Author: Christian Sauvé

  • Syriana (2005)

    Syriana (2005)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In theaters, December 2005) Close the books on 2005 and put this film at the top of the class. Syriana is the kind of film we don’t get often enough: A densely-told geopolitical thriller whose understanding of the world actually seems to be relevant to ours. Resemblances with 2000’s Traffic are not accidental: Oscar-winning scribe Stephen Gaughan here takes on the additional mantle of direction, and the result is a film that places a surprising degree of trust in the viewers’ ability to follow the story. A meaty mix of power, money and weaponry, Syriana studies the web of middle-eastern oil dependency through five interconnected stories, zapping here and there around the globe to show how everything is linked. This isn’t for the easily distracted, the incontinent or the casual “show me a movie” crowd: the plot moves in short sharp vignettes, often beginning and ending in mid-action. The plot has the satisfying quality of a good novel; have a look at the fabulous screenplay (generously made available on-line) for a reading experience not unlike a crackling thriller. What’s more, the film is ably supported by a number of good performances, though it’s George Clooney’s bearded and paunchy “Bob” that leaves the biggest impression. There may not be all that much conventional action here, but it’s more than offset by the sizzling intensity of the film. On the other hand, much like Traffic, this is the kind of film that can’t really be re-watched again with the same impact.

  • King Kong (2005)

    King Kong (2005)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In theaters, December 2005) It dawned on me, halfway during this no-expenses-spared third version of the classic King Kong, that I didn’t really care about any possible variant of the basic premise and even less about one that gets excited about gorilla-on-blonde action. Oh, I’m not saying that I didn’t enjoy it: After all, there’s plenty of action, some spectacular special effects, a number of intriguing details and slick directorial skills. But the story is too familiar to be of interest, and further leadened by self-indulgence. For a film like this to last three hours is nonsense: There are no contiguous 60 seconds of this film that couldn’t have been trimmed to 40 or even 30 seconds. Despite a lovely historical recreation, the opening New York segment belongs in another film. Several of the action scenes never know when to quit. Worse; the undeterred excess of the film is symptomatic of what feels like a rushed finish to a blank-check project: This is particularly visible in comparing the impeccable CGI for Kong versus the amateur-hour rear-projection work during the ill-conceived stampede sequence. But most frustrating of all is the lack of focus in a film that goes here and there without even slowing down to ask itself fundamental questions such as “can a human be thrown around without having her neck broken” or even “how the heck can one be carried through frosty New York in an evening dress without spending her time bitching about the cold?” It’ll remain a wonder for the ages that a film costing more than two hundred million dollars can’t even bothered to take in account simple observations. The film isn’t bad (chances are that I’ll go through the Special Edition DVD weeks after its release), but it’s frustrating to see that much effort result in such imperfection.

  • The Last Jihad, Joel C. Rosenberg

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Forge, 2003, 335 pages, C$10.99 mmpb, ISBN 0-765-34643-5

    Regular readers of these reviews have already figured out my centre-left politics. Not that it’s any surprise: I’m a French-Canadian, after all. What they may not know is that I was a moderate right-winger for a good part of my teenage years, seduced by techno-thrillers and alternate-universe military fiction in which the US invaded whoever it wanted. All good fun… until the real world caught up with the fiction and delivered a disturbing techno-thriller starring a sub-par president.

    In many ways, though, this initial love of military thriller hasn’t completely left me. My bookshelves have all of Clancy’s novels in hardcover, along with quasi-complete runs of Stephen Coonts, Dale Brown, Larry Bond, Harold Coyle and others. I’m always interested in new military thrillers, even if the past ten years have been somewhat disappointing in that sub-genre.

    The Last Jihad first popped up in the supercharged atmosphere of early 2003, appearing in hardcover as bombs were raining on Baghdad. A quick paperback edition followed scarcely six “Mission Accomplished!” months later, stamped with the “New York Times Bestseller” label and laudatory quotes by such right-wing luminaries as Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity and Oliver North.

    The reason for the excitement was simple: The Last Jihad begins with an attack on the President of the United States, an attack that is eventually tracked back to Iraq. I’m not spoiling much (the book has sequels, after all) if I say that it ends with a nuclear flash over Baghdad. As a ripped-from-the-headline marketing coup, the gang at Forge books (the thriller imprint of SF/Fantasy publisher Tor) knew that they had a winner on their hands and milked it as they should. It helped that Rosenberg is supremely well-connected in right-wing talk radio and religious circles.

