Author: Christian Sauvé

  • Passion Play, Sean Stewart

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Tesseracts, 1992, 231 pages, C$?.?? mmpb, ISBN 0-88878-314-0

    For a writer, one good way to ensure interest from the reader is to mix widely disparate elements in a single work. Some of the time, the result is a mish-mash of incongruous concepts. Most of the time, it seems like a fairly obvious gimmick (as Jurassic Park‘s mix of genetic engineering and chaos theory) Once in a while, though, the themes mesh well together and the result is often a classic.

    In the field of Canadian Science-Fiction, Passion Play (Aurora and Edgar Award, 1992) is considered a minor classic and after reading it it’s easy to see why. Basically, it’s an endearing mix of science-fiction and crime story: the plot is about an investigator asked to solve the death of an actor.

    So far, so accessible. Then the complications begin.

    First, the setting. We’re a few years in the future, in an America dominated by a religious leadership (The Redemption Presidency, in a tone slightly similar to Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale —another great Canadian SF novel.) The atmosphere is restrictive, oppressive and retrograde. Women’s right are in decline -if not almost gone-, as are most progressive ideas. Vigilantism is encouraged; the novel begins as a small mob kills a women for adultery—the leader of the mob being the husband.

    Enters the protagonist; Diane Fletcher, a woman in a man’s world. Her precious talent: She can see and feel the emotions of others. This makes her useful to the official police force, who subcontracts a few cases to her. Fletcher is one of this novel’s biggest assets: Her narration is almost always impeccable, and her personality is fully developed. It is fortunate that the tale is told by her voice.

    The victim of the crime isn’t ordinary either: Jonathan Mask is, at the beginning of the novel, the most famous actor—sorry, “communicator”—in America. And he’s also very, very dead, electrocuted inside his hi-tech suit he was wearing for his new teleplay. It might be an accident—but since this is a crime story, we can bet that it’s not.

    Fortunately, Steward knows how to tell a tale. It gets muddled in the end (like most whodunits) and the end result is too dark to be cheered, but Passion Play is an impressive debut by the author who would later write the engrossing (but frustrating) Resurrection Man. Passion Play is slightly more enjoyable although the ending is unnecessarily grim. Too bad; this novel could have used an optimistic finale.

    Still, this 1991 Tesseract book is well-worth tacking down. Stylish yet easy to read, complex but captivating, let’s hope that our future has a few more authors like Sean Stewart and books like Passion Play.

  • Hudson Hawk (1991)

    Hudson Hawk (1991)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (Third viewing, On TV, April 1998) Lord knows why, I’ve got a soft spot for this movie, widely known as one of the biggest bombs in the history of cinema. This tale of one singing cat-burglar is very uneven, intermittently clever and suffers from a lacklustre first ten minutes before it switches in high gear, but it also sports Bruce Willis in a fairly good character, Andie MacDowell (what more is there to say?) and some of the weirdest, most over-the-top comedy you’ve ever, ever seen. (“There aren’t many challenges left when you’ve made your first billion at nineteen. So I set upon my next goal: Global Domination!” [The shareholders applaud]) I can see why it’s not for a general audience and I’d sure would have liked to see another (tighter, funnier) draft of the script. But this movie left me in stitches each time I’ve seen it (thrice, two of them in butchered French translation) so… see it at least once, and don’t expect anything.

  • The Big Hit (1998)

    The Big Hit (1998)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In theaters, April 1998) This is another of those movie that are a lot of fun providing that you don’t expect them to make a lot of sense. In this case, it’s a violent comedy in the tradition of Pulp Fiction, Hexed and Grosse Pointe Blank mixed with the stylistic excesses of The Chase, The Rock and/or a bunch of Hong Kong movies. The characters are at least unusual, and the action sequences (all five of them) are fairly well executed. The movie tries too hard to be funny, and regrettably indulges in a lot of despicable stereotyping but it’s okay if you’re in the mood for this kind of thing. Acting is also above average for this kind of movie, with special kudos going to Mark Wahlberg, Avery Brooks and newcomer China Chow (may she have a long and successful career: we could certainly benefit from seeing more of her around!) Very good movie to see with a bunch of MST3K-like friends.

