Year: 2008

Area 7, Matthew Reilly

Area 7, Matthew Reilly

ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

St. Martin’s, 2001 (2003 reprint), 490 pages, C$10.99 mmpb, ISBN 0-312-98322-0

If ever Matthew Reilly’s publishers are scouring the web for snappy blurbs, here’s the best I can do: “Matthew Reilly is the mad man of thrillers.”

It’s even true.

Because other writers write thrillers as if they’ve got constraints to respect. Budgets. Logic. Physics. Reilly, on the other hand, thinks that none of those things should stand in the way of a kick-ass thriller. And seeing how much fun his novels are to read, it’s hard to disagree with him.

Area 7 alone, for instance, has a massive underground complex filled with government secrets, advanced airplanes, traitorous special forces, serial killers and Kodiak bears. That’s beautiful, and I haven’t even told you anything yet about a President of the United States whose heart is wired to an explosive charge, and the special game that pits the President’s secret service against a renegade bunch of racist military personnel. Do I really need to? This is a novel in which, for goodness’ sake, the protagonist escape to orbit midway through the story, and them come back down for more explosive action.

If you have already read some of Reilly’s other thrillers, you will find yourself at home: It’s got the same scope of imagination, the same madcap pacing, the same rush through mysteries and revelations. Any other writer feels like a poky geezer after Reilly’s thrill-a-chapter experience.

The similitudes to his other novels will be obvious. Not only does Area 7 feature protagonist Shane “Scarecrow” Schofield (who also starred in Ice Station), it also takes place in a generally confined environment like the eponymous Ice Station or the library of Contest. Like most Reilly novels so far, it features a lone hero acting alongside crack teams of opposing forces, plays along with high-tech weaponry and seems aimed more at jaded action movie fans than traditional thriller readers.

By the time our hero blasts off into orbit to duel with astronauts defecting to China and control a satellite that relays instructions to the President’s bobby-trapped pacemaker, (or something like that) it’s far too ridiculous to be taken seriously: even when it works, it works on a different level, one that takes place on the meta-fictional plane where author and reader are trying to one-up each other in a complex game of self-aware genre protocol redefinition.

Or maybe it’s just explosive slam-bang action throughout. At some point it’s exhausting to pick where earnestness stops and parody begins. Suffice to say that if Area 7 has a flaw, it’s the same one as Reilly’s other thrillers: By pummeling readers with non-stop action and ever-crazier developments, it runs the risk of exhausting its audience. Ironically, it’s page-a-minute speed freaks rather than slower, infrequent readers that may have bigger problems reading the book: Unlike other writers who pad their narrative with description and character moments that can be skipped on the way to the next plot point, Reilly dispenses with those uneventful stretches and so trips up readers who have made a habit out of skimming. He only gets detailed when writing an action sequence in which all the small details have to be aligned. Otherwise, it’s gunshots and explosions all the time.

It goes without saying that Reilly’s writing for a specific audience, and that this audience is considerably smaller than the total book-toting public. But his formula has become sheer performance art, and I can’t wait until I can read his next novel.

Defining Diana, Hayden Trenholm

Defining Diana, Hayden Trenholm

ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

Bundoran Press, 2008, 285 pages, C$19.95 tpb, ISBN 978-0-9782052-0-1

Some novels are tougher to review than others, and as far as I’m concerned, Defining Diana is right up there along with the toughest. Understand that I want to say something nice about the novel: I bought it, autographed, straight from the hands of the author. I want Hayden Trenholm to succeed at what he does, as much as I want to read great Science Fiction. As if that wasn’t enough, Defining Diana is also a publication from a Canadian small-press publisher that specializes in genre literature, and criticizing Canadian small-presses feels just as bad as kicking puppies. (I’m not saying on what authority I can make this comparison.)

But if I had read this novel in normal circumstances, bought in bookstores from an unknown author and just any other publisher, this review wouldn’t exist. I would have read the book, shrugged and gone on to something else. The problem with Defining Diana is that it’s a generic novel that struggles for distinction in a market that churns out hundreds of other SF novels per year. What actually makes the novel special for me (its Canadian-ness, its place in the bibliography of someone I know) may not actually do anything for you.

Even the plot summary seems to court generic ennui. In 2043 Calgary, a woman named Diana is found dead in a locked apartment, and the lacks of DNA clues don’t add up for the detectives on the scene. Faster than you can say “locked-room mystery”, Calgary Police’s Special Detection Unit is on the case. But Calgary’s a big city, other things are happening, and SDU members seem to have been selected more for their neuroses than their special detection skills…

If defining Diana is the novel’s first pressing question, it’s soon submerged under a number of subplots. Some of them are related and other aren’t, but it all adds to a portrait of Calgary a few decades in the future. While the background elements of the future seem taken from generic mildly-dystopian SF elements (environmental degradation, pervasive corporatism, ever-present terrorism, rising fundamentalism, etc.), the concept of setting this story in Calgary bring a certain freshness to the book: Despite being Canada’s third most important SF metropolis, Calgary has yet to be mined for inspiration in the same way Toronto or Montréal have been. If nothing else, it makes Defining Diana one of the purest Canadian Science Fiction novel of the past few years, and that’s nothing to dismiss easily.