    The left-wing’s reaction was predictable. A number of scathing reviews followed, including the much-quoted Washington Post review which -after a few mild compliments- stated that “[Rosenberg’s] writing, however, is harder to forgive, for it is an act of terrorism on the reader’s brain.” Ouch!

    But, hey, I report; I decide: The surprise is that the first half of The Last Jihad isn’t bad at all when put alongside other books of the genre. The attack on the president is vividly described, and the crisis management that follows the attack feels appropriate, especially in the shadow of 2001-09-11. While the writing is a bit clumsy and the characters are taken straight from the right wing’s pantheon of heroes (the tough president; the successful businessman; the shadowy operative that kills; the woman that shoots), it moves at a rapid clip and has the advantage of a comforting earnestness. The technical details are convincing despite a few gaffes (“Canadian president Jean Luc”?? [P.74]). Rosenberg even indulges in a fake-out death that makes no sense but made me laugh for its unabashed manipulation. Even the incidental jabs at Carter and Clinton (coupled with a hilarious passage about the success of Bush’s presidency) are amusing in the avowed ideological context of the novel. (Playing with rigged dice is fine if you know how they’re rigged.)

    Unfortunately, things turn sour in the second half of the book, and not for the reasons you may think: Simply put, the novel runs out of steam and plausibility. As our super-businessman protagonist magically turns into a top-notch special operative, he gets trapped into a firefight that seems to go on for a hundred pages. Romance also rears its head —never a good sign in a thriller. Pages of uninteresting minutiae overwhelm the book’s momentum, eventually leading to the jaw-dropping sadism of the finale. (Pop quiz: You have identified a ballistic missile launch site in the middle of a city. Do you destroy the launch site with a precision guided missile, or do you nuke the entire city?) Some religious content makes its way into the narrative. Everyone who tries to stop the final US jihad against Iraq is arrested, shut up or converted. The Drudge Report makes an amusing cameo on page 252-253.

    By that time, though, my amusement with the novel had noticeably paled. Even with only three years’ worth of hindsight in Iraq’s true military capabilities, The Last Jihad is hilariously paranoid. While my soft spot for thrillers carried me through the first half of the book with ease, the story’s own limpness couldn’t do much to sustain this early initial impression. All told, I’m not likely to keep reading the latter books in the series. (Apparently, neither are Forge’s editors given how the third book, now featuring explicitly religious content, was published by a speciality Christian publisher.)

  • King Kong (1976)

    King Kong (1976)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On TV, December 2005) Some childhood memories should be left alone, and the seventies remake of King Kong may be one of them. Another look at it, post 2005-King Kong, largely serves to make the Peter Jackson effort look good: The script is even more tedious than the 2005 version and the special effects really haven’t aged well at all. (Here’s a piece of trivia for you: It won the “Special Visual Effects” Oscar in early 1977. The next winner in that category, of course, would be Star Wars.) Fortunately, there are still a few good things about it: Jessica Lange (in her screen debut) still looks great thirty years later, Jeff Bridges is delightful in an early role as a shaggy photographer and the World Trade Center is prominently featured. The opening sequences have a charming feel to them as a petroleum expedition is efficiently dispatched to The Island. Things start to sour soon after, as the film grinds down to a halt to go through all of the expected plot points. King Kong himself is a disappointing man in a suit, even if said man is Special Effects legend Rick Baker. It adds up to a fine piece of seventies blockbuster entertainment: Sometime tedious, sometime earnest, occasionally fun, but certainly not something that escapes its context.

    (Second Viewing, On Cable TV, April 2020) I have changed my mind. Having seen the other versions of King Kong, I go back to the 1976 one feeling as if it’s my favourite. There’s some nostalgia at play here—I recall seeing it on TV as a boy—but it’s also because it’s relatively well made. I like the mid-1970s feel, I like the techno-thrillerish approach, I like the links to the 1933 version (such as having an actress on board the exploration ship) without the endless CGI excesses of the 2005 version. I certainly like that we spend more time on Manhattan than on Skull Island. I like the gradual mystery—even if we know damn well that there’s a giant ape behind the gate. Even forty-some years and one 9/11 later, this is one of the most striking uses of the Twin Towers ever put on-screen. The plot is admittedly a bit dull, but the execution is fine. Some (but not all) of the special effects hold up—and Jessica Lange, in her first film role, is a special effect of her own. This is Kong filtered through the 1970s disaster movie lens (director John Guillermin had previously directed The Towering Inferno) and it has the kind of accidental details that anchor this film into a now-remarkable period feel. The 1976 version of King Kong is not the best, the slickest or the most innovative… but it just may be my personal favourite.

