Year: 2005

  • Jarhead (2005)

    Jarhead (2005)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In theaters, November 2005) Most military fiction either glorifies the nobility of war or decries its murderous nature, but there’s a little-known third alternative, that of military service as a long stretch or boredom, loosely interrupted by terror, dashed expectations and boys being boys. More or less faithfully adapted from Anthony Swofford’s blisteringly honest autobiography, Jarhead follows the path of a Marine as he undergoes training and is then shipped off to Saudi Arabia just in time for Desert Storm. Director Sam Mendes gives a decent polish to this modern wartime story, but it’s what doesn’t happen that gives the film its unique edge: the protagonist’s testosterone overload is never quite satiated by the war, even though it is likely to end up being his life’s defining moment. Jake Gyllenhaal turns in a decent performance as “Swoff”, but it’s Jamie Foxx who steals the show as a professional soldier who does actually find satisfaction in being a warrior. (Hoo-Ha.) There’s plenty of political resonance between this and the American occupation of Iraq, but readers of the original volume will be disappointed by how Swofford’s explicit critique is here relegated to a minor character’s ranting. Visually, the film has a number of great moments —including a walk through a burning oil field. What doesn’t work so well is the suggestion that there’s a much better picture lurking under the surface, a movie with more daring and more energy. A movie closer to the book, one is tempted to say. Ultimately, Jarhead veers too closely to its subject matter: boredom.

  • The Ice Harvest (2005)

    The Ice Harvest (2005)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In theaters, November 2005) Director Harold Ramis here makes a blatant bid for the “Coen Brothers” type of film, only to fail when it becomes obvious that the script is only a pale copy of the “small city black comedy” sub-genre. Sure, protagonist John Cusack is always sympathetic (though he’s reaching an age where boyishness ceases to be an option), Connie Nielsen plays a suitable femme fatale and Billy Bob Thornton is effortlessly dangerous. But there’s a a lack of urgency in this script, despite the tight time frame, despite the desperate circumstances, despite the potential for interesting characters. Certain scenes rise above the others (isn’t it surprising how a guy talking his way out of a locked trunk is comic gold?) while others just linger in place. At least there’s plenty of skill to admire in the film’s first act, as it plunges us boldly in a situation where characters already have established relationships. To be fair, The Ice Harvest doesn’t attempt to be anything more than a low-octane criminal comedy, and it achieves this goal with a relative ease. The performances are relaxed, the direction is unobtrusive and until the drawn-out ending, the film moves at a comfortable rhythm. Not exceptional, but not too bad either.

  • Emergency Deep, Michael DiMercurio

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Onyx, 2004, 464 pages, C$9.99 mmpb, ISBN 0-451-41166-8

    (Read in French as Alerte: Plongée Immédiate, translated by Dominique Chapuis)

    One of the most frustrating aspect of military techno-thrillers is how often authors working in the genre will write series even when it doesn’t make sense. The problem can be tracked back to Tom Clancy, whose Jack Ryan found himself embroiled in a series of high-stakes adventures in one book after another. This makes sense when, say, your series is about events that have no impact on the shape of the world. (Which serves to explain the popularity of detective series) But wars, even when they’re imaginary, have a way of messing up geopolitical reality, and authors should at least take that in account, or abandon their fictional world once it has diverged too far away from reality. Seeing Harold Coyle trash Egypt, Iran, Mexico, Columbia and then try to merge it with real-world development (and then desperately “reset” the series in God’s Children) is almost too sad for words. Inevitably, the author ends up cheating by trying to exploit their reader’s attachment to characters while ignoring the lasting consequences of their actions. Even by the lowered literary standards of military fiction, this isn’t playing fair.

    All of this to say that poor Michael DiMercurio found himself stuck with his “Michael Pacino” series after Terminal Run. By then, the fictional world he’d set up was so divorced from current reality that his series was closer to Science Fiction than to current-day military relevance. This divergent universe had kept him shielded, somewhat, from the uncomfortable realities of post-Russia submarine warfare: In a real world where submarines were tools for superpowers and there remained only one superpower, how to justify submersed thriller without resorting to highly improbable scenarios like Joe Buff’s series, or feeble-minded absurdities like Patrick Robinson’s novels? The Pacino sequence offered ever-imaginary enemies to fight against. Alas, sales were down (even for an author who, at the best of times, didn’t escape the military fiction mid-list) for a series so hermetic than only fans of the previous volumes felt welcome. Hence the perils or continuing a techno-thriller series past its expiration date.

