his ability to keep readers coming back for "one more chapter" is terrific. While the tight suspense of the first half eventually cedes way to a looser second half, the strong characters keep up interest until the end despite ever-larger developments. The delight with which Wilson multiplies the complications (by bringing in "good" Nazis, the looming menace of another concentration camp, a mysterious stranger traveling to the Keep, unexpected shifts in allegiances, and so on) is the stuff from which satisfying novels are made of. Plus, hey, it's all-too-easy to lose sight of the most excellent premise: Nazis versus monsters! What's not to like?

The historical detail is convincing, Wilson generally avoids the easy Nazi clichés and the first 150 pages are a model of increasing tension. No small wonder that The Keep still attracts an audience more than a quarter-century after its publication. Even for experienced horror readers, the novel still carries its own kick. There's a good chance that The Keep will still be just as readable in 2031.

 

Movie Reviews

In theaters

CHARLIE WILSON'S WAR (2007, Comedy): The once-sparse subcategory of geopolitical sarcastic comedy is certainly picking up steam: After LORD OF WAR and THE HUNTING PARTY, here's CHARLIE WILSON'S WAR, a "comedy" with more political savvy than most so-called "political thrillers" (not to mention documentaries) out there. Little surprise, since Aaron Sorkin is writing it: his mastery of Soviet weaponry and the Washington political process shows through. Better yet is the acting talent, with Tom Hanks having fun as a philandering Texas congressman and Julia Roberts hamming it up as a larger-than-life Houston socialite. And yet it's Philip Seymour Hoffman who walks away with the best lines as a riot-nrrrd CIA operative who finally gets a chance to do something. The script deftly takes us around the world, making a comedy out of a foreign policy move that blows back hard. And that, ultimately ends up being the uncomfortable elephant in the room: How can you make a snarky comedy about arming people who would later come back and become one of the USA's many number-one enemies? Well, you don't, and you tag the conclusion in an epilogue. Which may be the truest, unkindest joke of all.

ALIEN VS PREDATOR: REQUIEM (2007, Science-Fiction/Horror): Sixth (or eighth?) in a series of instructions on how to stomp two franchises deeper into the ground. By now, aliens and predators are so familiar that they could be making plushies of them for all the non-terror they inspire. This film doesn't add much to the mythos (barely a look at the Predator planet and a late Yutani cameo) and doesn't do much with the now-generic monsters. The human characters aren't particularly interesting either, and their gory deaths are far more ordinary than you'd expect. (Only a scene in a maternity ward actually stretches the boundaries of good taste and earns some begrudging kudos.) There are some okay special effects, but the men-in-suits shtick is all too obvious here. There's really not much to say about this film: it'll fade in memory even faster than the first ALIEN VERSUS PREDATOR, and that's a telling fact in itself.

ATONEMENT (2007, Drama): How fitting that a film about life-long guilt should seem to last forever. If you thought THE ENGLISH PATIENT wasn't long enough, then ATONEMENT is the movie for you: stiff-lipped English romantic drama against a WW2 backdrop, with self-important cinematography and lengthy meaningful pauses. It certainly aims for a particularly forgiving segment of the public, and it's no accident if I was the youngest member of the audience at the screening I attended. The opening manages to be both enigmatic and dull, with enough time-shifting to make anyone wonder if the reels have been wrongly put together. Then it's off to war, and the single best reason to see the film: a lengthy shot flying around three characters as they make their way on and off a beach where English troops are waiting to be evacuated. It's a show-off piece –just like most of what's distinctive about the film, up to and including the ending which slaps the viewer on the face and tells them they shouldn't have bothered. This is pure Oscar-bait, and it exemplifies the type of excruciating cinema that audiences have to inflict upon themselves if they want to stay current during the Awards season.