  • Good Night, and Good Luck. (2005)

    Good Night, and Good Luck. (2005)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In theaters, December 2005) There is no doubt that this film exists for a specific reason –to show, through the example of Edward G. Murrow, that people of good faith can gang together to expose the truth. Great. Fabulous. Unfortunately, I had the feeling that Good Night, and Good Luck. preaches solely to the already-convinced: Yes, McCarthy was a bad, baaad man. And then what? As a period piece, this film approaches parody through black-and-white cinematography, typewriter clacks, smoke-filled scenes, casual discrimination and in-show advertisement. Director George Clooney (who also turns in a good performance, though not as much as David Straithairn) it playing a very specific type of cinematic game here, one that charms but doesn’t do much more. If it’s easy to admire the intent of the piece and mutter a heartfelt “right on” at some of the message, it still doesn’t feel urgent or all that compelling. It takes more than a message, even a message with which you agree, to make a film that deserves to be seen.

  • Dans une galaxie près de chez vous – Le film [In A Galaxy Near You: The Movie] (2004)

    Dans une galaxie près de chez vous – Le film [In A Galaxy Near You: The Movie] (2004)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On DVD, December 2005) I would have seen this film earlier had I thought it had potential to be good. Fortunately, it’s only slightly better than I expected: a lame collection of jokes about Star Trek strung together in colloquial French-Canadian may be fun for a five-minute sketch, but it starts grating at the sixth minute. Some moments aren’t too bad, but most of the film doesn’t even try for internal coherency. Some silliness is good, but most of it is grating. Worse are the film’s last-act foray in dramatic territory, which never really work. The actors at least try to have fun, and some of it comes through despite everything else. Fans of cheap B-series SF comedies may come to grudgingly appreciate the whole thing. The DVD comes with English subtitles that gamely try to translate the wordplay and allusions of the original dialogue.

  • The Chronicles Of Narnia: The Lion, The Witch And The Wardrobe (2005)

    The Chronicles Of Narnia: The Lion, The Witch And The Wardrobe (2005)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In theaters, December 2005) Once upon a time, I suppose that this film may have been special. But coming in on the heels of an excellent half-decade for fantasy films, it ends up looking like the latecomer who doesn’t know when the party has moved on. Through no fault of the source material, this first Narnia feels rehashed, dull, familiar and even a little pointless. Kids will flock to it, of course, especially given the you’re-so-special plot of the film (“Welcome, humans! Stick around and we’ll flock to your feet!”) Whatever religious subtext there is to the film is scarcely noticeable, but that doesn’t excuse the lack of originality. The special effects hold up, of course: Though everyone else will focus on the Lion, I was particularly taken by the beavers, surely the finest CGI beavers since Men With Brooms. Otherwise, well, the film sputters on fumes of better things. The faun is creepy, the final battle is obvious (Though I thought, for a while, that they would use effective air support) and the kids are sometimes annoying: No small surprise if I wanted to cheer for Tilda Swinton’s White Witch throughout the movie –at least there’s a character who knows what she’s doing. As for the rest, hey, if fantasy’s your thing, you won’t find any purer (read; ripped-off) material this year.

  • The Tin Man, Dale Brown

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Bantam, 1998, 429 pages, C$9.99 mmpb, ISBN 0-553-58000-0

    I haven’t been kind to Dale Brown’s previous few novels (no less an authority than on-line store mostlyfiction.com linked to my last review as “Christian Sauve’s (brutal) review of Fatal Terrain”), but don’t mistake my lack of enthusiasm as anything but disappointment: if Brown’s first novels remain cornerstones of the technothriller genre (especially Day of the Cheetah and Silver Tower), what’s stopping him from writing another scorcher?

    While The Tin Man is ultimately not much of a success, it clearly shows that there’s hope for Brown’s career. It moves away from Brown’s usual aerospace plots, tackles other issues than “there are no problems that a well-equipped B-52 won’t solve” and even spends more time closer to the characters than has been the case over his last five books.