But the problem with this novel’s multiplicity of subplots, and their conventional nature drawing equally from police procedurals and Science Fiction, is that it’s hard to avoid a certain boredom. What didn’t help were a number of deliberate writing techniques: a number of infodumps between characters who should know better; on-the-nose dialogue; and a succession of pop-culture references that feel old even by today’s standards, let alone those of 2043. All of those can be explained by a desire to make the novel more accessible to older non-genre readers. (The same writing tics often pop up in Robert J. Sawer’s fiction) But they often feel graceless, forced and useless: Few things are as exasperating as reading a few lines of dialogue and think “there’s probably a joke in there for those who watched the CBC in the seventies.” Not everyone is as jaded as I am, sure, but all of the above made reading the novel more of a chore than I expected.

While I’m discussing small deliberate annoyances, I might as well get to the small-press-and-puppies-kicking part: Bundoran Press may want to spend just a bit more time working on the packaging of their next novels. Defining Diana‘s uninspired book design isn’t a problem, but the copy-editing has let a few amusing mistakes through (I’m still wondering what a “boarder patrol” [P.44] actually does.) and the garish cover looks as if it’s been put together from free clip-art sources. Just try to explain that SF is a respectable literature to anyone who catches you reading this.

But now that I’m done venting, here comes the good part: As mentioned above, I don’t think there’s been a purest Canadian Science Fiction novel recently. For all of its faults, Defining Diana does something that I always find admirable, which is to define a future from modern Canadian principles. It’s urban, it’s multicultural, it’s energetic and it generally espouses good middle-of-the-road Canadian values by showing what happens if you push too far in the other direction. I’ve mentioned that Calgary seldom earns any extrapolative love from the Canadian SF community, but Canada often gets short-changed by its own authors. It’s about time that Canadian SF writers start thinking about futures set at home, even if it’s as background for deeper character stories. Defining Diana does that, and thus easily earns a place on my Aurora Awards ballot for 2008. For those who don’t care about awards, consider this: I expect that the ideal audience for this book, which is to say readers who like SF police mysteries but haven’t overdosed on them, will like the book a lot more than I did.

And you know what? I will gladly pay cash for Trenholm’s next novel.

(But we’ll see then whether he agrees to dedicate it to me.)

Running Blind, Lee Child

Running Blind, Lee Child

ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

Jove, 2000 (2005 reprint), 498 pages, C$10.99 mmpb, ISBN 978-0-515-14350-8

Every series has a weaker volume, and so I think I just found Lee Child’s worst novel in the six I’ve read so far. Not a bad batting average, especially considering how readable Running Blind remains despite a really silly conclusion.

It’s even more remarkable considering how consistently good the Jack Reacher series has been until now, blending tough-guy narration with credible procedural details and genre-aware plot twists. It’s a telling detail that despite many far-fetched premises, the Reacher series has remained generally credible until now, where a twist too far makes the whole novel crumble on its foundations.

But let’s not get ahead of ourselves, nor spoil the novel ahead of its time.

Running Blind starts like many Jack Reacher novels do, with something unrelated. This time, Reacher is in New York City, enjoying an out-of-the-way restaurant while mulling over his relationship carried over from Tripwire. It’s an unusual beginning given how the rest of the series seems content to ignore previous adventures. It’s also a signal that this volume’s Reacher will be considerably more introspective than in the others. But don’t worry, because you get bone-crushing action before the end of the sixth page, as Reacher smacks down a few hoodlums intent on explaining a protection racket to a new restaurant owner. Unlike most incidents of Reacher generosity, this one has consequences leading to Reacher’s apprehension. But he’s not charged with what he expects: it turns out that around the country, women with a past link to Reacher are being murdered by what appears to be a serial killer, and Reacher fits the psychological profile of such a killer almost perfectly.

Will Reacher be forced to clear his name? Not really, because his explanation of why psychological profile is nonsense is quickly followed by another murder for which he’s got an official alibi. Reluctantly brought inside the investigation to help, it’s obvious that he doesn’t have many friends in uniform: his presence is barely tolerated, and his solid instincts as an investigator are the only thing making him useful to the authorities.

But this wouldn’t be a Reacher novel without at least one dramatic twist at some point during the narrative, and the one in Running Blind comes later than most as Reacher suspects that there’s no serial killer at work.

Alas, the novel jumps off the rails soon afterward, as (SPOILER) the only way Child can bring his various impossibilities together is by asking readers to believe in a mastermind able to hypnotize a dozen people well enough to make them act upon specific instructions weeks after the hypnosis session, and collaborate willingly in their own death. And also ignore a cumbersome delivery sitting in their garage during this whole time.

I mean: come on. That kind of cheap plotting trick may have been cute in dime novels, but it’s not because the Jack Reacher novels are the best modern equivalent to men’s pulp thrillers that Child can get away with that this time around. Never mind the moody Reacher (who gets a stay of relationship when his past paramour flees to England, resetting the continuity in time for the next novel): that dumb hypnosis plot contrivance is the one thing that separates Running Blind from the rest of its better Child brethren. It’s a shame, really, because the rest of the novel is vintage Child, with the tough prose, page-flipping rhythm and well-painted characters.