    So DiMercurio resets the clock and starts a new series with Emergency Deep, starring a new protagonist named Peter Voronado. The setting is recognizably closer to our own “War on Terror” universe, with threats coming from an unholy alliance between old-school Russian capabilities and new-style terrorist ideology. As the CIA gets wind of a plot to attack Israel, they inexplicably come up with a plan not to destroy the danger, but to infiltrate a spy in the enemy’s rank.

    This spy is Peter Voronado, champ submarine captain beached ashore by an extraordinary health problem. The first third of Emergency Deep is spent bringing together the elements of the plot, thanks to two lengthy prologues, one of which has no business in this novel in its current form. But DiMercurio is a military fiction writer; efficient writing is not his style, and so the novel takes an awful lot of time revving up to cruise speed. By the time Voronado finally reaches his covert position, a certain lassitude has already settled over the novel, a slight annoyance that only gets worse.

    As with many of his veteran colleagues, DiMercurio writes what he knows, but forgets how many details just aren’t useful to the vast majority of his well-meaning civilian readers. Emergency Deep quickly falls in the familiar trap of too many acronyms and not enough energy. Further problems develop along with a pair of unlikely romances, a few plotting issues and a clear lack of tension. The result is one solidly average military thriller that stretches a bit outside the usual confines of a submarine thriller, but not enough to be particularly memorable.

    One can’t fault DiMercurio for finding a way to ally Cold War equipment with concerns about terrorism, or for spending a lot of time “off the boat”, so to speak, in order to explore new directions. But Emergency Deep doesn’t do much with those elements, and fails at attracting new readers. It’s a good step in the right direction while remaining comfort food for his usual audience. But it’s unlikely to make him new fans, or even revitalize the moribund submarine thriller genre. Emergency Deep is slated to be the start of a new series of books; DiMercurio may want to re-think that plan.

  • Harry Potter And The Goblet Of Fire (2005)

    Harry Potter And The Goblet Of Fire (2005)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In theaters, November 2005) I’m afraid that the Harry Potter series has achieved escape velocity: every instalments is so competently made as to escape any worthwhile critical commentary, leaving the rest of us reviewers fighting over scraps like “ooh, isn’t Hermione such a cutie?” Slightly more accessible than The Prisoner Of Azkaban, but still feeling as if a number of important relationships were short-changed by the adaptation, Goblet Of Fire hits all of the expected notes and continues J.K. Rowling’s lucky streak in seeing respectful adaptations of her books. Not that the source material is flawless, of course: Harry’s passivity in this instalment is so pervasive that it leads to one asking “just how good a magician is he anyway? Isn’t he just an average wizard with a bunch of handy friends?” But even that gratuitous bit of sarcasm isn’t enough to dim the good movie-going pleasure that this film offers. The darkening of the Potterverse continues as it becomes more apparent than ever that Harry is stuck, pawn-like, in a larger tapestry of dangers not of his own making. Good stuff, especially if it develops into something even deeper in the next episodes. Which I’ll see as soon as it comes out, of course.

  • Derailed (2005)

    Derailed (2005)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In theaters, November 2005) Dour and ponderous, manipulative and sometimes incoherent, Derailed is further hampered by bad casting choices and a wholly unnecessary double ending. But don’t let that deter you: as a thriller, Derailed knows that it’s not playing in the big leagues, and this basic honesty does much to reconcile viewers with the picture’s raw exploitation. Nominally yet another vigilante story in which an innocent man’s small transgression gets him caught in ever-bigger lies, Derailed easily turns into yet another revenge picture. Here, Clive Owen is arguably miscast as a passive character who eventually learns how to, er, settle his issues decisively. Jennifer Aniston isn’t much better as a tragic heroine. (Only Vincent Cassel is pretty much perfect as the criminal mastermind, even slipping in a line that only Francophones will appreciate) The story is out to manipulate the viewer, and isn’t above lying, cheap shocks and an all-powerful villain to do so. Never mind the plot holes, of course. It adds up to a cheap thriller that at least doesn’t waste too much time. The third act isn’t so good, but by then the movie has to assume the choices it made. Too bad about the cheap second “Kill the bad guy! Kill him!!!” ending. It’s the kind of thing fit to make you wonder how the entire film would have worked so much better as a silly comedy. Chances are that you may enjoy the film as it runs. But you’ll have a hard time respecting it the next day.