    But there’s one big problem with The Tin Man, and his name is Patrick McLanahan. McLanahan, of course, is Brown’s favourite protagonist since Flight of the Old Dog. Brown seemingly can’t let go of his imaginary universe, even when the discrepancies between it and our world are getting too big to ignore. Smarter writers would see the constraints of series fiction, start from scratch, build other novels around other characters and ultimately let things run their course. But whereas Brown has tried singletons before (Hammerheads and Chains of Command), he has never been able to resist the latter impulse to fold them back into the McLanahan series at the earliest opportunity, regardless of internal coherency. (Let’s not even talk about the Taylor/Clinton/Martindale presidencies mash) With The Tin Man, Brown had another ideal opportunity to start afresh. But… no.

    McLanahan started life as an air force navigator, evolving -over time- into an all-purpose action hero. This trajectory finds its ultimate expression in The Tin Man as McLanahan, seeking to avenge his rookie policeman brother, asks a few favours from a genius-grade friend and gets a high-tech armour fit to take on a small army of terrorist. (“He’s an air force officer! He’s a nerdy engineer! Together –THEY FIGHT CRIME!” would go the TV spots.)

    The “Tin Man” armour is certainly a neat gadget, despite blatantly ignoring every law of physics you can think about. Its wearer can absorb gunshots, manipulate heavy weaponry and kick really high. Armour-clad McLanahan goes on a rampage and soon finds himself battling terrorists and policemen, finding out that vigilante justice isn’t as much fun as DEATH WISH promised. Brown has never let a real-world detail stop him from writing fabulous action scenes, and so The Tin Man at least delivers a few good thrills along the way.

    The Tin Man is better-structured than any of Brown’s novels since before Storming Heaven and integrates a number of good technical details about Sacramento’s police milieu. Brown hasn’t lasted this long in the techno-thriller genre without learning how to deliver a copious amount of detail, and so the technical aspects of the novel are relatively pleasant to read: Should Brown decide to abandon the military genre, he’s clearly got a future in police procedural thrillers.

    The character details are also better than in Brown’s last few novels. The relationship between McLanahan and his younger brother is compelling, even if it’s in a plotting-101 fashion. It’s also good to see uber-nerd Jon Masters get a featured role in this novel: He’s easily my favourite character from the Brown oeuvre, and his budding romantic relationship is heartening despite lacking in subtlety.

    But even my attachment to Jon Masters can’t displace the feeling that if The Tin Man has most of the right elements in the right place, it loses points for some silly on-the-nose plotting, plausibility-stretching sequences and (cue familiar refrain) sticking McLanahan where he doesn’t belong. It would have been much better as a standalone singleton, especially given how this is the first time (and maybe even the last time) McLanahan has even mentioned his younger brother. Oh well; at least it’s better than Fatal Terrain. Battle Born, which apparently brings McLanahan back in a cockpit, is up next.

    [June 2008: An anonymous but disappointed Dale Brown fan sends along:

    dale browns tin man doesn’t seem so outlandish 10 years later maybe he did something called research those 10 years ago into future weapons systems. every toy in his books is at least under study and or development and feasible sometime down the road they break no laws of physics so maybe you guys need to do some research into a subject called physics

    Reprinted without comments regarding Dale Brown fans.]

  • Brokeback Mountain (2005)

    Brokeback Mountain (2005)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In theaters, December 2005) It’s unbelievably hard to shake off sarcastic giggles when considering the concept of this film. Thanks to South Park, “pudding-eating gay cowboys” had already entered the lexicon as code for “dull independent films”: Seeing such a film with a real budget and actual Hollywood stars is enough to make anyone smile, as in “aren’t they being a bit too obvious about their pretended edginess?”. Then there’s the amusing thought that gays cowboys are two words which, placed in close proximity, can enrage the Religious Right in another bout of fake culture war. But all of the potential giggles and sarcastic snickers quickly die down once the film gets underway: despite my qualms about director Ang “I killed The Hulk” Lee’s brand of slow-moving period drama, Brokeback Mountain does eventually attain a narrative velocity that makes it hard to dismiss. Sure, the romance emerges almost out of nowhere and the tragic nature of the film is a touch too predictable, but most of the film is spent wondering what will happen next. If nothing else, Brokeback Mountain is far more interesting than, say, Aeon Flux or any cheap teensploitation film in terms of drama. This may sound like faint praise because there are indeed limits to my appreciation of the film: I’m not generally a fan of romantic tragedies, westerns, gay-issue or Ang Lee films. But even despite these serious handicaps (plus the giggle factor inherent in the premise), Brokeback Mountain held my attention and wasn’t as dull as I had thought. Not bad.