  • / [Slant], Greg Bear

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Tor, 1997, 349 pages, C$34.95 hc, ISBN 0-312-85517-6

    Greg Bear is a very uneven writer. At his best, he’s able to produce stories like Blood Music, The Forge of God, Eon and the exceptional Moving Mars. As his worst, he gets taken with disillusions of literary grandeur and turns out stuff like most of Eternity, Strength of Stones and the incredibly boring Queen of Angels, all of whom manage to fumble clever premises by molasses-like plotting, cypher-characters and obscure prose. With / [Slant], Bear has added another miss to his collection.

    Well, I’d better qualify this statement. Queen of Angels did not amaze me, despite the fact that some critics hailed it as one of the best SF novels ever. Cool ideas, interesting stuff, but it was still mind-numbingly boring. Slant is the sequel to Queen of Angels.

    (A word or two about the title: somewhere buried into the copyright page, we find the following doozy: “The title consists solely of the slant sign.”)

    Slant picks up a four years after the events of Queen of Angels. Despite the quadruple whammies of Self-Sentient Machine Intelligence, the Binary Millenium, explorations of the Country of the Mind and possibly intelligent extra-terrestrial life, the world of 2052 hasn’t changed very much from the previous volume. Most of the prequel’s protagonists are a step down from where they were previously. Policewoman Mary Choy has moved to Seattle. Psychologist Martin Burke has a private practice and doesn’t meddle with the Country of the Mind anymore: nobody does.

    Meanwhile, a man named Jack Giffey is mounting a raid on a modern-day pyramid. A porn star/occasional prostitute has a disturbing encounter with a paying customer. A middle-aged man has seemingly lost his wife’s affection. Other stuff happens.

    For a good hundred-fifty pages, nothing is brought together. Then, we get ominous hints of something like an impending collapse of the collective unconscious. (Unfortunately, nothing like that happens..)

    By the time all characters, events and subplots come to an end inside the said modern-day pyramid, we’re ingested a bit of philosophy, met a few characters and seen a future that’s quite plausible.

    It still doesn’t mean that it wasn’t boring.

    To be fair, there are a few good quotes and a few equally good ideas here and there in /. There is an unusual emphasis on the theme of male/female relations (there goes / again), treated quite maturely. The characters are effectively (re-)introduced and we get the idea that we could have had a fairly good story with them. The first fifty pages are even quite good, mostly because at this point all possibilities are still open. Unfortunately, Bear settles for a pedestrian walk through the future and we, the readers, suffer through it all.

    Slant doesn’t even have the memorable bits from the first volume, so it’s very probable that it’ll disappear from the SF conscience in very short time. A pretty weak cover by Jim Burns also doesn’t help. The interior design is quirky, perhaps a bit too much.

    Upon reading books like /, there is always the doubt that the author may be too smart for us, that we’re just too dull, too immature to “get” what he’s talking about. It is probably the case with both of those books, but the ultimate recommendation stands: If you’re in the market for a readable, fast and fun read, steer clear of /.

  • Dreaming Aloud: The Life and Films of James Cameron, Christopher Heard

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Doubleday Canada, 1997, 260 pages, C$21.95 tpb, ISBN 0-385-25680-9

    In the last minutes of March 23rd, 1998, James Cameron brandished his Academy Award for Achievement in Movie Directing above his head and exclaimed before a few hundred million viewers, “I am the king of the world!” Despite the fact that this hyperbole was quoted directly from his script for TITANIC, it was a sentiment that a lot of Cameron fans could share.

    James Cameron, born in Kapuskasing, (Ontario, Canada) had come a long way from his humble origins. In fifteen years, he has produced some of the most stunning movies the world could have imagined. His cinematography reads like a box-office hit top-ten: THE TERMINATOR, ALIENS, THE ABYSS, TERMINATOR II: JUDGEMENT DAY, TRUE LIES and finally, especially TITANIC. He has broken the most-expensive-movie-ever record not once or twice, but thrice. His movies consistently push the limits of moviemaking technology, and yet he seldom contributes substandard material. His movie, as shocking as it may seem, are techno-marvels built upon human emotions.