JUNO (2007, Comedy): There are a number of really nice things about this film, and it's a shame that some of them work at cross-purposes. JUNO may begin as a tart-tongued indie comedy with a lot of cynicism, but it gradually transforms itself into a relatively better-mannered romantic drama with a lot more heart than you'd expect from Rainn Wilson's initial rapid-fire smart-alec riffs. It works, in part because it mirrors the transitions of the characters themselves: Coolness is a variable quality in JUNO, and the better people can often be the ones you don't expect. It earns its heartfelt ending. On the other hand, the crunchy dialog gets more and more ordinary as the film advances, and it's easy to pine for the earlier flurry of quotable material. But a better case of instincts running aground can be seen in the typical "indie" feel: the minimalist soundtrack, the endearing goofiness of the characters, the jerky pacing, the basement-cheap cinematography and the deliberately off-the-wall opening credits. It works more or less well: JUNO wouldn't be the film it is had it been adulterated by a slick marketing department, but the rough edges of the film still feel off-putting. But I'm really being far more critical than I should: Out of a lengthy list of indie comedies that have caught on mainstream audiences lately, JUNO stands far above NAPOLEON DYNAMITE and is generally more consistent than LITTLE MISS SUNHINE. Ellen Page shines in the title role, and the script is pure savvy writing. Characters act in refreshing fashions (no cheap histrionics here) and stick in mind long after other films have faded in memory. Oh, just see it, all right?

ORPHANATO, EL ([THE ORPHANAGE], Spain, 2007, Horror): The best horror films are often those that don't reach for your throat with cheap shocks, loud stingers and oceans of blood. THE ORPHANAGE will feel immediately familiar to fans of THE SIXTH SENSE, THE OTHERS and PAN'S LABYRINTH: For a long time, there's little to suggest that this is a horror film, and the hints only accumulate gradually. Cranked like a purring machine, THE ORPHANAGE is light on shocks and deep in atmosphere. Belén Rueda's performance carries nearly the entire film as her character falls apart over the course of the events. There's much to applaud in the script, from the double-trigger twist to an emotionally satisfying climax that works by not wimping out. There are a few rough spots for dramatic purposes, but the rest of the film holds together and is easily better than the vast majority of American horror films. Remember the pedigree I mentioned? This is the horror film that every connoisseur will have to see this year, if only to nag those who haven't.

CLOVERFIELD (2008, Science-Fiction/Horror): It's too early in the year to start thinking about best-of-year lists, but I've got a feeling that I'll have to keep a spot for CLOVERFIELD. Sure, it can be instantly dismissed as "Blair Witch Gojira", or a "Monster movie for the YouTube Generation". The story is short and simple, the characters are sketches and the shakycam cinematography isn't as clear as it should be. But that's missing the point. CLOVERFIELD is a modest triumph of concept, taking a popcorn monster movie and bringing the audience so deep into it that it becomes a full-blown horror film. There are clear visual references to 9/11 early in the film, and it's hard to avoid thinking that this is the first good pop-culture film to completely internalize the chaos, the confusion and the terror of that day, transposed into something (monsters!) that had become innocuous through endless B-movies. As a movie geek, I was impressed at how well the filmmakers integrated the camera as a character in the film, how the continuous filming felt natural in the context of the piece and yet how they ended up capturing exactly the images they wanted. (Although I think the tower sequence is ill-served by the lack of visual detail.) The suspense works; the subway sequence is terrifying, but the death that it sets up is brutal in its execution. Oh, I can quibble with the best of them about the plot's logistical problems (walking long distances in minutes, getting off a snapping bridge far too easily, running without shoes and a gaping wound), but I can't deny that when this film works, it really works. One thing is for sure: It's so much better than the American remake of GODZILLA that it's like talking about different art forms.

THERE WILL BE BLOOD (2007, Drama): Every year, I do what I'm told and check out the Oscar-nominated films, catching up what I haven't yet seen. Usually, this is an exercise in tediousness: Oscar rarely agrees with the paying public, and there's usually a reason why I haven't yet chosen to see those nominated films. But I think of it as a master-class in respectable cinema. THERE WILL BE BLOOD is one of those films that aren't all that enjoyable, but are made of very impressive pieces. Daniel Day-Lewis is exceptional as the obsessed oilman around whom this film revolves, an ultra-capitalist who's not above two or three shocking gestures to prove his point. The clipped delivery of his dialog is only one of the elements that make his performance impossible to miss. Other sections of the film also hold up, in particular the historical re-creation of the early California oil boom. But writer/director Paul W.S. Anderson isn't particularly interested in an accessible piece of cinema: The soundtrack of the film is as deliberately grating as in PUNCH-DRUNK LOVE and his family epic stutters on and off without much connecting tissue. The film is about thirty minutes too long and yet so much material is missing that it often feels more like a series of sketches (or snippets from Upton Sinclair's original novel) than a coherent film. The shock value of his character's sudden violence also wears off quickly, leaving little to process once it's done with a bang. At some point, I even started musing about how a battle between capitalist and preacher isn't all that different from yet another ALIEN VS PREDATOR film: whoever wins, the rest of us lose. (Am I the only one who dares compare those two films?) (Also: and am I the only one who started imagining Daniel Day-Lewis doing a cover of Kelis' "Milkshake" at the end?) Other directors would have been able to do much better with the same material, but here we're stuck in a deliberately myopic view of a fascinating time with an even more mesmerizing character. But, hey, if that's the kind of thing that the Academy likes...