  • Bhaji On The Beach (1993)

    Bhaji On The Beach (1993)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On DVD, December 2005) A charming dramatic comedy from director Gurinder Chadha, (who would later go on to make small gems such as Bend It Like Beckham and Bride & Prejudice), this film studies the life of a few Indian-English women as they make a day trip to Blackpool Beach. The men aren’t far behind, but they’re more like personified problems than actual characters: The real strength of the movie comes as it studies vastly different generations of non-Caucasian women as they relate to England, their own Indian culture and each other. As a comedy, it’s low-octane and leadened by dramatic moments of variable impact. But as a pleasant melodrama, it’s hard to do better than Bhaji On The Beach: Despite a tepid start, it soon cruises along to its own rhythm, and if the schematic nature of the dramatic arc can be a tad too obvious (including a final dramatic moment that seems forced and calculatingly unforgivable), there’s a pleasant flow to the dialogue and relationships. Without too much fuss, this film tackles on weighty issues such as racism, sexism, conjugal violence, cultural incomprehension and the clash of generations. Intimate to a degree that will remind you of its TV drama roots, Bhaji On The Beach is nonetheless a quietly fascinating little film, well-worth tracking down if you were charmed by Bend It Like Beckham.

  • Æon Flux (2005)

    Æon Flux (2005)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In theaters, December 2005) The premise was iffy, the trailer was dull and the casting was unpromising. Small wonder Æon Flux only lives up to the most modest expectations. As SF, it’s pedestrian and wholly recycled from better films. As an action film, it sputters from one scene to another without much regard to plausibility or even excitement. It’s nearly perfect as a piece of cinematic dystopian-SF tofu, though: If all you’re asking is a B-grade film with kooky aesthetics (even though they clash unsuccessfully), this is pretty much it. Charlize Theron manages the neat trick of looking completely unattractive in tight black clothes. Meanwhile, the other actors seem to be befuddled by the wacky sets. A mishmash of dumb science (oh no; not another clones-have-memories subplot!), stupid mistakes (for the last time: a rifle can’t suddenly transform in a machine gun!) and outright indifference (a sister, you say?) cap off the rest of the experience. Aeon Flux doesn’t take a lot of time to reduce its audience to a seething mass of complete indifference: what follows is an almost unbearable wish to see the film end as soon as possible, as it predictably doesn’t. Expect to see it in the bargain bin in a matter of months.

  • The Rough Guide to Sci-Fi Movies, John Scalzi

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Rough Guide, 2005, 325 pages, C$21.99 tpb, ISBN 1-84353-520-3

    There has been a number of books about science-fiction films over the years, but few of them are as enjoyable as John Scalzi’s The Rough Guide to Sci-Fi Movies. Beyond a simple overview of the field, Scalzi’s guide manages to find a clever balance between fact, personal quirks and consensus opinion. The result is a reference book that will inform neophytes and please long-time fans; no mean feat considering the nature of the field.

    The good people at Rough Guide have done their homework: The book covers an outline of the field’s history, a canon of essential films, a series of “icons” (notable people, characters, places) and a bunch of related information. In addition to the fifty essential film of the canon, The Rough Guide to Sci-Fi Movies briefly reviews 250 other SF films: It’s hard to think of another movie that ought to have been included. (Well, maybe not that hard: EQUILIBRIUM should have been mentioned. But seriously, how would you manage to fit an entire genre in no more than 325 pages?)

    The meat of the book are, of course, the fifty films selected as canon. Most of the expected classics are here (STAR WARS, 2001, BLADE RUNNER, THE MATRIX, TERMINATOR 2, etc), alongside some more daring choices (BROTHER FROM ANOTHER PLANET, ALPHAVILLE, 28 DAYS LATER). Some choices will generate some controversy (THE INCREDIBLES?) but the list is, overall, quite solid for a historical overview. If the list, read cold, can seem bizarre, it’s hard to disagree after reading the full write-up of those films: Scalzi does a fine job at explaining why those particular films were selected and why influence often trumps quality or success.

