Book Review

  • The Automatic Detective, A. Lee Martinez

    The Automatic Detective, A. Lee Martinez

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Tor, 2008, 317 pages, C$16.95 tpb, ISBN 978-0-7653-1834-3

    One of the most interesting things about our genre-saturated entertainment culture is that everyone has at least some basic understanding of the specialized protocols that drive, say, mysteries or Science Fiction. We’ve caught enough TV shows rehashing the same plots, seen enough movies riffing off past ideas, read enough genre books that some useful fiction plot devices have become ingrained in our imagination. Talk about a robot, and everyone will picture a humanoid hulk of metal. Mention a Private Investigator, and everyone will see a smoke-filled office, a middle-aged guy in a trench-coat and a beautiful blonde asking for a simple favor.

    For a satirist like A. Lee Martinez, it’s a natural vein to exploit. Why not combine the clichés on SF and hard-boiled mystery fiction to create a parody of both genres? Martinez’s novels so far, starting with Gil’s All-Fright Diner, have been amusing take-offs on popular segments of genre fantasy and horror. The Automatic Detective is his first look at SF clichés, but the same instincts that have served him so well on previous books are once more displayed here.

    Mack Megaton is the hero of the story: a big, red robot designed to destroy but now trying to fit into normal society. Mack’s got anger issues, and his job as a taxi driver isn’t helping much. So when bad things happen to his neighbors and even worse things threaten Empire City, he opts for a career re-alignment and decides to do a little private investigation.

    The Automatic Detective is not meant to be serious Science Fiction. Empire City and its citizen are straight out of Pulp SF clichés, with easy jokes, silly world-building and the obvious use of familiar tropes. The narration itself is pure hard-boiled machismo made metal, with Megaton and friends worrying about oil changes, electrical charges and rusting plates. Mutants, aliens and fancy technology all make appearances, highlighting the deeper truth that this is surface SF, maybe even science-fantasy, playing with quasi-outdated SF gadgets not because they make sense, but because they’re familiar to everyone. (There’s an intriguing comparison to be made here between this book and Charles Stross’ Saturn’s Children, which attempts to re-cast familiar SF archetypes in a plausible modern world-view.)

    This sounds like a criticism of Martinez’s approach and it isn’t: From the way he piles up more and more of these references, it’s obvious that he doesn’t mean to pass this off as contemporary SF with deeper meaning: he’s out to write a romp, and he manages to reach his objective. The Automatic Detective is a good read, one that makes good use of its initial premises. Mack is a sympathetic character, and it’s not tough to cheer for him as his investigation continues. Martinez knows how to plot, and the book holds together well once the reader’s usual hard-SF nitpicking circuits are deactivated.

    In lesser hands, this could have been a mess of surface SF, with gadgets used nilly-wily without any attention to plausibility. Here, there is some rigor and a sense that Martinez’ voluntarily pulpish milieu is tied into the conceptual framework of his jokes. It’s also a fast read, which helps smooth out some of the background inconsistencies that arise when blending together so many SF devices. Purely and simply, it’s a romp and it should make a number of readers smile regardless of whether they can quote chapter and verse from Asimov and Chandler.

    For Martinez, it’s another solid hit that should solidify and broaden his reputation as one of SF&F’s most entertaining satirist. It’s not enough to have jokes: he’s able to beef up amusing premises with solid plotting, good characters and smooth writing. Best of all, his books should be accessible to a wider public who’s already familiar with the genres being parodied, whether they realize it or not.

  • The Uglies Series, Scott Westerfeld

    The Uglies Series, Scott Westerfeld

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Simon Pulse, 2005-2007, ???? pages, C$??.?? tpb, ISBN Various

    Uglies, Simon Pulse, 2005, 425 pages, C$10.50 pb, ISBN 978-0-689-86538-1
    Pretties, Simon Pulse, 2005, 370 pages, C$10.50 pb, ISBN 978-0-689-86539-8
    Specials, Simon Pulse, 2006, 372 pages, C$11.50 pb, ISBN 978-1-4169-4795-0
    Extras, Simon Pulse, 2007, 417 pages, C$19.99 hc, ISBN 978-1-4169-5117-9

    If we’re to believe those with access to Bookscan sales numbers, Scott Westerfeld has become one of the best-selling SF author of the past decade without much attention from the genre SF community. Cannily, he’s been able to pass unnoticed by tapping the young adult market: Thanks to publishing silos, most YA publishing used to pass unnoticed from the adult fiction pundits. Things have improved somewhat over the past few years as YA’s bigger sales have shamed adult SF numbers, and one of the landmark works in the field has been Westerfeld’s Uglies trilogy, which was ideally poised to benefit from the success of Westerfeld’s previous Peeps series.

    In the spirit of reportage, your fearless reviewer dared plunge into the unfamiliar murk of the YA section to bring back a boxed set of the Uglies trilogy (Uglies, Pretties and Specials) along with a standalone fourth book (Extras) set in the same universe. How does it stack up next to the adult fiction? Should we all make a stop at the YA shelves from now on? Are the kids reading this going to grow up to be good SF fans? Keep reading.

    One of the distinguishing characteristics of YA fiction is that it usually features younger protagonists, and so the initial Uglies trilogy stars Tally Youngblood, a teenage girl living in a world where there’s been quite a few changes to human society: Isolated cities exist in a post-apocalyptic landscape, and the stages of life have been formalized into distinct stages: “Littlies” grow up to be “Uglies” until their sixteenth birthday, at which point they are medically transformed into “Pretties” who enjoy a vacuous life until they grow older and become “Crumblies”. The city in which Tally lives is segregated by age, which leads to the usual hijinks in which the young ones try to see how the glamorous older set lives.

    But Tally’s not the kind of person to go with how things usually go, and so she quickly discovers life outside the city, along with hints of a past catastrophe, an underground for rebels and the disturbing secret of the medical procedures that transform Uglies into Pretties. In latter volumes, she goes through the “Pretties” transformation herself, then reluctantly gets recruited to become a “Special” operative to act on behalf of the city government. Before she’s through she’ll have time to love a few boys, start a war and completely re-shape the society she lives in. What fun!

    (The fourth volume, Extras, takes place years later with a fresh new social system and involves a largely different set of characters, though its perspective on Tally is intriguingly detached.)

    From an adult SF reader’s perspective, the series holds up a certain interest: The extrapolation of various trends in entertaining, and Tally makes for a good narrator. Where it differs from adult SF is that the explanations are more laborious and take far more time to be revealed: savvy SF readers will guess most of the twists ahead of time, and roll their eyes at the falsely-frantic pace that doesn’t lead anywhere. On the other hand, readers unfamiliar with SF in general may not find a better series to learn the particularities of the genre.

    The first volume is most interesting, as the stakes are clear and there’s an entirely new world to understand. The second volume is a notable step back, as the protagonist’s goals are less clearly defined. The third volume is bigger and more interesting, while the unplanned fourth book is an acceptable epilogue with enough space for some new ideas.