    Cameron, like the best folk heroes, consistently goes against impossible odds. Many people thought him defeated after the saga of TITANIC’s making. 500+ million dollars of US gross box-office revenue later, Cameron proved them wrong. But if the skeptics had read Dreaming Aloud before doubting Cameron, they might have thought differently.

    Dreaming Aloud chronicles Cameron’s life from his Kapuskasing Days until the eve of TITANIC. He see Cameron during his stint at Roger Corman’s B-flick studio, where he directed his first feature film (PIRANHA II). Then it’s his chance meeting with Arnold Schwarzenegger, future wife Linda Hamilton and fate with the first TERMINATOR movie. The remainder is known and expected, but author Heard makes it interesting. Whether it’s about his films or his marriages (Linda Hamilton being Cameron’s fourth wife. As the author says, “Marriage is something Cameron believes in but isn’t very good at himself.” [P. 188]) the style is completely readable (very possibly in a single sitting), especially for confirmed Cameron fans.

    An index, a cinematography and a few photos complete the account.

    But even despite the appeal of Cameron’s films and the breezy style in which it is written, Dreaming Aloud is at the same time far from being satisfying enough. A look at the bibliography reveals a scant six books and seven magazine articles used to write “Dreaming Aloud” This reviewer has read (heck, has written) essays with more sources than this. Dreaming Aloud may or may not be a compilation of these thirteen sources, but in retrospect it is also a very distant biography. We never get the sense that Heard has actually talked to Cameron, or done extensive legwork on his subject. The extended plot summaries (4-5 pages for each major movie) are not interesting for Cameron fans (who already know these movies by heart) and may feel out of place for the remainder of the audience. The usefulness of their length is doubtful.

    Dreaming Aloud closes while pondering the after-TITANIC for Cameron. Given the success of the movie at the Academy Awards (11 Oscars, tying BEN-HUR’s record), this is a surprisingly powerful finale.

    Fortunately, we now know that Cameron has taken his deserved place in the Hollywood hiearchy. He is in the enviable position of having dared the gods, and won. He can do whatever he desires next: it will be seen by millions. At the moment he is truly, as grandiose as it may seem, King of the (Hollywood) World.

    Millions of fans cheer.

  • Ignition, Kevin J. Anderson & Doug Beason

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Forge, 1997, 320 pages, C$32.00 hc, ISBN 0-312-86270-9

    EARLY 1996

    —Hi, what’s up?
    —Thought about our next book a bit. You know that we’ve got to deliver another thriller to Tor/Forge in the coming year.-
    —Yeah, something a bit meatier than our Craig Kreident franchise for Ace.
    —Exactly. So, I was watching DIE HARD yesterday, and-
    —Ah yeah, pretty good movie. We could do something like this.
    —Exactly. So, I began thinking where terrorists could do some damage, and came up with something pretty wild. Ready?  How about Cape Kennedy?
    —Terrorists take over a shuttle? That’s a great hook!
    —Thanks. Now, I guess we’d have some kind of shuttle flight-
    —-so we could show off our Hard-SF background with the technical details-
    —Yeah, and terrorists would threaten to blow up the shuttle on the launch pad while the hero would run around, killing bad guys and saving the shuttle.
    —Terrific premise. We can do something with this.
    —The best thing is that there’s plenty of explosives around.
    —Right! A few rockets here and there, some hi-tech weapons…
    —Not to mention helicopters and APCs and the shuttle!
    —We could even sell the movie rights to Hollywood!
    —But no reviewer would miss the connection.
    —Hey, this one’s for the money, right?
    —Uh-huh. So, back to the premise: We could always make the hero -an astronaut- a bit more vulnerable, something to chuck off in the movie-
    —Like, oh, having him with a broken leg?
    —Oh, come on, he’d be grounded- Hey, that’s not bad! He’d be pissed-
    —Yeah! And then he’s wobble along blowing up terrorists (laughs)
    —We could make this work. And what about a love interest?
    —Uh… Got it! An ex-lover of his that’s gone up to flight control. Traditional fiery relationship. But then they kiss and make up.
    —I like it. How about a villain?
    —Oh, don’t know yet… We’ll get around to that later. I just want to make sure we’ve got a good amazon female henchman assassin character somewhere.
    —That about wraps it. I’ll draft the outline and send it to New York-
    —No special effort for style, I guess.
    —Nah. We nailed it with Ill Wind: No need to waste style on thrillers. Descriptive is good enough. Gotta keep them turning the pages!
    —That’s the goal! Okay, talk to you later.