But everyone gets a day off once in a while, and Running Blind is the weak spot so far in the Reacher series. One of the only advantages of reading the series straight through (as part of my Lee Child Reading Project) after discovering it in a late installment is the reassuring knowledge that it’s an unusual lousy episode, and that the rest of the series goes back to normal.

Body of Lies, David Ignatius

Body of Lies, David Ignatius

ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

Norton, 2007 (2008 reprint), 360 pages, C$15.50 tpb, ISBN 978-0-393-33429-6

The years since the cold war haven’t been kind to espionage thrillers. After the fall of the USSR, writers had a tough time finding a credible replacement for the all-powerful Soviet Empire. Trying to spy on drug cartels, North Koreans or secretive corporations sometimes worked, but often didn’t carry the same charge. But as Body of Lies demonstrates, spying is still a capable thrill generator, as long as you understand the nature of twenty-first-century intelligence operations.

While many contemporary thrillers have taken refuge in fantasy world made of politically partisan axioms, reporter David Ignatius’ Body of Lies heads into the other direction, taking a hard look at America’s increasingly precarious place in the world. The novel begins in post-invasion Iraq, as American intelligence services are looking for ways to infiltrate terrorist networks. But their intentions aren’t matched by their power on the ground, and it’s up to agent Roger Ferris to suffer the consequences of stateside callousness when his ground operation blows up in his face. Transferred to Jordan while his marriage crumbles, Ferris finds himself stuck between his cynically slimy boss and the head of the Jordanian intelligence service. While Europe has to deal with an unprecedented campaign of suicide bombers, Ferris hits upon a plan to infiltrate a terrorist network… thanks to a dead body.

But if there’s a recurring idea in this book, it’s that for all of their money, intentions and high tech equipment, Americans are disadvantaged when it comes to ground operations in the Middle East. Trying to run spies in foreign countries can be a difficult dance with local authorities, while terrorist networks find strength in their tech-savvy lack of central organization. In this context, Ferris is a young man with an old-school mentality, as he disdains the quick crutch of signal intelligence in favor of human assets cultivated over sustained relationships.

Perhaps Body of Lies‘ finest achievement is in re-casting well-worn spy thriller concepts in a way that seems perfectly attuned to the current zeitgeist. Its portrayal of modern intelligence operations is credible, even as it self-avowedly riffs off a World War 2 operation as its central conceit. (Fans of Ewen Montagu’s The Man Who Never Was will be pleased.) At the same time, Body of Lies tackles several of the standby themes of espionage fiction: the twisted relationships, the power trade-offs, the lack of trust, the tension between signal and human sources, the hierarchal tensions between field operators and headquarter managers, and so on. For those who haven’t read a good spy thriller in a while, Body of Lies is a great way to get back in the genre: it’s got vivid characters, mesmerizing procedural details and crisp writing. Best of all, it’s got no visible political ax to grind beyond an acquiescence that America often makes mistakes.

Fans of the Ridley Scott movie adaptation will be pleased to see that the film stays surprisingly true to most of the book despite the removal of one major female character and the titular body of lies. But there’s a really fascinating extra plot twist near the end of the story that wasn’t carried over the the film, a pernicious little extension of the story’s theme that becomes a bonus for those tempted by the book.

Body of Lies is all the more remarkable in that it’s a perfectly entertaining beach read that also doubles as a solid world-aware thriller with more on its mind than just gunfights and jeep chases. It’s American without being America-centric, and modern without abandoning the lessons of the past. It’s a welcome tonic for the spying thriller, and a satisfying read for anyone who’s paid attention to the headline news over the past few years.

Transporter 3 (2008)

Transporter 3 (2008)

ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

(In theaters, November 2008) The first film was dumb, the sequel was dumber and this one is the dumbest. But the worst sin of writers Luc Besson and Robert Mark Kamen is to saddle returning protagonist Frank Martin with one of the most unlikable love interest in recent memory. Sullen moody marble-mouthed raccoon-faced “Valentina” somehow manages to seduce Martin, but viewers may be forgiven for wondering how much more fun the film would have been with a real sullen moody marble-mouth raccoon in the passenger’s seat. Transporter 3 never recovers from that mistake, and even the chases and gunfights of the film all seem lame given the lack of empathy regarding Martin’s charge. Only Jason Statham does well and saves his honor throughout the film; the rest is eminently forgettable. After a bad second installment, let’s just hope that this franchise is now out of its misery.

Red Thunder, John Varley

Red Thunder, John Varley

ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

Ace, 2003 (2004 reprint), 441 pages, C$10.99 mmpb, ISBN 0-441-01162-4

Genre fiction is often defined as an ongoing conversation within which a set of common attitudes are shared and forged. When genre works well, it allows writers to depend on an audience that is already sympathetic to their goals and methods. Free from re-inventing the wheel, genre writers can explore more intricate issues. But when genre goes bad, it lock both writers and readers in a set of outdated assumptions that have less and less to do with the world outside.