  • Chicken Little (2005)

    Chicken Little (2005)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In theaters, November 2005) As tempting it may be to excuse this film’s flaws by restating that it’s a kid’s movie, it’s not much of an excuse when comparing the film to any of Pixar’s offerings. The comparison is even more apt considering that Chicken Little is the first film from Disney’s own CGI unit, whcih was set up partly to replace the Mouse’s dependence upon its Pixar distribution agreement. Alas, if Chicken Little occasionally shows moments of charm and wit, the overall film suffers from a bad structure, blatant emotional manipulation and tonal shifts that cumulatively take their toll. One thing that is irreproachable is the quality of the animation and some of the character design: Suburban Oakey Oaks residents are well-patterned after animals, and the sight-gags can be amusing. Sadly, some of those gags seem thrown in the movie without much attention to their surroundings: Chicken Little is filled with individual moments that don’t make much sense in context, especially given how the film doesn’t aim for absurd humour. This ties into the weak structure of the film, which feels padded and meandering; the baseball game sequence is a perfect example of this wobbly structure, clumsily inserted in the rest of the film almost as an excuse to present baseball gags. The soundtrack seems just as forced, providing even cheaper emotional manipulation than the rest of the oft-maudlin screenplay. Fortunately, it all leads to a more focused third act that’s even funnier with fresh memories of War Of The Worlds. But even this late-start burst of energy can’t hide a film that can’t manage to transcend its kiddie audience, much to the dismay of their parents.

  • Contacting Aliens, David Brin & Kevin Lenagh

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Bantam Spectra, 2002, 191 pages, C$22.95 tpb, ISBN 0-553-37796-5

    Few Science Fiction universe are as entertaining as David Brin’s “Uplift” series. On one level, it’s a standard galactic-civilizations setting, with plenty of alien races, big ideas, neat gadgets and an inspiring niche for humanity. It’s space opera at its finest, without much relevance to the future as it could be, but compulsively delightful for five of the six books in the series. (I still doze off at the memory of Brightness Reef). Brin is a natural storyteller: his mixture of humour, action and against-all-odds bravado is the stuff of classic SF adventures.

    The one bit of background innovation that makes it different from other series is a twist on environmentalist concerns: The galaxy out there, we finally discover once we start poking around the stars, is one big potpourri of related species. An essential part of the series is “Uplift”, the lengthy process by which one species brings another to sentience and full-fledged galactic participation. Every species has been uplifted by another… except, curiously enough, humans. In the series, humans have managed to uplift a number of species (dolphins and chimps, at first) while seemingly being patron-less. You can imagine how well the aliens are taking the news, and which kind of upset this causes in well-mannered galactic society.

    Contacting Aliens is, to steal the sub-title, “an illustrated guide to David Brin’s Uplift Universe”, designed as if it was a manual distributed to future agent of humanity as they travel across the galaxy. Galactic history and institutions are sketched, followed by a lengthy bestiary of alien species. Most of those description are accompanied with amusing ink drawings from Kevin Lenagh. The guide is roughly arranged in galactic “family lines”, which prove more related than at first glance. As befitting its billing as a “field guide”, the descriptions are written as coming from Earth’s intelligence agencies, with plenty of tantalizing details, vague suppositions and unanswered questions that agents may want to pursue.

    Fans of Brin’s universe will be thrilled at the wealth of details contained in Contacting Aliens. The Uplift universe is vast, dangerous and fun: If this book does one thing very well, it’s to keep up in the same amusing vein as the novels, balancing Brin’s optimistic humour with a thrilling setting that could still launch a series of adventures. (In fact, the book contains two mini-pieces of fiction that raise even more questions about the nature of the Uplift universe.)

    While the cover sports a spiffy colour illustration by Jim Burns, the guide itself is illustrated by Kevin Lenagh’s simpler black-and-white ink drawings. While Lenagh does an excellent job at portraying Brin’s wilder inventions, the artwork can often err on the rushed and silly end of things. Some of the human figures are unconvincing and the poses often feel unnatural. But I’m being too harsh, perhaps in comparison with Burns’ work: The guide would be much poorer without Lenagh’s artwork, and the sense of fun from Brin’s writing comes across clearly in the illustrations.

    If you’re not already a fan of Brin’s series, Contacting Aliens won’t be as interesting as it should be. Gamers used to reading role-playing source-books will find much familiar ground here (indeed, the book ends on a mention of the Uplift GURPS supplement), but the audience is definitely those readers looking for a little bit more Uplift material after the conclusion of 1998’s Heaven’s Reach. It shows the way to more stories in the Uplift universe and it’s certainly a treat for fans.

    [January 2006: Via email, Kevin Lenagh adds that he contributed a substantial amount of text in addition to the illustration. He also clarifies that the book suffered from a number of unfortunate production issues, making the end result somewhat less impressive that he had hoped for. Have a look at lenaghalienfactory.com for better examples of his art, including color versions of some illustrations in Contacting Aliens.]