    MARCH 1998

    Anderson and Beason probably never had the above conversation, but they succeeded in producing a perfectly entertaining thriller with Ignition. Okay, so the villain is simultaneously hilarious and bland, the conclusion is dragged-out and the image of a hero with a broken leg is often more comical than inspiring, but the remainder of the novel isn’t half-bad. A couple of big explosions, action scenes and classic wish-fulfillment makes this an engrossing read. Should make an interesting movie.

  • Airframe, Michael Crichton

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Knopf, 1996, 351 pages, C$35.00 hc, ISBN 0-679-44648-6

    (Read in French translation as Turbulences, Robert Laffont, 1998)

    Another year, another Michael Crichton techno-thriller. At least, this one is better than The Lost World… even if that’s not really saying much.

    When future literary historians will dust up the shelves of turn-of-the-millenium popular fiction, they’ll have to take notice of the name Michael Crichton. After all, when you regularly top the best-selling lists like he does, year after year without any signs of slowing down, these things tend to stay in memory.

    But when they’ll peer closer at Crichton, I get the feeling that they’ll run into a maddening puzzle. Was Crichton an author, or not?

    Are there any creative endeavor that Crichton hasn’t tried? Besides being a best-selling novelist (Jurassic Park, The Andromeda Strain, Congo, Rising Sun, Disclosure…), Crichton is/has been a fairly good movie director (THE GREAT TRAIN ROBBERY, WESTWORLD… even one of my favorites: RUNAWAY), a computer game programmer (an obscure illustrated text adventure called, I believe, AMAZON), a TV scripter/producer (E.R.), a screenwriter… where does he find the time to write these books? (Notice that we haven’t mentioned his medical studies, or his family, or that he once won an Academy Award for improvements in movie accounting. No, really!)

    Crichton, these days, is arguably more famous as Crichton himself than as the guy who’s slaving away behind the keyboard putting words one after the other. Part of this might be caused by his novels. Okay, so Crichton has made a living out of warning people about technology. But besides that, his books feel like prepackaged products: Formidably competent, usually utterly entertaining, but devoid of flavor, quirkiness or personality.

    Airframe certainly fits into the cookie-cutter profile that Crichton fans have come to expect. Once again, it deal with a high-technology subject (in this case, passenger airplanes) from a dramatic angle (people are killed during a in-flight accident) using characters freshly recycled from the nineties’ stable of stereotypes. In this case, our heroine is an administrator at Norton Aircraft, the antagonist is a young and irresponsible media “journalist”, the evil overlord is a (grr! grr! kss! kss!) rich and greedy corporate guy, and so on and so forth.

    Plotting is strictly by-the-numbers, with unexpected events happening here and there without any justification but that something must happen by this point. (The chase through the airplane hangar is particularly ludicrous.) At least Crichton does not do cliches. His characterization may be familiar, unsubtle and hastily pieced-up, but it stays within the borderlines of the reasonably adept.

    It’s fun (?) to note that despite being sold by truckloads to a mass-market audience, Airframe contains considerably more scientific and engineering jargon than most science-fiction novels. In many ways, this is a prototypical techno-thriller. The hook, the process, the gimmicks, the resolution are all technological, and the ultimate cause of the crashes won’t exactly be guessed by the casual reader (as it is too often the tendency while writing this type of fiction.) Airframe at least has a veneer of authenticity, a probable result of considerable time spend researching the subject.

    Predictably, Airframe is slick, fun entertainment. Easily readable in a single day (or a single airplane flight, heh-heh-heh) and perfect for beach reading, it again proves why Crichton is at the top of the charts, and deserves to stay there.