    But the canon isn’t the only worthwhile part of the book. More than half of this Rough Guide is spent discussing the historical origins of SF (including a short but good history of the written field), the icons of the genre (including actors, directors, characters and landmarks), an overview of SF cinema around the world and a quick look at television SF. All put together, it does give a good overview of the field for whoever would want to know more.

    But the Rough Guide will also interest core genre geeks: Scalzi is a knowledgeable cinephile (his credentials include a decade-long stint as a movie critic) and a confirmed member of the SF community: He can discuss the field like the best of them, and so for genre geeks the book is like sitting down with a fellow fan who’s seen pretty much everything. What’s also noteworthy is that while Scalzi isn’t afraid to hold some strong opinions, most of his outlook on the genre will match the collective opinion of well-read fans. (Dissing STAR WARS is a hard sell at the office, but it’s almost de rigueur at a Science Fiction convention ) Unlike, say, C.J. Henderson’s Encyclopedia of Science Fiction Movies, there is no significant re-evaluation of the field in here: knowledgeable fans will, despite a few hasty generalizations due to lack of space, feel comfortable in handing over this guide to neophytes.

    Alas, The Rough Guide to Sci-Fi Movies was roughly shoved through production, and the unacceptable number of small silly mistakes shows how quickly the book was produced. Beyond the simple typos (“Fishbourne”, etc), there are a number of other slight errors (Seaquest DSV was retitled and lasted a second season; AMERICA’S SWEETHEART was released in 2001) that mar the otherwise reasonably exact content of the book. Hopefully all will be corrected in the second edition.

    Any discussion of Scalzi’s work would be incomplete without acknowledging the accessibility of his prose. Scalzi’s writing has been forged by years of journalism and blogging: His prose is crisp, crystal-clear and immediately enjoyable. Grab the book in bookstores, start reading a page at random and see how long it takes you to stop.

    All in all, Scalzi’s Rough Guide to Sci-Fi Movies does what it set out to do. The material can be thin, but the selection is appropriate, the sidebars are satisfying and it’s hard to find significant fault in the book’s overall stance toward SF cinema. Given how it’s a quarter of Rough Guide’s slate of genre cinema guides, I’m awfully tempted to rush out and get the three other books.

  • Eyes of the Calculor, Sean McMullen

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Tor, 2001, 589 pages, C$10.99 mmpb, ISBN 0-765-34512-9

    There’s a good reason why I try to read volumes of a trilogy one after another: Wait more than a month between volumes and the characters fade away: It’s possible to spending more time catching up than actually enjoying the latest instalment. Due to a variety of factors (including temporary blindness), I ended up waiting seven months between the second and third tomes of Sean McMullen’s “Greatwinter Trilogy”, and the gap did nothing to improve my experience of the series.

    Eyes of the Calculor begins soon after The Miocene Arrow, but returns to Australica after the extended North American trip of the second volume. The atmosphere is correspondingly closer to the first Souls in the Great Machine, although with the inclusion of a few American characters. The final instalment begins as The Call, which had enslaved humans for generations, is shut down. (Given that this was one of the lamest elements of the series, its absence is not missed.) Freed from the constraints of the Call, humanity starts spreading once more, leaving the Aviads without natural protection…

    Readers of the first two volumes of the trilogy already suspect what is to follow: Romantic high adventure in a neo-medieval setting, with plenty of romantic heroism and triumphant moments. And indeed, Eyes of the Calculor more or less delivers the good. McMullen is clearly having a lot of fun here, and it’s a treat to see him get back to a familiar setting, bringing along a trio of strong female characters, a return to Rochester’s Great Library, another look at cool ideas such as the human-powered calcul(at)or and the consequences of the first two volumes.

    It’s very familiar and, in fact, perhaps too familiar. The number of new ideas here falls almost to zero as McMullen continues to play along with known elements and very hastily brings everything to a conclusion of sorts. There is a sense that this is a comfort novel: a last hurrah, but not a significant step forward. Even the characters are eerily familiar, through no coincidence. McMullen takes a number of risks, most notably by making a heel out of one of the second volume’s heroes, but it’s hard to shake the feeling that this isn’t all that new, especially given the originality of the first and, to a lesser extent, the second volume. Not everything works out: As in the first volume, there are a number of suspicious betrayals, and the material about the Gentheist is never as interesting as it could have been.