  • Buffalo Soldiers, Robert O’Connor

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Vintage, 1992, 324 pages, C$21.00 tpb, ISBN 0-679-74203-4

    Comparing film adaptations to their source novels is a source of quasi-endless fascination, especially if you make the trip from the derived to the original work. The movie leaves you with images, structure and a smattering of good moments. Reading the book deepens the experience, and sometimes even takes you in a different story. Interestingly enough, more obscure source material (as in “I didn’t know this was adapted from a novel!”) usually reveal more interesting differences than celebrated media blockbusters of the Harry-Potter kind: It’s easy for a studio executive to mess around with lesser-known material without a fan base, but Warner Brother studios would be burned down to the ground by the kids if they even tried to mess around with the original. (“We can’t do that, sir! The kids will kill us! Won’t you think of the children? THE HORRIBLE CHILDREN?!”)

    Approaching novels after seeing the film isn’t just a mere exercise in frivolity and facilitated reading: Storytellers should learn how a story gets adapted from one work to another, which details need to be dropped, which changes are necessary to get the audience’s sympathy and so on. Even so-called “hard-edged” movies like FIGHT CLUB are nowhere near as nasty as their literary progenitors.

    And so it goes with BUFFALO SOLDIERS, a little-seen film with an interesting history. Billed as a satire about America’s Army at the close of the Cold War, BUFFALO SOLDIERS deals with an amoral anti-hero who manages to turn his stint in German barracks into a profit-making venture on the back of Uncle Sam’s supply lines. Drug-dealing, senseless deaths, inter-service conflict and racial tensions all play a large part in a film that brings to mind many other dark military comedies. Alas, this movie was premiered at the Toronto Film Festival on September 10th, 2001. The perceived profitability of cynical portraits of soldiers fell to the ground the very next day, sending the film back on the studio shelves, and then (much later) to a limited theatrical reserve and an even softer video release.

    Too bad, because if the film loses steam in its second half, it’s a serviceable little black comedy with an appealing anti-hero and some neat direction in its first half. It’s dark, but not unbearably so. It doesn’t portray the army favourably, but neither is it an all-out attack on the institution.

    The novel is something else.

    For one thing, protagonist Ray Elwood isn’t simply the clever petty-thief fixer of the film’s Joaquin Phoenix. In the novel, we’re quick to understand that this miserable heroin junkie is skating on a thin ice of brutal enforcement, cheap thrills, overwhelming greed and careful power-playing. Movie Elwood is a decent, if somewhat amoral chap. Novel Elwood is holding together solely because of fear and smack: Nearly everyone he knows would knife him in the back if they could.

    The rest of the novel runs in pretty much the same vein. The events are more similar to the novel that you’d expect (Elwood sees his position threatened by a new authoritarian Master Sergeant, so he seduces his rival’s daughter and sets up an epic drug deal as his last hurrah in the underground business. Then things go wrong.), but the tone is a lot darker. Some changes are significant, yet meaningless (Ray’s new girlfriend is an amputee in the novel, but the film’s Anna Paquin didn’t need the handicap one bit to fit the character), while others are small but important (the novel is set in, at the latest, the early eighties while the movie takes place in 1989. This is significant given how, historically, the US military had unbelievable morale problems in the seventies, gradually clawing its way back up to a far better all-volunteer fighting force. The harsh environment described in either version of Buffalo Soldiers makes sense close to the seventies, but increasingly less so after then.) And then there’s the ending, which was drastically altered from the novel to the film… and I’ll let you guess which one is happier.

    And yet, even as a written-word purist, I can’t really fault screenwriter Eric Weiss for softening up the story for the big screen. It’s not a revelation if I say that different mediums have different tolerances for excess: I can think of many scenes that work on the page and would be insupportable if captured on cinema. Junkie-Elwood is a fine novel narrator (except that he speaks in “you”), but he wouldn’t earn more than five minute’s sympathy on screen. The rough stuff that follows is interesting on the page, but would be stomach-churning if seen. The film is fine, and so is the novel: fast-paced, decently-written, sharply-detailed and cynical enough to make anyone think twice about enlisting. See the film, then read the book!

  • The Wreck of the River of Stars, Michael Flynn

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Tor, 2003, 534 pages, C$10.99 mmpb, ISBN 0-765-34033-X

    This is a review about a book, but like most reviews about a book it suggests more players than simply a review and a book. It suggests a reader and an author. It also suggests a reviewer as an actor in the melodrama that is a review. It suggests that every word of the review shines as much on the critic than the readers of the review who may (but not always) be also readers of the book. This is all very simple, or as simple as human affairs can ever aspire to be.