This meta-conversation about genre has been ongoing in the Science Fiction community for, oh, decades, but it’s always revealing to illuminate the discussion with specific examples. Alas, John Varley’s career looks like it’s sliding into a specific case study of what can happen to a genre writer as he slides into obsolescence. The early phase of Varley’s career, with works like The Ophiuchi Hotline, was characterized by strong genre awareness and capable writing skills: Free to play around in structures built by Heinlein and his predecessors, Varley explored new issues of gender and body modification in ways that were friendly to the SF genre audience.

But recent works like Red Thunder may be showing a writer increasingly reluctant to extend genre premises, and far more comfortable providing comfort reads to a penned-in audience. Red Thunder is fun if you’re already a Science Fiction fan, but it may not withstand a moment’s scrutiny from more demanding readers.

Oh, it starts well enough: For all of his other faults, Varley can still write compelling narration, and Red Thunder quickly establishes not only its dynamic teenage narrator Manny (whose family is barely hanging onto a strip motel), but the rest of the Floridian characters who will come along for the ride: A rich rebellious girlfriend, a good buddy skilled in engineering matters and his no-nonsense girlfriend.

But things take a turn for good-old pulp SF when Manny befriends a washed-up colonel and his idiot-savant brother. Thanks to a very convenient discovery and two just-as-conveniently rich characters, they’re able to slap together a few pieces (using “all-American guts”, specifies the back-cover blurb) and go to Mars in time to beat the Chinese to the landing and save a NASA mission doomed by committee-driven engineering flaws. Try as you might, I’m not sure you could come up with a pluckier story to please long-time Analog SF fans.

It’s bad enough that the revolutionary “bubble” technology has been invented by a mentally-challenged genius speaking with a Louisiana accent. It’s the by-the-number plotting in which our teenage heroes and their redeemed captain build the ship, race to Mars, giggle at the Chinese and rescue their NASA friends that really makes the entire novel redundant. It’s a greatest-hits of common SF daydreams with nary a hint of plausible deniability. Try to tell the story to a non-SF reader: they’ll roll their eyes and mutter something like “you’re still reading this stuff?” despite your attempts at saying that this is aimed at young adults: Let’s face it, the novel was marketed at adults and makes most sense only to those who overdosed on Heinlein during their long-past teenage years.

The only reason why Red Thunder holds together is Varley’s ability to write compelling prose. Even those who want to dismiss the novel as nothing more than reheated space-age fantasies will be hard-pressed not to enjoy the procedural elements of how a small group of teenagers are able to weld together a spaceship bound for Mars. No matter how ludicrous it is, how wobbly its foundations are and how obvious its plotting remains, Red Thunder is a fun read. Don’t blame Manny and his friends for being stuck in the dusty daydreams of a dying genre: just hop along for the ride and nod your head at the expected plot points. Varley hasn’t written nearly enough in the past decade, and once stuff like Red Thunder is out of his system, maybe we’ll be back to top form sometime soon.

RocknRolla (2008)

RocknRolla (2008)

ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

(In theaters, November 2008) It may be that marrying Madonna was the worst artistic mistake Guy Richie ever made, and his partial return to form with this film in the wake of his divorce will only intensify this supposition. Going back to Richie’s London-underworld roots, RocknRolla isn’t quite as good as Snatch or Lock, Stock And Two Smoking Barrels, but at least it’s quite a bit above Swept Away. The flashy direction is back, as is the rock-and-roll soundtrack. From the first few intense minutes, the story steadily complexifies, until you can’t tell the good from the bad guys. And there lies the biggest of the film’s problem: For all of the crazy narrative energy, bravura set-pieces and Thandie Newton’s purring performance, it’s never too clear who, exactly, we should be cheering for. There are no everyman protagonists in this crazy gallery of ever-crazed criminals. Mark Strong may be admirable in his second breakout performance of the year (mere weeks after Body of Lies), but his crime-lord personae isn’t one to empathize with. Unlike Richie’s two best films, RocknRolla is a performance to be watched rather than a film to like. It’s quite a bit of fun, and a really promising step back up in his career, but it’s still missing something underneath the surface gloss.

Quantum Of Solace (2008)

Quantum Of Solace (2008)

ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

(In theaters, November 2008) This second Daniel Craig outing as James Bond may be a straight sequel to Casino Royale, but it suffers greatly from a comparison to its more robust predecessor. Here, the re-invention of James Bond goes too far in drama, presenting a damaged protagonist that isn’t nearly as appealing as the franchise should be. Worse, Quantum Of Solace is further hampered by a dull plot and nonsensical directing, with a result that will leave most viewers pining for the energy of the previous entry. While the film is too professionally made to be boring (and, by virtue of being Bond, is essentially critic-proof), it’s certainly underwhelming and will remind fans of the lackluster Pierce Brosnan years. The Bond girl isn’t particularly memorable, the climax is straight out of Dullsville, the politics are tangled and the whole thing simply doesn’t feel like fun. What should have been a surefire follow-up has turned into a middling entry: let’s hope that the next Bond installment will learn from the lessons this film.