    If that’s the kind of SF that the kids are reading today, we’re in good hands: it’s not dumb, it’s not dull and it’s not fantasy dressed up in silver costumes. It’s also quite different from the Heinlein juveniles, and that ought to be a lesson for whoever wants to write SF for teens: they don’t want regurgitated ideas from the fifties, they want stories that speak to the hyper-connected present. One of the best legacies of Westerfeld’s success so far has been to open up the YA market to the adult audience, ensuring that we’ll be able to recognize the best SF authors regardless of who they’re writing for. And who knows; maybe the infusion of contemporary SF tropes will even invigorate the sometimes-moribund adult genre…

  • Multireal, David Louis Edelman

    Multireal, David Louis Edelman

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Pyr, 2008, 522 pages, US$15.00 tpb, ISBN 978-1-59102-647-1

    As a follow-up to David Louis Edelman’s debut novel Infoquake, Multireal improves upon a few problems from the first book, runs aground on the usual shoals of second-volumes-in-a-trilogy and promises much for the conclusion of the series. Fans of Edelman’s previous novel won’t be disappointed, and some skeptics will be reassured about the fate of the “Jump 225 Trilogy”.

    Readers will remember that Infoquake ended with a mind-bending technology demo of “Multireal”, a technology that allowed control over future possibilities, allowing an individual to predict and select the best outcomes of the many choices confronted on a moment-to-moment basis. Multireal focuses upon this technology while following the adventures of the driven entrepreneur Natch and the rest of the group he brings together to manage the release of this new technology product. Things aren’t looking good for him as the novel begins: beyond the usual business rivals and rabid media aggressiveness, Natch also has to contend with officials who can’t bear to see a technology as promising as Multireal stay in private hands, and hidden enemies who can’t wait to see the much-damned Natch fail at something for once.

    Perhaps the best things about Multireal, from a genre SF fan’s perspective, is how it manages to deal effectively with the possibilities of Multireal. The novel offers a series of showcases for the technology, from a flechette gunfight that ends in a perfect draw, to a stroll through London foot traffic, to a wild soccer demonstration to life-saving heroics in desperate circumstances. What seemed so far-fetched in the first volume seems natural, even inevitable this time around, which is a testament to Edelman’s growing confidence as a writer.

    It’s not the only aspect of Multireal that feels improved upon its predecessor. Many of the less-believable aspects of Edelman’s imagined future are either refined or left unmentioned, lending greater credibility to a setting that almost looked like a parody at first glance. Many of the monolithic organizations that so bothered picky readers in the first volume are now fractured and inefficient in this follow-up: The government forces are notably more nuanced thanks to infighting and power plays, adding some much-needed complexity to the “Jump 225” world.

    From a more conventional standpoint, Edelman may leave a lot of things hanging in mid-air by the end of this second volume, but he doesn’t hesitate to throw them there. Natch’s journey through this book goes from bad to worse as he suffers from black code implanted deep in his brain, loses almost every single source of support and struggles with his own beliefs. By the time A-type Natch is “reeling with ethical vertigo” on page 400, readers can be excused if they want to stand up and cheer; clearly, things are evolving. At the same time, Jara fans will be intrigued by her dramatic trajectory through the novel, as she emerges as a protagonist in her own right, trying to save the fiefdom from all enemies while trying to put away her infatuation for her former boss.

    All in all, it amounts to a strong second novel that shows how Edelman is growing as a writer. As high-tech SF novels go, this is one of the year’s good choices. It’s fun to read, interesting to think about and suggests that the third volume of the trilogy will be even better.

    [July 2007: Sharp-eyed readers will notice that a certain “Christian Suave” is hidden among the many, many Multireal blurbers. It’s my first printed blurb, and my name is misspelled. It’s a triumph both for both my ego and my integrity!]

  • Succubus in the City, Nina Harper

    Succubus in the City, Nina Harper

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Del Rey, 2008, 392 pages, C$8.99 mmpb, ISBN 978-0-345-49506-8

    I should probably start by saying that I’ve known Nina Harper for a few years as nodding acquaintances (back when she didn’t even call herself Nina Harper) and that I really wanted to enjoy this book. I should also make it clear, for calibration’s sake, that I read very little paranormal romance even though it has become one of the hottest SF&F sub-genre over the past few years.

    At first glance, Succubus in the City is the kind of book with which I wouldn’t want to be caught. A mixture between Sex and the City and The Devil Wears Prada, this novel is narrated by a succubus who’s contract-bound to deliver victims to hell after sex. But don’t worry: she’s a good girl who takes delight in sending the bad kind of men downward, and who enjoys spending time with her three demonic girlfriends when she’s not busy working at a fashion magazine. She may be three thousand years old, but she certainly appreciates the amenities of Manhattan, from designer clothes to high-end ice cream.

    In many ways, this reads like pure wish-fulfillment fantasy for the female urban professional set: Long litanies of expensive labels, blunt descriptions of shopping, sinful food, a heroine with an obligation to sleep around and send unworthy lovers to hell… Succubus in the City sometimes feels like a self-aware attempt to meld and exploit the tropes of paranormal romance with chick-lit. Not being among the target audience, I’m not sure how well it works, but I can tell you that it’s absolutely fascinating: There are probably a hundred pages in this novel that could have been cut without harming the plot, but the accumulation of brand names, hip references and upper-upper-class Manhattanite living makes for a neat reading experience: This may be an alien culture to me, but wish-fulfillment jumps gender barriers better than I expected.

    But Nina Harper is smarter than you and I, and so Succubus in the City is more than a litany of Things Women Want: there’s a fairly sophisticated mythology at play here, one where angels and demons are two sides of the same coin, where hell lives up to modern management techniques and where Satan’s top lieutenants have been at this game for thousands of years. The narrator is a three-thousand-year-old minor princess, and Harper’s take on modern society via the eyes of someone who has seen it all can be more amusing than you’d expect. This is a lighthearted novel, after all, one where Satan’s reputation exceeds his worst traits, one where the victims all deserve it and one where hell’s minions have access to their own version of LiveJournal called MagicMirror. (“Meph” is a foodie with his own restaurant reviews.) Everything is handled with a light touch and a professionals’ eye for decent plot mechanics. The details of the novel are where it works best: I was particularly happy with the character of Azz, a librarian with the look and temperament of a cat.

    Where the novel doesn’t work as well is when it tries to piece everything together. Narrator Lily and her friends are fun to hear, but it’s hard to reconcile some of their conversations with the personality of people who have lived through entire civilizations: the banter works for Sex and the City (which is explicitly referenced; the narrator thinks she’s Samantha), but for characters with that much experience in the ways of humanity… not so much. There are other issues of verisimilitude, starting from the curious lack of repercussions from taking so many people out of circulation. Most of those issues are hand-waved away with an omnipotent “Authority” that raises more questions than it satisfies: the real answer, of course, is that this is the type of fantasy where we’re not meant to ask too many questions. Which is a shame, considering the fun of Harper’s vision of hell and its servants.

    I haven’t said much about the plot so far because it doesn’t seem particularly important, even to the characters who take off to Aruba, are temporarily stumped by Google and can’t be bothered to exhibit the appropriate paranoid response at the suggestion that one of their own is conspiring against them. Trying to put a thriller plot framework on a light-hearted wish-fulfillment romantic fantasy can be tricky, especially considering the breaks for extravagant consumption.