    The book may be called The Wreck of the River of Stars and its author may be Michael Flynn, but wouldn’t it be too quick to simply reduce this review to a mere work and a mere man? Isn’t it true that this book is the product of an entire genre called Science Fiction, of generations of writers all building upon the foundations left by previous writers? This review itself is the product of decades of reading, of writing, of confronting the reviewer with the harsh realities of the outside world as it exists outside the critic’s mind. This review, already quite simple, will turn out to contain multitudes.

    While the reviewer would want to discuss the novel, it would be more exact to say that, as with the vast majority of reviews in the history of humankind’s literary progress, it confronts an existing set of prejudices to a new work to be absorbed in the reviewer’s mind. That The Wreck of the River of Stars is a psychological drama masquerading as hard Science Fiction is less important than the critic’s preexisting prejudices about psychology, drama, masquerades, hardness, science and fiction. Deeper analysis is left to the readers, who will undoubtedly see the intricacies under the surface.

    Nothing, for instance, would be so simple as to say that the novel is about a crew’s efforts to save their spaceship from peril. Doing so would be doing a disservice to the intricately-defined interactions between characters and their environment. Historical antecedents for this type of novel may include an unworthy strain of “pulp SF”, which would negate this novel’s ambition as a fine exploration of complex psychological group dynamics.

    And yet there is another player in the drama of this review, this book, this appreciation. Is it possible to discuss the book intelligently without talking about the Voice of Reason narration so overwhelmingly used by the author? Is it possible to read The Wreck of the River of Stars without being spellbound by a narrative voice more knowledgeable than God himself? Is it even possible to criticize the author as the Voice itself seems to preclude any discussion? A Voice that knows the characters in all their folly, and yet describes even their silliest thoughts with a patience borne out of an infinite compassion?

    Hush, says The Voice with mellifluous kindness as frustration arises about the book’s length and patronizing narration. Don’t you know that humble SF fans such as yourself scarcely deserve the kind of psychological insight I proffer with this glorious work of literature? Haven’t you seen that the whole structure of the novel rests on a savvy use of the Briggs-Meyer schema? Don’t you-

    At this point, a number of entities in our joyous motley crew of parties dealt with in this essay, perhaps readers, would mumble vaguely about other concepts such as entertainment and pleasure of reading without spending an entire frickin’ weekend slogging through a hundred-page description of two guys eating space pudding while they’re thinking nasty thoughts about the rest of the doomed crew.

    But-, would say The Voice.

    Shut up, would reply the critic, you’ve had your five hundred pages. Let’s face it: The Wreck of the River of Stars is not just the most pretentious title of the year, it’s also one of the most overwrought excuse for an engineering-SF story that goes wrong and kills off more than half its characters through stupid stuff and the desire to show that you’re not just “another hard-SF writer.” To heck with that, and to heck with the Voice of God crap and to heck with taking a perfectly good thriller and messing it up with three hundred pages of material that could be handled in three lines and a half. Cripes.

    Surely you can’t be so angry, would say the Voice, breaking into the author’s voice.

    At eleven bucks, five hundred pages, a swarthier-than-thou narration and a downer of an ending, I can be as pissed as I want.

    Exit Author, Voice, Novel, Genre, and Critical theory.

    Exit Reader, Reviewer, Prejudices, Audience and Review.

  • Tooth and Claw, Jo Walton

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Tor, 2003, 292 pages, C$9.99 mmpb, ISBN 0-765-34909-4

    I don’t read a lot of fantasy, and that fact may have worked to my advantage as I made my way through Jo Walton’s short-but-rich Tooth and Claw. Perhaps the most succinct description one could make of the book would be “Austen with dragons” and it would even be exact: A comedy of manners set in a world peopled with wings-and-fire dragons, Tooth and Claw re-imagines the rigidly-defined social roles of Victorian romances as being motivated by the biological imperatives of dragonkind.

    As a book, it’s definitely a one-in-a-kind curiosity. But don’t think that the interest stops with the premise: Walton is able to do more than paint a pretty world, and so it doesn’t take a lot of time for the dragons, —scales, snouts and all— to grow on us as characters every bit as enjoyable as anything else in the Romantic canon.

    The plot is set in motion by the peaceful death of a family patriarch. His corpse has barely any time to cool down that it’s already being torn apart –literally. One thing leads to another and before long the whole inheritance issue is causing its share of troubles between the rest of the family, and those surrounding them.

    Despite the scaly eight-foot-tall characters, readers will immediately feel an atmosphere of comfortable reading pleasure. Walton deliberately sets her story in a universe not unlike the English Regency era, alternating between rich country estates and the griminess of a city not called London… Even the dullest fantasy/romance readers like myself will be off and running within a few pages.