Passchendaele (2008)

Passchendaele (2008)

ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

(In theaters, November 2008) Criticizing this movie for its melodrama feels a lot like kicking a puppy for its inherent doggyness. But at some point, it’s required to drop the whole “most expensive Canadian movie ever made! About Canadian war heroism! Based on a true story!” thing, step back, and cackle at some of the film’s worst moments, from Paul Gross’ Jesus complex to the lopsided structure, the mawkish scenes and the dramatic shortcuts. That the film is made with the best of intentions doesn’t excuse the hour-long snooze set in Calgary, or the too-short time spent on the front. Best intentions don’t require a ten-second detox scene, clichés from sixty-year-old movies or a final sequence taken from the Stations of the Cross. As much as it’s tough to dislike the film’s impressive historical recreation, the charm of the actors or the intention to tell a typically Canadian piece of history, Passchendaele stumbles when comes the moment to put it all together. The result will go well with those who (for various reasons, many of them politically partisan) really want to “support our troops”. Alas, it will have a much tougher time crossing over to a larger audience that isn’t already sold to the film’s emotional manipulation. Despite the film’s fascination for crucifixion, it has to do more than sing to the choir.

The Somnambulist, Jonathan Barnes

The Somnambulist, Jonathan Barnes

ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

Morrow, 2007, 353 pages, C$23.95 hc, ISBN 978-0-06-137538-5

Be warned. This review has no literary merit whatsoever. It is an ignorant piece of nonsense, nonsensical, incoherent, written by an unreliable scribbler, written in painfully inept prose, frequently erroneous and willfully ridiculous. Needless to say, I hope you won’t believe a word of it.

If I allow myself to appropriate Jonathan Barnes’ first paragraph of his debut novel The Somnambulist, it’s that I find myself in a curious position while attempting this review. I generally liked the novel, but trying to apply my usual reviewing mechanisms fails to illuminate why. Trying to classify it as fantasy is a slippery conceit leading to a discussion of “weird” fiction. And beyond it all, there’s the feeling that Barnes is laughing at every befuddled reader.

Even trying to give a feel for the novel’s atmosphere sends us grasping for dime novels, pulp fiction, Victorian grotesque, steampunk and other qualifiers that may or may not fit. We’re not the only one struggling against labels, because even the jacket blurb makes references to Neil Gaiman, Susanna Clarke, Clive Barker… and Carl Hiaasen.

Yes, The Somnambulist is set in Victorian London. Yes, it features a detective/magician fighting against a city-threatening menace. Yes, it flies from strange plot points to even-stranger fantastic concoctions. Yes, it does feel as if a funny mystery writer had overdosed on steampunk fantasy.

Buy trying to give specific examples…

There’s the title character, for instance, a milk-guzzling hulk of a man (?) who doesn’t bleed when pierced by swords. There’s a house of ill-repute, favored by our protagonist, that specializes in ladies most often seen at a freak show. There’s a firm (called Love, Love, Love and Love) whose HR regime seems based on complete brainwashing. There are uncanny murder mysteries, time-regressing bit players, murderous fiends dressed in schoolboy outfits, a librarian who seems to understand everything (as all good librarians should, but even more so) and séances that, frankly, don’t seem particularly occult considering the rest of what this novel has to offer.

But if you’re expecting any explanation at all, well, you’re reading the wrong book.

So maybe you can come to understand the delight and bafflement of the ordinary reader confronting a novel such as The Somnambulist, designed according to the spaghetti-throwing school of writing in which as many strange strands are thrown on a blank wall in the hope that some will stick. But not all of them do, and it’s hard to avoid concluding that some editing would have avoided a big mess on the floor.

But when it comes to reading experiences, there’s no denying that The Somnambulist is unusual and rewarding. The shaky plot may or may not be a problem given the succession of rich details that novel has to offer. It’s not just stylish but atmospheric, and the odd mixture of influences will do much to endear the novel to readers looking for more of the New Weird mixture that has proven so elusive. It may of may not be New Weird (heck, does anyone actually care whether New Weird exists any more?), but it’s certainly weird, and feels new in all of its retro charm smacked around modern concerns. There are resonances here with Vandermeer and Mieville, although The Somnambulist more than stands on its own. Trying to classify it may give headache, but there’s no denying that the “Jonathan Barnes” sub-genre of fiction was launched with an intriguing first entry.

Pandemonium, Daryl Gregory

Pandemonium, Daryl Gregory

ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

Del Rey, 2008, 288 pages, C$15.00 tpb, ISBN 978-0-345-50116-5

Since I read current novels more readily than short stories, it’s rare that I will pay attention to authors before their first novels. But Daryl Gregory was an exception, thanks to “Second Person, Present Tense”, an astonishingly good story reprinted in the Hartwell/Cramer anthology Year’s Best SF 11. On the strength of that story alone, Gregory’s first novel was worth waiting for. Fortunately, he doesn’t disappoint.

A mash-up of genres and influences, Pandemonium is best described as a contemporary fantasy taking place in a parallel universe where people can be “possessed” by archetypes. After World War Two, instances of people acting strangely -often exhibiting abilities outside their knowledge- have multiplied, spawning research, fear, catastrophic events and a lot of curiosity. No one quite know how or why those possessions occur, but even the most skeptical have a hard time denying their existence.