    Add to that the considerable frustration of discovering that this is the first part of a series: the story doesn’t end as much as it is interrupted on the last page. What could have been forgivable with a “Book One of the Sexxubus Trilogy” warning ends up being a problem, at least until we are able to order the rest of the series.

    Not that this makes this novel any less fascinating to read, even when I can feel the commercial imperatives of the genre being deliberately tweaked by the author. Some authors may talk about paranormal romance as female empowerment, but Harper is the one that writes about sending unsatisfactory lovers straight to hell. Even guys like me can learn something from this book.

    [May 2009: Second volume Succubus Takes Manhattan is more of the same, with a few uneven differences: More descriptions of satanic rituals, more palace plotting amongst Hell’s minions, and a strengthened romantic intrigue between heroine Lily and her two men. On the other hand, the core strengths of the series remain: Harper doesn’t miss an occasion to go on virtual spees of wish-fulfilling indulgence. It’s all good fun, but those who haven’t been seduced by the first volume won’t have their minds changed by this follow-up.]

  • The Surrogates, Robert Venditti & Brett Weldele

    The Surrogates, Robert Venditti & Brett Weldele

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Top Shelf, 2008, 256 pages, US$19.95 tpb, ISBN 978-1-891830-87-7

    Good news, bad news: The Surrogates is a decently-imagined standalone Science Fiction story that deals with intriguing themes and stands alone away from superhero fantasies. On the other hand, the rough art is a tough sell in this era of slick computer-shaded photorealism, and the story has fairly embarassing plot holes.

    As the mainstream comics publishing industry matures and tackles other things than the superhero fantasies that have been their backbone for the past few decades, one of the most promising developments has been the trend toward limited series later collected in trade paperback. The Surrogates was originally published in 2006-2007 by Top Shelf Comics, and this trade paperback collects all five issues of the miniseries along with extra making-of material.

    The subject matter is intriguing: tackling the familiar SF idea of remote-controlled bodies, The Surrogates imagines a world where such technology has passed in common use: People purchase custom robotic bodies and stay home, living through their surrogates and their enhanced physical attributes. As the story begins, a masked criminal in Atlanta is destroying surrogates for reasons of his own. A policeman placed on the case quickly finds out what it means to live “for real” again when his surrogate is destroyed during the investigation. He suspects the intervention of a nearby preacher who cautions followers about mediated lives, but the truth is more complex than it appears.

    The problem with comics tackling SF themes is that, bluntly speaking, they’re usually well behind the times in terms of genre sophistication. The Surrogates, as strong as it is in a few areas, is a perfect example of those issues. It’s never quite credible in making us believe that less than fifty years from now, everyone will be using surrogates whose components can be traced back to one company. Real technology diffuses into the real world in complex ways: there’s competition, multiple models, people who refuse to buy into the new technology and various other knots of complexity. I, ROBOT (the movie) was similarly dumb in its treatment of its principal plot device, and for the same reason: the plot hinges on One Way, One Truth and One Answer. Point out that, well, there’s an awful lot of iPod clones on the market today and the plot of these stories crumbles away.

    Hence my dubiousness regarding the extrapolation in The Surrogates. From a written-SF fan’s perspective, it doesn’t help that the idea of surrogates have been explored in many stories for decades. It’s not an entirely original plot device. Anyone looking at the last decade alone can unearth Laura J. Mixon’s Proxies, David Brin’s Kiln People and (tangentially, but vigorously) Richard Morgan’s Altered Carbon as examples of the form, and that’s not even going into short stories.

    But it is new in the comic book universe, and what matters is what the writer does with it, right? Fortunately, writer Venditti does better when comes the time to makes his characters come to life: His lead protagonist is a credibly beaten-down policeman who learns to re-discover his outer humanity, and the plot involves a good variety of interesting characters. Preachers are often mis-used in SF and The Surrogates doesn’t escape that trap, but at least it does something unexpected with it.

    But where The Surrogates will really divide readers is at the surface level of the art, which is an odd mixture of pen sketches and computer-enhanced coloring. I found it dreary, unfocused and unpolished, like being stuck in a nightmare —but looking at other reviews, I see that it’s an approach that has fans. It’s a good thing that the script is the strongest part of The Surrogates: careful buyers will flip through the book before purchasing it to get an idea of whether they’ll have an allergic reaction to the art.

    Despite everything, The Surrogates is worth a look to see where the comics medium is going regarding authentic SF ideas. It’s not entirely successful, but it’s a great deal more ambitious than most SF graphic novels on the market, and when it work, it really works.

    (You won’t be surprised to learn that the big-budget movie adaptation will feature Bruce Willis and come out in summer 2009.)

  • A Theatre Near You, Alain Miguelez

    A Theatre Near You, Alain Miguelez

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Penumbra Press, 2004, 370 pages, C$45.00 hc, ISBN 1-89413-138-X

    I must have passed on Alain Miguelez’ A Theater Near You in local bookstores for two or three years before finally buying it. As a lavishly-illustrated specialized publication from a boutique publisher, this wasn’t a book I could hope to see on sale at some point. What’s more, I do have a deep interest in the book’s subject matter: I spend most of my waking hours in Ottawa, and I’m a steady moviegoer: A book about “150 years of going to the show in Ottawa-Gatineau” is almost tailor-fit for my tastes, even if it ends up being one of my most expensive books purchased so far.

    Fortunately, it’s worth every penny. Miguelez’ history of movie-going in the Ottawa area is a superbly-produced book that will certainly become the last word on the subject. It’s unbelievably well-researched (with 424 endnotes spread over ten pages), filled with a variety of historical facts, and it understands the economic, civic and cultural ramifications of its subject. A Theatre Near You deals perfectly with the language issues particular to Ottawa, demonstrates a keen understanding of the city’s history, and logically packages a complex subject in an easily-digestible structure. Its readability is also enhanced by clever graphic design: Nearly every single one of its pages sports visual material of some sort.

    It starts earlier than anyone would expect, going back all the way to the mid-nineteenth century theaters founded when Ottawa was still lumberjack-shack Bytowne and Canada was still a vague notion. Miguelez then moves on to the electric era with the Nickelodeons, then the “Early Legitimate Cinemas”, the “Downtown Picture Palaces”, the “Talking Picture Theatres”, the “Post-War Theatre Boom”, a quick unabashed look at the wave of “Porno theaters” that briefly flourished when single-screen theaters tried to survive in difficult times, then the “Theaters in Malls and Office Complexes” and finally the current “Megaplexes” era.

    Miguelez was able to sketch portraits of these eras with historical documentation and occasional memories from people who went or worked at those theaters. Each theater in Ottawa’s history (!) gets its own section, and the result is highly satisfactory. Miguelez himself becomes part of the story when discussing the closure of the Elgin or the Sommerset, and his first-hand knowledge of theaters in the area becomes more and more obvious as we move closer to the present day.