    Don’t be fooled by the book’s relatively short page count: The story is so gripping that you’ll slow down to read every sentence in full, savouring how Walton is able to build a fabulous novel of character on top of a fantastic premise.

    What’s particularly noteworthy for a Science Fiction geek like myself is the way dragons are here approached almost as an exercise in alien world-building. Walton makes it seems as if the most outlandish aspects of her pseudo-romantic society logically derive from biological factors. I knew the novel was going to work for me when Walton explained the irreversible “blushing” effect and made it an integral part of dragon courtship: clever, clever stuff.

    Fans of Jane Austen’s work will be bowled over by the way Walton pays careful homage to the conventions of the genre, through inheritances, disdain of the church, reversal of fortunes, hard-working heroes and the reason for it all, big romantic love. There’s no shame in loving a book like this one when it’s so well done.

    Tooth and Claw is so surely manned, in fact, that it’s obvious midway through the book that this will end well not just for the characters, but for us as readers. Only a few misstep (the fortuitous arrival of a sizable fortune; too-similar names) mar the overall portrait, but they’re nowhere near denting the considerable reading pleasure offered by the book. An awe-inspiring hybrid between a literary joke and a wintertime-fireside comfort, Tooth and Claw is well worth a look, even for those who think they’ve got no time for romance or fantasy.

  • Gridlinked, Neal Asher

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Tor, 2001, 423 pages, C$10.99 mmpb, ISBN 0-765-34905-1

    Even since his 2001 debut, Neal Asher has been part of a new generation of British Science Fiction authors with ideas to burn and no mercy to spare. Along with other writers such as Alastair Reynolds or Richard Morgan, Asher has been busy putting thrills back in SF action novels. His fiction has only recently made it over this side of the Atlantic thanks to Tor’s reprints of his first few novels. Clearly, it was time to see what the fuss was all about.

    Starting from the beginning means going back to Gridlinked, the first novel in the “Polity” sequence that has so far tied together most of his work. The book works well as an introduction, even though its own introduction may be the best thing about it.

    Fans of hard-boiled espionage thrillers will feel right at home throughout the first few pages, as protagonist Cormac is revealed to be an agent for the interplanetary human government. Within a few pages, he efficiently dispatches a rebel threat to the Polity, blows up a part of the city and escapes with his life. It’s all good fun, packed with fast-paced action and a bit too much dripping violence.

    The real story then starts rolling, as the Polity sends Cormac on a primitive planet far away from the Grid in which our protagonist has been plugged for too long. A destructive act of sabotage may not be an accident –and it’s up to Cormac and his team to make sense of it. Meanwhile, the mindless action prologue turns out not to be so meaningless when a grieving man decides to hunt down Cormac wherever he is, bringing along some very scary friends…

    As setup, the first half of Gridlinked works beautifully. Despite some awkward language (“runcible” may have some appeal to native English-speaking readers, but it doesn’t carry much emotional weight for me), the Polity universe is efficiently introduced, with plenty of details to keep us interested. Civilization spans the galaxy, Hyper-intelligent AIs run everything, bioengineering is common and there are troubling signs of long-lived aliens. As if that wasn’t enough, Asher comes up with Mr. Crane, an insane, indestructible and very homicidal brass android. Killer robots are a dime a dozen in SF, but to see an schizophrenic one travel with a briefcase of meaningless toys is something else. (It’s no coincidence if the latest Asher novel is titled Brass Man.)

    But for all the cool toys and the fun stuff, the expansive playground and the thrill of good old action-adventure, Gridlinked seems to run out of steam midway through. Even weeks later, I remember a number of elements from the beginning of the novel, and almost nothing of the end. Not so coincidentally, I do remember a deep feeling of let-down at the point where the Dragon is revealed to be part of the novel’s plot rather than an amusing side-detail.

    The rest of the novel plays like a standard chase thriller with stranger pursuers and faster vehicles. Asher doesn’t to much with the un-gridlinking of his protagonist and spends too much time with the antagonist. After a while, it just becomes a big blur. You’ll keep reading to see what happens to a few characters, and sigh in slight exasperation as one miraculous escape follows another.

    I’m still not so sure why my interest evaporated so quickly: this is the type of novel that I’m supposed to like, and yet it just fell flat. The book as a whole runs significantly too long, leaving the impression that it’s overwritten. The mundane eventually overwhelms the interesting. Even the answers to the original mystery don’t seem so urgent by the end of the book. I found myself wondering when I’d be able to get my hands on Richard Morgan’s next novel.