  • Yat goh ho yan [Mr. Nice Guy] (1997)

    Yat goh ho yan [Mr. Nice Guy] (1997)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In theaters, March 1998) What can you say about a Jackie Chan movie? You either like the goofy humor, the incredible real-life stunts, the lousy stories, the insulting sexism and the hammy acting or you don’t. As a confirmed Jackie Chan fan, I can say that it’s one of the most enjoyable movie he’s done, mainly due to a certain lack of repetitiveness that had plagued some of his earlier films. The action is also nicely distributed, with at least four memorable sequences in the movie, including a horse-carriage chase and a construction site fight. The Pepsi-fight is also fun to watch. The ending might be disappointing for martial-arts aficionados, but is a blast if you like monster-truck shows. Better than Operation Condor, if less hilarious. Unpretentious fun, Mr. Nice Guy is exactly what you need to take a 90-minutes brain break.

  • Interface, Stephen Bury

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Bantam, 1995, 583 pages, C$15.95 tpb, ISBN 0-553-37230-0

    American politics are -rightfully- an endlessly fascinating topic, especially when seen from the outside. With power, greed, money and lately -as if it was the only thing missing-, extramarital sex, you can’t really go wrong. The increasingly mediatic aspect of, specifically, high-office campaigning have been the inspiration for many fine works (THE MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE, Primary Colors, ROB ROBERTS…) and Interface is an attractive new high-tech work dealing with the subject.

    Half of Stephen Bury is better known as Neal Stephenson, writer of such SF masterpieces like Snow Crash and The Diamond Age. With Interface, he switched technological gears and collaborated with his uncle to produce one of the most entertaining political techno-thriller you’re likely to read this year. Or any year.

    The jacket blurbs will try to sell you Interface as a chilling novel where one presidential candidate has a chip implanted in his brain that lets him get instantaneous audience feedback. The truth is that this particular subplot is fairly insignificant, barely exploited and then quickly forgotten. But the remainder of the novel is even better: Public Opinion moguls, redneck psychos, government-controlling conspiracists, crazy spin doctors, humble housewives, foreign neurosurgeons, nerdy engineers and a few million voters all tangle, fight, debate, act, flee or react to make this a complex, but engrossing story.

    Interface is an incredibly dense novel. This is definitely one that you’ll want to read attentively; not only is there a lot of plot, but there’s also a lot of details. Stephenson is also known by his articles for Wired magazine, and his fascination for the sociologies of America is evident.

    The style of Interface is even better than anything we could have hoped for. Bury’s combined voice is sardonic, clear, often hilarious and always compelling. With some books, the reader feels smarter than the author but here, not only are we conscious that Bury’s smarter, but we accept this without resentment. (“Why didn’t I think of that?”) The amount of detail is incredible; protagonist Cozzano is not described as a rich guy, but his whole family history is unwrapped before us. It’s a measure of Bury’s talent that this exposition and erudition does not feel forced or boring. Similarly, these authors don’t skimp on characterization: Everyone here, despite some very unlikely stunts, feel like actual human characters, and not puppets moved on a stage for our entertainment.

    But beyond all this, beyond the enthralling prose and the grrrreat characters, what makes the novel are the Cool Scenes. Cool Scenes are these almost-perfect snippets of prose that aren’t always related to the plot, but stick in the mind for a while. We’re talking Dune‘s sandworms. Neuromancer‘s public-telephone trick. The snowballs thrown at the Moon in Earth. The cruciform resurrections in the first Hyperion volume. Interface has a lot of these Cool Scenes: A Politician vandalizing an ambulance; a blow-by-blow description of dirty campaign tricks; a psychological test; an unemployed housewife taking on a presidential candidate—and winning. This is what elevates Interface over the rest.

    Despite all of this, Interface‘s conclusion is a bit rushed. Some of the parts don’t quite gel together. Threads are left untied. And we never get the “robo-candidate” novel promised on the blurb.

    But nevertheless, Interface is more than a keenly successful satire on American politics: it’s great, great entertainment. You will probably even learn a few things. Buy it.