    For the historical buff, A Theatre Near You is a fascinating open door on Ottawa’s history, and the place of cinema in the Canadian capital’s cultural life. Even longtime Ottawa residents may be surprised to find out about such things as the Russell Hotel, or the now-gone Canal Street. (The postcard illustrations of downtown in the first third of the book are amazing.)

    I obviously never paid enough attention to my local history, because I was gob-smacked to find out about the existence of Le Français, the Regent or the 2,000+-seats Capitol and amazed at how much of Ottawa’ past cinema history remains visible in downtown today. The strange empty space next to the upper-Bank Street Staples is explained in this book, and if I stretch my neck a bit from my cubicle, I can see the empty space left behind the gas explosion that destroyed the Odeon in 1958. Those historical fact progressively mesh with my own memories as I recall the Sommerset (where one can now purchase milk where I was sitting at the premiere of GO in 1999), the Elgin sign that still stands proudly or the wonderful Mayfair still kicking after decades of continuous showings. One can easily imagine a walking tour of downtown pointing out the dozens of past theaters, some of which are still standing. (One of the most intriguing bits in the book is the suggestion, perhaps fanciful, that the Place de Ville theater has been mothballed, “the cinemas still in place, waiting for another tenant to occupy the space.” [P.311]) [January 2014: As of early 2014, the Place de Ville theater still exists in its mothballed state, albeit maybe not for long as this Ottawa Rewind article and this subsequent CBC news article suggests.]

    General movie buffs may be more interested in learning that Ottawa may have been the site of the first public motion picture projection in Canada:

    “Ottawa brothers Andrew and George Holland pioneered movie exhibiting in Canada. With their Edison license, their kinescope shows on Sparks Street were Canada’s first contact with the moving pictures. Holland Avenue is named after them.” [P.83]

    More recently, Ottawa’s grandiose Capitol theater hosted many Canadian movie premieres. Best yet: There are credible arguments that the first Canadian multiplex was Ottawa’s own Elgin theater. (What is certain is that the owner who had the bright idea of creating “The Little Elgin” went on to become the president of the Cineplex chain.)

    Despite a few annoying typos, a lack of an index and passages that could have been re-written once more, especially near the end of the book, A Theatre Near You is easily one of my favorite books of the year. I doubt that it will be particularly interesting to anyone outside the Ottawa area, but it’s the best book one could imagine on its particular subject.

    It’s also likely to remain the definitive book on Ottawa-area theaters for the same economic reasons that are explained throughout the book: With the progressive passage of films to the digital realm and the consequent acceleration of direct digital distribution, I don’t think that we’ll get many more new theaters in the area. Since 2004, only one theater has opened in faraway Barrhaven, and despite the revival of the St-Laurent multiplex as a discount theater, the 2006 shake-up in theater ownership only suggests a dwindling market: The Mayfair and Rideau always feel on the verge of closing down, and plans for a new downtown picture house have not materialized. Once day-and-date direct digital distribution becomes commonplace (something that may be as near as five years away), theaters will become a charming upscale throwback to an earlier area.

    But even if that happens, A Theatre Near You will be there to testify about cinema’s history in the Ottawa area. If you are or know an Ottawa-based cinephile who likes history, this is a perfect gift idea.

    [January 2009: Alain Miguelez was kind enough to write and acknowledge the review. Thanks!]

  • Saturn’s Children, Charles Stross

    Saturn’s Children, Charles Stross

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Ace, 2008, 323 pages, C$27.50 hc, ISBN 978-0-441-01594-8

    One of the most vexing issues to face genre SF these days is the necessity to put away outdated futures. Seminal writers in the fifties may have have imagined glorious visions of housewives in space, but we know a bit better: We know that housewives will be rare in the future, and we suspect that space travel is likely to remain impractical for humans. Any modern SF writer worth his books’ cover price has to stop and consider whether the ideas hardwired in the collective DNA of the genre are still possibilities knowing what we know now.

    Charles Stross is one of the smartest genre SF writers on the market today, so it’s a delight to see him come up with a novel that squarely confronts those issues in Saturn’s Children. It’s an updated homage to Heinlein and Asimov that seeks to tie classic extrapolations to a future we can still imagine from today. It’s a romp, it’s typical Stross (perhaps too-typical Stross) and it’s a terrific read for those weaned on classical SF.

    While perfectly readable on its own, Saturn’s Children is best appreciated with a curriculum of previous reading experiences. Since it’s an explicit homage to Heinlein and Asimov, it’s best appreciated with some knowledge of those authors. In particular, it features a heroine, Freya, with strong similarities to the titular heroin of Heinlein’s Friday (the cheesecake cover of the American edition of the book may be too outrageous for some, but it is a blatant reference to Michael Whelan’s infamous Friday cover), tours the solar system much like in Heinlein’s The Cat Who Walks Through Walls (along with descendants like John Varley’s The Golden Globe) and freely quotes attitudes from much of Heinlein’s middle-to-late period. Since Saturn’s Children also riffs on the power chords of the Three Laws of Robotics, familiarity with Asimov’s I, Robot is suggested.

    It begins as narrator Freya contemplates suicide. You would too if you were in her situation, a female sexbot created to serve the needs of a human race that has since disappeared, now stuck above Venus with little means to her credit. Fortunately, Freya is one of many fembots cast from the same model, and they try to help each other when they can. Shortly after being summoned by one of her sisters, Freya is stuffed in a ship and sent off to Mercury, where her Grand Tour of a post-human Solar System only begins. Fans of Stross’ work won’t be surprised to learn that espionage, thrills, secret identities, romance and high-tech jargon are all included in the tour. The prize is a dazzling recasting of Heinleinian and Asimovian themes in something that feels convincingly modern, up to an including a neat extrapolation of the social vulnerabilities of Asimovian-wired robots left without human masters.

    Saturn’s Children is most distinctive when it points and smirks endearingly at the trail left by Heinlein, Asimov and other well-respected SF legends. Heinlein’s well-known quote about the need for humans to be generalists is upended with a rude reference to trading other people’s skills for sexual acts. Other specialized jokes abound: A crucial poultry-shaped MacGuffin is referred to as a “Plot Capon” while the threat of humans being genetically re-created becomes “pink goo”. And so on; even if this a standalone book, the more you remember about SF, the more jokes you’ll get.

    As a Stross book, it’s largely what fans have learned to expect from the author: it hits the usual techno-jargon, humor, romance, thrills and hints of horror that figure so often in his work. Readers who loved his previous books will completely satisfied by this one. (Conversely, those who still don’t get what Stross is trying to do won’t be any closer to an answer with this one.) Stross has attained the status of a reliable author a while ago, but at the price of delivering excellent novels that are perhaps a bit too similar. From an uninformed perspective, Stross writes very quickly: due to a number of factors, his fans have enjoyed twelve novels in six years, an insane pace that doesn’t allow any margin for error. As a result, Saturn’s Children may be superbly entertaining, but also feel just a bit too familiar to be truly impressive. (On-line chatter suggests that he’s aware of the issue and is about to slacken the pace a bit, which should be for the best.)