    Thankfully, McMullen has grown as an author and so the writing in Eyes of the Calculor is noticeably smoother than in the previous volumes. Tonal shifts are less jarring; dialogue is snappier; scenes are tighter. Perhaps too tight, as it’s not uncommon to read along and suddenly have to back-track, abruptly suspicious that Something Important has just happened in a very short amount of prose. There is still an unpolished quality to McMullen’s prose that keeps his fiction from achieving its full potential. The first hundred pages of this novel, for instance, take an awful lot of time to cohere in a compelling whole. (It certainly didn’t help, to echo what was written above, that I paused for so long between the second and third novel.)

    But when it does, when McMullen hits his groove, the novel truly works. Despite the nasty edge to some of McMullen’s imagined world (he never lets you forget that these are much less enlightened times, or that commoners are cannon fodder), he has a knack for unbelievably strong-willed characters, compelling adventure and triumphant moments. His characters alone, in all of their lusty vitality, are a pleasure to follow. This is high adventure in a good classical vein; too bad it has to work in fits and starts.

    Overall, the Greatwinter Trilogy of which this is the conclusion has more good moments than bad, but there’s no escaping the sense that the memory of the trilogy will end up being better than the actually messy reality of its prose. It didn’t need to be so long, nor so scatter-shot: an author with a bit more structural ruthlessness could have made a classic series out of those elements; as it stands, it’ll have to settle for something akin to mere goodness. Which, mind you, is still quite respectable.

    [December 2025: Twenty years! For twenty years I had mistakenly titled this review “Eyes of the Calculator!”  Why didn’t anyone tell me…?]

  • Incompetence, Rob Grant

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Gollancz, 2003, 291 pages, C$24.95 tpb, ISBN 0-575-07533-3

    Welcome to a nightmare: A near future United States of Europe where one can’t be fired from any job for reason of age, race, creed… or incompetence. In a place where everything becomes unreliable and approximative, protagonist “Harry Salt” is a detective surrounded by incompetence. There’s just one very very important exception to this level of incompetence: The very competent killer who’s leaving a track of bodies from Rome to Eastern Europe by way of Paris.

    This is not, of course, a serious novel. Rob Grant is an ex-member of the “Red Dwarf” comedy troupe, and this stand-alone novel reflects a delicious sense of humour that owes much to Sheckley and Adams. Runaway bureaucracies may be bad enough, but you’ve got real problems when the rot of inefficiency trickles down to even the most average janitor.

    Harry Salt’s life is not easy: He’s lucky when his plane lands at the right airport (baggage is another matter) or when his hotel room contains both a bed and a sink. Renting a car can be a lengthy adventure, especially when even the anti-theft device has been stolen. Salt’s U.S.E. may be a few years in the future (complete with automated cars and traffic signalization that can make it impossible to leave Paris), but the comic jabs are straight out of today’s anxieties.

    Stylistically, Incompetence riffs off the usual first-person tough-guy narration. “Harry Salt” (no real name provided) is one tough hombre, and he never lets you forget it. Grant overuses hyperbole as if he feared their criminalization, but it fits with the tall-tale tone of the average PI narration. Like most comedies, this isn’t a book that will take you a lot of time to read.

    It’s a measure of the novel’s lack of seriousness that the plot is nothing but an excuse on which to hang comic vignettes. See Harry pursue devious criminal; see Harry argue with service personnel; see Harry run for the train. It’s pretty good except when it runs too long, and unfortunately the novel does have a tendency to overstay its welcome, especially toward the end. Some of the comic vignettes work (I was particularly charmed by Captain Zuccho, a policeman with rather serious anger management problems) but many simply run too long: The entire train sequence is a perfect example of a one-note joke dragged on for twenty pages. It doesn’t get much better over the course of the drawn-out conclusion, which tones down the humour and add in useless details.

    Not that this is the only thing wrong about the conclusion, in which the novel’s light-hearted tone somehow ends up swapped with a pretty serious conspiracy theory involving competitive geopolitics. Readers will frown at the conclusion and wonder where that came from. But perhaps it’s not such a surprise considering a story featuring an overly competent murderer: Incompetence can be funny if it’s not happening to you; murder is rarely funny even in the abstract.