Our narrator, Del Pierce, has a closer relationship to those entities than most. As a child, he was possessed by “The Hellion”, a Dennis-the-Menace archetype whose influence had real consequences. A childhood exorcism drove the demon out, but following a car crash, it seems that it’s trying to come back… and that’s not counting the wink that Del gets from another possessed person in the first chapter. Deadbeat, unable to hold on to relationships, severely emotionally afflicted, Del may not be much of a winner but there’s no denying his character.

Looking for clues and a way to get rid of his entity, Del travels to a convention of possession specialists, stalks an expert, partners with a somewhat wrathful nun and makes his way in America’s Midwest to find the origins of his problems. Thanks to a few twists that occasionally echo “Second Person, Present Tense”, it’s a more complex journey than you’d expect. The ending isn’t entirely happy.

There are a lot of things to like about Pandemonium, but the accessibility of the story is perhaps the most obvious of them. Despite the scope of the changes in that world, Gregory manages to introduce the premise smoothly, allowing us to understand the world and how it differs from ours. The telling of the tale is generally straightforward, except for the intentionally shocking twist midway through. The characters are well-sketched, and the prose is easy to read.

There are also a few memorable details. A description of a possession convention recalls a number of SF conventions, and the cameo by Philip K. Dick (himself possessed by Valis, a possession that seems to have had a beneficial effect on the writer) is only the most obvious of the unobtrusive in-jokes that pepper the novel. Gregory has a good handle on pop culture, and Pandemonium doesn’t have to scratch deep to find interesting things to say about our collective imaginary landscape.

If the novel falters a bit, it’s in building a credible alternate history for the universe. Despite significant differences between history of the world (including a rather different fate for Richard Nixon), many pop references remain the same, along with historical event such as the O.J. Simpson trial (although it, too, ends differently). To be fair, the balance between a recognizably similar universe and the changes flowing from fifty years of possessions was nearly impossible anyway: Too much in fantasy and the novel loses its relevance, while too much in realism and the entire thing loses its appeal.

But if you avoid looking too closely at the historical aspects, Pandemonium is a strong first novel, a perfectly satisfying read and a promising step up for Gregory. If you haven’t registered his name after “Second Person, Present Tense” and his other short stories, it’s time to stand up and take notice.

His Dark Materials, Philip Pullman

His Dark Materials, Philip Pullman

ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

Knopf, 1995-2000 (2007 omnibus), 934 pages, C$24.50 tpb, ISBN 978-0-375-84722-6

In a way, it’s sometimes a relief to review books that everyone else has read.

Granted, my standards for “everyone else” are fairly low. But when discussing Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials trilogy, “everyone else” is a lot of people. Pullman’s series may not have reached the mass-market hysteria that swept around J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series (it helped that the series became popular after it was completed), but it was often mentioned in the same breath, sold widely, earned a lot of critical attention and had its first volume adapted to the big screen with an A-list budget.

The movie crashed and burned a hole in the studio’s budget, thereby ensuring no second and third film, but that’s not much of a big deal considering that the entire story, as conceived by Pullman, still exists happily on bookshelves, untainted by the film’s imperfections. In fact, it’s a bit of a wonder that the film existed at all given the original trilogy’s ambitious goals. While Harry Potter was an accessible experience for the entire family, His Dark Materials is significantly more complex, with a correspondingly more difficult style and thematic concerns that go well beyond the Young Adult market it was often aimed at.

It’s a story of a young girl discovering the world, but there’s a lot more to Pullman’s ambitions than to deliver a coming-of-age story: Before she’s through, heroine Lya will discover her unpleasant parents, see friends die horribly, venture to the land of death and eventually confront The Authority itself. While the first book is generally about her, from her perspective, the latter parts of the story shatter in multiple viewpoints, some of them ending only when the characters die while striving for their goals. Along the way, Pullman hops from one universe to the other and tackles philosophy, the nature of the universe, the way science works and how people change. It’s an almost impossibly rich mixture of themes, and trying to take it all in takes time and effort.

In fact, I’m not terribly ashamed to say that the book lay on my bedside table for nearly a year, slightly and infrequently read, until a series of airports and planes gave me sufficient motivation to finish it. It’s not particularly accessible for those who just want a story, and it takes a lot of time to rev up. By all means, see the movie to prime your imaginary engines… but don’t be surprised if it remains heavy-going.

On the other hand, the rewards for reading the story to the end are considerable. Over and over again, it’s hard not to be impressed by Pullman’s audacity, his willingness to go to difficult places, kill favorite characters, defy convention and still manage to deliver a satisfactory conclusion. The fantasy elements he brings to the story are both complex and original, never completely tipping over in familiar tropes and surprising even seasoned genre readers. He sets a high standard for himself and dares others to keep up, which is a tough but rewarding experience as long as you keep up.

Unfortunately, this demanding regimen makes it difficult to recommend the book widely. Readers with patience, some literary skills and a taste for more ambitious material will get the most out of this trilogy. But the beauty of reviewing works that “everyone else” has read is that, by now, everyone who wanted to read it was already done so.