    Small quibbles about Stross’ prodigious writing output aside, Saturn’s Children is another solid hit for him, and a superb example of genre Science Fiction at this moment in time. It makes interesting use of familiar tropes with contemporary thinking, and it’s a wonderful read from beginning to end. Stross has been accumulating fans ever since coming to prominence with his first novel, and this merely keeps up his winning streak.

  • From the Notebooks of Dr. Brain, Minister Faust

    From the Notebooks of Dr. Brain, Minister Faust

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Del Rey, 2007, 390 pages, C$17.95 tpb, ISBN 0-345-46637-3

    This, dear readers, is the decadent era of the superhero in pop culture. There are now so pervasive, such a part of the entertainment-retail complex that there is nowhere for them to go but down, preferably in a cloud of ridicule. The symptoms are clear, and clearer as I re-write this in September 2008: After HANCOCK, it’s clear that it’s a free-for-all in the superhero field, and notwithstanding oddities like BATMAN RETURNS, it’s clear that humor is one way of dealing with a now-overly familiar topic.

    That’s tying Minister Faust’s From the Notebooks of Dr. Brain to a heavy conceptual framework, but it’s also true that Faust is perverting the comic-book superhero tradition in two ways in his second novel, one of which is obvious from the get-go, with the other becoming apparent only as the novel goes on and maintains a facade of false humor.

    (Readers overly sensitive to spoilers may want to skip ahead to the last paragraph of this review.)

    The first of Faust’s hacks on the superhero form is well-presented in the packaging of the novel. Written as if from the pen of “Dr. Eva Brain-Silverman”, psychologist to superheros, From the Notebooks of Dr. Brain is re-titled Unmasked! When Being a Superhero Can’t Save You From Yourself and presented as a self-help book for the average hyper-hominid. If you’ve read any pop-psychology book before, this will feel instantly familiar, as Dr. Brain can’t help but structure her narrative around common super-heroic psychological issues, and pepper the narrative with a thick cloud of well-titled syndromes and cute acronyms.

    It’s not your average self-help book though, because it does tell a story. As Dr. Brain is tasked with treating the dysfunctional relationship of the top members of the Fantastic Order Of Justice (FOOJ), some of whom are not meant to be riffs on existing superheroes. Who would associate Batman with pro-fascist The Flying Squirrel? Who could recognize Superman in the quasi-moronic Omnipotent Man? There isn’t any link at all between Wonder-Woman and Iron Lass! Well, oh, okay. (Other winks to superhero canon are peppered through the narrative, two of the earliest ones being “the city of Los Ditkos” and the “Crisis of Infinite Dearths.” )

    But as Dr. Brain deals with her super-powered subjects, another external threat emerges, linked with the escape of super-villains, an upcoming election within the FOOJ and the death of one of the greatest superheroes of all times. What happens as the novel goes on become stranger and stranger, as one of the story’s most lucid character is systematically belittled by the narrator. The character’s racially-charged rhetoric may be overt, but it’s strange to see him marginalized, especially given Faust’s own minority-friendly first novel.

    But nothing is an accident, and the unreliability of the narrator eventually becomes a window through which we understand that Faust’s building an entirely different critique of the superhero genre, one that obliquely discusses the nature and social ramification of the power fantasies implicit in the superhero genre. Brain herself may be either evil or clueless, but that doesn’t change anything to the way the novel says one thing and means another in its closing chapters. It does place readers in a curious position, though: After a fun start, From the Notebooks of Dr. Brain becomes less and less amusing, until the smiles become bitter with resentment.

    As a novel, it’s a clear step up from the occasionally-messy The Coyote Kings of the Space-Age Bachelor Pad. The style is snappy, the characters all have distinctive voices, the twists are striking and the entire novel seems far more controlled. It’s a mystery why Faust hasn’t received more attention for this unnerving, but worthwhile second novel. As a decadent take on the superhero genre, it’s about as good as it gets.

  • Heaven, Ian Stewart & Jack Cohen

    Heaven, Ian Stewart & Jack Cohen

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Warner Aspect, 2004 (2005 reprint), 428 pages, C$9.99 mmpb, ISBN 0-446-61103-4

    I may blow my entire Science Fiction credibility out of the room by mentioning the following, but here goes: I’m not a big fan of alien-centric SF. Strange, isn’t it? But put down those pitchforks and allow me thirty more seconds to explain that one. I’m more interested in the extrapolative aspect of SF; in its ability to illuminate the familiar with the unfamiliar. The problem with alien-centric SF is that is too often feels like a self-satisfied series of tricks that are of interest to the author and few others. “Card tricks in the dark”, to cite the Turkey City Lexicon again.

    Add to that my lack of interest in SF that tackles religious themes (it’s been done before, folks) and that explains why I never really bothered seeking out a copy of Ian Stewart and Jack Cohen’s Heaven. Both authors, respected scientists in their own fields, had previously shown an impressive ability to match scientific speculation with adequate fiction in their first novel Wheelers. I had to wait until I saw a paperback copy of Heaven deeply discounted at a used book sale before committing to their follow-up.

    I shouldn’t have waited that long. Despite a back-cover blurb that suggests a worst-case-scenario of alien-centric SF crossed with pure religion-bashing (“…mariner Second-best Sailor leans this his planet is discovered by evangelists…”), Heaven turns out to be a lot more palatable than my own prejudices had led me to believe. Oh, it’s not an immediately compelling read, at least at first: I ended up re-reading the first fifty pages once I realized that if I hadn’t been hooked by the first few pages, there really was something intriguing going on.

    Once properly set up, Heaven flies by with a succession of neat ideas and better-than-expected plotting. Stewart and Cohen won’t be mistaken for great prose stylists anytime soon, but their affection for their imagined aliens shows through, and it’s a minor marvel that they can make a deeply alien life form so compelling. Their specialty is xenobiology, and it shows in their portrait of a aquatic life-form with a strong kinship to coral. Comfortable with the language, the common assumptions and the writing quirks of genre science-fiction, the authors then proceed to deliver an unusual adventure that plays with the usual tropes of SF.

    It’s not a book that I would suggest to someone who’s new to Science Fiction, since it fills a very intriguing niche in the SF ecosystem: The kind of novel written by practicing scientists, far more comfortable with ideas and conceptual issues than in delivering a standard reading experience. Fans of Hal Clement, Charles Pellegrino or John Cramer’s regrettably few novels will understand what kind of SF this is: the pure bedrock of the genre, crammed with speculations while unburdened by notions of literary respectability.

    And yet explicit comparisons with Cramer and Clement do a disservice to the considerable reading pleasure offered by this novel once the basic language of the novel is established: There are a few neat tricks in Heaven‘s prose, the coolest of which being a discussion between chunks of a planet-spanning intelligence. The novel doesn’t always make sense, but it usually sacrifice logic for hard-hitting visuals: The scene that illustrates the titular “heaven” is nonsense, but it’s an utterly memorable image nonetheless.

    All in all, Heaven ends up being a small surprise. It doesn’t try to be for everyone and so will probably appeal to those who are already familiar with genre SF, but it’s an overlooked delight for that readership. The lesson learned here is that authorship should trump subject matter in choosing a book to read. If you loved something by an author, don’t be afraid to disregard what you think you know about the subject of their next book. You may be pleasantly surprised.