  • All Our Yesterdays, Robert. B. Parker

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Dell, 1994, 466 pages, C$8.99 mmpb, ISBN 0-440-22146-3

    It’s become something of a cliché to represent every best-selling author as someone with deep literary aspirations who resort to simple, exciting, shallow novels to support himself while s/he’s writing the Great American Novel. (Even Olivia Goldsmith’s The Bestseller does this…)

    For instance, everyone knows that Stephen King can write shlocko horror novels at the rate of two or three a year, but his fans also know that meanwhile, King is also writing deeply serious, profound works of literature with his Dark Tower series (among other things, including his short stories.)

    In this case, Robert B. Parker is best known as the best-selling author of the detective series “Spencer”. In these novels, a witty Boston private investigator fends off the Mob and other assorted thugs while solving crimes and engaging in witty banter with his psychologist girlfriend and a gallery of sharply-drawn characters.

    I more or less became hooked to Robert B. Parker in early 1997, when one friend gave me a box of crime novels which contained two “Spencer” thrillers. I don’t usually read much crime fiction (perhaps ten-fifteen books a year in good years) but somehow became a “Spencer” fan.

    And now this, a non-Spencer Parker novel.

    All our Yesterdays traces the affairs between two families over three generations, beginning in 1912 and ending in 1994. The legacy of an affair between an Irish revolutionary and an American nurse will ultimately end up in Boston (considering Parker—where else?) being played-out in a city-wide gang war. Three generations of cops, trying to deal with crime and love.

    This book is a much more ambitious novel than any of the “Spencer” novels. It’s also nastier, as if Parker realized he was writing for a more jaded audience than his usual crowd. His characters are darker; his prose style is harsher. People swear, have sex and beat up others even more. (They don’t seem to kill off each other in greater quantities, though.) Even given the not-always-fluffy tone of the Spencer novels, this is something. Unfortunately, a lot of the humor is also left behind. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, since Parker retains his grip on how to write crackling dialogue.

    The characters of the novel are deliciously complex, and often end up acting in ways you’re not supposed to expect. The relationships between the characters is more dynamic than in the average novel, and it’s one of the pleasures of the novel to see everything being played out. It may be argued that the small scale of the novel is unsatisfying, but Parker makes simple dialogue more exciting than explosions, so everything evens out. The style is unusually readable, this 450+ pages novel being easily readable over a single day.

    All our Yesterdays, despite its bigger aspirations, isn’t that much of a step over the Spencer series. (A testament of the overall quality of Spencer novels more than anything else) As such, fans of Spencer will certainly enjoy this novel as much as the other ones. Others might see this as a good one-time introduction to Parker’s fiction.

  • The Quintaglio Trilogy, Robert J. Sawyer

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Ace, 1992-1994, ??? pages, C$??.?? mmpb, ISBN Various

    Far-Seer (1992), Fossil Hunter (1993) and Foreigner (1994)

    Funny animals, dinosaurs.

    Funny in the sense that they can lend themselves to a multitude of interpretation; their image in the popular psyche includes things from Barney to the T-Rex in Jurassic Park. You can have’em fluffy or bloodthirsty; there’s room for everything in-between. Even intelligent dinosaurs.

    With the Quintaglio Trilogy, Canadian author Robert J. Sawyer sets out with big ambitions. He set sout to explore no less than the path to our modern Western scientific mindset by telling us a three-volume story about an alien race (said Quintaglios) gradually discovering the truths of the universe. In the few hundred pages composing the trilogy, they (we) will go from Galileo to space-flight. It’s a lot of stuff, but Sawyer manages it well.

    The first book of the trilogy, Far-Seer, is simultaneously the most interesting and the most ludicrous book of the cycle. The narrative structure is familiar; a young protagonist goes on a voyage of discovery that will change him. (The rest of the world will follow) It’s a fine coming-of-age story. Some parts are breathlessly exciting. Unfortunately, this volume doesn’t unfold as much as it is unwrapped by the author. Like most Sawyer novels (although this one is worse than most), Far-Seer relies a lot on suspicious plotting and awfully convenient coincidences. Earthquakes, sudden deaths and leaps of logic happen when they are the most needed.