Half a Crown, Jo Walton

Half a Crown, Jo Walton

ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

Tor, 2008, 316 pages, C$28.95 hc, ISBN 978-0-7653-1621-9

True to form for Jo Walton’s work, Half a Crown is both familiar and unexpected, successful and flawed, charming and unnerving. As the third book in the “Small Change” trilogy, it has to live up to the expectations set by its predecessors, which described the course of an alternate history in which England played nice with the Nazis. The result was fascism with a kindly British face, told in alternating chapters by young women and a detective with more and more to lose.

This detective, Peter Carmichael, has risen through the ranks in the decade-and-a-half since the previous volume: Now head of the secret police, he spends half his time upholding the law of his government and the other half doing what he can to lessen the oppression. The years since Ha’Penny have been rough on England: In almost fifteen years of totalitarianism, the population has come to an arrangement in tolerating its oppressive government. Some people have lived nearly their entire lives under this type of regime, and find the whole thing natural.

Which brings us to the other narrator of the story: Elvira, daughter of Carmichael’s old partner, now his ward but also eighteen and anxious to become a débutante. Her introduction into formal society won’t go as planned as a rally turns violent and police arrest her. For both Elvira and Carmichael, this is the beginning of momentous events that will change everything. 1960 London is boiling with tension, and this gives Half a Crown an extra layer of urban complexity that wasn’t immediately obvious in the first two novels of the trilogy.

As ever, it’s Walton’s low-key extrapolation of British fascism that make up the bulk of the novel’s conceptual appeal. Draped in King and Cross, Half a Crown show that fascism can become part of the background noise –especially if one learns to ignore the occasional cries for help. If the political events of Farthing could be considered an accident and Ha’Penny can be seen as a missed chance to make things better, Half a Crown is more pernicious because it shows that totalitarianism isn’t something that will be automatically be resisted by everyone. The inertia of ordinary people, promised nothing less than what they already have, can be a surprisingly amoral force.

As for the novel’s more conventional qualities, there’s little to say: Walton is a careful writer, and there’s a great deal to like about Half a Crown‘s characters (especially as they’re forced to make the choices their whole lives have been leading to), the slow-burn pacing and the way Walton finds essential details in commonplace things. Fans of the first volume will finally learn what happened to the Khans, although the answer and its implications may not be as reassuring as they may think.

The only element of the book that is likely to cause controversy is the ending. The “Small Change” trilogy has been relentlessly downbeat, and though everyone can forgive a happy ending, Half a Crown seems to make things awfully easy on itself, in a way that practically begs for a dose of sarcasm. A short royal conversation, a proclamation and the whole thing is on its way out? It fits and yet doesn’t: despite the sacrifices of the characters (and yes, a recurring character does die along the way), Half a Crown‘s ending seems to wrap up too quickly and easily.

But it’s also fair to say that the principal strength of the series has been about journeys, about the day-to-day life rather than the cusp points or the wrap-up. Walton, in a way, has attempted the portray the unstoryable, the way in which we get used to horrible things. Comfort from routine can be found in the oddest places, and upsetting this routine always feel wrong somehow, even when the change ends up (or should end up) being for the better.

The Greatest Sci-Fi Movies Never Made, David Hughes

The Greatest Sci-Fi Movies Never Made, David Hughes

ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

Titan Books, 2001 (2008 rewrite), 350 pages, C$16.95 tpb, ISBN 978-1-8457-6755-6

One piece of knowledge that differentiates Hollywood insiders from mere pretenders is the understanding of how difficult it is to bring a movie to the big screen. As a collaborative art form, film involves hundreds if not thousands of people, millions of dollars and years of effort. The financial risks are so high, and the number of potential projects so vast, that there are far many more ideas than production slots. No wonder, then, that there is enough material for a fascinating book about the movies that never were.

While the idea of a book about non-existing movies may strike some as useless, David Hughes’ The Greatest Sci-Fi Movies Never Made is far more interesting than anyone may expect. Far from presenting a compendium of failures, Hugues uses this opportunity to reveal the hidden history behind some famous SF franchises, study the ways Hollywood really works, and tell fascinating stories about the film industry. Ignore the pandering “Sci-Fi” and broken toy robot on the cover: this is serious film journalism, blending information from public sources and exclusive interviews to describe development processes that may have lasted decades.

Chances are that you will recognize many of those “movies never made”. For one thing, what we’ve seen on screens isn’t always the first concept that occurred to the film’s producers. There’s an entire chapter on the STAR TREK series of films, for instance, that sketches the false starts, development pains and secret negotiations that shaped the series. For another, good film concepts don’t necessarily die when work stops on them: often, they go dormant, awaiting only the right person for a revival. So it is that many movies judged “dead” in the first edition of Hugues’ book were revived and released before the second revised edition. THUNDERBIRDS, THE HITCHHIKER’S GUIDE TO THE GALAXY, SUPERMAN RETURNS, FANTASTIC FOUR are only four of the titles that made it out of development hell in the meantime (with WATCHMEN a few months away from release), and this edition of the book has been revised to include the postscript of those efforts.