  • The Mirrored Heavens, David J. Williams

    The Mirrored Heavens, David J. Williams

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Bantam Spectra, 2008, 409 pages, C$14.00 tpb, ISBN 978-0-553-38541-0

    I didn’t like this novel and it feels like a defeat.

    I started it with the best intentions, after all: I love high-tech SF thrillers, and everything about The Mirrored Heavens suggested the equivalent of a techno-thriller kicked a hundred years in the future, with super-powered operatives, competent terrorists, tensions between global power blocks and spectacular disasters. It’s got effusive blurbs by authors I like a lot, leading with a front-cover blurb from Peter Watts. I like SF, I like thrillers. What could possibly go wrong?

    Indeed, from some angles, The Mirrored Heavens still feels awesome. The complex power dynamics within the dystopian world described by Williams are credible and unpredictable. The relentless pacing of the book, where crises barely resolve themselves before there’s another rushing at full speed, is the type of breathless rhythm that’s missing from several novels. Some of the set pieces are spectacular in the way only wide-screen action sequences can be. Heck, even Williams’ staccato prose is among the best I’ve read this year. Try this early paragraph for a taste:

    Marlowe opens up on the two suits at point-blank range, his wrist-guns set for flechette swarm. The armor worn by Marlowe’s targets is good. It’s nowhere near enough. Marlowe cuts through it like he’s wielding a giant buzzsaw. The figures he’s facing suddenly aren’t figures anymore. Marlowe fires his thrusters, plunges down the shaft toward what’s left of them. He lands on the roof of the elevator car. He leaps through the open doors from which the dead men emerged. [P.34]

    Now imagine 400 pages like that.

    And that’s part of the problem: As the book’s events accumulated, as the four main characters dispatched entire armies of faceless opponents, destroying chunks of cities and changing the history of their world by their actions, I found myself increasingly numb to the novel’s impact.

    This isn’t normally a problem: My number-one complaint about novels these days is that they’re too long and too dull. 400 pages of action ought to have been a plus, not a minus.

    I finally realized what had been bothering me upon reading the novel’s Appendix, which presents a time-line of world history for the next hundred years. The amazing thing about it is that year by year, item by item, things get constantly worse in order to lead to Williams’ nightmarish future where even the U.S. is under martial leadership. There have been a lot of SF thrillers in the past few years (indeed, they make up most of the output of acclaimed new authors such as Charles Stross, Alastair Reynolds and Richard Morgan), but their menagerie of secret agents and super-powered operatives are usually fighting to preserve or bring about a desirable world: they’re the wolves guarding the sheep with whom the readers are supposed to identify. But there’s no such thing in The Mirrored Heavens: The entire world is bleak and whatever the characters will do won’t change a thing in improving everyone’s lot. It’s like having gunfights and car chases on the deck of the Titanic: they’re all doomed anyway.

    The novel’s other annoyances (a punchy style that never lets up; ridiculously over-powered characters; humorless tone) would not have been problems in other circumstances, but here they feel magnified by the novel’s lack of success in earning at least a bit of empathy.

    On of the toughest skills in being a reviewer is trying to dissociate a personal distaste from a more dispassionate consideration of a work’s strengths and weaknesses. It’s an admirable but futile quest since all reviews are subjective, but trying to explain where The Mirrored Heavens goes astray raises an uncomfortable doubt: The fact that I don’t like it right now doesn’t mean I may not like it in other circumstances; once I won’t be overdosing on SF thrillers, for instance. Fortunately, everything about this book screams of a sequel: we’ll see then if there’s any improvement.

  • Zima Blue, Alastair Reynolds

    Zima Blue, Alastair Reynolds

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Night Shade, 2006, 280 pages, C$17.95 tpb, ISBN 978-1-59780-079-2

    The stories in this Alastair Reynolds collection have two things going for them when compared to the rest of the author’s work: They’re short, and they’re not part of his Inhibitors future history.

    Given that the vast majority of Reynold’s work so far is made of thick fat novels all taking place in the Inhibitor universe, this may sound like damning with faint praise. But my problem with Reynolds’ fiction is simple: His novels are far too long, and they keep happening in a universe that I don’t find particularly interesting. In fact, some of my favorite Reynolds stories so far (Chasm City and The Prefect) and quasi-standalone stories that explore outskirts of the Inhibitor universe. Reynolds is a capable author, but he’d be even better if he showed some control over his prodigiously lengthy output.

    Considering those objections, Zima Blue seems tailored for optimistic nay-sayers like myself. A collection of Reynold’s non-Inhibitor short stories so far (the Inhibitor short stories are in Gollancz’ Galactic North) they offer a look at what he can do with a smaller freer canvas. It’s an ideal introduction to his work, and it may even please those who couldn’t stand the verbiage of his novels. Every one of the collection’s eleven story is accompanied by notes giving a glimpse into Reynolds’ life and inspirations. An introduction by Paul J. McAuley completes the content.

    The two stories that bookend the collection offer a good way to go from the Inhibitors stories to the more varied universes in this collection. The last story, the titular “Zima Blue”, is a meditation about memory and art placed over an imagined universe that teems with possibilities. It’s a companion to the first piece “The Real Story” in that both take place in a fairly optimistic universe in which a journalist named Carrie Clay goes around trying to understand celebrities. (In his story notes, Reynolds hopes to write more of those stories, but warns us not to hold our breath.)

    It’s not the only pair of linked stories in the collection: “Hideaway” and “Merlin’s Gun” share a common character and a baroque space-opera setting, but I regret to say that neither particularly grabbed me. Perhaps the next time I re-read them…

    Given that most of Reynolds’ short-stories so far have been published in the United Kingdom, most of the stories collected here will be unknown to American readers. Of the two exceptions collected in Hartwell and Cramer’s year’s-best anthologies to date, only “Beyond the Aquila Rift” is reprinted here, and it’s just as good now as upon a first read –perhaps even more so, given the big twists. (The other year’s-best story, “Tiger, Burning”, was published too late for inclusion.)

    One story is original to this volume. “Signal to Noise” is a strong and memorable narrative of parallel universes and lost lovers, a rare near-future story that shows a promising direction for Reynolds should he choose to step back from the far-future space opera that has been his specialty until now.

    The other standout piece in the book, “Understanding Space and Time”, neatly encapsulates its goal and appeal in its title. I suspect that this is one of the pieces that immediately serve to distinguish those who love SF for its aspirational attitude toward knowledge from those who just like the stuff for other reasons: It’s both overwritten and simplistic, but I’m reasonably certain that it will leave other SF fans thrilled with a glimpse at the unknown.

    On the design side of things, Night Shade Books should be praised for having been inspired by the design of Reynolds’ Gollanz/Ace books to deliver a cover that fits well on the shelf with the rest of the author’s work. It’s a small detail, but the kind of service that makes Night Shade such a dependable publisher both for readers and authors. Zima Blue is the kind of single-author short story collection what too often gets forgotten by major publishers, much to the detriment of everyone. If it can manage to make me look more favorably upon Reynold’s works… imagine what it can do for you.