MAD MONEY (2008, Crime/Comedy): If you want to understand Hollywood, why not avoid the best, ignore the worst and take a look at what falls right in-between? Take MAD MONEY, for instance, a middle-of-the-road criminal comedy that does nothing particularly well but still manages to entertain as long as you don't ask too many questions. The setup is elegant: Three women in menial jobs at the Federal Reserve unite to smuggle out dollar bills on their way to the shredder. The details are dull and asinine (I can think of five practical objections to the scheme without thinking too hard: serial numbers; job rotation; truly-random searches, money laundering and volume handling), but this is not a detail-oriented movie. It's really an excuse to see Diane Keaton, Queen Latifah and Katie Holmes play their own demographic stereotypes and spend some time thinking about what we would do in a similar situation. Never mind the weird ethics in which the movie tortures itself, the inner moral contradictions, the cheap ending or the broad physical comedy that never feels even connected to reality. It's not such a bad time at the movies: in fact, given the dearth of female-driven movie out there, it's almost a welcome change of pace. MAD MONEY's script is clumsy, from a flashback-driven structure to a disappointing number of modest laughs here and there. But its main problem is the film's lack of overall ambition, mordant wit, ethical concern or sustained tension: it doesn't do much with what it has in stock. Oh, fans of the three lead actresses will be happy, but no one will be overly impressed. And that can very well stand for most of Hollywood's mid-list offerings.

UNTRACEABLE (2008, Thriller): I anticipated this film with a mixture of cringing and dread: "Cyber-Crime Movies", after all, have a terrible track records: From THE NET to FIREWALL (with a special dispensation for HACKERS' in-jokes), the field's been a laughingstock of dumb technological mistakes and routine thriller with a techno paint-job. UNTRACEABLE goes through the motions well and almost masters the jargon early on (you can spot the line where fiction leaves reality), but life keeps ticking out of this paint-by-number film almost as fast as the victims of the lame "Internet killer" anchoring this story. Diane Lane stars as an FBI agent on the case, but it doesn't take three acts to figure out the predictable outcome of the film as the identities of the victims come closer and closer to her. Worse: The unnerving nature of the film's high concept actually gets less and less interesting as the script ties it up together, as disappointing motivations get in the way of a pesky exercise in torture-porn film-making. The setups are obvious, the suspense is practically absent and the script seldom gets to the quick of its thesis on consequence-free voyeurism. The film's last thirty seconds are a mish-mash of reheated vigilante justice and an ironic coda that only server to highlight the issues avoided and the hypocrisy of the entire project. Tssk-tssk-tssk; so many wasted opportunities here. I'll grant that it's better than FIREWALL, but that's the very definition of low expectations.

RAMBO (2008, Action): There really isn't much to see in this dry, dull and wholly unnecessary fourth entry in this faded series. The threadbare plot is just an excuse to crank up blood-lust until it's all released in a long and self-mocking third act that is all about violent retribution. Thanks to cheap CGI and two decades of gore-hardened audiences, decapitations and amputations feature heavily in the cringe-inducing butchery; even jaded viewers will wince at this 300-level type of carnage. Not that there's any attempt at a deeper level of insight: The emotional beats of the story are trite, the moral arguments are non-existent, the villains have no personality beyond simple evil and the addition to the Rambo mythology are laughable. And even that is spending far too much time dissecting a movie that deserves no interest or attention.