    The other books are less classically definable, but also rely less of Amazing Authorial Plot Tricks. If the first volume is about Galileo, Fossil Hunter is about Darwin and Foreigner is about Freud. You’ll have to supply the ability to believe that all of this happens in less than a century. With protagonists mostly related to one another.

    But reading the Quintaglio trilogy only for the story is a bit unfair. For one thing, the characterization is adequate and the style is the usually limpid prose that Sawyer has used with great success in his other novels. Like the author’s other novels, the Quintaglio books are readable in a single sitting, although you might want to make them last a bit further. Scientific details are exceedingly well-researched, which brings us to the biggest virtue of the Quintaglio trilogy: World-building.

    The most amazing thing about the Quintaglio trilogy is the way everything holds well together. The world has an impact on the biology, which has an impact on the psychology, which has an impact on individuals… A lot of subtle and unsubtle details show us how the Quintaglio differ from us and how we can emphasize with them. (My favorite is an insult: “Eat Roots!” Pretty offensive statement for a carnivore…!) Despite dealing with beings closely related to our dinosaurs, Sawyer makes them as sympathetic and likable as human characters.

    Careful readers of Sawyer’s work won’t be surprised to find that his usual themes of religion and marital problems find their way into the fabric of the Quintaglio trilogy. A concordance of the Quintaglio world is included at the end of the third volume. Very useful material, but contains spoilers so don’t peek ahead. The illustrations by Tom Kidd (Vol.1) and Bob Eggleton (Vol.2-3) are okay. This trilogy cries out for an omnibus edition.

    A final comment; the third book’s emphasis on Freud might not go down well with a few readers overly unconvinced by Old Sigmund’s theories. It would be a mistake, however, to assume a one-to-one analogy with our human theories; the Quintaglio way of life is suitably different from ours, and we get the drift that Freud would have been vastly more successful (or at least, accurate) there than here. (In a bizarre coincidence, I read Foreigner while my elective psychology class was studying Freud. Talk about synchronicity!)

  • L.A. Confidential (1997)

    L.A. Confidential (1997)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In theaters, February 1998) I can’t wait I waited this long to see this movie. To L.A. Confidential, I offer my ultimate movie-criticism compliment: It was as enjoyable as a good book. A triumph of storytelling, L.A. Confidential packs a staggering amount of material in less than three hours, which fly so fast that you’ll never realize it is almost a three-hour movie. Every minute is worthwhile, and few moments are boring. A masterful script is backed-up by excellent performances by all six lead actors (Kim Basinger, yeah!), surprisingly great direction and equally excellent editing/scoring. L.A. Confidential gives me back my faith in cinema. Or rather; I go see movies for things like L.A. Confidential. I’m not sure if Titanic or L.A. Confidential is my favorite film of 1997, but I’m sure that L.A. Confidential is the better movie of the two.

  • Dark City (1998)

    Dark City (1998)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In theaters, February 1998) Somehow, great things spring up from nowhere. Last year, low-budget lower-impact movie Gattaca managed to be the best SF movie of 1997, appearing out of the blue and sinking almost as fast. This year (so far), Dark City can claim to the same distinction. It’s not a “warm”, “easy” or “fun” movie, but it’s certainly cool, impressive and tremendously exciting. Dark City is a riff on the unusual themes (for cinema) of memory and identity, well-mixed with a good old-fashioned mortal-against-gods story and a very stylish noir atmosphere. Not your run-of-the-mill SF flick, but possesses terrific editing and visual effects. It’s not without faults, of course (said editing is often over-the-top, premise more “Science-fantasy” than otherwise, parts of the ending are disappointing, some visual effects are uneven) but it’s likely to be some of the best stuff this year.

    (Second viewing, In theaters, July 2000) Ironically for a film about memory, I had nearly forgotten how good a film Dark City was. Decently scripted, wonderfully directed and amazingly designed, this is a film that will endure, most probably because it was designed from the onset to be timeless, which its quasi-retro look and atmosphere. A second viewing reveals wonderful small details that may be missed on first viewing (such as the protagonist’s fish fascination, or a shot where a rock thrown through a window flips over a sign from “Closed” to “Open”) Best of all, this is a film that’s enthralling for its whole duration. Most assuredly one of the best genre films of the decade, Dark City is a must-see-again.