  • Hippo Eats Dwarf, Alex Boese

    Hippo Eats Dwarf, Alex Boese

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Harcourt, 2006, 278 pages, US$14.00 tpb, ISBN 0-15-603083-7

    My idealistic streak would dearly love to see a world where truth and accurate information would triumph over lies and nonsense. Alas, the human brain isn’t wired this way, and the mass of disinformation that clogs the Internet is just a reflexion of how, as a species, we’re just not very good at this whole idea of an “objective reality”

    Billed as “A Field Guide to Hoaxes and Other B.S.”, Alex Boese’s Hippo Eats Dwarf is most fascinating as a punchy compendium detailing some of the ways humans lie to each other. It’s profoundly depressing even when it’s hilarious, and it’s an eye-opener even for those who think they’ve seen everything, on or off the Internet.

    The central conceit of the book is to teach readers how to distinguish between hoaxes and reality. (The title refers to a widely-known urban legend in which a set of circumstances lead a hippo to swallow a dwarf. It usually involves a circus cannon.) So each chapter of the book is peppered with “Reality Rules” (eg: “Reality Rule 11.1: There’s nothing real about reality TV”) that are meant to guide readers but actually introduce the next set of anecdotes, incidents, hoaxes and outright falsehoods (mixed with the infrequent truth) that Boese brings together in one handy hyperactive package.

    Generously illustrated and printed in bi-chromic black-and-green, Hippo Eats Dwarf is as entertaining as it’s useful. The structure of the book unpacks itself in bite-sized segments peppered with short definitions, “Case Files” sidebars, question-and-answer “Reality Checks” and sub-categories, along with pictures and illustrations. One can argue about its bilious shades of green, but the design of the book is up to its content in terms of making it as reader-friendly as possible. It’s great bathroom reading, something that the book itself explicitly encourages: “Should you find yourself reluctant to put down this book despite a burning need to go to the bathroom, there is a perfect solution. Read the book on the toilet. You have my permission.” [P.175]

    Such an unpretentious tone works well given the subject, especially when readers are tempted to ask who Boese thinks he is to slice between truth and fiction. As it happens, Boese is a former science history student whose abandoned doctoral dissertation led to a rather interesting career as a self-taught “hoaxpert” whose web site remains a reference point for anti-hoaxers. Hippo Eats Dwarf is the second of his three books so far, but Boese’s slightly-sarcastic tone occupies an interesting mid-point between credibility and sympathy: he may snark, but the acid never overwhelms the wonderful aspect of the things he brings to our attention. The entire thing is remarkably funny.

    Even for those who think they’ve reasonably well-informed about the quasi-infinite weirdness of modern human society, Hippo Eats Dwarf has a number of new stories to tell. Some of them are amazing; others are just depressing as we wonder how, exactly, do people fall for this kind of obviously silly stuff. Despite Boese’s protestations late in his introduction (“the question of why our world has become so hippo-eats-dwarf is an interesting one, but that’s another topic I don’t address at length.” [P.3-4]), this book is a lengthy collection of the variety of reasons why people will prefer to invent, and believe, outright falsehoods. Best of all, it demonstrates such things by an encyclopedic enumeration of practical cases rather than dry academic discussion.

    Contrarily to other books that look good upon browsing and end up flat on close reading, Hippo Eats Dwarf is a solid and content-filled book that delivers upon even its own outrageous back-cover promises. It looks good and leaves an even better impression. It won’t do much to fight against the human propensity to believe nonsense, but it may set a few things straight in your mind. Can you afford to let this book slip by?

  • Neuropath, Scott Bakker

    Neuropath, Scott Bakker

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Penguin Canada, 2008, 306 pages, C$26.00 tpb, ISBN 978-0-14-316871-3

    Scott Bakker’s Neuropath is a heck of a book despite not being much of a novel. Despite being marketed as a futuristic thriller in which a psychologist is asked to fight a serial killer, it’s really more of an argument, a game between the author and the reader. It’s an attempt to undermine the very foundations of the thriller, to deny the very possibility of a free agent in a genre that is predicated on an active protagonist. I admire it a lot despite not caring for it very much as a thriller.

    The first fifty pages are as good as the first few pages of a thriller ever get: Thomas Bible is a psychologist, a teacher and a divorced man trying to make the world better from his children. But everything changes once FBI agents set foot in his office one August morning: They want his help in tracking down a particularly sadistic serial killer who just happens to be Tom’s best friend.

    The twist here is central to Neuropath‘s central theme: Our serial killer knows enough about neurology and technology to hack into his victim’s brain and make them kill themselves with glee. But there’s more, because Tom knows that his friend Neil is not killing other people as much as he’s proving an ongoing argument about the nature of consciousness: For someone convinced that consciousness is an illusion, there can be no guilt in murder. And Tom is the audience for the demonstration.

    If it seems like an intriguing justification laid atop a fairly standard thriller plot, you’re not too far off from the novel’s intent. Bakker is using the latest real-world discoveries in the field of neurology to argue about whether consciousness really exists as a decision-maker, or if it’s rather a set of confabulation and justifications for a set of unconscious behavior. As disturbing as it may sounds, the more we understand about the inner working of the brain, the less consciousness-as-driver seems likely. Neuropath is an attempt to work out the consequences of such a conclusion, and apply them to the framework of a serial killer mystery.

    For the seasoned thriller reader, Neuropath occasionally seems to be doing everything wrong. The novel lathers repetitive exposition sequences, stops dead in its track in-between plot beats, features a main character who can’t be called a protagonist by sheer lack of initiative and reaches a climax thanks to the actions of third parties. Tom has to pop pills to alter his brain chemistry so that he can act, and even that can’t help him but being a witness to the novel’s final moments. You really have to look at the novel at a certain angle in order to appreciate all the genre-tweaking that Bakker does.

    Some flaws remains unforgivable no matter how pernicious the rest of the novel wants to be: Neuropath‘s rhythm stops dead between its first third and last half. The females characters tend to have clichéd plot functions. Much of the exposition repeats itself. The ending seems overly abrupt, missing an extra-sarcastic epilogue. In his rush to overturn the conventions of the thriller genre, Bakker seems to forget that they exist because they work, and that shooting them down carries its own price.

    My suspicion (and hope) is that the novel will find its audience not among the beach readers looking for another crime thriller, but with seasoned critical readers with a good understanding of genre protocols. The philosophical argument carried by the novel is more interesting that the story it tells, and that may not, indeed, appeal to everyone.

    Such is Neuropath: a complex, not entirely comfortable book whose weaknesses aren’t nearly as damaging as you may think, and in fact form part of the novel’s appeal. It may not work all that well as a thriller for various reasons (intentional and unintentional, conscious or unconscious), but I have a hunch that once I’ll tally up my most memorable books of 2008, this one is going to rank fairly high despite its flaws.

    [September 2008: No review of Neuropath should exist without at least a glance at Peter Watts’ Blindsight and a few stories such as Daryl Gregory’s “Second Person, Present Tense”: This “neuropunk” sub-genre of science-fiction is doing some pretty interesting things with the latest research in consciousness, clawing back further and further the notion of free agency and active consciousness. I predict a lot of buzzing around these areas over the next few years.]