    But I’m not giving up on Asher. He’s clearly part of Cyberpunk 2.0, and likely to grow into a more skillful writer: the memorable elements of Gridlinked clearly show that he’s not to be dismissed lightly. My dissatisfaction with Gridlinked may just be a freak accident of public transportation distraction, or it may be the result of a first novel’s lack of control. Whatever the reason, I’m likely to have a look at Asher’s other work… in due time.

  • Deception Point, Dan Brown

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Pocket, 2001, 557 pages, C$11.99 mmpb, ISBN 0-671-02738-7

    Books seldom get a second chance. Most of them surface in bookstores, don’t sell all that well and disappear in a whimper, never to resurface. In lucky cases, they may be reprinted after a movie adaptation or a runaway bestseller by the same author. In Dan Brown’s case, his publisher didn’t just get one mega-seller with The Da Vinci Code: It got three bonus best-sellers by reprinting Brown’s previous novels, none of which had sold all that well during their first print runs. (The good news is that if you’ve got one of those first editions, you can pretty much pay for your next holidays by selling it to collectors.)

    And so that’s how Deception Point re-emerged in bookstores three years after original publication, granted a second life by the boffo success of Brown’s fourth novel. For fans of The Da Vinci Code or Angels & Demons, how does Brown’s third novel stack up?

    The least one can say is that there is consistency to his method, even though the atmosphere of the book is different from the “Robert Langdon” thrillers. Deception Point is more political (not partisan, mind you, but with a number of power-playing politicians as characters), more action-oriented and, in some respects, closer to a typical techno-thriller than Brown’s best-known works. For those who complained that The Da Vinci Code was all talk and little action, have a look at this one.

    It starts in Washington D.C., as protagonist Rachel Sexton is sent to an Arctic glacier on behalf of the president. Her mission: validate a revolutionary scientific find that you won’t have any trouble guessing ahead of time. But things aren’t so simple, of course. For one thing, Rachel is the daughter of another politician with excellent chances of taking over the White House. For another, there are three Delta Force operatives buried in the snow, making sure that everything goes according to plan…

    No doubt about it: Deception Point is a full-bore, straight-ahead thriller that faithfully understands the rules of the genre. Exotic facts, clear characters, steady forward momentum and unobtrusive writing are the norm here, and it’s not hard to imagine Brown asking himself “How can I juice up this storyline?” over and over again. As a result, there are the usual nick-of-time escapes, chases, explosions, fancy deaths and ruthless operators. It’s formulaic, but it works really well in sucking the reader from one tight chapter to another. While the literary and religious world have united in condemning Brown’s success, faithful thriller readers can only appreciate that Brown is just doing what he’s supposed to do. NRO, nuclear submarines, oceanographic research, high-tech weaponry, White House operational details, woo-hoo!

    It’s not all good, of course. A number of errors here and there spoil the effect (somehow, I don’t think that an entire meteorite can be heated up by a focused laser), but not as much as a few outrageous developments. In his quest to amplify the impact of his storyline, Brown often overreaches, and the reader is abruptly reminded that this is only, after all, a particularly sophisticated thrill machine. (This impression gets worse as the book nears its end and lasts just a bit too long.) Brown does himself disservice by swearing up and down that technologies described in the book all exist: knowledgeable readers will roll their eyes at the ways he stretches a number of point. His sources of inspiration are also obvious: Echoes of 1996-1998 Bill Clinton are obvious in at least two separate plot threads.

    Worse yet for Brown fans is the way he repeats himself from one novel to another. Never trust his mentor characters! What’s both amusing and infuriating is the way Brown is willing to take on sacred cows (the Vatican, CERN, here NASA) in his quest for ever-more fantastic antagonists: While it may be interesting to read about, it also sends a generally muddled message –assuming messages are what Brown wants to send.

    Otherwise, well, this is another solid thriller from a writer suddenly hyped beyond any reasonable chance of fulfilling expectations. It may or may not be better, from a technical perspective, than The Da Vinci Code, but it’s sure to offer what people are looking for when they’re picking up a thriller. It seldom slows down during its 550+ pages, and neither will readers.

  • The Curse of the Were-Rabbit aka Wallace and Grommit In The Curse Of The Were-Rabbit (2005)

    The Curse of the Were-Rabbit aka Wallace and Grommit In The Curse Of The Were-Rabbit (2005)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In theaters, October 2005) Expectations were high for this first feature-length Wallace and Gromit film after the success of their previous short animated films and the boffo Chicken Run. Fortunately they’re all met with stylish wit in this animated horror film parody. Once again, the staff at Aardman studios is in full mastery of their art: Grommit’s silent performance is astonishing, and not just because it’s coming from a staff of dozen. A number of surprisingly audacious gags (featuring religious imagery, or produce-driven innuendos) pepper a solid script that will appeal equally to kids and adults. The deliberately rough claymation “with fingerprints” is a debatable artistic choice, but the rest of the film is almost perfect. Don’t miss it: it’s sure to become a DVD classic.