  • Blues Brothers 2000 (1998)

    Blues Brothers 2000 (1998)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In theaters, February 1998) I began 1998 with the firm resolution to go only to worthwhile movies. It’s a downer to find that my first movie of the year is so very ordinary. The Blues Brothers still stand in my mind as one of the best musical comedies ever, but this sequel doesn’t even approaches the 1980 original in terms of coolness, musical energy, plotting, general fun or even coherence. Despite having seen the man in person, I’ve been less and less of a fan of Dan Aykroyd ever since his shameless propaganda for paranormal phenomenon, and he sinks even lower after the markedly mercenary intent of this film. (It’s probably no coincidence that it features an explicit Revelation From God and a witch temporarily turning the heroes into zombies.) The musical numbers are so lousily integrated in the movie that we almost expect the little MTV logo to appear in the corner at the beginning and end of each song. Finally, if everything else wasn’t depressing enough, the movie isn’t even very funny, and has no real conclusion to speak of. On the other hand, Joe Morton, John Goodman and the few female roles are somewhat enjoyable. There are also a lot of blues in-jokes you won’t understand.

  • The Bestseller, Olivia Goldsmith

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Harper Collins, 1996, 514 pages, C$35.00 hc, ISBN 0-06-017822-1

    It’s inevitable. After reading a few hundred books, the compulsive reader is not only interested in the stories that the book tell, but in the books themselves. Some become authors; other read about authors.

    So, it’s quite a treat to see such a witty and accomplished novelist as Olivia Goldsmith (The First Wives Club) turn her attention on the wonderfully twisted world of New York publishers. Of course, since this is a best-selling novel about best-selling novels, it naturally follows that adultery, crime, punishment, sex, sex, sex, betrayals, horrid incurable diseases, sex, suicides, multimillion contracts and more sex than usual is portrayed here.

    In short, The Bestseller is a blast.

    At 514 pages, The Bestseller manages to be long and compulsively readable… after a while. The premise is simple: Five books are eventually bought by one of New York’s biggest publishing house. We follow their fates, along with their authors and almost everyone remotely associated with the books’ publication: Editors, agents, librarians and the other members of the family…

    Author number one dies in the first pages of The Bestseller: Her mother goes on crusade to publish her daughter’s masterpiece. Author number two is a best-selling romance writer on the decline: Is she going to be able to keep her sanity in addition to the number one spot? Author number three is a young Englishwoman in Italy: Is love or fame the most important thing? Author number four is not only an author, but the publisher himself: Vanity publishing, or honestly good novel? Author number five is a pseudonym for a husband-and-wife collaboration: What happens when the husband “forgets” about his wife and claims the credit?

    Then there are the agents (the good and the bad ones), the editors (the good and the bad ones) and the publishers. (again; the good and the bad ones) We visit sales conference, the ABA, bookstores, a few author tours. We read about ghostwriters, famous scandals, publishing lore and wisdom… Truly, The Bestseller tries to reward its reader, who should preferably be a Reader.

    Due to the number of plot-lines kept in the air, it does take a while for The Bestseller to cohere. Once it does, however, we’re in for the ride! Goldsmith paints her characters adequately enough to care for them. By the end of the book, it feels like we’ve made new friends.

    The Bestseller, however, is rather heavy-handed. As the novel advances, characters are further divided in two mutually exclusive camps: The Good characters will get most of what they want. The Bad characters will get what they deserve. Melodrama happens, but strangely it does not harm the book. In fact, The Bestseller would have been much less enjoyable with moral ambiguity. Everyone likes a happy ending, and it’s refreshing to be in a narrative where everything happens as it should happen.

    Escape reading? At its best! Goldsmith’s prose is undemanding yet not without a certain elegance. Whatever happens is clearly described (aside from one unfortunately intentional “Let’s hide the gender of this character” misstep.) and there are very few barriers between the reader and the story.

    A few audacious in-jokes pepper this book, further rewarding the attentive reader. But most will be content just to read page after page, sinking in the story like it should be with any big, good bestseller.