  • Wanted, Mark Millar and J.G. Jones

    Wanted, Mark Millar and J.G. Jones

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Top Cow, 2008, 192 pages, C$19.99 tpb, ISBN 978-1-58240-497-4

    This is not your usual comic-book super-hero miniseries.

    Mark Millar has something else in mind. He wants to show you a world where the super-villains have won. He wants to riff off Fight Club and The Matrix in a super-heroic context. He wants to make you cheer for an utterly amoral loser physically modeled after Eminem. He wants to take your money and make fun of you. (Not you, casual reader, but you, comic fanboy with a serious $40-dollar-a-week habit at the comic-book shop.)

    It starts where its readers live, with a lead character who has already been destroyed by modern life: Wesley Gibson is a young man with a steady job and a girlfriend, but both of those things are a farce: his job is an abusive dead-end cubicle nightmare, while his girlfriend is having an affair with his best friend –along others. Wesley’s a hypochondriac, suffers from panic attacks, and doesn’t seem to have any worthwhile hobbies beyond complaining about himself. But a few hyper-violent pages later, things change: A mysterious woman named Fox (whose appearance is clearly modeled after Halle Berry) tells him that he’s the son of a freshly-slain master assassin, and that an all-powerful organization wants him to continue the family legacy. After casually slaying most of a diner in order to prove her claims of legal impunity, she takes Wesley to the organization’s headquarters where he learns that his panic attacks are merely the undisciplined manifestation of an incredible talent for concentration. One issue later, he’s a master assassin (“The Killer”) learning how super-villains have destroyed all super-heroes and rewritten the history of the world to the one you learned in school. Another issue later, and The Killer is embroiled in a war between the last remaining super-villains, a war that claimed his father and may destroy him.

    Wanted doesn’t deal in niceties. It just takes five pages before the first hyper-graphic death. One super-villain has scatological powers. Foul language is pervasive. Fox (and eventually Wesley) have no moral compunction about killing innocents who annoy them. (In describing his training hit-list, Wesley enumerates: “My old geography teacher. The girl next door, that guy across the street who kicked my ass for scratching his old Mustang… The chick who said no when I asked her to a movie, that guy who set his dog on me… My bank manager, my landlord, that Hispanic guy in the record store with the attitude…” The only surprise is that he doesn’t kill his old girlfriend, but there’s a plot reason for that.) Small wonder if the Hollywood movie adaptation made it to screens shortly after the trade paperback, even without the super-villains.

    For a while, it looks like a slickly-produced but irredeemable exercise in pointless nihilism. (Not every Fight Club wannabe understands Palahniuk’s point.) A guilty joy to read, sure. Anything more, though?

    But every review of Wanted mentions the last two pages of the series with good reason: It’s as clear a deconstruction of comic-book fanboyishness as can be printed. It’s a slap in the face of everyone who’s been swept away in the story. In many ways, it’s the series’ chaotic moral center, its final attempt at redemption after an utterly amoral story meant to stroke readers in the most indulging ways possible. It’s what raises Wanted from a mildly interesting power fantasy to a pernicious commentary on such fantasies. [July 2008: And, typically, it’s the only part of the book that the movie adaptation gets completely wrong, transforming bone-cutting sarcasm into crowd-pleasing bravado.]

    It’s that ending that warrants a look at Wanted for anyone who falls outside the familiar stereotype of the comics fanboy. Millar may or may not have pasted a quick cheap tag to a pandering ultra-violent story, but there’s no denying that it radically changes the impression left by the book for the better. And if you’ve seen the film… you haven’t seen anything yet.

  • Strip Tease, Carl Hiaasen

    Strip Tease, Carl Hiaasen

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Warner, 1993 (1996 reprint), 418 pages, C$8.50 mmpb, ISBN 0-446-60066-0

    Submitted for your consideration: the strange idea that some good authors are worth reviewing once but not twice.

    It’s a concept that touches upon the traditional definition of a hack: a professional writer who can be counted upon to deliver what’s expected. Less-kind definitions of “hack” focus on the mercenary intent of the writer as if it necessarily necessarily excluded any quality from the resulting work —but genre readers know better than that. Some professionals quickly learn that good formulas work consistently, leading to writers-as-brand names like Clive Cussler. The experience of reading their books remains consistent from one to the other: if it’s a thrill to read the first one and determine what makes it different from the rest of genre fiction, there’s little to say afterwards, especially in series where real change is kept to a minimum. (Cussler’s last few novels have been worth a review in part because he has started tinkering with his usual approach.) I find myself unable to review Robert B. Parke’s Spenser novels, for instance, even if I absolutely love them: they deliver exactly the same experience all the time: There’s little left to say except “Wonderful, another success in a long series.” In my just-finished quest to review all of Michael Connelly’s fiction at a pace of one novel per month, I often ran out of things to say beyond repeating Connelly’s strengths and seeing how the novels linked to previous books.

    Which generally brings us to Carl Hiaasen’s particular brand of comic crime fiction in that I have never been disappointed by his books, but it’s hard to find anything distinctive to say once a first review has been written. His madcap novels of silly South Florida crimes each feature entirely different plots, generally new characters and strange new Floridian sub-cultures, but they all share a similar feel. All can boast of a large cast of characters, criss-crossing plotting, limpid writing and a light atmosphere nonetheless leading to tense moments. Hiaasen has found a winning formula, and there’s little reason for him to deviate from it. That makes him an utterly dependable authors, and one who deserves a massive monthly back-catalog reading project. Alas, it also makes it almost impossible to review Hiaasen on a monthly basis: There’s a limit to how much space a plot summary can take when the critical content of the review remains the same.

    If I make an exception for Strip Tease, it’s that I haven’t reviewed Hiaasen in years, and I wanted to flag down why that was so. Furthermore, Strip Tease remains to this day the only one of Hiaasen’s non-juvenile crime novels to have been adapted to big screen. I never saw the 1996 film STRIPTEASE, but I can still remember the public titillation at the idea of then-hot Demi Moore playing the lead exotic dancer. Never mind that the movie was a critical flop and a commercial under-achiever: It’s probably still the only Hiaasen title that the vast public can recognize. (“Hey, look, there’s Demi Moore’s on the cover!”) I suppose that there’s something to be written about how Hiaasen’s fine-tuned style doesn’t lend itself to a flat film adaptation, but that will wait until I get to see the film.

    As for the book itself, well, it’s all you’d expect from a Hiaasen novel: Decent characters (including a single mom strip-teasing to support herself and her daughter) faced against antagonists both evil and stupid, complex plotting, wonderful prose style, tongue-in-cheek commentary on the less glamorous side of Florida life, moments of well-executed tension, progressive politics and an epilogue that wraps up everything. No disappointment here: Just a good solid dark comedy. Read one Hiaasen, and that will be enough to tell you if you are likely to love the other ones. (You can even read them out of order.)

    So don’t mind me as I spend the next few months reading through the entirety of Hiaasen’s work to date. Just don’t be surprised if I somehow don’t manage to review every single one of those books. Or if I end up discussing other things than the book when I do.