PERSEPOLIS (2007, Biography): As a confirmed fan of Marjane Satrapi's graphic novel autobiography, I had a number of apprehensions about this adaptation, but most of them were swept away by the end of the movie: It works both as a film and as an adaptation, and the mixture of drama, history and humor is just as balanced on the screen than in the page despite significant differences in how the story is told. The basic idea remains the same: This is the story of a young Iranian girl who, growing up, sees the Islamic revolution first-hand, survives the Iraq/Iran war and is sent to Europe when her rebellion gets to be dangerous. (Not that the story ends there.) The film itself is a wonderful piece of stylistic charm, mixing high technology with Satrapi's iconic black-and-white drawings for a result that is quite unlike anything else in theaters this year. The writing is sharp either in French spoken dialogs or English sub-titles (one of which, regrettably, obscures a visual gag late in the film.) Fans of the original graphic novels will be pleased to note that the film exists as its own entity, with scenes that couldn't exist on the page; film fans will be even happier to discover the wealth of extra material that the graphic autobiography (now available in a single unitary edition) has to offer. There's a lot of biting humor and a lot of material to reflect upon, and the everyday details of life under an oppressive regime are telling. Comic books in written form have long escaped the "just for kids" stigma, and PERSEPOLIS will help do the same for the cinematographic form. If we're lucky, it will mean more animated adaptations of successful graphic novels.

On DVD:

MA FILLE, MON ANGE ([MY DAUGHTER, MY ANGEL], Canada, 2007, Crime/Drama): there's something hilarious about the film's self-important message about the dangers of letting your daughter go to the big city. Hard drugs, abusive boyfriends and Internet pornography are inevitable consequences of parental indulgence! The upper-middle-class paranoia of the script plays doubly false given the film's own titillation factor and goody-goody characters. The murder mystery ends up being a false front for a hypocritical feature-length reactionary tract that resolves itself in a bitterly unsatisfying twist. While the pacing is generally satisfying and the production value hold up well, the film itself is a hollow shell. Too bad; the actors do generally well with what they're given, and it's always a pleasure to see Michel Côté get in a fist-fight.

PETITE AURORE L'ENFANT MARTYRE, LA ([THE LITTLE AURORE, THE MARTYR CHILD] 1952, Drama): If you're looking for one of the biggest cultural icon of 20th-century Quebec, look no further: This is it. The movie that nearly every French-Canadian has seen at least once on TV, the classic story of an abused child suffering at the hands of her adopted mother in deep rural Quebec. (It's based on a true story.) I hadn't seen it in a while and while parts of the film appear quaint today, others have survived surprisingly well. It's a surprise to recognize megastar Jeanette Bertrand in an early role, and hardly a surprise to remember that the actress who played the abusive mother, Lucie Mitchell, was instantly stereotyped and was reportedly assaulted in real life by people who couldn't dissociate the actress with the character. Parts of the film are unbearably naive: The plot drivers are obvious, the technical quality of the film is poor, the staging is theatrical, the dialogs are on the nose, the scenes are slapped together (if you want to talk iconic, talk about the stove scene) and the ending reaches an apex of melodrama. But some fine bits still shine through: The outdoor scenes have a really convincing feel to them, the portrayal of an meek priest unable to stop the abuse can be seen as a daring criticism of the then all-powerful clergy, and as manipulative as it is, the melodrama still has a rough and respectable power. Certainly worth another look for anyone interested in French-Canadian pop-culture.

LES VOISINS ([THE NEIGHBOURS], Canada, 1987, Comedy): Some TV specials should never escape the vaults, and this eighties TV-movie is a fine example of why some archives are better off mouldering in silence. The DVD's promotional material will try to sell you the film as a satire about the emptiness of suburban lives, but it fails to add that the film itself becomes the equivalent of nails scratching a blackboard. The dialog, the acting, the cinematography: everything is so grossly amateurish that it's hard not to suspect a practical joke or a modern art project. But the effect is indistinguishable from a truly awful film: I contemplated life, obsessions and my DVD remote throughout most of the film, wondering if I absolutely had to go through it. The shifting levels of dialog alone (sometimes formal, sometimes slangy, always stilted) are enough to drive anyone crazy. The worst thing about LES VOISINS, though, is that it's crammed with half a dozen competent and funny actors who would go one to much better things: it's disheartening to see people such as Louise Richer stuck with a z-grade script and even worse direction. Avoid, just avoid.

CALL 77 NORTHSIDE (1948, Crime/Drama): Even sixty years later, James Stewart is still The Man: As the lead in this semi-documentary drama about a journalist working to free a man unjustly accused of murder, he's the mesmerizing rock upon which everything else depends. His impassioned speech at the end of the film evokes memories of other great Stewart performances, but it also stands on its own. Six decades later, it's easy to be amused by the dramatic devices in what must have felt like a techno-thriller back then: The lie detector, the photographic processes, the remote transmission process: yeah technology! But the film itself is solid: Even if the film shows its age, the characters are interesting, the rhythm compares well to other films of the time and the look at then-Chicago has its own charm. But most of all: James Stewart. The guy isn't one of the greats for nothing.