Most of all, The Greatest Sci-Fi Movies Never Made provides great examples of the way Hollywood really works in the myriad of ways movies can turn wrong, or never make it out of the intense competition for limited production funds. Science Fiction movies are expensive, and it’s a defining characteristic that may account for a significant number of failures: at that level of commitment, few people are willing to go on a limb and remain true to an artistic vision. And that’s assuming that the creative differences are settled, which isn’t always the case: WATCHMEN, for instance, had no less than half a dozen different directors attached to it at one time or another, all cracking their heads on the issues in adapting a comic-book masterpiece to a different medium.

Happily enough, Hugues’ style in describing those complex stories of failure and successes is almost compulsively readable: His clean prose deftly juggles names, time-lines, interview quotes and explanations of why things didn’t go as planned. The narrative prose is clear, with the sources kept in a dense thirteen-page appendix. There’s a lot of original research, and even film buffs will find something new in there.

Naturally, we shouldn’t mourn for all of those movies. I was particularly taken by the case of Clair Noto’s famously unproduced script “The Tourist”, intriguing in its moody description of stranded aliens, but almost certainly the kind of film that I would have hated in theaters. That the premise is eerily similar to aspects of the delightful MEN IN BLACK is something left to contemplate whenever I feel that Hollywood always makes the wrong choices.

The Brass Verdict, Michael Connelly

The Brass Verdict, Michael Connelly

ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

Little Brown, 2008, 422 pages, C$29.99 hc, ISBN 978-0-316-16629-4

With a bibliography that now numbers twenty volumes in sixteen years, it’s no accident if Michael Connelly’s got a keen understanding of what his fans are expecting from him. Given Connelly’s track record of bringing together practically all of his protagonists, it’s not much of a surprise to discover that The Brass Verdict features two of Connelly’s best-loved heroes so far: “Lincoln Lawyer” Mickey Haller and series stalwart Harry Bosch. The least surprising development, of course, is that for all of its twists and turns and limpid prose, The Brass Verdict remains solid Connelly.

After two years away from the law after the events of The Lincoln Lawyer, protagonist Haller ends his self-imposed sabbatical in less-than-ideal circumstances: An acquaintance of his has been murdered, and a past agreement between them stipulates that Haller is the legal executor who gets to take care of the cases. For Haller, who planned on slowly getting back into practice after a lengthy rehabilitation period, this comes as a shock in more ways than one, especially when he realizes that one of the thirty-one cases falling into his lap is a high-profile murder case featuring one of Hollywood’s power producers. But there’s a lot more to it. Like, for instance, finding out who murdered the lawyer with the original case load. The LAPD is on the case, and they’ve sent one of their finest agents on the case: Grizzled veteran Harry Bosch, who shares another connection with Haller.

Narrated by Haller himself, The Brass Verdict is a welcome return to the legal procedural mode last successfully seen in The Lincoln Lawyer. While Connelly’s usual perspective (via Bosch) is about police work, Haller’s an opinionated expert on law, and his digressions on the way justice is served in the real world are just as cynical as Bosch’s own handiwork. Lies, unsurprisingly, are at the heart of this novel’s thematic concerns —especially when they place Haller in a difficult position. Meanwhile, Bosch is usually somewhere in the novel’s shadows, doing his own thing.

While The Brass Verdict stands alone by itself, there’s little doubt that Connelly fans will get the most out of it: The interplay between Haller and Bosch is better if readers already know the two characters. As usual for Connelly’s crossovers, Bosch is more scary than admirable when seen from another perspective. The Brass Verdict may be the first of Connelly’s novels to turn him into a supporting character, acting away from the narrator’s perspective and letting Haller realize how callously Bosch is using him for his own purposes. The central connection between the two characters, which has been known to faithful Connelly readers for a while, comes as a bit of an anticlimax late in the novel as the narrator finds out for himself. Meanwhile in the Connellyverse, other characters make guest appearances, from Jack McEvoy’s extended cameo to a fleeting suggestion of Void Moon‘s Cassie Black (who’s overdue for a return feature engagement after being anonymously glimpsed in at least two novels so far.)

There are questions that linger, though: Isn’t it convenient that Haller is still another lawyer’s executor after two years away from the law? Isn’t it convenient that Bosch (just-as-conveniently back in active Homicide cases as of The Overlook) is too heartless to recuse himself from a case involving someone he knows? The questions aren’t as bothersome as the reasons why they spring to mind: Despite Connelly’s sure-footed prose and click plotting skills, The Brass Verdict often feels like a perfunctory effort, another crossover special with more emphasis on the high-concept log-line (“Haller meets Bosch!”) than the actual plot, which seems to end on a rather gratuitous fishtail.

But there’s no need to panic yet for Connelly fans: Even at its contrived worst, The Brass Verdict won’t disappoint anyone, and does nothing to tarnish anyone’s appreciation of the author. If nothing else, it brings to mind memories of The Narrows, which also brought together known character for a result that ended up being less than the sum of its parts. Still, even at his most routine, Connelly still manages to beat most other crime fiction writers at their own game.