    Still, Incompetence is a laugh for most of its duration, and that’s not bad by itself. Humorous SF is still a fairly rare phenomenon, and this novel is a clue as to why: Short and yet too long, amusing and yet a bit too serious by the end, structured around individual vignettes that aren’t always coherently strung together. The level of individual incompetence exhibited in the novel would quickly bring civilization to a halt, to say nothing of preventing underground prison hellscrapers… but it’s not a good idea to question the coherence of an absurd humour novel.

    Pleasant but not exactly unforgettable, Incompetence will fit the bill if you’re looking for a few laughs and an undemanding read. The prose has its pleasures, and so do some of the individual sequences. Otherwise, well, it’s a lot like your average sitcom: A good way to spend time, but nothing worth considering the next day.

  • The Zombie Survival Guide, Max Brooks

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Three Rivers Press, 2003, 256 pages, C$19.95 tpb, ISBN 1-4000-4962-8

    Now that’s a curio. The title really tells you everything you need to know: This is a guide, and it’s all about surviving a zombie uprising. Hilariously patterned after a survivalist manual, Max Brooks’ Zombie Survival Guide grabs a concept and runs far, far away with it.

    The first part of the book sets the (un)dead-serious tone: Zombies are a real scientific phenomenon, explains Brooks as he details the current state of “scientific knowledge” about the condition. The zombies of this guide are similar to the usual movie canon, with a number of important differences not limited to the demands of a two-hour-long running time. The most important of them is the zombies’ durability: We are made privy to a number of incidents in which zombies successfully traveled underwater, or even thawed after several years spent encased in ice. Brrr!

    Product of a “Solanum” viral infection, zombie outbreaks present their set of particular dangers and opportunities. Preparedness is key to survival: Properly-informed citizen can mount an effective resistance, whereas those poor fools caught unprepared might as well settle right now for a fate worse than death.

    Brooks never breaks a smile as he goes through scenarios, weapons, tactics and survival strategies. Though billed as “humour”, the the book acquires its own credibility after a while, and people reading through the “living in an undead world” chapter may want to put down the book, look through the window, take a deep breath and repeat to themselves “This is fiction! Humour! Not real! I don’t have to prepare for a zombie invasion!”

    The book is soberly presented in a no-nonsense design, often punctuated by simple line drawings. The writing is crisp, to the point and almost too believable at time. Despite the number of contradictions inherent to the concept (for a virus “not yet fully understood”, the fictional Solanum virus seems unusually well-researched), The Zombie Survival Guide creates its own off-kilter reality in which zombie plagues are not exactly unknown.

    This impression gets even stranger in the last part of the book, in which Brooks digs through history to present a series of vignettes detailing the evolution of Solanum infections throughout humankind. There are a number of highly effective passages in here, meshing relatively well with known history and even establishing a Cold War secret history of sorts. SF and Fantasy readers will read this section as a confirmation of Brook’s success in creating his own parallel zombie-friendly reality. Beyond a simple humour book, The Zombie Survival Guide often slips into a horror universe of its own.

    It also offers a non-movie look at the zombie creatures, which is precious given how Brooks wastes few words in taking the concept of the zombie to its logical extreme. Indestructible creatures can last a long time, travel underwater and survive unlikely traumas before rotting away or (preferably) being shot in the head by a prepared citizen. This type of long-term deep extrapolation would be unworkable in a movie context. Here, Brooks spends a lot of time pondering “What if?” and the chapter on living in world where zombies have effectively taken over (for at least a generation) is a fairly original piece of work.

    All told, you may want to buy The Zombie Survival Guide as a gag gift, but you will end up reading it with a deepening sense of deliciously realistic dread. A book of that title might have just been a collection of stupid tricks learnt from zombie movies, but Brooks has spent a lot more time creating his own work of fiction. Not bad at all.

    [December 2009: The Zombie Survival Guide: Recorded Attacks is a graphic novel re-telling many of the historical vignettes collected in the last part of The Zombie Survival Guide.  Ibraim Roberson’s busily detailed artwork is in luscious grayscale, and if the stories tend to repeat themselves as variations on the old bite-bite-fight, there’s enough menace in the various introductions and conclusions to make it all seem unsettling.  At less than 150 pages, it’s not a big book, and is best aimed at those who already liked The Zombie Survival Guide at lot.  But after three zombie books in a row, Brooks could definitely try something else.]