WAITRESS (2007, Comedy/Romance): You wouldn't necessarily expect a film about an unexpected pregnancy in the middle of a loveless marriage, leading to an affair between two married people, to be a feel-good movie. And yet that's exactly what it is: a sometimes-bitter, but mostly-sweet film about a woman rediscovering herself and taking control of her own life. The direction is charming, the script is steadily amusing and the acting is right where it needs to be: Nathan Fillion and Kari Russel are an ideal romantic couple, and the supporting characters hold their own. The ending is a perfect cap. What doesn't work as well is a certain unevenness of tone whenever the abusive husband is concerned: as soon as he enters the picture, WAITRESS seems to hop into a far less pleasant reality –which is part of the idea, but still disconcerting. I could quibble about the deus-ex-inheritance of the ending, but it does fit a certain fairytale ideal. Plus, I can't stay mad at any film that uses Cake's "Short Skirt Long Jacket" so effectively. Don't be surprised to develop a sudden craving for pie while watching.

VOLVER (2006, Comedy): As someone without much knowledge of Aldomovar's work other that "oooh, Aldomovar", I watched VOLVER feeling as if a good chunk of the film was hidden away from view. But even on a pure surface level, it remains an interesting, often endearing look at the lives of a few desperate women. Even with the deaths, betrayals and less-pleasant details of the film, it still feels like a feel-good comedy. Penelope Cruz is radiant as the driven protagonist; she seems like an entirely different actress in Spanish while away from the tepid roles she's been offered in English. What really amused me most about the film, though, was that as a seasoned fantasy/horror fan, I had no trouble accepting the possibility of a ghost, clinging to that explanation long after I should have figured out the truth. Otherwise, well, the film is definitely too long and the cultural context can be a handful to absorb at once, but that does tie back to my lack of familiarity with the director's other work.

NORBIT (2007, Comedy): Every year, the Oscars play a dirty trick on completists by nominating the worst sort of tripe for one of the technical categories. Last year it was CLICK; this year it's NORBIT for best make-up. Well, props to the Academy: The makeup effects that allow Eddie Murphy to play three roles alongside himself are top-notch and withstand way-too-close scrutiny. On the other hand, makeup is the only thing worth noticing about this tedious comedy that multiplies the Murphy Mugging factor. The plot concerns a henpecked man (Murphy), raised by an adoptive father (Murphy), hounded by a massive wife (Murphy) rediscovering his inner strength when a long-lost love (Thandie Newton, to be pitied) moves back into town. There's little to the predictable plot but a series of fat jokes and slight gags. The characters aren't caricatures; they're lobotomized stereotypes that highlight how the film was made for 12-year-old audience. The script is leadened with a series of overused jokes, unfunny concepts and dumb staging that will only make sense if you know nothing about the way the world works. (Hence the ideal 12-year-olds audience). Occasionally, NORBIT manages to strike a mildly amusing note or two; otherwise, it's a dreadful experience without much value.

NO END IN SIGHT (2007, Documentary): This brainy documentary takes on a tough subject (the way the aftermath of the invasion of Iraq was mishandled) without much in terms of eye-candy: It's mostly Baghdad footage and talking heads for the entire duration. But don't let that stop you from watching this intelligent explanation of how and why the United States has really dropped the ball and exacerbated existing problems after its invasion. A lot of this material will be familiar to observers of the situation over the past few years, but NO END IN SIGHT does a fine job at piecing it together in a coherent picture that goes beyond the easy headlines. It's a matter of policy decisions and adapting to the fact on the ground –and in there like in the rest of its administration, the Bush II regime is completely incompetent. The film shows over and over how capable people are ignored, sidelined or fired and replaced with ideologically malleable people who don't have a clue. It adds up to a profoundly depressing portrait, a methodical argument without much in terms of overt partisan polemic. (Though Rumsfeld act as the film's own bitter comic relief.) It's not documentary-as-entertainment like we've seen so frequently over the past few years, but it's a clever, remarkable piece of non-fiction cinema. It certainly deserves its Oscar nomination.