  • The Republican War on Science, Chris Mooney

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Basic Books, 2005, 342 pages, C$32.95 hc, ISBN 0-465-04675-4

    Faithful readers of these reviews (if any) already suspect my distinct lack of enthusiasm for the Bush administration in particular and modern Republicanism in general. If there was plenty to admire in the traditional Republican model (fiscal restraint, promotion of civility, determination to use force when necessary), the newer post-Goldwater Republicanism has forged an alliance between religious conservatives and big-business interest that’s simply too dangerous to condone. Especially when its starts messing with science.

    In The Republican War on Terror, science journalist Chris Mooney takes aim, as the title clearly indicates, at the steady pattern of anti-scientific behaviour from Republican politicians. While acknowledging early on that political abuse of science is a bipartisan affair, Mooney thinks that there is particular cause to single out Republicans (not just the Bush administration) as the worst offenders. They, argues Mooney, have a long history of deliberately misrepresenting research, shutting down independent enquiries and financing their own brand of contrarian research through ideological think-tanks. After reading the book, you’ll be hard-pressed to disagree.

    The problem stems from the modern Republican Party’s two biggest constituencies: The Religious Right and Big Business interests. Neither of them are particularly interested in the objective assessment processes of science, nor in factual conclusions. Mooney takes us back to the Reagan years, with a look at the Goldwater campaign, to demonstrate the long history of anti-intellectualism within the Republican Party. Then he works his way forward, showing the damage caused by both of those factors.

    Big Business, of course, has a number of business models to protect. Anything that suggests health impacts from industrial activities directly threatens those business models. Hence the tobacco companies’ efforts at discrediting links between cigarettes and lung cancer. Hence the efforts to finance studies by ideologically-driven institutes to disprove or dismiss evidence of Global Warming. You can expect industry lobby to say these things, but when Republican members of congress parrot the same lines, (allowing the “moderate” Bush administration to say “well, there’s doubt out there”), it’s clearly not the same game.

    The Religious Right, on the other hand, has realized that strictly moral points aren’t “sellable” by themselves and so resorts to false science in order to “demonstrate” its ideological values. Can’t argue that abortions are immoral? Just manufacture proofs that abortions offer health risks. Can’t deal with the reality of condoms? Just say they don’t work. Studies that suggest that abstinence-only sexual education programs are ineffective or that needle-exchange programs work are dismissed not because they’re flawed, but because they don’t agree with the conservative social agenda. Again, you would expect church leaders to make those claims, but when carefully-chose federal officials start messing with research funds in order to eliminate dissenting research, it’s time to ring the alarm bell.

    Mooney shows, over and over again, a steady pattern of scientific abuse, dismissal, politicization of government agencies, anti-intellectual trends, attack mechanism that the anti-science agenda of the Republican party becomes more than obvious. (And we haven’t even said anything about the “Intelligent Design” nonsense.) Particularly revealing is the pattern through which politicians can influence scientific research through spin or budgetary manoeuvres. It’s impossible to claim an interest in the modern scientific research process and ignore this book. (And lest I be accused of cheap anti-Americanism, it’s true that Canada’s own federal research infrastructure has known its share of controversy. Search around for “Shiv Chopra” for the details.)

    The Republican War on Science is certainly not a pleasant reading experience. It’s infuriating, depressing, mind-boggling and completely convincing. Mooney has spent a lot of time and effort proving his thesis: Of the book’s 342 pages, eight list interview subjects and over sixty are made of notes and sources. A dozen-page index makes this a great reference source. The main text itself is clearly written and utterly damning. The thin appendix suggests a few solutions, but the problem itself seems formidable. Maybe it’s time for our American friends to clean their House?

  • Saw II (2005)

    Saw II (2005)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In theaters, October 2005) While no classic, the original Saw at least played with a very unnerving idea: The thought that someone could put you in a situation where your only chance at survival would be to do extreme violence to yourself. Simple idea, fairly well executed despite a number of misfires. Unfortunately, the shell of this concept seemed to have been lost in this sequel, which ignores the horror of puzzle boxes to instead rely on a bunch of fairly unlikeable people thrown together as for an extra-gory reality TV show. The murderer is once again an all-knowing, all-powerful villain: his unlikely influence on the events is a bit too much to consider seriously. Overall, the film sputters without much of a clue: even the end’s climactic mutilation seems more dumb than horrific. (Use mirrors, dude!) Oh well; as exploitation horror sequels go, I’ve seen much worse.